Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

Post by rileyphone » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 7:49 PM UTC

jmcqk6 wrote: post #169

manmal wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. Do you have an intuition for why there is selection pressure towards energy dissipation?

My current intuition goes something like this: Energy MUST flow. No matter how energy is captured and stored, there is a pressure for it to continue moving. The movement of energy means that matter is always moving, and new configurations are always being "discovered." Some configurations allow for energy to flow more easily, and when one of those configurations is "discovered" the movement of energy keeps that confi…

Post by nextaccountic » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #213

empath-nirvana wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. A lot of lifeforms evolve to be more simple, not more complex -- I think what you have is sort of a distribution of complexity, and as life continues to evolve, the upper bound keeps getting pushed up as some organisms push the boundary of complexity, but I don't think it's at all true that in general life involves to be more complex.

Arguably, viruses exist by shedding as much complexity as possible. Trim their genome to the absolute minimum which can still propagate.

Post by rileyphone » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 7:57 PM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #190

lutusp wrote: post #164

"Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe? (arxiv.org)" Easily answered: * We don't know how consciousness comes into being, indeed we can't rigorously define it or unambiguously identify its presence or absence. * We believe we have it, but we aren't sure whether other animals and/or objects possess it. * Therefore, based on Occam's razor, we may provisionally assume that all ma…

I don't think Kauffman is making any claims about consciousness here. I agree that consciousness is a big mystery. Kauffman's theory (haven't yet read this paper, but have read a lot of his other work), is that self-replicating entities are essentially inevitable in environments that have above some level of chemical complexity. That chemical complexity also weakly implies that there is useable free energy, which is…

Post by bloopernova » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 8:05 PM UTC

jmcqk6 wrote: post #89

lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

Check out the work of Ilya Prigogine - he won a Nobel prize in the 70's for his work on self-organizing complexity. There is a selection force in the universe for increasing complexity, being driven by the dissipation of energy. When you have systems in non-equilibrium, there is a strong pressure to explore the possibility space to find ever more efficient ways to dissipate energy. A bacteria the size of a grain of s…

Post by monkaiju » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 8:12 PM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #165

monkaiju wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats exactly what it is i think. Theyre unable to find meaning in the real world and need an equally mystical hand waivey narrative

Not my intention to toss science out the window. All theories are just ideas or musings in the beginning. Until they are further defined, researched and proven. Things like the earth circling the sun, sounded crazy at first. It also went against god. If all independent 'thoughts' are diss-allowed because only "god" can provide the answers, then we'd still be living in trees wondering why the sun comes up. How do you…