Too Much Fluke!

[peter]

How did life emerge from the oddball bags of chemicals floating around in the primordial soup? Fluke. How did consciousness develop in life? Fluke. How did self aware intelligence arise in consciousness? Fluke. How is it that the universal constants are all set just right for life to arise? Fluke. How is it that the Goldilocks zone of earth is just so, so that life and eventually us could come about? Fluke.

Now correct me if I'm wrong - but there seems to be a hell of a lot of luck and flukes going on in the scientific explanations we have as to why what appears to be an almost undeniably teleologically appearing situation - one in which everything seems to have been almost deliberately directed so that we would be here, now - is not the case..... but it's all just random fluke.

Are all of these flukes actually demonstrated - proven to beyond doubt as it were - or are fluke, chance and luck just the convenient answers that science gives which mean it does not have to face up to the uncomfortable questions it would have to face if it accepted that one 'billion to one against' might be acceptable (like winning the lottery once), but when they start coming along like number 67 buses, it gets a bit more difficult to accept that 'fluke' cuts it. I mean, moving from a universe with shit loads of hydrogen and helium and not much else, to us, with a double fistful of shit near impossible lottery wins along the route...... isn't chance, luck and fluke as an answer to every one pushing it a bit? I think we either have to demonstrate that the arrival at us (with the 'progress' in complexity that implies) is a pretty much inevitable thing .......or accept that the process has direction,not necessarily from outside, but direction nevertheless. There is such a thing as too much fluke.

[Fist and Faith]

Maybe there are a trillion universes, with different properties. And almost none of them has any life in them.

[sgt.null]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_flounder

[Skyweir]

How did life emerge from the oddball bags of chemicals floating around in the primordial soup? Fluke. How did consciousness develop in life? Fluke. How did self aware intelligence arise in consciousness? Fluke. How is it that the universal constants are all set just right for life to arise? Fluke. How is it that the Goldilocks zone of earth is just so, so that life and eventually us could come about? Fluke.

Now correct me if I'm wrong - but there seems to be a hell of a lot of luck and flukes going on in the scientific explanations we have as to why what appears to be an almost undeniably teleologically appearing situation - one in which everything seems to have been almost deliberately directed so that we would be here, now - is not the case..... but it's all just random fluke.

Are all of these flukes actually demonstrated - proven to beyond doubt as it were - or are fluke, chance and luck just the convenient answers that science gives which mean it does not have to face up to the uncomfortable questions it would have to face if it accepted that one 'billion to one against' might be acceptable (like winning the lottery once), but when they start coming along like number 67 buses, it gets a bit more difficult to accept that 'fluke' cuts it. I mean, moving from a universe with shit loads of hydrogen and helium and not much else, to us, with a double fistful of shit near impossible lottery wins along the route...... isn't chance, luck and fluke as an answer to every one pushing it a bit? I think we either have to demonstrate that the arrival at us (with the 'progress' in complexity that implies) is a pretty much inevitable thing .......or accept that the process has direction,not necessarily from outside, but direction nevertheless. There is such a thing as too much fluke.

If direction, from where? What kind of direction?

Is design the only opponent of *fluke*?

I seriously doubt it …

I wonder how many other species invest as much time and energy into like-mannered ponderances

I wonder how much of human arrogance is intertwined with searches for greater meaning that can be acquired from a mortal complete yet finite life.

My guess is other species focus perhaps moreso on survival and increase.

Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural world following a systematic methodology based on evidence. The fact that we do not have ALL the answers, does not mean there are none.

We know a lot more today than we did just a mere 100/200 years ago: we know living species evolved and adapted in innumerable ways since the single cell amoeba lol

We know the more about the earth than we did a mere 100/200 years ago - we know the earth is part of a much greater solar system earth is comprised of the same dust and matter that is found in the cosmos.

Science is continually learning and discovering information about the earth, the universe, life etc.

I don’t think scientists would consider: *fluke* an evidence based approach to those questions.

We will likely not find the answers you seek in our lifetimes but I can see no impediment to the possibility that in a few hundred years from now humankind will know a lot more about these things than we do now. Just as we know a lot more about these things than we did in the past.

Once upon a time humankind feared travelling by sea, for fear of falling off the earth into an imagined abyss.

Answers will come as answers have come.

[peter]

The multiple universes answer to this conundrum, if not backed up by scientific evidence, is really as much of a cop out as the Creator based answer.

But let me be clear; the object of this post (resultant from a bit of mild musing on the subject in a lazy moment at home) is not to turn it into a polemic on the existence of God - rather to say that all of the lucky happenstances that seem to have occurred in order for us to be here now, having this discussion, seem indicative that the process of increasing complexity leading to emergence of life, followed by emergence of consciousness followed by the emergence of intelligence is a direction that is pre-deteremined by some as yet ill understood mechanism, rather than a random occurrence that just happened to occur by fluke.

If such a mechanism does indeed exist, where I wonder is it taking us. What will this 'omega point' be like? (Thanks to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for this nice succinct descriptor.)

Science has invested so much energy in trying to prove, to tell us we are not special. Why not? Why shouldn't we be special? What's so wrong with being special?

(Tempted to break into the well known Radiohead song here. )

[Skyweir]

I’d think that it’s not fluke - randomness has a specific function - not unlike adaptation or survival of the fittest or the most intelligent.

My money is on the right conditions.

If you have the right conditions - you have increase, growth, evolution, adaptation - survival.

Not happenstance. Perhaps bring in the right place at the right time leads to the same occurrences arising.

And maybe you have stumbled across a key element in the development of existence itself.

[Skyweir]

https://blog.oup.com/2021/07/have-human ... ogQE1Zi4b8

From a pluriversal perspective, the past would no longer look like a kind of extended overture to the present, where all humans inhabit the same world and struggle along a common path of “progress” towards western modernity. Instead, it would look like a vast panorama of autonomous worlds, where life was secured by a wondrous array of relations, beings, and forces that defy our narrow technoscientific imaginations.

[peter]

We seem to have a lot of conditions that turn out by chance to be just right though Sky. In the many universes theory, this can be accounted for by saying that there are a multitude of multitude of universes where the conditions are not met and we are in the either very rare or only one where they are. But this explanation, unless backed up by the observation of said universes or mathematical proofs that they must exist (or could we be this very proof ourselves.....hmmm, that's an interesting question) fall flat pretty quickly. In the absence of such a possibility demonstrated by either observation or sound mathematics, even the smallest application of Occam's razor has it consigned to the dustbin of also ran ideas.

But I'm interested in this property of emergence. Tell me this; are there any examples of emergence (in the universe) that can be cited, that precede the emergence of life? Was the pre-life universe simply too....... simple for any examples of emergence to occur. Also, are there any other examples of emergences arising from pre-occuring emergences as seems to have happened in the case of the brain/mind. I'm thinking here that the property of self-awareness seems to have been emergent from the complexity of the neural networks of the brain, and from the complexity of self-awareness/consciousness seems to have emerged the property of intelligence. Is this an emergence from an emergence, or something else?

[Avatar]

In an infinite universe, anything which is possible must exist somewhere.

--A

[peter]

The key word here is possible Av; and thinking something is possible does not make it so!

We get into the realms of the ontological argument going down this route.

[Avatar]

But if we can think it, it's conceivable, therefore must exist somewhere?

--A

[peter]

But I can conceive of a nothing so absolute that to say it existed would simply make it a contradiction in terms.

[Fist and Faith]

No. It's possible to have an infinite number of different things without having every possible thing. All those monkeys could type an infinite number of different things without one of them ever hitting "e". Not saying it's likely, but there are an infinite number of possibilities that don't have the letter e.

[Zarathustra]

No. It's possible to have an infinite number of different things without having every possible thing. All those monkeys could type an infinite number of different things without one of them ever hitting "e". Not saying it's likely, but there are an infinite number of possibilities that don't have the letter e.

Correct. In the infinite series of even numbers there is not a single odd.

[peter]

But can immaterial things have existence? My conscious mind is a case in point; it seems real enough to me - but I fully accept that thoughts that define it (in the way I perceive them, not just as spikes of electrical activity on an ECG) are immaterial and yet find it hard to accept they have no existence.

And yet once having been acknowledged as having existence, the same rules must apply as to any other avatar of being; they can no more be pulled from absolute nothing anymore than can universes - and (change them as you might) no more can they ever again be consigned to the dustbin of history (by annihilation back into nothingness).

[Skyweir]

We seem to have a lot of conditions that turn out by chance to be just right though Sky. In the many universes theory, this can be accounted for by saying that there are a multitude of multitude of universes where the conditions are not met and we are in the either very rare or only one where they are. But this explanation, unless backed up by the observation of said universes or mathematical proofs that they must exist (or could we be this very proof ourselves.....hmmm, that's an interesting question) fall flat pretty quickly. In the absence of such a possibility demonstrated by either observation or sound mathematics, even the smallest application of Occam's razor has it consigned to the dustbin of also ran ideas.

But I'm interested in this property of emergence.

Tell me this; are there any examples of emergence (in the universe) that can be cited, that precede the emergence of life? Was the pre-life universe simply too....... simple for any examples of emergence to occur.

I think there are 100b suns in our home galaxy - and there are something like 3t galaxies in the universe which all indicate there would likely be billions upon billions of examples of emergence that preceded human existence on this small planet.

Also, are there any other examples of emergences arising from pre-occuring emergences as seems to have happened in the case of the brain/mind.

Given the infinite possibilities and probabilities existence in universal/planetary and the evolution/emergence of life and intelligence that there absolutely are explanations/precedent conditions etc that give rise to the development of the brain/mind.

I'm thinking here that the property of self-awareness seems to have been emergent from the complexity of the neural networks of the brain, and from the complexity of self-awareness/consciousness seems to have emerged the property of intelligence. Is this an emergence from an emergence, or something else?

Yup seems entirely likely but to answer what came first the chicken or the egg is a rather fascinating conundrum.

Scientists can successfully grow brains self awareness seems to emerge from the presence of the infrastructure- or quite possibly the existence of other concurrent developments or something else entirely

[Avatar]

Correct. In the infinite series of even numbers there is not a single odd.

Sure, but if you have an infinite series of even numbers, you must also have an infinite series of odd numbers?

--A

[Skyweir]

Why aren’t my quotes working?

[peter]

Something I'm continually asking myself Sky!

[Avatar]

Why aren’t my quotes working?

Mine are...

--A