The following chapter is from Rabbi (Prof.) Yehuda (Leo) Levi's forthcoming expansion of his book: Torah and Science. It is posted here with his kind permission.
5
Sublime Sophistication
5.1 Introduction
The evidence of God's wisdom and strength as displayed in the marvels of nature and their harmonious complexity is potentially among the most powerful sources of inspiration guiding us to love and revere Him. To demonstrate this wisdom, I present at the end of this chapter an illustration from my own professional field, describing one part of a small organ in man, which is minuscule in size, yet awe-inspiring in its performance.
The evolutionist argument of natural selection attempts to account for all biological marvels by means of well-known laws of nature. Although this argument collapses under closer scrutiny (see sec. 7.3), it tends to dampen the emotional impact of such demonstrations of God's wisdom. Natural selection may be argued to be relevant to the origin of species, but is, of course, irrelevant to the origin of basic laws of nature. Therefore, illustrations of God's wisdom from the laws of physics may have a special appeal. One such illustration is given later on (sec. 7.4), another, the so-called anthropic principle, we discuss here. See also our earlier discussion of the origin of laws of nature (sec. 1.2) as a possible source of inspiration in this sense.
Sir Fred Hoyle, the well-known astronomer, also well-known for his agnosticism, calculated the probability that the creation of life on earth was due to chance. His conclusion: it equals one in 1040,000. See sec. 7.3 for further discussion of this point.
5.2 The Forces of Nature and the Anthropic Principle1
According to our present world picture, there are four basic forces that control all physical processes and are responsible for the structure of our universe. They are:
(1) Gravity, a relatively weak force, responsible for the macroscopic structure of the universe, holding e.g. our solar system together .
(2) Electrical force, which, among other things, accounts for the structure of the atom.
(3-4) The weak and strong (nuclear) forces, which control the structure and stability of the atomic nucleus.
The magnitudes of these forces span a range of about 40 decades (a factor written as a one followed by 40 zeros), a number so large that it truly defies our imagination. And yet, their relative magnitudes are closely prescribed by the anthropic principle, which states that universe must have been designed to make intelligent life possible. The constants governing them seem to be limited to a very small range, if life is to be possible in this world.
Detailed analysis shows that, were the gravitational constant only slightly greater, all stars would be "blue giants", radiating only ultra-violet light, incompatible with life as we know it. On the other hand, if this constant were only slightly smaller, all stars would be "red dwarfs", again incompatible with plant life.
Similarly, if the strong force, which holds the nucleus together, were only a few percent weaker, only hydrogen could exist; if it were just 5% stronger, a nucleus consisting of two protons would be stable and no hydrogen would survive, so there could be no water.
The weak force controls the proton-neutron interaction in the nucleus. If it were only slightly weaker, all hydrogen would turn into helium and, again, water would be impossible.
It also appears that if the universe were somewhat more massive2 than it is in fact, its expansion would be short-lived - it would rapidly recollapse. Were it significantly less massive, galaxies would not condense, stars would not form and, again, life as we know it would be impossible.
If they are to be observable, laws of nature require the existence of an observer - they must be such as to make intelligent life possible. This conclusion is called the anthropic principle. It is used to "explain" many "coincidences" in nature like the ones listed above and many more. These coincidences are too unlikely and too many to be accepted without an explanation.
The anthropic principle by itself is of course not an explanation - it simply helps us to group the coincidences. Possible explanations include the assumption that under different circumstances intelligent life would also be possible - we simply can not imagine what form it would take. Life takes the form it does only because that form is compatible with the forces of nature the way they happen to be constituted. But this explanation remains unconvincing as long as the postulated alternative life forms are unimaginable.
Others have suggested that there exist, in fact, an infinity of universes, each with its own set of natural laws and most of them "stillborn", i.e. without the potential of intelligent life. Since no one has yet found the slightest evidence for the existence of such worlds, this very much looks like a desperate attempt to graft "natural selection"-type thinking onto a physical situation with which it is simply incompatible.
It would appear, then, that we have here evidence, albeit far from conclusive, pointing to a careful design, where the most fundamental components of our world picture are concerned.
Incidentally, today many scientists believe that the spontaneous evolution of life is extremely unlikely - even with the given optimum constellation of forces of nature (see chap.7, note 6).
5.3. Some Marvels of Water and Air3
Marvelous design can also be seen in the substances most central to life: water and air.
Water makes up the major bulk of the living cell. In our bodies it also serves as the transportation medium, carrying nourishment to the cells and waste products from them. In plants it carries dissolved inorganic nutrients to the roots. It is eminently suited for this because of its ready adhesion capabilities and its being an intermediately active solvent. Its extensive presence on earth is not inherent in the nature of a planet - none of the other known planets have significant amounts of water.
On earth, most of the water is stored in reservoirs "miraculously" available for it. Why "miraculous"? The earth's surface is essentially divided into two distinct regions: the continental level, above sea level, and the deep oceanic level, at a depth of about 4 km. Only 4% of the earth's surface is in the transition region between sea level and 4 km below it. This fortuitous structure is based on an underlying distortion of the shape of the earth's mantle and cannot be explained on the basis of random development.
The marvel of the water cycle, in which the oceans supply the clouds, and these bring the water to the land, whence, via rivers, it returns to the ocean, is well known. Less well known is another function of the oceans. Our life on earth depends crucially on about 0.04% of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Together with water and nitrogen, this is the main constituent of the carbohydrates manufactured by plants and hence sustaining animals and man. CO2 is generated during combustion and oxidation of dead organic material; it is consumed by plants during photo-synthesis; too much CO2 or too little, both are detrimental to life. How is the delicate balance maintained? This is a major function of the oceans. About 96% of all available CO2 is dissolved there. The oceans absorb any excess of CO2 present in the atmosphere and release it as needed to maintain the balance.
The liquidity of the oceans is the result of another fortuitous anomaly. Most substances contract when they cool and this is true of water as well - except when it comes to within 4°C of its freezing point. As it is cooled below this temperature, it begins to expand; in a natural body of water it therefore rises as it cools further. This accounts for the fact that bodies of water freeze from the top down and hence readily thaw when the atmosphere warms up again later. Were it not for this anomaly, oceans and rivers would freeze from the bottom up and thaw only partly when warm weather comes. Year by year the ice level would rise and soon most of the water on the earth's surface would be frozen - a deadly "ice age" would quickly set in.
The earth's rotation, too, is fortuitous. By means of the resulting lateral force (Coriolis effect) it diverts winds from their "natural" north-south direction, brings them down to a manageable speed (most of the time), turning them into an important factor maintaining life on earth as, for instance, in plant pollination. Incidentally, it has been calculated that if the earth's axis of rotation were not inclined to the plane of its orbit around the sun, the resulting lack of seasonal temperature fluctuations would give rise to the formation of glaciers that would soon cover all of the earth.
Similar marvels have been pointed out concerning the atmosphere, which, in addition to the CO2 balance discussed above, also maintains a balance of ozone (a mere 3 mm out of 8 km of sea-level-equivalent atmosphere). This balance provides a carefully monitored level of ultra-violet radiation at the earth's surface.
The intricate atmospheric processes have been studied extensively.4
5.4 The Smart Television Camera in Our Head5
Job exclaimed "from my flesh I perceive God" (Job 19:26). As an illustration of how we can use modern science to perceive God from our own flesh, let us consider the eye - our window to the world. Our eye is built somewhat like a tiny camera with lens, shutter, automatic iris control and automatic focusing, the last a feature only recently introduced into the amateur camera field. In particular let us look at a tiny part of the eye, the element analogous to the film in the camera: the retina, which covers the inside of the back of the eyeball.
The retina receives the image formed by the cornea and lens of the eye and converts it into nerve impulses. It operates usefully over a range of brightness of about a trillion to one, greater than that of any man-made device. Due to the automatic iris control, the resulting illumination range on the retina is less than that by a factor of about fifteen; but that still leaves a factor of about a hundred billion for the retina itself to handle.
To understand how the retina does this, we must take a closer look at the individual light detecting organs it contains. There are about seven million cone-shaped detectors, capable of the highest resolution of detail and of color discrimination. In addition, there are 120 million ultra-sensitive rod-shaped detectors. These are effective primarily at low illumination levels. Each of these "rods" contains hundreds of thousands of molecules of visual purple, each of which changes its structure when struck by light.
A single quantum of light (it takes about 2.5 trillion of these to make a watt-second!) is capable of activating such a molecule, causing it to release a sizeable flow of electric charge. Thus each such molecule acts, in a way, like a Geiger counter, amplifying the effect of a single quantum. A few "rods", with just one molecule of each activated, give rise to a sensation of light.
This much for the lower end of the brightness range. As the illumination rises, more and more molecules are activated and our visual nerves would soon be flooded with signals beyond their capacity to handle - if it were not for an amplification control mechanism, which reduces the sensitivity as less is needed. When the illumination has risen to about 3000 times its barely detectable level, the "cones" become active and start taking over the detection function. They work in a manner similar to the rods, except that their sensitivity is lower and they remain effective to much higher illumination levels.
This is but the beginning of our story. Each of the retinal detectors exits in a small nerve thread - close to 130 million nerves; in all. So many signal channels entering the brain would overload its data handling capacity. We are, therefore, fortunate that the optic nerve, the cable that carries information from the retina to the brain, consists of only a few hundred thousand nerve fibers. How does the transition take place? The optic nerve fibers end in a layer facing the layer of detectors, with a veritable thicket of nerves connecting the two sets of nerve endings. Some nerves connect to many detectors; others connect to many optic nerve fibers. The significance of these interconnections has only recently been discovered. This network of nerve interconnections performs the function of image enhancement. Perforce, the image formed on the retina is blurred; but, by means of carefully arranged interconnections, much of the blur is eliminated by the nerve interactions, in a manner similar to the way images received from space ships are processed.
This image enhancement uses up some of the signal energy so that, at very low levels of illumination, the retina might fail to detect the image altogether due to this processing. To overcome this limitation, the eye automatically adapts the amount of processing to the illumination level.
But the eye does ordinary image processing one better! It processes signals in time as well. The reader may have wondered at his ability to detect a moving object "out of the corner of his eye." He may be viewing a very complex static scene, with a great amount of detail structure with, say, a million picture elements each the size of a fly; and yet, if there is one small moving object, he notes it instantly. If he had to check out each one of the million elements, it would take him close to 3 hours, even if he could check them at the rate of a hundred per second! But the eye has certain detectors which are especially sensitive to change, "sounding an alarm" every time there is a significantly rapid change. Simultaneously, the retina "tunes out" the strictly static elements, which are, after a while, no longer very interesting. (The eye actually performs small rapid scanning motions, of which we are not conscious. Without these, the visual image would fade after a few seconds and actually does so, when the motion is artificially eliminated.)
Here, too, there are some refinements. At low illumination levels, the photons come in slowly and there would be too few of them if the total were added up too soon. But at these levels the eye responds to change more slowly, again sacrificing discrimination for detection.
And the retina does all this - in full color, except at the lowest levels of illumination.
And so the little retina in our eye performs the function of a super-television camera together with a sophisticated image processor – with one big difference: the pictures from space are processed by a computer that takes up the equivalent of a large box, whereas the retina does it in the volume of the head of a pin!
Anyone sensitive to divine wisdom cannot but stand in awe before this feat, which reproduces itself and is so commonplace that we take it simply for granted.
1 This section is based on the following: a. B.J. Carr and M.J. Reeves, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure the Physical World," Nature 278:605-612 (1979). b. G. Gale, "The Anthropic Principle," Scientific American 245:114-122 (Dec.1981). For a very thorough treatment, see John B. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford, 1986.
2 The proper term here is the "scalar curvature of the universe." To make the presentation more readable, I use the term "mass" instead.
3 This section is largely based on H. Mandelbaum, "Ma'aseh Bereshith and Geology" Proc. Assoc. Orthodox Jew. Sci. 5:75-94 (1979)
4 Relevant material has been briefly reviewed in E.G. Freudenstein, "The Fourth Day of Creation," Intercom 122:5-8 & 23, A.O.J.S., New York (1979)
5 This section is based on L. Levi, Applied Optics, Vol. 2, Wiley, New York (1980); Chapt.15. Cf. also RaMBaM, Guide of the Perplexed 3:19.
I'm confused. Any particular set of circumstances is infinitely unlikely. Yet particular sets of circumstances happen all the time. I can drop a deck of cards, and the chance all of the cards will land the way they do is infinitely unlikely, yet each time I drop the deck the infinitely unlikely occurs. The particular result has no significance, however, and isn't noteworthy.
ReplyDeleteEven assuming that the existence of intelligent life is infinitely unlikely, so what? Anything existing is equally infinitely unlikely. What makes the particular result of intelligent life in any way noteworthy?
I don't get it.
Stated differently, the fact that the cards fall in a particular way, with certain cards face up and others face down, in no way implies that the arrangement was the work of an intelligent designer who wanted that particular result. Why does the fact that our universe came out a particular way imply an intelligent designer who wanted that particular result?
ReplyDeleteIn each case the result is infinitely unlikely. What is the difference between them?
Every mouse is the offspring of a particular father and mother, out of billions of possible parents. Do you think each mouse has reason to marvel at the incredible unlikelihood of being himself?
ReplyDeleteJoshua's argument is essentially the monkeys and typewriters argument. I googled "1000000 monkeys typewriter" and got some interesting results. For example, from Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteInfinite monkey theorem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
According to , given enough time, a like this one typing at random will eventually type out a copy of one of 's plays.
Enlarge
According to Kolmogorov's zero-one law, given enough time, a chimpanzee like this one typing at random will eventually type out a copy of one of Shakespeare's plays.
The infinite monkey theorem1 says that almost surely (i.e. with probability equal to 1) a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard will eventually type every book in France's Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library). In the restatement of the theorem most popular among English speakers, the monkeys eventually type out the collected works of William Shakespeare; others replace the National Library with the British Museum or the Library of Congress.
The name is a popular misnomer for an idea from Émile Borel's book on probability, published in 1909, which introduced the concept of "dactylographic2 monkeys".
A popular statement of the theorem is that an infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of time will produce a given text. To insist on both infinities, however, is excessive. A single immortal monkey who executes infinitely many keystrokes will eventually type out any given text, and an infinite number of monkeys will begin producing all possible texts immediately, with no wait.
The literary notion may have its origin in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1782), part three, chapter five, in which a professor of the Grand Academy of Lagado is attempting to create a complete list of all knowledge of science by having his students constantly create random strings of letters by turning cranks on a mechanism.
Contents [showhide]
1 Proof sketch
2 Probabilities
3 Myth about origins
4 Infinite monkey experiments
5 Literature and popular culture
6 References
7 External links
8 Footnotes
[edit]
Proof sketch
The infinite monkey theorem is relatively straightforward to prove. If two events are statistically independent, meaning neither affects the outcome of the other, then the probability of both happening is equivalent to the product of the probabilities of each one happening on its own. For example, if the chance of rain in Sydney on a particular day is 0.3 and the chance of an earthquake in San Francisco on that day is 0.8, the chance of both happening on that same day is 0.3 × 0.8 = 0.24.
Now, suppose the typewriter has 50 keys, and the monkey is trying to type the word "banana". Typing at random, the chance that the first letter typed is b is 1/50, as is the chance that the second letter typed is a, and so on. These events are independent, so the chance of the first six letters matching "banana" is 1/506. For the same reason, the chance that the next 6 letters match "banana" is also 1/506, and so on.
Now, the chance of not typing "banana" in each block of 6 letters is 1 − 1/506. Because each block is typed independently, the chance, X, of not typing "banana" in any of the first n blocks of 6 letters is X = (1 − 1/506)n. As n grows, X gets smaller. For an n of a million, X is 99.99%, but for an n of 10 billion it is 53% and for an n of 100 billion it is 0.17%. As n approaches infinity, the probability X approaches zero; that is, by making n large enough, X can be made as small as one likes. If we were to count occurrences of "banana" that crossed blocks, X would approach zero even more quickly. The same argument applies if the monkey were typing any other string of characters of any length.
The same argument shows why infinitely many monkeys produce a text as quickly as it would be produced by a perfectly accurate human typist copying it from the original. In this case X = (1 − 1/506)n where X represents the probability that none of the first n monkeys types "banana" correctly on their first try. When we consider 100 billion monkeys, the probability falls to 0.17%, and as the number of monkeys, n increases to infinity the value of X (the probability of all the monkeys failing to reproduce the given text) decreases to zero. This is equivalent to stating that the probability that one or more of an infinite number of monkeys will produce a given text on the first try is 100%, or that it is certain they will do so.
The theorem exemplifies a proposition in the theory of probability called Kolmogorov's zero-one law, which was published in 1933, 24 years after Borel's book cited above.
[edit]
Probabilities
Ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization, and assuming a uniform distribution of letters, a monkey has one chance in 26 of correctly typing the first letter of Hamlet. It has one chance in 676 (26 times 26) of typing the first two letters. Because the probability shrinks exponentially, at 20 letters it already has only one chance in 2620 = 19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376, roughly equivalent to the probability of buying 4 lottery tickets consecutively and winning the jackpot each time. In the case of the entire text of Hamlet, the probabilities are so vanishingly small they can barely be conceived in human terms. The text of Hamlet, even stripped of all punctuation, contains well over 130,000 letters.
The mere fact that there is a chance, however unlikely, is the key to the "infinite monkey theorem", because Kolmogorov's zero-one law says that such an infinite series of independent events must have a probability of zero or one. Since we have shown above that the chance is not zero, it must be one. To consider that an event this unlikely is guaranteed to occur given infinite time can give a sense of the vastness of infinity.
Gian-Carlo Rota wrote in a textbook on probability (unfinished when he died):
"If the monkey could type one keystroke every nanosecond, the expected waiting time until the monkey types out Hamlet is so long that the estimated age of the universe is insignificant by comparison ... this is not a practical method for writing plays. (We cannot resist the temptation to quote from A.N. Whitehead, 'I will not go to infinity'.)"
In The Nature of the Physical World: The Gifford Lectures (Macmillan, New York, 1929, page 72) the physicist Arthur Eddington wrote:
"If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum. The chance of their doing so is decidedly more favourable than the chance of the molecules returning to one half of the vessel."
In physics, then, the force of the "monkeys argument" lies not in the probability that the monkeys will "eventually" produce something intelligible, but in the practical reality that they will not. Any physical process that is even less likely than such monkeys' success is effectively impossible; this is the statistical basis of the second law of thermodynamics.
[edit]
Myth about origins
It is often reported, though highly improbable, that Borel's use of monkeys and typewriters in his theorem was inspired by an argument used by Thomas Henry Huxley on June 30, 1860. Huxley was involved in a debate with the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, held at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, of which Wilberforce was a vice-president, and was sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species seven months earlier, in November 1859. No transcript of the debate exists, but neither contemporary accounts of it nor Huxley's later recollections include any reference to the infinite monkey theorem. The association of the debate with the infinite monkey theorem is probably an urban myth triggered by the fact that the debate certainly did include some byplay about apes: the bishop asked whether Huxley was descended from an ape on his grandmother's or his grandfather's side, and Huxley responded, in effect, that he would rather be descended from an ape than from the bishop. It is most unlikely that Huxley would have referred to a typewriter. Although patents for machines resembling modern typewriters were granted as early as 1714, commercial production of typewriters did not begin until 1870, and a skilled debater like Huxley would hardly have let his point depend on a device whose existence would have been unknown to most of his audience.
[edit]
Infinite monkey experiments
"The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator" (http://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/index.html#results) website, launched on July 1, 2003, contains a Java applet that simulates a large population of monkeys typing randomly, with the stated intention of seeing how long it takes the virtual monkeys to produce a complete Shakespearean play from beginning to end. As of January 3, 2005, matches as long as 24 consecutive letters, four words have been recorded ("RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r"5j5&?OWTY Z0d "B-nEoF.vjSqj[..." from Henry VI, part 2). Due to processing power limitations, the program uses a probabilistic model (by using a random number generator) instead of actually generating random text and comparing it to Shakespeare. When the simulator "detects a match" (that is, the RNG generates a certain value or a value within a certain range), the simulator simulates the match by generating matched text.
In 2003, scientists at Paignton Zoo and the University of Plymouth, in Devon in England reported that they had left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Sulawesi Crested Macaques for a month; not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages (http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/NOTES_EN.pdf) (PDF) consisting largely of the letter S, they started by attacking the keyboard with a stone, and continued by urinating and defecating on it.
[edit]
Literature and popular culture
In "Inflexible Logic" by Russell Maloney, a short story that appeared in The New Yorker in 1940, the protagonist felt that his wealth put him under an obligation to support the sciences, and so he tested that theory. (He had heard the British Museum version of the story.) His monkeys immediately set to work typing classics of fiction and nonfiction. The rich man was amused to see unexpurgated versions of Samuel Pepys' diaries, of which he owned only a copy of a bowdlerized edition.
A similar theme was struck in the story "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges, which contains a potentially unlimited number of volumes filled with random strings of characters. The narrator notes that every great work of literature is contained in the library; but these are outnumbered by the flawed works (which are vastly outnumbered by the gibberish).
Popular culture references to this theorem include The Simpsons (in one episode, Montgomery Burns has his own room with 1000 dactylographic monkeys, one of which is chastised for mistyping a word in the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times."), Family Guy (a group of monkeys is shown collaborating on a line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in a cut scene) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, under the influence of the Infinite Improbability Drive, are ambushed by an infinite number of monkeys who want their opinion on the monkeys' script for Hamlet). In the comic strip Dilbert, Dogbert tells Dilbert that his report would take "three monkeys, ten minutes".
The theorem is also the basis of a one-act play by David Ives called "Words, Words, Words", which appears in his collection All in the Timing. In the one-act, three monkeys named Milton, Swift, and Kafka have been confined to a cage by a scientist until they can write Hamlet. There is a humorous short story by R.A. Lafferty entitled "Been a Long, Long Time", in which an angel is punished by having to proofread all the output text until some future time (after trillions of Universes have been created and died) when the monkeys produce a perfect copy of Shakespeare's works.
In Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, one character says, "If a million monkeys..." and then cannot continue, as the characters are actually "within" Hamlet, one possible topic of this rule. He then finishes the sentence on a different topic.
In 2000, the IETF Internet standards committee's April 1st RFC proposed an "Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)", a method of directing a farm of infinitely many monkeys over the Internet.
WWDN (http://www.wilwheaton.net/), the blog of author and actor Wil Wheaton, uses the slogan, "50,000 monkeys at 50,000 typewriters can't be wrong." His witticism won him a Bloggie in 2002 for the category "Best Tagline of a Weblog."
A rather jocular quote by Robert Wilensky on the theorem is, "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."
Comedian Bob Newhart has a stand-up routine in which a lab technician monitoring an "infinite number of monkeys" experiment discovered that one of the monkeys has typed "To be, or not to be; that is the gezortenblatt."
[edit]
References
* No words to describe monkeys' play (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3013959.stm) (9 May 2003) BBC News
* Monkey Theory Proven Wrong (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/12/national/main553500.shtml) (9 May 2003) CBS News
* RFC 2795 — The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)
[edit]
External links
* Monkey Shakespeare Simulator (http://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/index.html)
* Real Life Parody of the Keyboard/Monkey Concept (http://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/)
* Monkeys Don't Write Shakespeare (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58790,00.html)
[edit]
Footnotes
1 To some lay persons, "infinite monkeys" and "infinitely many monkeys" may seem synonymous; to mathematicians, the former is incorrect because each individual monkey is finite.
2 The word dactylographic appears in the English translation of Borel's book, and seems to be an Anglicization of a French word for typewriting, but in English, dactylography has come to mean the study of fingerprints.
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It is definitely worth looking at:
ReplyDeletehttp://user.tninet.se/~ecf599g/aardasnails/java/Monkey/webpages/index.html#results
The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator!
Also!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vivaria.net/experiments/notes/publication/NOTES_EN.pdf
Joshua:
ReplyDeleteMost people would find the significance of intelligent life self-evident. However, if you want to formalize it, you could say that intelligent life is inherently significant since only intelligent life can serve a creator, and therefore it points to one. One could probably come up with other arguments as well.
Your mouse argument misses the point, I think, because there are a near infinite number of mice, so indeed the existence of one particular mouse is only significant to that mouse and those he directly affects. However, if you show (through my argument or some other) that intelligent life is inherently significant, and not only significant to itself, then your argument would be refuted.
In addition, you will notice that it is not only intelligent life that is extremely unlikely, but in fact any amount of complexity at all. Slight changes in the electromagnetic force would change all atoms to hydrogen, essentially rendering most of science obsolete. I suppose you could argue that there is no inherent significance to having all the complexity of existence that chemistry gives us (even without intelligent life), but I imagine you would have a very hard time convincing anyone who has studied science and been struck by its elegance of that fact.
I think that Jewish Exile has understood the point of my posts, and I'll address his/her response below.
ReplyDeleteYGB's main response, while lengthy and amusing, does not seem reponsive at all. It starts with a given text--Shakespeare's works--and asks what is the chance that monkeys could reproduce it by chance. This is completely different from the argument for intelligent design of man/the world. With the latter, we don't start with man/world and try to see how unlikely it is that it could be reproduced at random--rather, man/world is a result we have, and we are trying to see whether its existence is too significant to be the result of chance. If you look at the deck of cards I described, and how it happened to be positioned on the floor after any given drop, you could equally say that a billion monkeys dropping decks for a billion years would not reproduce the exact position of every card in the deck I dropped. So what? It has no significance.
Similarly, if you never had a Shakespeare, and therefore none of his works, it still would be significant if monkeys could randomly type beautiful plays and sonnets. But that is only because we know from the start that beautiful plays and sonnets are special. If we had no language, the works of Shakespeare would be gibberish, and the monkeys' feat no more significant than any random series of letters. And that is my point--it is only because we have bodies, minds and a world that we consider valuable that we consider their existence meaningful. What makes them meaningful objectively? Why are they any more significant than the particular arrangement of every rock on the surface of the moon?
What am I missing?
Jewish Exile:
ReplyDelete>Most people would find the significance of intelligent life self-evident.<
Isn't this mere bias? What makes it self-evident?
>However, if you want to formalize it, you could say that intelligent life is inherently significant since only intelligent life can serve a creator, and therefore it points to one.<
I'm lost here. The fact that intelligent life could serve a creator does not suggest there is a creator. This seems completely circular. Why not say that the fact that spices exist suggests that there must be a creator who likes to smell things? Or the fact that disease exists suggests that there must be a creator who likes to kill? Or that the fact that every rock on the moon is exactly where it is means that there must be an intelligent designer who wants each rock to be in that exact position? This is completely circular.
>if you show (through my argument or some other) that intelligent life is inherently significant, and not only significant to itself, then your argument would be refuted.<
Perhaps. But you'd need to show it.
>In addition, you will notice that it is not only intelligent life that is extremely unlikely, but in fact any amount of complexity at all. Slight changes in the electromagnetic force would change all atoms to hydrogen, essentially rendering most of science obsolete. I suppose you could argue that there is no inherent significance to having all the complexity of existence that chemistry gives us<
Yes, I would argue that there is no inherent significance to having all the complexity of existence that chemistry gives us. What makes it significant?
>but I imagine you would have a very hard time convincing anyone who has studied science and been struck by its elegance of that fact.<
This too is the result of bias. We happen to be what has evolved at random. We have no more objective significance than a particular arrangement of cards. We're more complex--so what? Our particular strucure makes us find certain things elegant-- a topic in itself--but that does not make them inherently significant.
The whole argument hinges on placing particular value on certain things over others. Nothing gives those things inherent value, so, I believe, the argument fails.
I was too lazy to write this comment, so I left my laptop outside where acorns could bounce off the keypad. If you don't like it, talk to the oak tree.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteI don't like to be disdainful, but it would appear that you haven't been following the conversation, and haven't got a clue. Perhaps you should try harder to understand what is being discussed before you leave your keyboard under the oak tree.
I think that Jewish Exile understands the issues. Rabbi Bechhofer, any thoughts?
I am not sure, Joshua, that I can help you out on this issue. R' Noah Weinberg makes the cogent point that one needs to be a judge, not a lawyer, in deciding matters of emunah. That is, since the Creator deliberately left belief un-"provable," one must carefully weigh the available evidence and come to the best possible conclusion. To me it seems obvious that the exquisitely complex systems that exist in the world, some quite paradoxical - such as the acid in the stomach that attacks the food, but not the walls of the stomach, or the venomous snake, that poisons others but not itself - are not consistent with a world in which things strive to entropy and chaos. Moreover, to cite Dr. Gerald Schroeder, there is indeed a chance that a book on my bookshelf will all of a sudden spontaneously jump up and then fall. Experience demonstrates, however, that events that have infinitesemally small chances of occurence so not occur.
ReplyDeleteThis is different than, say, a lottery. In a lottery, some pattern must emerge, as the balls must pop, or whatever. It is a closed system. In an open system such as our universe, however, no pattern need have occurred, and it strains my credulity to assert that the complexity of this creation is just the result that occurred. Clearly, however, this does not strain your credulity, so I am left unable to help you out.
>To me it seems obvious that the exquisitely complex systems that exist in the world . . . are not consistent with a world in which things strive to entropy and chaos.<
ReplyDeleteI do not know enough about entropy to comment intelligently, but I know that scientists have shown experimentally that species adapt to environment. So not everything strives to chaos.
>Moreover, to cite Dr. Gerald Schroeder, there is indeed a chance that a book on my bookshelf will all of a sudden spontaneously jump up and then fall. Experience demonstrates, however, that events that have infinitesemally small chances of occurence [do] not occur.<
I don't think this is to the point. We simply do not know the chances of a random universe. It is impossible to judge how infinitesmally small a chance there is that a universe always existed, or came into existence without a creator, or that particular laws of nature might obtain, or that simple patterns, over vast periods of time, might evolve into complex systems. The reason it is impossible to judge these things is because we have no experience with such things on which to base any judgments. Arguments from analogy are useless.
We do have experience with books on shelves, and so can predict fairly reliably how they will behave. We don't know what random sets of circumstances might conceivably result within a random universe. Whatever did result would probably be statistically highly unlikely.
>it strains my credulity to assert that the complexity of this creation is just the result that occurred. Clearly, however, this does not strain your credulity, so I am left unable to help you out.<
Very intelligent answer.
While I have already noted, Joshua, that I cannot help you out, and you have lauded that conclusion, I must note that adaptations to environments are:
ReplyDelete1. Lateral evolutions, not progressivley more complex evolutions (indeed, it may be argued that adaptation to environment is striving to chaos...).
2. Micro-evolution, not macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is not a scientific theory (it cannot be proven) but an article of belief.
Joshua,
ReplyDeleteI have to think about this more; I didn't have time to really sit down and think it through today. Perhaps tomorrow. However, I would be curious to know what your criteria would be for truly objective significance. Seemingly, anything significant is only so to us, but not objectively, because indeed, what COULD be significant on a truly objective scale?
I'm not sure my argument is really advanced if you say "nothing is objectively significant," but it is an interesting side point nonetheless. On the other hand, if you do tell me something you would consider objectively significant, we can see why intelligent life would not fall under that or any similar criterion.
OK. Thought a little more. My attempt at a formal proof before was essentially saying this:
ReplyDeletePerhaps we don't need "objective" significance. Perhaps all we need is an event that is significant to a potential creator. What I mean is this: If the universe is designed, then it is no surprise that a universe that is in some way significant to its creator was designed. On the other hand, the probability of a universe existing that, by chance, has features that would be significant to a hypothetical creator is very small. What we are then left with is, what is significant to a creator? My answer was, creations that can recognize Him.
I suppose your counter argument is: You only suppose that the Creator wants his creations to recognize him because that happens to be the state of affairs. If we could look at a different universe and see that the fundamental constants were such that it simply smelled very good (ignoring the fact that smell is a purely subjective experience), you would suppose that THAT is what is of significance to your hypothetical Creator.
I would then argue back that we are now debating religious philosophy. What might a Creator "want," if anything? And I think it makes a lot of sense to say a Creator "wants" to create beings that will actually appreciate the good he does for them.
I'm pretty sure this argument isn't circular, but if it is I'd be glad to hear why.
Jewish Exile:
ReplyDelete>I would be curious to know what your criteria would be for truly objective significance. Seemingly, anything significant is only so to us, but not objectively, because indeed, what COULD be significant on a truly objective scale?<
Agreed. Nothing is objectively significant. What we find significant is based on subjective value judgment. I believe that's a weakness in the anthropic argument.
>Perhaps all we need is an event that is significant to a potential creator. . . . What we are then left with is, what is significant to a creator? My answer was, creations that can recognize Him. . . . I think it makes a lot of sense to say a Creator "wants" to create beings that will actually appreciate the good he does for them.<
I think what you're saying is that if there is a creator, He'd likely want to create intelligent beings that will appreciate the good He does for them. The problems with this are many: (1) It supposes a hypothetical creator, the very thing we are trying to determine the existence of. (2) It supposes that a creator would want to create beings that apprehend his existence. But cows exist, and they don't apprehend a creator, so why were they created? Also, some consider it an imperfection for G-d to "want" beings that apprehend Him. Some feel that "wants" imply "needs" (an imperfection), and that if G-d is perfect, nothing else can exist. (3) You presuppose G-d does good for man. One can argue that G-d does evil to man, and even that which looks good to us looks good only because we are limited and see only part of the picture. (4) Etc.
Joshua evidently feels that I did not address his thesis. And, for some reason, he does not accept that the post about the laptop hit by acorns was an accurate account. How did he deduce that my previous comment was actually generated by a human being? Some clue must have tipped him off. But there must, after all, be some non-zero probability that I didn't write the previous comment or this one either---why would he totally disregard this?
ReplyDeleteJoshua:
ReplyDeleteWith regards to point (1), it presupposes a possibility and then considers whether that possibility explains the experimental data any better than alternative hypotheses. That is not different than any experiment. Possible counter-argument by you: I (Joshua) assign a zero (or very low) prior probability to the hypothesis that there exists a creator. Therefore, even very convincing experimental data will not convince me. I would respectfully disagree.
Regarding your other points, you may be right; again, we are now debating religious philosophy, in which I am usually unconviced by arguments on both sides.
It has been a pleasure discussing this with you. I admit that an airtight case may, indeed, be impossible to make on the basis of the anthropic principle. Like all so-called "proofs" of God, it is relegated to be yet another "support." I posit that it is a very strong one; that our intuition about what is significant does, indeed, have some validity. Indeed, I think the anthropic principle a pretty convincing argument. You may completely reject this claim and say that since I have not proven objective significance, there is in fact zero support derived from this entire argument. I would, again,respectfully disagree, and hope that I am not being misled by my subjective experience.
Jewish exile:
ReplyDeleteIt has also been my pleasure to discuss this issue with an intelligent and pleasant person.
Kol tuv
Anonymous:
ReplyDelete>Joshua evidently feels that I did not address his thesis. And, for some reason, he does not accept that the post about the laptop hit by acorns was an accurate account. How did he deduce that my previous comment was actually generated by a human being? Some clue must have tipped him off. But there must, after all, be some non-zero probability that I didn't write the previous comment or this one either---why would he totally disregard this?<
Because in the context of posts on blogs, we have experience as to how such things occur. It's not simply that chance typing by acorns is highly unlikely. With respect to universes and how they come about, we have zero experience. We know nothing about the subject, so we look for clues. The question is whether the complexity of the world, or intelligent life, is a clue pointing to intelligent design. I believe that to say there is something special about these things that makes creation by chance extremely unlikely, while a universe filled with an infinitely unlikely particular arrangement of hydrgen atoms might not suggest intelligent design, is to make value judgments as to what is important or noteworthy.
It's a good thing we have a Mesorah!
ReplyDelete>Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing we have a Mesorah!<
True! The question then is how supportable is our belief in the accuracy of our mesorah.
Joshua:
ReplyDeleteI think you are in the wrong place. In my experience, email and posts are not the proper forums for intense perusal of emunah issues. If you would like, however, I can recommend to you some reading material.
YGB:
ReplyDeleteSorry if I offended, but I wasn't engaged in "intense perusal" of emunah issues. I was simply noting that if you present a lengthy thesis by Levi purporting to support our emunah, and if that thesis is questionable, and if Anonymous says it is therefore good that we have a Mesorah, then the question returns to whether that Mesorah is supportable. I don't think this is an "intense perusal" of emunah issues.
It's your blog, and you have the right to control/censor what goes on it, but if you're going to present "proofs" or arguments to support our emunah, is it not valid to respond with questions about whether that emunah ultimately is supportable, or rather merely is a matter of emunah?
BTW, reading material is always welcomed.
Not offended at all, and not intending to censor, but Emunah per se was not the purpose of the thread. Rather, it relates back to R' Gil Student's post:
ReplyDeleteAt Wednesday, May 11, 2005 9:28:59 AM, Gil Student said…
RYGB, Any thoughts on whether the study of modern science and medicine can lead to Ahavas Hashem? The Israeli English Yated recently published an editorial saying that modern science is different from medieval science, and cannot lead to Ahavas Hashem. Do you have an opinion?
and was meant to demonstrate how modern science can lead to Ahavas Hashem.
If your Hebrew is good, the best resource on Emunah I know of is in the Otzaros HaMussar by Rabbi Moshe Y. Tzuriel, usually available in the US from Tuvia's in Monsey.
Unfortunately, my Hebrew is poor. Does the book explain what emunah is, and how it differs from blind faith, which we know from looking at the world and its many conflicting belief systems is a "faculty" that is wholly unreliable at arriving at emes?
ReplyDeleteAny books in English on the latter subject?
It does so indeed. In English, off hand I do not know a text myself, although I am sure they exist. I would recomment an audiotape series, but first I have to find out how you can get it. I'm trying "As we speak."
ReplyDeleteThis is what I most highly recommend - a bit pricey, but great!
ReplyDeleteaish on tape
Intermediate & Advanced
The Lakewood Seminar by Rabbi Noah Weinberg
Advanced WN692A-F
6 Tapes $60.00 buy
See more titles by Rabbi Noah Weinberg
Rabbi Noach Weinberg is a pioneer and leader of today's Kiruv movement. Hear the strategies, techniques, and many of the amazing tales that have set in motion much of today's Kiruv activity.
This 6-cassette series was presented to a packed audience night-after-night at Bais Medrash Gavoha in Lakewood. It is widely considered to be one of Rabbi Weinberg's most brilliant presentations.
You can find it at:
ReplyDeletehttp://wwwc.catalog.com/cgibin/storemaker?id=68196188661600122789&action=page&page=adv_kiruv/default.html
Thanks very much. I assume Rav Weinberg's lectures are better than some of the "proofs" Aish presents, which, in my opinion, are false and misleading--some bordering on dishonest.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with current Aish proofs (indeed, R' Weinberg asserts that there is no "proof" in the literal sense of the word), but since this tape is "ancient" (1980) I suspect many of the proofs used today had not yet been developed at that time.
ReplyDeleteAlso see:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dovidgottlieb.com/publications.htm