[ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets

spike spike66 at att.net
Wed Nov 6 16:48:32 UTC 2013


 

 

>. On Behalf Of John Clark
Subject: Re: [ExI] kepler study says 8.8e9 earthlike planets

 

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 1:06 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

 

> OK now I am more puzzled than ever.  NASA says there are about 8.8 billion
Goldilocks planets in the Milky Way alone:
http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.ht
ml
<http://news.yahoo.com/study-8-8-billion-earth-size-just-planets-212232920.h
tml%20%20> 

  
>.Well, 8.8*10^9 is a big number but that alone doesn't tell you anything,
the real question is if chemistry and biology can generate numbers as big or
bigger that can counteract astronomy's numbers.  A chain of 20 amino acids
is too short to be considered a protein, but there are 20 different types of
amino acids in earthly life so there are 1.05*10^26 different ways to make
such a little chain. So already we have a number ten million billion times
larger than 8.8*10^9.

Ja, but when we see these kinds of comparisons, we immediately recognize
that the 8.8 e9 is this galaxy alone, so tack on about 10 more OOMs, then
recognize something even more important: the use of a planet as a unit of
measure is irrelevant.  The radius of the earth is about 6E6 meters, so
surface area is about 1e14 m^2 or about 1e20 mm^2 or 1e26 square microns, so
we must ask ourselves how much real estate the first organism needed to
evolve.  We don't know.  My intuition is screaming there is something wrong
with our whole picture here, even after I divide thru by Fa and set Fa
arbitrarily large.  We are still missing something.  

This feels to me like an investigation in the rocket science biz 15 yrs ago
where we had where we listed 20 scenarios and tested them all.  We still
didn't have the right answer up there, but I watched as one guy after
another picked a favorite theory and defended it like it was his own cub
from any and all counter-evidence or anomalous observations.  We kept
thinking, eventually found the right answer.

>. And even bacteria are "astronomically" more complex than such a simple 20
element peptide chain.

John keep in mind that this argument ignores the possibility that the
simplest possible life form is as complex as the simplest lifeform currently
on earth.  The simplest car on the road today is vastly more complex than
the model T.  There might be some model T equivalent in the biological
world, but we have never seen it because it is long since extinct and left
not a trace. 

>.Or maybe the reason we don't see ET is that some principle puts a lid on
how smart something can be and how much cosmic engineering that can be done
by it, my best guess on why that could be is that having access to your
emotional control panel might lead to positive feedback and mental
instability.  I hope that's not the answer, I hope the answer is just that
the numbers from biology are bigger than the numbers from astronomy. .John K
Clark 

This one sounds more plausible to me, and it does cause worry.  I tend to
see everything thru the lens of controls engineering (we control freaks are
like that.)  Just like everything else, there are positive and negative
feedback loops on intelligence.  It is possible that at some point, the
negative feedback loops dominate.  Singularity theory is dependent on the
notion of positive feedback loops crush every negative loop, or as we
controls guys like to say, there are poles in the right half plane.  I hope
that is true, but it might be wrong.  

If evolution can somehow kickstart life and result in something as awesome
as this, then I have high hopes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTO3L2rSjI

But if negative feedback loops eventually dominate our intelligence model,
then all we are is dust in the wind.

spike

 

 

   






 

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