Junkyard Tornado Fallacy. "Long odds" of life/complex life

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Junkyard tornado​

The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle’s Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."[1][2][3] It was used originally by Fred Hoyle, in which he applied statistical analysis to the origin of life, but similar observations predate Hoyle and have been found all the way back to Darwin's time,[1] and indeed to Cicero in classical times.[4] While Hoyle himself was an atheist, the argument has since become a mainstay of creationist and intelligent design criticisms of evolution.

This argument is Rejected by the vast majority of biologists. From the modern evolutionary standpoint, while the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbably remote, evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection rather than by chance, over a long period of time. The transition as a whole is plausible, as each step improves survivability; the Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado posits.
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Junkyard tornado - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One way this fallacy is used is to arbitrarily reduce the probability of anything to virtually zero.

 

[scruffy]

One way this fallacy is used is to arbitrarily reduce the probability of anything to virtually zero.

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

 

[abu afak]

I write better than you, have a greater vocabulary than you and can think and type more quickly than you.

1. I am on he road with a 13.9" laptop with two (ie, 4/5, R/T, etc) dead vertical rows of keys down the center vertically so using an on screen keyboard on an already small screen.

2. No answer to my probability... or your LowQ debate by youtube.

3. I am in several high IQ groups and mostly post in them having long ago won the debate here with my Pillar OP's and logic. Just bump them up every so often for a new crop of deniers like you.

.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

1. I am on he road with a 13.9" laptop with two (ie, 4/5, R/T, etc) dead vertical rows of keys down the center vertically so using an on screen keyboard on an already small screen.

Then I suggest you concentrate on the driving.

2. No answer to my probability... or your LowQ debate by youtube.

Did you ask me a question?

3. I am in several high IQ groups and mostly post in them having long ago won the debate here with my Pillar OP's and logic. Just bump them up every so often for a new crop of deniers like you.

What do you think I'm "denying"?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

When you think about it, all of these fallacies originated with Zeno's paradoxes.

For example, Zeno's Paradox of Motion.

But we got past that "paradox" (that wasn't), when we learned how to sum infinite series.

Then some charlatans turned these simple, debunked paradoxes into beguiling stories with 747s and works of Shakespeare and chimps with typewriters and rejuvenated them.

And now we get to see them in use in 2024 on an internet message board.

Kinda sad.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Some of these clowns need a math education. They seem to be completely ignorant of basic combinatorics. Maybe they should start with something simple like factorials.

Discrete Mathematics was a great class.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

The fallacy here is to arbitrarily assign probabilities to events to make the probability of a single, resulting event to be negligible.

The problem here is that such probabilities refer to the probability of an event happening at the exact time and place that it happens. This has limitations, when trying to understand the world around us.

You can push your pencil all day and push the probability of your existence at this exact time and place to be virtually zero.

But you will have not even spoken to the probability of life forming in a universe that exists for billions of years.