I posted long rely yesterday but a system error... I`ll try to
reproduce it again.
tomhendricks474{at}cs.com (TomHendricks474) wrote in message
news:...
> >TomHendricks474{at}cs.com wrote in message
>  news:...
> >> Some say life 'emerged'. Then through
> >> the first replicator adapted to the environment
> >> it was in.
> >> But that supposes a 'grace' period during which
> >> the environment did not in any way hinder
> >> the replicator, until it had the needed time
> >> to adapt to it's environment.
> >> 
> >> There was no 'grace' period. And any scenario
> >> that allows for one is making a mistake IMO.
> >> 
> >> Comment?
> >
> >There were several replicators but we descend from the only one that
> >kept adaptaing from the beginning, either by chance or superiority.
> >Environment is a single word for several aspects of Reality different
> >from biological entities. Those environmetal aspects that didn`t
> >change for a while contributed to the successful replicator`s
> >adaptation to the environmental aspects that did change. Once a
> >replicator emerges, its instances form part of the environment.
> 
> TH
> Wait a minute here. So you are saying a repliator
> pops up and it is instantly in tune with and 
> magically and instantly adapted to the environment?
> Then you believe in the grace period theory. Or the
> idea that life popped up in a set-aside vacumn that was protected on all sides
> till the lid was removed?

Think of it as a sytem of simltaneous equations. You solve at the same
time the replicator and the environment and get one solution. I was
thinking about the theory of life emerging in clays or `dirty` water.

>  Maybe
> >there was competition among different classes of replicators until
> >only one remained. But we can perfectly well envision a set of
> >conditions that favor the emergence of replicators that would last for
> >enough time to give it time to adapt, 
> 
> 
> TH
> I can't - without having a magical grace period.
> I would ask you how you would envision such a thing?
> Remember your replicator can't hide from my sun.
> And the uv and temp cycle would destroy any replicator
> the minute it came into existence UNLESS it already was stable in the
> environment - and that suggests
> earlier chemical adaptive aspects.

Ok, I assume by chemical adaptive aspects you mean either a closed
cycle of reactions or compounds which assume different forms according
to changes in the environment. These would act as building blocks to
build te replicators, like words forming a sentence ike `copy me` or
`I copy myself`. I cannot easily verbalize the idea I have in mind but
I am thinking of something similar to Goedel`s self referencing
sentences. It would be a matter of finding the minimum set of `words`
which combined can give rise to such kind of sentences, also in their
minimum (most efficient) state. Yet by assuming earlier adaptive
aspects you are assuming that the replicator`s ability to replicate
depends on the building blocks and is not a function of the way those
blocks connect, i.e., of the configuration of the replicator as a
whole. It is equivalent to say that a sentence`s meaning (its adequacy
to the referent) is independent of changes in the words that compose
it and to adapt it would need to change words. A sentence like `it
rains` is true when there is a light shower and when it is storming
but if you say `it is storming` the sentence`s meaning is destroyed
the moment the storm turns into a light shower. So first replicators
could be very resilient from the very beginning to changes in the
environment, particularly if those changes were cyclical and smooth,
as a property of the replicator as a whole, not as a property of its
subcomponents. To form such sentences, however, we must have an ample
vocabulary to begin with.


> but to adapt there must be
> >changes to adapt to. So it adapted against other classes or
> >replicators, against other instances of th replicator, and/or against
> >some changes in the enviroment.
> 
> TH
> No it was burned up
 
Like in there was only one instance of the replicator? But the
replicator must have been formed by spontaneous assembly of
subcomponents (unless there was some form of template...) so given the
existence of more than one molecule of the subcomponents we would have
several instances of the replicator. Not all would be burned up, even
if by sheer chance or the protective effect of being among other
instances. The fact is that once they are in existence they can start
adapting against themselves and this adaptation must take the form of
more complexity for the most basic forms and/or variations (atoms,
molecules) for more advanced replicators (I am thinking of L-systems).
This property can be a property of the replicator from the very
beginning. No grace period.
 
>  There is no period of grace in
> >Reality, there are no stationary conditiond, Reality always changes,
> >but not all aspects cahnge at the same rate. There can be scenarios
> >withperiods of grace in only those aspectsof the environment that
> >favor the emergence of replicators, like for instance, stable
> >concentrations of chemicals durng long periods of time compared to the
> >quantity of replicators.
> 
> TH
> Now you are getting to my point and suggesting the
> obvious. There was  a type of pre-life chemical
> selection that favored that that was more stable.
> And that is my point - the point of this thread.

Like the child`s toy of matching forms and holes where the forms that
go through the holes are the basic words from which replicator
sentences are formed and tested against the environment, the
environment including themselves.
A huge combinatorial exercise of subcomponents going through cribages
(clays?) to form replicators until a replicator emerged that could
adapt to changes to the environment. What I consider here is that
adaptation to change is not only to pure change but to rates of
change. Adaptation can be easy if first differentials are constants
for instance. UV and temp can change but if those changes are
cyclically stable (not abrupt or totally unpredictable) adaptation can
considered easy, and as far as I know for long periods during the
first ages of Earth such were the conditions. The bigger changes after
Earth consolidated have come from the effects of life proper. Maybe a
chronology would be in order here.
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