Friday, November 5, 2010

Evolution is like a Box of Chocolates

1) The cracked actor in the first clip is Hal Holbrook. His performance makes him eligible for the Golden Crocoduck 2010. The video is titled "Evolution Theory - Is it Reliable?"

2) Te guy in te boat can be found in the video: "CrEvo-Rant-78 - the boat that dont float"



3) In my original script I had the numbers pulled out of Holbrook's box destroyed if they were wrong, as would happen with deleterious genetic traits. But what I said on the video was that they go back into the pool, which would alter the stats. In the first case, the number one would be pulled very quickly, if it took just one second to pick up and discard each of the numbers -- max time 20 seconds. If the wrong numbers went back into the box then there would be a 1 in 20 chance of picking up the right ball each time, so it would take an average of about 10 seconds to pick the right number. But that's just a statistical average. In theory you could keep picking numbers out of the box for a million years and never get a one, just as you could roll a die for ever and never get a 6. The probability is so small as to be impossible.

4) The same goes for the slot machines. Instead os saying it would take a minute to hit the jackpot, in reality it would take a few minutes longer, on average, because not every machine would be guaranteed to get a bacterium symbol even after six tries. There will always be one machine where a bacterium doggedly refuses to come up in one wheel.

These are interesting academic points, and I am happy to clarify my mistakes for the record. But we are still reducing a time period of 77 million (or billion) years to a matter of a few minutes, and changing something the creationists say is impossible to something that is certain. That's the power of natural selection over natural chance.

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