A simple mechanism could have been decisive for the development of life
phys.org
phys.org
I guess this could work in conjunction with SOC, providing discrete stages for development. Interesting stuff.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality
For a nice primer on what biological phase separation is, see this (non-paywalled) general audience article from earlier this year in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03070-2).
Some other work on phase separation as a means for primordial evolution and biochemistry includes a paper from Christine Keating in 2012 (WAY WAY ahead of the curve) [1], elegant work by Frank Jülicher [2], and more recently a nice paper from Keating and Phil Bevilacqua [3].
These papers (IMO) tie rather nicely into some theoretical predictions on self-organization from Jeremy England [4].
[1] Keating, C.D. (2012). Aqueous phase separation as a possible route to compartmentalization of biological molecules. Acc. Chem. Res. 45, 2114–2124.
[2] Zwicker, D., Seyboldt, R., Weber, C.A., Hyman, A.A., and Jülicher, F. (2016). Growth and division of active droplets provides a model for protocells. Nat. Phys. 13, 408.
[3] Poudyal, R.R., Pir Cakmak, F., Keating, C.D., and Bevilacqua, P.C. (2018). Physical Principles and Extant Biology Reveal Roles for RNA-Containing Membraneless Compartments in Origins of Life Chemistry. Biochemistry 57, 2509–2519.
[4] England, J.L. (2013). Statistical physics of self-replication. J. Chem. Phys. 139, 121923.
A Phase Separation Model for Transcriptional Control. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28340338
which already has 70 citations despite being published just 14 months ago.
Is the writer sure about this claim? I've seen cars and bicycles in the garage rust due to humidity and condensation, especially from the day-night temperature cycles.
A car in the rain rusts faster than a car in a garage. The sheltered vehicle still rusts... but the lower rate makes it feasible to maintain.
Any guesses when this will happen? Life springing up in a 2D-Automata or something like that? What size will it be? How many cells does the smallest self reproducing 2D-Automata need?
http://conwaylife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=399&start=0
But in HighLife there is a trivial replicator:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(cellular_automat...
Of course for life you need not just replication but mutation and antifraility
"The evolution of self-replicating computer organisms" (1996) http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/ai/The%20evolution%20of%20se...
4096x4096 grid. 16 opcodes. Randomly seed the field. Observe string replicators at surprisingly high frequency. Much simpler than y'all think.
But that is just because they gave them all the necessaray tools to do so. So the program only has to 1) Set pointer A to its beginning 2) Set pointer B to somewhere 3) Copy from pointer A to pointer B 4) Increase pointer A 5) Increase pointer B. 6) GOTO 1
If you look at the actual instruction set they use, it's even worse. They served the opcodes needed for replication on a silver plate.
That does not count. You could just as well give the programs an opcode that says "copyMyself" and say that creating life is easy because many programs used that opcode.
So the above doesn't count, okay, make it a bit stricter and it takes a few orders of magnitude more computation to generate self replication. A bit stricter again, another few orders of magnitude. Then we run out of computing power, but can conjecture that by the time you get to the physics of our universe, self replication will presumably still appear at least once in, say, every 1e1000 Hubble volumes. Which is still silver plate territory compared to e.g. Conway's game of life, which has no uphill paths. So you get to pick what level you're satisfied with.
Also, I think most people would expect that "organisms" (as opposed to the more usual A-Life term "agents") are capable of homeostasis—that random bit-flips of their internal structure, or even another replicator attempting to "eat" into them, won't break their replicating ability. That's one of the (more implicit, oft-left-unstated) bars by which we usually measure whether something is alive. (E.g. it's the one that allows us to separate viruses from dormant bacteria.)
No, I don't go to parties either.
How valid is a two dimensional simulation like this for a three dimensional phenomenon?
Theological debates usually end up with the creationist position being that belief without proof equals faith, there for proof is not desired.
Science is skepticism, religion is unquestionable; the two are opposites.
That is not an excuse for avoiding and denying any insight into creation or trying to fill the gap with gods of course. I strongly disagree with the thread starter's sentiment
All that said, reading Jordan Peterson’s book has increased my opinion of the Bible and the knowledge about the human condition that it contains, but as an allegory, not a literal history.
We're in agreement about nihilism, but neither is willful blindness.
And please don't say "the creator has always been there", because the same could be said about a universe to make a creator redundant...
What is hard is proving that what you believe is true.
Indeed, let's be honest, we cannot prove anything.
> but we have been endowed with intelligence and humility to hopefully come to the right conclusion.
So then, the right conclusion would simply be that we don't know, right? You are free to have some preference, i.e, you prefer that a creators exists, and that's fine, but as you said earlier, let's be honest we cannot prove it.
So with the humility that was endowed to us, let's just acknowledge what we don't know. And that's why people are trying to understand :)