Text 860, 57 rader
Skriven 2004-11-19 06:15:00 av Tinyurl.Com/uh3t (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: Metabolism Forced
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> From: tomhendricks474@cs.com (TomHendricks474)
> you still have not given me any plausible reason why there would be
> replicators or metabolism.

You need to define what you mean by "metabolism" such that the word can
be meaningfully applied to primitive conditions where a replicator
existed but nothing we'd recognize as true life yet existed. For
example, would you consider a simple redox reaction, where a chemical
fragment gobbled an electron from some molecule, to qualify as
"metabolism"? Would you consider the process of consuming energy to
replicate to qualify as "metabolism"?

As for why a replicator, specifically a catalytic loop, would
spontaneously come into existance: Did you see where I supposed a
statistical distribution of catalytic chains of various lengths,
starting from a single UV photon having only one chance out of a
hundred of creating one molecule of a catalyst with single-step
fecundity greater than one, and among all those only a one-percent
chance of two-step fecundity greater than one, etc., resulting in a
certain number of catalytic chains of any given length per unit time?
Did you see my additional supposition that there are only a finite
number of different types of catalytic reactions likely under such
conditions, so eventually long-enough chain must cycle back to a kind
of catalyst that already occurred, thereby creating a catalytic-type
loop?

> if your magical replicator is not already adapted
> there will never be a fecundity greater than one.

Thats not true. No adaption whatsoever is necessary. Lots of chemicals
are produced, and among them all, every so often there's one that
generates a catalytic chain sufficiently long to form a loop.

Consider the following experiment: You have a random number generator
produce bit patterns which are loaded into a computer and the computer
then is caused to start executing each one. Most of the time the
computer stops dead after just one or two instructions. But sometimes
it successfully executes several instructions. Once in a long while the
random sequence is sufficient to run forever. No adaption has occurred,
only selection among the bitpatterns of various executabilities.

> The irreducible complexity of genetics-first origin scenarios is
> high, requiring joint emergence of catalysis, compartmentation,
> and heritability to make the minimal self-perpetuating structures.

A simple catalytic cycle is a self-perpetuating structure, yet it
doesn't have any compartmentation, so there's a counterexample to your
false statement.
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