The more we discover about the incredible complexity of the information bearing properties of living cells, the bigger the gap becomes. Since the Miller-Urey experiment in the 50’s we’ve made virtually zero progress in the origin of life problem. In fact, the problem has gotten larger over time as we’ve discovered the huge information load contained in cells. Bravo to Paul Davies for not only recognizing what has become obvious, but stating it so clearly.
Hugh Ross has spoken about the gloomy atmosphere at origin of life conventions because the more understanding we gain about the complexity of life, the more remote it makes the possibility of abiogenesis.
Thank God for this program! Who else gets down to the real questions and finds original thinkers like Mr. Davies to take them on? It gives me hope that this is a rational world with a real purpose. Keep going please!
Nice talking to you John. I hope you know I have nothing to do with Mr Lawrence Show. I give all credit to Mr Lawrence And is gang of closer to true. also all of us are big fan followers for bit time, and we sometimes ask about subjects or this personne will great. Il y I am part of those subject beening the subject that is why I watch the great show because I love so much earing about my self. I I watch it 24 /7 when I first it. I I start again. HaHa LOL. I just à joke about I know you guy's don't take this seriously Ha Ha Ha. I no but may we all part the show a little because some of you are use to hair hating me never I remember this word sorry. I what this mean hair or hathing it is when someone dont like me or others. I yes believe me lots of people are total brain washe. I so sad seeing and feeling this totally totally crazy situation. I that is why I need people helping by the way because here in Quebec city justin trudeau that tief know that is possible to me that I am able to perceive each thing he did since he is born. He is extremely smart because yes I discovered many many secrets about him. I wonder why. Hahaha. I like he never informed the citizens from Canada that he have mental issues like his mommy. He that he has big issues dealing with stress anxiety. Having issues like manic depress type 1 with phychotic period on the clock after a manie period and fallow by a period of depression. The I truly believe those election with Justin trudeau if he was honest of course could be the first time in history propably in the world history that a candidate with a terrible mental issue like manic depress type 1 with psychotic effects go to run here in Canada run to be the first elected prime minister in the world history. And guess what it was sure justin trudeau pass with a minimum of 55% population vote positive for him. I guess is press team don't know right it's a secret with mommy who as also this terrible mental health problem. Serious not that I am not serious manic depression type 2 or 1 or probably the most painful the most judge mental issue who do not pass in North America culture. The no chance at all already guilty for what they call them self [NORMAL] 😂😂😂😂😂😁😁😁😭😭😅🤣🤣😱🤑🤪🐵🐵🐵🐱 Hahaha LOL... To hard to stop again sorry 🐵🐵🐵😁😢😕😅😅😕😅😂😂🐸 OK let's be serious a little come 0n guy's I have some things Important to say 🐵🐵🐵😭😭😭😭😭😳😭😅😜😜😜😜😜😜🤣🐵🐵🐵🐵🐵🐵😑=me my self and I Hahaha. Iike I was saying good night no talk about some one with is manipulating mommy who use really a sick way to raise the pour guys is mom fuck right up and she did it close door and hide this manipulatrice sickness. I yes the pour guy with a particular Oedipus complex. She was in total visous but with is complite intelligence for those period. The she commit a horrible crime against is son just be able to manipulate here son just about again money heritage. It's easy now to understand the rest with the way justin trudeau act. The I am sure psychiatric will understand better wy he act like this this actually pour guy wish badly to drop is secret nuclear weapons on me. I sorry I talk to much
@@Chineseguy001 Like everyone else, but he at least recognizes it and tries to follow the path that he thinks will start to give some clues, rather than following the mainstream thinking that has been stagnated for decades.
@@MeRetroGamer Actually there's far more going on in the field of abiogenesis these days than he's admitted to. I doubt it's ignorance on his part and more to do with ego and/or self deception. RNA can function as both working mechanism and self replicating storage at a very basic level. Lipids form vesicles as a natural consequence of mechanical properties (much like soap bubbles) which can act as a semi-permeable containing membrane. this stuff -practically- literally makes itself. 😉 There's been some very interesting research recently (I forget the exact source) about the level of complexity necessary to maintain a sustainable memetic library of RNA molecules in a competitive co-evolving medium - leading to a discovery of sorts; vindicating apparently non-symbiotic parasitism as a foundationally necessary regulatory mechanism. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on right now and he's not mentioned any of it.
@@TheYahmez He is talking about the mechanism and the information - software not hardware. "far more going on in the field of abiogenesis" ? Don't be fooled by the exaggeration and media play of scientists.
@@edenrosest the {software | hardware} dichotomy is a flawed prescriptive prior rather than a sound descriptive reception. I'll attempt an analogy with physics: like saying "I don't care about waves in a field - our concern should be; where do _particles_ come from?" Like trying to clap with one hand.. The closer model requires understanding of wave-particle (non)duality or collapse of the wave function. Using Newtonian mechanics alone to understand quantum effects is nonsense. He's begun with a flawed query which is alone fairly unscientific. The current investigations aren't hopped up nonsense but very promising physical experimentation followed by tentative best fit analysis, modelling and prediction rather than the other way around.
Paul Davies THANK YOU for that profound and deeply insightful talk. And thank you Robert for creating CLOSER TO TRUTH !!! (And asking remarkable questions)
Mike Bin: rather than insight, what i heard was how adamant he was about "because he didn't know" then "nobody knows" when the truth may be that some know but just didn't share it with him. Im not meaning to discount your opinion just expressing mine.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,… they have polluted what I have wrote badly. They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
@@TEE19622 I think there is a sense in which 'know' is not a scientific word. Scientists think, formulate hypotheses, investigate, experiment, come up with theories, etc. With that in mind... Atoms interact according to their nature and circumstance. There is a logic to these interactions. That logic permits the formation of molecules. Molecules also interact according to their nature and circumstance. There is a whole lot more logic governing molecular interaction. If a prerequisite for intelligence is logic then obviously that prerequisite is satisfied by atoms and molecules. Skipping ahead... If it should ever come about that a molecule is formed in accordance with the logic and this molecule interacts with its molecular environment causing a negative copy to accumulate and break off and that copy interacts with its molecular environment causing a negative copy to accumulate and break off, then replication has begun and so has evolution. I find it very, very easy to imagine that happening given the content of the primordial soup and the circumstances simmering it.
I really like this one. Paul Davis is interesting but also he is good at talking about it. Not good like a rehearsed professional (which is a little annoying at times), but good like he is very thorough and at the same time doesn't just use complicated jargon which makes it difficult for people not directly in his field of study/work. Great interview. Great topic.
"To go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium." - Lynn Margulis, agnostic biologist and ex-wife of Carl Sagan
@@ALainSckom If the many theists - as is currently the case in the USA - did not want to establish a theocracy with the motto: one nation under God (their God) or if they did not want to turn back the wheel of time before the Enlightenment, I would only use this word very rarely.
Wow. Genuine respect for Paul Davies here, demonstrating genuine humility and honesty like a "true scientist" and not like a politician spinning some rubbish in order to defend an ideological perspective. Kudos! 👏
It's stuck in it's infancy because it has no future. I would say that nothing has changed since Miller-Urey in 1952, but actually the situation gets worse from year to year for abiogenesis as scientists discover that they are getting further and further away from understanding how life could have possibly originated on it's own. The more we learn, the greater the complexity we discover. Articles and illustrations in scientific journals and magazines depicting possible scenarios for abiogenesis are false, misleading, and strictly wishful thinking and speculation.
@@karlschmied6218 To be honest that seems like it is what's taken place at the moment we have big gaps in our understanding at present but by the way some scientists talk it's like we know it all already.
Synthetic chemist James Tour has a lot to say on the chemistry aspect of this question. It would be great to get his two cents on this discussion, great interview.
Yes, James Tour clears up and exposes a lot of the misinformation and flat out delusion among the "scientific" community. ruclips.net/video/r4sP1E1Jd_Y/видео.html
He has a lot to say except to other scientists. James knows how the game of science is played as he's done it literally hundreds of times. Yet when it comes to OOL he screams from the stands how awesome he is at the game and how terrible the actual players are. He made a lame excuse the other night in the debate that it was very difficult and then undercut himself by naming several others who managed it. It's much easier to fool the rubes than to do the work and show that scientists are in fact clueless and everyone but him is a fraud.
I recently read an incredible book titled “Life Itself” by Robert Rosen. It’s very technical but an unbelievably enjoyable read that describes life as certain types of systems that are described “relationally” in category theory, independent of substrate, and it draws distinctions between organisms and mechanisms.
I bought this book a while back and got maybe halfway through, I remember it being very good, but really slow going due to the technicality, which was very hard to parse.
I really like how Paul fully discloses how little we know and the limits of our understanding here. Often when science is communicated it's done so with much certainty and gives the impression much is tied up. I like hearing about where the frontiers are. The physicists talk much about the theory of everything, yet that is unlikely to explain how complicated organisms come to be. It seems that there are many theories of everything to be generated, each providing an answer to a different question.
You're smarter than most. Wondering and questioning are things that seem to have been left behind as many people don't think for themselves, but by default, absorb the narratives thrown out by media.
Thank you so much!! I am a brazilian economics student but i am very interested in philosophy too and this channel provides to me great material about it. I enjoy this channel so much!
Information is a type of energy, and energy has mass. Did you know Information has a weight. Meaning gravity works on Information. Information has a tangible quantifiable weight and actually gets heavier with density just like everything else too, and that just blows my mind.
One of the best interviews and fundamental questions. So we are basically very organized matter, lnformation and energy working together. It seems so unique compared like stone or whatever.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,… they have polluted what I have wrote badly. They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
Even stone is made out of very organized matter, information and energy working together Everything in life is like that and that's what makes it fascinating! You can always keep wondering how it works!
How information organize itself within the system hmmm I've never stressed on thinking of it this way I've always seen just the objects as they are, even for thoughts food animals..man this applies to everything! like this is what makes each person's experience of life different and unique to himself because the way his information is organized is unique to him alone; we all can have the same inputs, the same data, the same raw objects but each one of us will organize them in their own way that's on the palpable level idk if this goes beyond to how information is organized differently in our DNA or not but it's beautiful to have an explanation for different perspectives to be able to describe it in this way I love it
If an attempt is made to completely describe anything, even if it be by a person of the most extraordinary genius, it is impossible not to hit a wall of ignorance at some stage or the other.
Oh yes, we will certainly come to the end/wall, as has always been said, BUT by damm we go on don't we and keep questioning and discovering and will look back on those such as you who bet agnist the human imagination.
And behind this wall of ignorance many people see their personal gap filler, their God of the gaps. Because they are afraid or stressed by their knowledge of ignorance.
The idea of an emergent property whereby information is passed on, stored, retrieved, reproduced, etc., reminds me of the same questions asked about consciousness. I'm not being new-age-y here, but consciousness seems to share the same toolbox as life. Of course, consciousness cannot exist without life (at least as far as we understand either), but consciousness seems to exploit all it can from life (if that makes any sense).
All Closer To Truth Videos Are Excellent: Everyone on the program who discusses various scientific hypothesises and theories greatly enlightens all of us. Sincerely, FREE PRESS WITHOUT BORDERS
"No, see I think the big gap is the first step (from chemical soup to life)" It amazes me that one of my biggest shifts in thinking was to listen to Prof Davies so many years ago and concluding that science points so clearly to the existence of God, and then to find out that he doesn't have the same conclusion. He has a 'cosmic religion' that there must be an underlying purpose, but he doesn't see God as the go to answer. Every time I listen to him, he reinforces my faith. I sincerely hope that one day he will have his Damascus moment as a reward for leading so many of us to God by his work in crystalizing the questions that have no answers (in science). Thanks Prof Davies!! (Although I am sure he would at this point rather be remembered as a brilliant physicist than an evangelist!)
He is totally right. There's a huge gap and scientists are looking in the wrong place, similar to looking for the keys lost in the dark house outside under the street light ... because it's easier to see there.
around 07:20 Terrence Deacon would first state that you need a system generates equally entropy and negentropy so that both tendencies constrain - in order to obtain an identity - and energize - in order to obtain biological process within the identity - the system. Plus, that reasoning is in straight line with Lupasco's logic of energy which states that when heterogeneous and homogeneous forces are equally present in system, a third included - here life - that includes both antagonistic forces has no choice but to emerge.
I appreciate Paul Davies recognizing that the problem of the origin of life: 1. Is currently nowhere close to being solved (in a naturalistic way) 2. Requires an explanation of the origin of information, and information processing and copying systems I wish he was more open to the theory of Intelligent Design, which offers a very good explanation for these problems.
@@chrisbarnett5303 So non intelligence giving rise to intelligence is a better explanation? I didn't even mention God. Keep your illogical statements outta here.
Thank you Robert for giving us a sense of belonging when it comes to the questions that haunt us all. My question is: why is everybody ignoring "Darwin's Black Box..." by Behe, beyond his controversial idea of intelligent design? Isn't he asking the right questions and proposing just a right/wrong answer? I read his book a long time ago and his detailed explanation of what is needed to kick-start life goes right into the essence of Paul Davis' concern. And: no, is not about God or religion...
"The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle's Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."
If the existence of highly complex life on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the existence of a highly complex god is the "ultimate Boeing 747" that truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.
@@JamesCormier actually, we're talking about two categorically different things, the naturalistic mechanisms and a being. Logically the implications of one are not the same as the implications of the other. If I say on a much simpler level that shaking the box of Lego will never produce the object pictured on the outside but will rather only wear out the box or the Lego before anything is possibly created. Then to say that it requires a being with intelligence to assemble it, is reasonable. We know what it takes to assemble Lego, then why not look for the same categorical type of thing? I understand the difficulty of proposing a being like God , but I don't think it makes him an illogical option. but I think you are right, explaining how God has existed for forever is unanswerable to us. And what would be the difference definitionally between God and whatever the supercapable materialistic power be? We can't propose the idea of an all powerful God but we can propose the idea of a materialistic mechanism that has brought forth the information, energy, material and proper composition of life? Still sounds like an all powerful god.
The guy on the left is totally misinformed while Davies at least appreciates the enormous chasm between what is not life and life, so I'd say it's like a child wanting his way speaking with an adult.
I read a book by Paul Davies many years ago on the search for extraterrestrial life called The eerie silence and his clarity of explanation and frankness on the topic changed my way of thinking. A real beacon in a world bedazzled by chimeras. Robert Lawrence Kuhn's work is invaluable. He has created an inspiring encyclopedia of work, touching on topics that others would feel embarrassed to discuss. I hope his work is given the recognition it deserves!
Drake is interesting, but if this very unclear factor is added to the mix (of the odds of the creation of life from non life), it can take down the whole equation. {A gazillion stars/planets} x {various other stuff} x {unknown process of creating life} = ??? It's like adding a null factor to an equation, making the outcome unknown
Great talk, rarely do we get a real take on where science really is at this point in time on the genesis of life. Most people think it’s a foregone conclusion that it is known the way most other scientists talk
There my be a pattern connection with amino acids...and the ability to turn into proteins in milliseconds...to the correct protein...which the odds are something like 1 followed by 300 zeroes...against. To run through the computations would take forever...but somehow...the amino acids pick the right combination every time...almost instantly. That is some serious software.
I don't see it as a dichotomy between life and non-life but between inanimate and animate. What we call life is ordinary matter that is animated and as a consequence is more able to inform us. It's all matter and energy, and consciousness. But the inanimate can't inform us of their inner experience, as animated objects can. When a person is dead, their body might still be intact, but it is inanimate, and is exactly the same as a boulder. Then, you ask, what is all this - this "reality" - and where is my soul? That's an entirely different question.
finally someone who admits that asking how is possibile life from non-life is a very good question and there's not an easy answer. But apparently lots of people (ordinary people and scientists) think that it's not big deal, that the answer is easy. They have no clue. Understanding how we get life from a non living matter is THE big mistery of reality.
No, I don't think that any biologists think it was easy. Respect for the difficulty of explaining the origin of life is universal among scientists who have actually worked on this problem. This speaker is starting in the wrong place. Information stored in nucleic acids didn't come first. It came near the end of the process. Selection had to happen somehow before genetics. Chance would never get there. Nucleotides are really hard to make.
The problem here is not defining that what is being talked about is physical life which we would agree is elemental and has its origin in the elements backed by and molded by forces. This is not life itself and if we know what the origin of elemental life is still we do not know the origin of life. What came before the elements and forces? Did they just arise out of what was there and where did what was there come from? If consciousness is fundamental and at different rates of vibration when manifest but vibrationless when not manifest, it would explain a lot. Manifest life as a play of ideas on substance, all being consciousness, appears to be the only realistic solution to the problem of what is life?
I think this is why consciousness is so hard to substantiate in any substrate other than the brain because the material must be alive (whatever alive actually means)
Research into abiogenesis is further on than most people think. There was a breakthrough in the last couple of weeks that showed that volcanic glass could act as a catalyst for forming RNA.
This question assumes that the entirety of reality is not alive and aware. Because, another way of looking at things is that the reality that we generally think is all-encompassing, is actually something completely different and something that we could not have previously believed or even thought of.
Thank you Paul. As one of deterministic leanings and a molecular biologist this is the one area I have a real dilemma with my “faith” in science. I concluded many moons ago we are missing something fundamental in our current theories of Abiogenesis. There’s not even any point looking at the maths of it all until the mechanism is known and pushing the solution out to another planet isn’t a satisfactory solution either.
Right, and the very idea of a "mechanism" from a random collection of molecules is in itself contradictory. It's shocking to me that this guy on the left thinks it's not that big of a deal to go from not life to life. That's Joe Biden level delusional. He says to Davies that his skepticism about the ease of transition from non-life to life is not a common one, a lot of scientists blah blah blah. He is completely misinformed. I suppose he also thinks it's not that big of a deal for the universe to come into existence from nothing (no space, time, matter, or energy). The God "hypothesis" solves these and many other fundamental questions, but not a lot of people WANT to hear that.
How about involving Embryology in the process of finding out what life is ( fertilization, gastrulation, the development of the ecto - meso - endoderm), the development of the different organ systems …. Etc. & trying to find out the difference between a hen, & human beings & what makes a human being human - with all its qualities !
We are still in a material age and all is thought to begin with matter by those who are materialists. In the higher ages those who remained materialists, who still didn’t get it, were confined to manual labor, they were not allowed into any other field. That, obviously, is not the case today, and materialists play a role in this material age, we have to start there, as that is where we are, until more is known about the quantum, electromagnetism, and magnetism itself, not to mention ideas, mind, and consciousness. So far we have just have a worm’s eye view of reality with Darwinism, a biological take on the nature of reality, wrongly extrapolated beyond biology, to encompass all of reality, An understanding of the role the three forces play plus an understanding of forces predating elementary forces, of consciousness (now the hard problem) and mind as well will likely change this perspective in the future as we move into an age of electricities and forces to an understanding of mind and consciousness.
Is the idea that there is no free will diametrically opposed to an assertion of living things? Is life the contravention of determinism? Is life the fundamental contradiction of determinism?
Life starts with formation of hydrocarbon from inorganic materials. Then from hydrocarbon (organic) to life is a mystery. I think somehow the ETC electron transport chain or it's simplistic form has to be first molecule needed for self propagation as it captures energy by redox from sun (photosynthetic life) or other way (chemosynthetic life). I think chemosynthetic evolved from photosynthetic life.
How do 'stumbling molecules turn into information storage systems'? ...I can tell you - it is molecular replication, likely inevitable, which begets replicated complexity - which is then the said information system.
To me every living thing ( humans included ) is an intelligent information system of multiple degrees of complexity, the most complex I.I.S. of all is the Cosmos itself
Getting from chemicals to DNA is not understood at all. How DNA creates cells in multiple configurations is not understood at all. Life is a mystery to science.
Agreed, even if you have 100% of what it takes to create a living creature as in one that has just recently died, after a short period of time it is impossible to bring that creature back to life.
Hmm. All through this video I kept wondering what role, if any, does consciousness play in defining life. A robot could seemingly be programmed to replicate itself, including the instructions, but that doesn’t make it alive. I then also wondered if consciousness matters since, as it seems at the moment, you can really never know if something is conscious. I cant even be sure if the cells in my own body are conscious. Heck, I know my consciousness seems to reside in my head/brain, but I have no idea if that’s from where my consciousness comes! At the end, we might find that a rock has consciousness, but yet it doesn’t self-replicate. So if something is self-aware, but doesn’t self-replicate with instructions, how do you define that?
A robot actually couldn't replicate itself as the robot would need a factory to at least provide it with the parts. A cell is quite different since it manufactures its own parts.
A cell can't tell itself that it's alive and ponder its existence, so I think the consciousness thing is dead on arrival, so to speak. I suppose that if a cell never died, and never replicated, and never changed size because its input was same as its output, that would be the very minimum case for being alive.
tbardoni "I know my consciousness seems to reside in my head/brain, but I have no idea if that’s from where my consciousness comes!" Put it this way, you can lose limbs and your consciousness remains intact. You can transplant/surgically manipulate nearly every organ in the body and consciousness remains intact. But any kind of brain trauma has the potential to radically alter both you conscious experience and identity so it's fairly clear where consciousness arises from I think.
@@sierrabianca From where does consciousness come in single-celled paramecium with no brain? Suck up a paramecium in a syringe and it learns to escape faster each time. So not only does the paramecium learn and have spatial awareness, it also has a * desire * to leave the syringe. Yet, it has no brain or central nervous system.
@@sentientflower7891 Your argument is one of sophistication and complexity. But its not a grand step to imagine a robot having sophisticated programming to the point of gathering its own raw materials to replicate itself.
Could the epigenetic programming be sourced from the "quantum field"? Somewhere along the line, the laws change from the very small to the very large. It would seem that inherent programming would make that happen. Maybe the source material for our universe has been recycled from another universe via a black hole. Maybe we are the result of source material being funneled through a black hole and ejected into a new "space" where a new universe evolves...but the original encoding remains from the source. The information was not lost in the transition.
Watch the Martin Hanczyc TED talk on the line between life and non-life, here on RUclips. You'll be amazed by the demonstrations of very simple chemical mixtures behaving in ways that are uncannily similar to living organisms...including self-replication.
Something which I think is not generally appreciated is the size of the system where this takes place. The mass of the oceans is about 10^21 kg. The development of life happened in perhaps 300 million years. The measure of opportunity is 3*10^29 kg-years. Maybe only a fraction of the ocean volume is in play, perhaps geothermal vents, but is is still an enormous volume. That represents a very large number of throws of the dice. You cannot hope to replicate this in a laboratory where you can do an experiment using, say, a liter for one year. The earth has 10^29 times more chances for the right thing to happen. Mars had a much smaller amount of liquid water for a much shorter period of time so for Mars to have a chance, it must be a lot easier than if earth needed all of those chances. It is also possible that it took billions of earths for one to have got lucky.
To use the brick to city analogy, scientists are not even close to understanding how a naturally occurring and quite complex substance such as clay could organise itself spontaneously into a building block without some intelligent input let alone how bricks could organise themselves into a city. I am intrigued as to why the scientific community along with government and private backing do not set up some institute to explore how bricks came from clay in the same way they developed the Hadron Collider to explore sub atomic particles or launched space stations and telescopes to explore space.
And so it all boils down to Information The last observation, that there has to be a pattern to this information, leads quite naturally to Consciousness
In my opinion why transformation from non life to life is impossible now is the rate of space expansion at that time is different from what is now and the rate is far more enormous then and there than we experience here and now localy.
well doc davies is of course right on the money that getting from a soup of chemicals to organized life is a profound leap that no one is anywhere close to understanding.
Taking about the information of life. We tend to think of information as something that intelligence uses to achieve an end. Forget that. We are talking the first life or even proto-life. At this stage, or maybe it's 'form this point of view', information is structure. Structure made of DNA or RNA. This structure, these structures, have various rudimentary capabilities, which capabilities can be improved in terms of conserving the original structure. How structure supports capabilities and how capabilities are extended are the questions. At some point we call an extended capability intelligence.
Robert asked a question; what is the first step you have to have for the structure of life to exist. The answer is the photon, Photon should be the first particle on the periodic table with atomic number 0. Photons are particles of mind and this makes mind the fundamental stuff that generates life.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,… they have polluted what I have wrote badly. They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
Does this mean, according to Prof. Davies, to bridge the gap from non-life to life, not only does one need to achieve life in a single leap, but one must simultaneously achieve the blueprint and the assembly instructions, all in that same single leap across two other gaps? When the host indicates getting to simple life is easy, Prof. Davies says, “that is exactly wrong!! Does this mean the absolute minimum is at least a trifecta of an organism, the DNA as a “dumb object” and an information management system, both of which must be replicated? Is it accurate to assert, the organism has a first complexity, the blueprint (DNA code) a second complexity different in kind from the first complexity, and the information management system a third complexity, also different in kind from each of the first and second complexities?
There are currently no known examples, in nature or science, where one life form will convert to a different life form (i.e. different body plan) by change in the DNA. Current understanding in the field of genetics seems to indicate that varying body plans (for example, the difference between an octopus and praying mantis) do not reside within the DNA. Genes within the DNA of a particular organism code for the different proteins required to build and allow that particular organism to function.
I almost fell off my seat when this guy basically said it's not that big of a transition from non-life to life.
The more we discover about the incredible complexity of the information bearing properties of living cells, the bigger the gap becomes. Since the Miller-Urey experiment in the 50’s we’ve made virtually zero progress in the origin of life problem. In fact, the problem has gotten larger over time as we’ve discovered the huge information load contained in cells. Bravo to Paul Davies for not only recognizing what has become obvious, but stating it so clearly.
Hugh Ross has spoken about the gloomy atmosphere at origin of life conventions because the more understanding we gain about the complexity of life, the more remote it makes the possibility of abiogenesis.
Do you really believe we don't know the true origin of life? I mean we're dealing with some of the brightest minds here.
@@Ekam-Sat huh? If you know something we don’t you could always share😂
Fascinating topic for sure. Well said, Rand….
@@jamespenny9482 The possibility is 1 given we're here.....
Im with Paul on this one, life is so complex and interdependent.
Thank God for this program! Who else gets down to the real questions and finds original thinkers like Mr. Davies to take them on? It gives me hope that this is a rational world with a real purpose. Keep going please!
Nice talking to you John. I hope you know I have nothing to do with Mr Lawrence Show.
I give all credit to Mr Lawrence
And is gang of closer to true. also all of us are big fan followers for bit time, and we sometimes ask about subjects or this personne will great. Il y I am part of those subject beening the subject that is why I watch the great show because I love so much earing about my self. I I watch it 24 /7 when I first it. I I start again. HaHa
LOL. I just à joke about I know you guy's don't take this seriously Ha Ha Ha. I no but may we all part the show a little because some of you are use to hair hating me never I remember this word sorry. I what this mean hair or hathing it is when someone dont like me or others. I yes believe me lots of people are total brain washe. I so sad seeing and feeling this totally totally crazy situation. I that is why I need people helping by the way because here in Quebec city justin trudeau that tief know that is possible to me that I am able to perceive each thing he did since he is born. He is extremely smart because yes I discovered many many secrets about him. I wonder why. Hahaha. I like he never informed the citizens from Canada that he have mental issues like his mommy. He that he has big issues dealing with stress anxiety. Having issues like manic depress type 1 with phychotic period on the clock after a manie period and fallow by a period of depression. The I truly believe those election with Justin trudeau if he was honest of course could be the first time in history propably in the world history that a candidate with a terrible mental issue like manic depress type 1 with psychotic effects go to run here in Canada run to be the first elected prime minister in the world history. And guess what it was sure justin trudeau pass with a minimum of 55% population vote positive for him. I guess is press team don't know right it's a secret with mommy who as also this terrible mental health problem. Serious not that I am not serious manic depression type 2 or 1 or probably the most painful the most judge mental issue who do not pass in North America culture. The no chance at all already guilty for what they call them self [NORMAL] 😂😂😂😂😂😁😁😁😭😭😅🤣🤣😱🤑🤪🐵🐵🐵🐱 Hahaha LOL... To hard to stop again sorry 🐵🐵🐵😁😢😕😅😅😕😅😂😂🐸 OK let's be serious a little come 0n guy's I have some things Important to say 🐵🐵🐵😭😭😭😭😭😳😭😅😜😜😜😜😜😜🤣🐵🐵🐵🐵🐵🐵😑=me my self and I Hahaha. Iike I was saying good night no talk about some one with is manipulating mommy who use really a sick way to raise the pour guys is mom fuck right up and she did it close door and hide this manipulatrice sickness. I yes the pour guy with a particular Oedipus complex. She was in total visous but with is complite intelligence for those period. The she commit a horrible crime against is son just be able to manipulate here son just about again money heritage. It's easy now to understand the rest with the way justin trudeau act. The I am sure psychiatric will understand better wy he act like this this actually pour guy wish badly to drop is secret nuclear weapons on me. I sorry I talk to much
god had nothing to do with it
@@1man1bike1road Prove it.
@@deistormmods what you want me to prouve to you. Did you have a probleme with me. Juste Tell me that is it.
@@godthecreatoryhvh681 I was speaking to Stephen.
Always enjoy Paul Davies talks, he seems to have a no nonsense and understandable way of explanation on a subject.
He has no clue.
@@Chineseguy001 Like everyone else, but he at least recognizes it and tries to follow the path that he thinks will start to give some clues, rather than following the mainstream thinking that has been stagnated for decades.
@@MeRetroGamer Actually there's far more going on in the field of abiogenesis these days than he's admitted to. I doubt it's ignorance on his part and more to do with ego and/or self deception.
RNA can function as both working mechanism and self replicating storage at a very basic level.
Lipids form vesicles as a natural consequence of mechanical properties (much like soap bubbles) which can act as a semi-permeable containing membrane.
this stuff -practically- literally makes itself. 😉
There's been some very interesting research recently (I forget the exact source) about the level of complexity necessary to maintain a sustainable memetic library of RNA molecules in a competitive co-evolving medium - leading to a discovery of sorts; vindicating apparently non-symbiotic parasitism as a foundationally necessary regulatory mechanism.
There's a lot of exciting stuff going on right now and he's not mentioned any of it.
@@TheYahmez He is talking about the mechanism and the information - software not hardware.
"far more going on in the field of abiogenesis" ? Don't be fooled by the exaggeration and media play of scientists.
@@edenrosest the {software | hardware} dichotomy is a flawed prescriptive prior rather than a sound descriptive reception.
I'll attempt an analogy with physics:
like saying "I don't care about waves in a field - our concern should be; where do _particles_ come from?" Like trying to clap with one hand..
The closer model requires understanding of wave-particle (non)duality or collapse of the wave function. Using Newtonian mechanics alone to understand quantum effects is nonsense.
He's begun with a flawed query which is alone fairly unscientific.
The current investigations aren't hopped up nonsense but very promising physical experimentation followed by tentative best fit analysis, modelling and prediction rather than the other way around.
Paul Davies THANK YOU for that profound and deeply insightful talk. And thank you Robert for creating CLOSER TO TRUTH !!! (And asking remarkable questions)
Mike Bin: rather than insight, what i heard was how adamant he was about "because he didn't know" then "nobody knows" when the truth may be that some know but just didn't share it with him. Im not meaning to discount your opinion just expressing mine.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,…
they have polluted what I have wrote badly.
They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
@@TEE19622 you didn't state an opinion. obviously you don't know either
@@TEE19622 I think there is a sense in which 'know' is not a scientific word.
Scientists think, formulate hypotheses, investigate, experiment, come up with theories, etc.
With that in mind...
Atoms interact according to their nature and circumstance.
There is a logic to these interactions.
That logic permits the formation of molecules.
Molecules also interact according to their nature and circumstance.
There is a whole lot more logic governing molecular interaction.
If a prerequisite for intelligence is logic then
obviously that prerequisite is satisfied by atoms and molecules.
Skipping ahead...
If it should ever come about that
a molecule is formed in accordance with the logic and
this molecule interacts with its molecular environment
causing a negative copy to accumulate and break off and
that copy interacts with its molecular environment
causing a negative copy to accumulate and break off,
then replication has begun and so has evolution.
I find it very, very easy to imagine that happening
given the content of the primordial soup and
the circumstances simmering it.
I really like this one. Paul Davis is interesting but also he is good at talking about it. Not good like a rehearsed professional (which is a little annoying at times), but good like he is very thorough and at the same time doesn't just use complicated jargon which makes it difficult for people not directly in his field of study/work. Great interview. Great topic.
I agree. Someone like Michio Kaku is annoyingly rehearsed when he talks. There are lots of them in the astronomy/astrophysics realm.
"To go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium." - Lynn Margulis, agnostic biologist and ex-wife of Carl Sagan
The larger the gap the more space for the god of the gaps.
@@karlschmied6218 I love how atheist always fall to mention god out of no reason.
@@ALainSckom If the many theists - as is currently the case in the USA - did not want to establish a theocracy with the motto: one nation under God (their God) or if they did not want to turn back the wheel of time before the Enlightenment, I would only use this word very rarely.
Wow. Genuine respect for Paul Davies here, demonstrating genuine humility and honesty like a "true scientist" and not like a politician spinning some rubbish in order to defend an ideological perspective. Kudos! 👏
Brilliant analysis by Paul - This field of scientific research is in its infancy.
No, P. Davies is using the god of the gaps.
It's stuck in it's infancy because it has no future. I would say that nothing has changed since Miller-Urey in 1952, but actually the situation gets worse from year to year for abiogenesis as scientists discover that they are getting further and further away from understanding how life could have possibly originated on it's own. The more we learn, the greater the complexity we discover. Articles and illustrations in scientific journals and magazines depicting possible scenarios for abiogenesis are false, misleading, and strictly wishful thinking and speculation.
I respect that man a lot. There's a risk in scientific dogma and a true scientist knows a lot of stuff but also knows what they don't know.
"scientific dogma" is an oxymoron. I'd say there is a risk that people see science as built on dogmas.
@@karlschmied6218 To be honest that seems like it is what's taken place at the moment we have big gaps in our understanding at present but by the way some scientists talk it's like we know it all already.
There are always "some scientists". I think Basiten Millecam says it right. So my comment is actually redundant.
Synthetic chemist James Tour has a lot to say on the chemistry aspect of this question. It would be great to get his two cents on this discussion, great interview.
I agree.
Yep. Did a nine part series on it.
Yes, James Tour clears up and exposes a lot of the misinformation and flat out delusion among the "scientific" community. ruclips.net/video/r4sP1E1Jd_Y/видео.html
He has a lot to say except to other scientists. James knows how the game of science is played as he's done it literally hundreds of times. Yet when it comes to OOL he screams from the stands how awesome he is at the game and how terrible the actual players are. He made a lame excuse the other night in the debate that it was very difficult and then undercut himself by naming several others who managed it. It's much easier to fool the rubes than to do the work and show that scientists are in fact clueless and everyone but him is a fraud.
I love all your content. Thanks for the continued search.
I recently read an incredible book titled “Life Itself” by Robert Rosen. It’s very technical but an unbelievably enjoyable read that describes life as certain types of systems that are described “relationally” in category theory, independent of substrate, and it draws distinctions between organisms and mechanisms.
Go to 33th street on 7.7.2022 at 14:27 youll have best momment of yours life....Gruss auf dem HagenNrw
@@tc25d The book does a much better job than I could
I bought this book a while back and got maybe halfway through, I remember it being very good, but really slow going due to the technicality, which was very hard to parse.
I really like how Paul fully discloses how little we know and the limits of our understanding here. Often when science is communicated it's done so with much certainty and gives the impression much is tied up. I like hearing about where the frontiers are. The physicists talk much about the theory of everything, yet that is unlikely to explain how complicated organisms come to be. It seems that there are many theories of everything to be generated, each providing an answer to a different question.
I’ve often wondered about this question. Good interview!
Yes fundamental question.
You're smarter than most. Wondering and questioning are things that seem to have been left behind as many people don't think for themselves, but by default, absorb the narratives thrown out by media.
Thank you so much!! I am a brazilian economics student but i am very interested in philosophy too and this channel provides to me great material about it. I enjoy this channel so much!
This is mind blowing material! 🤯
Information is a type of energy, and energy has mass. Did you know Information has a weight. Meaning gravity works on Information. Information has a tangible quantifiable weight and actually gets heavier with density just like everything else too, and that just blows my mind.
One of the best interviews and fundamental questions.
So we are basically very organized matter, lnformation and energy working together.
It seems so unique compared like stone or whatever.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,…
they have polluted what I have wrote badly.
They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
Even stone is made out of very organized matter, information and energy working together
Everything in life is like that and that's what makes it fascinating!
You can always keep wondering how it works!
How information organize itself within the system hmmm I've never stressed on thinking of it this way I've always seen just the objects as they are, even for thoughts food animals..man this applies to everything! like this is what makes each person's experience of life different and unique to himself because the way his information is organized is unique to him alone; we all can have the same inputs, the same data, the same raw objects but each one of us will organize them in their own way that's on the palpable level idk if this goes beyond to how information is organized differently in our DNA or not but it's beautiful to have an explanation for different perspectives to be able to describe it in this way I love it
I really like the way Paul Davies thinks and approaches the question. His various books are also well written.
I’ve watched so many of these and this is one of the best
Really enjoy P. Davies profound & deeply insightful talks !!
If an attempt is made to completely describe anything, even if it be by a person of the most extraordinary genius, it is impossible not to hit a wall of ignorance at some stage or the other.
What does that matter to the overall quest?
True. How far down can you go? Eventually strays into philosophy and theology.
Oh yes, we will certainly come to the end/wall, as has always been said, BUT by damm we go on don't we and keep questioning and discovering and will look back on those such as you who bet agnist the human imagination.
And behind this wall of ignorance many people see their personal gap filler, their God of the gaps. Because they are afraid or stressed by their knowledge of ignorance.
Excellent episode thanks Robert!
The idea of an emergent property whereby information is passed on, stored, retrieved, reproduced, etc., reminds me of the same questions asked about consciousness. I'm not being new-age-y here, but consciousness seems to share the same toolbox as life. Of course, consciousness cannot exist without life (at least as far as we understand either), but consciousness seems to exploit all it can from life (if that makes any sense).
All Closer To Truth Videos Are Excellent: Everyone on the program who discusses various scientific hypothesises and theories greatly enlightens all of us. Sincerely, FREE PRESS WITHOUT BORDERS
Thank you for addressing the haunting questions too many gloss over.
"No, see I think the big gap is the first step (from chemical soup to life)" It amazes me that one of my biggest shifts in thinking was to listen to Prof Davies so many years ago and concluding that science points so clearly to the existence of God, and then to find out that he doesn't have the same conclusion. He has a 'cosmic religion' that there must be an underlying purpose, but he doesn't see God as the go to answer. Every time I listen to him, he reinforces my faith. I sincerely hope that one day he will have his Damascus moment as a reward for leading so many of us to God by his work in crystalizing the questions that have no answers (in science). Thanks Prof Davies!! (Although I am sure he would at this point rather be remembered as a brilliant physicist than an evangelist!)
Exactly!
missed this video when it was posted - excellent conversation!
Brilliant. Beautiful. Elegant. Probably truer than other hypotheses. Would love to hear a conversation between Davies and Chalmers!!!
me too !! i would add also Hameroff. Kastrup and one between Koch and Tononi !!
He is totally right. There's a huge gap and scientists are looking in the wrong place, similar to looking for the keys lost in the dark house outside under the street light ... because it's easier to see there.
Well them please show us where you have hidden all the keys. Otherwise STFU.
around 07:20 Terrence Deacon would first state that you need a system generates equally entropy and negentropy so that both tendencies constrain - in order to obtain an identity - and energize - in order to obtain biological process within the identity - the system. Plus, that reasoning is in straight line with Lupasco's logic of energy which states that when heterogeneous and homogeneous forces are equally present in system, a third included - here life - that includes both antagonistic forces has no choice but to emerge.
Paul. I read most of your books. They're a treasure in my bookshelf.
Get married and in a few years you will find what the gap is from life to no life.
Whoaa!! Bada Bing! That was cold LOL😆
Haha! Awesome
And true!
If you meant birth. It is first non life then life when fertilization has happened.
Wow you know too....😂
“You have to get married sometime. You can’t go on enjoying yourself forever.” - Benny Hill
Finally someone (mr Davies) I understand on this channel. 😊
I appreciate Paul Davies recognizing that the problem of the origin of life:
1. Is currently nowhere close to being solved (in a naturalistic way)
2. Requires an explanation of the origin of information, and information processing and copying systems
I wish he was more open to the theory of Intelligent Design, which offers a very good explanation for these problems.
Without an intelligent agent this would never happen.
True
god of the gaps
@@chrisbarnett5303 So non intelligence giving rise to intelligence is a better explanation? I didn't even mention God. Keep your illogical statements outta here.
@@deistormmods just comes to show the atheists have a religion and agenda of their own.
Thank you Robert for giving us a sense of belonging when it comes to the questions that haunt us all. My question is: why is everybody ignoring "Darwin's Black Box..." by Behe, beyond his controversial idea of intelligent design? Isn't he asking the right questions and proposing just a right/wrong answer? I read his book a long time ago and his detailed explanation of what is needed to kick-start life goes right into the essence of Paul Davis' concern. And: no, is not about God or religion...
Behe is ONLY about God. Read here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Black_Box
It was with Behe. Davis is much more circumspect.
"Circular arguments occur when a person's argument repeats what they already assumed before without arriving at a new conclusion."
"The junkyard tornado, also known as Hoyle's Fallacy, is an argument used to deride the probability of abiogenesis as comparable to "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747."
If the existence of highly complex life on Earth is the equivalent of the implausible junkyard Boeing 747, the existence of a highly complex god is the "ultimate Boeing 747" that truly does require the seemingly impossible to explain its existence.
@@JamesCormier actually, we're talking about two categorically different things, the naturalistic mechanisms and a being. Logically the implications of one are not the same as the implications of the other. If I say on a much simpler level that shaking the box of Lego will never produce the object pictured on the outside but will rather only wear out the box or the Lego before anything is possibly created. Then to say that it requires a being with intelligence to assemble it, is reasonable. We know what it takes to assemble Lego, then why not look for the same categorical type of thing? I understand the difficulty of proposing a being like God , but I don't think it makes him an illogical option. but I think you are right, explaining how God has existed for forever is unanswerable to us. And what would be the difference definitionally between God and whatever the supercapable materialistic power be? We can't propose the idea of an all powerful God but we can propose the idea of a materialistic mechanism that has brought forth the information, energy, material and proper composition of life? Still sounds like an all powerful god.
To understand the gap it's useful to analyze the seeming "discontinuity" arising when a being dies.
no it isn't
I 2nd the need for a James Tour interview on this subject.
Not just a brilliant scientists but a wise one.
Brilliant conversation! Thank you both!
The guy on the left is totally misinformed while Davies at least appreciates the enormous chasm between what is not life and life, so I'd say it's like a child wanting his way speaking with an adult.
I read a book by Paul Davies many years ago on the search for extraterrestrial life called The eerie silence and his clarity of explanation and frankness on the topic changed my way of thinking. A real beacon in a world bedazzled by chimeras. Robert Lawrence Kuhn's work is invaluable. He has created an inspiring encyclopedia of work, touching on topics that others would feel embarrassed to discuss. I hope his work is given the recognition it deserves!
I like the scientific integrity of prof. Paul davies
one of the most likable scientist around
Finally finally finally! Somebody getting real about this topic. The Drake equation is rubbish.
Drake is interesting, but if this very unclear factor is added to the mix (of the odds of the creation of life from non life), it can take down the whole equation. {A gazillion stars/planets} x {various other stuff} x {unknown process of creating life} = ??? It's like adding a null factor to an equation, making the outcome unknown
Great talk, rarely do we get a real take on where science really is at this point in time on the genesis of life. Most people think it’s a foregone conclusion that it is known the way most other scientists talk
I've never seen a leading scientist in that field talking like your straw men.
Information is energy. Or the other way around. Maybe.
There my be a pattern connection with amino acids...and the ability to turn into proteins in milliseconds...to the correct protein...which the odds are something like 1 followed by 300 zeroes...against.
To run through the computations would take forever...but somehow...the amino acids pick the right combination every time...almost instantly.
That is some serious software.
I don't see it as a dichotomy between life and non-life but between inanimate and animate. What we call life is ordinary matter that is animated and as a consequence is more able to inform us. It's all matter and energy, and consciousness. But the inanimate can't inform us of their inner experience, as animated objects can. When a person is dead, their body might still be intact, but it is inanimate, and is exactly the same as a boulder. Then, you ask, what is all this - this "reality" - and where is my soul? That's an entirely different question.
finally someone who admits that asking how is possibile life from non-life is a very good question and there's not an easy answer. But apparently lots of people (ordinary people and scientists) think that it's not big deal, that the answer is easy. They have no clue. Understanding how we get life from a non living matter is THE big mistery of reality.
Perfectly said Paul!!!
''Life'' : an enclosed biochemical system which tries to survive in the sea of entropy...and it finally fails''
No, I don't think that any biologists think it was easy. Respect for the difficulty of explaining the origin of life is universal among scientists who have actually worked on this problem. This speaker is starting in the wrong place. Information stored in nucleic acids didn't come first. It came near the end of the process. Selection had to happen somehow before genetics. Chance would never get there. Nucleotides are really hard to make.
The problem here is not defining that what is being talked about is physical life which we would agree is elemental and has its origin in the elements backed by and molded by forces. This is not life itself and if we know what the origin of elemental life is still we do not know the origin of life. What came before the elements and forces? Did they just arise out of what was there and where did what was there come from? If consciousness is fundamental and at different rates of vibration when manifest but vibrationless when not manifest, it would explain a lot. Manifest life as a play of ideas on substance, all being consciousness, appears to be the only realistic solution to the problem of what is life?
It addition to my prior comment it is likely that consciousness is fundamental and that mind is elemental and emerges with quantum events.
@@ALavin-en1krthis is just word salad
I think this is why consciousness is so hard to substantiate in any substrate other than the brain because the material must be alive (whatever alive actually means)
Research into abiogenesis is further on than most people think. There was a breakthrough in the last couple of weeks that showed that volcanic glass could act as a catalyst for forming RNA.
Oh I love his books so much!
Truth is simple but difficult to understand from the point of complexity. 👍
3:35
within a cell, information density increases where there is top down causation of chemical molecules?
Whenever we go too deep into the nature or casue of something we fail to understand it.
Go ahead! Make a simple living cell. Win the Nobel.
I wonder if you can program a primordial soup and leave it to run randomly? Off to find out...
i totally agree with Paul Davies.
Information and storage managment...how was it done? Cells are amazingly complex. Viruses less so but they need cells to replicate.
Information can only arise from intelligence period. Design requires a designer
This question assumes that the entirety of reality is not alive and aware.
Because, another way of looking at things is that the reality that we generally think is all-encompassing, is actually something completely different and something that we could not have previously believed or even thought of.
does the formation of a cell with membrane boundary allow complexity to develop life?
Thank you Paul. As one of deterministic leanings and a molecular biologist this is the one area I have a real dilemma with my “faith” in science. I concluded many moons ago we are missing something fundamental in our current theories of Abiogenesis. There’s not even any point looking at the maths of it all until the mechanism is known and pushing the solution out to another planet isn’t a satisfactory solution either.
Right, and the very idea of a "mechanism" from a random collection of molecules is in itself contradictory. It's shocking to me that this guy on the left thinks it's not that big of a deal to go from not life to life. That's Joe Biden level delusional. He says to Davies that his skepticism about the ease of transition from non-life to life is not a common one, a lot of scientists blah blah blah. He is completely misinformed. I suppose he also thinks it's not that big of a deal for the universe to come into existence from nothing (no space, time, matter, or energy). The God "hypothesis" solves these and many other fundamental questions, but not a lot of people WANT to hear that.
I wonder if answering the question of life would be easier or harder if we discover alien life?
How about involving Embryology in the process of finding out what life is ( fertilization, gastrulation, the development of the ecto - meso - endoderm), the development of the different organ systems …. Etc. & trying to find out the difference between a hen, & human beings & what makes a human being human - with all its qualities !
We are still in a material age and all is thought to begin with matter by those who are materialists. In the higher ages those who remained materialists, who still didn’t get it, were confined to manual labor, they were not allowed into any other field. That, obviously, is not the case today, and materialists play a role in this material age, we have to start there, as that is where we are, until more is known about the quantum, electromagnetism, and magnetism itself, not to mention ideas, mind, and consciousness.
So far we have just have a worm’s eye view of reality with Darwinism, a biological take on the nature of reality, wrongly extrapolated beyond biology, to encompass all of reality, An understanding of the role the three forces play plus an understanding of forces predating elementary forces, of consciousness (now the hard problem) and mind as well will likely change this perspective in the future as we move into an age of electricities and forces to an understanding of mind and consciousness.
Love this guys mind met him accidentaly in Balmain Sydney when he was doing a show for the ABC tv
Is the idea that there is no free will diametrically opposed to an assertion of living things? Is life the contravention of determinism? Is life the fundamental contradiction of determinism?
Life starts with formation of hydrocarbon from inorganic materials. Then from hydrocarbon (organic) to life is a mystery. I think somehow the ETC electron transport chain or it's simplistic form has to be first molecule needed for self propagation as it captures energy by redox from sun (photosynthetic life) or other way (chemosynthetic life). I think chemosynthetic evolved from photosynthetic life.
The biggest mystery there is!
How do 'stumbling molecules turn into information storage systems'? ...I can tell you - it is molecular replication, likely inevitable, which begets replicated complexity - which is then the said information system.
To me every living thing ( humans included ) is an intelligent information system of multiple degrees of complexity, the most complex I.I.S. of all is the Cosmos itself
Getting from chemicals to DNA is not understood at all.
How DNA creates cells in multiple configurations is not understood at all.
Life is a mystery to science.
Agreed, even if you have 100% of what it takes to create a living creature as in one that has just recently died, after a short period of time it is impossible to bring that creature back to life.
Hmm. All through this video I kept wondering what role, if any, does consciousness play in defining life. A robot could seemingly be programmed to replicate itself, including the instructions, but that doesn’t make it alive.
I then also wondered if consciousness matters since, as it seems at the moment, you can really never know if something is conscious. I cant even be sure if the cells in my own body are conscious. Heck, I know my consciousness seems to reside in my head/brain, but I have no idea if that’s from where my consciousness comes!
At the end, we might find that a rock has consciousness, but yet it doesn’t self-replicate. So if something is self-aware, but doesn’t self-replicate with instructions, how do you define that?
A robot actually couldn't replicate itself as the robot would need a factory to at least provide it with the parts. A cell is quite different since it manufactures its own parts.
A cell can't tell itself that it's alive and ponder its existence, so I think the consciousness thing is dead on arrival, so to speak. I suppose that if a cell never died, and never replicated, and never changed size because its input was same as its output, that would be the very minimum case for being alive.
tbardoni "I know my consciousness seems to reside in my head/brain, but I have no idea if that’s from where my consciousness comes!"
Put it this way, you can lose limbs and your consciousness remains intact. You can transplant/surgically manipulate nearly every organ in the body and consciousness remains intact. But any kind of brain trauma has the potential to radically alter both you conscious experience and identity so it's fairly clear where consciousness arises from I think.
@@sierrabianca From where does consciousness come in single-celled paramecium with no brain?
Suck up a paramecium in a syringe and it learns to escape faster each time.
So not only does the paramecium learn and have spatial awareness, it also has a * desire * to leave the syringe.
Yet, it has no brain or central nervous system.
@@sentientflower7891 Your argument is one of sophistication and complexity. But its not a grand step to imagine a robot having sophisticated programming to the point of gathering its own raw materials to replicate itself.
So how did the first cell.form on its own
Could the epigenetic programming be sourced from the "quantum field"? Somewhere along the line, the laws change from the very small to the very large. It would seem that inherent programming would make that happen. Maybe the source material for our universe has been recycled from another universe via a black hole. Maybe we are the result of source material being funneled through a black hole and ejected into a new "space" where a new universe evolves...but the original encoding remains from the source. The information was not lost in the transition.
Watch the Martin Hanczyc TED talk on the line between life and non-life, here on RUclips. You'll be amazed by the demonstrations of very simple chemical mixtures behaving in ways that are uncannily similar to living organisms...including self-replication.
And yet, no lab has ever created life from scratch.
@@chrism.1131 Intelligent life not at all.
@@chrism.1131 Neither has any god...and it's had far longer.
Something which I think is not generally appreciated is the size of the system where this takes place. The mass of the oceans is about 10^21 kg. The development of life happened in perhaps 300 million years. The measure of opportunity is 3*10^29 kg-years. Maybe only a fraction of the ocean volume is in play, perhaps geothermal vents, but is is still an enormous volume. That represents a very large number of throws of the dice. You cannot hope to replicate this in a laboratory where you can do an experiment using, say, a liter for one year. The earth has 10^29 times more chances for the right thing to happen. Mars had a much smaller amount of liquid water for a much shorter period of time so for Mars to have a chance, it must be a lot easier than if earth needed all of those chances. It is also possible that it took billions of earths for one to have got lucky.
If you are interested in this topic, check out Terrence Deacon. Reading his book "Incomplete Nature" right now, pretty mind-boggling stuff.
Information requires mind/intelligence
To use the brick to city analogy, scientists are not even close to understanding how a naturally occurring and quite complex substance such as clay could organise itself spontaneously into a building block without some intelligent input let alone how bricks could organise themselves into a city. I am intrigued as to why the scientific community along with government and private backing do not set up some institute to explore how bricks came from clay in the same way they developed the Hadron Collider to explore sub atomic particles or launched space stations and telescopes to explore space.
And so it all boils down to Information
The last observation, that there has to be a pattern to this information, leads quite naturally to Consciousness
Wow yes
In my opinion why transformation from non life to life is impossible now is the rate of space expansion at that time is different from what is now and the rate is far more enormous then and there than we experience here and now localy.
well doc davies is of course right on the money that getting from a soup of chemicals to organized life is a profound leap that no one is anywhere close to understanding.
Taking about the information of life. We tend to think of information as something that intelligence uses to achieve an end. Forget that. We are talking the first life or even proto-life. At this stage, or maybe it's 'form this point of view', information is structure. Structure made of DNA or RNA. This structure, these structures, have various rudimentary capabilities, which capabilities can be improved in terms of conserving the original structure. How structure supports capabilities and how capabilities are extended are the questions. At some point we call an extended capability intelligence.
Robert asked a question; what is the first step you have to have for the structure of life to exist. The answer is the photon, Photon should be the first particle on the periodic table with atomic number 0. Photons are particles of mind and this makes mind the fundamental stuff that generates life.
they are thieves, their main goal is what I have wrote before on this RUclips channel, I have wrote what they talk about myself it is self concept in mankind and one of the most advanced coding systems in existence that build and uses genes, they have stolen everything including what I have wrote about consciousness, self concept, space, time, gravity, ….. who deleted my comments is Kuhn himself, it is a culture of thievery, they have no morals no values no minds,…
they have polluted what I have wrote badly.
They use thievery as patching techniques, in some cases they use blunt thievery!
? ? ? ?
development of cell nucleus allows DNA information density to increase for top down causation to replicate?
Excellent..... thanks 🙏.
Paul Davis are lost in his owns minds when he shows archaic and pedantic anwers. IoI
Does this mean, according to Prof. Davies, to bridge the gap from non-life to life, not only does one need to achieve life in a single leap, but one must simultaneously achieve the blueprint and the assembly instructions, all in that same single leap across two other gaps? When the host indicates getting to simple life is easy, Prof. Davies says, “that is exactly wrong!! Does this mean the absolute minimum is at least a trifecta of an organism, the DNA as a “dumb object” and an information management system, both of which must be replicated? Is it accurate to assert, the organism has a first complexity, the blueprint (DNA code) a second complexity different in kind from the first complexity, and the information management system a third complexity, also different in kind from each of the first and second complexities?
That's a good summary. All three components simultaneously coming into existence. ... Incredible
The way I heard it, Paul could've omitted everything said up to 5:30.
There are currently no known examples, in nature or science, where one life form will convert to a different life form (i.e. different body plan) by change in the DNA. Current understanding in the field of genetics seems to indicate that varying body plans (for example, the difference between an octopus and praying mantis) do not reside within the DNA. Genes within the DNA of a particular organism code for the different proteins required to build and allow that particular organism to function.