Re: Life: Turn it upside down!

On 15/04/2024 19:36, JTEM wrote:

  Arkalen wrote:
 

I'm not talking about abiogenesis in that (snipped) sentence, I'm talking about the conditions on early Earth, which is what you continue to seem to claim you were referring to when you talked about "faith".

 No. You're talking about abiogenesis. You're saying that it likely
occurred under the conditions you referenced. You introduced an
abiogenesis "hypothesis" that was centered on a proposed environment,
these conditions. Abiogenesis.

I talk about many things, it's unfortunate you seem to struggle to keep track of them. All this extreme snipping can't be helping.

 

Can you clarify for me which if any of these claims you'd be willing to grant as

 I grant that a better technique would be to study that which exist,
instead of that which does not exist.

So that's a "no" then. Oh well.
snip

 

I didn't say "useful", I said "superior to all others in scope

 That's circular.
 "Assuming I am right, this is the right answer! And the right
answer is superior to all the others!"

Not "superior"; superior *in scope* (and specificity, evidential support and predictive power). And I'm not assuming it's superior in those ways, I'm observing it:
*Scope:* All the abiogenesis hypotheses I've seen focus on a small aspect of the problem - looking for sources of organic molecules, looking for nonliving processes by which RNA could form, looking for nonliving processes by which cell-like structures could form, looking at whether some functions of life like RNA replication can happen spontaneously. The alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis OTOH covers almost all of the problem space and extends even beyond, from nonliving precursors of metabolism capable of generating the building blocks of life to the divergence of archaea and bacteria, blowing right past LUCA. It incorporates the formation of cell-like structures, fixes some conceptual problems with RNA world and recent papers are tackling the origins of protein translation.
*Specificity:* Even within their narrow scope the other abiogenesis hypotheses I've seen aren't able to narrow possibilities down much - they basically open the door for questions but don't find much in the way of answers, not enough to narrow down to a single one at least. The AHVH OTOH is increasingly specific in its claims, from the protometabolic pathways that are increasingly fleshed out and constrained by experimental results, specific ways protocells would form and what factors would constrain their growth, specific antecedents to ATP and why ATP might be the universal energy currency, a specific order in which the genetic code might have formed and protein formation might have started given patterns in the genetic code, the path by which archaea and bacteria would have acquired their respective proton-pumping schemes, etc etc.
*Evidential support:* That kind of goes with the scope and specificity really - every part of the hypothesis makes has different independent lines of evidence supporting it and it has many parts. From the physics of serpentinization to the phylogenetic signal in archaea and bacteria and going through the increasing volume of experimental results into various aspects of the hypothesis. No other abiogenesis hypothesis has that convergence of independent lines of evidence; many have as their only line of evidence the observations that made someone come up with the hypothesis to begin with.
*Predictive power:* That kind of goes with scope and specificity too. Other abiogenesis hypotheses I know of aren't specific enough to make good predictions and don't have a scope that would allow them to make predictions about much. A lot of the evidential support mentioned above also doubles as predictions made and satisfied by earlier versions of the hypothesis. In its current forms it suggests predictions about plenty of things, like the ability of specific reactions to be done under hydrothermal vent conditions that haven't been done yet, the order in which purine nucleotides vs pyrimidine nucleotides would have been created, that a hairpin RNA loop could catalyze peptide bonds, details in how archaea and bacteria differ...
snip

It's especially superior to panspermia which isn't even so much a
hypothesis as a vague notion that doesn't actually explain the origin of life.

 This is a very odd thing to say. Because we have no explanation
for the origins of life, least of all one that has been
confirmed scientifically.
 This is about what strikes you as good or not.

There is a big difference between an explanation we aren't sure is true, something that's a partial explanation and something that's not an explanation at all. The alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis is a partial explanation well on its way to being a full one that we aren't sure is true. Panspermia isn't an explanation at all - not for the origin of life at least.
snip

the lab is a controlled environment that allows one to narrow down the causes of any given phenomenon.

 No. That's the opposite of science.
 You merely decided that you know something happened.
 All scientific experimentation can ever accomplish is to
establish that something MAY happen given specific,
measurable conditions. It doesn't mean that it ever
happened nor that those conditions ever existed.

Are you confused about the subject of conversation again? That sentence was a general description of the nature of experiment, all this "something happened" makes it look like you're treating it like abiogenesis, meaning your "that's the opposite of science" is misapplied.

 

Take for example the Todd Willingham case and the debunking of the forensic science used to convict him. Forensic scientists had some ideas on how human-caused fires differ from accidental ones and based on those they argued that various patterns were evidence that Todd Willingham had committed arson. Then a guy called Gerald Hurst discredited all this evidence based in part on experiments where he re-created those patterns in ways that showed that they can occur in non-human-caused fires.

 It was an excellent example of how people defer to "Authority"
and why an "Appeal to Authority" is not a valid argument.
 As I recall from the case, the investigators found that the fire
burned in a star like pattern and this "Proved" in their minds
that it was an intentional Satanic act, while in reality the fire
seemed to burn towards oxygen sources.
 What is lost on most people is that in both cases, the evidence
is exactly the same. Both were looking at patterns, the exact
same patterns. Both saw this "Star."
 

Now I can see there is a fun little conceptual paradox there that I'd be happy to work through, but just for a start: do you think what Gerald Hurst did was inherently impossible or invalid?

 It's not really a paradox. The evidence was the evidence was the
evidence. Everyone saw it.

I'm talking about the experiments Gerald Hurst ran to undermine the claims the prosecutors made about that evidence. Were they adequate to that purpose? Is that even a possible thing to do?

 

Sure, and the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis is really good in comparison to pretty much all of the other ideas on abiogenesis

>
Rather circular, that. And anyone proposing a different answer
would be definition be disagreeing with you.

 

It's not circular

 Of course it's circular. You're concluding with your starting premise.

You're confusing a circular argument with a simple statement.

 

The claim is that the very same nature which produced diamonds
and forms lithium can also produce life. This life is not a
separate and distinct form of matter, it lies along a spectrum.
>
This much is a fact.
>
To claim anything else is to argue divine intervention!
>
So if we understand that spectrum we understand life, and an
understanding of that spectrum begins with actually mapping
it out.

 

I assume you're proposing something that you think is possible to do

 Why wouldn't it be?
 It's just studying what exists.
 

even somewhat practical given you think it's a better approach than all other ones, so for example it wouldn't involve mapping every individual particle of matter including those contained in the paper or computers this map would be published in.

 Every type of matter, yes.
 

Some categorization would be involved. What level of category do you have in mind? Like, what might a typical entry in the database look like? What size database do you think would be possible or reasonable?

 Doesn't really matter. In my day you could locate an item inside of
a 20 million entree database in seconds, if that long.
       ...milliseconds.
 Of course things are significantly faster now...

So I take it you're picturing thumb drive, not hard drive or more. And what categorization scheme you pick absolutely does matter to the size and tractability of the database. Are we talking "bosons and fermions" here or "every time you add a carbon to the chain it's a new type of matter"?

 

I'm also a bit curious what mechanism in your mind would cause such a map to help use understand the origins of life.

 I'm at a lot here. I can't explain how you can't see it.
 Life isn't unique. It isn't separate and distinct. It is merely a
form of matter along a spectrum. Period. So let's map out and try
to understand that spectrum.
 Because "Abiogenesis" isn't even science. It's "True" no matter
what, can't be falsified, just like God. And even if you somehow
produced it under laboratory conditions, you'd just be "Proving"
creationism. Because that's exactly what it would be:  An
intelligence creating life.
 So move on to the study of things that really do exist.

Not sure what "Abiogenesis" you're on about, I'm talking about the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis which is a perfectly normal scientific hypothesis and as such is definitely science.

 

I'm sad you snipped the parenthetical right after that where I confessed to cheekiness but added the actual serious answer, which was that alkaline hydrothermal vents are definitely, indubitably an environment that ever existed on this Earth which MIGHT've resulted in abiogenesis.

 Such pursuits are theoretically -- and only theoretically -- useful
in that they could identify environments to search for on other
worlds.
 Exobiology.
 Or...
 Astrobiology.

That's definitely another thing you get out of the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis, the possibility of those systems existing on extraterrestrial bodies like Europa or Enceladus.
Anyway I was mostly curious whether you'd grant that "it may literally be impossible to identify any environment that has ever existed on this Earth which might've resulted in abiogenesis" was a completely false statement. It can't be impossible to do something that's already been done, and an environment matching the parameters of that sentence has been identified.