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Mitochondria Are Alive

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Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#281

Post by jibal »

aydyn wrote: post #242
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why couldn't multicellular life still exist? We don't know the fundamental energy requirements of complex life. The threshold may be 2%. It may be 19.995%. If non-mitochondrial metabolism is common, the Earth would still be rare in that we'd be the "fast" biosphere. The high-octane species. Given how power-intensive intelligence is, that might be material. (Or it might not.) More fundamentally: we have no plausible…

I think that's a little farfetched since a lot of prokaryotes show the beginning stages of complex multi-cellularity.

I don't understand why anyone would commit to so adhering to a speculative hypothesis H as to call themselves an "H-er", especially one so pointless and vague as "Rare Earth". There is some probability that a random star has intelligent life on orbiting planets, but we have no idea what that probability is. The original "Rare Earth" proposal suggested that the Earth may be the only such planet in the galaxy, but at that rate there could be hundreds of billions of Earths.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#282

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #224
jjk166 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome. It's very unlikely that two competing lineages would evolve to be exactly equal at the same time and remain equal for an extended period of time.

> In an evolutionary process, one lineage running away is the most likely outcome What are you basing this on?

Artifacts of evolution such as tribalism/xenophobia are the most obvious examples/analogs.

But really, and "slightly" varied instance of yourself is the "most" likely to compete for the same, infinite pool of resources.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#283

Post by jibal »

eboynyc32 wrote: post #136
outworlder wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mitochondria seems to have been an 'accident', yes. That does not mean that other lifeforms in different planets require mitochondria or equivalent organelles. As long as they can perform the necessary chemical reactions (which could be different in a different environments) and extract enough energy, they should be good. How did mitochondria evolve in the first place? Could they have remained as independent organism…

It’s so pathetic to keep hearing that dna is an accident , life is an accident, mitochondria is an accident. What is an accident that natures says “oooops”. When will we take our heads out of the sand and realize the universe is alive and creating everything. There are no goddamn accidents !!!!

People whose heads are out of the sand reject that misunderstanding of the universe and nature, neither of which are agents.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#284

Post by govg »

dekhn wrote: post #245
satvikpendem wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you should be relying on an LLM as any indication of anything... More seriously, considering something as being alive in order to engineer them better does not necessarily change the fact of them actually being alive or not, in my opinion.

If LLMs work the way I understand them to, they are trained on large corpora which contain a statistical preponderance of statements which are consistent with the current scientific mainstream, so it may not be completely crazy to try doing this; you'd get the scientific mainstream explanation, and possibly a few alternative hypotheses if they had enough literature support.

Why would it be consistent with the scientific mainstream? Unless there's evidence that scientific reports and material are specifically up-weighted during training and prioritised somehow, whatever an LLM says will be only consistent with its training material, which could have any proportion of fake articles, Reddit posts, Quora responses, encyclopedia pages and joke blogs

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#285

Post by Vecr »

I thought the Mitochondria Liberation Front was defunct. Are people getting back into this type of linguistic debate? Anyway, uplifting as a whole is pretty sketchy and I'm not sure there's too much point.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#286

Post by moomin »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

There is a lot more to a person than genetic code. We are not IKEA chairs and DNA is not the assembly instructions.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#287

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

jjk166 wrote: post #205
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Mitochondria are why I’m a Rare Earther. In Earth’s history, mitochondrial endosymbiosis occurred once. Without that you don’t have the energy budget for complex life. Moreover, there may be a narrow window where it can happen: modern microbiology has defences and selection pressures that it make inhospitable to the hobbling chimeræ the first mitochondrial cells would have been. Until mitochondria, the emergence of l…

This process, known as primary endosymbiosis, happened at least twice, for mitochondria and chloroplasts. Further, while all chloroplasts (and more widely plastids) appear to share a common ancestor, there is evidence that mitochondria may descend from multiple lineages that underwent lateral gene transfer and/or convergent evolution. Nitroplasts are a likely another, separate instance of primary endosymbiosis. There…

See also: nitroplasts

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#288

Post by satvikpendem »

dekhn wrote: post #245
satvikpendem wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you should be relying on an LLM as any indication of anything... More seriously, considering something as being alive in order to engineer them better does not necessarily change the fact of them actually being alive or not, in my opinion.

If LLMs work the way I understand them to, they are trained on large corpora which contain a statistical preponderance of statements which are consistent with the current scientific mainstream, so it may not be completely crazy to try doing this; you'd get the scientific mainstream explanation, and possibly a few alternative hypotheses if they had enough literature support.

You don't know what the training data is and what each category's weights are, so how can you assume that?

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#289

Post by antonvs »

positus wrote: post #265
dukeofdoom wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sperm and egg cells, known as gametes, fuse during fertilization to create a zygote. " Since all humans were just 2 cells at one point. It seems to follow that the entirely of the code for what a human is, is contained in just those 2 cells. Not just code for a finger. But even code for our deeply ingrained fear of snakes. Was just at one point contained in those 2 cells. Kind of blows your mind. If they are separat…

[flagged]

> From the moment the egg is fertilized, a new person exists.

The potential for a new person exists. Just as the potential for new people exist in a collection of sperm and egg cells.

The only difference, which you seem to be latching onto, is that now that potential has been turned into a more specific one. Why do you think that makes any real difference? It seems like an arbitrary and abstract argument that depends on an almost mystical perspective.

> This is a strong argument against abortion.

It really isn't. In fact, it's fallacious, because to accept the argument, you have to accept premises that produce the desired conclusion - i.e. it's question-begging, assuming its conclusion.

Re: Mitochondria Are Alive

#290

Post by jyounker »

RajT88 wrote: post #276
positus wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It would be a so-so argument if it was true. (It is not) How DNA is expressed is a part of the story as well which involves many environmental factors both in utero and after birth. We do not totally understand how it works, but there are heritable traits not passed via DNA - the one often in the news is women with emotional trauma pass that trauma on to their children, and those children show those symptoms even if…

For the most part epigenetic traits seem to be transmitted by DNA too. Rather than being encoded in the pattern of base pairs, the epigenetic changes are made by slightly modifying the structure of individual bases. Think of it as adding tags to instructions.
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