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Because nature has way more time and space than we do. And life hasn't arisen in the lab (on earth by humans at least) yet, but it's certainly arisen in nature
by vikramkr 7y ago
Because nature has way more time and space than we do. And life hasn't arisen in the lab (on earth by humans at least) yet, but it's certainly arisen in nature at least once, so those factors seem to clearly outweigh our ability to experiment
- agumonkey 7y agoBut Nature doesn't optimize for life. It had billions of years and insane amount of space to do whatever. We ~may be able to focus search on life sustaining chemical combinations ?
- vikramkr 7y agoNature does optimize for life because by definition the result of any optimization is life. Natural selection is a powerful force. And with time, nature optimizes for chemical reactions that self replicate without the biases and weaknesses of human science. We aren't patient enough to wait as long as nature is willing to and we are biased because we keep trying to replicate life like ours. Nature also had panspermia and other techniques to spread life around once it gets going, it only needs to figure it out like once per galaxy under some sets of assumptions
- agumonkey 7y agoYeah but optimization is not linear, earth gave way to a path to lifeforms, other places not so much, they end up lifeless local maxima. Saying space and time can't be a simple factor to dismiss local human research.