Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment and made a new discovery

Re:Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment an... by pfdietz on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @07:15AM (#29079563)

I still don't understand. We have no useful lower bound on the probability that life arises, so how does Bayesian reasoning bootstrap to any meaningful lower bound?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Scientists recreated classic origin-of-life experiment an... by csee on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @10:00AM (#29081311)

Who said anything about a lower bound of p? I was talking about a lower bound on N, not a lower bound on p.

Bayesian reasoning (by using the fact that we exist rather than don't exist, as well as other info about our existence, such as how long it took us to evolve) helps us estimate a probability distribution of p, as well as a central tendency estimate.

See e.g. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2019.2149

[ Parent | on HN ]