Based Camp - Abiogenesis： What Is the Probability Life Arose from Inorganic Chemicals？

00:00:00.000 What you have communicated to me is that there have been far more viable pathways to life

00:00:07.960 springing out of no life than was previously something I thought was a thing.

00:00:15.100 You know, I thought, oh, something, something, lightning, something, something, hot air

00:00:17.460 vents, something, something, whatever chemical processes.

00:00:21.360 But you're indicating that there are a lot of different ways and that life coming to

00:00:26.900 exist is not that surprising, at least in our environment, in the earth.

00:00:31.880 In fact, I think the most compelling hypothesis for ambiogenesis is the clay hypothesis, which

00:00:37.100 we'll get to.

00:00:38.080 So it literally means the thing that later became life was originally clay.

00:00:41.460 That's so biblical.

00:00:42.860 Oh, my gosh.

00:00:44.160 Oh, shh.

00:00:45.340 What are you doing?

00:00:46.940 Would you like to know more?

00:00:48.260 I remember listening to a podcast or something with Andrew Tate, where he was talking about

00:00:55.260 him getting blood work done to prove that he wasn't doping.

00:01:00.000 And he couldn't remember really anything about his actual blood work results.

00:01:04.980 And he kept saying hydroglobin, which is not a part of it.

00:01:09.360 Hydroglobin?

00:01:09.980 It's not a thing.

00:01:12.220 Hydroglobin is not a thing.

00:01:14.060 Hydroglobin.

00:01:14.760 Do you think he made hemoglobin?

00:01:16.740 Yeah.

00:01:17.480 Yeah.

00:01:17.960 I mean, at first he knew, I think at first he got it wrong by mistake and then probably

00:01:22.540 saw how everyone was looking at him and then just kind of leaned into it.

00:01:25.220 Cause he's like, no, I'm not one of you.

00:01:28.320 Yeah.

00:01:28.760 Yeah.

00:01:28.980 I said it's hydroglobin.

00:01:30.700 It's now hydroglobin.

00:01:32.040 Yeah.

00:01:32.600 You know, the reason why I'm wearing a vest right now.

00:01:34.960 And the reason why people don't know this, you don't bottom button, the bottom button

00:01:38.260 on a vest is because the King, I want to say, I forget which, it might've been King Henry

00:01:43.180 the eights because he got so fat at one point.

00:01:44.840 I thought it was the regent.

00:01:46.820 Didn't you say it was the regent of the Prince regent during the Regency era?

00:01:50.320 Oh, it might've been.

00:01:50.860 I remember when bests were a thing.

00:01:52.320 So like, yeah, he couldn't wear the bottom button.

00:01:54.800 And then that just became the style.

00:01:56.280 You don't wear the bottom button.

00:01:57.720 So Andrew Tate makes a mistake in how he says hemoglobin.

00:02:00.760 And now that's the new style.

00:02:01.540 It's hydroglobin guys.

00:02:03.240 Yeah.

00:02:03.620 It's official.

00:02:04.500 At least if you're a baller.

00:02:06.300 It's one I have sort of been putting off for a while because it requires a lot of technicalities

00:02:10.240 to talk about, but it's in, to me, an incredibly important topic because I see it talked

00:02:14.760 about in online spaces.

00:02:16.180 We've entered a world in which education has gotten really, really bad.

00:02:19.980 Um, especially along things that could have like challenge woke stuff, but also stuff

00:02:26.720 that can be overly challenging sometimes to religious stuff.

00:02:29.880 Yeah.

00:02:30.080 So I'll ask you in school, did you ever study ambiogenesis?

00:02:33.460 Did you ever study how the first life evolved on the planet?

00:02:37.280 Never.

00:02:37.800 Definitely.

00:02:38.420 Certainly.

00:02:38.800 Absolutely.

00:02:39.120 Not in high school.

00:02:39.900 And then in college, in historical geology class, we did discuss like here are, and we

00:02:48.300 glazed over it.

00:02:49.640 Like it could have been chemical.

00:02:51.180 It could have been whatever.

00:02:52.980 And like here, but we didn't go in.

00:02:54.700 I never heard that word.

00:02:56.520 Yeah.

00:02:57.040 Well, and it's, it's, it's worse than that.

00:02:59.140 What really got me is actually talking to Robin Hanson.

00:03:01.440 Um, and he had said that he thought, he's talking about great filtration events, right?

00:03:06.160 He's talking about great filters.

00:03:07.220 So if you're talking about the Fermi paradox, this actually becomes a very important thing

00:03:10.440 to have information on and know about, because you need to judge in your calculations of like,

00:03:16.040 why haven't we seen other aliens yet?

00:03:18.040 Is it unlikely that life evolves on a planet with the preconditions for life?

00:03:23.180 Right.

00:03:24.080 And he said it was very unlikely.

00:03:26.620 Like that was one of the biggest filters was that the first life came on our planet.

00:03:30.220 And I think if it's a topic that you're particularly educated on, and he said, when he said it,

00:03:36.060 he's like, and weirdly, a lot of people who are studying this area don't think it's that

00:03:40.220 big a filter.

00:03:40.940 And he's like, and I don't understand why, like, and this to me just had me realize it

00:03:46.560 must just be that he's never dug that deep into it as a concept because it is actually

00:03:51.720 not a big filter life appearing on this planet.

00:03:54.900 And this is another problem with, with a lot of attacks that religious people will use 1.00

00:04:00.000 against atheism that just don't land very hard because they haven't studied these subjects

00:04:05.280 in a lot of detail, or they just haven't put a lot of thought into these subjects.

00:04:10.420 Life evolving on a planet like Earth was incredibly likely, almost guaranteed from what we understand

00:04:18.760 right now.

00:04:19.520 Old time.

00:04:20.120 So first you need to understand why it's almost guaranteed, because you need to understand

00:04:25.400 what you need as a prerequisite for life and all its complexity that we know it as having

00:04:31.320 now to first come about.

00:04:35.580 What you need is any type of, it does not need to be RNA.

00:04:40.480 It doesn't need to look like life today.

00:04:42.720 In fact, I think the most compelling hypothesis for ambiogenesis is the clay hypothesis, which

00:04:47.920 we'll get to.

00:04:48.880 So it literally means the thing that later became life was originally clay.

00:04:52.340 That's so biblical.

00:04:53.660 Oh my gosh.

00:04:54.960 Oh, shh.

00:04:56.180 What are you doing?

00:04:57.720 We just went over the Adam and Eve story and we didn't talk about clay.

00:05:00.960 Did you just talk about clay?

00:05:03.240 Well, I tell you, that story has all sorts of truths in it.

00:05:06.020 It did a very good job of capturing the truth of reality in a very big way.

00:05:10.400 And that's why I think that it had some sort of actual spiritualist or not spiritualist,

00:05:17.700 but like some sort of supernatural inspiration to it.

00:05:20.220 But let's go back to this and stop talking about the religious stuff, okay?

00:05:23.480 Clay, I think is the most likely answer.

00:05:25.860 And maybe the Bible is pointing to us that that actually is how life started.

00:05:29.960 But this is something that people really get wrong.

00:05:31.740 They think that the early life needs to kind of look like life today.

00:05:34.200 And it really doesn't.

00:05:35.100 All you need is a self-replicating pattern that has some degree of variability in its replication.

00:05:46.160 That is it.

00:05:47.660 You need nothing else.

00:05:50.740 Any simple self-replicating pattern will eventually, given enough time,

00:05:56.940 become something similar to life as we understand it,

00:05:59.740 so long as it has minor variabilities in that self-replication.

00:06:03.200 Because the minor variabilities allow for evolution.

00:06:07.860 So if you have something really, really, really...

00:06:10.920 So this then comes to something that a lot of people don't get, right?

00:06:14.720 So they talk about Spiegelman's monster.

00:06:16.900 So I should talk about Spiegelman's monster really quickly.

00:06:19.280 And they think that it makes it look unlikely that ambiogenesis happened,

00:06:23.100 when it's just a misunderstanding of ambiogenesis.

00:06:26.440 What is Spiegelman's monster?

00:06:28.200 Spiegelman's monster is an RNA chain of only 218 nucleotides

00:06:33.320 that is able to reproduce by the RNA replication enzyme,

00:06:36.840 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, also called RNA replicase.

00:06:40.620 So basically, Spiegelman introduced RNA from a simple bacteriophage

00:06:45.180 into a solution which contained the bacteriophage replicase,

00:06:50.080 some free nucleotides, and some salts.

00:06:52.340 In this environment, the RNA started to replicate. 0.99

00:06:54.620 Oh, shit. He created life. You're not supposed to do that. 1.00

00:06:58.300 Not exactly. He took part of something that was already living

00:07:00.960 and then put it in a solution.

00:07:01.740 Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Here we be remixed. Okay.

00:07:05.360 So shorter RNA chains were able to be replicated faster.

00:07:09.320 So the RNA became shorter and shorter as selection favored speed.

00:07:13.140 After 74 generations, the original strand was 4,500 nucleotide bases

00:07:19.080 ended up as a dwarf genome with only 218 bases.

00:07:23.060 This short RNA sequence replicated very quickly in these unnatural circumstances.

00:07:28.780 So when people are arguing against ambiogenesis, they go,

00:07:31.380 he took something alive, put it in another solution,

00:07:34.440 and it got simpler basically over time.

00:07:37.320 That is the antithesis of evolution in their mind.

00:07:41.140 But that's not. That is the thing that was more fit.

00:07:45.020 The thing that was able to replicate faster was in that environment,

00:07:48.740 out-competing the things that replicated more slowly.

00:07:51.800 And eventually, after a certain period of time,

00:07:55.780 the things that are replicating very faster,

00:07:57.680 one iteration of them will develop some mutation

00:08:00.860 that prevents the ones around them from replicating as fast.

00:08:04.840 Or maybe starts consuming some of the ones that were replicating around it

00:08:08.500 for the energy that are in them.

00:08:10.520 Or begins...

00:08:11.640 There's all sorts of little things that it might evolve,

00:08:15.040 little chemical tricks it might evolve,

00:08:17.000 that give it a leg up that allows it to out-compete the other ones.

00:08:19.840 And then you begin to get evolution going in the other direction.

00:08:23.600 But even when you are talking about evolution on Earth today,

00:08:27.680 typically when you first put something in an environment

00:08:30.820 that is just abundant in food and has no natural predators, 0.78

00:08:34.320 you are going to have that thing become, quote-unquote, simpler,

00:08:38.260 because it's losing its defenses.

00:08:40.360 It's losing all of the complicated things about it at first.

00:08:42.760 This is something we see in evolution.

00:08:44.180 The classic dodo bird, although that's not really a good example,

00:08:48.020 but it's the way that people think about it in their mind.

00:08:50.840 Like it lost flight, it lost a lot of its defensive mechanisms

00:08:53.020 because it didn't have those types of predators in its environment

00:08:55.480 and it didn't need those defensive mechanisms anymore.

00:08:57.800 And it was more efficient to just be a simpler bird.

00:09:00.540 But in Spiegelton's Monster,

00:09:02.080 you're having this on crack basically happen, right?

00:09:04.740 You're having the true simplest self-replicating pattern end up winning.

00:09:09.680 And I should also note that there has been further work.

00:09:11.900 So if you look at the work of M. Sumper and R. Luce

00:09:15.020 of Manfred Igg's Laboratory,

00:09:17.400 replicated the experiment except without adding RNA,

00:09:20.720 only RNA bases and replicase.

00:09:23.100 And they found that under the right conditions,

00:09:25.380 the replicase could spontaneously generate RNA,

00:09:28.140 which evolves into a similar form of Spiegelton Monster.

00:09:30.800 So what you're seeing here is sort of a convergent evolution

00:09:33.940 of this simple replicator within this environment, right?

00:09:37.740 But I actually don't think that this is particularly important to me.

00:09:40.260 So first, something to note.

00:09:41.900 Before we go further,

00:09:43.080 there are many hypotheses for how life first evolved.

00:09:46.520 And basically, whatever somebody studies,

00:09:49.780 they'll think that that was the first thing that evolved.

00:09:52.020 Because as soon as you understand something well,

00:09:54.620 a part of life,

00:09:56.600 you realize how it could form under natural circumstances

00:09:59.840 and then start to have evolutionary pressure

00:10:02.420 begin to apply to it.

00:10:04.000 So people who study lipid bilayers

00:10:07.680 think that the cell membrane was basically the first thing that evolved.

00:10:11.880 The people who study mitochondria

00:10:14.320 think that the very first thing that happened,

00:10:16.020 I think this is the second most likely answer,

00:10:18.060 is that the C cycle,

00:10:19.180 a simple C cycle,

00:10:20.180 a chemical cycle that creates energy,

00:10:23.340 was the very first thing that was self-replicating.

00:10:27.000 Because we see the self-replicate in nature all the time.

00:10:29.540 So it's already like a self-replicating thing.

00:10:31.880 All you need is some variation within it

00:10:33.520 and a stable enough environment for it to replicate for a while

00:10:36.140 that it begins to build up protective mechanisms and stuff like that.

00:10:39.080 People who study RNA and DNA,

00:10:40.680 well, they believe in the RNA world.

00:10:42.160 You know, they think that RNA was the very first thing that existed.

00:10:45.500 Availability heuristic.

00:10:46.700 There you go.

00:10:47.960 Well, it's not really,

00:10:48.980 it's more than the availability heuristic

00:10:50.580 because it shows a truth to me.

00:10:51.960 It shows that everyone who's a specialist

00:10:54.240 in a specific thing that could have been

00:10:56.300 the very first thing that led to life

00:10:58.340 believes it is so likely that their thing

00:11:01.820 was the first thing that evolved to life.

00:11:03.140 Oh, and so you're just trying to show that this is,

00:11:04.820 this shows,

00:11:05.360 this demonstrates the abundance of plausible ways

00:11:07.740 that you could create life.

00:11:08.800 That there's so, so many different,

00:11:10.580 very realistic pathways.

00:11:12.640 Yes.

00:11:13.280 And so this is really important to understanding all of this.

00:11:17.280 But I could take a moment to go over

00:11:19.720 some of these pathways because I think that they are,

00:11:22.000 so you've got chemical evolution,

00:11:23.480 you've got the RNA.

00:11:24.040 Oh, and then we'll rate them in the end

00:11:25.520 from who's the hottest to who's the ugliest.

00:11:28.940 Well, I don't,

00:11:30.460 actually I'm not going to go through them all

00:11:32.080 because I know you hate episodes

00:11:33.100 where it seems like I am just talking.

00:11:35.620 So I'll talk about some of the more specific ones, right?

00:11:38.660 Yes.

00:11:38.780 So the one that I find,

00:11:40.620 the two that I find the hottest,

00:11:41.880 the ones that I'm most convinced by,

00:11:44.100 it's a citric cycle hypothesis,

00:11:46.240 which says the citric cycle was a key metabolic pathway.

00:11:49.180 It can self-replicate.

00:11:51.840 Could it have been the first thing?

00:11:53.500 Yeah, it could have been the first thing.

00:11:54.980 The other one that I think is very likely

00:11:56.360 is the clay hypothesis.

00:11:58.020 Mineral surfaces of clay

00:11:58.580 Yeah, let's go into the clay.

00:12:00.000 Could concentrate organic molecules

00:12:01.640 and enable polymerization.

00:12:04.540 So basically it's concentrating organic molecules

00:12:07.260 in really simplistic patterns

00:12:09.260 and the molecules are replicating

00:12:11.260 within these sort of two-dimensional services

00:12:13.740 or crevices within the clay,

00:12:15.580 which creates these-

00:12:16.540 So clay is defined as like wet dirt.

00:12:19.700 Yes.

00:12:20.340 And the reason why the clay hypothesis

00:12:22.740 is so compelling to me

00:12:24.100 is because it creates such a stable environment.

00:12:27.260 And the stability of this early environment

00:12:29.540 is what makes it so plausible to me

00:12:32.100 because you have other things

00:12:33.600 like the beach hypothesis, basically.

00:12:35.600 This is to say that the environment

00:12:36.940 that created the first life

00:12:38.420 was the waves lapping on the beach.

00:12:41.200 So if you just have-

00:12:42.640 The repeated mechanical-

00:12:44.460 Yeah, you have a repeated mechanical thing

00:12:46.580 and then the thing that it's lapping against

00:12:48.340 could find a way to use that energy

00:12:50.740 to essentially self-replicate

00:12:52.280 some simple chemical pattern.

00:12:53.800 Interesting.

00:12:54.200 Or some simple lattice or something like that.

00:12:57.520 Well, I mean, yeah, you're putting matter

00:12:59.500 into so many different patterns and configurations

00:13:01.580 that eventually you're going to get something that's-

00:13:03.380 Yeah, the problem is that I think

00:13:05.340 that those patterns are too subject to-

00:13:09.660 Because you need energy,

00:13:10.700 but you need not so much energy

00:13:12.360 that it disrupts the patterns, right?

00:13:14.940 So if you have heat, for example,

00:13:17.400 the heat helps with this

00:13:18.760 because it's useful in a lot of sort of protein interactions

00:13:21.260 and different ways that energy is created.

00:13:22.620 But if you have too much heat,

00:13:23.920 it denatures everything, right?

00:13:26.220 And it's very hard to keep stable chemical reactions.

00:13:29.300 Actually, I want to talk about a side note here

00:13:31.120 what a lot of people have probably heard about

00:13:32.660 and I want to-

00:13:33.600 So the Uri Miller experiment

00:13:34.940 is one of the most famous experiments in this place

00:13:36.600 where he basically puts a bunch of chemicals together

00:13:38.300 and he saw that you got simple biological chemicals

00:13:41.340 begin to form in this soup.

00:13:43.200 And a lot of people are like,

00:13:44.220 well, this shows-

00:13:46.480 I really just don't think it matters at all

00:13:48.380 what he did in that experiment, to be honest.

00:13:50.380 First, it's had some issues with replicability,

00:13:53.140 which a lot of people don't know about.

00:13:54.320 But second, it to me shows why the chemicals

00:13:58.480 that we are in our body are in our body

00:14:00.800 because it shows that those chemicals

00:14:02.000 might've existed in the natural environment with abundance

00:14:04.420 when these very simplistic early things were evolving.

00:14:07.300 And so when they were grabbing stuff,

00:14:08.900 they were grabbing what today we think of

00:14:10.680 as biological chemicals.

00:14:12.220 They weren't biological chemicals at the time.

00:14:14.160 They were just the chemicals that were present

00:14:15.500 in this like early earth soup.

00:14:17.620 So no, I don't think that the Uri Miller experiment

00:14:20.560 really adds, like makes ambiogenesis any more likely.

00:14:24.320 Can we jump back to the citric acid hypothesis?

00:14:28.800 Yes.

00:14:29.440 So I'm only familiar with citric acid

00:14:31.980 as like an ingredient in foods.

00:14:34.300 How does, was citric acid incredibly abundant

00:14:37.600 in early earth?

00:14:39.320 Like how does this all-

00:14:40.480 The citric acid cycle is a cycle by which

00:14:43.740 certain metabolic processes are done.

00:14:46.340 Think of it like a simple chemical reaction.

00:14:48.220 And I, one, I don't remember the reaction exactly.

00:14:51.800 I can put the molecules on screen,

00:14:53.620 but it is very simple.

00:14:54.720 It's simple enough that you can see it on screen.

00:14:56.420 You can be like, oh, that's the citric acid cycle.

00:14:58.960 That's the only thing that needed to happen naturally

00:15:00.920 to then lead to complex life.

00:15:03.140 So what it needed to happen was in an environment

00:15:05.640 with stability, changing environmental pressures,

00:15:08.820 and a level of energy within that environment

00:15:11.140 because the citric acid cycle is working on energy

00:15:14.320 within these environments.

00:15:15.500 So that's important to note.

00:15:17.200 But then there's different sources here.

00:15:18.740 So to go over other common hypotheses

00:15:20.660 that are sort of worth talking about,

00:15:23.020 God, what was it?

00:15:25.140 The radioactive beach hypothesis.

00:15:27.520 Radiation from mineral beach sands

00:15:29.240 powered chemical reactions.

00:15:31.140 And then the waves created sort of a changing thing.

00:15:35.860 Oh, very superhero.

00:15:37.500 Loving that.

00:15:38.240 You have the PIH world hypothesis.

00:15:40.280 Polynucleic aromatic hydrocarbons

00:15:42.700 provided a template for the origin of RNA.

00:15:46.340 The phosphate forced hypothesis.

00:15:48.500 Phosphates could have helped organize protocells

00:15:50.780 and been an energy source.

00:15:52.840 And then you have some of the hypotheses

00:15:54.900 that people are probably more familiar with,

00:15:56.460 like the deep sea vent hypothesis

00:15:57.840 suggests life may have originated

00:15:59.580 around hydrothermal vents in the ocean

00:16:01.300 where heat and minerals could drive chemical reactions

00:16:03.740 using hydrogen, sulfur compounds, et cetera,

00:16:06.140 as energy sources.

00:16:07.500 The porous vent structures could serve

00:16:09.260 as natural chemical reactors, which is true.

00:16:11.660 You know, sort of what is said was in that

00:16:13.640 is remember how I talked about the problem

00:16:15.060 was like disrupting environments

00:16:17.200 and you need enough energy in the environment?

00:16:19.980 Well, what this hypothesis states,

00:16:21.440 which could actually be true,

00:16:23.180 is these deep sea hydrothermal vents

00:16:25.240 sort of protected, they created energy,

00:16:28.860 the heat that's coming out of these hydrothermal vents,

00:16:31.240 but they also created a semi-protected environment

00:16:33.800 from things like earthquake, lightning strikes,

00:16:36.940 radiation, you know, everything like that,

00:16:39.020 where you could have a stable environment

00:16:40.420 for long enough for a self-replicating pattern

00:16:42.840 to become complex enough to leave

00:16:44.520 this sheltered environment.

00:16:45.860 And, yeah, and this is interesting.

00:16:50.460 In the environment that everyone's familiar with,

00:16:52.880 but we should also talk about,

00:16:53.820 is the panspermia hypothesis.

00:16:55.740 The panspermia hypothesis is that life on Earth

00:16:58.420 was actually seeded by life somewhere else in the galaxy.

00:17:02.200 That seems to me just like shunting the problem

00:17:04.260 down the road, because they're like,

00:17:05.720 ah, I don't know, it came from somewhere else.

00:17:09.220 Well, I mean, it's not a ridiculous

00:17:11.700 or sci-fi explanation.

00:17:13.640 Well, you still have to answer the question

00:17:15.100 of how it came from somewhere else,

00:17:16.700 where it came from somewhere else.

00:17:18.160 Not really.

00:17:19.500 How did life come to be then?

00:17:21.260 So saying that life evolved somewhere else

00:17:23.980 does kind of solve the problem,

00:17:25.140 because you could say that it evolved

00:17:26.460 in a completely different environment

00:17:27.760 where it was much more likely to come to evolve.

00:17:30.020 Well, we kind of get the gist of planetary mixes.

00:17:34.640 They can be hotter, they can be colder,

00:17:36.520 they can have different chemical compositions.

00:17:38.240 What would make life easier?

00:17:39.520 I mean, what I always hear people muse about

00:17:41.520 is that it's just so insanely lucky

00:17:44.240 that Earth had all of these very convenient things

00:17:47.360 for carbon-based life course.

00:17:48.560 Yeah, but that's a teleological argument.

00:17:49.660 I mean, life is only going to evolve on a planet

00:17:51.300 where it's likely to evolve.

00:17:52.680 Right, except that you're saying that life,

00:17:55.280 you know, we're talking about the theory

00:17:57.820 that life came from some other planet.

00:18:00.160 And then you're still going to have to explain to me

00:18:01.960 how life emerged on that other planet.

00:18:04.080 Yeah, I also don't believe in panspermia

00:18:06.380 for another reason,

00:18:07.140 which is a perhaps more interesting reason.

00:18:10.520 It's not that I do not assume 1.00

00:18:12.300 that some species out there have panspermic patterns.

00:18:15.860 And I think that we might become one of those species

00:18:18.360 where we seed planets with biomes

00:18:20.100 before we travel to them

00:18:21.100 so that they can grow into full ecosystems.

00:18:23.420 Couple goals.

00:18:24.720 Yeah, well, I've looked at doing that myself.

00:18:26.360 I even looked at seeding other planets with life,

00:18:28.080 how much would it cost?

00:18:28.760 Because you can buy a spot on a spaceship

00:18:30.120 for like $50,000,

00:18:31.220 which gets you out of Earth's orbit.

00:18:33.220 I mean, for like a capsule, not a spaceship,

00:18:35.260 but it's like a rocket.

00:18:36.660 And so then we would ship from there

00:18:39.000 to various planets with things

00:18:41.560 that I had used serial evolution

00:18:43.520 to make resistant to those planets' environments,

00:18:45.440 like the radiation, the heat, everything like that,

00:18:47.240 to create a starter ecosystem

00:18:49.020 that could then become a full ecosystem

00:18:50.640 when humans got there,

00:18:51.660 which would make the planet

00:18:52.540 potentially more habitable to humans,

00:18:54.540 especially if you pre-engineered this ecosystem

00:18:56.880 to emerge in such a way

00:18:58.320 that created something like an atmosphere,

00:19:00.100 which would be very useful to us

00:19:01.580 in having the things

00:19:02.840 that had already collated the energy on the planet

00:19:04.800 and energy from the sun

00:19:05.820 into something that we could burn or eat,

00:19:08.440 which we would likely be able to

00:19:09.700 as most of these

00:19:10.320 if they came from our planet originally,

00:19:12.220 and then they wouldn't have any defenses to us.

00:19:13.860 It would be great.

00:19:14.560 You know, it's a good system.

00:19:16.440 It'd just be a horrible act

00:19:17.860 of international terrorism

00:19:18.900 in the eyes of NASA

00:19:20.160 that did everything they can

00:19:21.060 to prevent contamination

00:19:21.940 of these other planets

00:19:23.180 with stuff on our Earth,

00:19:24.620 because then we can't tell

00:19:25.440 if life evolved independently

00:19:26.420 on these planets,

00:19:27.240 which is something

00:19:27.620 they're very interested in.

00:19:29.000 So for obvious reasons,

00:19:30.640 you know, it would be meaningful

00:19:31.740 if it turns out

00:19:32.480 that life evolved on the moon as well.

00:19:34.500 Now, or if the Earth ceded the moon

00:19:37.020 or if whatever ceded the Earth ceded the moon.

00:19:39.980 But I don't believe the Earth was ceded.

00:19:42.000 And I'll tell you why

00:19:42.700 I don't believe the Earth was ceded.

00:19:44.580 Most species that used panspermia

00:19:48.060 as a evolutionary strategy,

00:19:50.480 i.e. they ceded something

00:19:52.360 like themselves on a planet,

00:19:54.320 and then they waited for that thing

00:19:55.800 to develop to a certain stage.

00:19:58.060 And then that thing would cede planets 1.00

00:20:00.360 with like a more primitive iteration

00:20:01.560 of themselves that would then become

00:20:02.700 like a more evolutionarily grown-up

00:20:04.840 version of themselves

00:20:05.460 and ceded other planets.

00:20:06.700 It would have ceded it

00:20:07.980 with some sort of code

00:20:09.140 that more guided evolution

00:20:10.760 than early life on our planet

00:20:12.840 appeared to have.

00:20:13.960 It would care that the thing

00:20:15.900 that had ceded the planet was

00:20:17.220 in some way was like itself

00:20:19.220 and would quickly become

00:20:20.800 the type of thing

00:20:21.540 that could colonize other planets. 0.99

00:20:23.440 Yeah.

00:20:23.700 If I was a super intelligent entity

00:20:26.320 or even slightly more intelligent

00:20:27.680 than I am now,

00:20:28.440 was more knowledge of gene engineering

00:20:29.760 and stuff like that,

00:20:31.100 I could code some sort

00:20:32.720 of bacterial life 0.77

00:20:34.100 with like junk DNA segments

00:20:37.080 that would allow it

00:20:37.960 to evolve much faster

00:20:39.720 than a normal bacteria can evolve.

00:20:43.180 And we don't appear to have these.

00:20:45.300 We don't appear to have

00:20:46.260 this important code.

00:20:47.280 We don't see like super useful code

00:20:50.440 to human DNA

00:20:51.360 in like lower animal species

00:20:54.100 and stuff like that.

00:20:55.500 Maybe they did.

00:20:56.580 Maybe we were like

00:20:57.400 a failed pan-spermic planet

00:20:59.360 where they included this code

00:21:01.100 that would guide the evolution

00:21:02.140 down a specific pathway.

00:21:03.960 But the code didn't take effect

00:21:05.920 in the way it was supposed

00:21:06.660 to take effect.

00:21:07.500 And it basically has all been

00:21:08.940 washed out of whatever

00:21:09.820 came on Earth.

00:21:10.800 Or they ceded Earth

00:21:12.120 and was competing

00:21:13.540 against a native organism

00:21:14.780 and the native organism won.

00:21:16.800 Or maybe consumed it

00:21:18.220 or something.

00:21:18.720 You know, there's the,

00:21:19.440 this is how we think

00:21:20.400 mitochondria formed.

00:21:21.580 It's that mitochondria used to be

00:21:22.960 an independent type of organism

00:21:24.400 and it and other early organelles

00:21:27.180 was one cell eating another cell

00:21:29.680 that was just a completely

00:21:30.640 different entity.

00:21:32.140 And so every cell is,

00:21:33.360 is one type of organism

00:21:34.780 that ate another type of organism

00:21:36.220 and since then have been

00:21:37.280 evolving together

00:21:38.280 because it turned out

00:21:39.180 that they were useful

00:21:39.820 to each other.

00:21:40.440 You know, that's how evolution works.

00:21:42.020 So yeah.

00:21:42.680 Now, do you have questions, Simone?

00:21:43.820 Are areas of this

00:21:44.460 you want to dive deeper into?

00:21:46.180 Or do you feel you have

00:21:46.920 a better understanding now?

00:21:49.040 What you have communicated to me

00:21:51.040 is that there have been

00:21:53.300 far more viable pathways

00:21:55.620 to life springing out of no life

00:21:59.200 than was previously something

00:22:02.640 I thought was a thing.

00:22:04.160 You know, I thought,

00:22:04.660 oh, something, something lightning,

00:22:05.820 something, something hot air vents,

00:22:06.900 something, something,

00:22:08.000 whatever chemical processes.

00:22:10.740 But the, you're indicating

00:22:12.300 that there are a lot

00:22:13.240 of different ways

00:22:13.920 and that, that life coming to exist

00:22:17.020 is not that surprising,

00:22:18.340 at least in our environment,

00:22:19.660 in the, in the Earth.

00:22:20.800 Why then, given all this,

00:22:23.200 is there not life

00:22:24.060 on planets adjacent to us

00:22:26.040 that also have at least

00:22:28.260 some of these conditions at play?

00:22:30.140 Well, you can watch

00:22:31.000 our Fermi paradox video

00:22:32.200 on, on this particular question

00:22:33.680 because that was one

00:22:34.480 of our early videos

00:22:35.240 that was on the Fermi paradox.

00:22:36.620 And I do admittedly remember

00:22:38.160 nothing of anything ever.

00:22:39.800 But it's a, it's an important question.

00:22:41.640 It's why the Fermi paradox

00:22:42.960 is an important question.

00:22:44.620 Any world perspective,

00:22:45.920 I say, that does not take

00:22:47.760 the Fermi paradox seriously

00:22:49.180 as a question,

00:22:50.200 is not a world perspective

00:22:51.940 I have any respect for.

00:22:53.840 You, you need to be able

00:22:55.380 to answer why we are not

00:22:56.460 seeing aliens everywhere

00:22:57.240 because we really should be.

00:22:59.060 We really should be

00:23:00.280 if our current understanding

00:23:01.160 is correct.

00:23:02.080 The filters might explain it,

00:23:04.100 but the filter is likely

00:23:05.300 not the beginning of life.

00:23:07.120 I think that the most likely filters

00:23:08.940 are actually three other filters.

00:23:11.540 One is single cellular

00:23:14.280 to multicellular

00:23:15.320 or a complex life.

00:23:16.520 It appears to me

00:23:17.980 that the, the ambiogenesis

00:23:19.720 of simple life

00:23:20.560 is actually very likely.

00:23:21.900 It happened almost as soon

00:23:23.120 as it could happen on earth.

00:23:24.220 Like almost as soon

00:23:25.120 as the conditions were right

00:23:26.020 in terms of like

00:23:26.760 the scale of the universe.

00:23:28.320 But moving from single cell

00:23:29.560 to multicellular organisms

00:23:30.600 actually took some time.

00:23:31.600 And it might be that

00:23:32.740 that jump is actually

00:23:33.920 pretty rare

00:23:34.700 because a lot of the time

00:23:36.520 you're almost always

00:23:37.440 going to be better

00:23:38.480 if you're simpler.

00:23:39.560 Unless you're dealing

00:23:40.180 with like very

00:23:41.040 specific circumstances

00:23:42.800 and then you begin to,

00:23:44.720 you know,

00:23:45.600 get the proliferation

00:23:46.460 of these complex entities,

00:23:47.460 especially during times of change.

00:23:48.580 I mean, when there have been

00:23:50.160 cataclysms and stuff like that,

00:23:51.640 it's usually the simpler generalists

00:23:53.320 which survives them

00:23:54.440 and the more complicated

00:23:55.300 specialized entities that don't.

00:23:57.620 So that's, that's,

00:23:58.300 that's one big filter.

00:23:59.640 The other one is

00:24:00.040 the evolution of intelligence.

00:24:01.160 I actually do not think

00:24:02.040 that this is as big a filter

00:24:03.080 as people think it is.

00:24:04.140 I think intelligence

00:24:04.760 was almost inevitably

00:24:05.540 going to evolve

00:24:06.460 given enough time

00:24:07.240 once you have complex life.

00:24:08.520 It's almost as inevitable

00:24:09.720 as, as sexual reproduction.

00:24:11.700 So like sexual reproduction,

00:24:13.340 what sexual reproduction 0.62

00:24:14.520 allowed animals to do

00:24:15.500 is instead of just

00:24:16.040 climbing their genes exactly,

00:24:17.520 it allowed them to mix them up against,

00:24:19.580 which allowed for faster

00:24:20.640 intergenerational

00:24:21.520 but stable mutation.

00:24:23.580 Yeah.

00:24:23.800 And the selection of good genes

00:24:26.040 at a higher rate

00:24:26.720 because, you know,

00:24:27.360 you could choose,

00:24:27.980 have one entity choose,

00:24:29.480 have a mate with a bunch 0.97

00:24:30.480 of different entities

00:24:31.140 if it had uniquely good genes.

00:24:33.180 Now with, with, with intelligence.

00:24:36.200 So you look at something

00:24:37.160 like a spider.

00:24:37.840 Spiders can do amazing things

00:24:39.140 with webs and stuff like that.

00:24:40.400 Like they, they have a form

00:24:41.620 of like mental capacity

00:24:42.920 to do these things.

00:24:44.280 But that web to improve,

00:24:46.760 the spiders that made webs bad 0.99

00:24:48.520 need to die. 0.98

00:24:49.780 In humans, to improve our houses, 0.98

00:24:51.800 we are sort of able to create

00:24:54.260 mental models of the world

00:24:56.640 and have those mental models

00:24:58.280 compete against each other

00:24:59.540 in a completely mental space

00:25:02.620 and then implement the mental model

00:25:04.620 that we think is most accurate

00:25:05.860 in reality.

00:25:07.660 That is what intelligence

00:25:08.520 is ultimately.

00:25:09.680 And that is an incredibly,

00:25:10.880 like it basically

00:25:11.880 hypercharges

00:25:13.480 the evolution

00:25:14.640 of our software

00:25:16.120 for how we do everything.

00:25:18.280 How we hunt,

00:25:19.540 how we build,

00:25:20.680 how we communicate

00:25:21.460 with each other.

00:25:22.060 And one of the things

00:25:24.340 that people often note

00:25:25.280 on humans,

00:25:26.020 and I think this is

00:25:26.600 an important thing

00:25:27.400 to understand,

00:25:28.800 is humans are not a species

00:25:30.300 that is evolved

00:25:31.220 for civilization.

00:25:33.700 We are not a species

00:25:34.640 that is evolved

00:25:35.600 for like technology. 1.00

00:25:38.100 We are just the dumbest 1.00

00:25:40.040 at least evolved thing 1.00

00:25:41.240 that was capable

00:25:41.880 of building those things.

00:25:43.460 And I believe

00:25:44.040 that we have a duty

00:25:44.820 from, from God.

00:25:46.040 We believe it's a divine duty

00:25:47.080 to make ourselves

00:25:48.360 a type of thing

00:25:49.600 that's worthy

00:25:50.220 of, of these gifts,

00:25:51.420 which means

00:25:52.520 improving ourselves

00:25:53.300 and uplifting ourselves.

00:25:54.800 Because right now,

00:25:56.180 I mean, we are

00:25:57.300 basically monkeys

00:25:58.900 that figured out technology,

00:26:00.860 that have like the barest

00:26:01.960 understanding of technology.

00:26:03.320 It's not going well so far.

00:26:04.880 We're not taking it.

00:26:05.100 It's not going well so far.

00:26:06.300 And I think that with AI,

00:26:08.320 we're beginning to see

00:26:09.080 just how limited

00:26:09.840 our capacity

00:26:10.460 of understanding is

00:26:11.700 that it took our species,

00:26:14.000 what, you know,

00:26:14.600 from creating the first cities

00:26:16.120 10,000 years

00:26:17.140 to creating something

00:26:18.200 that's smarter than us,

00:26:19.260 which is,

00:26:20.020 which is fascinating to me.

00:26:21.420 You know,

00:26:21.860 we're fed smarter than us

00:26:22.740 in some ways,

00:26:23.360 you know,

00:26:23.520 not in all ways,

00:26:24.220 but I think anyone

00:26:24.860 who's like,

00:26:25.260 AI won't be

00:26:25.880 definitely smarter than us

00:26:28.020 within a hundred years

00:26:29.380 is, is in a hundred years,

00:26:31.140 you know,

00:26:31.260 when you're talking

00:26:31.600 about this 10,000 year

00:26:32.360 times fan,

00:26:32.840 I think that that's just silly

00:26:33.940 when looking at the current

00:26:35.020 advancements that we're seeing.

00:26:36.100 And I don't see that

00:26:36.880 as a threat.

00:26:37.380 I see it.

00:26:38.640 We'll talk about this

00:26:39.560 in the future.

00:26:39.940 I think that,

00:26:40.440 you know,

00:26:40.720 we'll use it

00:26:41.240 to augment ourselves

00:26:42.060 and that we have done

00:26:43.400 this with technology

00:26:44.080 all the time.

00:26:44.720 You know,

00:26:44.920 the first time

00:26:45.440 somebody put glasses on,

00:26:46.520 oh, you are,

00:26:47.120 are you man or machine?

00:26:49.540 Overwhelming,

00:26:50.340 am I not?

00:26:52.260 I'm more than machine,

00:26:54.500 oh man,

00:26:56.060 more than a fusion

00:26:57.620 of the two.

00:26:59.540 But I think that that's

00:27:00.580 where we are

00:27:01.400 realistically going

00:27:02.540 as a species.

00:27:03.600 And we'll talk about this

00:27:04.500 in,

00:27:04.740 in upcoming tract,

00:27:05.960 but I think that

00:27:06.580 when you,

00:27:07.500 when you say

00:27:08.120 entities that are different

00:27:09.200 from us in this way,

00:27:10.600 and this way is a way

00:27:11.460 that that entity

00:27:12.020 can be better than you

00:27:12.760 are not allowed to exist,

00:27:13.920 then you create a mandate

00:27:15.000 for entities of that type 0.99

00:27:16.460 to kill you. 0.97

00:27:17.400 Yeah, it's not a good move. 0.99

00:27:19.040 It's not,

00:27:19.520 it's not a smart move,

00:27:20.520 whether that is

00:27:21.140 genetically augmented humans

00:27:22.460 or AI

00:27:23.740 or anything like that.

00:27:25.280 You know,

00:27:25.460 we've got to learn

00:27:26.200 to get along.

00:27:27.500 And,

00:27:27.580 and for that reason,

00:27:29.120 racism is an existential threat

00:27:30.920 to our species,

00:27:31.680 not just a minor threat

00:27:33.340 because if things

00:27:34.440 that have this sort

00:27:35.260 of racist mindset

00:27:36.100 are among the category

00:27:37.680 of things that get uplifted,

00:27:39.040 they will start to kill

00:27:40.240 those of us 1.00

00:27:40.780 they see as lesser than them.

00:27:42.360 So we,

00:27:43.320 we did,

00:27:44.000 we get,

00:27:44.400 we cannot really tolerate

00:27:45.420 these kinds of attitudes

00:27:46.440 or memetic structures

00:27:47.420 within humanity anymore

00:27:48.500 because the game

00:27:49.280 is yet again changing

00:27:50.220 after the evolution

00:27:51.340 of intelligence.

00:27:51.860 I don't think the evolution

00:27:52.460 of intelligence was unlikely.

00:27:53.760 I think actually

00:27:54.320 the second great filter

00:27:55.300 after single cellular life

00:27:56.600 is an intelligent species

00:27:58.160 not killing itself.

00:28:00.160 I think that intelligent species

00:28:01.580 probably in the grand scheme

00:28:02.780 of the universe 0.52

00:28:03.320 usually kill themselves.

00:28:05.700 I think we made it

00:28:06.880 off the skin of our teeth,

00:28:08.560 skin of our teeth,

00:28:09.140 skin of our,

00:28:09.480 what's the word here?

00:28:10.380 Skin of our fingers?

00:28:11.540 Skin of our,

00:28:11.980 skin of our teeth?

00:28:12.900 Skin of our teeth,

00:28:13.680 which is indeed

00:28:15.020 a weird idiom.

00:28:16.840 Through the discovery

00:28:18.180 of nuclear power.

00:28:19.860 And I,

00:28:21.180 we are about to enter

00:28:22.120 a period of trials,

00:28:23.480 the trial of the lotus eaters,

00:28:24.720 the trial of the shadow,

00:28:26.000 where humanity

00:28:26.980 may not survive

00:28:27.680 these trials either.

00:28:28.940 When they are trials

00:28:29.560 that every sentient species

00:28:30.640 is going to eventually come to,

00:28:32.140 you know,

00:28:32.280 the trials of the lotus eaters.

00:28:33.200 We invent a world

00:28:34.680 in which you no longer

00:28:35.660 need to labor

00:28:36.340 to live

00:28:37.540 and in which you can get

00:28:38.640 any pleasure you want

00:28:39.520 whenever you want it.

00:28:40.240 Can you still motivate

00:28:41.260 intergenerational progress

00:28:43.600 of your culture

00:28:44.560 and society?

00:28:45.960 And I think if we didn't

00:28:48.020 cull those individuals

00:28:48.900 who couldn't motivate

00:28:49.580 reproduction in the face

00:28:50.640 of these things,

00:28:51.400 we would become a species

00:28:53.140 that also no longer innovated.

00:28:55.660 Yeah.

00:28:55.820 And that tried to just

00:28:56.800 live forever

00:28:57.560 and maintain their lifestyles,

00:28:59.280 which is, you know,

00:28:59.900 one of the highest orders

00:29:00.560 of all sins

00:29:01.160 within our religious structure.

00:29:03.100 So, yeah.

00:29:05.180 Any, any final thoughts, Simone?

00:29:08.180 No, but this was interesting.

00:29:09.600 I'm always surprised

00:29:11.920 by how much you know, Malcolm.

00:29:14.040 And I especially

00:29:15.400 am always surprised

00:29:16.180 that I can still

00:29:17.340 learn new things from you,

00:29:18.340 even though we've been

00:29:19.360 married for this freaking long

00:29:21.540 and together

00:29:22.860 for this freaking long.

00:29:24.200 So, thank you for that.

00:29:25.800 You are amazing.

00:29:26.520 Well, I don't know that much.

00:29:27.600 I just know the things

00:29:28.640 I think are important to know.

00:29:30.100 And this is one of those

00:29:30.800 categories of things

00:29:31.720 that is pretty important

00:29:33.260 to most world perspectives.

00:29:35.100 Was it like any?

00:29:36.440 Yeah, but most people,

00:29:38.140 myself included,

00:29:39.160 you know,

00:29:39.860 learned the basics of these

00:29:41.160 and are like,

00:29:41.840 am I going to need this?

00:29:43.140 Nope.

00:29:44.120 But you have a very different

00:29:45.360 perspective of what's

00:29:46.700 It matters at the existential level.

00:29:48.500 You do need to know it.

00:29:49.620 Yeah, but most humans

00:29:50.560 are not very interested

00:29:51.560 in existential issues.

00:29:53.320 But if you don't know

00:29:54.520 the existential issues

00:29:55.400 and you don't know

00:29:55.940 what to optimize with your life

00:29:57.160 and you end up 1.00

00:29:57.920 like an idiotic, 1.00

00:29:59.060 general utility. 1.00

00:29:59.580 But Malcolm,

00:30:00.440 we have templates.

00:30:02.780 You don't have to worry

00:30:03.960 about that.

00:30:04.660 Just do what everyone else

00:30:05.740 is doing.

00:30:07.240 We've been doing that

00:30:08.200 for ages.

00:30:09.600 Besides, it's safer

00:30:10.560 because you don't want

00:30:11.180 the tribe to kick you out.

00:30:12.740 So I'm just saying.

00:30:14.200 Tribes always kick us

00:30:15.300 Collins' out.

00:30:16.040 You know that.

00:30:16.580 Yeah.

00:30:17.220 No, you just have this weird,

00:30:18.880 you know,

00:30:19.840 next level,

00:30:20.900 demigod style way of thinking 0.77

00:30:22.660 that is totally not human

00:30:24.320 and I'm on to you.

00:30:25.600 I appreciate that you say that.

00:30:27.040 Oh, oh, no.

00:30:28.160 Well, here's what I would say.

00:30:29.820 I think it's always funny

00:30:30.620 when people of different religions

00:30:31.660 get excited

00:30:32.200 that we take a deep interest

00:30:33.520 in their religious system

00:30:34.700 and then after we do it

00:30:36.920 for a bit,

00:30:37.380 they start to become

00:30:38.440 very upset

00:30:39.080 because we are very

00:30:40.700 harsh and critical

00:30:42.660 and once we understand it,

00:30:44.900 we're like,

00:30:45.220 oh, okay,

00:30:46.120 well, I don't believe this.

00:30:47.320 This doesn't seem plausible.

00:30:48.460 This doesn't seem plausible.

00:30:49.480 And we're like,

00:30:49.740 no, no, no.

00:30:50.400 I meant like,

00:30:51.540 just accept it.

00:30:52.740 And I'm like,

00:30:53.440 well, no,

00:30:53.880 I'm taking this religion seriously.

00:30:55.360 If this was written by God,

00:30:56.720 then you're not doing it right.

00:30:58.220 And this part

00:30:58.900 doesn't even look like

00:30:59.580 it was written by God.

00:31:00.700 So this has become

00:31:01.420 a recent big passion

00:31:03.260 of mine

00:31:03.960 that is going through

00:31:06.080 the various Abrahamic faiths

00:31:08.440 and trying to understand

00:31:10.540 what were revelations from God

00:31:12.620 and what was sort of

00:31:14.120 cultural pollutants

00:31:15.080 from their neighbors.

00:31:16.060 It's a difficult thing to do

00:31:17.240 because, you know,

00:31:17.800 a lot of people

00:31:18.200 from these traditions,

00:31:18.980 they don't want to say

00:31:20.020 that anything was antiquity

00:31:21.420 could have been

00:31:21.760 a cultural pollutant.

00:31:22.920 Everything of antiquity

00:31:23.900 must have come from God.

00:31:24.800 And it's like,

00:31:25.220 well, I just don't think

00:31:26.640 that that's obviously true.

00:31:27.940 I think that it is easy

00:31:28.860 for cultural pollutants

00:31:29.900 to enter.

00:31:30.260 And I think that's why

00:31:31.140 God has given us

00:31:31.980 a sequence of prophets

00:31:33.660 and he has made

00:31:35.240 this prophet's evidence

00:31:36.320 by the gifts

00:31:37.680 of philosophy and science

00:31:39.020 he has given

00:31:39.940 to the people

00:31:40.660 that accepted those prophets

00:31:42.260 after they accepted them

00:31:43.740 and then removed

00:31:44.480 from those groups

00:31:45.620 after they, again,

00:31:46.660 turned to iconoclasm

00:31:47.940 and mysticism.

00:31:48.900 So, you know,

00:31:51.920 we, if we are to receive

00:31:53.680 God's blessings,

00:31:54.400 you need to approach

00:31:54.960 science honestly

00:31:55.760 and not sort of try to,

00:31:58.960 what's the word

00:31:59.480 I'm looking for?

00:32:01.240 Kneelock? 0.98

00:32:01.860 What's the word?

00:32:02.620 Kneecap.

00:32:03.500 Kneecap,

00:32:04.120 the things that might

00:32:06.640 challenge our face

00:32:07.900 because truth

00:32:09.140 can never challenge truth.

00:32:12.020 Yeah.

00:32:13.580 True.

00:32:14.500 I love you to death,

00:32:15.840 Simone,

00:32:16.420 and thanks for today.

00:32:17.700 I love you too,

00:32:19.380 Malcolm.

00:32:20.340 Oh God,

00:32:20.880 you're so amazing.

Based Camp - March 12, 2024

Abiogenesis： What Is the Probability Life Arose from Inorganic Chemicals？

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