Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,806 Year: 3,063/9,624 Month: 908/1,588 Week: 91/223 Day: 2/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The Simplest Protein of Life
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 90 of 281 (675824)
10-16-2012 11:45 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by Aware Wolf
10-16-2012 10:46 AM


Re: Your case is lost...
No, Wolfie, no regress at all. There is no single file you imagine. Things push and pull every which way. Round and round it goes.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by Aware Wolf, posted 10-16-2012 10:46 AM Aware Wolf has seen this message but not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 91 of 281 (675825)
10-16-2012 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 88 by Taq
10-16-2012 11:06 AM


Re: Probabilities nonsense on both sides
What is a viable enzyme, Taq? Viable means able to survive. Survive implies being alive. From what I understand about the living I conclude that an enzyme by itself is no more alive than a hammer. Just one tiny element in a network of death escaping machines. My point was that life is not known to exist other than in such a network. Which is the most simplest network that is viable is another question.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by Taq, posted 10-16-2012 11:06 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 93 by Taq, posted 10-16-2012 12:06 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 94 of 281 (675833)
10-16-2012 12:39 PM
Reply to: Message 84 by Percy
10-16-2012 9:52 AM


Re: Your case is lost...
So, Percy, could you specify for the cat your beliefs as to how exactly the first proteins came about and what they were? What kind of a death escaping machine were they the building blocks of? What kind of a system that death escaping machine was a part of? Or was the machine alone or in company of just a few of the same kind?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by Percy, posted 10-16-2012 9:52 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by Percy, posted 10-16-2012 2:26 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 97 of 281 (675862)
10-16-2012 4:12 PM
Reply to: Message 96 by New Cat's Eye
10-16-2012 2:32 PM


brains washed thin
What exactly in the cat's explanation keeps the pair of you so deep in the dark? Where is the obfuscation exactly? Now, mind you, the very same stuff is expressed by other people using all kinds of functions, manifolds, hyperspheres, Petrosian radii, wavelengths, arcseconds and radians and suchlike exotic stuff you might have difficulties with.
The feline keeps it all down to the very essence a nine year old whose brain is not washed thin by the lifelong exposure to the bigbangism should be able to grasp.
Just simple triangles and most basic assumptions: light speed is constant throughout with no fancy exceptions whatsoever. Due to that space and time are two interchangeable measures of distance. Direction is relative. A meter of time is the interval it takes light to cover that distance in that direction. A second of space is the distance light crosses in a standard second. So anyone standing five meters to your left strictly speaking is five meters into the relative past, any one standing five meters to the right is in the past too but that is not exactly the same past since time is a strictly local measurement relative to an arbitrary location. Light departs into the future only and arrives only from the past. The three of you do not occupy the same location so are not simultaneous. Not in the same past from one another's perspective. That is just five common-or-garden meters so the effect is infinitesimal. Not zero though, as the radiation signal is not instantaneous. Now when talking about the wide cosmos the same negligible delay becomes mind-bogglingly huge. In every direction and not just one single way for the whole of existence like the idiotic metric of Friedmann would love you believe.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by New Cat's Eye, posted 10-16-2012 2:32 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 98 by New Cat's Eye, posted 10-16-2012 4:31 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 99 by Taq, posted 10-16-2012 4:32 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 100 by Larni, posted 10-16-2012 4:36 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 101 by Panda, posted 10-16-2012 5:18 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 102 of 281 (675872)
10-16-2012 5:45 PM
Reply to: Message 101 by Panda
10-16-2012 5:18 PM


Re: brains washed thin
Aren't you a naive panda's thumb? The cat is just charitable on you mice. He gives you lot a lot of cover to concentrate on so that you can ignore the book and its deadly claws with perfect ease you desire.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 101 by Panda, posted 10-16-2012 5:18 PM Panda has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 103 by Panda, posted 10-16-2012 6:35 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 104 by jar, posted 10-16-2012 6:58 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 105 of 281 (675875)
10-16-2012 7:25 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by Larni
10-15-2012 1:22 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
Larn, you can't produce a virus whereas the latest research inclines the cat to believe that the virus was being instrumental in producing you from a different type of ape. Hence the viral memory and intelligence must be ultimately superior to yours.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by Larni, posted 10-15-2012 1:22 PM Larni has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 107 of 281 (675887)
10-17-2012 2:32 AM
Reply to: Message 95 by Percy
10-16-2012 2:26 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
That's exactly what the problem is. Any known system of death escaping machines is way too intricate to have self-assembled by chance all at once. Yet gradualism is not too convincing a proposal either given how deadly is the Mother Nature's well known nature. All life is hell-bent on avoiding death; it is exceedingly greedy to replicate and that and only that is what enables it to strike a balance with the ever malicious Mother hell-bent on infanticide. If that innate death resistance urge is absent, there is no plausible mechanism to explain how the gradual changes could be preserved one after the other in an orderly succession eventually leading to a fully functioning death-avoiding machine let alone a whole system of such machines which as the cat suspects is the minimum requirement of survival. Constructing life looks like building a skyscraper under the condition you need to start building from the top floor.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 95 by Percy, posted 10-16-2012 2:26 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 108 by Percy, posted 10-17-2012 8:01 AM Alfred Maddenstein has replied
 Message 109 by Taq, posted 10-17-2012 10:16 AM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 110 of 281 (675913)
10-17-2012 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Percy
10-17-2012 8:01 AM


Re: Your case is lost...
Not only other death avoiding machines represent the destruction. Such a machine is in essence the memory of ways to deal with the surroundings. The memory has to be accumulated and retained faster than the surroundings may degrade it. Water in your pond is such a degrader for one. The machine has to keep abreast while the inert is known to be happy to lag behind. Therefore the question of precedence is an open one. The position expressed by Kelvin and Helmholtz seems to be quite a reasonable one. That the inert matter must precede life necessarily is just a belief without any firm foundations. The observation tells only that both are present. Therefore the belief is arrived at by a mental deduction of life from matter. Moreover since time in the Universe is relative the proposal can be sustained only by the intuition of linear time which is but another unreasonable belief.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by Percy, posted 10-17-2012 8:01 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 114 by Percy, posted 10-17-2012 7:28 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 111 of 281 (675945)
10-17-2012 4:31 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by Taq
10-17-2012 10:16 AM


Re: Your case is lost...
Tacky, a much simpler life that left no fossil is no strawman. It is a ghost. No more substance than the designer postulated by the ID folks.
You just need it to have been there for purely theoretical reasons. Nothing wrong with that. Flesh the ghost out, devise a mini-environment and try to demonstrate how the chemicals bond into that particular pattern. Just don't sell it as a fact of nature reflecting what had really happened 4 billion years ago. Your guess is that it was abiogenesis. Fine. Mine is that it was pre-existing life arriving on rocks and comets. Face it, your guess is as good as mine.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Taq, posted 10-17-2012 10:16 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by Taq, posted 10-17-2012 4:47 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied
 Message 115 by Coragyps, posted 10-17-2012 8:00 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied
 Message 122 by Larni, posted 10-18-2012 6:08 AM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 113 of 281 (675948)
10-17-2012 5:18 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by Taq
10-17-2012 4:47 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
That they were putting out oxygen is no indication of a much greater simplicity you postulate. It is actually only an indication of presence. Nobody contests that. From that presence no conclusion about any origins follows. The data show the presence from very early on by the way.
We are not talking about how modern species came together. The topic is the first ones to appear on earth and the relative complexity of their bits and pieces.
If the cat does not understand what is that you are proposing, then explain what it is exactly.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by Taq, posted 10-17-2012 4:47 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by Taq, posted 10-18-2012 11:11 AM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 116 of 281 (675962)
10-17-2012 9:19 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Coragyps
10-17-2012 8:00 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
The direct parent planet may or may not be known. That would depend on further astrobiology research and general progress in astronomy. By now, if such existed, it might well be gone making tracing it difficult for obvious reasons.
The earth might lend seeds of a future tree of life elsewhere and if similar to us clever monkeys develop there too, they will be left guessing about their origins just like we are now.
The ultimate origin of life may not also be an answerable question. Given the relativity of universal time the question may be less than meaningful. I am not saying that those who believe that life on earth originated through abiogenesis should stop doing their research in that direction. It's just that I see the insistence that this must have been the case by all means to be very foolish and hardly scientific.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Coragyps, posted 10-17-2012 8:00 PM Coragyps has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by Coyote, posted 10-17-2012 10:08 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied
 Message 125 by Taq, posted 10-18-2012 11:18 AM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 118 of 281 (675967)
10-17-2012 10:22 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by Coyote
10-17-2012 10:08 PM


Re: Turtles?
Linear thinking, Coy. It's rather turtles in every direction and all of them orbiting rotating crocodiles.
Edited by Alfred Maddenstein, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Coyote, posted 10-17-2012 10:08 PM Coyote has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 119 of 281 (675969)
10-17-2012 11:00 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by Percy
10-17-2012 7:28 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
If you want a more extensive argument why water may be degrading to a memory arising from oblivion read Robert Shapiro's skeptical book and other stuff. He is quite impartial not supporting panspermia either.
I never said life must have preceded inert matter or the other way round. All I said was not observed separately and that the contention there was a point in time when life was absent from every location in the universe is an impossible claim of bigbangism. I cannot be quite sure abiogenesis is absolutely impossible. It's not to be logically excluded in principle.
On the other hand I'm absolutely certain a universal linear calendar is not in the stars. Absolutely impossible for the reasons of elementary geometry and logic. I'll find the exact words of Kelvin or Helmholtz and then I'll post them.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by Percy, posted 10-17-2012 7:28 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 120 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-18-2012 3:30 AM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 123 by Percy, posted 10-18-2012 8:54 AM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied
 Message 129 by Coragyps, posted 10-18-2012 6:28 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 126 of 281 (676061)
10-18-2012 5:47 PM
Reply to: Message 124 by Taq
10-18-2012 11:11 AM


Re: Your case is lost...
Whatever is the case none of it is any indication that the first proteins belonged to systems any simpler than a modern virus and its bacterial host. There is a bottom limit to living complexity. It has to be no simpler than what allows it to remember itself. What is exactly the simplest possible chemical and mechanical configuration that is that limit?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 124 by Taq, posted 10-18-2012 11:11 AM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 127 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-18-2012 6:02 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied
 Message 128 by Taq, posted 10-18-2012 6:03 PM Alfred Maddenstein has not replied

  
Alfred Maddenstein
Member (Idle past 3966 days)
Posts: 565
Joined: 04-01-2011


Message 130 of 281 (676065)
10-18-2012 8:03 PM
Reply to: Message 129 by Coragyps
10-18-2012 6:28 PM


Re: Your case is lost...
Sorry, Gyps, you might not be aware of that but in the meantime the relativity has been high-jacked by the bigbangism that restored back the naive idea of the universal calendar and is creationist geocentrism in disguise. So Kelvin's ideas may be far more advanced and reasonable in comparison to this pre-Copernican concept which is currently the monopoly consensus-nonsensus view in cosmology. The view is highly pernicious to science in general since it puts constraints on other disciplines such as biology.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 129 by Coragyps, posted 10-18-2012 6:28 PM Coragyps has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 131 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-18-2012 9:05 PM Alfred Maddenstein has replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024