7 ms·

The more I read and learn the more I realise how little we know about everything that surrounds us and existence itself. It truly is humbling.

by ferros 6y ago

jcims 6y ago
Start watching the complexity of energy management in a cell or how the immune system works or how cancer cells implement countermeasures to bypass all of the evolved mechanisms against it (yet remain viable). It's beyond ridiculous Honestly I just struggle with the overall statistical likelihood of life evolving. I've tried to get folks to engage on my thinking here but it never happens. I don't know where I'm off. One example. The number of interactions per second in water is roughly the mean molecular velocity divided by the mean free path times the number of molecules. For a mole of water (~18g) that's approximately 590 m/s * 1/3.1e-10m * 6.02e23 or ~1.15e36 interactions per second. Per kg of water that's ~1.15e36 * (1000/18) = ~6.4e37. Given that most chemical reactions related to the formation of life are going to happen in solution in water, this seems like a reasonable place to start on this journey. Expanded across all of the water and entire biomass of the earth (in kg) for 5 billion years, this is 1.15e36/kgs * (1.4e18kg + 6e14kg) * (360024365*5e9)s = 2.5e71 potentially life-forming molecular interactions in water on planet earth's history. We're just spitballing here so let's square that to account for any bullshit that I missed. 6.25e142 'interesting' molecular interactions on earth since it was a sphere of magma. I know this is broken but just roll with the idea for a second. Given 6.25e142 molecular interactions total, let's assume that's the upper bound of base pairs of DNA stacking on each other (reality is obviously many many many order of magnitudes less). A+C+A+G, then A+C+A+T, then A+C+T+A, etc etc. Let's further assume that the absolute minimum number of base pairs required for a critter to reproduce is 1/10 the smallest observed genome. The smallest i can find is Carsonella ruddi with 160k base pairs. Let's split that down to 16k base pairs just for shits and giggles and assume that most of it can be random and still result in a living reproducing organism. The only constraint i'm going to ask for is that there are one or more critical sections that need to be reasonably correct for the DNA to be viable. The question is what is the likelyhood that all of these interactions are going to create one of those critical sections? There are four nucleotides that make up dna, commonly labled as A, C, G and T. The possible combinations of these nucleotides grow exponentially with the length of the sequence. 4 base pairs have 4^4 combinations, 10 base pairs have 4^10 combinations. etc etc. What if we assume perfectly uniform distribution of random variations (obviously broken), what's the maximum length of 'critical section' that we can guarantee will get at least one shot at life. log₄(6.25e140)=237 237 nucleotides is the limit to where our mythical mix master could explore all possible combinations and any one of those has a 100% chance of being realized. (Keep in mind that this is individual nucleotides, not genes. A single gene typically starts at 1000 nucleotides, our 'most simple organism' Carsonella ruddi has 160,000 base pairs, and the human genome has ~3 billion base pairs.) What this tells me is that you cannot have a 'critical section' in ANY gene or DNA sequence that is more than 237 nucleotides long and attribute the source of that sequence as some kind of statistical certainty...from there it starts to become a function of chance. The degree to which it is chance depends on what kind of sequence you need to find to get life moving. (ANd this is completely ignoring the fact that DNA is not living, it needs all sorts of mechanisms around it to actually function) This is all true also if you limit the scope of your investigation to the planet earth. If you expand it to all of the atoms across the entire universe assuming it's one giant blob of water, just expand the middle term from ~1.5e18kg to 1.5e53kg and the length to 15 billion years. You wind up with max critical section length of 355 nucleotides. Again i'm sure something is wrong with my thinking. But my mental model is that we are operating somewhere along an infinite stream of events of trillions of universes and we are unbelievably special/unique. OR the universe is much more bizarre than we even remotely understand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  The weakness may be down to your assumption that the simplest form of life then is equivalent to the simplest form of life you personally can find now. . Life has to do a lot of things now that maybe the first reproducing cells needn't, like defending itself from other life. . There may be simpler forms of life that exist currently that we are unaware of... . ...or maybe not, because each time it gets created it gets eaten by much more advanced life around it. . We don't even know what life really is. etc. etc. I get the feeling you're perhaps paving the way for a theistic argument. If you don't believe that god the creator exists, the proof that life is possible regardless of your stats is all around you. (None of my arguments are novel)
  - jcims 6y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I definitely feel that my idea of where it started is polluted by where we are now. However, the minimum viable product for evolution is essentially 'trait inheriting chemical structure' and even the simplest examples that we have of that today are incredibly complex. >I get the feeling you're perhaps paving the way for a theistic argument. If you don't believe that god the creator exists, the proof that life is possible regardless of your stats is all around you Nope. It's really not. There's no way for me to prove it, and I'm glad you said it out loud so it could be addressed, but it's really not. This honestly came to me out of my career in information security and tangents into encryption. If you think of those 'critical sections' as passwords or encryption keys to life, our current thinking just seems to be totally fucked by impossibly small probabilities. The place where the ball settles in the saddle for me is panspermia OR that there is something that we don't quite understand in general about emergent phenomena that drives 'chance' in a certain direction.
- GuiA 6y ago
  Read Nick Lane’s The Vital Question. He goes into a somewhat related line of thinking about energy transfer in hydrothermal vents and what could have led to primitive structures that lead to life.
  - 6y ago
sapientiae3 6y ago
The thing I wonder about, is that presumable we can control temperature, pressure, magnetism, electric currents, elements and pretty much everything we know and understand in the physical to a relatively fine degree. We can simulate most environments that have existed on the planet over its existence, and yet with all that control, we cannot create even the simplest of life. We can manipulate it, alter it, destroy it - but we cannot yet create it. So either we don’t understand things nearly as well as we think we do, or there are some things that we don’t even know about yet.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > and yet with all that control, we cannot create even the simplest of life. we're not too far either https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/15/cambridge-scientists-create-worlds-first-living-organism-with-fully-redesigned-dna https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/15/cambridge-sc...

The more I read and learn the more I realise how little we know about everything that surrounds us and existence itself. It truly is humbling.

by ferros 6y ago

The more I read and learn the more I realise how little we know about everything that surrounds us and existence itself. It truly is humbling.

jcims 6y ago

Start watching the complexity of energy management in a cell or how the immune system works or how cancer cells implement countermeasures to bypass all of the evolved mechanisms against it (yet remain viable). It's beyond ridiculous Honestly I just struggle with the overall statistical likelihood of life evolving. I've tried to get folks to engage on my thinking here but it never happens. I don't know where I'm off. One example. The number of interactions per second in water is roughly the mean molecular velocity divided by the mean free path times the number of molecules. For a mole of water (~18g) that's approximately 590 m/s * 1/3.1e-10m * 6.02e23 or ~1.15e36 interactions per second. Per kg of water that's ~1.15e36 * (1000/18) = ~6.4e37. Given that most chemical reactions related to the formation of life are going to happen in solution in water, this seems like a reasonable place to start on this journey. Expanded across all of the water and entire biomass of the earth (in kg) for 5 billion years, this is 1.15e36/kgs * (1.4e18kg + 6e14kg) * (360024365*5e9)s = 2.5e71 potentially life-forming molecular interactions in water on planet earth's history. We're just spitballing here so let's square that to account for any bullshit that I missed. 6.25e142 'interesting' molecular interactions on earth since it was a sphere of magma. I know this is broken but just roll with the idea for a second. Given 6.25e142 molecular interactions total, let's assume that's the upper bound of base pairs of DNA stacking on each other (reality is obviously many many many order of magnitudes less). A+C+A+G, then A+C+A+T, then A+C+T+A, etc etc. Let's further assume that the absolute minimum number of base pairs required for a critter to reproduce is 1/10 the smallest observed genome. The smallest i can find is Carsonella ruddi with 160k base pairs. Let's split that down to 16k base pairs just for shits and giggles and assume that most of it can be random and still result in a living reproducing organism. The only constraint i'm going to ask for is that there are one or more critical sections that need to be reasonably correct for the DNA to be viable. The question is what is the likelyhood that all of these interactions are going to create one of those critical sections? There are four nucleotides that make up dna, commonly labled as A, C, G and T. The possible combinations of these nucleotides grow exponentially with the length of the sequence. 4 base pairs have 4^4 combinations, 10 base pairs have 4^10 combinations. etc etc. What if we assume perfectly uniform distribution of random variations (obviously broken), what's the maximum length of 'critical section' that we can guarantee will get at least one shot at life. log₄(6.25e140)=237 237 nucleotides is the limit to where our mythical mix master could explore all possible combinations and any one of those has a 100% chance of being realized. (Keep in mind that this is individual nucleotides, not genes. A single gene typically starts at 1000 nucleotides, our 'most simple organism' Carsonella ruddi has 160,000 base pairs, and the human genome has ~3 billion base pairs.) What this tells me is that you cannot have a 'critical section' in ANY gene or DNA sequence that is more than 237 nucleotides long and attribute the source of that sequence as some kind of statistical certainty...from there it starts to become a function of chance. The degree to which it is chance depends on what kind of sequence you need to find to get life moving. (ANd this is completely ignoring the fact that DNA is not living, it needs all sorts of mechanisms around it to actually function) This is all true also if you limit the scope of your investigation to the planet earth. If you expand it to all of the atoms across the entire universe assuming it's one giant blob of water, just expand the middle term from ~1.5e18kg to 1.5e53kg and the length to 15 billion years. You wind up with max critical section length of 355 nucleotides. Again i'm sure something is wrong with my thinking. But my mental model is that we are operating somewhere along an infinite stream of events of trillions of universes and we are unbelievably special/unique. OR the universe is much more bizarre than we even remotely understand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
The weakness may be down to your assumption that the simplest form of life then is equivalent to the simplest form of life you personally can find now. . Life has to do a lot of things now that maybe the first reproducing cells needn't, like defending itself from other life. . There may be simpler forms of life that exist currently that we are unaware of... . ...or maybe not, because each time it gets created it gets eaten by much more advanced life around it. . We don't even know what life really is. etc. etc. I get the feeling you're perhaps paving the way for a theistic argument. If you don't believe that god the creator exists, the proof that life is possible regardless of your stats is all around you. (None of my arguments are novel)
- jcims 6y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I definitely feel that my idea of where it started is polluted by where we are now. However, the minimum viable product for evolution is essentially 'trait inheriting chemical structure' and even the simplest examples that we have of that today are incredibly complex. >I get the feeling you're perhaps paving the way for a theistic argument. If you don't believe that god the creator exists, the proof that life is possible regardless of your stats is all around you Nope. It's really not. There's no way for me to prove it, and I'm glad you said it out loud so it could be addressed, but it's really not. This honestly came to me out of my career in information security and tangents into encryption. If you think of those 'critical sections' as passwords or encryption keys to life, our current thinking just seems to be totally fucked by impossibly small probabilities. The place where the ball settles in the saddle for me is panspermia OR that there is something that we don't quite understand in general about emergent phenomena that drives 'chance' in a certain direction.
GuiA 6y ago
Read Nick Lane’s The Vital Question. He goes into a somewhat related line of thinking about energy transfer in hydrothermal vents and what could have led to primitive structures that lead to life.
- 6y ago

sapientiae3 6y ago

The thing I wonder about, is that presumable we can control temperature, pressure, magnetism, electric currents, elements and pretty much everything we know and understand in the physical to a relatively fine degree. We can simulate most environments that have existed on the planet over its existence, and yet with all that control, we cannot create even the simplest of life. We can manipulate it, alter it, destroy it - but we cannot yet create it. So either we don’t understand things nearly as well as we think we do, or there are some things that we don’t even know about yet.

jcelerier 6y ago
> and yet with all that control, we cannot create even the simplest of life. we're not too far either https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/15/cambridge-scientists-create-worlds-first-living-organism-with-fully-redesigned-dna https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/may/15/cambridge-sc...