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Chains of amino acids can form interesting proteins by 3d folding a 1d chain, so I wouldn't give up on your two hole tinker toys so quickly. Perhaps 2 hole node

Chains of amino acids can form interesting proteins by 3d folding a 1d chain, so I wouldn't give up on your two hole tinker toys so quickly. Perhaps 2 hole node structures will never dominate in an environment with 3 hole nodes, but in an environment with only 2 hole nodes, 2 holes are the only game in town. I think we're going to find life everywhere, and everywhere life will have constructed itself from the best tools available - the most efficient physics and chemistry in that environment, but that the minimal requirements for a toolkit that life can use to fight against entropy will be much lower that the decadent luxury of the CHONPS toolkit we enjoy.

at_a_remove 4y ago
Right, but those amino acid chains are rich with self-interactions because the subunits each have so many different elements within them, like those big cheaters carbon and nitrogen. You can get all kinds of exciting stuff with that. Were they only chains of sulfurs, could we get much out of it? Knots, possibly, I could make room for a knot in the chain of sulfur leading to something interesting, or a vague Van der Waals or other second, even third-order effect, but it's really on the knife edge of possibility.
- monkeycantype 4y ago
  hello remove, Of course your right, but what if absolute efficiency doesn't matter all, what if the only thing that matters is relative efficiency? If knots and folds of two bonded atoms could create units with different properties : hydrophobic, and hydrophilic (or the equivalent properties to some other non aquatic medium), forming corkscrews, forming sheets, forming cross chain links - then perhaps it doesn't matter how convoluted the solutions are, perhaps all that matters is whether it is relatively efficient compared to other competing solutions. What I think makes this more than just a hypothetical to ponder is that perhaps this is fundamental to understanding the origins of life. Perhaps early life was complex without being sophisticated, having terribly inefficient metabolic pathways, a chaos of reactions in which only a bare sliver of energy was directed towards useful activities, perhaps the activities of those early cells unfolded slowly over thousands of years and it didn't matter because there was no other life to compete with.

at_a_remove 4y ago

Right, but those amino acid chains are rich with self-interactions because the subunits each have so many different elements within them, like those big cheaters carbon and nitrogen. You can get all kinds of exciting stuff with that. Were they only chains of sulfurs, could we get much out of it? Knots, possibly, I could make room for a knot in the chain of sulfur leading to something interesting, or a vague Van der Waals or other second, even third-order effect, but it's really on the knife edge of possibility.

monkeycantype 4y ago
hello remove, Of course your right, but what if absolute efficiency doesn't matter all, what if the only thing that matters is relative efficiency? If knots and folds of two bonded atoms could create units with different properties : hydrophobic, and hydrophilic (or the equivalent properties to some other non aquatic medium), forming corkscrews, forming sheets, forming cross chain links - then perhaps it doesn't matter how convoluted the solutions are, perhaps all that matters is whether it is relatively efficient compared to other competing solutions. What I think makes this more than just a hypothetical to ponder is that perhaps this is fundamental to understanding the origins of life. Perhaps early life was complex without being sophisticated, having terribly inefficient metabolic pathways, a chaos of reactions in which only a bare sliver of energy was directed towards useful activities, perhaps the activities of those early cells unfolded slowly over thousands of years and it didn't matter because there was no other life to compete with.