4 ms·

I agree, but keep in mind abiogenesis is probably one of the tallest orders for chemistry. I'm glad scientists are at least exploring possible explanations, ev

I agree, but keep in mind abiogenesis is probably one of the tallest orders for chemistry. I'm glad scientists are at least exploring possible explanations, even if it means possibly disproving the mechanisms.

CobrastanJorji 7y ago
Of course! Disproving known stuff is the best thing about science.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
What are the alternatives? Even with panspermia life would have had to begin elsewhere. The universe would have been too hot at the Big Bang to support organic molecules if that theory is true. Even with “intelligent design” the intelligence would have its own heritage and origin. The implications of an alternative to abiogenesis seem outside the realm of scientific inquiry entirely. Is the desire here a coherent, detailed narrative for how we went from hot plasma to RNA?
- novalis78 7y ago
  If nothing else Panspermia allows for more time assuming a similar chemical process but over a much longer time horizon than ancient Earth.
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  >Even with “intelligent design” the intelligence would have its own heritage and origin Is this really a given? Certainly there must be something in the universe that "started it all" and has no origin of itself. Or, alternatively, everything in the universe has a history stretching back infinitely far, but that's equally incomprehensible and still allows you to perform the same "trick" (in this case: life has always existed). Not saying that I believe in intelligent design, but in this case it seems to me that it does answer a question without creating any new ones.
  - qubex 7y ago
    You’ve just run into the classical “Prime Mover” paradox of infinite regression.
  - dTal 7y ago
    Without creating any new ones? I have quite a lot of questions for our erstwhile intelligent designer... If you're happy to entertain a causeless cause to explain life, why make it an intelligent designer, a very complicated object? Why couldn't life itself be the causeless cause? A cell is much simpler than anything capable of inventing the universe. All 'intelligent design' does is move the problem (and amplify it). I think an intelligent designer feels simpler to a human because "conscious entity" is implemented as a conceptual primitive in our minds, for obvious evolutionary reasons. The idea of a non-corporeal mind spontaneously arising feels more plausible than a single-celled organism spontaneously assembling, because we need many more symbols to represent the latter. But it's a misleading perception.
    - Smithalicious 7y ago
      I agree completely with your points on complexity, but I also don't see why the causeless cause would more plausibly be simple rather than complex. In fact, I think a simple origin creates more problems than a complex origin; if the origin is simple, you need to explain why the universe is complex.
      - dTal 7y ago
        We should seek to minimize incidental complexity; this is what an "explanation" is. "Explaining" the complexity of the universe by moving that complexity wholesale into an entity you're not allowed to ask questions about, doesn't actually "explain" anything at all. Fortunately, there's an abundance of evidence that complex phenomena can (and do, more often than not) arise from simple rules. Apart from this being the goal of all physics, at which it has been wildly successful, we can find examples all over mathematics. The cellular automaton "Rule 90" is a nice visual example of this: the rules are only a few bits and the initial state is a single cell, but the behavior is a tantalizing mix of ordered structures on the micro scale and chaos on the macro scale - a suggestive metaphor for our own universe. If you saw a picture of a section of Rule 90 without knowing what it was, and tried to explain it, which explanation feels more satisfying? A mathematical rule + initial conditions that fit into a few bits? Or "someone drew it in an image editor because they thought it looked pretty"? Which has more predictive power?
benogorek 7y ago
Well said. I feel that documentaries, etc. hand-wave away abiogenesis as it's just obvious that it happened, but there's this elephant in the room regarding the question of "why?" Great, you're a puddle of RNA compounds, all 4 in fact. Just sitting there. A puddle.

CobrastanJorji 7y ago

Of course! Disproving known stuff is the best thing about science.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

What are the alternatives? Even with panspermia life would have had to begin elsewhere. The universe would have been too hot at the Big Bang to support organic molecules if that theory is true. Even with “intelligent design” the intelligence would have its own heritage and origin. The implications of an alternative to abiogenesis seem outside the realm of scientific inquiry entirely. Is the desire here a coherent, detailed narrative for how we went from hot plasma to RNA?

novalis78 7y ago
If nothing else Panspermia allows for more time assuming a similar chemical process but over a much longer time horizon than ancient Earth.
Smithalicious 7y ago
>Even with “intelligent design” the intelligence would have its own heritage and origin Is this really a given? Certainly there must be something in the universe that "started it all" and has no origin of itself. Or, alternatively, everything in the universe has a history stretching back infinitely far, but that's equally incomprehensible and still allows you to perform the same "trick" (in this case: life has always existed). Not saying that I believe in intelligent design, but in this case it seems to me that it does answer a question without creating any new ones.
- qubex 7y ago
  You’ve just run into the classical “Prime Mover” paradox of infinite regression.
- dTal 7y ago
  Without creating any new ones? I have quite a lot of questions for our erstwhile intelligent designer... If you're happy to entertain a causeless cause to explain life, why make it an intelligent designer, a very complicated object? Why couldn't life itself be the causeless cause? A cell is much simpler than anything capable of inventing the universe. All 'intelligent design' does is move the problem (and amplify it). I think an intelligent designer feels simpler to a human because "conscious entity" is implemented as a conceptual primitive in our minds, for obvious evolutionary reasons. The idea of a non-corporeal mind spontaneously arising feels more plausible than a single-celled organism spontaneously assembling, because we need many more symbols to represent the latter. But it's a misleading perception.
  - Smithalicious 7y ago
    I agree completely with your points on complexity, but I also don't see why the causeless cause would more plausibly be simple rather than complex. In fact, I think a simple origin creates more problems than a complex origin; if the origin is simple, you need to explain why the universe is complex.
    - dTal 7y ago
      We should seek to minimize incidental complexity; this is what an "explanation" is. "Explaining" the complexity of the universe by moving that complexity wholesale into an entity you're not allowed to ask questions about, doesn't actually "explain" anything at all. Fortunately, there's an abundance of evidence that complex phenomena can (and do, more often than not) arise from simple rules. Apart from this being the goal of all physics, at which it has been wildly successful, we can find examples all over mathematics. The cellular automaton "Rule 90" is a nice visual example of this: the rules are only a few bits and the initial state is a single cell, but the behavior is a tantalizing mix of ordered structures on the micro scale and chaos on the macro scale - a suggestive metaphor for our own universe. If you saw a picture of a section of Rule 90 without knowing what it was, and tried to explain it, which explanation feels more satisfying? A mathematical rule + initial conditions that fit into a few bits? Or "someone drew it in an image editor because they thought it looked pretty"? Which has more predictive power?

benogorek 7y ago

Well said. I feel that documentaries, etc. hand-wave away abiogenesis as it's just obvious that it happened, but there's this elephant in the room regarding the question of "why?" Great, you're a puddle of RNA compounds, all 4 in fact. Just sitting there. A puddle.