A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe(quantamagazine.org)
quantamagazine.org
A New Theory for the Assembly of Life in the Universe
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly-of-life-in-the-universe-20230504/
67 comments
Sounds to me somewhat like realizing you can grok a new large source code base by looking at the series of pull requests that got you there. (Without, of course, the benefit of any comments).
No I think it's more like you have a codebase - without history - that just happens to behave appropriately with a compatible codebase, or with this virus, or with additional resources
It starts as this, but with the help of evolutionary science it can (piecewise) proceed closer to the parent’s understanding.
matter is the basis of all finally generates yields as the ultimate 'output': The as 'completed' scientific discipline called chemistry
the point being how they (chemistry as a cultural institution) owns so much technical know-how without which we cannot live like we do, and this knowledge is not innovating, nor nothing of the sort, it's in maintenance mode. this what I mean by "completed" discipline.
energy is the basis of all:
same as above but physics are the 'ultimate output'; as the completed discipline. I suppose this 'goal of 'completing physics' is not fully realized yet.
Except in some sub-disciplines like civil engineering (built on physics-science).
information is the basis of all:
still working on it. some mix of logic, philosophy, physics, and computer engineering/science must all output another 'completed scientific 'discipline. or completely re-draw physics as a cultural institution.
this article is all about this 'information'-awareness going over old biology
> a useful restatement of a lot of intuitive understanding
now with more 'information' as a substance guiding the intuition.
the point being how they (chemistry as a cultural institution) owns so much technical know-how without which we cannot live like we do, and this knowledge is not innovating, nor nothing of the sort, it's in maintenance mode. this what I mean by "completed" discipline.
energy is the basis of all:
same as above but physics are the 'ultimate output'; as the completed discipline. I suppose this 'goal of 'completing physics' is not fully realized yet.
Except in some sub-disciplines like civil engineering (built on physics-science).
information is the basis of all:
still working on it. some mix of logic, philosophy, physics, and computer engineering/science must all output another 'completed scientific 'discipline. or completely re-draw physics as a cultural institution.
this article is all about this 'information'-awareness going over old biology
> a useful restatement of a lot of intuitive understanding
now with more 'information' as a substance guiding the intuition.
Yes it is the information leg of the stool.
If you haven’t found the work of Melvin Vopson yet you might enjoy it.
If you haven’t found the work of Melvin Vopson yet you might enjoy it.
interesting... i don't buy the 'we live in a simulation' idea though.
per my own living understanding, the simulation is in my head, each of us are running our own 'local instance' of this matrix/simulation.
this is made out of culture understood as an expression of software (but understood as a substance, I guess on this much I do agree with Vopson, information as a fifth state of matter? interesting)
finally, I think somebody should try to measure the gravitational contribution (if any?) of information.
with the most precision that is available measure a difference between a flash card (or similar, the denser the best) in which it is all zeros Vs one with the most random, highest entropy, sequence of 0s and 1s stored in it.
per my own living understanding, the simulation is in my head, each of us are running our own 'local instance' of this matrix/simulation.
this is made out of culture understood as an expression of software (but understood as a substance, I guess on this much I do agree with Vopson, information as a fifth state of matter? interesting)
finally, I think somebody should try to measure the gravitational contribution (if any?) of information.
with the most precision that is available measure a difference between a flash card (or similar, the denser the best) in which it is all zeros Vs one with the most random, highest entropy, sequence of 0s and 1s stored in it.
They looked into this but the experiment they devised (erasing/writing the densest forms of information storage — an SD card I think (Vopson was in a former life a magnetic storage researcher/engineer)) required several orders of magnitude greater sensitivity in mass detection than the current state of the art. I’m also not totally certain it would have worked.
The more recent proposal comes at it the opposite way: looking for two extra very low energy photons when a particle is demolished (representative of the Landauer limit).
The more recent proposal comes at it the opposite way: looking for two extra very low energy photons when a particle is demolished (representative of the Landauer limit).
I think what the last sentence is saying by "and increase the operative information content" is that if you're comparing disparate systems' information content, but all you have is ciphertext and the keys but not the encryption algorithm, then it's as if the systems have a lot more information than the plaintext would have. Yes?
Yes that’s essentially my understanding. In many types of information they don’t yet have the keys either, but they can usually observe the function (perhaps several layers removed), and often delete things and view the consequences.
I kind of disagree with the premise of an infinite universe or anything shoving out the problem under the rug by just assuming something's infinite. Abiogenesis occurring randomly is extremely unlikely.
We don't know whether the universe is infinite in space. The universe reachable to us is actually quite finite. The age of the universe is ~ 10^60 Planck time, and the size of the observable universe is also 10^60 Planck length. log2(10^60) ~ 200, so with all the universe time and space, you could only brute force a 800 bits string, or 400 DNA base pairs. That's not a lot at all. You can't just shrug complex systems as "random".
The actual number of bits the universe could've brute forced regarding life is probably less than 100 bits. That's not a lot at all. Think about bootstrapping a compiler in a hostile assembly with just 100 bits to boot.
Darwin's natural selection only gets you going once you have self replicating molecules and a way to inherit properties.
If it takes even 100 pairs of RNA to bootstrap life, that's already too much.
Another funny way to look at it, is that if there's truly no randomness in the universe (if everything was predetermined in the big bang), literally everything you know has kolmogorov complexity of less than 1000 bits+number of bits required to represent laws of physics + number of bits to describe the initial condition in the big bang. The program that decompress it just simulates the whole universe and fetches the information from the given coordinates.
We don't know whether the universe is infinite in space. The universe reachable to us is actually quite finite. The age of the universe is ~ 10^60 Planck time, and the size of the observable universe is also 10^60 Planck length. log2(10^60) ~ 200, so with all the universe time and space, you could only brute force a 800 bits string, or 400 DNA base pairs. That's not a lot at all. You can't just shrug complex systems as "random".
The actual number of bits the universe could've brute forced regarding life is probably less than 100 bits. That's not a lot at all. Think about bootstrapping a compiler in a hostile assembly with just 100 bits to boot.
Darwin's natural selection only gets you going once you have self replicating molecules and a way to inherit properties.
If it takes even 100 pairs of RNA to bootstrap life, that's already too much.
Another funny way to look at it, is that if there's truly no randomness in the universe (if everything was predetermined in the big bang), literally everything you know has kolmogorov complexity of less than 1000 bits+number of bits required to represent laws of physics + number of bits to describe the initial condition in the big bang. The program that decompress it just simulates the whole universe and fetches the information from the given coordinates.
Only for uniform probability density.
All that's needed is a tendency to sustain itself, instead of diminishing it. This isn't that unusual; consider waves. Structures also spontaneously arise, such as bubbles (foam), crystals, streams, rocks.
But if pre-life RNA existed, it would be hard to identify: very small, similar to life detritus, and quickly processed as food.
All that's needed is a tendency to sustain itself, instead of diminishing it. This isn't that unusual; consider waves. Structures also spontaneously arise, such as bubbles (foam), crystals, streams, rocks.
But if pre-life RNA existed, it would be hard to identify: very small, similar to life detritus, and quickly processed as food.
There is good hint that the universe is infinite (flat universe) and the main interpretation of quantum mechanics refutes local determinism.
My own not-even-a-hypothesis feeling about this is that cycles are required.
Here me out: Earth life first put a surface around the seawater it was in. Each cell is really a bag of saline (unless you're a plant and then you have rigid walls) plus other stuff. That was encapsulated. Anyone who has kept saltwater fish knows that they only do well in a narrow range of temperatures, salinity, and so forth.
Then creatures thermoregulated, carrying the necessary temperatures for life within themselves. Slow down at night. Basking in the sun: an innovation. Feathers, then fur. Brown fat cells. All this to keep our interior seawater just so.
But what if what kickstarted life wasn't just chemistry, but the cycles applied to the chemistry? A warm little pond, a soup all of its own. New unreacted chemicals (nutrients) rain in. A bit of tide washes out the chemicals at the bottom of the entropy chain (waste). Rain in, wash out, over and over, allowing for a concentration. Dump chemicals in an unmoving tank of water, they head toward equilibrium, but have them surging in and out, you can get interesting stuff. Rain in, wash out; inhale, exhale; eat, excrete; heartbeat. All cycles. Urea cycle, Krebs cycle, glyoxylate cycle. Once you step back to see that life works as repeated cycles of chemistry, well, we probably needed cycles to get started, just as we needed chemistry and other conditions to get started. We incorporated those cycles because life is not static, it persists because it repeats.
So perhaps -- and this is just a perhaps -- not only does life need one "set" of chemistry or another to begin (maybe arsenic instead of phosphorus, hydrogen sulfide instead of water), it needs cycles, interlocking cycles. So not just a year with seasons, but day and night (tidally locked planets need not apply), and even tides (hope you have a moon) would be needed. The more cycles to piggyback upon, the more opportunities for chemistry to capture, repeat, and encapsulate those cycles, to self-perpetuate.
Just something I wonder about.
Here me out: Earth life first put a surface around the seawater it was in. Each cell is really a bag of saline (unless you're a plant and then you have rigid walls) plus other stuff. That was encapsulated. Anyone who has kept saltwater fish knows that they only do well in a narrow range of temperatures, salinity, and so forth.
Then creatures thermoregulated, carrying the necessary temperatures for life within themselves. Slow down at night. Basking in the sun: an innovation. Feathers, then fur. Brown fat cells. All this to keep our interior seawater just so.
But what if what kickstarted life wasn't just chemistry, but the cycles applied to the chemistry? A warm little pond, a soup all of its own. New unreacted chemicals (nutrients) rain in. A bit of tide washes out the chemicals at the bottom of the entropy chain (waste). Rain in, wash out, over and over, allowing for a concentration. Dump chemicals in an unmoving tank of water, they head toward equilibrium, but have them surging in and out, you can get interesting stuff. Rain in, wash out; inhale, exhale; eat, excrete; heartbeat. All cycles. Urea cycle, Krebs cycle, glyoxylate cycle. Once you step back to see that life works as repeated cycles of chemistry, well, we probably needed cycles to get started, just as we needed chemistry and other conditions to get started. We incorporated those cycles because life is not static, it persists because it repeats.
So perhaps -- and this is just a perhaps -- not only does life need one "set" of chemistry or another to begin (maybe arsenic instead of phosphorus, hydrogen sulfide instead of water), it needs cycles, interlocking cycles. So not just a year with seasons, but day and night (tidally locked planets need not apply), and even tides (hope you have a moon) would be needed. The more cycles to piggyback upon, the more opportunities for chemistry to capture, repeat, and encapsulate those cycles, to self-perpetuate.
Just something I wonder about.
You might want to read some of Nick Lanes' work, he's a biochemist researching abiogenesis etc but has written a number of popular works, which I found very compelling
https://nick-lane.net/
He is in particular concerned with exactly the chemistry and physics aspect of the origin of life. In particular his summary of the theory of alkaline "warm" hydrothermal chemistry & the early earth and the origin of life is very compelling.
Essentially such areas are theorized to have created physical protocells at the chemical and energy boundaries between the sea water and the alkaline hydrothermal vents. The naturally occurring molecules there apparently present aspects similar to a hypothetical early cell, and yes, bags of saline. But also the relevant point is the interaction of energy across this barrier. And eventually something "escaped" from this system that was able to "create" a similar system or sustain itself in other environments.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/nov/deep-sea-vents-had-ideal...
https://nick-lane.net/
He is in particular concerned with exactly the chemistry and physics aspect of the origin of life. In particular his summary of the theory of alkaline "warm" hydrothermal chemistry & the early earth and the origin of life is very compelling.
Essentially such areas are theorized to have created physical protocells at the chemical and energy boundaries between the sea water and the alkaline hydrothermal vents. The naturally occurring molecules there apparently present aspects similar to a hypothetical early cell, and yes, bags of saline. But also the relevant point is the interaction of energy across this barrier. And eventually something "escaped" from this system that was able to "create" a similar system or sustain itself in other environments.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/nov/deep-sea-vents-had-ideal...
Here's a rough metaphor for you: life is an engine (running cyclically) but it needs a manual kickstart (existing cycles) to get going.
More or less, yes. Very sloppily at first.
My "look for life here" candidates are basically planets (or moons!) where a liquid solvent is present (so you can have chemistry happen more readily), warmer (faster reaction, so you can have the chemistry happen faster, and therefore again and again), and with cycles (not tidally locked, a moon helps).
I'm still something of a carbon chauvinist, but I am open to different solvents and other chemistries.
My "look for life here" candidates are basically planets (or moons!) where a liquid solvent is present (so you can have chemistry happen more readily), warmer (faster reaction, so you can have the chemistry happen faster, and therefore again and again), and with cycles (not tidally locked, a moon helps).
I'm still something of a carbon chauvinist, but I am open to different solvents and other chemistries.
I love this theory and it seems very plausible. Cycles are everywhere in the world and it's impossible to avoid them.
I wonder if that's why are brains want to find patterns all the time. We need cycles and patterns because they represent stability. Once you have stability then you can focus on improvements because you have a baseline. Your baseline is like your save file you reset to when your experiments go wrong.
It really seems like you can apply this to almost anything in life.
I wonder if that's why are brains want to find patterns all the time. We need cycles and patterns because they represent stability. Once you have stability then you can focus on improvements because you have a baseline. Your baseline is like your save file you reset to when your experiments go wrong.
It really seems like you can apply this to almost anything in life.
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And that units of computation are called cycles is no coincidence right?
seems like he's thinking in the same space as Andreas Wagner, who writes about these ideas in his book, "arrival of the fittest".
Wagner also talks about the "probability space" of organic molecules being too high for life to emerge through true randomness.
For even the simplest components of life, like the citric acid cycle, to come into existence is something like everybody in the world hitting the lottery number every day for a billion years. or something.
I don't remember how he brings his theory down to earth because I didn't finish the book, but a cool thing to think about.
Wagner also talks about the "probability space" of organic molecules being too high for life to emerge through true randomness.
For even the simplest components of life, like the citric acid cycle, to come into existence is something like everybody in the world hitting the lottery number every day for a billion years. or something.
I don't remember how he brings his theory down to earth because I didn't finish the book, but a cool thing to think about.
Early terrestrial chemistry can't have stayed random for too long though - given the goldilocks conditions of multiple energy sources (solar, geothermal), mechanical agitation (lunar tides) and abundant water facilitating mixing/migration of chemicals. Chemical complexity must gave progressed fairly quickly, especially in environments (e.g. thermal vents, seashores) where factors like these were more pronounced.
The precursors to instruction-based biochemical factories like modern cells would have started out with things as simple as catalysts that favored certain reactions, and gradually grew in complexity (maybe via multi-product catalysts?) to encode the production of more and more specific chemical products.
The story here would be one of ever-increasing chemical complexities and ever-increasingly complex cells/proto-cells. Chemical products, and cycles, that may have been infinitely unlikely to have been created under initial conditions of randomness would eventually become incorporated into the chemistry of the cell whose production was encoded for and inevitable. Complexity would have grown with simpler biochemicals being combined into more complex ones, simple/shorter cycles growing into longer ones, etc.
The precursors to instruction-based biochemical factories like modern cells would have started out with things as simple as catalysts that favored certain reactions, and gradually grew in complexity (maybe via multi-product catalysts?) to encode the production of more and more specific chemical products.
The story here would be one of ever-increasing chemical complexities and ever-increasingly complex cells/proto-cells. Chemical products, and cycles, that may have been infinitely unlikely to have been created under initial conditions of randomness would eventually become incorporated into the chemistry of the cell whose production was encoded for and inevitable. Complexity would have grown with simpler biochemicals being combined into more complex ones, simple/shorter cycles growing into longer ones, etc.
I am a little religious (deist and Quaker background) so it's easy for me to hand-wave away the origins of life as divine, but I often think about how life could have arisen completely randomly. This line:
> everybody in the world hitting the lottery number every day for a billion years. or something.
is something I totally agree with, but the amusing confounding factor is that if "time" is infinite, then this exact scenario would happen infinity times.
Whatever the origins of life are, I'm certainly glad to be here.
> everybody in the world hitting the lottery number every day for a billion years. or something.
is something I totally agree with, but the amusing confounding factor is that if "time" is infinite, then this exact scenario would happen infinity times.
Whatever the origins of life are, I'm certainly glad to be here.
>if "time" is infinite
And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass every time he hopped.
But back to reality, there is not infinite time and matter. All that heat death of the universe and everything. The arrow of time.
Just becaues the concept of infinity exists, doesn't mean something can happen. For example, I have started reading James Joyce's Ulysses probably a dozen times how and have never been able to get more than a few pages into it. I know if there was infinity time, I'd never be able to get more than a few pages into that book. It's mathematically proven.
And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass every time he hopped.
But back to reality, there is not infinite time and matter. All that heat death of the universe and everything. The arrow of time.
Just becaues the concept of infinity exists, doesn't mean something can happen. For example, I have started reading James Joyce's Ulysses probably a dozen times how and have never been able to get more than a few pages into it. I know if there was infinity time, I'd never be able to get more than a few pages into that book. It's mathematically proven.
Yet the earth is widely believed to be only a few billion years old!
Enter the anthropic principle. Our Earth is one planet out of some hundreds of billions of planets the galaxy likely has, out of however many billions of galaxies are there. Earth is just the planet (likely one of many planets) that won the lottery.
yeah on a long enough timeline all probabilities = 1
Some theories theorize that the universe is infinite in size. Recent observations with the JWST suggest that parts of the universe formed much to quickly for the Big Bang to explain their existence suggesting that parts of our universe already existed when the bang happened so possibly parts of the universe were carried over from a time before the Big Bang. Both of these could explain beating the odds because if something is infinite it will eventually experience every single state of possibility even the seemingly impossible. The universe may actually be millions of timescales older then we understand. It’s all very fascinating to ponder.
It’s a tautology that we would never be able to observe the infinite. But plugging infinity into the equations makes everything, and nothing, possible.
E.g. if there is an infinite sequence of events required to get to this moment of time, it’s impossible to be experiencing this moment.
E.g. if there is an infinite sequence of events required to get to this moment of time, it’s impossible to be experiencing this moment.
So empty article on the main page. All you need to read is following:
Not surprisingly, such an ambitious project has aroused skepticism. Its proponents have not yet made clear how it might be tested in the lab. And some scientists wonder whether assembly theory can even deliver on its more modest promises to distinguish life from nonlife, and to think about complexity in a new way.
Not surprisingly, such an ambitious project has aroused skepticism. Its proponents have not yet made clear how it might be tested in the lab. And some scientists wonder whether assembly theory can even deliver on its more modest promises to distinguish life from nonlife, and to think about complexity in a new way.
> But others feel that these are still early days for assembly theory, and there’s a real chance that it might bring a fresh perspective to the question of how complexity arises and evolves...Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State agrees, calling it “a novel idea with the potential to transform the way we think about complexity.”
If you're only interested in mature, well-tested science, then ignore this. But if actual scientists did that, then scientific progress would slow down by a lot, because anyone with a new hypothesis would have to labor in solitude.
If you're only interested in mature, well-tested science, then ignore this. But if actual scientists did that, then scientific progress would slow down by a lot, because anyone with a new hypothesis would have to labor in solitude.
Theory? The correct term should be 'hypothesis'.
I'm not sure how philosophers of science demarcate hypotheses from theories, but my own feeling that this is a theory. It is infallible, like Euclidean geometry. It can be falsified, but I think it can adapt to falsification attempts. Or it can detach itself from Real, it can go platonic, like Euclidean geometry does, and to speak about Ideal, like points, lines, planes and other objects that are not real. So it is more than a hypothesis, that to my mind must be falsifiable.
It'll be interesting to see if this potentially very useful framework can play out.
At least the article failed to dig deeper into this:
>> by narrowing down relatively complex molecules to a small subset. Ordinary chemical reactions already “select” certain products out of all the possible permutations because they have faster reaction rates.
Since the theory is about assembly all the way down the the bottom, does it seem the theory needs to account for the next level down (and below that from quantum foam to atoms), relative to this chemical selection process? Why is it, or what is it about the universe that causes this, or makes it inevitable?
At least the article failed to dig deeper into this:
>> by narrowing down relatively complex molecules to a small subset. Ordinary chemical reactions already “select” certain products out of all the possible permutations because they have faster reaction rates.
Since the theory is about assembly all the way down the the bottom, does it seem the theory needs to account for the next level down (and below that from quantum foam to atoms), relative to this chemical selection process? Why is it, or what is it about the universe that causes this, or makes it inevitable?
I think that their theory might go something like this when extended:
Whatever early state of the universe was in there was a huge set of possibilities but a smaller set assemble into anything and even smaller set can assemble into things such as atoms that have stable eletron orbits that can mix with other atoms giving rise to chemistry.
It's not saying this option is inevitable but some option is. We happen to live in the option that gave rise to atomic matter that self interacts allowing to assemble more complex matter.
Of course this doesn't include dark energy and dark matter which presumably doesn't interact chemically with the matter we are familiar with but none the less could still be a component needed/useful for life.
Whatever early state of the universe was in there was a huge set of possibilities but a smaller set assemble into anything and even smaller set can assemble into things such as atoms that have stable eletron orbits that can mix with other atoms giving rise to chemistry.
It's not saying this option is inevitable but some option is. We happen to live in the option that gave rise to atomic matter that self interacts allowing to assemble more complex matter.
Of course this doesn't include dark energy and dark matter which presumably doesn't interact chemically with the matter we are familiar with but none the less could still be a component needed/useful for life.
Fascinating stuff. However: annihilating critique here
"What they have proposed is a limited special case of an RLE-Huffman coding algorithm, which means their paper introduces a simpler version of what was already considered one of the simplest coding algorithms in computer science."
The 8 Fallacies of Assembly Theory https://hectorzenil.medium.com/test-8f0be54817c4
And https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.00901
"What they have proposed is a limited special case of an RLE-Huffman coding algorithm, which means their paper introduces a simpler version of what was already considered one of the simplest coding algorithms in computer science."
The 8 Fallacies of Assembly Theory https://hectorzenil.medium.com/test-8f0be54817c4
And https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.00901
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.00901
Granted, I'm not very familiar with the math behind things like compression and I skimmed a few sections, but this seems to be a criticism of the authors' methods and not the general idea. They show that there are other ways to produce these quantifications of complexity that are better than what's in the original paper. But these also show that certain biological materials score substantially higher than the abiotic samples.
Some of the criticisms also seem to be nit-picking, mainly the mention of beer scoring very high on these measures, as if it's a fault. That just means it's a measure of how biotic something is, not necessarily if it's alive. Beer requires the interaction of at least three species (human, yeast, and wheat) so why shouldn't it score highly?
Granted, I'm not very familiar with the math behind things like compression and I skimmed a few sections, but this seems to be a criticism of the authors' methods and not the general idea. They show that there are other ways to produce these quantifications of complexity that are better than what's in the original paper. But these also show that certain biological materials score substantially higher than the abiotic samples.
Some of the criticisms also seem to be nit-picking, mainly the mention of beer scoring very high on these measures, as if it's a fault. That just means it's a measure of how biotic something is, not necessarily if it's alive. Beer requires the interaction of at least three species (human, yeast, and wheat) so why shouldn't it score highly?
The existence of life is definitive proof of the existence of God.
It is laughable that people think it is irrational to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ but then blithely believe that life itself was birthed from nothing for no reason.
Natural Selection cannot even begin until life exists, which is like saying that you can't even start counting to one million until you're already at nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
The existence of life is the only interesting question in the Universe because without life no other question can even arise.
It is laughable that people think it is irrational to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ but then blithely believe that life itself was birthed from nothing for no reason.
Natural Selection cannot even begin until life exists, which is like saying that you can't even start counting to one million until you're already at nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
The existence of life is the only interesting question in the Universe because without life no other question can even arise.
I suspect everyone acknowledges the existence of life, but only a small subset of people think it's because of any particular god, so I'd argue your claim that the former definitely proves the latter.
Objectively, a virgin birth is implausible, and consider that the first claim of this was made some 70 years after the alleged event, by an unknown author writing about people they had never met, nor so far we can tell, had ever talked to anyone who'd met any of the people involved. Then you have the contention around translations - virgin vs young woman, etc.
So, we've got a distinct lack of evidence for any of that -- in comparison to some increasingly gap-reduced hypotheses around how life started on Earth.
Someone else mentioned Nick Lane, and I'd recommend his work if you're genuinely curious.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-ques...
Objectively, a virgin birth is implausible, and consider that the first claim of this was made some 70 years after the alleged event, by an unknown author writing about people they had never met, nor so far we can tell, had ever talked to anyone who'd met any of the people involved. Then you have the contention around translations - virgin vs young woman, etc.
So, we've got a distinct lack of evidence for any of that -- in comparison to some increasingly gap-reduced hypotheses around how life started on Earth.
Someone else mentioned Nick Lane, and I'd recommend his work if you're genuinely curious.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/22/the-vital-ques...
I'd recommend the book The Stairway to Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check, if you're genuinely curious. https://amazon.com/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life-Reality/dp/1734...
Who said anything about any particular god?
You did - you used the capital-g version of god, which suggests you had a particular one in mind, and you mentioned the unproven virgin birth of Jesus, who according to that particular mythology was the son of / the actual christian deity.
Thanks for the suggestion on the book - looks like it was written by a couple of christians, is that right? I'll see if I can find a copy at the local library.
Hopefully you get a chance to read some deep-science, non-partisan, non-orthodox books on the subject, like the one I cited.
Thanks for the suggestion on the book - looks like it was written by a couple of christians, is that right? I'll see if I can find a copy at the local library.
Hopefully you get a chance to read some deep-science, non-partisan, non-orthodox books on the subject, like the one I cited.
oh, get over it and face the science!
What have I said that suggests I'm denying science?
What have you said that suggests you're facing the science?
I note you came in with 'life proves the supernatural'. This is not a unique claim, and repetition does not imbue it credibility.
What have you said that suggests you're facing the science?
I note you came in with 'life proves the supernatural'. This is not a unique claim, and repetition does not imbue it credibility.
By "science" I just mean clear, rational thinking that is based on empiricism and does not have a prior commitment to a particular metaphysics or worldview.
Well, I'd say that empiricism is a) a subset of what science is / means, and b) empiricism by itself would rule out any supernatural, by definition.
Did you have an existing commitment to a belief in a deity before you came to conclude that ".. the existence of life is definitive proof of the existence of a god"?
Did you have an existing commitment to a belief in a deity before you came to conclude that ".. the existence of life is definitive proof of the existence of a god"?
It sounds to me like you're starting with the assumption that empiricism must rule out the supernatural. That is what I mean by having a prior commitment to a metaphysic, and is therefore not a truly scientific approach.
As for me, no I do not have an existing commitment to a belief in a deity before concluding that the existence of life is definitive proof of the existence of a god. Rather, it is the other way around -- it is the empirical observations about life that lead to the conclusion that it must have been designed by a superior intelligence.
Obviously, you cannot begin with the assumption that the supernatural must be ruled out and then come to the conclusion that the supernatural must be ruled out without engaging in circular reasoning. Let the evidence guide you based on reason, but don't begin by assuming your conclusion.
As for me, no I do not have an existing commitment to a belief in a deity before concluding that the existence of life is definitive proof of the existence of a god. Rather, it is the other way around -- it is the empirical observations about life that lead to the conclusion that it must have been designed by a superior intelligence.
Obviously, you cannot begin with the assumption that the supernatural must be ruled out and then come to the conclusion that the supernatural must be ruled out without engaging in circular reasoning. Let the evidence guide you based on reason, but don't begin by assuming your conclusion.
I'm kind of happy with this pithy summary - plucked from the internet just now - of the definition of, and differences between, rationalism and empiricism:
"rationalism is the knowledge that is derived from reason and logic while on the other hand empiricism is the knowledge that is derived from experience and experimentation."
In any case, empiricism is all about evidence based, typically via experimentation, so I'm still confused how you'd go about proving something unprovable (and almost certainly non-existent) by evidence and experiment.
I think if you could demonstrate evidence of the supernatural, it wouldn't be supernatural.
What empirical observations about life lead you to want to believe that life was designed by a superior intelligence?
Is it the eye? (I note that ~60% of the population need glasses.) Is it smallpox, malaria, Leigh syndrome, etc? These don't feel like the result of an especially sophisticated intelligence. Is it the famously circuitous route of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the giraffe's neck? Perhaps it's the the fact that Earth is one of about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe, therefore we must be special?
"rationalism is the knowledge that is derived from reason and logic while on the other hand empiricism is the knowledge that is derived from experience and experimentation."
In any case, empiricism is all about evidence based, typically via experimentation, so I'm still confused how you'd go about proving something unprovable (and almost certainly non-existent) by evidence and experiment.
I think if you could demonstrate evidence of the supernatural, it wouldn't be supernatural.
What empirical observations about life lead you to want to believe that life was designed by a superior intelligence?
Is it the eye? (I note that ~60% of the population need glasses.) Is it smallpox, malaria, Leigh syndrome, etc? These don't feel like the result of an especially sophisticated intelligence. Is it the famously circuitous route of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the giraffe's neck? Perhaps it's the the fact that Earth is one of about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe, therefore we must be special?
What is it about the Rosetta Stone that makes you think there was an intelligence behind it, rather than wind and erosion? Surely you don't believe that science cannot in principle detect the activity of intelligence, do you? If so you would have to dismiss anthropology, forensic science, cryptography, and the SETI project.
As for your point that if you can detect the supernatural then it isn't supernatural, well, I almost took the time to address this in my earlier response, but decided to save my breath. Basically, I don't care whether you decide to define God as natural or supernatural -- the point is that we can determine with certainty that life is the product of an intelligence.
As for your point that if you can detect the supernatural then it isn't supernatural, well, I almost took the time to address this in my earlier response, but decided to save my breath. Basically, I don't care whether you decide to define God as natural or supernatural -- the point is that we can determine with certainty that life is the product of an intelligence.
If you could prove the existence of any of the gods, this would be a pretty popular capability with deity advocates the world over - but given no one's come up with such a proof, and you haven't demonstrated one here, I'm inclined to go with the standard view that it's impossible.
The Rosetta Stone - aligned with and correlated existing writing / languages with a huge swathe of corroborating material. There was nothing mystical about its content - it was a pretty pedestrian payload, if I recall.
The Rosetta Stone - aligned with and correlated existing writing / languages with a huge swathe of corroborating material. There was nothing mystical about its content - it was a pretty pedestrian payload, if I recall.
By the way, you just keep demonstrating circular reasoning. For instance, you write: "I'm still confused how you'd go about proving something unprovable...", which tells me that you're starting with the assumption that the existence of God is unprovable. So you begin with the premise that the existence of God cannot be proven and then you conclude that I must not be able to prove the existence of God. You really need to start laying your assumptions aside and thinking scientifically.
From the associated paper:
> "Our central thesis is that molecules with high MA [Molecular Assambly Index] are very unlikely to form abiotically, and the probability of abiotic formation goes down as MA increases, and hence experimental determination of MA is a good candidate for a life detection system. If our hypothesis is correct, then life detection experiments based on MA can indicate the presence of living systems, irrespective of their elemental composition, assuming those living systems are based on molecules."
You could get a false positive from a pre-biotic but molecularly complex planet, such as Earth in the 100 million years before the origin of the first self-replicating genetic-information-containing entity. Such an environment would contain many complex molecules, whose sites of formation/sources could include metal-rich hydrothermal vents, metal-rich clays, meteorite inputs, ocean surface photochemistry, etc.
In a planet with established life, particularly one with oxygenic photosynthesis , these processes don't allow organic molecules, amino acids etc., to accumulate in high amounts because every system is full of microbial scavengers that take up almost every complex molecule they come across, with a few exceptions (the 'persistent organic fraction' derived from tree lignin etc.). Also, free molecular oxygen is a kind of bleach that eventually degrades many organic molecules.
However, in an abiotic system these complex molecules could persist for hundreds or thousands of years, particulary in the absence of free oxygen. Such a complex molecular soup would then provide many opportunities for the generation of simple living systems.
Incidentally, the most plausible current theory of the origin of life puts the protein-producing rRNA-based ribosome at the center, and the concept is that abiotically produced amino and nucleic acids formed conglomerates, and these bodies developed the ability to replicate themselves by pairing up with free abiotically produced amino and nucleic monomers and catalyzing bond formation (May 2022):
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01303-z
> "Structure that links amino acids suggests that early organisms could have been based on an RNA–protein mix."
> "Our central thesis is that molecules with high MA [Molecular Assambly Index] are very unlikely to form abiotically, and the probability of abiotic formation goes down as MA increases, and hence experimental determination of MA is a good candidate for a life detection system. If our hypothesis is correct, then life detection experiments based on MA can indicate the presence of living systems, irrespective of their elemental composition, assuming those living systems are based on molecules."
You could get a false positive from a pre-biotic but molecularly complex planet, such as Earth in the 100 million years before the origin of the first self-replicating genetic-information-containing entity. Such an environment would contain many complex molecules, whose sites of formation/sources could include metal-rich hydrothermal vents, metal-rich clays, meteorite inputs, ocean surface photochemistry, etc.
In a planet with established life, particularly one with oxygenic photosynthesis , these processes don't allow organic molecules, amino acids etc., to accumulate in high amounts because every system is full of microbial scavengers that take up almost every complex molecule they come across, with a few exceptions (the 'persistent organic fraction' derived from tree lignin etc.). Also, free molecular oxygen is a kind of bleach that eventually degrades many organic molecules.
However, in an abiotic system these complex molecules could persist for hundreds or thousands of years, particulary in the absence of free oxygen. Such a complex molecular soup would then provide many opportunities for the generation of simple living systems.
Incidentally, the most plausible current theory of the origin of life puts the protein-producing rRNA-based ribosome at the center, and the concept is that abiotically produced amino and nucleic acids formed conglomerates, and these bodies developed the ability to replicate themselves by pairing up with free abiotically produced amino and nucleic monomers and catalyzing bond formation (May 2022):
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01303-z
> "Structure that links amino acids suggests that early organisms could have been based on an RNA–protein mix."
> You could get a false positive from a pre-biotic but molecularly complex planet, such as Earth in the 100 million years before the origin of the first self-replicating genetic-information-containing entity.
That would still be incredibly useful. 100 million years is only 2% of the Earth's age, for comparison, so it's very unlikely that any given planet would be in this state. Even if it were, it's hard to imagine biologists would balk at a chance to study a bona fide pre-biotic environment.
That would still be incredibly useful. 100 million years is only 2% of the Earth's age, for comparison, so it's very unlikely that any given planet would be in this state. Even if it were, it's hard to imagine biologists would balk at a chance to study a bona fide pre-biotic environment.
Covered in lots of details in Lex Fridman's podcast #279 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFxIazwNP_0
Unfortunately, transcript isn't available.
Potentially has big practical applications as it allows for construction of chemical computers that compute through chemical reactions.
Potentially has big practical applications as it allows for construction of chemical computers that compute through chemical reactions.
Sounds interesting. It‘s cool they found an OK way to approximate the assembly index given that it sounds like something uncomputable (will have to read the paper but it sounds like computing something like Kolmogorov complexity in some model of computation).
The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon, said a minimalist.
By the sounds of that article there needs to be more work done on applying abstract notions of complexity to the real world and developing suitable methods for this.
There is some reason why things in the universe are incentivized to replicate. The earliest life forms are all about replication, up to now. It’s about more, everything we do is also about more. Maybe it’s a way to create order, because if something is random chaos, you cannot count it. Maybe the math laws in our universe, especially addition is the basis for a lot of why things happen
It's more of a survival bias.
Say, something new comes into existence every 1000 years on avg, with an average shelf life of 1 year.
0.001% of those things can self replicate. The rest can't.
After a billion years: - 1,000,000 new objects have been created - 10 of them were self-replicating - There's a 0.1% chance that the current year contains at least one object that cannot self replicate. Chances are there won't be any non-self replicating objects existing in the current year. - There will be many, many copies/descendants of the 10 self-replicating objects
Replication leads to survival bias
Say, something new comes into existence every 1000 years on avg, with an average shelf life of 1 year.
0.001% of those things can self replicate. The rest can't.
After a billion years: - 1,000,000 new objects have been created - 10 of them were self-replicating - There's a 0.1% chance that the current year contains at least one object that cannot self replicate. Chances are there won't be any non-self replicating objects existing in the current year. - There will be many, many copies/descendants of the 10 self-replicating objects
Replication leads to survival bias
The part I can never figure out is how do you get the entire mechanism required to self-replicate, which is not just a couple molecules, to get to the point where it actually does what it "was intended" to do?
Meaning, what is 1/4 of that system? At some point, it had to start evolving towards the end result, but the in-between stages would give no survival advantage and likely useless. So why are they starting to form a self-replicating mechanism? It's not like it knows it needs to try to hang onto these currently useless parts because one day after enough generations it'll turn into its "final form" and be amazing.
And obviously the entire mechanism required to self replicate doesn't just come into existence randomly at some point and "just works". There must have be many, many years of some sort of "work in progress".
I can't fit that into the theory of evolution at all. Yet here we are.
I ran it by GPT-4 and it doesn't know either. Gave some theories, but ended it as expected.
> The precise mechanisms by which self-replicating mechanisms emerge and evolve are still not fully understood, and it remains an active area of research in the fields of biology, evolution, and artificial life.
Meaning, what is 1/4 of that system? At some point, it had to start evolving towards the end result, but the in-between stages would give no survival advantage and likely useless. So why are they starting to form a self-replicating mechanism? It's not like it knows it needs to try to hang onto these currently useless parts because one day after enough generations it'll turn into its "final form" and be amazing.
And obviously the entire mechanism required to self replicate doesn't just come into existence randomly at some point and "just works". There must have be many, many years of some sort of "work in progress".
I can't fit that into the theory of evolution at all. Yet here we are.
I ran it by GPT-4 and it doesn't know either. Gave some theories, but ended it as expected.
> The precise mechanisms by which self-replicating mechanisms emerge and evolve are still not fully understood, and it remains an active area of research in the fields of biology, evolution, and artificial life.
Language is also about replication. Ideas have a lifecycle, they get born, spread, evolve and die, but it's a different cycle from that of humans. We act like fertile grounds for language. Up until now language could self replicate only by humans and copying. With the advent of LLMs language gained another vector for replication.
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The Universe is computational per Scott Aaronson.
He's wrong, per Roger Penrose, if you're making an appeal to authority.
If you're actually examining the reasoning, Penrose points simply to a non-computational quantum phenomenon that we observe in the real world and uses that to say "therefore, the universe is non-computational."
If you're actually examining the reasoning, Penrose points simply to a non-computational quantum phenomenon that we observe in the real world and uses that to say "therefore, the universe is non-computational."
> Penrose points simply to a non-computational quantum phenomenon that we observe in the real world
Do you have an example?
Do you have an example?
But he is only a part of the Universe...
The introduction to one of the linked papers is far more informative and frankly readable than the article:
> Biological systems have access to a lot of information—genetically, epigenetically, morphologically, and metabolically—and the acquisition of that information occurs via evolutionary selection over successive cycles of replication and propagation [7]. One way to look at such systems is by comparing the self-dissimilarity between different classes of a complex system, allowing a model-free comparison [8]. However, it has also been suggested that much of this information is effectively encrypted, with the heritable information being encoded with random keys from the environment [9]. As such, these random keys are recorded as frozen accidents and increase the operative information content, as well as help direct the system during the process of evolution, producing objects that can construct other objects [10].
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/7/884