Nick Szabo  🔑

@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.

@gwern @cinnamon_carter However crude their model, their willingness to tackle the genomic complexity issue is a huge step forward.

@NickSzabo4 @cinnamon_carter A model that bad sheds more heat than light. What good is it to plot some points and draw a line backwards?

@gwern @cinnamon_carter At least a bad model is a model, and thus far better than hand-waving about "rich soups", "open niches", etc. etc.