More "miscellany" PART TWO (General)

by David Turell @, Monday, May 29, 2023, 20:23 (304 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

INFORMATION IS THE BASIS OF LIVING BIOLOGY

DAVID: The basis of biochemistry making life is cells interpreting the information in their DNA, which requires a spontaneous action of the appearance of DNA and active cells. I'm describing the next level down, a level you don't enter.

dhw: Once again, what do you mean by ”spontaneous action of the appearance of DNA and active cells”. This sounds like the chance arrival of DNA and living cells. And I have no idea what you mean by the next level down. All this muddle and confusion because you want to make information the basis of living biology! Question: if information is dormant and can only be used by a living mind, how can the cell use the information BEFORE it comes to life? (Please don’t repeat that it’s a miracle!)

Life started because the cell and the information had to spontaneously come together all at once, since you can't have one without the other.


Chirality

QUOTE: "The study thus brings us one step closer to understanding the complex history of our own biochemistry" (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bold above is pure hype. All they had shown is a slight tendency to produce left-handedness under intelligently guided lab reactions. All of life's amino acids are left-handed. Note my bolds. It is not predominance, it is absolute!

dhw: Thank you for your insight. I only wish to express my pleasure at the fact that the word ”information” appears nowhere. It is clear from the article and from your comment that the basis of living biology is biochemistry. :-)

Great distortion. The basis of biochemistry is information. Biochemistry is a human mental descriptive product. The molecular reactions follow DNA instructions.


Madagascar

DAVID: Ancient humans ate from as much of the then current bush as was available to them. Today we can eat from the whole bush. I had octopus recently but wasn't impressed.

dhw: And you’ve forgotten all about the 99% of food bushes which your God designed and which had no connection with us and our food. Commiserations on your experience of eating octopus. How did you get on with the baked brontosaurus and the trilobite trifle ?

DAVID: Ancient human ate from the ancient bush of life whatever they could. The bush is timeless.

dhw: No, the bush is not timeless. Most of the bush disappeared long, long ago. Only approx. 1% of it remains. Please stop telling us that the whole bush of life serves as food for us humans.

Yes, it does. I just had octopus. Humans have always had to eat and have eaten everything available.


Fine-tuned universe

QUOTE: "All of this, when taken together, leads us to a fascinating conclusion: if any of these things were — in any way — substantially different from the way they are, it would have been a physical impossibility for human beings to have arisen as we did within the Universe."

dhw: I like the insertion of “substantially”. That leaves plenty of room for manoeuvre. And who can possibly know what a different universe might produce? We don't even know HOW this universe works (90+ per cent of it is supposed to consist of dark matter and energy - "dark" meaning unknown!) In any case, our fine-tuned universe will eventually burn our planet up, or some unexpected heavenly body may smash us into smithereens, and the rest of the universe will continue for the rest of eternity on its fine-tuned way with its billions of fine-tuned stars and solar systems and galaxies...proving what?

DAVID: But!! We are here at this moment and how that happened is fine-tuned. You are right about the future not being so fine-tuned. So what? WE are not guaranteed forever.

dhw: I think your “so what?” sums up my own response to the two articles. If conditions had been “substantially” different, maybe there would have been “substantially” different forms of life, or no life, and maybe when we’ve disappeared, the same “finely tuned” conditions in the universe will not produce any life. Nobody knows, but I’m sure we will all agree that no life can appear anywhere unless conditions are suitable for life. So what?

Back to the meaningless anthropic principle


Complete thread:

 RSS Feed of thread

powered by my little forum