Does abiogenesis require a multiverse?

[ChetSinger]

There are a multitude of problems getting from nonlife to life.

Here's Eugene Koonin, a well-known researcher in the fields of evolutionary and computational biology. A brilliant man, by all accounts. Get a load of a solution he published a few years ago. He's not appealing to biology at all, but to physics: the proposed multiverse.

Biology Direct | Full text | The cosmological model of eternal inflation and the transition from chance to biological evolution in the history of life

I'll post a few excerpts:

Background...The model of eternal inflation implies that all macroscopic histories permitted by laws of physics are repeated an infinite number of times in the infinite multiverse. In contrast to the traditional cosmological models of a single, finite universe, this worldview provides for the origin of an infinite number of complex systems by chance, even as the probability of complexity emerging in any given region of the multiverse is extremely low...

Hypothesis...Origin of life is a chicken and egg problem: for biological evolution that is governed, primarily, by natural selection, to take off, efficient systems for replication and translation are required, but even barebones cores of these systems appear to be products of extensive selection. The currently favored (partial) solution is an RNA world without proteins in which replication is catalyzed by ribozymes and which serves as the cradle for the translation system. However, the RNA world faces its own hard problems as ribozyme-catalyzed RNA replication remains a hypothesis and the selective pressures behind the origin of translation remain mysterious. Eternal inflation offers a viable alternative that is untenable in a finite universe, i.e., that a coupled system of translation and replication emerged by chance, and became the breakthrough stage from which biological evolution, centered around Darwinian selection, took off...

Conclusion...The plausibility of different models for the origin of life on earth directly depends on the adopted cosmological scenario. In an infinite universe (multiverse), emergence of highly complex systems by chance is inevitable. Therefore, under this cosmology, an entity as complex as a coupled translation-replication system should be considered a viable breakthrough stage for the onset of biological evolution...

Catch what he's done? He's accepting what creationists have been saying for decades: the chances of abiogenesis are so infinitesimal that they can't happen in our universe's size and duration. So he's proposing to extend that size to infinity, via the proposed multiverse, the model of "eternal inflation".

What do you guys think about that?

 

[PsychoSarah]

I think that the question is kinda ignorant, because the two ideas don't have a relationship to each other.

 

[ChetSinger]

I think that the question is kinda ignorant, because the two ideas don't have a relationship to each other.

Hey, thanks for coming here. This was originally meant as a response to one of your posts in another thread, but I thought it might be interesting enough for a new one.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Hey, thanks for coming here. This was originally meant as a response to one of your posts in another thread, but I thought it might be interesting enough for a new one.

Then respond to that post, for the sake of context if nothing else, in the thread you saw it in. Abiogenesis and string theory are independent of each other, they don't have to both be correct or have one be incorrect for the other to be correct, etc.

 

[ChetSinger]

Then respond to that post, for the sake of context if nothing else, in the thread you saw it in. Abiogenesis and string theory are independent of each other, they don't have to both be correct or have one be incorrect for the other to be correct, etc.

His paper isn't about string theory. It's about the requirements for abiogenesis on earth.

 

[Sofaman]

All conjecture.

We don't know how abiogenesis occurred so we don't know the probability of it happening. For all we know, in certain conditions it could be an odds on chance

 

[lesliedellow]

In an infinite universe (multiverse), emergence of highly complex systems by chance is inevitable.

That anything which can happen must happen in an infinite universe is an oft repeated fallacy. The set of all integers is an infinite set, but, if somebody started calling them out at random, there is no reason why the number one must necessarily turn up eventually, even if he carried on forever.

 

[Michael]

I think that the question is kinda ignorant, because the two ideas don't have a relationship to each other.

Now you understand my complaint about polarized photons and inflation theory.

It's is kinda funny (and par for the course actually) that someone would try to connect inflation theory to abiogenesis. Whatever they can dream up is fair game and they've made it clear already that the sky is the limit when it comes to slapping inflation theory to the side of everything in the universe.

Whatever they don't understand yet, they immediately attempt to attribute to their invisible inflation deity in the sky.

That's funny!

 

[Strathos]

I have heard that physicists and biologists get testy when one tries to step into the other's territory.

 

[Sofaman]

That anything which can happen must happen in an infinite universe is an oft repeated fallacy. The set of all integers is an infinite set, but, if somebody started calling them out at random, there is no reason why the number one must necessarily turn up eventually, even if he carried on forever.

Given that we are talking about infinity, the chances of a possible occurance, not occurring become so small as to be effectively zero. Granted it may never quite be zero but it might as well be

 

[lesliedellow]

Now you understand my complaint about polarized photons and inflation theory.

Oh boy. One note Michael. I have heard of obsessives, but this is ridiculous.

When they carry him to his grave, they will have to nail down the coffin lid real hard, otherwise they will hear that sound emanating from inside.

 

[Michael]

Oh boy. One note Michael. I have heard of obsessives, but this is ridiculous.

Oh come on. It's just funny from my skeptical perspective. The number of affirming the consequent fallacies that have been associated mathematically with inflation theory is never ending. It's been done to everything from polarized photons from space, to abiogenesis, and lucky for us, inflation supposedly saved us all from Boltzmann brains, and gave us a "free lunch" too! Honestly, it's just hysterical in term of the blatant coattail riding at this point. Next I'll be reading about how inflation theory is responsible for perfect peanut butter.

 

[Michael]

When they carry him to his grave, they will have to nail down the coffin lid real hard, otherwise they will hear that sound emanating from inside.

Nah. You'll just hear it resonating from the universe around you at that point.

 

[Michael]

I have heard that physicists and biologists get testy when one tries to step into the other's territory.

Actually I would assert that both empirical physicists and empirical biologists tend to get testy when supernaturalism is stuffed into their territory.

 

[Strathos]

Well that is also true

 

[lesliedellow]

Given that we are talking about infinity, the chances of a possible occurance, not occurring become so small as to be effectively zero.

No they don't. If the real numbers were substituted for the integers, the chances of any particular real number being called out, even after infinite time, are effectively zero.

The reason? The real numbers are what is technically known as an uncountable set. Meaning it is far larger, in fact infinitely larger, than the set of all integers, even though they are both infinite.

 

[Michael]

Catch what he's done? He's accepting what creationists have been saying for decades: the chances of abiogenesis are so infinitesimal that they can't happen in our universe's size and duration. So he's proposing to extend that size to infinity, via the proposed multiverse, the model of "eternal inflation".

What do you guys think about that?

Whereas you and I will accept that God has no beginning, and no ending, and has the ability to 'create' living things intelligently, the atheists need some sort of atheistic surrogate at an emotional and logical level.

They've created a very elaborate creation mythology around their eternal inflation deity without ever physically demonstrating that inflation has any cause/effect relationship to anything physical in a real experiment with real control mechanisms.

It's the ultimate 'magic mathematical elixir god' for whatever they don't understand. It's akin to the ultimate "atheistic math god". Unfortunately it's more impotent on Earth than any average concept of "God". At least God is reported/predicted to have a real and tangible effect on real humans on Earth in the present moment. That at least gives us a physical starting point for active experimentation.

The eternal inflation deity apparently is so empirically impotent however, he simply doesn't show up in the lab. He only does his magic on "sacred math paper".

Gutheology is definitely the weirdest religion on the planet and it's gods are utterly impotent.

 

[Sofaman]

No they don't. If the real numbers were substituted for the integers, the chances of any particular real number being called out, even after infinite time, are effectively zero.

The reason? The real numbers are what is technically known as an uncountable set. Meaning it is far larger, in fact infinitely larger, than the set of all integers, even though they are both infinite.

I'm not following your analogy. If a person called out random real numbers for an infinite amount of time, the same still applies. What has the comparison in size of integers to real numbers have to do with it?

 

[Paulos23]

That anything which can happen must happen in an infinite universe is an oft repeated fallacy. The set of all integers is an infinite set, but, if somebody started calling them out at random, there is no reason why the number one must necessarily turn up eventually, even if he carried on forever.

And given the number of potential planets we are discovering, it is not necessary. Given the current findings, and if you extrapolate the planetary density to just the rest of the galaxy, the chance of a single planet having life appear approaches near certainty. It just happened to happen on this planet.

 

[lesliedellow]

What has the comparison in size of integers to real numbers have to do with it?

This involves some quite technical mathematics.

Let's take an example. How would you go about counting all the real numbers between 0 and 1 without missing any of them out? I will tell you now that you can't do it. The reason you can't do it is because the set of all real numbers between 0 and 1 is an uncountably infinite set.

Of course, you could doubtless devise some scheme for counting some of them, but, even if you had an infinite amount of time available, you would never count all of them. In fact, you would be doomed to miss most of them out. Therefore, the chances of you naming any given real number, chosen at random by somebody else, would be vanishingly small.

The set of all rational numbers is a countably infinite set, so you could count all of them, if you had an infinite amount of time, but you couldn't count all the reals between 0-1, even with an infinite amount of time available to you.