Junkyard Tornado Fallacy. "Long odds" of life/complex life

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Junkyard tornado​

The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle’s Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."[1][2][3] It was used originally by Fred Hoyle, in which he applied statistical analysis to the origin of life, but similar observations predate Hoyle and have been found all the way back to Darwin's time,[1] and indeed to Cicero in classical times.[4] While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay of creationist and intelligent design criticisms of evolution.

This argument is Rejected by the vast majority of biologists. From the modern evolutionary standpoint, while the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbably remote, evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by chance, over a long period of time. The transition as a whole is plausible, as each step improves survivability; the Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado posits.
[......]

Junkyard tornado - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One way this fallacy is used is to arbitrarily reduce the probability of anything to virtually zero.

 

[scruffy]

One way this fallacy is used is to arbitrarily reduce the probability of anything to virtually zero.

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

 

[abu afak]

I write better than you, have a greater vocabulary than you and can think and type more quickly than you.

1. I am on he road with a 13.9" laptop with two (ie, 4/5, R/T, etc) dead vertical rows of keys down the center vertically so using an on screen keyboard on an already small screen.

2. No answer to my probability... or your LowQ debate by youtube.

3. I am in several high IQ groups and mostly post in them having long ago won the debate here with my Pillar OP's and logic. Just bump them up every so often for a new crop of deniers like you.

.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

1. I am on he road with a 13.9" laptop with two (ie, 4/5, R/T, etc) dead vertical rows of keys down the center vertically so using an on screen keyboard on an already small screen.

Then I suggest you concentrate on the driving.

2. No answer to my probability... or your LowQ debate by youtube.

Did you ask me a question?

3. I am in several high IQ groups and mostly post in them having long ago won the debate here with my Pillar OP's and logic. Just bump them up every so often for a new crop of deniers like you.

What do you think I'm "denying"?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

When you think about it, all of these fallacies originated with Zeno's paradoxes.

For example, Zeno's Paradox of Motion.

But we got past that "paradox" (that wasn't), when we learned how to sum infinite series.

Then some charlatans turned these simple, debunked paradoxes into beguiling stories with 747s and works of Shakespeare and chimps with typewriters and rejuvenated them.

And now we get to see them in use in 2024 on an internet message board.

Kinda sad.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

Discrete Mathematics was a great class.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

The fallacy here is to arbitrarily assign probabilities to events to make the probability of a single, resulting event to be negligible.

The problem here is that such probabilities refer to the probability of an event happening at the exact time and place that it happens. This has limitations, when trying to understand the world around us.

You can push your pencil all day and push the probability of your existence at this exact time and place to be virtually zero.

But you will have not even spoken to the probability of life forming in a universe that exists for billions of years.

 

[Wuwei]

One way this fallacy is used is to arbitrarily reduce the probability of anything to virtually zero.

Yes, I think what a lot of people don't understand is that in a multistep process, you don't simply multiply the probabilities of each step.

1. Given a one celled animal what is the probability that a single photosensitive element evolves.
2. For multi-celled animals, given a single photosensitive element, what is the probability that a bump on the skin will focus on the element to form a crude motion detector.
3. Given that, what is the probability of several photosensitive elements evolving in a group to form a crude size and motion direction detector.
4. What is the probability that muscles will form to move the bump to allow scanning the environment.
5. etc.

Each of those steps are very simple, and have a good potential for happening.
Given a prior event, the probability of the next event is more accurately calculated and is higher that simply multiplying the probabilities of each event without using the prior knowledge. This is the basis of Markov Chains. It seems that Creationists statisticians don't understand this.

 

[scruffy]

Yes, I think what a lot of people don't understand is that in a multistep process, you don't simply multiply the probabilities of each step.

1. Given a one celled animal what is the probability that a single photosensitive element evolves.
2. For multi-celled animals, given a single photosensitive element, what is the probability that a bump on the skin will focus on the element to form a crude motion detector.
3. Given that, what is the probability of several photosensitive elements evolving in a group to form a crude size and motion direction detector.
4. What is the probability that muscles will form to move the bump to allow scanning the environment.
5. etc.

Each of those steps are very simple, and have a good potential for happening.
Given a prior event, the probability of the next event is more accurately calculated and is higher that simply multiplying the probabilities of each event without using the prior knowledge. This is the basis of Markov Chains. It seems that Creationists statisticians don't understand this.

Simple things like n! / (n-x)! seem to elude them.

 

[scruffy]

Yes, I think what a lot of people don't understand is that in a multistep process, you don't simply multiply the probabilities of each step.

1. Given a one celled animal what is the probability that a single photosensitive element evolves.
2. For multi-celled animals, given a single photosensitive element, what is the probability that a bump on the skin will focus on the element to form a crude motion detector.
3. Given that, what is the probability of several photosensitive elements evolving in a group to form a crude size and motion direction detector.
4. What is the probability that muscles will form to move the bump to allow scanning the environment.
5. etc.

Each of those steps are very simple, and have a good potential for happening.
Given a prior event, the probability of the next event is more accurately calculated and is higher that simply multiplying the probabilities of each event without using the prior knowledge. This is the basis of Markov Chains. It seems that Creationists statisticians don't understand this.

Have a look at this, it's the complete sequence of an alpha tubulin.

Complete amino acid sequence of alpha-tubulin from porcine brain - PMC

The amino acid sequence of alpha-tubulin from porcine brain was determined by automated and manual Edman degradation of eight sets of overlapping peptides. It comprises 450 residues plus a COOH-terminal tyrosine that is present only in 15% of the ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Not only are there repeating segments, but the article discusses the similarity of portions of the sequence to myosin, actin, and troponins.

And it deduces there are four different kinds of porcine alpha tubulin, which differ only slightly.

 

[Stryder50]

View attachment 516005

It was all planned fifteen billion years ago when the hand of God set everything in motion.

HAPPY SMILE

And before 15 billion years ago?

If God is eternal, and eternal means no beginning and no end, then what was happening more than 15 billion years ago?
What was happening 30 billion years ago?
60 billion years ago?
Etc?
Etc?
Etc? .....

 

[scruffy]

And before 15 billion years ago?

If God is eternal, and eternal means no beginning and no end, then what was happening more than 15 billion years ago?
What was happening 30 billion years ago?
60 billion years ago?
Etc?
Etc?
Etc? .....

You're being nonsensical.

Trying to apply linear time to timelessness.

Think quantum. "Non-locality".

 

[abu afak]

Junkyard tornado​

The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle’s Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."[1][2][3] It was used originally by Fred Hoyle, in which he applied statistical analysis to the origin of life, but similar observations predate Hoyle and have been found all the way back to Darwin's time,[1] and indeed to Cicero in classical times.[4] While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay of creationist and intelligent design criticisms of evolution.

This argument is Rejected by the vast majority of biologists. From the modern evolutionary standpoint, while the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbably remote, evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by chance, over a long period of time. The transition as a whole is plausible, as each step improves survivability; the Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado posits.
[......]

Junkyard tornado - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

CrusaderFrank said:
Let's agree to disagree because you're wrong and out in a column with at least 8,000 zeros to it.

You cannot shuffle a deck of 52 cards the same way twice in all the time since the creation of the Universe, but there's a 100% certainty 2,000 proteins randomly assembled the first cell?

You could give a 5,000 gallon drum of amino acids a billion years to 'evolve' and you'd never once see a functioning cell.

Life is complex, because it is designed that way

I don't know why anyone would so adamantly defend randomness, mutations and entropy as the building blocks of the Life around us.

PoliticalChic has got a whole thread dedicated to trying to explain it.

I don't have the patience to penetrate an ego

 

[westwall]

CrusaderFrank said:
Let's agree to disagree because you're wrong and out in a column with at least 8,000 zeros to it.

You cannot shuffle a deck of 52 cards the same way twice in all the time since the creation of the Universe, but there's a 100% certainty 2,000 proteins randomly assembled the first cell?

You could give a 5,000 gallon drum of amino acids a billion years to 'evolve' and you'd never once see a functioning cell.

Life is complex, because it is designed that way

I don't know why anyone would so adamantly defend randomness, mutations and entropy as the building blocks of the Life around us.

PoliticalChic has got a whole thread dedicated to trying to explain it.

I don't have the patience to penetrate an ego

Nor do you have the intellect.

 

[Moonglow]

I'll give you all this much; not much is known about the universe, the Earth, or humans, we do however, like to think we do...

 

[scruffy]

CrusaderFrank said:
Let's agree to disagree because you're wrong and out in a column with at least 8,000 zeros to it.

lmao

You cannot shuffle a deck of 52 cards the same way twice in all the time since the creation of the Universe,

Yes you can.

The actual state space is 8 with 67 zeros. (That's 52!)

And you don't have just one deck, you have 10^30 of them.

If it takes you ten seconds to shuffle a deck, you get about 3 million shuffles per year, per deck. Therefore the Poisson equation says you're likely to repeat a result within 10^15 seconds or so.

How long is that?

How many seconds in a year?

Answer: 60x60x24x365 = about 31 million.

10^15 divided by 3x10^7 is very roughly about 100 million years.

So there you have it. You are well within the evolutionary time frame.

but there's a 100% certainty 2,000 proteins randomly assembled the first cell?

The fallacy in your logic is, you don't just have one deck of cards.

10^30 is the number of microbes on earth. But the number of reactive carbon atoms in the ocean is vastly greater than that, it's on the order of 10^55. You can do the math on that too.

Carbon atoms only have 4 configurations instead of 52, and you have 25 more orders of magnitude of them.

So you see, your math is entirely fallacious, as Abu pointed out. You failed to account for the multiplicity of simultaneous experiments.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

Junkyard tornado​

The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle’s Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."[1][2][3] It was used originally by Fred Hoyle, in which he applied statistical analysis to the origin of life, but similar observations predate Hoyle and have been found all the way back to Darwin's time,[1] and indeed to Cicero in classical times.[4] While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay of creationist and intelligent design criticisms of evolution.

This argument is Rejected by the vast majority of biologists. From the modern evolutionary standpoint, while the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbably remote, evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by chance, over a long period of time. The transition as a whole is plausible, as each step improves survivability; the Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado posits.
[......]

Junkyard tornado - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

What about the "if we wait long enough anything can happen" fallacy?

Tell me, if you had 5 billion years would you eventually find a positive integer solution for

where n > 2? If you kept trying over and over would you eventually find one?

 

[abu afak]

lmao



Yes you can.

The actual state space is 8 with 67 zeros. (That's 52!)

And you don't have just one deck, you have 10^30 of them.

If it takes you ten seconds to shuffle a deck, you get about 3 million shuffles per year, per deck. Therefore the Poisson equation says you're likely to repeat a result within 10^15 seconds or so.

How long is that?

How many seconds in a year?

Answer: 60x60x24x365 = about 31 million.

10^15 divided by 3x10^7 is very roughly about 100 million years.

So there you have it. You are well within the evolutionary time frame.



The fallacy in your logic is, you don't just have one deck of cards.

10^30 is the number of microbes on earth. But the number of reactive carbon atoms in the ocean is vastly greater than that, it's on the order of 10^55. You can do the math on that too.

Carbon atoms only have 4 configurations instead of 52, and you have 25 more orders of magnitude of them.

So you see, your math is entirely fallacious, as Abu pointed out. You failed to account for the multiplicity of simultaneous experiments.

I was QUOTING "CRUSADER FRANK" You fucking IDIOT.
I am 60 IQ points higher than he and at least 20 on you.

Your posts are always needlessly long, oft with needless citations crap from your collge days.,

F*CK OFF you wordy Turd.
`

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

What about the "if we wait long enough anything can happen" fallacy?

Tell me, if you had 5 billion years would you eventually find a positive integer solution for View attachment 1059601 where n > 2? If you kept trying over and over would you eventually find one?

You answer, then state your point. Then we can describe your fallacy.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

I was QUOTING "CRUSADER FRANK" You fucking IDIOT.
I am 60 IQ points higher than he and at least 20 on you.

Your posts are always needlessly long, oft with needless citations crap from your collge days.,

F*CK OFF you wordy Turd.
`

May i suggest a switch to decaf?