fire away. the questions are I believe ... are the ratios correct for the known period of life on earth. that is does complexity or whatever increase at the rate the author says it increases.
also why would it not start at zero complexity or whatever x billion years ago on earth.
that is does complexity or whatever increase at the rate the author says it increasesIt's not my area, but I'd bet the farm it does, IF they restrict it to the time period for which they actually have data. This is the area of their expertise and they've spent decades studying it.
But there is something that bothers me about it; namely, as I said, they've extrapolated their results well outside the time period for which they have data. Any beginning stat student will tell you that's a very risky thing to do. You cannot say that just because your regression analysis gives you a nice straight-line fit through your data that it continues that way for BILLIONS of years prior to where your data kicks in - or kicks off. In fact, it's almost nuts to assume that that it does. Especially when the period for which you're making the claim equals or exceeds the length of time for which you actually have data to support it. However, they are experts in this field. Maybe they have good reasons, of which I am TOTALLY unaware. But I'd never do it myself.
also why would it not start at zero complexity or whatever x billion years ago on earthYes, good point. I'm not sure how they define complexity. Maybe it's because the precursors of life exist in interstellar space and the Earth must have benefited from their presence? I don't know.
The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. . . . Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past . . . what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! . . .
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. . . . There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”