Nick Szabo  🔑

@gwern @cinnamon_carter A 150 base pair ecosystem can't catch, much less put to use, most of the amino & nuclear acids floating around.

@NickSzabo4 @cinnamon_carter Why does it need to catch to grow or spread or evolve w/o competition? Does not catching prove panspermia?

@gwern @cinnamon_carter Many far more likely places in universe to find stable amino+nucleic acid soup than bombardment-era Earth.

@NickSzabo4 @cinnamon_carter Be that as it may, what does that have to do with linearity of genomes as clocks and that paper's model?

@gwern @cinnamon_carter Linearity is just a good initial way to avoid "and now a miracle occurred" assumptions that plague these debates.

@NickSzabo4 @cinnamon_carter Arggh. No, the linearity drives the entire extrapolation beyond Earth in that paper!

@gwern @cinnamon_carter Prokaryote-like fossils appear as soon as Earth bombardment ends.

@gwern @cinnamon_carter Thinking about genomic complexity & chemical ability shows effective impossibility life originated then & there.