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It's more of a survival bias. Say, something new comes into existence every 1000 years on avg, with an average shelf life of 1 year. 0.001% of those things ca

It's more of a survival bias. Say, something new comes into existence every 1000 years on avg, with an average shelf life of 1 year. 0.001% of those things can self replicate. The rest can't. After a billion years: - 1,000,000 new objects have been created - 10 of them were self-replicating - There's a 0.1% chance that the current year contains at least one object that cannot self replicate. Chances are there won't be any non-self replicating objects existing in the current year. - There will be many, many copies/descendants of the 10 self-replicating objects Replication leads to survival bias

EMM_386 3y ago
The part I can never figure out is how do you get the entire mechanism required to self-replicate, which is not just a couple molecules, to get to the point where it actually does what it "was intended" to do? Meaning, what is 1/4 of that system? At some point, it had to start evolving towards the end result, but the in-between stages would give no survival advantage and likely useless. So why are they starting to form a self-replicating mechanism? It's not like it knows it needs to try to hang onto these currently useless parts because one day after enough generations it'll turn into its "final form" and be amazing. And obviously the entire mechanism required to self replicate doesn't just come into existence randomly at some point and "just works". There must have be many, many years of some sort of "work in progress". I can't fit that into the theory of evolution at all. Yet here we are. I ran it by GPT-4 and it doesn't know either. Gave some theories, but ended it as expected. > The precise mechanisms by which self-replicating mechanisms emerge and evolve are still not fully understood, and it remains an active area of research in the fields of biology, evolution, and artificial life.

EMM_386 3y ago

The part I can never figure out is how do you get the entire mechanism required to self-replicate, which is not just a couple molecules, to get to the point where it actually does what it "was intended" to do? Meaning, what is 1/4 of that system? At some point, it had to start evolving towards the end result, but the in-between stages would give no survival advantage and likely useless. So why are they starting to form a self-replicating mechanism? It's not like it knows it needs to try to hang onto these currently useless parts because one day after enough generations it'll turn into its "final form" and be amazing. And obviously the entire mechanism required to self replicate doesn't just come into existence randomly at some point and "just works". There must have be many, many years of some sort of "work in progress". I can't fit that into the theory of evolution at all. Yet here we are. I ran it by GPT-4 and it doesn't know either. Gave some theories, but ended it as expected. > The precise mechanisms by which self-replicating mechanisms emerge and evolve are still not fully understood, and it remains an active area of research in the fields of biology, evolution, and artificial life.