As I'm sure tsunamifury would agree, it is incredibly common for people to label "bell curves" by eyeball, regardless of whether they are normal curves. To most people, "clumping" in a one-dimensional spectrum is all they mean by the phrase "bell curve".
> suppose that a large sample of observations is obtained, each observation being randomly produced in a way that does not depend on the values of the other observations, and the average (arithmetic mean) of the observed values is computed. If this procedure is performed many times, resulting in a collection of observed averages, the central limit theorem says that if the sample size is large enough, the probability distribution of these averages will closely approximate a normal distribution.
Sorry, but nothing you have said here is true or makes sense. Multi worlds are universes, not worlds within our universe. The multiworld interpretation is one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics of the exact same evidence--one or the other interpretation being "true" has no empirical implications. And it is an interpretation of quantum mechanics, which has nothing to do with the distribution of nucleotides. And it's incoherent to call an observed event "impossible". You seem to mean that you think that it is highly unlikely, but offer no reason to think so ... nor for the bizarre claim that "Multi worlds is the only way". I suspect that you are mixing up a very confused understanding of "Multi worlds" with some version of the anthropic principle. But the anthropic principle is an a posteriori explanation of an a priori unlikely occurrence, it's not a "way" for something to happen.
I won't comment further unless you offer a convincing proof of your assertion.
Ok, what is the mystery in the origin of life? As I understand, it is how all the required molecules came together in the right configuration spontaneously? Is that the question that we are trying to answer?
If this is the question, I think the Multi Worlds Interpretation provides the answer. Because it says that there is some worlds where any given random event will manifest.
So it follows that there is some worlds, where this random event that we call the "origin of life" manifested. And it is just that we are part of one such world.
>multiworld interpretation is one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics of the exact same evidence
I think we might think the other way around. That the origin of life, as well as the fact that we seem to be alone in the universe, as a proof of the MWI..
About the latter, I think we have an overwhelming chance to be alone, because while it is true that there can be universes where random events have lead to origin of life in multiple places, the universes where there is only a single "origin of life" event will vastly outnumber such universes that the chances of us finding oursleves in one such universe (where life has originated independently more than once) is vanishingly small.
Yeah, it didn't confuse sensible people who are capable of putting themselves in someone else's shoes.
I did a Small Web search at Marginalia and was immediately pointed to sites that claim that I and everyone in my political party are literally the spawn of Satan--I really don't think it's my thing.
I helped develop the ARPANET back in 1969-1970 while working for the UCLA Comp Sci dept, got a brief mention in RFC 57, hold several network patents, and was on usenet before the usenix conference where we voted to call it that ... I'm bemused by all the people who claim that boomers are technologically inept (I think they have us mixed up with our parents). Anyway it's been a heck of a wild ride and didn't end up quite how JCR Licklider envisioned it.
I wrote this in response to one of the reviews, so I'll share it with you since you asked. :-)
I worked on an ARPA-funded speech understanding project in the 1970's at SDC--it was definitely driven by military interests. One time some of us techies were in our soundproof lab drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers when our manager brought to the big picture window an Iranian general bristling with medals--they both looked extremely unhappy.
I also worked on ARPANET development at UCLA from 1969-1971, and there was none of that. The driving motivation was ARPA-funded researchers at universities being able to readily share their work. Is ARPA funding researchers at universities an issue that can be written about? Of course, but it has nothing to do with the ARPANET per se and isn't part of the story that this book is about.
Oops--I left out a critical part of the SDC story--we were in the lab because it had an incredible sound system featuring a pair of high end AR-3 speakers. I don't recall what we were playing but I'm sure it sounded wonderful.
We also did real work in that lab of course ... mostly recording things like "What is the surfaced displacement of the Lafayette?", which our primitive system running on (pathetically slow by today's standards) Raytheon 704 and PDP-11 computers would attempt to parse and answer. The text of course was selected for the sake of obtaining a grant from the USN.
This early work, funded by the military, laid the basis for today's ubiquitous speech understanding systems. Are there issues with fundamental research being funded by the military or, say, big pharma, rather than as part of a direct planned effort by society to achieve social goals? Sure, and much can and should be written about that, but it's not the subject matter of this book.
Second, your "aka" is incorrect --- there is all sorts of clumping that is not a normal distribution.
reply