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Author | Topic: How did it start? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
robinrohan Inactive Member |
We don't need a time machine. All we need is for somebody to produce obvious life from nonlife. That's proof enough for me. Like a little bug or something.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
All we need is for somebody to produce obvious life from nonlife. That's proof enough for me. Like a little bug or something. Search for "minimal organism" and you can see what work has already been done in that field. The biggest obstacle to showing you something "obviously alive" is that nobody knows what the least complex "obviously alive" thing is. It's like adding yellow to blue paint, and wanting to stop at the first color that is "obviously green". How green is that, exactly? Could something be less green than that and still be green?
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
I didn't say it would be easy, but I would think it would be theoretically possible to artificially produce life--assuming there's nothing that a living thing needs that we don't have.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I didn't say it would be easy, but I would think it would be theoretically possible to artificially produce life It should be, yes. If you want to help out, you could get a biochemistry degree and get to work.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
But now that I think about it, what would that really prove? After all, it would be the "artificial" production of life, put together by Minds. We get just the right ingredients together, go through the process, etc. But minds did this, not nature.
In other words, nature had help.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
After all, it would be the "artificial" production of life, put together by Minds. Minds working to duplicate the effects of nature. The laws of physics don't change when you step into a laboratory, or when someone with a brain enters the room. If scientists, working through the laws of physics and chemistry, can create life, then we know that chemistry can create life. Intelligence isn't some magic force that we must infuse matter with to have life. When intelligence gets results by duplicating processes found in nature, we know that intelligence isn't necessary for the result.
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Jazzns Member (Idle past 3941 days) Posts: 2657 From: A Better America Joined: |
It would prove that one can get a living organism by the sole product of a series of chemical reactions. Just because it took a human to re-create a situation where that reaction can take place it still shows that the reaction is possible.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
I am conscious; presumably, you, Crashfrog, are conscious. Therefore, there is mind.
There is the world of indivisible mentality (no atoms) and then there is the physical world: or at least that proposition is arguable.
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
Let's head back towards "How did it start".
If you want a thread ( I think there are several running right now) on MIND, look around. Comments on moderation procedures (or wish to respond to admin messages)? - Go to: Change in Moderation? (General discussion of moderation procedures) or Thread Reopen Requests or Considerations of topic promotions from the "Proposed New Topics" forum or Introducing the new "Boot Camp" forum
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
I was afraid of that. I messed up again.
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Kevin Inactive Member |
I wonder how long it took after the earth was created till the first organic molecules formed to the first "life" was created. I'm assuming this first life must be some type of genetic material, maybe a precurser to RNA since it has started to be shown that RNA can have enzymatic activity. For example snRNAs and the spliceosome that cuts out the introns from pre-mRNA.
The way I see it, the only difference between living and non-living matter is that living matter evolves. I know the whole idea of life is that life metabolizes, replicates, evolves, communicates, and something else. But the point I want to make here is that evolution is a process caused by some "passion" to survive and replication with error over large periods of time. Because of this need to survive does "life" metabolizes, replicates, and communicates. I think if we look at why 1) RNA wants to survive, and 2) why it replicates, we will understand the origins of life. This message has been edited by Kevin, 12-20-2004 05:29 PM If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to asess the level of our civilization, is: 'Have they discovered evolution yet?' -Richard Dawkins
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1497 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
But the point I want to make here is that evolution is a process caused by some "passion" to survive and replication with error over large periods of time. I think that's quite erroneous. It's entirely possible to have living things with no particular drive, or even ability, to reproduce, errors or no. There's absolutely no inherent drive to reproduce or evolve in living things. But naturally, those that do not reproduce will not have any decendants, and so all living things are the decendants of those that did, for whatever reason, want to reproduce. By now the only living things that really have a chance to compete are those that need to reproduce.
I think if we look at why 1) RNA wants to survive, and 2) why it replicates, we will understand the origins of life. Did this make sense to you when you typed it? How could RNA "want" anything? The reason that it seems to you that RNA "wants" to survive is because the RNA that didn't survive isn't around for you to wonder about. The fossil record is a record of extinction; the history of life is a history of death. The organisms that did survive did so not because they wanted it more, but because they were lucky and won the life-lottery. RNA replicates because of the laws of chemistry. When you raise and release a stone, it doesn't "choose" to fall to the earth; the laws of physics demand it must be so. Similarly the laws of physics demand that RNA will replicate in the proper situation.
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Kevin Inactive Member |
I see what you are saying I was looking at it wrong. It give me a question, but I'm going to have to formulate it more clearly first.
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lfen Member (Idle past 4707 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
If you want to help out, you could get a biochemistry degree and get to work. That's takes too long, I prefer to hire grave robbers to get me fresh corpses and then I set up these lighting rods and giant capactors to funnel the reanimating lightening to where I've wired up my creature and then come the next thunder storm, voila! oh wait.... lfen
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: I was under the impression that reproduction was part of a formal defitnition of life, along with some form of energy transmission. I also think that this reproduction is inherent to life - that life is an "entropy facilitator", and can be seen as a form of chain reaction.
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