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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Feb 28, 2012 - 05:07pm PT
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Life forms are far too complicated to form mathematical probabilities of their existence based on their structure. We can't even use math to predict simple events and organic life is not simple.
Dave
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 28, 2012 - 05:35pm PT
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Ed said: Largo's position is entirely defendable,
Fruity said: This is so not true.
My "position" is that if looked closely enough, all of the arguments and definitions about the "creation" of just about anything radically fall apart at some level in the so-called causal chain and at this point we either get a bunch of erudite run-arounds clothed in "scientific" argot, or we get the most puerile double-talk about how matter just manages to become conscious, or forms into replicating cells, or simply appears out of the void - somehow.
In pointing this out, I am lambasted as lacking scientific acumen, as being afraid of the unknown or unknowable, or not appreciating the nuances, in creating straw man arguments (from people who not even know what a straw man is), or playing off paradoxes like a sly joke, yada yada.
So, if Fruity is correct, and it is so "not true" that existing threories about abiogensis are not fraught with foundational problems of Homeric proportions, then what, exactly is the theory to which one and all feel is "so true?" and on what specific observations is this theory based?
JL
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jsavage
climber
Bishop, CA
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Feb 28, 2012 - 05:43pm PT
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Just graded the exams that covered the evolution unit I just finished teaching to my 9th and 10th graders. They did pretty well. I've never had an entire group of students all understand it so well. Skywalker, send an email if you still want some ideas on angles for helping people understand how it works. Jim
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 28, 2012 - 06:09pm PT
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I'd say our imagination around abiogensis is quite alive and well, but our various specific theories around how it actually happen barely rise above the level of conjecture. And that's ok, we're really early in the cycle being only 61 years out from the original Miller-Urey attempts.
Largo: My "position" is that if looked closely enough, all of the arguments and definitions about the "creation" of just about anything radically fall apart at some level in the so-called causal chain...
True, but they also fall completely apart to the same degree when looked at from the metaphysical / consciousness / design perspective. And I'm not 'lambasting' you anything, but rather suggesting you seem at times to be bordering on intolerant when it comes the fact we simply don't know yet; that the fact we don't know has somehow has special gravity and immediately implies we will never know it. Just seems like an odd perspective for someone with so many FAs.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 28, 2012 - 07:02pm PT
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True, but they also fall completely apart to the same degree when looked at from the metaphysical / consciousness / design perspective. And I'm not 'lambasting' you anything, but rather suggesting you seem at times to be bordering on intolerant when it comes the fact we simply don't know yet; that the fact we don't know has somehow has special gravity and immediately implies we will never know it. Just seems like an odd perspective for someone with so many FAs.
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I'm not intolerant that we don't have a working materialistic explanation per "creation," I'm questioning the dead certainty many have per a materialist explanation being forthcoming soon as the key data rolls in. Likewise, that people pit metaphysical/consciousness design models against the materialist model when in fact what most are doing is pitting a Biblical model against the materialist model.
There are hundreds of possible consciousnss models to probe "creation," including the idea that matter is not pushed, bottom up, but is pulled by some ungraspable force whereby matter, by fits and starts, is left to work its way toward becoming conscious, which might acount for the many false starts and "junk" leftovers in our DNA. Or that nothing was ever created per se, but that everything not manifest is latently present in everything else - which has shades of Boehm's Implicate Order in it. Hell if I know what the answer is.
Going back to the insufferable "mind" thread, just for a sec., nothing falls apart more thoroughly and rapidly than a materialistic explanation for subjective experience. The best people can do is to claim that brain function and experience are the same things - which is something you'd expect to hear from Mr. Ed ( the horse, not the esteemed Physicist and ice climber), but not a honest well reasoned person.
At the level of first or "efficient" causes, none of us know sh#t.
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 28, 2012 - 07:24pm PT
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I wouldn't argue the point of us not knowing, but do view the issue of the leap from inanimate to alive and from mind to consciousness as pretty much identical in terms of it's all basically conjecture at this point. We can follow either back to a certain point and then we clearly don't know. But again, we're learning every day.
One side note, the idea that we have 'junk' DNA is at this point looking more like another rush to judgment in the face of the unknown. Based on what we are currently learning, it's likely none of our DNA is 'junk', but rather serves a purpose either in expression or repair and of course a good chunk of that 'junk' - both ancient and recent - is invasive and part of our on-going battles with a churning world of external fungi, bacteria, and viruses. That's where HERVs and Retrotransposons make for some fascinating reading and gives you the impression the 'designers' were reading some real gas scifi and horror novels.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2012 - 09:06pm PT
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healyje -- " ... based on what a lousy job the 'designer' did over and over."
It was done on purpose.
jail is not supposed to be pleasant.
And means you have no brain to understand.
You project all your own faults, imperfections etc onto the world outside of you.
Actually it's perfectly designed ...
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Feb 28, 2012 - 10:53pm PT
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i lectured on evolution today. but it was climbing related, so i felt obliged to include it in this thread.
we started on the summit of mont blanc, then ran from saussure through lyell and the emergence of "geology" and other fields as the run in.
then darwin. they have to navigate the variorum.
http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/index.html
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 28, 2012 - 11:10pm PT
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Dr.F, we don't know that. Yeah, it is kind of like a religious statement to talk about Panspermia, but lots of complex organic molecules have been found in meteorites.
Or it could be God after all. The problem with passing it to God is that over and over the origin myths are inconsistent with tons of evidence. What is more interesting is that the majority of the world does believe in a God or supernatural being.
Yeah, they like microwave ovens and pretty Hubble photos, but the Pentecostal Christianity that is prevalent these days is very inflexible.
So positing a supernatural answer is akin to just giving up.
I still don't get Largo. He is so sure that it will never be solved. I am not that sure about anything other than empirical evidence, and even that can be misinterpreted. I think that he is trapped in an inflexible ideology. His posts are very consistent on this.
If you consider everything, even Largo's point of view, you are alright. You just need to consider everything.
Reductionism has been very fruitful. All it is is reducing things to their simplest parts and seeing if they explain things. It works well with many ideas. Most ideas.
Everyone is taking it easy on Largo because he is Largo. Well, I don't think that he has any unique insights, and his inflexibility is a type of logic that almost guarantees failure. Simply because he is dogmatic about a certain philosophy regarding how to understand things in nature.
He could be right, but he would make a terrible geologist. When looking at something, there are often many answers that are consistent with observation. It isn't some rigid whah whah. First you have to define the problem. Then you have to examine the problem.
The fact that there is currently no answer to the problem does not mean that there will never be an answer. Science is full of examples where what Largo calls the materialist/reductionist method works fine, although it often doesn't come easy and takes a lot of time. Many questions will be answered or revised in the future no doubt about that.
To say, with absolute conviction, that the origin of life cannot form from abiotic chemicals is folly. With an idea that is not understood, dogma will get you nowhere. Open your mind and consider all sorts of ideas.
I do that all of the time. There are tons of arm waving sessions with other guys when working a problem. Long before something gets published.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 28, 2012 - 11:14pm PT
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Dr. F and HFCS, you cannot possibly be defending faith based science... you know you have to be at least predictive thus testable in your theorizing. And on the origin of life you don't have anything more than is out there... in one of the articles I linked above there was a quote from Francis Crick:
"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going" (Crick 1981). 1
the footnote 1 is: "The author qualifies this statement to make it clear that he does not believe that the origin of life was a miracle."
this was written in 1987, and we have not, since then, "discovered" the recipe of life... as I said, it is unlikely that this recipe will be found as there are many possible recipes, and the hypothesis that it comes from off planet is consistent with the observations.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 28, 2012 - 11:20pm PT
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The fact that there is currently no answer to the problem
You say that and speak for the whole universe.
You haven't been everywhere.
Now look who is being really dogmatic, rigid and claiming an absolute.
I thought your so called science does not deal in absolutes.
Although the word does exist and describes the meaning .....
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 28, 2012 - 11:54pm PT
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Everyone is taking it easy on Largo because he is Largo. Well, I don't think that he has any unique insights, and his inflexibility is a type of logic that almost guarantees failure. Simply because he is dogmatic about a certain philosophy regarding how to understand things in nature.
Since when has anyone taken it easy on me? I've been almost the only one calling baloney on all of this dogmatic certainty that's being fobbed off as science per the origin of things.
What kind of "logic" or inflexibility is at hand in asking how, exactly, did self replicating cells simply spring out of the soup. People like Fruity revert back to the same old arguments that if I only knew what he did, it would all be crystal clear - that material simply HAD to become conscious, and life was most certainly "born" here by way of this or that process, random, chaotic, accidental, self directed, ain't it wonderful, taking billions of years, et al. Science, as I understand it, is a precise business, down to the width of a light wave, so no, I can't cotton to non-answers fobbed off as manifest truths - if only I have the scientific acumen to understand. Even Ed is saying to pony up the goods on this one. But none are forthcoming and questioning same is now called "jibberish."
In looking at the so called "origin" or "creation" of things, or so far as life being "born" because fossils appear at a certain time, I reminded about the law of conservation of energy in physics.
"For an isolated system, this law means that energy can change its location within the system, and that it can change form within the system, for instance chemical energy can become kinetic energy, but that energy can be neither created nor destroyed."
If you ever doubt that life involved an energetic quotient, study a corpse, or watch someone die.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 12:08am PT
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Its much more likely that it started here, and only here, in this solar system.
this is stated as in a way that seems to say you know how to calculate the likelihood. If you do, let's see the calculation. If not, then it is your opinion and you didn't mean to imply that you actually have a theory a consequence of which is the likely occurrence of life on the planet.
It is the realization that water, thought so necessary for life, was probably obtained from extraterrestrial sources that made an assay of stuff raining onto the Earth an interesting line of inquiry. In particular, you can read this talk from the meeting, "Conditions for the emergence of life on the early Earth" by Max Bernstein "Prebiotic materials from on and off the early Earth" (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1474/1689.full);
Abstract
One of the greatest puzzles of all time is how did life arise? It has been universally presumed that life arose in a soup rich in carbon compounds, but from where did these organic molecules come? In this article, I will review proposed terrestrial sources of prebiotic organic molecules, such as Miller–Urey synthesis (including how they would depend on the oxidation state of the atmosphere) and hydrothermal vents and also input from space. While the former is perhaps better known and more commonly taught in school, we now know that comet and asteroid dust deliver tons of organics to the Earth every day, therefore this flux of reduced carbon from space probably also played a role in making the Earth habitable. We will compare and contrast the types and abundances of organics from on and off the Earth given standard assumptions. Perhaps each process provided specific compounds (amino acids, sugars, amphiphiles) that were directly related to the origin or early evolution of life. In any case, whether planetary, nebular or interstellar, we will consider how one might attempt to distinguish between abiotic organic molecules from actual signs of life as part of a robotic search for life in the Solar System.
his basic point is that material important to the emergence of life on Earth could have come from cosmic dust falling onto Earth, the amount of it seems to be about as much as the synthesis of the same stuff by terrestrial means...
I don't see how you can dismiss it, I didn't write my description well enough, perhaps, and you thought I was talking about bugs being "galactic hitch hikers" or some such when I mean to refer to the stuff of life, the molecules that form the necessary ingredients to the recipe we seek...
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go-B
climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
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Feb 29, 2012 - 12:21am PT
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2 Corinthians 5:7 for we walk by faith, not by sight!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 12:44am PT
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so we know it wasn't 3 years...
we've got 6 more years on the prediction, anyone want to put a bet on these guys?
There basic "theory" seems to be that once you get this stuff together it will "live." Which might be plausible, but what it comes down to is the idea that some special set of chemical reactions can perform metabolic and reproductive activities once they get together, hardly a theory, really.
The issue is the characteristics of non-equilibrium systems and the "rules" that govern them. This sort of thinking will go a longer way to helping understand early life than staying up late in the kitchen mixing stuff together in the hope that you create some sort of killer dessert, randomly.
Even taking the hints that life gives us can be misleading... take an example from Kasting & Catling's article "Evolution of a Habitable Planet" from Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 2003. 41:429–63 (http://cips.berkeley.edu/events/planets-life-seminar/kasting.pdf);:
"An early origin for life could explain one of the most intriguing features of the biological record: In evolutionary trees derived from sequencing of ribosomal RNA, most of the organisms near the root of the tree are hyperthermophiles with preferred growth temperatures in excess of 80ºC (Pace, Olsen & Woese 1986). One explanation for this finding is that life originated at high temperatures, perhaps in some midocean-ridge hydrothermal-vent system (Corliss, Baross & Hoffman 1981). However, this inference is vigorously contested by some prebiotic chemists who argue that life must have originated at lower temperatures at which amino acids and other organic precursor molecules are more stable (Bada, Bigham & Miller 1994). An alternate explanation for this observation is that life originated during the heavy-bombardment period. Life could have originated at low temperatures, then colonized the midocean-ridge vent systems. A large impact may have subsequently wiped out all surface life, leaving hyperthermophilic vent organisms to recolonize the entire planet (Sleep et al. 1989). This hypothesis can explain the phylogenetic data without requiring a high-temperature origin of life."
The point I would make here is that even knowing what life is on the Earth now is not sufficient to understand how life began, the number of possible scenarios which are consistent with observation may be large and indistinguishable. So putting together synthetic life, which may be entirely possible and interesting in its own right, may have nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of life.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 29, 2012 - 12:54am PT
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the title of the article was "Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years"
the first sentences were 'Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.
Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."'
as I said... 4 years in, 6 to go, anyone want to bet on them?
My other points still stand, even if they do it, it doesn't necessarily get us closer to understanding how life emerged on Earth.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Feb 29, 2012 - 01:25am PT
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Lots of liquid water + lots of chemicals + lots of energy + lots of time = life. QED.
Practice in thinking about what "lots" means is recommended, as humans have limited imaginations.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 29, 2012 - 02:25am PT
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http://lifeorigin.org/
Provide a comprehensive model of how life emerged on earth and win a cool million dollars.
"The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible natural-process mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. The explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical, kinetic, and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s)."
Many of the articles listed on the lifeorigin site are informative.
There are also sites that take side-bets per whether or not anyone will win the prize in the next decade (pre-dated to 2009). Odd makers have the odds at 80 to 1 that no one cashes in my 2019. Meaning if you place a one dollar bet, you can win 80 if Fruity, say, comes up with said mechanism. Whose gonna put their money where their mouth is n this one?
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 29, 2012 - 05:50am PT
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Two of the three basic elements for creating an artificial cell have been accomplished - the cell membrane and nuclear DNA. What remains, as Largo would point out, is an operative, integrated energy source to drive the system.
But let's be clear, we've already created synthetic life from commercially ordered amino acids. In order to do it, however, Venter had to use the cellular infrastructure of an existing cell, sucking out it's DNA and replacing it with the commercially sourced version his team designed and engineered.
Szostak's work is attacking half of that core infrastructure piece - cell membranes, but from my perspective it's the integrated energy source piece of the infrastructure puzzle that will prove the most challenging. Without it you just have an inanimate sac of amino acid chains.
Werner: Actually it's perfectly designed ...
Sure it is - in that George Romero / John Carpenter / Wes Craven sort of way. Your naivety with regards to the ugly details of life's underlying mechanisms is typical; no one really wants to know or look under the hood because it's not a pretty or well-designed picture when you do.
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SuperTopo on the Web
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To the supernaturalists... Get yourselves a science education - hopefully one that's multidisciplinary. 
Let us know!