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New study estimates the odds of life and intelligence emerging beyond our planet:
We know from the geological record that life started relatively quickly, as soon our planet's environment was stable enough to support it. We also know that the first multicellular organism, which eventually produced today's technological civilization, took far longer to evolve, approximately 4 billion years.
But despite knowing when life first appeared on Earth, scientists still do not understand how life occurred, which has important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.
In a new paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences today, David Kipping, an assistant professor in Columbia's Department of Astronomy, shows how an analysis using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference could shed light on how complex extraterrestrial life might evolve in alien worlds.
"The rapid emergence of life and the late evolution of humanity, in the context of the timeline of evolution, are certainly suggestive," Kipping said. "But in this study it's possible to actually quantify what the facts tell us."
To conduct his analysis, Kipping used the chronology of the earliest evidence for life and the evolution of humanity. He asked how often we would expect life and intelligence to re-emerge if Earth's history were to repeat, re-running the clock over and over again.
He framed the problem in terms of four possible answers: Life is common and often develops intelligence, life is rare but often develops intelligence, life is common and rarely develops intelligence and, finally, life is rare and rarely develops intelligence.
This method of Bayesian statistical inference—used to update the probability for a hypothesis as evidence or information becomes available—states prior beliefs about the system being modeled, which are then combined with data to cast probabilities of outcomes.
"The technique is akin to betting odds," Kipping said. "It encourages the repeated testing of new evidence against your position, in essence a positive feedback loop of refining your estimates of likelihood of an event."
From these four hypotheses, Kipping used Bayesian mathematical formulas to weigh the models against one another. "In Bayesian inference, prior probability distributions always need to be selected," Kipping said. "But a key result here is that when one compares the rare-life versus common-life scenarios, the common-life scenario is always at least nine times more likely than the rare one."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:03PM (21 children)
Is early/simple life really distinguishable from fire? Conversely: prove that fire isn't alive.
If we end up nuking all our land masses to glass, was the whole of life on Earth any different from fire in the long view?
The thing about statistical models of the emergence of "complex" life is that the significant unknowns are impossible to pin down even within high multiple orders of magnitude. Ooze in a pond developed cell walls and complexity emerged from there. Fine, how many times did that happen and the ooze making the cell walls failed to find competitive advantage against the non-cell-walled ooze? (R 1.0). How many ponds were there? How many ponds with the right set of ingredients to enable cell walls? etc.
We don't even know if the transition to complexity happened in a surface pond, in the light, in the dark, in the deep ocean, what chemical cycle was used to fuel the original transition, etc.
Bayesian inference is a great tool, and it can help with "fuzzy" input variables, but when that fuzz is approaching zero real information content, all your tool has done is help you to express 99.44% pure speculation, mathematically with lots of flowcharts and distribution graphs all based on more nearly pure speculation. I guess it gets people published and there's monetary reward for that, in certain circles, but is there any correlation to value for anyone other than the authors?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:21PM
The nuclear glass [wikipedia.org] is prettier.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/03/02/1658200 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:43PM
I agree completely.
Maybe this guy saw the fame that came to the creator of the Drake Equation and wanted to make his own more complicated analog.
Both are a classic case of GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out, with complete mathematical precision.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:00PM (4 children)
I'm just asking myself, "How do you do statistical analysis on an example of one?" So, yeah, what you said too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:14PM (3 children)
First you assume a distribution.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 21 2020, @05:29PM (2 children)
What does Coach Butterworth say happens when you Ass/u/me?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:35PM
I'd ask him, but he's busy fucking Mrs. Butterworth [scene7.com]. That horny little bitch is so sweet!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @10:05PM
I think he says "dis/tri/buti/on"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:24PM (7 children)
Fire doesn't have the ability to ask dumb questions. As to the second question, did the past happen, if it's not the past any more? Some of the most reprehensible and destructive human ideologies heavily used the idea that the past can be destroyed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:32PM (2 children)
I don't believe you, and am therefore issuing a damnatio memoriae upon you and this notion that one can eliminate the past shall fade away.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 21 2020, @05:45PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @10:10PM
The man without a grandiose sense of self-importance, is... is... like if a man is good [youtu.be].
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 21 2020, @04:45PM (3 children)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:12PM (2 children)
No, no it did not. :,-(
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:38PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @05:33AM
You're not here for the hunting are you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @06:18PM (1 child)
The paper is open access [pnas.org], in case you want to view it.
By the way, you are criticising the Bayesian approach with frequentist arguments. I would have thought that we'd be beyond that after more than 100 years, but that frequentist mindset will not be shaken off easily!
Abstract:
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 22 2020, @12:27AM
After a statement like that, I'm not reading any farther - sure, technology didn't bloom until the last 900 million years.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 21 2020, @07:40PM (3 children)
In the long run, life will end. The second law of thermodynamics is merciless.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:44PM (1 child)
Spoken like a philosophical absolutist.
But, why does the universe exist, and with energy flows that can power useful work? If it began once, why couldn't another beginning happen? If it's eternal, why has it not reached a "heat death" state yet?
Maybe we're the children of a Type V civilization that while unable to escape the heat death of their own multiverse, was able to spawn a new universe and seed it in a way that would cause new life to evolve. Maybe they couldn't perpetuate themselves, but they could perpetuate life. And maybe, in some unimaginably distant future, our descendants will achieve Type V, and use all that power to do it all over again, give birth to a new universe.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 22 2020, @11:40PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 22 2020, @12:31AM
That's the interesting thing about life, it there's a loophole in the 2nd law, life is going to be what finds it. We've only been aware of the 2nd law of thermodynamics for the last 0.0000000001% (approx) of the life of the universe - I find it entirely probable that there's aspects of it, applicable in parts of the universe we haven't even observed yet but our progeny may one day visit (or not...) that we don't know about that just might constitute a loophole in this simple law that has passed all of our tests so far.
It wasn't so long ago that "what goes up must come down" was similarly inviolable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]