Perfection, I apologize for not responding to this sooner. I got your private note about it and to be honest kind of ignored it at first, expecting to get back to it at some point in the near future.. now! I mean, I've been pretty busy, and I didn't think it was important enough. besides, we've been over all this before already, and I don't think we're going to agree on any fundamental points of this discussion at all, ever, so I gotta say, I was a bit reluctant to bite.. but I feel like typing stuff right now, so whatever. I mean, I think we covered the bases already, but maybe not. Anyway, without any further delay, here is my response to your rebuttal, as typed out by my secretary:
And you base this "fact" on what?
I figure, that there are 100 different points I can find on my rock where the features could be different in 10 roughly equiprobable ways independent of one another (in actuality it's probably more like hundreds of millions with subtle interdependencies, but this is a good toy model), for example on one part of it, there's a slight chip, if that chip causer was different it could have been shallower or deeper by maybe 10 noticible graduations all of similar probability. There are many many other points on my rock like this I can find where things could have been different by said similar probability. The end result is I can easily estimate the probability of a similar sized rock to have similarity in shape to mine, to be under 10^-100, which makes it in all likelihood completely unique in the universe.
I said "using your unaided senses". You would need tools to keep track of all those measurements and have a means to compare them in any sort of meaningful way.
Perfection said:
Yet still not nearly huge enough.
For what exactly, though? Sure, an atom-by-atom analysis of the rock should be unique for even the most immense of Universes... but there is a threshold for that, even - large enough and *exactly* the same rocks start appearing in various places around the hypothetical Universe. Indistinguishable.
I suppose my point here is that the Universe is a very big place, and the rock-analysis data would have to be very detailed for you to be able to tell your rock from my hypothetical i-flew-around-the-universe-and-found-the-closest-rock-to-your-rock-that-exists rock
Perfection said:
Well, we know life came into being, we just don't know how likely it is, I have thus far found no compelling reason to believe it is either over or under ~10^-22 per star. Remember, warpus, I'm not saying we are alone, just saying that you can't say we aren't.
Okay, assume that A = "life arising on its own around a star". So, P(A) = "the probability of life arising around a random star". This value could be anything, like you said, some value between 0 and 1.
Let B= estimated number of instances of life arising in the universe,
x = the number of stars in the Universe, an unknown
So B = P(A)*x
What you're saying is that P(A) and x are so fine-tuned that they equal 1 when you multiply them. In essence, you are saying that they are inverses of eachother.
I'm saying it's possible, but the spectrum of other possibilities is far far greater than that one particular and well-balanced possibility.
Perfection said:
Your method is simply doesn't work for sufficiently rare events, of which life might be!
We don't know if life is rare, you can't assume that it is. My probability spectrum includes rare and non-rare life (occuring 4 times, 6 times, 318,812,822,853,333 times, etc.), yours only includes a very particular instance of rare (1 time)
