The origin of life has been found.
Making the idea simple. Jeremy England’s idea may sound a bit complicated, but (if I’m understanding his idea correctly) it can be put in simple terms: Clumps are the key. If you’re a configuration of atoms–a clump of matter–in the path of a heat source, and you efficiently incorporate and slough-off the heat coming your way–in other words, if you facilitate maximal entropy creation through time–you’ll go on existing longer than if you don’t do this efficiently. Clumps of matter, from snowflakes to proteins, are like well-oiled revolving doors, taking in and spitting out the energy that comes their way as they pass through time. They look improbable, but actually there’s no improbable climbing and a lot of probable dropping through space and time that is generating them. Think of Alice falling down the rabbit hole. That’s all of us. Our patterns channel energy as it moves from low entropy to high. It’s the price clumps of matter–nonliving and living–pay for ongoing existence.
This means that, despite all the work that is going on in a cell, it’s not ultimately a river flowing uphill against the natural inclinations of normal physics, but something going with the cascade of greater entropy in the cosmos. Life is not a freak (a kangaroo among the beauty, as Emily Dickinson once called herself). Life is not just The Seven Dwarfs resisting entropy locally through work (“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go”), but also the Three Stooges (reacting efficiently to each strike of energy so as not to break from contact with it). Curly doesn’t resist Mo’s ear tugs or bops to the belly, but goes with them.
So the better you are at going with the heat (eating it at the front end, channeling it through your system, and dissipating it out your rear) the more likely your pattern-type will survive and replicate itself. Here’s another way that the profile puts it:
Popular hypotheses [for the origin of life] credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, […] the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”
From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England […] has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy.
“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said. […]
A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases.
I actually buy this. Observe how the pattern repeats. In both cases, hard scientific advances with heavy mathematical underpinnings permit resolution and revolution:
Thesis: Microevolution accounts for the diversity of life’s forms.
Antithesis: Bullshit it does. Breeders know better. Fossil record lacks Intermediate forms. Not enough time. Also, epigenetics says Lamarck was right.
Synthesis: Stabilization Theory plus microevolution plus epigenetics plus possible deliberate intervention accounts for the diversity of life’s forms.
Thesis: Abiogenesis in the primordial soup.
Antithesis: Creationists scoff that no tornado in a junkyard produces a Boeing 747, nor million monkeys write Shakespeare.
Synthesis: Life is a subset of the universe’s natural tendency towards ordered entropy dissipation mechanisms, e.g. snowflakes and sand dunes.
Shiny new concept is shiny. Let’s see how much of the cosmos we can fuck up with it.
Implication: The purpose of biological life is the efficient dissipation of structured energy into entropy.
Application: Ingenopathy cure – adopt Melonhead strategies for efficiently dissipating energy into entropy in broken social systems.
Hypothesis: Humanity is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Physical laws and game theory unite to produce broadly compatible social animals scattered across the stars. That which achieves sentience is human.
The cosmos thus becomes a carefully counterbalanced engine of opposing forces. Negative entropy constantly streams downwards from adult stars, gently raising God’s sons from stone. The drain exhausts these life-giving stellar reactors, which explode and fade to dim silence. Yet new luminescences form in the empty void, steadily replenishing their ranks in perfect balance. (Or maybe not… but betting against Hoyle is risky. Velikovsky and I’ve got some Dark Matter we’d like to sell you. Just $15 billion for this map to the Higgs Bozo…)
Meanwhile, a different metaphysical balance plays out on the plane of consciousness. Singularity is hunted by vicious things lurking at the edges of Night. That and the vast gulfs between prevent any one strain of post-humanity from encompassing the universe. Souls are harvested to a higher plane, while bodies return to dust. The atoms of a trillion blasted husks drifts across the stellar wind, seeding barren rocks with life’s first spore.
When at last this rock gives rise to the right pair of species, the spark is struck, a new hybrid crossed – new eyes awaken to look upon the world. This chassis, when crossed with the divine paternity of visitors or Visitation, inherits the gift of consciousness – spirit.
Steadily the newborn climbs the technological tree. Some stay put on the lower branches; others creep out too far on shaky limb. Some fare across the starways, limited only by the inevitable drag of civilizational entropy and the Void’s hungry siege of too-bright minds.
All is in harmony. Man sings to his Creator, set a little lower than the angels. And again and again, the Son of Man dies for our sins.
The planets sing to God, but not to each other. Don’t transmit; don’t answer; block your ears and hide your signal. Hungry, Possessed Singularity rides the airways. Every distress signal’s a warning; every honeypot a hidden sting. Forget virus checkers and pray the nukes still work.
For if humanity is encoded, so is its antithesis. Serpent hunters rejoice – your prey awaits.