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Comment by ezion | Hacker News Reader

You do know that organic chemistry will quickly degrade right? And they have no memory, correct?

So you're telling me that compounds floating around self-assemble into a factory and the information necessary for the factory, including error correcting code, in a short amount of time, randomly?

I don't think you've thought this through.

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You're approaching this from a very high-level abstract theoretical point of view; things probably were significantly simpler than you're imagining. There was no "factory" or "information" or anything like that: just basic mechanics on the molecular level. This is still how things like DNA work today, as well as prions as I mentioned before, albeit these are much more complex than earlier life of course.

Perhaps you could detail how organic chemicals without exception degrade rapidly. You may want to share this groundbreaking insight with those that study PFAs, some of which have estimated environmental half-lives of over 1000 years. It's also worth noting that a lot of environmental degradation is caused by the processes of living organisms, which is obviously not an issue if life has not evolved yet.

Additionally there are some theories that rudimentary cell like structures formed in clays, which could protect initial unstable molecules. Then it turned out that adding a biofilm improved the resilience of the barrier.

Cell wall is a really amazing thing.

Even modern RNA and viruses can last for days which is frankly a lot of time. A quick Google indicates you can probably get weeks out of some RNA molecules in reasonable environments.

If you’ve already come to the conclusion you want, why bother asking questions about it?

>You do know that organic chemistry will quickly degrade right?

I'm not sure if I would count days (or possibly weeks) as quick.

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