On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 12:28 PM, david <[email protected]> wrote: > Horse said to dmb: > > I agree with much of what you say but it's still very important to remember > that DNA-based life is no more than one possible way for life to exist and > that it involves an environment and a context. Not having experienced > something (or maybe mis-interpreting something that we do experience) should > not blind us to the probability that it exists. Isn't this part of the > 'Cleveland Harbor Effect'? > > dmb says: > I think the lesson of the Cleveland Harbor Effect is other way around. "It > was a parable for students of scientific objectivity," he says. To say "he > rejected the observation and followed the chart" is to say to ignored the > actual experience because of what he thought. What he thought acted as a > static filter, "shutting out all information that did not fit." (This is good > description of what's known as "confirmation bias".) > > The idea of life that's not DNA-based is not exactly comparable, because > there are no observations or experiences being ignored. The idea, I think, is > only based on extrapolating upon the biological charts we already have. I > mean, nothing like that has been observed. It's reasonable and I don't think > there is any ideological resistance to it but it is pure speculation, a > plausible abstraction for which there is no empirical evidence. As far as I > know, anyway.
[Dan] I don't know, Dave. I think there are observations being made that non-DNA based lifeforms are possible: "Synthetic biologists have discovered that six other molecules can could store genetic information and pass it on. A host of alternative nucleic acids have been made in labs over the years, but no one has made them work like DNA. Until now, everyone thought we were limited to RNA and DNA. This is the first time artificial molecules have been made to pass genes on to their descendants. The finding is a proof of principle that life needn't be based on DNA and RNA." [www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/04/extraterrestrial-life-may-not-be-based-on-dna-or-rna-new-research-todays-most-popular.html] Dan comments: Note the words: Until now, everyone thought we were limited to RNA and DNA. This is very similar to what Phaedrus says about the Cleveland Harbor Effect: "When Phaedrus started to read yachting literature he ran across a description of the "green flash" of the sun. What was that all about, he wondered. Why hadn't he seen it? He was sure he had never seen the green flash of the sun. Yet he must have seen it. But if he saw it, why didn't he see it? "This static filter was the explanation. He didn't see the green flash because he'd never been told to see it. But then one day he read a book on yachting which said, in effect, to go see it. So he did. And he saw it. There was the sun, green as green can be, like a "GO" light on a downtown traffic semaphore. Yet all his life he had never seen it. The culture hadn't told him to so he hadn't seen it. If he hadn't read that book on yachting he was quite certain he would never have seen it." [Lila] This "static filter" is in place whether we recognize it or not. Phaedrus had never seen a green flash from the sun. He knew nothing about it. He wasn't told to go see it, until he read a book on yachting. And there it was! >dmb: > The Cleveland Harbor Effect is about throwing out NEW "facts" when they don't > fit with the intellectual patterns. "When a new fact comes in that does not > fit the pattern we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact." Here, > I think, "facts" are empirical reality while the patterns are conceptual (and > for a radical empiricist like Pirsig empirical reality always comes first and > concepts are always secondary). It seems to me that non-DNA life forms would > be greeted as an exciting discovery. Sci-Fi writers and real scientists have > been dreaming about it for a while. If a "contradictory fact has to keep > hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, before maybe > one or two people will see it," then alternative life forms would be > something like the opposite. It's an abstract pattern that keeps hammering > and hammering and lots of people desperately want to see it - but nobody ever > has. Dan: It is possible that non-DNA based life forms are right under our noses and we've never seen them because we aren't told to see them. We could liken this to the research being done on the Higgs boson and the resulting expansion of the laws of physics that are bound to follow. Thanks, Dan http://www.danglover.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
