john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
news:cbdlb7$2n0v$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> William Morse  wrote:
> 
>> john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote in news:cb7rtg$mpl$1
>> {at}darwin.ediacara.org:
>> 
>> >  wrote:
>> 
>> >> By the way, the bag-of-lipids with set of replicators that we were
>> >> discussing a few weeks as possible pre-life, worked in a
>> >> statistical/analog way regarding frequencies (abundances) of the
>> >> various replicators, but in a digital way regarding presence or
>> >> absence of a particular replicator in a particular bag.
>> >> (DNS should read DNA above, sigh.)
>>  
>> > "Presence" and "absence" defined
according to which threshold? :-)
>> 
>> I expect he meant presence and absence defined according to whether
>> either there is one or more of a particular replicator in the bag or
>> there are none of a particular replicator in the bag. But of course
>> this is a "digital" definition, so it couldn't possibly
be right :-)
> 
> Oh, sure. But what if you have an assay that cannot discriminate
> below, say, 1ppb, and so can't tell you if that digital condition is
> satisfied? What if the only "replicator" you have is an allotrope of
> the target replicator? What if it has a few percentage points lower
> efficiency than the target molecule? What if the replication rate of
> the target molecule varies according to the (analog) presence of a
> catalyst molecule? etc... 
> 
> It is easy to get binary states if you define them into existence.


Assuming you are a normal human being - OK that's a stretch but we'll go 
with it for now :-), you have two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, two  
lungs, one heart, ten fingers, ten toes, etc. etc. You may notice a 
pattern here - all these numbers are integers. I will also wager heavily 
that if you have a wife, and if she has any children, she has an integral 
number of them. Did I just define these into existence? No. All of these 
results are produced by analog processes (at the next level down), and 
all of them are digital results. 

To get back to your response above: what if I am not making an assay, and 
what if there are no allotropes of the replicator, so there is no 
difference in efficiency, and what if the rate doesn't vary according to 
the (_digital_) number of catalyst molecules present. Then the point is 
correct. 

Robert Maas's original discussion was in fact spot on. AFAIK, from a 
purely theoretical standpoint, analog processes can be modeled by digital 
processes and vice versa to whatever degree of accuracy is required. And 
at the heart of quantum mechanics analog and digital mesh into one. But 
for the world we live in, some processes are best represented as digital 
and others as analog.Note that analog is spelled with six letters, not  
1.9 x pi letters:-)

Yours,

Bill Morse
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 6/25/04 6:34:09 PM