Re: Origin - the wrong word?

Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
From: TomHendricks...@xxxxxx
Now I'm wondering if in the phrase 'origin of life', we
should omit origin. Dictionary says, "the point or source
or cause from which a thing begins its existence."
Yet for me it is clear that life is not a beginning, its
a response to what went before.

Per various abiogenesis speculations, what went before were nothing
more than a chemical hodgepodge where high-energy sources activated
chemicals which then interacted with each other in somewhat random
ways. But then, suddenly in geological time,

Here comes the magic, 2 doses: first we pop up a replicator, then
we pop up hunger so it likes to eat - why not another bit of magic
and pop up the ability to leap buildings in a single bound?
I reintroduce these two points. And encourage you to respond to them.

The next origin scenario that comes up - let's look for two points that

I don't think will be there and you think will, if I understand you

correctly.:



1. The energy source for these chemical reactions is listed as _____

2. The chemicals involved are stable in that environment and stable

throughout the period of the origin in their altered states because

_____

there was a single
successful replicator, something which consumed several of those
hodgepodge chemicals to produce more copies of itself, thereby growing
exponentially in number-of-copies, until a limit on the available
supply of one of its input chemicals began to slow the replication
rate, but already at that point billions of copies of the replicator
had already been fabricated.

This explanation is like writing a book on how to be a millionaire,
'first get a million dollars, then...
A replicator will replicate itself right out of existence - it'll
become
a Speigleman monster. It does in experiments of replicating RNA.
Please explain how your replicator does it differently.



If we look back to the very first copy of
that particular replicator, we can mark the creation of that first copy
as the moment when life began. There's a fundamental difference between
the kinds of mixmash chemistry that went before and the single-purpose
replication that came after. That sudden change is only in a very loose
sense a response to what went before.

Oh and can this happen outside of any energy source? Water?
If not then you are saying that it has to be a temperature cycle
between
0-100C? Yes or no. If so then that is a requirement and their is no
self replication - because it is all dependent on environmental
conditions.


I find it so strange that those who say they believe in natural
selection see no response to the environment in the 'origin'. As if
that was the one and only time that there was no selection pressure
and life just popped up.

Although there is always selection pressure, without some replicator
with fecundity greater than one (hence exponentially growing in number
of copies) all that happens is that some chemical species last longer
than others before they are destroyed, but not a single chemical
species maintains its own copies to avoid extinction. So selection
pressure before replication is essentially meaningless.

And all you get is replicating Speiglemann monsters.


We have discussed on this forum how difficult it
is to set ' a moment in time when life began.'

At the point when there were already a billion copies of one
replicator, I think we'd agree the life-began moment had already
(previously) occurred. At the point when the first ten copies of that
replicator had been generated from a single original copy, whereby
statistically it's nigh impossible for it to go extinct before it
reaches a billion copies, I'd say also the life-began moment had
already occurred. Now whether you want to set that number of ten as the
threshold, or backtrack to the very first copy of that replicator that
we know eventually got to ten and later to a billion, isn't worth
arguing over. You can make a precise definition of how far to backtrack
to set the moment when life began, and somebody else can backtrack a
different amount to get a different moment, and you have two moments
per different definitions. Nothing difficult about that.

Also note that these pop and adapt theories or fluke origin scenarios,
don't take into account that earth was probably sterilized a couple of
times
before life held. If so 'life' re-origined back as a reaction to that
environment.
That alone makes sense. What didn't happen was that life began a 2nd
and 3rd time as a fluke again and again - those odds are not odds
they're impossible.

My def. of life =
novel stabilizing responses to the environment
or
The most stable response of chemicals to that specific environment.

So you'd say the carbon dioxide atmosphere on Venus is life??

No but I would say that CO2 is the most stable response of chemicals to
that specific Venus environment - which is not earth's environment.

In response I'd say you're bonkers.
Oh wait, Venus wasn't the first planet to develop a stable
carbon-dioxide atmosphere, so Venus's atmosphere isn't novel?
Well then you'd say the first planet to have a carbon dioxide
atmosphere was life, and I'd still say you're bonkers.

The thing that most distinguishes life from non-life is that life
converts other materials to make more like itself, thereby generating a
*statistical* stability in lots of copies, *not* a direct stability of
simply sitting tight resisting erosion such as what zircons do.

Self copies huh? Ok make them outside of 0-100C - like on the sun
or at absolute zero - if they are 'self' then by def. they need nothing
else.
And can replicate anywhere.
And you are avoiding the tough questions - why would chemicals
replicate or metabolize? If these chemicals do, why doesn't my salt and
pepper? Won't magic words work on them too?


To illustrate the difference, do a simulation of some type of
replicator, where in each time step there's a probability of making a
copy, and a probability of being destroyed, which applies independently
to each instance of the replicator in existance at the start of that
time step. Start with a hundred instances of the replicator, enough
"food" to support a thousand simultaneous instances, and let it run.
After a while the total number of instances will be one thousand, and
will remain one thousand forever after. But if you look at which
instances are originals and which are copies, over time fewer and fewer
of them will be of the hundred originals, until eventually not a single
remaining instance will be one of the originals.

Now go one step further - with all this replication and evolution -
what is it evolving for? Tell me something that life evolves to that
makes it less stable in its environment? (and remember descent
with variation - is a long term stabilizer)
I don't think you can. So what is it coding for?
What are enzymes and proteins and RNA and DNA for?
If it is other than stability in the environment - then list here:
1.
2.
etc.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: There Was No Grace Period (copy)
    ... > every aspect of life before the replicator, ... > survives or is more stable in its environment. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Origin - the wrong word?
    ... which when combined with the rest of the chemicals already ... All life is a reaction to a sun/heat cycle. ... Had the environment been a single temp - no life. ... but already at that point billions of copies of the replicator ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: OOL II - Building Blocks
    ... what he expected would be produced, and answered "Beilstein". ... I would expect the very earliest life, such as the first replicator, ... not blocking random chemicals from ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Life in Universe Lecture
    ... > Life in the Universe ... > the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always ... How could they pop up outside the environment, ... Again why would any chemicals do anything unless forced to by ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: There was never a moment in time when
    ... >> There was never a moment in time when life began. ... >> OOL scenarios suggest that when a first replicator ... >> step was more stable and better 'adapted' to its environment ... We must not anthropomorphisize chemicals. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
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