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Physics of Life

Biological evolution

Difficulties in understanding biological evolution  Probability of the emergence of life  Problem of the probability of the emergence of life

Difficulties in understanding biological evolution  

 

Lack of precise definition:

Because a precise, unambiguous definition of biological evolution was not developed until 2009, scientists used used this concept made it sound metaphysical. Some of them, like Robin Dunbar, realized that the process of evolution is "still misunderstood", but did not clearly state how to understand it. Because there was no strict definition of evolution, neither its precise characteristics nor mechanisms could be determined. And without it, the understanding of it was simply impossible.

The most important problem is that, even according to reputable encyclopedias, evolution is a process of slow changes. The more precise ones point out that the changes affect subsequent generations, but others do not even mention it. Indeed, evolution in its essence concerns generational changes, but so far no one has described what initiated it and why.

 

Multidisciplinary approach:

Life issues cannot be understood by a single scientific discipline, but by several. So far, even in advanced biology textbooks, we do not find any information in the areas of economics, game theory or information theory. And yet these are only some of the disciplines necessary to understand life processes.

Therefore, it is necessary to know a dozen or so disciplines at a fairly advanced level. But, unfortunately, there are no such universities at this time that educate in such a wide spectrum.

 

Operational dimension:

Biological evolution operates on a huge set of objects and performs an unimaginable number of operations

2·106

Estimated number of proteins in a bacteria source

3·109

Estimated number of nitrogen base pairs in the human DNA source

2·109

Estimated number of proteins in a human cell source

3·1013

It is estimated that human beings are built from this number of cells. There are approximately 200 cell types. source

7·1027

Approximate number of atoms in the human body source

5·1030

estimated number of terrestrial bacteria source

5·1037

estimated number of nitrogen base pairs in the DNA of all terrestrial organisms source

1·1086

estimated number of atoms in the Universe source

2·10308

Approximate maximum number that an average computer can operate source

1·102 000 000 000

In so many ways 4 nitrogen bases can be arranged in 3 000 000 000 elements length sequences, corresponding to the length of the human DNA source

1·10500 000 000 000

It is estimated that during the lifetime of Earth, the genetic material may have been copied so many times from its simplest forms at the beginning to its present forms, e.g. the human genome source

The above table makes us aware of the fundamental difference between the numbers we deal with in relation to matter and in relation to information. On one hand, mathematicians say that an event whose probability is less than 10 -50 will never happen, on the other, they know that events whose probability is 0 occurs. However, we note that to put it purely statistically, nature could have as many as to create such and no other human DNA chain: 10498 000 000 000 attempts.

I am afraid that due to the number of objects subjected to evolutionary processes and unimaginable number of changes that could have occurred during the existence of the Earth, we will not be able to faithfully reproduce this process in the laboratory or even, with adequate accuracy, computer simulate its course. Due to Barrier in processing of information we will remain forever in the sphere of suppositions and presumptions. The only thing we can judge is that this and no other process of life on Earth is simply the most likely.

More on the mathematics of evolution.

 

Complicated characteristics:

I wondered if Galileo would have found a mathematical formula describing the free fall of bodies if it were not so simple equation. If instead of:

h(t) = ½gt2

had a form of, for example:

h(t) = ½gtϖ

I wager that humanity would not have discovered it at the start of the seventeenth century, but much later.

Because biological evolution is such a very complicated process, it is why we do not have a full and unambiguous picture of how it operates.

Biological evolution as a process has 5 characteristics. The first problem with understanding biological evolution that comes from them is that biological evolution does not always improve. It only improves when the selection function is strong enough, otherwise, as Darwin put it,it may return "to a less perfect state". Secondly, if it improves it is done in two, seemingly contradictory directions. It improves tactics aimed at winning conflicts and tactics of cooperation. Collaboration, which also aims to win a conflict, the player is not a single object, but a group of objects cooperating with each other. Thirdly, it has a specific mechanism for reaching a strong selection function based on exponential growth. And because this mechanism is not intuitive, we have difficulty understanding it. Fourthly, the goal of improvement is not simple - it is a complex function composed of various characteristics and tactics. On the most general level, they can be: the ability to acquire resources, the ability to avoid becoming a resource and the characteristics of multiplication. The practical verification of whether this function is appropriate or not does not take place at the level of the individual, but at the level of interacting populations of different species. The simplest model of this issue is the How life is competing model. The fifth problem, though not the least, is the ability of biological evolution to change the properties of elements subjected to it. This ability stems from the Law of comparative advantage, about which the economist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Samuelson (1915-2009) said : That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them Well, since this last issue is so difficult to understand, what can we say about biological evolution, whose operation is based not on one but several such issues?

Scientists have been arguing for years whether evolution is a "struggle for existence" or, contrarily, "cooperation", and it turns out that it does both simultaneously. Although this simultaneity seems illogical, it is enough to imagine a football tournament and everything becomes clearer. Teams compete against each other and it seems to be "life or death" - the ones who lose are kicked out of the tournament. Of course, the team that competes better wins, but can you fight well if the players do not cooperate with each other as part of a team? Biological evolution is also a kind of tournament, although the rules are more complicated. A tournament in which the winners have the right to replicate on the designs from which they and their relationships were built.

Another example is the evolutionary ratchet. A ratchet is usually associated with a mechanism that, if a certain condition is met, does something, for example lets it through, and if the condition is not met, it does not do it - it does not let it through. In biological evolution, this is not such an unequivocal mechanism and cannot be described in a few sentences. Of course, it allows for further duplication or not, but the condition that determines this is not simple. It depends on many factors, and what's more, the ratchet is not always activated by it. You can learn more about the nuances of how the evolution ratchet works on the Small Evolution game analysis page.

 

Autodynamic system:

Biological evolution and its subordinate objects constitute an autodynamic system. It is characterized by the fact that as evolution works, its mechanisms change objects, and under the influence of these changes, they change their behavior, thus changing the mechanisms of evolution. These reversible and alternating interactions are another reason for the misunderstanding of biological evolution.

An example would be the mechanism for modifying projects. Initially, these were probably accidental changes, but later biological evolution developed advanced mechanisms of protection against accidental changes and advanced mechanisms of design changes, e.g. crossing over. Therefore, it cannot be said that the changes are accidental or that they are not.

Autodynamicity means that biological evolution cannot be studied as an independent process, isolated from its subordinate objects. The whole must be analyzed: both the impact of the process on objects and the impact of objects on the process, so it is worth giving this whole a separate definiendum, for example a biosystem.

 

Time scale of biological evolution:

Another obstacle to understanding evolution is the scale of its speed - for the average observer, evolutionary processes are so slow that in practice they are imperceptible. The activity of an average person is approximately 45 years, and evolution has been going on for 4 500 000 000 years. These two numbers are three tenths of a second to a year. This proportion makes us realize that evolution in our understanding is an extremely slow process, if the adverb "extremely" accurately describes the fact that something happens seventy million times longer than the average human lifespan. Evolutionary changes are not noticeable by ordinary people, which has its consequences: Numerous examples from the history of science prove that any new discovery is easily accepted in public opinion if it does not contradict common sense, but facts that are inconsistent with such views are usually accepted with disbelief, even if they are supported by a whole lot of evidence. ["Principles of Life", Tibor Ganti, page. 47].

Therefore, due to this internal disbelief, we are forced to reconstruct evolutionary processes based on a set of clues known to us, which, like an inquisitive and tireless detective, we must arrange into a logically coherent whole.

 

Defection from the rules:

In its initial stage, biological evolution works according to a very simple scheme, the model of which is gerpedelution. It builds objects based on design information, selects them in terms of best meeting the orthogonal criterion, which consists of absorption tactics and replication tactics, and copies the designs of selected objects, and during this copying new information designs may be created in them. Then, based on these designs, another set of objects is built and so on...

As a simple scheme of operation complicates the construction of objects, they begin to complicate the scheme in turn. Bacteria, for example, do not always change their genetic design when copying; they can do so by actively capturing a piece of DNA from the environment and incorporating it into its own genome. Another method, different from changes during copying, is transduction (the process of introducing a new gene into the cell by bacteriophages).

 

Cascade nesting:

As biological evolution works, the structure of living objects gradually becomes more complicated over the course of subsequent generations. One of the directions of this complication is the creation of new independent objects as a result of permanent connection of various objects. This process is called symbiogenesis. An example of this are mitochondrions. It has its own genetic design, but many of its protein elements are created based on the genome of the cell in which the mitochondrion is located. Thus, the organisms of a given organizational level are built from elements of lower levels nested in each other and cooperating with each other, which is somewhat reminiscent of the spatial and multi-level containment of Russian dolls - matryoshka dolls.
More information about cascading nesting can be found in: organizational levels of living objects.

 

High perfection of the side-products of biological evolution:

In our human opinion, biological evolution has created objects and mechanisms that are perfect and, what's worse, impossible to produce by humans. Not only can we not build a mosquito proboscis, but we don't even know exactly how our brain works. In this aspect, I am fascinated by the mechanism of storing genetic information. Of course, the carrier is DNA, but people who have dealt with a tape recorder know how easy it is to get tangled and that in practice it is impossible to untangle it. The diameter of the DNA is estimated at 3·10-9 m, and the length at 3 m [See: Interesting data]. And this entire chain is packed in the nucleus of the cell, the diameter of which is about 1·10-5m. After all, from the technical sciences point of view, it is a miracle, as well as the nucleus containing all the machinery that prevents DNA from getting tangled, the machinery that repairs errors made during transcription, the elements needed for translation, and the transport proteins. And all this works reliably in a huge number of cells, for about 60-70 cell cycles.

Another example of hyperperfection is ourselves - perfect biological machines whose dynamically changing structure, support and repair systems are programmed in the DNA sequence composed of 3·109 nitrogen bases. And so far we do not know exactly how this information is packed or how it affects the processes of human development and functioning.

 

Anticlericalism:

Because evolutionism rejects the idea that life was created by God, most of its supporters consider believers to be naive and religion to be ignorance and superstition. Indeed, the majority, but I would say that they are rather believers of evolutionism, rather than people who have thoroughly explored it. A good understanding of evolutionary processes leads to surprisingly interesting conclusions. The words of the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson are significant in this respect: Although Marxism in its beginnings was an enemy of ignorance and superstition, it ceased to be so when it became dogmatic. Currently, it is seriously threatened by the findings of human sociobiology. Traditional religion is not threatened by them.

It is not threatened by the findings of sociobiology and, I would add, the Physics of Life. In the light of the definition of an object, God exists. And even if, as Richard Dawkins claims, it is imaginary and its carrier is only human minds, no one can deny that this abstract concept is a causative factor. Just to be clear, I myself have no opinion on whether God exists or not in a non-abstract form. But undoubtedly, whether abstract or not, God influences many things. It is for him that people sacrifice themselves for the good of others, and with his name on their lips they fight with each other to the death. And as it happens in life, God's influence on our lives was different, just as the impact of the ax was different. And it cannot be said that he was only the perpetrator of evil or only good. After all, you can build a house and kill someone with an axe.

For evolutionist Richard Dawkins, God is "imaginary", and for evolutionist Robert Wright, God is a consequence of the process of biological evolution. Yes, he also believes that it was invented by humans. Not once, anyway. In different parts of our globe, different human groups invented different religions. And religion and the group that professes it constitute an autodynamic system - they constantly influence each other and constantly shape each other. Of course, there were clashes between social groups professing different religions (see How Life Is Competing model) and of course, in the long run, one of them won. Usually the one whose winning ability was higher. And this ability, of course, depends on the quality of weapons, training, cooperation, dedication and morale, and in the longer term also the ability to increase and rebuild the number of followers. And these factors are undoubtedly influenced by religion, and therefore it may cause the group practicing it to start dominating over others.

Perceiving religion as exclusively good or exclusively evil is characteristic for reductionist thinking. However, this thinking does not allow for a full understanding of evolutionary processes. They can only be understood by thinking in multitudinal and game-theory terms. Those who can do this quickly come to the conclusion so aptly expressed by Edward O. Wilson. Because in fact, neither God is the enemy of evolution, nor evolution is the enemy of God. From the point of view of the Physics of Life, both of these factors are closely related.

 

Curse of knowledge:

After many years of studying life, I found that it is not as difficult to understand as it seems. The problem lies in the magnitude, not the complexity, of the issue. There is simply a lot of knowledge necessary to understand life and it comes from many scientific disciplines. Each of us has our own worldview resulting from the culture in which we were brought up and what and how we learned. And this causes us to deal with the phenomenon known in psychology as the curse of knowledge. It involves blocking cognitive abilities by already acquired knowledge.

Basically, the idea is that when people adapt new information to their worldview patterns, as soon as any element of this information does not fit these patterns, the entire information is rejected. Unfortunately, only very few people wonder whether there may be something wrong with their worldview. To explore, you need to have the cognitive curiosity typical for children and young people. It is also worth considering your own worldview, whether it is really complete or whether something needs to be changed.

The corse of knowledge is confirmed, among others, by the history of Lynn Margulis's theory of symbiogenesis. At first it was rejected, then ignored, and then not taken into account. In this case, the curse of knowledge was that even after accepting this theory, no one considered whether the model of biological evolution, including Darwin's famous "tree of life", should be rebuilt. It had to be changed in such a way that the new model (see HeKroGram) should include the phenomenon of symbiogenesis. I emphasize: no one from the scientific world made any effort in this regard in the period from 1970 to 2009.

 

Complexity:

The lack of understanding of biological evolution results from the fact that people do not want to delve into more complex issues. Few people understand the Prisoner's dilemma well, and understanding its iterated version with all its consequences is beyond the capabilities of many people. Therefore, one need determination and time to explore these types of issues, sort them out and build cognitive models based on them, which will provide the right conclusions in further investigations into the nature of life.

One element of the general theory of life is the Model of comparative advantage. A Nobel Prize winner once said about it: that it is logically true - a mathematician does not need to be convinced; that it is not obvious is testified by thousands of important and intelligent people who could not understand it [...] even when it was explained to them. And there are dozens of such models necessary to understand life. And each of them must be well understood and assimilated.

When I ask friends if they have read the treatise on Christ's parable of turning the other cheek, they usually reply, "It's too long" or "It's too difficult." Indeed, the problem needs to be explored and studied, and this costs time and/or money. If we want to understand life, we have to commit ourselves for many years, and realise that one, or even four, faculties are not enough.

 

Common thinking patterns:

People look for exact causes and exact effects, and mechanisms reduced to simple rules. Since the mechanisms of biological evolution are based on conflict situations, they must be studied with tools developed for mathematical game theory. And using these tools, it is not possible to build accurate predictive models, but models of approximate prediction in the form of:

  1. density of probability distributions of occurences and
  2. natural tendencies and/or trends.

And these distributions and trends are interpreted by people in very different ways, see: socialism or the paradox of industrialization. To examine life, one must develop a methodology of absolute thinking.

The reductionist worldview causes many people to take a denial-blocking position when it comes to evolution:

Creationists are impressed by the thesis that: If DNA is a code (a program, i.e. a set of executed instructions), and the code cannot be created by itself, it means that someone wrote it or irreducible complexity theorems. And since these theses are true, the only reasonable solution is to reject the theory of evolution, and not: a/. thorough examination of whether our theses are correct or b/. a thorough examination of whether the current theory of evolution has any gaps that need to be filled.

On the other hand in the case of evolutionists: If you do not understand evolution, it means that you are complete idiot and block and omit facts that do not fit the theory known to them. And again, instead of attempting to verify it, facts that are inconvenient for the theory are swept under the carpet. For example, Lynn Margulis (endosymbiosis and symbiogenesis) and Barbara McClintock (transposition) were treated in this way.

 

Bad narrative and lack of concepts:

Biological evolution has its own distinctive mechanisms that are found nowhere else and are unlike anything else. However, we use a familiar conceptual set to refer to them.

For example, saying that biological evolution created something. Many people take this anthropomorphic attitude literally and imagine that biological evolution works just like humans - it thinks, analyzes and comes up with a solution. The adoption of such terms causes misunderstandings and delays the understanding of the basic truth of biological sciences, namely that evolution is an inevitable consequence of natural processes that created and shaped the biosystem in one way or another.

You can often come across the following terms: Therefore, individuals of each of these species must constantly change their genetic design to keep pace with others [Collective work, "Outline of the mechanisms of evolution", page 250]. This also creates misunderstandings - generally speaking, an individual cannot cause a change in his or her genetic program. Changes to the genetic program occur from generation to generation.

Another subtle example is the use of definiens "ancestor". Of course, an ancestor is immediately associated with someone just like us. But our ancestors were only to a certain extent similar to us, and the less we talk about our earlier ancestors, the less they resembled us. Immediately after the publication of "On the Origin of Species..." everyone mocked that our ancestor could be a monkey. "Darwin's ancestor," the public mocked, "could indeed be a chimpanzee, but never mine!" And yet, several generations ago, the ancestor of each of us was a fish that came out from...

That's right, another nomenclature marvel: the shaft-finned fish came out of the water. Yet it was not a single fish that escaped, but its subsequent generations that ventured further and further into land to obtain food outside the aquatic environment. And only those individuals that managed to go further out reproduced, because there was less and less food near the water. The fish did not "come out of the water" at all, but gradually, from generation to generation, subsequent generations of fish transformed from aquatic creatures into land creatures.

Moreover, biological evolution does not change objects, but changes the designs on the basis of which these objects are built.

It is tempting to introduce new concepts instead of highly confusing ones, such as: instead of evolution created - it chose, instead of ancestor - prevolutant, etc. To carry out a small reform of the evolutionary nomenclature, similar to that done in chemistry by Antoine Lavoisier in the 18th century (1743-1794). This should not be difficult, considering that there is a Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, whose main task is to develop standard nomenclature in both fields.

The first such concept should be the mechanism of creating something new through biological evolution. After all, she "selects from the available range of possible solutions" and only on this basis produces the next generation, and not "consciously or unconsciously produces".

 

Ahamkara:

Ahamkara is a mechanism built in ourseleves which do not allow us to see many things and, what is worse, that we do not allow others to see this things neither.

Writing and saying what people want to hear.

We write and speak not to find the truth, but to become a star.

 

Scientific method:

Scientific method involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings.
[Wikipedia, eng. 2020.11.15]

I doubt whether this method will ever be able to predict with 100% accuracy who will win a given football match.

 

Uselessness:

As the matter of fact, this knowledge is not indispensable for anyone's life. Discovering it is actually a hobby. Knowing how life originated will not help us win the war or the election. However, thorough knowledge of all the mechanisms of biological evolution and the popularisation of this knowledge may cause many, very different ideologies to collapse.

There is therefore no political demand for the Physics of Life.

 

Probability of the emergence of life  

 

https://dzieckonmp.wordpress.com/tag/matematyka-dowodzi-istnieniu-boga/
An attack on the numbers and superstition of the Hoyle & Wickramasinghe partnership.

Problem of the probability of the emergence of life  

 

Step 01 

Question:

We flip a coin. The probability of getting heads is 1/2.

We make N throws. What is the formula for expressing the probability p that during these N tosses the coin only one time will come up tails?

Answer:

The opposite of this situation is that in N throws there will be only heads. The probability of this is (1/2)N
So the probability of getting tails at least once during N tosses is: 1-(1/2)N

 

Step 02 

So the general formula is:

If something happens with probability p (gdzie 0<p<1) then if we have N trials, the probability that this will happen to at least one trial is given by the formula:

1-(1-p)N

 

Step 03 

General task:

If:
p=1/10-a, and
N=1·10b

What is the general formula that this happens?

 

Step 04 

General numerical task:

If we cannot find a general formula, we may be able to estimate the numerical value for:
p=1/102 000 000 000, a
N=1·10439 000 000 000