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Fun! But if abiogenesis happened more than once, and we don't see any alternate-root lineages, then we've admitted the possibility that major advances towards

Fun! But if abiogenesis happened more than once, and we don't see any alternate-root lineages, then we've admitted the possibility that major advances towards complex life can have a resource lock out effect leading to the extinction of alternates; this could apply to any or all of the critical steps towards technological intelligence. e.g. did the evolution of homo sapiens and its subsequent monopolization of earth resources decrease the chances of another intelligent species evolving? Probably. maybe eukaryoticity and sexual reproduction are also advantages so great they confer world domination to their lineages, and therefore will exhibit this kind of founder effect. Once a world-dominating feature evolves, the rest of the tree must produce a competitor before resources are exhausted, otherwise the feature will only appear once in present lineages. It'd be interesting to know what effects modelling this might have on the resolved probabilities. Seems like the time-to-takeover/time-to-evolve ratio would be the critical factor. The thought experiment would be: if you took away all the life with feature X, how long would it take to re-evolve that feature? It might seem like Earth's resources are so vast that they couldn't possibly be 'taken over' in a meaningful way, but consider that all life is competing for a very narrow window of mineral availability, pH, and temperature, and that straying from these consensus boundaries requires you to evolve a huge amount of technology to begin using energy. Also recall that life tends to reproduce conditions suitable for its own continuance. So the result would be, that if you evolve something cool like a mitochondria, you might be able to replace your ancestors in every currently exploitable niche with significant energy flow in fairly short order.

deleted 5y ago
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mentalpiracy 5y ago
> But if abiogenesis happened more than once, and we don't see any alternate-root lineages, then we've admitted the possibility that major advances towards complex life can have a resource lock out effect leading to the extinction of alternates; this could apply to any or all of the critical steps towards technological intelligence I have often wondered if this is not exactly what occurred on earth, basically immediately after life first appeared. That direct ancestor to modern humans, maybe not even a real unicellular organism yet, won that very first resource race and extinguished any/all other contenders. That distant ancestor would have suffocated any possibility for carbon-based abiogenesis to occur again, leaving us with the tree of life we have today.
i386 5y ago
> e.g. did the evolution of homo sapiens and its subsequent monopolization of earth resources decrease the chances of another intelligent species evolving? Probably. Only if you assume that intelligent life fills an ecological niche. As far as I am aware that’s some hot debate in evolutionary biologist circles. There’s a strong chance this is all a massive fluke, given the configuration of our solar system and happenstance of earths position and chemical makeup. Then again we wouldn’t be around to observe what we see today if it wasn’t for all those things aligning. As observations of extra solar systems increase, I’m more inclined to think life is rarer and intelligence is exceedingly more rare. Nothing wrong with an empty universe. Less to contend with.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  If you start looking into definition of life itself you end-up deep into philosophical weeds, and start debating life like crystals, that dont feel alive but act as if they are biological organisms[0]. Heck even closer, is virus alive or its just a random runaway mutation of organic code? I don't think life is rare, but self aware intelligence probably is exceedingly rare, given how expensive it is in terms of energy cost, and the balance of disadvantageous environment needed for it to emerge and survive but not enough to destroy it. There are organisms that haven't evolved intelligence for millions of years because they are good enough to survive and not to mention the self awareness. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/01/living-crystal/ https://www.wired.com/2013/01/living-crystal/

deleted 5y ago

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mentalpiracy 5y ago

> But if abiogenesis happened more than once, and we don't see any alternate-root lineages, then we've admitted the possibility that major advances towards complex life can have a resource lock out effect leading to the extinction of alternates; this could apply to any or all of the critical steps towards technological intelligence I have often wondered if this is not exactly what occurred on earth, basically immediately after life first appeared. That direct ancestor to modern humans, maybe not even a real unicellular organism yet, won that very first resource race and extinguished any/all other contenders. That distant ancestor would have suffocated any possibility for carbon-based abiogenesis to occur again, leaving us with the tree of life we have today.

i386 5y ago

> e.g. did the evolution of homo sapiens and its subsequent monopolization of earth resources decrease the chances of another intelligent species evolving? Probably. Only if you assume that intelligent life fills an ecological niche. As far as I am aware that’s some hot debate in evolutionary biologist circles. There’s a strong chance this is all a massive fluke, given the configuration of our solar system and happenstance of earths position and chemical makeup. Then again we wouldn’t be around to observe what we see today if it wasn’t for all those things aligning. As observations of extra solar systems increase, I’m more inclined to think life is rarer and intelligence is exceedingly more rare. Nothing wrong with an empty universe. Less to contend with.

me_me_me 5y ago
If you start looking into definition of life itself you end-up deep into philosophical weeds, and start debating life like crystals, that dont feel alive but act as if they are biological organisms[0]. Heck even closer, is virus alive or its just a random runaway mutation of organic code? I don't think life is rare, but self aware intelligence probably is exceedingly rare, given how expensive it is in terms of energy cost, and the balance of disadvantageous environment needed for it to emerge and survive but not enough to destroy it. There are organisms that haven't evolved intelligence for millions of years because they are good enough to survive and not to mention the self awareness. [0] https://www.wired.com/2013/01/living-crystal/ https://www.wired.com/2013/01/living-crystal/