Computing the origin of life

Phys.org ^ | December 14, 2018 | Keith Cooper, Astrobiology Magazine

[ETL]

[E. Pluribus Unum]

My bet is that life originated underground as some kind of iron-oxidizing organism.

[Chainmail]

Poppycock. Nice way to make an inflated salary trying to “prove” that life was accidental. It wasn’t and isn’t.

[John Locke]

Leslie Orgel said it, many years ago: "Evolution is smarter than you"

This whole endeavour is folly: the idea that a megabyte of data can replicate a terabyte of DNA ia absurd on its face. But as long as it gets the funding ...

"He gave us eyes to see them ..."

[Chainmail]

To go along with “computational biology” you’d have to accept that that first bit of life, a complete living organism, not only happened on its own - but had the full program to build the next several billion more - already coded into it.

Then you’ve have to believe that on top of it all, that original happenstance bit of existence also has built-in operating instructions AND the incredible ability to self-improve.

None of the folks investing in these schemes never were engineers, apparently.

[ifinnegan]

“Avida operates by creating a virtual world in which programs compete for CPU time and memory access, just like organisms competing for resources in the real world.”

Yes, “JUST LIKE” organisms competing for resources. Lol. Just like it.

“Smith, for example, wonders whether our understanding of the chemistry of complex systems needs to take on a cyborg-like quality by integrating a lot more closely with computational research.”

Cyborg-like quality? This is meaningless nonsense.

—

Dawkins pitched a similar program years ago, called Blind Watchmaker. It could make swastikas and other symbols, he claimed, which somehow proved something. The download never worked.

Same ol snake oil.

Biology has really gone downhill now that it’s being used as a source for the new liberal orthodoxy as opposed to being a science.

[ifinnegan]

“My bet is that life originated underground as some kind of iron-oxidizing organism.”

What odds is Vegas giving?

[ifinnegan]

What does this picture at top have to do with anything?

These are like the modern equivalents to old paintings of cherubs and Adam and Eve.

A religious iconography meant to inspire awe.

[ETL]

To go along with “computational biology” you’d have to accept that that first bit of life, a complete living organism, not only happened on its own - but had the full program to build the next several billion more - already coded into it.

And did life only appear once, in one place, or in other locations over a period of time? And if so, in what ways were these organisms different, if at all?

[snarkpup]

I just got Jean-François Gariépy's book on The Revolutionary Phenotype. I think his theory makes more sense than most of this stuff, and wasn't done at government expense. (The book opens with a short Letter to the Reader in which he explains that he left academic biology because it was mostly just people writing grant proposals and meaningless publish-or-perish papers.)

In a nutshell, his theory is: protein world -> RNA world -> DNA world -> AI world. The latter will be our own doing—and our undoing.

[ETL]

What does this picture at top have to do with anything? These are like the modern equivalents to old paintings of cherubs and Adam and Eve. A religious iconography meant to inspire awe.

It was supposed to be a depiction of early earth, around the time life is believed to have first appeared. What do you think the early earth looked like?

[ifinnegan]

I know it’s supposed to be a depiction of early earth, providing an environment optimal for the formation of life! (The new creation myth).

Oh so dramatic and awe-inspiring.

What do you think the garden of Eden looked like?

It’s funny how this origin of life iconography looks like a Dante’s Inferno illustration.

[snarkpup]

It’s funny how this origin of life iconography looks like a Dante’s Inferno illustration.

To me, it looks more like a forge for making things.

[ETL]

What do you think the Garden of Eden looked like?

I don't know. Something like this, I guess...

[reasonisfaith]

Sounds like their conceptual foundation is built on the premise that evolutionary theory is true.

Which means if it’s not true, the whole thing falls apart.

[morphing libertarian]

life began at the first happy hour when the hot blonde walked into the bar

[reasonisfaith]

Faith in technology comes with great risk of being deceived.

[reasonisfaith]

The picture is a reminder of the “primordial soup,” a concept which has been a good example of the emptiness of naturalistic imaginings.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Avida v1.0

[glorgau]

protein world -> RNA world -> DNA world -> AI world

AI world is vastly slower and less complex than even protein world. The complexity of replicating protein folding is far beyond current computing capabilities and will be for probably a couple of decades.