12 ms·

Is that really a staggering gap? The nucleotides jumble together until they randomly hit a config that leads to a pattern that leads to more of that config. We

Is that really a staggering gap? The nucleotides jumble together until they randomly hit a config that leads to a pattern that leads to more of that config. We don’t know what that path is exactly but we can be pretty sure it’s the result of random mumbling through a series of random searches in an organic chemistry space. Computers don’t arise randomly (without annoying semantic arguments).

NateEag 4y ago
> Computers don’t arise randomly (without annoying semantic arguments). If you believe the human brain's processes are computable, and you believe evolution is a random process, then you believe that computers arise randomly. Is that what you mean by "annoying semantic arguments"?
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Yes. That is an annoying semantic argument. The intended discussion is pretty clearly a purposefully manufactured device made of silicon and how understanding how that instantiates by watching silicon is not at all like watching how nucleotides arrange into rna. Discussions of what constitutes a computer in this context or whether an nth order effect of a “random” process are just distracting.
  - jdthedisciple 4y ago
    Are you saying you are certain that human DNA was not purposefully manufactured?
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Human DNA is a lonnnng way down below the timelines and processes we’re talking about buddy.
tengbretson 4y ago
> Computers don’t arise randomly You are right. They don't.
rmbyrro 4y ago
> we can be pretty sure it’s the result of random mumbling If you throw construction materials up 1 quadrillion times, how many times can they randomly fall in the form of a house? My response is zero. Building a house is not a product of randomness, it's a product of intelligence and will. Life also can't be a product of randomness. There's some intelligence and will going on in nature's laws to make life happen.
- bglazer 4y ago
  Are you arguing that there was some direct intervention during the origins of life? Like, an intelligent being stuck a probe into a chemical mixture and tipped it towards generating cells? Or, perhaps you're arguing that the rules of the universe were designed in a way that guaranteed that life would arise? Something else?
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    More on line of the second thought, yes. To me, Universal laws aren't random. If they were, I'd expect them to change from time to time. These laws are immutable and inexorable. They respect, interact and cooperate perfectly with each other. How did they come to exist and be that way if not by intelligence and will? I have no idea how this works or came to exist, but it definitely doesn't look random to me.
    - trasz 4y ago
      They don’t cooperate perfectly; they cooperate somehow. They could be entirely different, and the life would look different - but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work.
    - tcmart14 4y ago
      Wouldn't this also have to assume a single universe. If our universe is just one of many, then randomness can still play an affect. We just happen to live in the universe with these laws. But the universe next door might have gotten a significantly different dice roll. Does that mean life isn't present there? No exactly, but I imagine it would look much different than us.
jdthedisciple 4y ago
> Computers don't arise randomly As if, contrary to that, humans do/did.
Calavar 4y ago
No, it's not as simple as that. The probability of self-replicating RNA arising by random assembly of bases is very low. There was a good Nature article [1] published a couple years back that digs through some of the numerical issues. (And a good, more layperson oriented summary as well [2].) The gist is that a self-replicating RNA sequence would have to be at least 40 nucleotides (and possibly even as long as 100), but the probability of randomly synthesizing a 40-nucleotide long sequence that happens to be self-replicating anywhere in the visible universe over the span of 13 billion years is effectively zero. To be fair, the probability gets closer to one if you expand your view to include the entire universe and assume that it is many, many orders of magnitude larger than the visible universe. But my take away, at least, is that we are not dealing with a situation where random assembly of RNA is so likely to generate self-replicating sequences that abiogenesis was effectively an inevitability. That was the narrative I was sold in grade school and undergrad, but it appears to be wrong. There are a good number of free parameters in the journal article that I linked: The fraction of RNA sequences that are self-replicating, the fraction of planets that are habitable for life, the average decay rate of RNA on a habitable planet, etc. You take can take issue with the empirical estimates for those parameters, but that points to missing pieces in the framework: Was there a chemical process on early earth that stabilized RNA oligomers that no longer exists? Are self-replicating RNA sequences more common than we believe? If so, why haven't we encountered more of them in nature? And so on. In my opinion, these are the truly interesting questions, not whether nucleotides and amino acids can form spontaneously. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0 [2] https://mathscholar.org/2020/05/the-origin-of-life-in-an-inflationary-universe/ https://mathscholar.org/2020/05/the-origin-of-life-in-an-inf...
- trasz 4y ago
  >The probability of self-replicating RNA arising by random assembly of bases is very low. But it parallelizes extremely well - throughout the entire universe for billions of years.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Or here on Earth over say 100 million years with trillions of little globs of organic chemicals, likely with even simpler replication mechanisms that are not understood currently.
pfdietz 4y ago
Where do the nucleotides come from?

NateEag 4y ago

> Computers don’t arise randomly (without annoying semantic arguments). If you believe the human brain's processes are computable, and you believe evolution is a random process, then you believe that computers arise randomly. Is that what you mean by "annoying semantic arguments"?

oneoff786 4y ago
Yes. That is an annoying semantic argument. The intended discussion is pretty clearly a purposefully manufactured device made of silicon and how understanding how that instantiates by watching silicon is not at all like watching how nucleotides arrange into rna. Discussions of what constitutes a computer in this context or whether an nth order effect of a “random” process are just distracting.
- jdthedisciple 4y ago
  Are you saying you are certain that human DNA was not purposefully manufactured?
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Human DNA is a lonnnng way down below the timelines and processes we’re talking about buddy.

tengbretson 4y ago

> Computers don’t arise randomly You are right. They don't.

rmbyrro 4y ago

> we can be pretty sure it’s the result of random mumbling If you throw construction materials up 1 quadrillion times, how many times can they randomly fall in the form of a house? My response is zero. Building a house is not a product of randomness, it's a product of intelligence and will. Life also can't be a product of randomness. There's some intelligence and will going on in nature's laws to make life happen.

bglazer 4y ago
Are you arguing that there was some direct intervention during the origins of life? Like, an intelligent being stuck a probe into a chemical mixture and tipped it towards generating cells? Or, perhaps you're arguing that the rules of the universe were designed in a way that guaranteed that life would arise? Something else?
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  More on line of the second thought, yes. To me, Universal laws aren't random. If they were, I'd expect them to change from time to time. These laws are immutable and inexorable. They respect, interact and cooperate perfectly with each other. How did they come to exist and be that way if not by intelligence and will? I have no idea how this works or came to exist, but it definitely doesn't look random to me.
  - trasz 4y ago
    They don’t cooperate perfectly; they cooperate somehow. They could be entirely different, and the life would look different - but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work.
  - tcmart14 4y ago
    Wouldn't this also have to assume a single universe. If our universe is just one of many, then randomness can still play an affect. We just happen to live in the universe with these laws. But the universe next door might have gotten a significantly different dice roll. Does that mean life isn't present there? No exactly, but I imagine it would look much different than us.

jdthedisciple 4y ago

> Computers don't arise randomly As if, contrary to that, humans do/did.

Calavar 4y ago

No, it's not as simple as that. The probability of self-replicating RNA arising by random assembly of bases is very low. There was a good Nature article [1] published a couple years back that digs through some of the numerical issues. (And a good, more layperson oriented summary as well [2].) The gist is that a self-replicating RNA sequence would have to be at least 40 nucleotides (and possibly even as long as 100), but the probability of randomly synthesizing a 40-nucleotide long sequence that happens to be self-replicating anywhere in the visible universe over the span of 13 billion years is effectively zero. To be fair, the probability gets closer to one if you expand your view to include the entire universe and assume that it is many, many orders of magnitude larger than the visible universe. But my take away, at least, is that we are not dealing with a situation where random assembly of RNA is so likely to generate self-replicating sequences that abiogenesis was effectively an inevitability. That was the narrative I was sold in grade school and undergrad, but it appears to be wrong. There are a good number of free parameters in the journal article that I linked: The fraction of RNA sequences that are self-replicating, the fraction of planets that are habitable for life, the average decay rate of RNA on a habitable planet, etc. You take can take issue with the empirical estimates for those parameters, but that points to missing pieces in the framework: Was there a chemical process on early earth that stabilized RNA oligomers that no longer exists? Are self-replicating RNA sequences more common than we believe? If so, why haven't we encountered more of them in nature? And so on. In my opinion, these are the truly interesting questions, not whether nucleotides and amino acids can form spontaneously. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0 [2] https://mathscholar.org/2020/05/the-origin-of-life-in-an-inflationary-universe/ https://mathscholar.org/2020/05/the-origin-of-life-in-an-inf...

trasz 4y ago
>The probability of self-replicating RNA arising by random assembly of bases is very low. But it parallelizes extremely well - throughout the entire universe for billions of years.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Or here on Earth over say 100 million years with trillions of little globs of organic chemicals, likely with even simpler replication mechanisms that are not understood currently.

pfdietz 4y ago

Where do the nucleotides come from?