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Philosophy

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    Even incredibly small probabilities become significant if you multiply them by the time scales (literally billions of years) and available space (the whole volume near the top of our oceans) - Speaking of probabilities, this paper might be relevant: philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/109968/66156
    – user66156
    Commented May 28 at 13:23
  • The probabilities mentioned are exponentially small, which means that multiplication by large constants does not make them non-small. You need a different explanation for how complexity arises. One happens to come from non-equilibrium thermodynamics: because we sit next to a hot star, our chemical species are constantly increasing in complexity. Origin-of-life research is aware of this; each abiogenetic experiment assumes that the precursor chemicals evolved through other reactions already, with the exception of Miller–Urey.
    – Corbin
    Commented May 28 at 17:54
  • Interesting molecules apparently form in open space, so forming them in a nice warm ocean seems quite likely.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented May 29 at 2:25
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    Since we're in Philosophy.SE here and not in Chemistry.SE or Biology.SE, my point is that exactly discussions like this ("it is very unlikely" - "but there is so much time and space" - "but the one is exponentional, the other polinomal" - "but entropy from the sun helps" - etc etc.) is exactly what makes Process Reliabilism "work" to build beliefe in this. Obviously with a bayesian mindset (i.e. we don't know until we know, but we can put a probability on it, and P.R. helps us to judge where on the scale of likelihood we might be).
    – AnoE
    Commented May 29 at 8:30