Where Did Life Come From? Perry Marshall’s Evolution 2.0 at Penn State University


Perry Marshall grew up in a conservative Christian community; he was taught Young Earth Creationism in church. But when a crisis forced him to question everything, he applied Electrical Engineering to the problem.

This revealed a world of discoveries he couldn’t have imagined… and engineering served him well. Cells employ digital code, error correction, information processing and control systems. These parallel and supersede human-engineered systems. One blade of grass is 10,000 years ahead of human technology.

This led him to organize a $5 million technology prize for Origin of Life and Artificial Intelligence, with judges from Harvard, Oxford and MIT. The prize was featured in IEEE Spectrum and is based on the discoveries of Claude Shannon, the legendary EE from Bell Labs who pioneered Information Theory.

Perry’s bestseller Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design brought fresh eyes to the 150-year old evolution debate. Bill Gates and the founders of Google revolutionized software and the web through their status as outsiders; similarly, Perry harnessed a communication engineer’s outsider’s point of view to reveal a century of unrecognized research and discoveries.

At Penn State, Perry explored new frontiers of science research. He raised new questions that confront us in Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Engineering today.

Where did life come from? What happens if we crack the code?

Find out in this video…

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

25 Responses

  1. Mark Chenoweth says:

    It was nice to hear the interview with Wynand! And I’ll keep an eye out for the Lynn Margulis documentary.

    Also, it would be nice to see someone associated with the Third Way or EES review Behe’s new book. I’ll send Sy a message too, I wonder if he would want to take a hack at it.

    • Shashwata Lahierie says:

      Dear Mr. Marshall,

      Thank you for your outstanding paper in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 165 (2021) 88-101. I have just read your book, Evolution 2.0. Surprisingly, I have missed both of these great works in the very beginning of my current research work, which is directly related to them. In these works, you have actually not expected the solution of an unasked question, but you have originally posed a new world for us which hardly we have ever imagined yet, I suppose.

      But from my present research experiences, I have found that there are some great mistakes in the proposal of Origin of Life Prize problem. They are as follows:

      1. In the prize Guidelines, clause No. 2, it has been written: “The Evolution 2.0 Challenge is to discover a purely chemical process that will generate, transmit and receive a simple code”. If I go after the phrase ‘chemical process’ more technically, then my argument is that you will never find any chemical process that will generate code, not even carbon itself is able to do so as long as there acts Quantum Mechanics (QM). Actually, this is my current research project. We are strongly misled by our universities about carbon that it gives us life solely, which is actually not true. Carbon is only the substrate of life, but generating code is beyond the act which is performed by carbon itself. The nucleus of an atom does not produce code, but its outer sells do. And there, QM prohibits any elements to generate code. So, coding is not an elemental property. No chemical process can generate code. Coding is actually a combinational property of a multi-elemental process within their proper arrangements. That is why DNA gives us code, but not RNA. Quantum Mechanical conditions are not satisfied in the case of RNA, which is also true in the case of a number of hydrocarbons, including amino acids themselves separately. So, I think, in the prize proposal, asking a ‘process based on chemicals’ is much liable than asking a ‘chemical process’ itself.

      2. In your cited paper, you have quoted: “Cognitive systems consume energy so thermodynamic entropy increases (Collell and Fauquet, 2015; Landauer, 1961)”. But in the prize Guidelines, it was not actually clarified what kind of energy sources an inventor should be permitted to use. Inside a cell, DNA uses electrical energy produced by intercellular chemical processes. Any process, which should qualify the terms and conditions of the prize, should not be possible without using electricity. For example, a chemical process like as reaction between caustic soda and hydrochloric acid should never give you any kind of code. The process of coding is actually an interchanging electron process strongly maintained by electric pulses, but not by some chemical processes we are usually being taught in our universities. Hopefully, you have already mentioned the solution of it in both of your above works. It is a new physical law beyond our university books. And it is truly possible, at least QM assures us about it.

      By the way, I should be wrong about both of these perspectives. Both you and Professor Nobel are more knowledgeable than me. So, I would like to request, if you kindly discuss about these arguments I have arose.

      Thank you once again for you great works; those certainly will make a new world for our future.

      Regards,
      Shashwata Lahierie

      • Shashwata,

        I know of no way that chemicals can generate codes; based on the laws of physics and chemistry that I am aware of, nobody has discovered a process that makes this possible. People often write in and tell me that it’s impossible to win this prize. Maybe it is or isn’t. But if Origin of Life is a mystery that science can solve at all, then surely there must be a way.

        If there is not, then let’s just admit it instead of making up stories about warm ponds and happy chemical accidents.

        I am not sufficiently versed in QM to evaluate your comments about that.

        What I can say is that either there is a principle or force of consciousness separate from laws of physics that we know; or else that matter and chemistry itself possess properties that are not found in any of our chemistry books.

        If I knew how to solve this, I wouldn’t need a prize, I’d just solve it and move forward with that solution.

        I don’t feel I need to make any stipulations about energy storage or amounts of energy. As far as I’m concerned, they can build a nuclear power plant if that’s what it takes to solve the problem. I just want to know the principle that generates information.

        Similar to my above comments about physics and chemistry, we likewise know no process by which energy becomes code. As Norbert Wiener said, “Information is information, neither matter nor energy. No materialism that fails to admit this can survive the present day.”

        • Shashwata Lahierie says:

          Dear Mr. Marshall,

          I strongly believe that the question you have arose in Evolution 2.0 is accurate and definitely outstanding. We must need the answer. And I assure you that it will happen very soon. Not for money, not for fame, but for millions of people who are suffering from cancer. I promise it.

          Thank you very much for your kind response.

          Regards,
          Shashwata Lahierie

  2. hello mr interested says:

    HI, I have a question. How can you conclude that a mind is behind dna if dna is a language? when plants who doesn’t have a mind have language. PLants does indeed have a language.

  3. Joe Earwood says:

    Just finding out about this web sight. Seems like there’s and honest questions and answer evolution and creation.

  4. Francis Miller says:

    As I was reading Evolution 2.0 last night, the ideas of Christopher Alexander came to mind.

    I am taking the liberty of pasting in some quotes from him below because a) you may well not have come across him and b) he is an accomplished outsider who takes a very unconventional approach to the field of evolution and other scientific issues.

    I don’t want to spam your blog so do feel free to delete if this is of no interest.

    Alexander studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, the college to which Isaac Newton belonged.

    He then turned to architecture and became a professor at Berkeley.

    His greatest impact has been on software development where he was the key influence behind the development of software design patterns. Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the first wiki, which led on to Wikipedia, also acknowledges Alexander’s influence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander

    At the core of his thinking is a concept that there are 15 properties of life and that transformations which strengthen these properties lead to greater wholeness and more coherent systems.

    Here are some quotes from his paper on New Concepts in Complexity Theory – http://www.katarxis3.com/SCIENTIFIC%20INTRODUCTION.pdf

    “How can a complex system find its way to the good configurations? In a theoretical sense, we may say that the system walks through configuration space, taking this turn and that, and always arriving at a well-adapted configuration.

    The huge question, of course, is How this walk is controlled: what are the rules of the walk, that make it lead to good adaptation? Although a few, very preliminary answers have been given to this question, no good ones have yet been given. This is, perhaps, THE scientific question of our present era…..

    All in all, to wrap up, this might be said: The beauty of naturally occurring patterns and forms has rarely been discussed by scientists as a practical matter, as something needing to be explained. and as part of science itself. Yet the fifteen transformations, if indeed they provide a primary thrust in the engine of evolution, and in the many engines of pattern formation, give us a way of understanding how beauty – aesthetics – plays a concrete role, not an incidental role, in the formation of the universe.

    I believe the fifteen transformations I have discovered will turn out to be naturally occurring, and necessarily occurring in all complex systems. The laws leading to their existence, will turn out, I think, to be inevitable or necessary results of the unfolding of wholeness, under the right conditions. And I believe, too, that our 20th-century notion that mechanical effects, without the guiding influence of these fifteen transformations, can create the beautiful structures we encounter in the universe, is simply wrong. In other words, it is the action of wave motion, mitigated by the fifteen transformations, that creates the beauty of the breaking wave: it is the operation of natural selection, mitigated by the action of these fifteen transformations, which generates discernible and coherent forms in the play of genetics and evolution; I believe it is the operation and unfolding of the most ordinary flower or stem of grass, mitigated by the operation of the same fifteen transformations, which generates the beauty of the flower. I believe that it is the same fifteen transformations which mitigate and channel the crumbling and heaving and bending of the geologic strata which generated the beauty of the Himalaya; and these fifteen transformations, too, which mitigate the action and swirling of the vortices on Jupiter, or the rippled piebald configurations we call a mackerel sky……

    Why do the creationists keep on making their fuss about evolution? I do not think it is only because of religion, but rather because some of them are aware that this problem of emergent beauty is not really solved. Why does Dawkins engage in such intense hand-to-hand combat with the creationists – something one would think hardly worth the ink? Is it not because of his own failure to acknowledge, more frankly, that the larger question of emergence of new, and beautiful configurations in evolution is not yet solved – at least not in the sense that computer simulations, using the algorithms of selection as currently understood, could yet arrive at truly beautiful new configurations and thus demonstrate the truth of the ideas of evolution as we currently understand them? ……

    The successful evolution of new biological forms is, in my view, undoubtedly modified by transformations able to move toward structures that are inherently – that is to say, geometrically – coherent. I believe this process accompanies natural selection, and is the crucial missing part of current explanations: a vital component in the gamut of selective pressures. We need more frankly to acknowledge such a possibility, and in my view scientists who aspire to realistic explanations, like Dawkins, should stop dueling with creationists (which is far too easy), and instead try to focus on this geometrical problem at its root (which is much harder). I believe the fifteen transformations I have described go some distance to laying a path toward the solution of these difficulties.

    Most scientists, and most lay people, share intuitions (not always acknowledged) which ascribe something great to the action of the universe. Roughly expressed, these intuitions rest on intuitive assessments that some deeper coherent, and more whole-oriented transformations, coupled with the action of the ordinary mechanisms we understand, and strengthening and reinforcing the wholeness which exists, can give birth to new and beautiful configurations from the wholeness which exists.”

    You might also be interested in a paper by Alexander on Harmony Seeking Computations: A Science of Non-Classical Dynamics based on the Progressive Evolution of the Large Whole – http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/library/harmony-seeking-computations.pdf

    It gives a good introduction to the 15 properties of life, from p.6 onwards.

  5. Hello, I am a 15 year old in 9th grade and I am not sure if this helps or not but I have come up with a rough but in-depth concept on how to go about reading mRNA and converting it to Binary as well as a VERY rough (and probably incorrect way) of writing to mRNA as well as practical uses. These methods may not be available until we advance more in technology, but it may be a decent starting point. Also, I made sure the method of reading would not just read binary but also could be used to read mRNA/DNA in the future for medicinal purposes by making it read 3 Nucleotides at a time. I am no scientist and I won’t pretend to be an expert, but I think this concept could at least inspire someone to move in the right direction. I just came up with it today at school and I came here because I heard you guys were interested in being able to use DNA as a storage device. I overlayed it with my Youtube banner so no one would steal it. You can find it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dCHk6lXYlnzjqSxxRCerwrmuDa-QP9iE/view?usp=sharing

    • If it was made, it would be great for AI learning. A big problem people have with deep learning AI (neural nets) is that when they are training the AI they eventually run out of memory on their hard drive and hobbyists would need to get large storage farms to train the AI far. With this, you could POTENTIALLY just plug in a USB thumb stick and train your AI for virtually as long as you want. So, lets estimate there are around 18,000,000,000 cells that can fit in the 3D space (volume) of your finger. That means that, in the space of a larger USB thumb drive, you could potentially store around 13500000 Terabytes of data.

  6. Note to the moderator: Please do not delete this clarifying post. If you do, please remove my post that states “Oh, yes it does”. You can verify that it is me by checking my e-mail that is not posted to the public, or by checking my IP. Please also read my full comment.

    Hi, when I said “Oh, yes it does.” it was a reply to a comment asking about if my internet worked. I responded to myself so that it would not look strange that I was asking the internet if it worked. The reason I posted it was because my comments were not showing up at first and I did not understand why until I saw they were being reviewed. For some reason the first comment was removed making the second comment seem like I was referring to my idea. I am posting this to clarify that, in fact, that quote does not have to do with my comments above and it is not me bragging/hyping up my ideas that I believe are not good enough to be hyped up. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

  7. George Prins says:

    Dilemna with an old earth: how can the edge of the Universe be 45 B light years away when the Universe is only ~15 B years old

    The Story of Krystal Starr

    A particular George Firma met a smashing young Italian girl named Terra some years ago. They were married and Terra became pregnant. After the appointed time allowed for these situations, she was rushed to the hospital to have her child. George waited patiently across from the Delivery Room and in a short time the obstetrician’s assistant came out and suggested to the new father that he could come within 15 minutes to congratulate his wife and meet their new daughter, Krystal Starr. George was elated!

    He came into the room only to notice that something was terribly wrong. The baby was not there. The obstetrician tried to explain that the baby had been whisked away to another hospital because of breathing problems. There was a concern. The hospital was on the other side of the city, some 45 mins away. Quite suddenly, a nurse received a text message that the baby had arrived at this hospital. George was flabbergasted. The baby, not quite 15 minutes old was now in another hospital 45 mins away! Was there a scam? He was desperate and became angry. A security guard appeared and quickly ushered him out of the room. Mrs Terra Firma, visibly shaken, was comforted by the staff.

    George took the elevator down to the main entrance and asked the receptionist for an answer. After a quick twitter, she explained that his new child was in a hospital not 45 mins away but 45 light minutes away, ie, 809,439,637 km away (about 810 M km or ~ 500 M miles= .5 B miles). There had been a small problem in communicating the data. It all could be explained by a third-party study on the matter. Does this sound ironic?
    George now had the option to distance himself from this sudden change of events.

    If we divide the times to fit the scenario below, the ratio should remain similar.
    14.6 B divided by B =~15 yr divided by x = 15 mins
    45 B light years divided by B = 45 light years divided by x = 45 mins

    Planet Earth was formed some 14.6 B years old and we have been told that the edge of the universe is 45 B light years away. (Absurdly, the Universe is still expanding some 68 km/sec or 250,000 km per hour and still accelerating away.) The articles that I have read on this explain that it does make sense as the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light. However, Einstein ruled that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

  8. Gary Mayer says:

    The situation, nobody has solved this problem, you must solve it yourself, came to me in 1996. I had followed young earth writings for over twenty years, and also after this I followed old earth reasoning from Reasons to Believe, but then I realized that neither of their attempts to harmonize science and the Bible worked. So I set out to solve it myself with the Lord’s help. I found that a true understanding of the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible solved the problem. But also I found that you could prove mathematically the the descendants of Adam and Eve married into an existing human race. I wrote it up in a book published print-on-demand in 2007, revised in 2009, and 2015, New Evidence for Two Human Origins: Discoveries that Reconcile the Bible and Science, half of which is on Academia.edu. My blog is http://www.garytmayer.blogspot.com. As brother Marshall put various disciplines together to solve a problem, so I put together my engineering, theological training, and linguistics to solve this problem of harmonization. I feel bad that the answer to reconciling the Bible and science has been solved, but those who need to understand it are not being told. Since I am 77, I am afraid I will die before the world finds out about my discoveries in Greek and Hebrew syntax that harmonize the Bible and science. I feel like Barbra Mcclintock when her discoveries were rejected.
    Gary T. Mayer

  9. Cyndi Mettler says:

    Wondering if you have read yadayahowah.com by Craig Winn; extremely interesting commentary/analysis of the Paleo Hebrew Dead Sea Scrolls. Our English translations simply do not do it justice.

  10. Gary Mayer says:

    I left a comment on October 9, 2019, where I explained that I wrote a book that shows MATHEMATICALLY from the biblical genealogies that Adam and Eve’s descendants married into an existing human race. Since then I updated it so that the latest edition is 2020. In it I explain how you can follow the Hebrew along from Genesis 1-6 to show that this is exactly what the Hebrew text teaches. Of course my book also explains that such a scenario does not contradict the teachings of the New Testament. Half of my book is still on academia.edu where the article can be found listed at independent.academia.edu/GaryMayer. Perry, I am 80 years old and feel bad that my discoveries are not being found by many people. I appreciate your website, and if you can do anything, it would be appreciated. Gary

    • Hi Gary,

      I don’t know that I can directly help you that much but I can give you some suggestions.

      The ASA – http://www.asa3.org – largest society of Christians who are scientists, accepts papers about these kinds of subjects.

      There are also lots of podcasts and youtube channels where people discuss things like this. You should reach out to those thought leaders and suggest that they interview you.

      You can also pursue the book self-publishing world, I suggest https://selfpublishing.com/ as I know the owners. For scholars who research these topics, if you want to get heard this is the age of going out and selling yourself – and that is how it is done. I wish you the best.

      Perry

    • Gary,

      If you have a blog post that succinctly offers a “tip of the spear” sampling of your argument that can be easily read and understood, that would help.

  11. Cyndi Mettler says:

    Have you read yadayah.com ? I think you will find it useful.

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