At the Royal Society in Great Britain 31 May 2019, Perry Marshall and investor Kevin Ham announced the $10 Million Evolution 2.0 Prize.
The meeting was hosted by Oxford Professor Denis Noble FRS CBE; and Oxford Professor Paul Flather, President of the Forum for Philosophy at the London School of Economics.
Denis organized the revolutionary “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology” conference, also at the Royal Society, in 2016.
Where did life come from? Where did the genetic code come from? The Evolution 2.0 Prize incentivizes the first person who can discover how code can emerge from chemistry. Such a discovery will bridge the gap between physics and biology.
Origin of Information (“Abiogenesis”) is the crucial question in the Origin Of Life. It’s also central to evolutionary change. It is the most elemental scientific problem that can be precisely defined. A solution may be as revolutionary as Einstein’s theory of relativity or the development of the transistor.
- Prize entries are being accepted at www.herox.com/evolution2.0.
- Voices From Oxford official prize announcement page
Transcript of the prize announcement at the Royal Society, London UK 31 May 2019 – Origin of the Genetic Code
Paul Flather, Oxford University: Welcome everybody and good morning. This is a very special occasion. I have the simple job, which is simply to welcome you and to introduce our main speakers, who will have the much more complicated task of explaining why we think this is a special moment.
We do think it’s a special moment because there is at the moment a fierce debate about evolutionary theory, and we think that we are in the middle of a fairly significant and radical change, so that the theories that were so brilliantly evoked by Charles Darwin and then his various successors, loosely termed neo-Darwinians, is now under challenge again.
I hope that our guests this morning will be able to explain a little bit about how this works and how exciting this is for our future thinking about how our bodies work; and maybe how thinking and machines and future inventions may be constructed. As I say, this is in a sense complicated, but complicated in an interesting way.
We can only marvel, as we understand more and more about ourselves, how amazingly our bodies have this power to engineer change in a way that’s way beyond our current capacities for understanding.
Even though people tend to marvel so much about artificial intelligence, we’re pretty convinced that cells are far and away ahead of the game.
The really exciting thing is to see how we can further our knowledge of the way cells can change, and their direction. It’s not a simple linear direction. It’s much more randomized, but nevertheless it’s randomized with a purpose. So I do think this is an exciting moment, and thank you all for joining us this morning.
My job now is to introduce our first speaker, Professor Denis Noble, who’s a scientist extraordinaire. We regard him very much as our dear friendly polymath. He’s a physiologist, he’s a biologist, he’s a philosopher, and he’s a linguist.
He’s also an activist. I personally got to know him best when he started a campaign to save investment and research in science – the famous Save British Science campaign in the 1980’s.
He first came to prominence with his work inventing a model of the human heart, which eventually led to the introduction and development of pacemakers, which we’re all familiar with.
He’s very much involved in these current debates around the idea of systems biology, and he’s expressed his ideas in two wonderful books, very easily readable, very accessible – The Music of Life and more recently Dance to the Tune of Life.
Denis, would you like to explain a little bit more about the current debates and what’s happening now, and the background to this prize which we’re going to be announcing shortly?
Denis Noble, Oxford University: Yes, thank you, Paul, for that. I’ll be fairly brief. It seems to me that, yes, there is a lot of discussion now about the fundamentals of biology. I was involved just three years ago in helping to organize one of the rare joint meetings between the Royal Society and the British Academy, which occurred in 2016 and has been published in the Royal Society’s journal, Interface Focus.
The articles in that issue, which are under the heading of “New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives,” indicate what is going on. It was an absolutely fascinating meeting.
Incidentally, the huge hall here was completely full. In fact, there was a huge waiting list for people to come to the meeting.
One of the people who was present was Perry Marshall, and I’ll come onto Perry in just a moment, and the prize.
The next significant development for me was meeting up with a remarkable bacteriologist at the University of Chicago, James Shapiro, who wrote this book, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. James Shapiro worked for a period in the last century with Barbara McClintock.
Some of you will know that her major discovery was what we sometimes call “jumping genes,” the ability she found in chromosomes in corn for chunks of the genome to move from one part of the genome to another. She wouldn’t have called it the genome in those days. It wasn’t even known that it was DNA. It was the basis of the genetic material.
She received a Nobel Prize for her discovery of what we would now call mobile genetic elements in 1983, at the age of about 81.
Jim’s book explains how that led in turn to him questioning some of the fundamentals of the way in which DNA is interpreted. Nobody, incidentally and certainly not in this room, is challenging the importance of DNA, the importance of there being a database there that enables cells to pass on from one generation to another the valuable information that is in DNA.
I think what is common between certainly some of us is that DNA is more controlled than it is controlling. That’s the way I would put it, and that’s exactly what Barbara McClintock said too in her Nobel Prize lecture, which is published in Science. She said the genome is an organ of the cell, which I think gets the idea of causation the right way around.
That leads me to Perry. Perry, you’re extraordinary. You’re a business man. You have a reputation for marketing. You have bestsellers in books like 80/20 Sales and Marketing, The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, and Industrial Ethernet. But you end up also publishing a book which has a title not very different from James Shapiro’s, Evolution 2.0, where he has it as A View from the 21st Century.
I read this book very, very carefully because I found it initially a bit puzzling how somebody like you with your background, admittedly with technological knowledge – you started off as an engineer – but still I was intrigued to know to what extent were you getting any of it right.
And Perry does, more or less, because what he writes is not very different in terms of perspective from what I write in my own books.
When Perry approached me with the news that he had a number of investors willing to put up a major prize, I was intrigued.
Why should there be a prize?
As I see it, we’re adding various processes to the story of evolutionary biology, particularly the control by epigenetic factors and the fact that material can go down via microsomes to the germ line and so on.
But it leaves two things, it seems to me, then completely unexplained. How did life get going in the first place and what is the origin of the genetic code? I would regard those as the two very, very big questions for science today.
On how life got going in the first place, there are people trying very hard – Lee Cronin is a good example in Glasgow – to start with simple chemistry in a dish to find out how it could be that proteins might have evolved from simple structures to very much more complicated structures.
But we’re still a long, long way away from understanding how all of that could come together in a cell, and then eventually develop a store which is DNA.
I put it that way because I can’t see personally how DNA could have been there at the beginning. After all, DNA requires a cell to enable it to reproduce. It requires the cell also, incidentally, to correct errors in that reproduction replication process.
That then leads to the other big question. As DNA evolved, where did the specific code – what these three nucleotides mean, if that’s the right word, for this particular amino acid – where does that come from? Because with triplet code there could be many possible ways in which you could arrange that.
Did it happen by the chance chemistry, being that it went one way rather than another? In which case there’s no explanation at all. Or is there some good chemical reason why that code should be as it is rather than anything else? That would be important to question, like if we find life on Mars or one of the moons of Jupiter or wherever we might eventually find it in the solar system, will we find the code is the same?
Will we find there’s a code at all? Or could it be you’ve got organisms that are essentially cells without DNA? That’s not impossible, incidentally.
I agree with you, Perry, that it’s the biggest challenge which, at the moment, we could say biology faces. I say the biggest because you might think the origin of life is even bigger, and in a sense it is, but I think this just conceivably could yield to the way in which the chemistry process enabled it to happen in the first place. I just somehow think there has to be a reason why it is as it is.
So when you asked me whether I’d be on the judging panel for this, I tell you my first reaction was that I don’t know enough. That’s what I said. I’m not sure whether George Church at Harvard said the same. I hope not.
Perry Marshall: No, he didn’t say that.
Denis: Good. And Michael Ruse at Florida State, who’s a philosopher – and incidentally, just to reassure those who might wonder whether there are any sort of metaphysical questions involved here, he’s a card-carrying atheist/agnostic, so at least we get that one on the table. We are a funny old mix.
Anyway, I think the best thing now, Perry, is you tell us why you decided to launch the prize. Why is it as big as it is, and where does all the funding come from? There’s a question. Over to you, and I’m sure you’ll get even more difficult questions from around the table.
Perry: Good morning. Thank you. It’s an honor to be here at the Royal Society. We’re here doubling the prize amount, and it’s the first significant activity I’ve had here in Europe discussing this. In the first 10 minutes I’m just going to give you the background and then we’ll do Q&A after that. And I’ll have a little word from Kevin Ham.
This story starts literally in this little Chinese bus in western China, where I went to visit my brother in 2004. My brother was an English teacher who was also working part-time as a missionary in China, and we had been having discussions back and forth because he was increasingly doubting the whole religious thing writ large.
Emails were going back and forth and we were discussing it, and when I got there I realized: he’s thrown this whole thing out the window. We’re pastor’s kids so this is a bit of a shock to my system, and a shock to the family dynamic, shall we say.
So I was feeling a little uncomfortable and we got into this argument. I would say that I retreated to my comfort zone, which is engineering, because I’m an electrical engineer. I say, “Bryan, look at the hand at the end of your arm. This is a nice piece of engineering! You don’t think this is a collection of random accidents, do you?” and he goes, “Hold on!” and he just came right back at me with the standard, “Perry, all you need is random copying errors of DNA and natural selection and millions of years and you’ll get a hand and you don’t need any engineering.”
I didn’t really have a problem with evolution per se, but I’d never quite heard it phrased quite that way. I’d always looked at my hand and said, “There’s something very, very intentional going on here,” and he was challenging that.
In a few seconds inside my own head I thought:
“Okay, I already know without pushing this argument any further that there’s a whole bunch of biologists who would agree with him and not agree with me. And I know from what I’ve done so far in my career and in school that there’s a lot of things in science that are very counter-intuitive.
“You know what? I don’t know.”
I said to myself, “Perry, why don’t you stop arguing with your brother right now,” and it wasn’t helping anyway, if you know what I mean. We’re trying to have a pleasant visit.
So I made a decision that when I get home I’m going to get to the bottom of this. He had already been dragging me with him against my will anyway, and I already had a whole cloud of religious and philosophical questions.
I said, “You know what? I’m an engineer. I know how to read a scientific paper. I’m scientifically literate. I’m going to go home and I’m going to let science make this decision for me. My belief system could completely change, and that’s terrifying, but you know what? Here we go,” and I just leaped into the void.
That’s how this started. What’s about to follow is a story of transforming what started as a philosophical and religious question and turning it into an engineering question and then eventually turning it into a prize.
I went home and I started obsessively reading and buying books. I’m an entrepreneur and, if you know entrepreneurs, they’re all obsessive/compulsive kind of people. Probably scientists are too, I’d imagine. I started buying books and going to websites and voraciously digesting things from all parts of the spectrum, everything I could get my hands on, and here’s what I discovered.
For a while I floundered helplessly. I was just inundated with information and I couldn’t make sense of it and I couldn’t figure out, “What’s the starting point with this? Which facts do you put first and which facts do you put second?”
One day I was trying to understand DNA, genetic mutations and genetic code, and I suddenly had this flash of recognition, and here’s what it was.
I had written this book here, Industrial Ethernet, for a major society of process control engineers.
If any of you have trouble sleeping tonight, this may help, but it actually turned out to be fascinating how all the 1’s and 0’s go on a wire and how ingenious all of it is. I was studying DNA and mutations and all of that, and suddenly I was like, “Wait a minute! I’ve seen all of this before. I know what this is!”
The diagram on the screen shows the dissection of an Ethernet packet on the top, and on the bottom transcription and translation of DNA, and you can see graphically how similar they are. Mathematically they’re identical. It’s encoding and decoding. It is a communication system. There’s an encoder, a message, and a decoder.
All the sudden, I had all of these familiar things that I could attach all of this to. I’m like, “Okay, I can start with this. I understand genetics. Genetics is digital communication. I understand digital communication because I wrote an Ethernet book.”
Suddenly a whole bunch of suspicions also came along, which took two or three years to later confirm, but it all just fell in place.
The ABC’s of a communication system is that you have an input that goes into an encoder. It gets turned into a message and then it gets decoded.
I send you a text message, it gets encoded on my phone, it gets turned into 1’s and 0’s, and it comes into your phone through Wi-Fi or what have you, and you read the message.
If what was put in corresponds properly to what came out, then communication has successfully happened.
On the left here is part of an ASCII table. 1000001 is a capital A, 1000010 is a capital B. In DNA, AAA is lysine and GGG is glycine. If you have an encoder, a message, and a decoder and a table, you have a communication system, and that’s exactly what’s in every biology book known to man.
As I started to explore this, I came to this realization that there’s a million codes, 999,999 are designed, and then there’s one that we don’t know where it came from, and it’s DNA.
Denis and I talked on the phone after the Royal Society meeting 2-1/2 years ago and I said to Denis, “Ten years ago when I was in the beginning of this, you could have pegged me as a card-carrying Intelligent Design guy,” based on exactly what I just told you.
To an engineer this looks totally designed. But there were a couple of things that caused me to shift my position to be very much in concert with what Denis and people like James Shapiro and others espouse. Maybe we’ll get into that later, it’s up to you, but I got very fascinated with evolution itself.
When I discovered Barbara McClintock, my inner geek just went crazy because she discovered that corn plants cut, splice, edit, and re-engineer their own DNA in real-time. To an engineer who was tempted to be a creationist, I suddenly saw this, and a whole universe opened up.
I’m like, “Oh, this is way, way more interesting than anything I’ve been told so far.” This was probably in 2006 that I discovered Barbara McClintock, yet it had taken me two years of reading and researching before I actually found it.
I’m asking, “Why isn’t this front page news?” so I became immensely fascinated with evolution itself. This is the greatest engineering problem ever, and neither of the camps, so to speak, are doing it justice.
Then you get to the origin of life and the origin of code, and it would be easy to just abdicate to a divine explanation. But I suspect that there are some principles here that science has not figured out. I still believe in God, but I don’t like the “God of the gaps” arguments. They routinely fail and we’re trying to get past this.
Here’s how the prize works. If you can produce a self-organizing digital communication system, we’ll write you a check for $100,000 and there are no other strings attached. The first person that shows up who’s done this gets a check.
But if your process is patentable, then Natural Code LLC will fund the patent and pay you $10 million for the rights for it; and partner you into the company so that you participate in the profits as it grows, because I think this would be extremely valuable intellectual property.
I think that origin of life, evolution itself, AI, and maybe consciousness are really the same single problem, not four problems.
And I think an answer to this question of “How do you get from chemicals to code?” would unlock the door to all those problems. That’s what I suspect. I don’t know that that’s true, but that’s what I suspect.
Why a prize?
Information is the central question in biology. Where does the information come from? How is the information processed? How is information from one species to the next in an evolutionary process actually generated?
Computer programs don’t rewrite themselves, but cells do. DOS did not evolve into Windows by itself, but bugs evolve into superbugs in 30 minutes. So there’s something that people in the software world don’t understand at all.
Alexa and Siri understand every word you say but they have no idea what you mean. Your dog doesn’t understand a single word you say, yet your dog knows what you mean.
There’s a fundamental difference between biology and human technology, and I think this would bridge that gap. A solution to this will revolutionize technology and medicine, for reasons that should be obvious, but we can talk about it in the Q&A.
Here is one of the reasons I wanted to have this meeting: Last summer I had a long conversation at Harvard with George Church. He’s the godfather of modern genetics, you could say. We talked about the risks and the dangers of gene editing and CRISPR. We can edit DNA as easily as inserting a picture into a blog post. You can buy a gene editing kit on Amazon for $169 USD with free shipping.
I think that the information question in biology has not been treated seriously enough. There’s not enough journals about it. There’s not enough books about it. Most people are dealing with this as a chemistry problem. I think it’s an information problem.
If we don’t take this information problem seriously enough, I think we’re going to make some very big mistakes and we won’t be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. I hope we can talk about that today.
The judges are:
George Church from Harvard and MIT. Everyone in genetics knows who he is. He’s incredibly prolific with 143 patent apps. He’s a fascinating guy.
Denis Noble from Oxford, the first to come on board. He needs no introduction here.
Michael Ruse from Florida State University. The president of HeroX, who hosts our prize, said, “Perry, you’re a Christian and people are automatically going to think this is some kind of Intelligent Design publicity stunt. Can you get an atheist on your panel?” and I said, “Let me see what I can do,” so we got Michael Ruse.
I love Michael. He’s a hilarious guy. He’s also very friendly. He’s not combative. He’s been involved in many debates and discussions about science and religion. He’s been in some of the creation trials as an expert witness in the United States. You all know how different the United States landscape is with this question than Europe, so he came on board.
So I have these judges, and at NaturalCode.org we have the whole prize description. It redirects to the HeroX website. We have a ten-million-dollar prize, and I think we need a substantial sum of money to pinpoint the importance of this question.
Paul Flather: Thank you very much, Perry. So just to reiterate, what we’re announcing today is that the prize is now $10 million USD, and that’s completely new and a huge increase from previous thinking about it. It’s the first time, Perry, that you’ve talked about this prize beyond America, so this is in a sense trying to turn the prize into a global prize.
The third key element is that you’ve realized that this prize goes beyond chemistry and biology and engineering. It’s really about information, which is central to the way that we operate in society in terms of our body, so these are the major announcements this morning in the Royal Society in this very special conference room.
Perry: I believe this is the most fundamental question in science that can be precisely defined.
Paul: Thank you very much. We’re going to open it up to questions, but before I do we’re going to bring in a close colleague of yours, Kevin Ham, who’s kindly joined us and flown in this morning, who wants to add his perspective on this.
Kevin Ham: Thank you, Dr. Flather. I’m privileged to be here at the Royal Society. My name is Kevin Ham and I’m from Vancouver, Canada. I flew in for this occasion and the announcement of the $10 million prize. I’m one of the investors and I just wanted to give you the background story of how I came into it, which leads me to my childhood.
When I was 14 I was skating around on an ice rink. By suppertime I could barely bring my spoon to my mouth. By dinnertime I could barely walk. I ended up in a children’s hospital, admitted for an autoimmune disease.
While I lay in bed for the next few weeks I wondered if I was going to live, and if I did I decided I was going to be a doctor, so that was kind of like my mission in life.
At 16 I started studying and reading the Bible, and I came to believe there was a God. I did a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry, and then I got into med school, finished med school, and became a family doctor at age 30. While I was in my medical residency I saw 40 patients a day, 10 minutes per patient, and I just thought it was like a factory so I thought, “You know what? I don’t want to do this like a business.”
I knew that the internet was going to be a revolutionary medium, greater than any media revolution that we’ve experienced in history, so I decided to create an internet business. So I did that and it started making more money in one month than I did the whole year in residency, so I thought I’d do that for about six more months and then go back to medicine.
But I haven’t gone back to medicine. I’m still doing business.
I met Perry in 2016, about three years ago. We were having dinner and I wanted to meet him because of his 80/20 book. His book talked about 80/20 being fractal, so there was an 80/20 inside of 80/20 and that fascinated me. It totally changed the way I thought about business, about life, about everything actually.
We were having dinner and then he started telling me about this other book that he had written, Evolution 2.0, and that fascinated me.
After our 5-hour dinner I put my hand out and I said, “I’m in. I want to be involved in this prize.” He told me he was trying to get investors at $1 million in, so I said I’m in.
I was the fifth investor, and then we started having these annual meetings. We had our first one in Hawaii, our second one in Napa Valley, and our third one is going to be in Iceland this summer. Now the number of investors is double at 10 and it creates this very eclectic unique group of people from all walks of life, so that’s pretty exciting.
Part of the thing that I got from this was, “That makes a lot of sense, what Perry just described.” This genetic code, all of us with 23 pairs of chromosomes, multiplies and then it differentiates into diversified cells that become tissues and organs and billions of unique beings and species. Even with the same code you get different expressions of beings, even with twins and triplets and so forth, based on the external and internal factors. That’s just so amazing.
Then I thought, “Why isn’t this being taught in school?” I never heard of anything like this before. I was like, “Perry, this needs to be in the schools. It needs to be introduced.” I was thinking, “How is Perry, who’s an electrical engineer, able to understand and explain DNA and genetics better than I can understand it?” and I loved this stuff and studied it. I wanted to support this to get the information out into a broader arena.
Obviously the $10 million prize might be an incentive for people, a little bit more incentive than just – I don’t know how much you win in a Nobel prize, but…
Paul: It’s less than that. This is a wonderful challenge for us. Thank you, Kevin.
Kevin: Thank you.
Paul: This is a very informal meeting, so it’s open to anybody to ask questions of Denis and Perry.
Denis: Could I just report one thing to Paul before we open up, very quickly? A number of people who would have been very willing to come just found the time was too short. They include two past presidents of the Royal Society.
Martin Rees has had very interesting discussions with you, Paul, about this, seeing it not terribly different from the “Just Six Numbers” problem, which is the title of his book.
How on earth can one explain the constants of the universe in the models? Venki Ramakrishnan himself, the present president, is walking in Wales, which is your country. We wished him well, but he said he hoped the meeting would go well.
We’ve been in contact with around 10 Fellows of the Royal Society in total, most of whom are not able to come, but the interesting thing for me – because, I will be honest, Perry, I wasn’t totally convinced this is the right way to go at the very beginning.
I’m your skeptic, while being on-board fully in terms of being a judge. I’m a skeptic because I’m not totally sure that it can be done.
Nevertheless, I’m amazed and interested by the fact that a lot of the Fellows of the Royal Society we contacted said, “Look, we don’t know whether this can be done either, but it should be a challenge,” so I’d thought I’d just report that before we open up.
Paul: Thank you very much, Denis.
Audience: I didn’t quite catch the terms. I was noting them down, Perry. Tell me again the terms of winning the prize and the IP and all that, of how the judges will decide whether someone has done what’s needed.
Perry: This slide right here really summarizes it. If you can take some chemical process and, without cheating, get encoding, message, and decoding through some emergent property or what have you, then you’ve solved the prize.
And it doesn’t have to be the genetic code. It can be any kind of code.
It needs to have a certain number of symbols in it, and the specification goes into all that, but basically we’re just looking for exactly what you see on the screen, where you can draw an encoding table and a decoding table and see that it’s working correctly, and you’ve won the challenge. At that point you get $100,000.
Then the next question is, is this defensively patentable? And if it is, the investors are agreeing to pay for all the research costs and the patent costs. And when the patent is granted, then the discoverer gets another $9.9 million, making the total $10 million, and the inventor also gets a stake in the company, Natural Code LLC, and whatever intellectual property that we can commercialize or sell.
Audience: Why shouldn’t the discoverer just do it himself, just keep all the IP and bring in a lot of other investors? Why should he or she go to you?
Perry: They can do that. The discoverer can say, “I’m just going to go sell this to Microsoft.” Then you, as the discoverer, are going to have to go do battle with Microsoft and their attorneys. You’re going to have to get money out of this thing, and it’s going to cost you a lot of money to hire your attorneys to do all of that.
I’ve got a sheet here, listing some of the investors. I’ve got a guy who used to manage $60 billion for Mesirow Financial and was the president of the world’s 2nd oldest bank for their United States office. I’ve got very savvy serial entrepreneurs, marketers, investors, some of the smartest business people I’ve ever met… and remember, I’m in the business consulting profession.
I think a person has a much better chance of going into that gladiator fight, and coming out alive, with a bunch of guys who have a bunch of their own money at stake.
But yes, if somebody discovers this, they’re going to have to decide, “I would rather collect my $10 million and also work with these people.”
Audience: What would you see as the money-making applications of this system that would make it so valuable?
Perry: I think if you could pour chemicals in your bathtub and get digital communication to occur, you’ve created some kind of AI. And you’ve done something nobody in Silicon Valley has ever done. All of the AI in Silicon Valley is from guys typing on keyboards. This would be some kind of a naturally-occurring digital communication.
I think this correlates to origin of life. If there is a naturalistic explanation for origin of life; if origin of life is a proper scientific question, and not just an eternal mystery and not just a religious or spiritual thing with no physical answer; then there must be a process. And we don’t know what it is.
Every time you discover a major new principle in science, technological applications multiply. Einstein discovers E=mc2 and 20 years later we’ve got nuclear fission and things like that. The implications of theory of relativity or any of these things – I think it would be like inventing the transistor, except a new kind of transistor.
Audience: How complex does the message have to be?
Perry: It’s in the specification. It’s 32 states. The genetic coding table has 64. We arbitrarily decided that if it could represent 32 different states, that would be more than enough. If you go to NaturalCode.org and click on the prize requirements, there’s a document there that explains it all in exact detail. In fact, I wrote the specification and just about stole it out of an engineering textbook by Bernard Sklar.
Denis: What interests me about the question is wouldn’t there also be the natural discovery of redundancy?
Perry: I don’t know, but when I had that epiphany of, “Wait a minute. DNA and Ethernet are the same. That means there has to be error correction. That means there’s noise. That means there’s a signal in a noisy channel, which needs to have enough redundancy to make it intact. It means that if the first bacteria was 3 billion years ago, then that noise channel has had to be robust enough. It means that there has to be error correction.”
All of that occurred to me in about a minute, and then it took me two or three years to find out that, “Yes, all of that is true.”
When I discovered Shapiro’s work and found out there’s three levels of error correction. I have become obsessed and fascinated with this question, and I just don’t think enough people are interested enough in it. This is where the action is! We live in the information age and nobody knows where 1’s and 0’s come from. So now what?
Denis: I very seriously doubt whether Silicon Valley can do it. You see, there’s a huge difference between water and silicon, and I’m not just referring to the fact that they’re different chemically. In a silicon chip you point to the network of things. In water the very points that form the network are wandering around stochastically. I think that’s an enormous difference.
What’s the implication of that? If it can only be done in water, you’re going to have to recreate you and me.
Perry: I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. And I deal with AI every day because I’m in the online advertising business. Google and Facebook are spending billions of dollars on AI for that purpose. Whenever a big company like this tells you about their “smart” technology, you just need to insert a “not so” – “not so smart AI,” “not so smart Siri.”
Have your kids or grandkids ever played with Alexa? When they ask it questions, they’re doing the “Turing Test.” All computer codes and computers are deterministic, and I do not believe that biological organisms are deterministic.
Barbara McClintock demonstrated that in her Nobel Prize paper. She talked about plant galls. An insect burrows into a plant and the plant will develop a genetic rearrangement in response to that insect, and it’s unique to any particular insect that might be there, which of course is completely unpredictable.
I don’t think biology is deterministic, and I don’t think we’ll ever achieve real AI until AI is no longer deterministic.
Denis: But then it would have to become Artificial Agency, not artificial intelligence. There’s a big difference between AI and AA, and I think AA probably can’t be done with silicon. That’s the way I would put it.
Perry: I think agency is the real question here. Organisms have agency and we don’t know where it comes from or how it works, but it’s clearly there.
Paul: Can I ask a naïve question then? Does that not raise a whole lot of subsidiary questions about how you manage agency and whether you might be losing control of a whole new raft of evolutionary developments?
Perry: Yes. All the sci-fi movies and HAL 9000…?
Paul: I wasn’t going to go there, but in a way…
Perry: Let’s get it all on the table. First of all, none of that is going to happen as long as silicon is deterministic. All those scenarios are distractions from the fact that somebody always owns those technologies and is always pushing the buttons.
This prize is actually a little scary because if somebody figures this out… we might actually have the first Artificial Agency, and people may shrink back from that.
I’ve thought about this very hard. To just put it bluntly, I think it’s better if we own this than if Monsanto gets it. This could come with a ton of questions and responsibilities, but we need to talk about all of these things before we have it, not after.
I’m open to all those conversations. I’m not afraid. We need to think about these things.
Paul: Can I ask a more practical and possibly naïve question? I can see Denis and your two fellow judges who’ve had an application – in one sense the judgement that this is a successful bid is teleological in the sense that can it be patented, can it be applied? But Denis, how will you actually make a judgement about a successful bid? Is it possible? I think we know that in some ways science is continuous, isn’t it. There ain’t going to be “the final answer.”
Denis: It’s obviously possible to judge whether somebody has built a self-creating code transmission system because it will be there in the physical. So there’s no difficulty with the judgement.
The problem as I see it, and the reason why I say that I’m a skeptic of his judging panel, is that I even wonder whether it can be done. Now, that’s fine. Prizes can be very difficult.
A very interesting thing that Martin Rees said to us, a former president of the Royal Society and author of Just Six Numbers, is he said, “This is a bit like the Longitude Prize,” and everybody knows what the Longitude Prize was.
Perry: Why don’t you explain that?
Denis: It was the fact that ships at sea could work out a lot in terms of how time had progressed from observing the sky, but the big difficulty came from knowing where around the world in the longitude direction you were, because the sky will change as a consequence of that, in terms of time and so on.
It seems to me that Martin Rees got it absolutely right. That was very much like it. Was it the 19th century that that prize was announced? I can’t remember now. It’s even earlier, isn’t it? It’s a one-off.
Audience: Some Royal Navy ships went down because they didn’t know where they were and went into the rocks.
Denis: Exactly so, and that was what – 17th century?
Audience: It might 1700-something.
Denis: I think that’s right. That’s the 18th century, isn’t it? I think Martin’s got it right, though. This is a one-off. There isn’t a difficulty about knowing whether it has been won. The difficulty is can it be won? That’s the way I see it.
Audience: What makes you think it can be won, that it will be possible to create something and to discover it even? Maybe it’s nothing like DNA.
Perry: Yesterday at the Forum For Philosophy meeting, one of the ladies said to me, “Oh, then I imagine that your money is probably pretty safe,” because she’s a biologist and she knows this is a very hard question.
I said, “Well, here’s what’s interesting. Every time I sat down with an investor and pitched him on this and I said, ‘I’m asking you to sign a piece of paper that says if they solve this thing you’re writing a $1 million dollar check,” none of them were cavalier about it. None of them were like, “Oh, well, nobody’s going to win it anyway. Sure, what the heck.”
No. They read the Private Placement Memorandum and they went through the thing and they showed it to their lawyers and they looked at their books and everything.
How would you know that you couldn’t win this? I decided: the last thing I want to do is to be in the business of predicting what science won’t discover next.
Furthermore, I think this is such an important question that even if this isn’t solved, if people are trying to solve it, it will produce derivative insights, and the investor group is interested in those, too.
This is Shark Tank for biological ideas. This is not just a one-trick pony. We are interested in other things that people might bring to us.
We have had people bring interesting things to us in the past. We’ve had some interesting submissions. We have five submissions on the website you can go look at, and none of them passed, but you can read the descriptions and the explanations of what they submitted and why we didn’t approve them.
I think they’re very instructive and I think it’s a worthwhile question.
One of the things I learned from my parents was that you head straight into the wind and you tackle the hardest problem that you can tackle. I don’t know how to solve this. I have a few ideas of where the solutions might lie, but I don’t know how to solve it.
I’ve got to tell you a funny story. I was in Dubai a few years ago trying to raise money for this prize and I found myself in the offices of Emaar Corporation, which is the company that built the Burj Khalifa. It’s the biggest real estate company in Dubai. They’re worth billions, and I’m talking to the Director of Investments at Emaar. I showed him this and he totally got it. He didn’t miss a beat.
He was a very sharp guy. His name is Nasser Batha.
He goes, “Perry, I can’t fund this. This is not real estate and it’s outside of my charter so I can’t do this.
“…But I know who’s going to win this.”
“You do?”
He goes, “Yeah. It’s not going to be a scientist in a white lab coat at an American university. It’s probably going to be a 14-year-old kid in a Montessori school in some artistic country like Sweden or Italy.
“When he figures it out, everybody will go, ‘Dang, why didn’t I think of that?’”
Maybe that’s why I’m not willing to say this can’t be won.
Audience: But has this system got to be radically different from the DNA system?
Perry: It could be.
Audience: But it couldn’t, because a small variant from the existing system presumably wouldn’t qualify.
Perry: As long as nobody cheats. If somebody does an RNA-world experiment and the thing self-replicates and it goes and it goes… or if somebody does a Miller-Urey experiment that actually gets you encoding, message, and decoding, you win. You could do it in silicon. You could do it in salt crystals.
Audience: Okay, totally open.
Audience: You talked about this being a global prize. If it goes to maximize the chance of someone discovering it, that’s what you should be doing. And you said this is the first time you’ve spoken about it outside the States?
Perry: In any significant venue. I’ve certainly been on some podcasts and radio programs, but nothing like this. Really this hasn’t gotten the exposure that it deserves.
Audience: Do you have any plans to take it to Asia, and where would you go?
Perry: I’d love to do that. In fact, if any of you have some contacts in Asia, if there’s a scientific society there that would like to hear about it, I’d love to get on a plane and go do that. I love being here today. I’m honored to be invited. What a great opportunity.
Paul: Any more final thoughts or questions?
Denis: One thing I’d like to throw into the pot before we have lunch. I’m coming back again to the water or silicon issue and why water is such a good medium for life developing. There are many reasons, actually.
Water is a very strange substance, but the most important one here is the stochasticity.
I seriously think that the process that would lead to that being done is going to have to mimic the way in which, for example, our immune system works.
The reason I say that is that – how does it work, just to go through that very quickly. There’s a challenge, which is that an invader, a new virus or bacterium arrives, for which the organism does not have the correct DNA to make the right human antigen that would latch onto that invader. It’s a lock and key, of course.
So what does it do? It starts the error correction and allows trillions of new bits of DNA code to emerge, but just in the region of the variable part of the immunoglobulin, not everywhere in the genome. Otherwise, you’d destroy the information.
That is how I see stochasticity, and I have a strong suspicion that since there are millions of possibilities of interactions between chemicals, it’s almost certainly going to be the case that what does that searches through. That’s fine. If somebody comes up with a mechanism that enables you to harness stochasticity to do that, that’s even better.
Moreover, it’s the reason why I suspect it can’t be done in silicon, for precisely the reason you’ve got the automatic stochasticity of chemicals in solution. You don’t have it in a silicon chip.
There’s a clue for somebody out there.
Paul: Thank you all very much for coming. I’m delighted that we could have this meeting, and you’ve all come at relatively short notice because this meeting was added on to a very nice philosophical discussion meeting we had at the Forum For Philosophy, which Denis Noble spoke at and Perry was our very special guest.
It’s given us a wonderful chance to focus on this very exciting prize and to announce it. You’ve never announced $10 million before. I think it’s a significant sum.
Perry: We added a digit. I’m very happy about that.
Paul: Thank you, Kevin, for proving you’re one of our supporters of the prize, so we know that you’re not forced to be here, and you explained how you’ve voluntarily given your support. Thank you all very much, and now we have lunch.
Denis: And over lunch, if people could think of good ideas on how Perry might expand his judging panel, I’d be very delighted. Quite apart from anything else, I still don’t know whether I’m competent to judge this.
Perry: Oh, I think you’re quite competent, Denis. I think you’ll do just fine.
Download The First 3 Chapters of Evolution 2.0 For Free, Here – https://evo2.org/evolution/Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0
Is the following theory relevant to these discussions ?
Since everything has its polar opposite it makes sense that the mortal has its spiritual opposite ie that it is perfectly possible that life continues in a spiritual form after death.
That is like saying that you can scientifically prove that as a loving living entity of flesh and blood, there MUST by default be an evil spiritual entity, and if that is so, then at death both cease to exist.
Here is a difficulty: the prize parameters specifically require a scientific discovery while explicitly rejecting theoretical submissions. This is as it should be, of course, for only the science (and consequent engineering) has monetizable value.
However—as even the most cursory student of Kuhn knows—a scientific breakthrough of this magnitude is typically preceded by a theoretical “revolution.” It’s like asking for predictive calculations of planetary movement while clinging still to geocentrism. The causality will be hopelessly off-axis.
A shift in perspective is needed first; and that will come in the form of new theory.
Please use your full first and last name, thanks.
If you are indeed serious about miracles upon miracles upon miracles… then You must read The Surgeon of the Rusty Knife by John G. Fuller.
I am a stage 4 cancer patient receiving checkpoint inhibitor treatment (anti PD-1) with amazing results. My time in treatment has allowed me to deep dive on the science of cancer and treatment. I am fortunate to have an amazing oncologist who has been working in immuno-oncology for 40 years. He has taught me much about the “spy-vs-spy” nature of cancer and the immune system; and the biological intelligence that seeks the entropy defying forces of meaning. He has a deep and thorough command of concepts of biological intelligence, meaning (purpose), and entropy. He is working with some collaborators on a paper that defines “the thermodynamics of cancer” which relies on biology, thermodynamics, and information theory. There is much in common with the ideas in “Evolution 2.0”. You may enjoy a discussion with him and his team.
I would welcome blog comments or (perhaps even) guest blog posts by your doctor.
Good luck, Matt.
I’ve been through it, and survived. My wife did not. I know what you are going through.
Those interested in the origin of life would find my book The Immense Journey of interest. It is available on my Amazon author page at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JO8VRA and my website gemarsh.com. They may also be interested in the work of Jeremy England, a description of which is available at https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/ .
Gerald,
Thanks for saying hello, nice to meet you. Welcome.
Perry
The following paragraph in the article gives the game away:
“Here’s how the prize works. If you can produce a self-organizing digital communication system, we’ll write you a check for $100,000 and there are no other strings attached. The first person that shows up who’s done this gets a check.”
So, an intelligent being with a purpose ‘creates’ a code for a motivational reason. How is that different from God, exactly?
To win the prize, a person can’t create a code. (Which is the point.) They have to get code to form as an emergent property of a physical process without cheating.
Hi Perry.
This is my first contact with you after signing up for more info about Evolution 2.0. Sorry if I’m on the wrong blog site, but I couldn’t figure out where else to post this. I am really pleased and intrigued to discover you and your work, and I’m eager to learn more. I recently heard you say that you believe humans are descended from primates. I’m open to that, but my faith is still inextricably linked to the biblical record. An historically literal Adam seems to be required by scripture if you take into account Jesus’ own beliefs and the fact that so much New Testament theology is based on Adam’s representative headship of our race/original sin. Do you have an opinion on how we can be descended both from primates and from him?
Just so you know, this isn’t merely a personal question. I lead a weekly Q&A at a 30-60-day rehab for men in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Many of them are on the verge of (re-) opening their minds to the possibility that there is a God who knows and wants to help them. Over the years the most common questions I hear concern the Bible’s reliability/relevance and how it intersects with science. I am not a scientist, but I care very much about being up-to-date and informed as well as biblical faithful. They tend to trust me, so I have to be as clear as possible about questions like the one I posed above. So I need your help, please.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Bob Sears
Bob,
I love the work you are doing with inmates. They are often very smart people. There is a chapter in Evolution 2.0 in the appendix called “Genesis 2.0.”
Also, yesterday I posted a reply to your similar question. Read those links and then we can discuss.
I couldn’t find the reply you said you posted on Dec. 10. Where should I look?
In your book it sounds like you believe God grabbed a particular “early humanlike” creature, already alive and part of a larger population evolved from primate ancestors, and breathed a soul/spirit into him, thus making him human. Close? And if so, what do you make of the Genesis statement that God formed the first man from the ground as though he were a uniquely formed being, not simply one more creature composed of natural elements like the rest.
I said the following:
Hi Bob, and welcome.
I discuss this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQWXn_jCVFc (well worth the watch)
Adam wasn’t the first human, Adam was the first prophet.
~
Genesis 1 says animals came from the ground, and that God formed man also from the dust of the ground. It does not specify how God did that.
Bob,
Any one of these articles may also be relevant, I’ve written a lot about this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22romans+5%22+site%3Aevo2.org&t=ffab&atb=v197-1__&ia=web
Also this book is excellent
https://smile.amazon.com/Historical-Genesis-Richard-James-Fischer/dp/0761838074/ref=sr_1_1
The Creation Week of Genesis 1 and 2 describe a renewal of the surface of the earth thanks to God’s intervention. It shows Moses and believers where the current situation comes from. There are hints throughout the Bible, of fallen angels breaking down the previous order, and God’s intervention for His purpose for intelligent life on the earth. The Bible does not deal with the prior situation as it does not affect our salvation. I can show that in your Bible. Darwin got it wrong, but simplistic Creationism believing the earth is but 6000 years old is also not Biblical. This Bible fully supports a very old earth with prior life. The Bible only deals with a new humanoid that could communicate in abstract concepts such as love and compassion, and obedience to God.
No it doesn’t. The Creation week never mentions a word about renewal. Do you know what the words “the beginning” mean? Yes, a 6000 year old earth is precisely biblical. Why do you need billions of years? The Bible doesn’t seem to be inerrant in your view, because you apparently need to appeal to the words of men over the Word of God. Even if your fairy tale were true (and I can tell that you are talking about gap theory) then you still have to believe in a 6 day creation week after the pretend renewal. Now you are right back to 6000 years again. Not to the beginning, but to A BEGINNING. No time for evolutionism and no reason for you to compromise with atheist pseudo-scientists pushing fake billions of years myths.
Ronald, please read this before attempting to post again:
http://evo2.org/dmz/
Ronald I deleted your other post because it was rude. I expect you to be mannerly and respect people.
Mr. Marshall,
I was introduced to your work from a link on uncommondescent.com. I’ve been greatly intrigued by not only your prize announcement (above), but a discussion you had with Denis Noble and Lee Cronin on the Unbelievable! radio show, and your most recent YouTube video with Dr. Behe. I have tremendous respect for your obvious drive, integrity, and ability to come to your own conclusions based on the evidence to hand.
As an Electrical Engineer myself by education (1988, Univ. of Toledo, Ohio), and a software developer most recently by trade, I’d like to respectfully offer feedback on a couple of what appear to be fairly foundational elements of your Evo 2.0 belief system, and why I am not as yet persuaded by your viewpoint. Namely, your belief in life’s ability to “self-engineer” (c.f. McClintock, Shapiro), and your criticisms of ID and Creationism as being science-stoppers (i.e. “Goddiddit”).
Firstly, again from an engineering perspective, it could be argued that your “ah-ha!” moment is confusing pre-programmed responses to environmental changes, with engineering novelty. A software analogy would be the existence of a try-catch block, built to handle exceptions to normal processing. An application’s ability to react in unique ways to abnormal inputs is not an indication that the application is “self-engineering”.
Take the example of corn’s ability to refactor it’s DNA. The significant questions to ask are:
a) Under stress, does corn ever create persistent novelty?
b) Is the behavior repeatable?
c) Does corn ever become “not-corn”?
If the answers are “no”, “yes”, “no”, then what you have is pre-programmed behavior. Adaptation is a fantastic example of design and information, but doesn’t provide any insight in how “common descent” might work. The same goes for the work done with bacterial response to environmental stress – if the results are repeatable, have limitations, and don’t result in persistent existence of novel features, then the coding is already built in to the application. Corn, or bacteria, or whatever, is still not an engineer – it is just a machine, following encoded instructions placed there by an engineer. I’d be curious to know what features you see in McClintock’s (et. al.) work that exceed a conclusion of “pre-programmed behavior”.
Secondly, your rejection of ID and Creationist conclusions that the variety of life is due to intelligent intervention, or special creation by God. I believe you have expressed the concern that such conclusions are science-stoppers, in that having those beliefs means one does not need to research evolution and common descent. I would certainly agree that this is true. However, I think it is important to acknowledge that such conclusions do not provide evidence for/against evolution, ID, or creationism. I.E., the statement “belief in Creationism retards research into the scientific process of biological evolution” has no bearing on whether the statement “All life is the result of common descent from simple life forms” is true. Whether ID is or is not a “god of the gaps” argument doesn’t have any bearing on whether it is a correct and accurate description of whether intelligence was required to introduce novelty in biological life forms.
Thanks for your efforts in this area – I will be eagerly following progress on the OOL front, and wish you the best of luck.
Dave,
Thank you for your great questions.
You MUST read Evolution 2.0 cover to cover.
Because you ask: Does corn ever become “not” corn?
YES. Emmer wheats + goat grass = modern wheat.
Cyanobacteria + Eukaryotic cell = plant cell with chloroplast.
Bacteria + Eukaryotic cell = animal cell with mitochondria.
You really need to dig into the literature on symbiogenesis and hybridization. You also need to read Shapiro’s 2011 book cover to cover.
The ID people and creationists have missed this and it’s a tragic mistake.
You can frame this as preprogramming or coding (and I get it, I really do) but you need to remember, we don’t have computer programs that can do this. Deterministic systems do not respond to stress and breakage this way. The only reason living things are so agile is that they are NOT deterministic, they are linguistic and willful. You can never chalk up McClintock’s corn plants repairing their own DNA as some sort of error correction algorithm such as you might find in a wifi router. It is vastly more creative and contextually responsive than that.
Just because an argument is “god of the gaps” doesn’t mean it’s not true. I acknowledge that. But the fact that the ID people have missed most of what I said above, and just sort of dismiss it, or don’t really pay attention to it, is a smoking gun. You cannot afford to attribute to miracle what natural processes very well may be able to explain. (Or already have explained, via live real time experiments that nobody talks about – like Kwang Jeon’s symbiogenesis experiments.)
You need to read Evolution 2.0 cover to cover. You also need to check the references and go further. This is WELL worth your time.
Perry,
Thanks so much for the thoughtful replies, I will certainly dig further into both Evo2 and your other references. If it can be shown, for example, that modern wheat contains genes coding for proteins that don’t already exist in Emmer wheats and Goat grass, I would certainly agree that is a observation demanding a response, no? Continuing our coding analogy – if you consider gene sequences in DNA as methods, the introduction of novel genes would equate to novel code, novel functionality.
I’m less persuaded by your argument that since we don’t have code that can “do that” (e.g. react in a positive fashion to undetermined stress) that the analogy fails – it simply might mean that the ID that designed the code is better at it than we are. Not much of a stretch, considering we already know we aren’t capable of creating even simple life! Additionally, if you investigate neural networks and machine learning, you may find that there is in fact modern code that can react to unknowns in a failure-detection/error-correction methodology that is at least a poor imitation.
I think the key point, and one you’ve certainly discussed in much greater detail with both Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe, is whether the results of biological recombination, HGT, etc. etc., ever creates novelty. Does modern wheat have genetic code not in its parent components? Or an animal cell with mitochondria? And so forth.
Thanks again, and best of wishes with your $10m prize!!
David,
About 20% of all genes are orfans, which means those coding sequences are not found anywhere else.
New coding sequences can be generated many different ways (Shapiro has written about this extensively) through recombination, reverse transcription, borrowed from viruses. The people who are telling you the “no new genes” story are ignoring large swaths of literature. Shapiro’s 2011 book is a good start.
This article references a great deal of such mechanisms:
https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/6/4/42
Dave,
You also need to read McClintock’s Nobel Prize paper (link at the end of this article which discusses it https://evo2.org/pz-mcclintock/ )
The whole point of her paper and indeed her work in general is that cells respond in novel ways to situations that have never occurred in the history of earth. This can never be explained in terms of programming by the ostensible fact that computer programs can only respond to situations that they are programmed to respond to. But life responds to a virtually infinite variety of situations with a very limited amount of inputs to begin with (ie genomes over 10 Gigabytes are almost unheard of, yet Mac OS is 20-30 GB).
The “speed of light” constant is a limitation of a closed system. The Genesis creation setting is an open system, with an omnipotent God. Wouldn’t that render any speed of light arguments as inadequate?
Whence lightning and a meteorite struck the soupy brine from an underground hotwater spring between the valley of a volcano on one side and glacier on the other.
The origin of life is the simplest question to answer. life started when the big bang arose, bringing our known universe into being. I know without question, that the sustenaince of life “started there!” All of the chemical, biological, I.E. producable questions about life are simply exercises in our desire to know everything we can as a species which is just a beautiful afterglow of the original birth of life itself. During the overwhelming, unbelievable, unbelievingly hot and dense; and unretestable; origin of the true beginning of “life” canot be answered until we come closer to the question of how and where this universe came from. countless universes may have lived and died for our primordial “soup” of crazy hot energy: again untestable; to have come to being. We will never know how life is “created”. The universe as we know it, and all of itse ? countless probable siblngs and the energy is life.
Hi Perry,
I read the transcript of the prize announcement at the Royal Society, London UK 31 May 2019 – Origin of the Genetic Code with great interest.
I admire your passion and consistency in helping solve the mystery of life. Perhaps you can achieve your dream within this century, hopefully within your lifetime.
I liked Dennis’ comment:
” I’m coming back again to the water or silicon issue and why water is such a good medium for life developing. There are many reasons, actually. Water is a very strange substance, but the most important one here is the stochasticity.”
John Stuart Reid, the inventor of the cymascope and I found in 2018 that we can generate information encoded in what Prigogine called ‘dissipative structures’ of water which then can be transduced into the information encoded in more stable ‘equilibrium structures’ of a solute dissolved in water. In theory, it should be possible to retrieve the information stored in the equilibrium structures back to dissipative structures using appropriate exergonic chemical reactions, thus accomplishing the information input-transduction-output cycle using water as the communication medium.
If you are interested in learning more about our findings, perhaps we can have a zoom meeting anytime next week.
All the best.
Sung
a stable control water structure (i.e, information carried by water) with sound which can be transformed to stable structure (i.e., information) encoded in tctre of solute
All the best.
Sung,
I really appreciate you posting this. If you look at our most recent podcast (which is also the most recent post on the blog), I talk about water as being a key to the unique properties of life. Yes, I’d love to talk to you but it will have to be in November as I’m booked up thru October. Feel free to use this booking link to schedule a Zoom call: https://my.timetrade.com/book/DYBGN
Perry
Well Perry this is very big news (or was in 2019). I wonder what you will do if I publish a rigorous falsification of abiogenesis? You see what you are missing is the proper accounting of thermodynamics. And from what I have done I can confidently tell you is the reason this challenge has not been and will never be answered. Would you be prepared to bet me $Aus20,000 you will have a winner before 2029?
I am an aero engineer UNSW 1972 and like you I can read the papers and understand the basics and conclusions etc. However what I do know is thermodynamics better than most. In this area I discovered a new number which allows the calculated entropy reduction during creation of a state of order by a process to be expressed in terms of the entropy cost the system must pay for that state by that process under the second law of thermodynamics. My paper went to the journal of Nature in May 2019 which included a falsification of abiogenesis as a violation of that law. They refused to send it for review and returned it with a caveat that I never disclose their reasons.
You see Perry you actually believe (as a Christian) by talking to the top people in science they are going to be truthful and tell you the whole truth. Well I am sorry to have to tell you they are most definitely not. You only have to look up the definitions of entropy or information to discover that. Does anybody know? Yes I do and that is going in my book. I have not read Evolution 2.0 yet but I can tell you now it will not contain a correct thermodynamic analysis. By correct I mean one which uses the correct definition of entropy which is most NOT based on energy. Dispersion of energy via gradients of any kind is only an APPLICATION of entropy not fundamental to it. In other words this is the exact point where these people are not going to tell you the whole truth. The true definition of entropy solves the Gibbs Paradox without recourse to hypothetical stretches of the imagination and it ahs nothing to do with energy!
Jumping genes or any cellular process observed in operation now can have zero explanatory power for what is required for abiogenesis to LUCA which must include a number of proteins even ATP Synthase which is logically un-evolvable.
Michael,
The issue is not thermodynamic entropy, it is information entropy.
I suggest you start with https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610721000365
Thank you yes I have read your paper and you are correct it is an entropy problem but you are missing something very important: There is only ONE definition of entropy. While not incorrect to talk about “information entropy” that is one application just like heat energy dissipation is another application. The only definition of entropy is MEASURE of DISORDER where disorder simply means PROBABLE. You have that all correct but you do not seem to realize many of your associates who “cross out God” a-priori do not share that position and have in recent times changed their position and actively confused the term entropy (including Brittanica, RI speakers and MIT to name a few)! WHY? Same reason they have confused the term ‘information’ which you define correctly in your “Where did life come from talk”. If you doubt what I am saying just have a look at [https://www.closertotruth.com/episodes/what-information] and we aske again WHY?
You are rocking the boat but you are not going quite far enough with your logic. The truth is your rejection of CREATION based on the starlight time problem is false and I can show you why totally within known factually agreed observations of secular science.
Are you interested?
Michael,
If you are advocating “Starlight and Time” by Humphries and a young earth / young universe, then I’m sorry so say that you are quickly losing credibility with me at that point. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something, if so let me know.
No I am not talking about Humphries or any theory you have seen to date all of which either deny the bible means just what it says or deny the cosmology which obviously dates the stars by their distance. I am talking about something you have not seen at all which means BOTH are TRUE (as they must be) without appealing to anything but what is FACTUAL from the known science. I have been on the same journey as you describe: an engineer seeking the truth at the bottom of the swamp. The thing you and everyone in this argument are missing is the truth about ENTROPY! It is the hidden word just like I pointed out to you concerning INFORMATION. You have broken the glass ceiling on that term which is why I am talking to you in the first place. But I know you don’t understand entropy or specifically how to apply what you do know. I’ll give you a hint: Find the definition of MACROSTATE and let me know.
Michael,
I am willing to listen to you. I am familiar with macrostates.
1) stop “yelling” with all caps
2) You’re being condescending and it’s not helping your case.
3) Post a link to what is you’re trying to say or say it here in a plain and straightforward way.
Sorry for caps, I only meant to emphasise not shout. Thank you for taking the time to listen. There are a couple of reasons why this is not on a web page or Utube video one of which is personal which I cannot go into here the other is this is very recent. I am writing it up to be published in a book. Please bear with me there is a good reason I am asking you some questions: I need to know that we are on the same page. So please
1) Did you see the [closertotruth.com] information doco? and do you agree at the very highest level of secular science they are hiding or confusing the real meaning of ‘information’ that you and I and most people know very well?
2) Would you please give me your definition of macrostate?
This is quite important because I have said you don’t understand entropy and I need to show you what exactly you don’t understand. It may also help if you look up “Entropy is not disorder” lots of raving but you can get MIT’s version from their most senior professor of mechanical engineering. It’s easy to prove they are wrong so why are they doing this now?
Its like this you said your brother could back anybody into a corner with his knowledge, well I need to respectfully do that to you. I did not get into Christianity by family, it was 20 years before I needed to know the truth about God, the universe and my place in it. I started in 1969 doing just what you did and I found if you do science and seek the truth you end up with a question: Who is God? Then if you do history and tell the truth you end up with another question: Who is Jesus? I cannot just tell you plainly until I know you understand the problem as I do. The only criteria being exactly what you said 1-No Weapons 2-Real name 3-Assume a positive intention 4-Get the truth not the sale. I absolutely agree.
Michael,
I’ve written and published 8 books to date, and there has never been a requirement that I keep something a closely guarded secret before the book comes out. In fact the only reason the books were any good was I test drove the ideas with lots of people in environments just like this one before showtime. I’m not clear why I need to define macrostate before you do. And I don’t do “homework assignments” without good reason.
Please plainly state your thesis.
Perry
Ok.. I am going to presume based on your stated principles particularly to focus on truth without fear that you will accept you can be wrong about the Big Bang [based on stuff outside of what you know you know]
This is Big Bang 2.0 Part 1:
The definition of entropy (measure of disorder) meaning based on probability not energy is crucial (rather like you defining information). Thus entropy has no units! The oft quoted thermodynamic unit (Joules/Kelvin) from Clausius is a psudo-unit. J/K = E/T = E/E/N = N (number of particles) This N is however limited by the condition imposed on Clausius equation that it is only valid at equilibrium so we must look to Boltzmann’s W or omega being the number of microsates in a chosen macrostate as the basis of entropy. So now an ordered state means an improbable state based on how many microstates in a macrostate over the total number of microstates in the system.
The definition of macrostate is missing in science! Why because the normal thermodynamic use of P, V, T, N does not account for any internal structure. They all apply to gases, only P, T, N applies to liquids and only T applies to solids! So by this a hot statue of David would have higher entropy than a cold pile of dust of the same mass! Thus the oft quoted definition of entropy as a ‘measure of the energy unavailable to do work’ is only an application not a definition. Most important we may now agree while a highly compressed state of energy is a state of order and a state of low thermodynamic entropy (eg early universe or bicycle tire pumped up) without any matter present there can be no internal structure term attached to that low entropy number.
So order is a rigorous scientific measure applying equally to compressed energy (like fuel) and geometry of matter and while also intuitive to an observer it is not just qualitative as falsely described in many sources!
Stephen Hawking wrote an introduction to New Science’s ‘The Origin of Almost Everything’ in which he states running the video of the universe back in time leads to a “point of infinite density”. But we know what a point of infinite density actually looks like and is theoretically predicted: A Black Hole from which nothing escapes! Now Roger Penrose has retired he is speaking more openly about the problems of the Big Bang and in an interview with iai he said “there can be no mass at the singularity” disagreeing with Hawking. He of course is right and Hawking was wrong. No, he was not telling the truth! What does Genesis say?
“And God said ‘let there be light’ ” a burst of pure energy with no mass.
Hawking also wrote ‘A Brief History of Time’ in which he said “the universe began very smooth” and it would evolve to being “lumpy and disordered.” But in thermodynamics smooth = equilibrium and lumpy = ordered! What he actually meant by ‘smooth’ was ‘low entropy’ which can only mean the state of a perfect crystal. But the early universe is never described that way! This was not a mistake it’s a lie!
Roger Penrose again said the problem with the CMBR is how very smooth it is indicating it originated from a condition of maximum randomization or equilibrium or high entropy! (because there was no matter) Agreeing the origin of the universe was thermodynamically smooth. But knowing entropy of the universe can only increase raises a big question as to how we got all the order we observe; stars, planets, moons, galaxies, black holes, comets etc. Richard Feynman asked the same question in his lecture on entropy.
So we conclude the Big Bang started as a burst of pure energy consistent with Genesis and many sources are not telling the truth. The matter could only be formed much later in the expansion when it was far enough away so its gravity did not pull it all back into a black hole.
Any questions?
This particular subject matter is not directly in my wheelhouse, but I believe I understand what you’re saying and at first glance it seems like a reasonable proposal.
A few comments:
-I’ve found physicists are less squeamish about admitting what they don’t know than biologists. Physicists seem OK with the big bang as a singularity, where biologists don’t like to admit that the origin of life may also be a singularity.
-Similarly, physicists are less atheistic than biologists. Math people are even less atheistic than that. The atheism streak in biology is not in a rational proportion to the number of thoroughly unsolved problems in biology, which are many.
The quality of Stephen Hawking’s work was at its best when he was an investigating agnostic. As he slid into atheism, the quality of his science declined quite a bit.
-Very interesting points you make about dimensionless quantities and internal structure.
I think the best thing you can do is get into a detailed dialogue with people in astrophysics who think carefully about this stuff every day.
Finally I think this paper may be at least peripherally related to your ideas about order and disorder and should be pretty interesting to you: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23258-x.pdf?origin=ppub
Dear Mr Perry Marshall,
I am writing to you regarding a proposal for a reward for someone who will show you how life began. I have been dealing with this issue since 1993. I think I know the answer to your question. I am glad that you considered Richard Dawkins’ answer “It was a happy chemical accident” unscientific. This satisfaction is due to the fact that my answer to your question, in turn, rests on a scientific basis, the truthfulness of which should not be questioned on the basis of criteria of the highest scientific rank. I am aware, of course, that the concept of not only “highest” but even “ordinary” scientific rank is the subject of a wide, long and still not solved discussion among scientists and philosophers. However, such pillars as e.g. the principle of contradiction is not controversial. Also in science, some issues are considered to be finally solved, e.g. the question of perpetuum mobile. There is no scientific or even hobbyist community that is seriously looking for a machine that works without the inflow and loss of energy. There is no one willing to finance such a search. This state is the result of the widespread acceptance of the correctness of the first law of thermodynamics, which states that mass / energy does not arise and does not perish, but changes its form. Although quantum physics allows to construct a model in which something arises from nothing, this is an exception that is unscientific, because well-established laws of nature as the laws of thermodynamics know no exceptions. Apples always fall from the apple tree to the ground, although the creation of a scientific model allowing the reverse process under certain assumptions, under certain conditions and an appropriate scale cannot be excluded. This also applies to the second law of thermodynamics, which states in a one concise form that in inanimate nature there is never a decrease in entropy, that is, in colloquial language – nobody detects increase in the organization of inorganic matter. Commonly and without exception, we observe the tendency of matter and energy to degrade with the perspective of thermal death of a homogeneous universe of elementary particles. The difference between organized and ordered matter is illustrated by the following example: a living cell is organized; crystals, snowflakes, chemical and physical processes are the ordering of matter. The claim that inorganic matter does not self-organize is of the same scientific rank as the claim that matter / energy does not arise out of nothing. Therefore, the search for the way in which inorganic matter transformed into life is, from the scientific point of view, the same error as the search for a perpetuum mobile. If we treat the laws of thermodynamics as scientifically equivalent, then the search for a way to increase the organization of inanimate matter has the same sense as the search for a perpetuum mobile. As a consequence, the answer to the questions of where the world came from, and life in it, is answered by science: they were created against the known laws of nature, that is, supernaturally. This is an offer to formulate a strictly (as far as science allows) a scientific explanation of the world in accordance with the expectations of the most modern science based on methodological naturalism. Metaphysics appears from consistently applied “physics”. Of course, how life was created is a question that science will have to consider sooner rather than later. Progress in science shows more and more clearly that natural biogenesis is as impossible as building a perpetuum mobile.
There is also the mystery that all life self-organizes on a continuous basis, which Schrodinger called “negentropy.” This ongoing organizing principle of life is as mysterious as its origin. I discuss this in my paper “Biology Transcends the Limits of Computation” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610721000365
I am afraid I have not been properly understood. You assume a priori that life self-organizes, which Schrodinger called negentropy, and that inorganic matter also has the ability to self-organize, as a result of which information was created and, immediately after that, life. Both processes are a mystery for now, and a reward has been set up for someone who convincingly sheds some light on the mystery. But the question was not how information and life came about in a natural way, but how information and life came about. I believe that, based on the undisputed laws of nature, I gave the answer by showing that information and life did not arise naturally. This should be admitted by anyone who accepts such scientific standards that exclude the possibility of constructing a perpetuum mobile. Accepting my answer would considerably shorten the already quite clear process of science coming to the same conclusion. Your excellent article is one of many illustrations of this inevitable process. The finding that the correct causation sequence in nature is cognition → code → chemicals corresponds closely with my answer. It is also compatible with the thesis known from thousands of years: “In the beginning there was a Word”, and therefore should not come as a surprise.
You didn’t read my article very carefully.
It seems like you’re picking a fight here where no fight is necessary.
Dear Mr. Marshall,
Life, apart from being an enigma, is also very difficult on a daily basis. For this reason, I was unable to reply to your comment on November 6, 2021:„You didn’t read my article very carefully. It seems like you’re picking a fight here where no fight is necessary.” I am afraid that I have not been properly understood after all. I wrote to you not to fight where there is no need to fight. I wanted to show you that the challenge you put to the scientists is basically settled. This is the conclusion that actually results directly from reading your article. 1 We read there: “The thing that separates life from non-life is information” (Davies, 2019). Further: “The reason that agency and cognition do not exist in the physico-chemical world is because neither physical laws nor random interactions make choices (Walker et al., 2017). If they don’t make choices, they don’t create elementary information because, as you rightly see, 1 bit of information is a choice. You also write truthfully that “there are no examples in the literature to show that the laws of physics and chemistry can produce codes, and that “there are no examples in technology that demonstrate that codes produce cognition” (Floridi 2005a). These are sufficient arguments to state that on the basis of what has been established in science so far, information, code, do not arise naturally. Of course, this thesis is additionally reinforced by your argument that biology transcends the limits of computation. Nevertheless, your article states that “The majority of the literature in the biological science takes the capacity of life to evolve for granted.” Consequently, this means that sciences are dominated by the belief, that you also share, that the natural origin of life and its evolution do not contradict the second law of thermodynamics. This belief is universal – the engine of the tireless search for the sources of biogenesis and an adequate theory of evolution, and it is also the inspiration behind the Evolution 2.0 award project. This belief is based on the claim that the second law of thermodynamics does not apply in open systems. The Earth is an open system, powered by solar energy, and therefore it is allegedly possible that the second law of thermodynamics does not apply in such a system and that the origin and evolution of life do not contradict it. Granville Sewell showed that there is no doubt that the second law of thermodynamics is also valid in open systems. 2 The laws of thermodynamics are therefore the universal laws of nature without exceptions. In my first e-mail, I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that this is the basic argument indicating that the natural formation of information, code, and thus the origin of life itself and its evolution, are contrary to the second law of thermodynamics. This is important in the light of Arthur Stanley Eddington opinion: “If someone points out to you that your favorite theory of the universe is inconsistent with Maxwell’s equations, so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it turns out that her experiments contradicts her – ah, these experimenters sometimes goof off badly. But if your theory contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, then there is no hope for you: you are left with nothing but ultimate humiliation.”3 In your article, you listed five possible solutions to the origin of the genetic code, among which you see a chance for success in the fourth possibility, that is the discovery of unknown laws or properties of physics and chemistry. Meanwhile, Stephen Meyer rightly argues that: “The new laws will never explain the origin of information, because the processes that lows describe necessarily lack that the information sequences complexity require. To say otherwise betrays confusion about the nature of scientific laws, the nature of information, or both.”4 This conclusion also contains your article in the work quoted above (Walker et al. 2007). Thus, we have five scientific arguments that prove that the implementation of the task set in the Evolution 2.0 competition. is impossible: the physico-chemical world does not make choices, so it does not create information, there are no chemicals that produce codes, biology exceeds the limits of computation, the laws of nature will never explain the origin of information, such a process would contradict the universal second law of thermodynamics. Robert Gange describes the attempts to search for natural sources of information or code as follows: “Thermodynamically speaking, the systematic production of patterns is equivalent to making a perpetual motion machine!”5
Despite this, masses of scientists around the world are constantly looking for this equivalent. Thus, the present state of scientific cognition indicates that the information, and hence the genetic code, did not arise naturally, and since they undoubtedly exist, must have arisen supernaturally, created by some transcendent entity. This is one of the possibilities mentioned in your article, rejected as an inference from ignorance, known as the god-of-gaps argument. This is not the correct approach, as we do not infer the supernatural nature of the formation of information and the genetic code from the fact that we do not know how they arose, but, as shown above, on the basis of the existing commonly accepted knowledge that they are not able to arise naturally. Intelligent design theorists call such reasoning “inference to the best explanation.”6 I hope this time you can see how my explanations relate to the fundamental issue raised in the Evolution 2.0 project. They do not propose the expected solution, but indicate that science, not ignorance, provides a different answer than expected. I think that giving meaning to these findings could result in the discontinuation of the search for this perpetual motion equivalent. This would have an economic dimension that would exceed the Evolution 2.0 award by orders of magnitude. However, if scientists have to study issues that science considers impossible, then the search for a machine that moves without an energy supply would be a real gift of Providence for the world in present time of energy crisis and climate change.
It is very, very hard to read your writing when it is all in one long paragraph.
Thank you for your thoughtful analysis.
The problematic issue is not thermodynamic entropy or laws, it’s the fact that negentropy does exist and is generated by organisms all the time. Negentropy (the creation of information) is necessary for not only origin of life and evolution but also for thought, action, and inductive reasoning. Read my paper carefully and this will be clear.
We cannot treat the existence of information as one miraculous event that occurred at the origin of life, or several times upon the creation of various species. It is something that is going on all the time right under our noses, yet we do not know what is is or how it works. You exercised negentropy when you decided to write a comment on my blog. What we can also see is that it works naturally. This suggests that nature is far more sophisticated than the reductionist models would consider.
My book “Evolution 2.0” in 1 sentence: Darwinists underestimate nature; creationists underestimate God.
Biology Transcends the Limits of Computation is a nefarious concept that has no real quantification. Transcends the Limits is meaningless. Computation is limitless as we analyse DNA. We have found coding within DNA and can now map a human genome easily. So to say Biology Transcends Computation is a belief and not a fact cos its being done as we speak. Have you heard of of having your DNA matched, there are actually only 4 m=nucleotide bases GTA and C so whats the problem? The problem is how these came about within a self replicating organism from nothing. Saying “we can’t work it out” is just picking an argument.
Deductive processes don’t do induction. This is Logic 101.
But a $1000 dollar minion DNA sequencing device can count the codes in a strand of DNA That is not up doing down or left doing right or in doing out. It is a small machine counting codes contained in our cells. Question is how did self-coding cells come about? Not “can we count the codes?” Of course we can.
I did not say there was a question of whether we can count the codes. You are right, the question is how did self-coding cells come about? Section 4 of my paper is a mathematical proof that the answer to this question goes beyond mathematics and computation.
If your paper, in saying: “Biology Transcends the Limits of Computation” and that “the answer to this question goes beyond mathematics” is proof the question can’t be answered then I don’t get the question? Because, of course we know genes assist cells to self replicate and the coding is part of this process. But to say it is beyond maths is like saying “I have a question that nobody can answer, and I am offering a reward for the answer that’s suits me” Personally I know the answer and it can be proven within the realms of mathematics, but what’s the point? If Darwin had posed a question about the timing of the transitional processes from the time when earth’s atmosphere could sustain a prokaryotic cell to the beginning of Cambrian we could now calculate it, but he’s dead and can’t find a prize. Is this the same?
It’s not proof the question can’t be answered. The fact that biology and math professors do inductive reasoning ALL THE TIME shows that it likely can be. As the paper says, “Just because it can’t be modeled mathematically doesn’t mean it can’t be built.” I suggest you read the paper very carefully.
We obviously know that it can be built and yet not by itself which deduction gave rise to Evolution 2.0 but You have said “deductive processes don’t do induction” so the question arises, would a more “careful” reading mean that math “inductive reasoning” will finally undo this maxim and produce deductions? And if not what’s the point? It’s like we are prohibited from stating the blindingly obvious as that would answer the question once and for all. I feel I have the clear answer, but the “rules of the game” inhibit any final reward. So taking a month off work to produce a definitive paper that puts this whole thing to bed would be utterly futile and my final deductions would not produce an inducement. How ironic.
If you have something of substance and a contribution to make to science, then you should make it regardless of whether it wins prize money or not. If you have something novel then surely some journal would publish it, and we at EV2 would certainly find it interesting.
We can obviously create code ourselves but what the prize is looking for is a principle or process that generates codes. My own suspicion is that whatever it is that generates consciousness is the answer, and I do not believe that consciousness comes from codes, but the reverse.
The thing that we cannot create is life itself. All of our finest advances fall FAAAR short of that.
If consciousness OR code are emergent properties of nature – as many many people claim, without proof – then if this can be demonstrated in a way that we understand (just as we can easily demonstrate that snowflakes are an emergent property of water and cold air) then the prize should be solvable.
It seems that in view of the complexity of the cell with all its mechanism for growth, excretion, oxygenation, movement and replication, there is less and less doubt that an infinitely complex mind put this all together, and even if the process of evolution were remotely plausible this sophisticated start would render it unnecessary.
Add to this the time constraints leading up to the accepted Cambrian explosion of all species appearing within a small window of time from the end of the Proterozoic Era to the Start of Cambrian, this leaves too small a period for any models of evolutionary process to have any say in the formation of life.
Given the above, had any process of evolution actually taken place, we would have to then assume that a single cell prokaryote cell in some form of plant-like existence would have had to sustain itself in a plant life-form and then a couple of transitions would have had to “evolve” prior to the Cambrian Explosion erupting.
Prokaryote (assuming it came from non-living matter and remained alive in a self generating/replicating form) wold have to transition into a Eukaryote and adapt from the use of binary fission to mitosis. This could seem needless, but necessary for multicellular organisms to benefit from mitosis. There are time scales involved and this can be calculated mathematically as to how much time would be required for these processes first to get a start and then to transition over time.
So, were we to get to the mitosis/eukaryote stage, the next transition (given that eukaryotes are sexless) would be to a form of life that has a male and a female component as is the case with most forms of life that came about at the start of the Cambrian period.
So we need time scales of immense proportion for prokaryote to appear and then each transition to eukaryote and then sex cells before the Cambrian explosion. All this would have had to take place during the period where oxygen was sufficiently abundant and fresh purified water was also able to allow these cells to thrive.
Wen we try to look for models of the above regarding timings, there is a vast difference between the periods leading up to Cambrian and the relatively short period where the fossil record shows that there was an explosion of so many varying forms of life that it becomes unrealistic to the point where we are clutching at fragments of straws.
When we then go back to the complexity of genes within the nucleoid of a prokaryote cell and the immense difficulty in explaining how this came about, we are no less stuck compared to the question of how the larger forms of multicellular life proliferated during a small period of time at the end of the Proterozoic.
Coupled with the above, we are relying solely on carbon C14 dating to calculate that these millions of years were actually millions and not thousands.
Archaeologists created a clay vessel of the kind that was used in the Stone Age.
They placed it over a fire and prepared a fish dish in it.
They made sure that some of it stuck to the pot.
They then Carbon-14 dated the pot and the burnt crust at the bottom of the pot. The dating showed that the pot and the burnt fish, Carbon-14-wise, were 700 years old.
This gave the archaeologists reason to believe that they should take care not to rely too much on the Carbon-14 dating method.
We do not know how much carbon was being ‘soaked’ up in the past and if it was less for a number of reasons than ages are miscalculated and this applies to all dating of fossils using C14 dating.
Sticking with that we know. Amoebas are eukaryote, have genetic code, replicate, breathe, excrete, ingest bacteria, grow, move and will react to an irritation.
For all this to take place, we cannot avoid the idea that a mind was involved at least to the degree that is required for us to understand how it may thrive.
So to replicate coding, we can only use the replicators that exist and the life that they use which simply presents the problem of where the ultra minute electrical impulses originated to spark them to life. For the above reason Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel developed the theory of directed panspermia, but this just goes to show that if 2 highly intelligent minds had to formulate/postulate such an idea, then the higher mind had to creat the life in the fist place.
I agree with you more or less (as far as I can tell). There is something fantastically intelligent behind all of this.
I agree that most of the scientific profession is ignoring the elephant in the room.
Nevertheless this question still has to be put in terms that are scientifically productive. It’s one thing to philosophically conclude, based on inference and evidence, that only Godlike powers could create life, and assimilate that into your religious and metaphysical views.
It is another thing to parse that problem in a way that is helpful for medicine, scientific knowledge, technology and human flourishing.
I am personally “past” the first question. I’m more than satisfied that the universe is divinely ordered.
That being the case, I think there may be nearly infinite layers of beauty, order and detail. No scientist gets to say “God did it, that settles it” and publish that in a paper. We have to understand the forces and principles that make life possible and that is what EV2 is about.
I concur with your inferences. I try now to go at this from the point of view of an atheist/evolutionist would who is seriously Objective. I avoid using the term God although this irks me to not do so. But, I am aware of the feelings of the audience in this debate and point to Crick and Orgel as strong intellects who were forced to come up with a notion called panspermia. If my post induces a “God comment” such as yours I ask where this came from within from my post? I tried to avoid this and lead the listener/reader along a trail of logic that may see what appears to be the elephant in the room. Really appreciate your interaction by the way.
You did say “higher mind.” It’s not like people don’t know that this is synonymous with some conception of God, and that metaphysical and theological questions are the often unspoken issue here.
If we have the goal of assimilating what we find out into our religious and metaphysical views, then this appears to be the tail wagging the dog, in that to have these views and then stuff what we find out into them, may prevent us from escaping incorrect and sometimes outright false views.
I think this could lead us into rejecting anything that won’t morph “correctly” into a view we already have and that will stifle the oportinities to find stuff out.
Take the approach to Covid as an example. If we have the view that stuff must have evolved and we have to fit everything around that, then we end up suggesting that the virus is ‘alive’ and is evolving to stay alive through mutations. Once we take that approach because it ‘has to have evolved’, then we switch off all other approaches.
But if we plainly look at what a virus is, which is simply an rna strand covered in a capsid and then look at how it proliferates inside a host body only ten can we make inroads into prevention and cure.
Just saying that the virus is ‘evolving’ via mutations actually ignores the whole theory of mutational adaptation as no previous mutational theory relies on a host to adapt itself and a virus is NOT a living thing. Evolution theory skews the though process where an objective view does not.
It is another thing to parse that problem in a way that is helpful for medicine, scientific knowledge, technology and human flourishing.
When COVID hit in March 2020, I turned my EV2 attention to viruses (which I hadn’t studied much up to that point). I soon realized that the same problem we’ve had with organismal evolution (=a drastically oversimplified “random mutation + natural selection” narrative that is mostly wrong) is not only also the case with virus evolution; our model of virus evolution is lagging behind our understanding of cellular evolution by decades.
All of the same general concepts of evolution I discuss in my book do apply, but in a somewhat different way, to viruses. Viruses are co-evolutionary partners with hosts, and hosts drive the evolution of viruses that live in them. Viruses are the “open source code repository” of evolution on planet earth.
I and three colleagues just submitted a new virus paper for peer review to a scientific journal, presenting a new model that significantly differs from the conventional view.
Hi Perry,
I agree with the following quote. I think “consciousness” is a primitive notion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_notion) that cannot be defined but gives rise to everything in the Universe.
“We can obviously create code ourselves but what the prize is looking for is a principle or process that generates codes. My own suspicion is that whatever it is that generates consciousness is the answer, and I do not believe that consciousness comes from codes, but the reverse.”
I recently posted the following argument that seems to support your thought (the table did not copy well; If you want, I can send you the intact table by email):
Prior to the discovery of the DNA evidence for the common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans [5], many thought that humans evolved from chimpanzees, since the latter appeared on the Earth before the former. However, there is now overwhelming scientific evidence indicating that both chimpanzees and humans evolved from a common precursor, hominids [5]. Similarly, many (including myself until recently) think that the mind evolved /emerged from the brain, probably because there are many primitive animals with brains but apparently no mind. But I now think seriously that the mind has not evolved or emerged from the brain but both evolved from a common precursor identified here with the Universe Itself. In other words, I am postulating that the mind-body relation is similar to the human-chimpanzee relation, or that there exists a common mechanism, called ‘Evolution’, underlying both the human-chimpanzee relation and the mind-body relation as indicated in the last row of Table 500 below.
Table 500. The Evolving Universe Hypothesis (EUH): A category theory of everything (CTE).
References:
[1] Brown, R. and Porter, T. (1989). Category Theory: an abstract setting for analogy and
comparison. http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~mas010/Analogy-and-Comparison.pdf
[2] Spivak, D. I. (2013) Category Theory for Scientists. http://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/teaching/sp13/CT4S–static.pdf
[3] Natural transformation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_transformation
[4] Natural transformations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LJC-XD5Ffo
[5] DNA Evidence That Humans & Chimps Share A Common Ancestor: Endogenous Retroviruses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfDF5Ew3Gc
[6] Nellickappilly, S. (2021). Spinoza: the concepts of Substance, attributes and modes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtlXNBwBCrQ
Categories
Functors
Hominid
/\
/ \
/ \
Chimpanzee Human
Universe
/\
/ \
/ \
Body Mind
Humans did not emerge from chimpanzees, but both evolved from their common ancestor, hominids [5]. The mind did not emerge from the body but both emerged from the Universe independently.
Natural Trans-formation EVOLUTION
1. There are an infinite number of Universes in reality.
2. Our universe happens to be the one that evolves from the simplest to the most complex entity.
3. Our Universe is infinite and omnipotent [6].
Sungchul,
Good to hear from you. I’m personally not comfortable with the pantheism view such as you seem to be espousing but I do see merits in some forms of panentheism.
Perry