scrappy

Made me chuckle. This reminds me of what my old philosophy prof used to argue: "There is no un-freedom in not being able to do what you do not wish to do." So, if all you can ever do is only what you want to do, is that freedom and free will? Or is that absolute imprisonment in your desires?

Here’s a hypothetical shot at it. It’s because of sex. Sex, according to W. D. Hamilton, enables a genome to escape its genetic parasites. But to do that the genome must leap from one generation to the next. That means the preceding generation must die. As such, genomes do a much better job of staying alive than organisms do. (And the fact that they are digital makes one hell of a difference!)

In Washington state we now have the "everything-but-marriage" law for same-sex civil unions. But, like Prop 8, it's being challenged on constitutional grounds. If Washington's SC upholds the existing law then it would seem that this whole SSM issue is about the word "marriage." Which it is, I think, once all the basic rights are extended to same-sex couples. (But some may think it is bigoted to ask why that isn't enough for them.)

just coded instructions for making them? most normal english speaking people would call that a blueprint. you just seem to be nitpicking the arguments of others. that is definitely trolling. A blueprint bears a drawing, an analogue, of the structure to be built. There is no such blueprint in the arrangement of nucleotides on a nucleic acid molecule; there is only digital code for that structure. This is the essence of my point: somewhere in the course of abiogenesis the information needed to make proteins was transferred from a stereochemical process ("Tinkertoy" chemistry) to one of digital encoding with a 4^3 geometry. Digital codes DO NOT resemble the structures they inform; they are NOT analogues of proteins, they are code that has to be transcribed and translated for implementation. And by merely arguing this point I am accused of trolling and threatened with suspension. My, oh, my! What a scientific forum this is!

One what? We are talking about biological abiogenesis aren't we? Show me something biological that doesn't require digital information to reproduce. No, I am not trolling. I am raising a serious objection to the assumption that a digital genetic alphabet will naturally-but-mysteriously arise from the stereochemical interplay of nucleic acid and proteins. There is no principle I know of in either biology or chemistry that explains how pre-biological life invented its own digital genetic alphabet. Yet that seems to have happened somehow. Therefore, to me anyway, the biggest mystery of abiogenesis is not about the chemicals but about the code.

The most crucial question regarding abiogenesis concerns how the earliest stereochemical process of building proteins evolved into an information storage/access system that does not function sterochemically but digitally. The genes, which are purely digital information, are not “blueprints” of proteins—a common fallacy—but instead just coded instructions for making them. There is nothing about a gene that looks anything like a protein. And you can change an entire protein by merely switching out a single nucleotide (i.e., a SNP, or “single nucleotide polymorphism”). This clearly demonstrates that genes are not sterochemical with their proteins, but instead digital. Since when did you become a mod?

You may need to join the Church of Abiogenesis, because some biological true believers here support the Poof Theory, wherein the digital information of genes just spontaneously occurred somehow—“Poof!”—amongst the chemical analogues. Some people are so entrenched in their beliefs that they claim their opponents are propagating “Persistent Logical Fallacies” without defending such claims. So, seraph, be prepared for a lot of condescension if your opinions don’t match those who claim intellectual supremacy.

I must agree with you. But I have to ask: Couldn't the same thing be said about religion? Maybe we should add a third leg to the scientific stool: correcting. The greatest tool science has at its disposal is the peer review. Rigorous skepticism embodies the Darwinian advantage of science. As such, it's the "natural selection" of the scientific process.

…blunt as it my be. There is no substance here; it’s all hyperbolic fluff. It’s equivalent to saying “My bicycle is better than yours because it’s red and yours is blue.” Yeah, like a mud bath with a hippopotamus. Now, how could I disagree with that?

Hold on there. When a political entity claims that something is or is not constitutional, and when that entity has its day in court, especially the SCOTUS, then that entity has agreed in principle and in fact that a SCOTUS opinion is the definitive judgment on what is or is not constitutional. If said political entity cannot live with that then said political entity does not understand how America’s constitutional republic works.

padren, I like your replies to all my points, and I don't wish to dispute them. Moreover, I tend to agree that " Arrogance, entitlement, and the concept of a Amero-centric universe are our biggest threats." However, these are not unrelated to America's hypocrisy and ambiguity, just not as well argued as your points. Whatever our "Achilles heel" is, our "Iliad" seems to be in its final chapter. Our Constitution is suffering from ambiguity and hypocrisy, or at least that's true of our interpretation of it. And even when it's been interpreted unambiguously, such as with Roe v. Wade, there are still institutions that reject the SCOTUS interpretation of that matter, which seems a little un-American to me. Case in point: watch Obama's speech today at Notre Dame and tell me that we Americans are merely "diverse" on this issue of abortion.

I think your point is that, along the course of abiogenesis, life existed before the first living organism emerged. I don't have a big problem with that, because it wasn’t biological life. When we talk about biological life we usually talk about living organisms. Yet we don't stick to the rules, because we often refer to living or dead viruses, which don't qualify as living organisms. So, what's the precise meaning of your definition of life? Even if your chemicals scored on all four points, the fun didn't start until the first organism showed up. So what? Chemical information is propagated and expressed by the growth of crystals. And it could have metabolism, too, if you wanted to play around with words. None of this however explains how the first living organism popped out of one of your "living" protocells. Who, other than you, said anything about Scientific American? Go back and take a look. All chemicals are analogues. In the case of ribonucleic acids the DNA or RNA molecules are analogues, while the information they carry is digital. Remember, genes are "pure digital information" (Dawkins); the chemical analogues make up the physical infrastructure that holds the digital information. You could have two DNA molecules, identical down to every chemical analogue, including the hydrogen bonds, and each carry a different cache of digitally coded instructions, because the order of nucleotides (digital bits) would be different. Oops! There’s that “poof” again: “…NOW you have a "digital genetic alphabet". I’m not convinced. I’d like to learn more about that. Before that happened, though, the information carried by the chemical analogues had to be reduced to digital code using a 4^3 digital alphabet. Yes, and I think it is an important hypothesis. There had to a pathway of some kind that led from soup to nuts; I don’t deny that. I don’t think there was a “poof.” Poole et al. is a worthy effort, but it’s also a testament to how little we know about abiogenesis. What's going on in the lab? I’m still waiting for that biological version of the Miller–Urey experiment. Come on, you chemists, make it happen with your chemical analogues! They're all just a bunch of electrons flowing down hill, anyway. What’s taking you so long?

What is America’s “Achilles heel”? I'd say it’s our polarizing hypocrisy. Americans are an ambiguous species—a population of hypocrites. We tolerate homosexuals but we oppose gay marriage. We embrace the principle of free choice in our democracy but we oppose a woman’s right to reproductive choices. We punish athletes for artificial performance enhancement but we reward beauty queens for artificially enhancing their boobs. We legalize guns, alcohol, gambling, drag racing, and sometimes even prostitution, but we outlaw an innocuous weed that was once used to make rope. America’s ambiguity may be fatal. Indeed our economy is the worst hypocrisy of all. We uphold the free-market principle of Darwinian economics and claim to want to make a better future for our children, and yet our government tries to resuscitate industrial dinosaurs at great cost to future generations. I’ll say one thing for those Islamic nuts who send their women off to blow up themselves along with a bunch of other people: they don’t have much ambiguity, and their occasions of hypocrisy are much less than ours. Question: Will America’s ambiguity and hypocrisy finally do us in? And when will real men have their penises tattooed an augmented with performance-enhancing plastic implants?

luscapa, one of our posters, GDG, was kind enough to seed me a PDF of the Poole et al. article. I’m still reading it over, slowly, because I am not as good a biochemist or p-chemist as either you or those authors. Their main idea here is that they were able to identify a hypothetical route of stereochemistry that could have possibly led to the adoption of a genetic code and the first “ribo-organism RNA genome.” Their consideration even includes a route from prebiotic conditions (late RNA-world phase) to eukaryotic organisms before degenerating (my term) into prokaryotes (I’ve never thought of that). I think their work is good and necessary. It’s hypothetical thinking in the right direction. If they are right then they would agree with Stuart Kauffman (1995, At Home in the Universe, p. 45): There are compelling reasons to believe that whenever a collection of chemicals contains enough different kinds of molecules, a metabolism will crystallize from the broth. If this argument is correct, metabolic networks need not be built one component at a time; they can spring up full-grown from a primordial soup. Order for free, I call it. If I am right, the motto of life is not We the improbable, but We the expected. I am not so easily led down that hopeful path to the garden where “metabolic networks…spring up full-grown from a primordial soup.” Yes, I know how much you, Morowitz, and a whole lot of other good chemists believe in your chemicals. I wouldn’t expect anything else. If you all are right then science is on the threshold of discovering a new natural law: Chemical analogues, totally on their own and given the right conditions, can indeed reduce themselves to purely digital coded information. I’d say “Golly, gee whitacers, Mr. Science!” to that. I’d also say “Now, what about cold fusion?”

About as likely as Jesus coming again to stomp out the Easter Bunny. Mokele, I think you have an unwarranted faith in The Church of Miller-Urey. What you expect to accomplish in your lab is the discovery of the magical ingredients of your so-called prebiotic soup. I don't believe that will ever happen, because I think abiogenesis was a one-off event. Yes, until then, which assumes of course that Homo sapiens will survive the next mass-extinction. And the likelihood of our extinction would seem to be much greater than the likelihood of a real Star Trek adventure.

Wait, wait! My grandson has one: http://www.growingtreetoys.com/product/flying-turtle More to the point: How would you know if abiogenesis was an inevitable emergence or a one-off event? (If this is too OT I'd be willing to start a new thread for it. The old one on abiogenesis got scotched by a nervous mod.)

Questions: If you are Google-able are you then virtually immortal? What about a Turing Test using FaceBook? Couldn't a sophisticated program be written by you to respond to all questions in a manner faithful to your opinions and persuasions? Some may say that virtual immortality doesn't count as immortality, per se. I say that biological immortality is impossible and unnecessary. Given the right immortality download you could have all the biological experiences you want, since those too will be digital. You could have digital sex with Marilyn Monroe, safe sex, too, and then enjoy and digital steak dinner with Joe Dimaggio. After all, biological experiences must be converted into electrochemical signals and transmitted along fleshy pathways to a central processing unit. There's a lot to be improved upon.

I meant "sea foam," of course. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I like this theory. So, Mokele, should we just believe in those highly improbable phantoms of the past? Because they just had to be there? There are two schools of thought regarding abiogenesis: 1) the school of inevitable emergence, and 2) the school of the one-off event. I happen to be persuaded by the second school, but this is OT on this thread.

If you say so. But I'm talking about biological life, the kind that with hereditary tools. Your kind of life could include crystals and sea form. I'm more interested in the kind of life that carries digital information forward from generation to generation. Please show me a form of biological life that doesn't require genetics. Even viruses require genetics, and they are not regarded as living organisms. No. Here it is in the June 2009 issue of American Scientist. It's your cup of tea. Interesting that the authors stay clear of any mention of how chemical analogues get transformed into digital information. This is fine...for the chemical analogues. How about the digital information? Just because? You confidence in those protocells exceeds mine by a nautical mile. It is a "Poof!" theory—Poof! And there you are with a digital genetic alphabet. From my POV, it badly needs to to be explained beyond the simple Poof! I'm fine with that. "Evolves later"? But how? That might explain how a nucleic acid is formed, but it doesn't explain how a genetic alphabet is formed. Yes, but that doesn't get you very far toward a genetic alphabet. Once again, I have no quibble over how chemical analogues are formed. It's the digital language that moves across generational lines that interests me. I'll try to get a copy of it and check it out. I managed to get a copy of Fran Crick's 1968 paper "The Origin of the Genetic Code" (J. Mol. Biol. 1968, 38, pp. 367-379). It will be interesting to see how Poole et al. differ in their explanation.

Before Pangloss closes this thread I'd like to know why women think they need to have their breasts augmented. Are there any ladies here who think their breast ought to be augmented? And, if so, why? Is it for the attention of men? Other women? Pure vanity? I don't like fake tits. Makes me wonder why men don't go out and get their penises augmented to impress the women...or other men.

Because I would see a cancer or an accident victim's need for breast augmentation that wasn't motivated by pure vanity. But I'll also admit that this is my subjective bias. How should I know what truly motivates a woman to augment her breasts? I would judge a man as negatively if he were a competitive bodybuilder and had his muscles surgically altered to impress the judges and the girls on the beach.

But, wait, I can get DNA on my Mac.

Damn! You make a good point. Another score. Then I guess I'm a "dumb bitch" too. (But I hate those coconut honkers!)

From where I stand I see a couple of coconut implants that do nothing but make her look like a porn queen. I judge her for that choice, which she must have thought was necessary because her "god-given" body wasn't good enough for the beauty-pageant judges. I fault myself for such bias irrationality. Furthermore, I don't care a twit about beauty pageants anyway. I wouldn't even go out on a date with a woman who had her breasts augmented, unless she was a cancer or accident victim. (I think there ought to be a Dolly Parton beauty pageant exclusively for augmented women, but I wouldn't watch it.)

Well, beauty pageants aren't my thing, but if I were a judge of one I would score down all evidence of artificiality. And I wouldn't hold her opinion on same-sex marriage against her if she didn't have fake tits. She's saying to me: 'I'm not entirely natural and that's OK, but homosexuality is not entirely natural, which makes same-sex marriage not OK.'