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Hello, firstly I would like to welcome you. We will be delving ourselves into a great fissure that exists in our world. A very fine border that has a very profound meaning that changes how everything works. “Why should we want to delve into this to topic?”, you might find yourself asking. Well, that’s because this revolves around you. But it also revolves around anyone or everything else. We have only seen a glimpse of what it had and has in store for us, and we can only speculate about what’s to come.
I don’t like to beat around the bush too much, so I will keep my shrouding in mystery of the subject at hand to a minimum, simply because I want to get at that topic: life.
Here, I will not be teaching you about life, at least not in a very traditional sense, since that is what every biology textbook, and biology (related) course is for. Instead, I will be trying to explain why life is so extremely fascinating, fundamental and the implications this has for the very space we do the things we do in.
I will try to post in a pretty regular manner, but I cannot say when I will have time/motivation to write and when not, but continuations will come sooner or later. I shall go over a broad amount of topics, ranging from biochemistry, histology, anatomy, molecular biology, biotechnology, ethics, philosophy, chemistry and physics to name a few. For some concepts, things will become a bit specific, but this is necessary if you want to grasp the full scope of things. Often times I will go on a philosophical tangent so we can look at biology and the current contemporary views on certain phenomena. In this way, I hope to bring you a medium in which you will be able to find, just as me, why the thing that may seem like the most abundant thing on Earth: one of the things with the most potential our universe has to offer.
So. Here we have it. Life. How does it work? What does it do? Where is it going? Why is it (happening)? All very profound questions that we will have answered in time. We will need a grasp of what life actually is and how we define it. Before I do that, I want to take you on a more spiritual approach to what it actually is to be alive.
We are confined to an all entailing universe, which practices universal laws. The laws might be different from scale to scale: we can’t know how space-time or mass-energy works between galaxies or even a scale above, neither do we truly know (or understand) how all these interactions work on a quantum level (and is there even an underlying scale?). What we do know is on a molecular level, when nature runs a pretty predictable, things can become very interesting. There’s a whole set of interactions that can happen when the right pieces of the puzzle are present. I’m not even talking about the formation of life (biogenesis), I’m talking about the transition and dispersion of energy in natural phenomena like: osmosis, diffusion, enthalpy, entropy (which is basically the same as the osmosis and diffusion, but more thermodynamically sound), exchange of ligands, electrophilic addition or nucleophilic substitution, … (the list does go on).
Whatever mechanism to transfer energy around in a bunch of molecules was and is taking place, somehow these molecules started to interact with each other in such a manner that they have found a way to consistently reproduce more or less the same structures. The same structures which could then be transformed over billions of years into more elaborate structures, but always with the same goal in mind: perpetuating constant change with the environment and making an interaction with the environment a necessity.
For a little thought experiment I would like you to take a moment and think about the following question: if an organism was completely closed off from its environment and it could do everything it needed to survive (whichever you can think of), would it have/need a mechanism to reproduce?
There’s a constant requirement threshold for an organism in order for it to stay alive. It needs energy and molecules to maintain itself (let’s not go into great detail here for now, since there are a plethora of those molecules). The reason for this is because the formed structures will break down naturally if unattended, as does everything in nature, so they need replacing. Certain organisms are great at maintaining this for a very long time, potentially infinitely if undisturbed, other more elaborate organisms have more of a clock on them.
But why does life evolve? Why does it even replicate itself if certain mechanisms exist to simply keep an organism in homeostasis with its environment (given that enough nutrients are available)?
One could argue that the structure of DNA/RNA naturally tends to replicate itself and that with the addition of proteins, fats and sugars, this structure becomes more stabilized and is able to be controlled. If we look at a single cell, we can see that it really is a finely tuned machine: DNA turns into an RNA, which turns it into a protein. Fats make sure the cell is compartmentalized for certain specialized functions, sugars for energy and addition of extra information and protection. Of course there are huge generalizations here, but it’s to get a main idea (obviously we will delve into this later).
In the end, however, it all comes down to favourable thermodynamical states, even if they are achieved only briefly. Certain molecules might be formed that are so low in energy, they might not be able to handle a lot of other molecules around them, since transfer of energy is always something one needs to consider. A nice example here, is when a free oxygen radical is created in the cell by whatever reaction it came from, and interacts with the relative stable double stranded DNA polymer to induce a break in it. This break then needs to be repaired by specialized enzymes, but these do not have a foolproof system (i.e. they make mistakes every n-th nucleotide they repair). If they make a mistake in a gene that is important for cell cycle regulation (for example), this could lead to eventual neoplasm formation.
To end this introduction, I would like to explain why this phenomenon is so special. If you look at it, we come from atoms (that once were less than that), which formed into stable molecules, formed into relatively stable structures, then these structures started replicating, they became more elaborate, they started specializing, interconnecting, making systems (this is true for tissue, organs, but also different species) and eventually they became intelligent.
Think about it (woah), molecules being able to think about themselves (that must’ve been a strong bonghit dude). Ultimately it became possible to sense the environment, to analyze and manipulate it in an almost clinical way. We are able to preserve and destroy at will, speculate, think about things that might not even exist, becoming something greater (collectively) than it is at face value, while still being an intrinsic part of it.
If the fate of the universe was that it had to end (whichever fatal state that is), I would put all my hope in the thing that holds it all together to prevent that fate; the driving force that found a way to control interaction, change and dispersion: life.
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I'm not quite sure I follow some of this, but I've definitely thought similar things at time. For me my questions are something like this. Is time and space continuous or discrete? It seems impossible for them to be continuous, because at small enough distances or time intervals things can't be defined clearly. How, then, do we even exist? If we could slow down time far enough, what would it look like? Is everything we think and feel just an average of inputs received one 'instant' before and the 'instant' after? Are we sort of like video files? Like a video clip that just X's out when it ends, are our lives sort of analogous? Even though we're recorded in a very different way (basically how we impact our environment, combined gravitational effects etc) that can't be easily translated into human viewing, the only difference is that our "files" all interact with everyone else's files. Sorry for rambling but I think about this kind of stuff all the time and was definitely intrigued by your post.
EDIT: I guess it's obvious I'm a math guy, but I always wondered if this meant that integrals/infinite series/etc are fundamentally just approximations of things, and that's why continuous-based formulations like general relativity can't be completely right. Like, in the real world there's no such thing as a perfect circle, so sure you can approximate the area with an integral but to find the true area of a "circle" you'd have to do a piecewise sum of all the smallest possible parts. How do you integrate over such an ill-defined domain? I really hope in my lifetime we'll figure out more about the fundamental structure of space and time.
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the true area inside a circle does exist. its just that it can not be expressed as a real number.
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Even though maths and physics are not my specialty, I believe space and time are continuous. I once had an epiphany (albeit while extremely high) about different fundamental forces about why space expands, what it is and the role of gravity is in it etc, but the idea ran away so fast from me, I couldn't grab it back.
But yeah, I'm a strong proponent of continuity simply because we have fractals, planck's constant and real numbers like pi and e that just somehow occur in so many things we use, but are seemingly infinite. There might be a cutoff point though in the sense that there could be a physical smallest and largest macrostructure that can reside in this universe before certain properties make it unsustainable, but idk.
However, it might be discrete in the sense that certain properties arise at certain scales.
Everything we think and feel is an extremely complex subject in the home of neurobiology which is very interesting, but very, very difficult and deep subject matter. I can tell you this, for example: the minimum amount of photons needed to observe light with your eye (e.g. a photoreceptor to be triggered in sending an electrical impulse to the brain and create a visual image for you to process) is 5 photons.
I think we have the ability to, between certain cutoff points, process nature in a very continuous fashion and with pretty high resolution at times. Ofcourse where we fail, we build objects that can do the job better for us.
What intrigues me alot is how organisms with a nervous system can interact with eachother so smoothly. I say this because a nerve does not transfer it's received impuls instantly and there's always a delay in receiving an impulse, traversing it and ultimately putting one out. How are we seemingly so adjusted to everything around us that we can make such fluid, almost instant reactions with one another. But there's ofcourse a hard limit. How fast your reaction speed can get thus has a physical component to it. If an event occurs fast enough, it's probably you'll never be able to react in time because you're just too slow to comprehend it.
Also, I don't think math with integrals is an approximation, because you can literally use the concept of infinity and apply that to certain concepts, while infinity might not even be something that's in this universe except for it being used conceptually by humans to help us understand this thing.
Lastly, if you have specific questions about certain stuff I talked about, don't hesitate to ask, I'll gladly explain.
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But I just can't believe that space and time are continuous. Infinity is a very convenient number but I just don't feel that it exists in real life. Like there's a limit of how many atoms are in the observable universe, etc. If space is infinitely divisible...there is a question of what is the smallest thing out there. So we have quarks right now...I mean, it stands to reason there are only so many divisions you can do before there's something that's fundamentally the smallest.
My argument about the integrals was one that is more philosophical than mathematical. In math, of course you can use it to find the area of a circle. But in the real universe, /can/ a perfect circle exist with the uncertainty principle? I for one say no, or if one does exist it's a lottery-esque coincidence.
The cutoff points you mentioned fascinate me. Does our brain processing speed really dictate what's happening in the universe? What if that speed were twice as fast, or twice as slow? Abstract that to X% faster or X% slower. The universe itself doesn't change...just the speed at which we process information. It doesn't answer anything concrete.
About your evolutionary points...I mean, we've had billions of years to evolve. So many organisms perished before they could really exist because their genetic code just wasn't the right one. After those billions of years it so happens that randomly a genetic code was generated that was able to experience life like we do. That isn't actually that amazing to me...after billions of years and quadrillions of species the odds of one developing our abilities doesn't seem so ridiculous.
What interests me the most as a math/physics guy is how the universe got like it did. All the physical constants seem just right to allow life to develop...who's to say quadrillions of universes before ours have come and gone with those constants so different that life couldn't even exist? Could a universe and an anti-universe be spawning from nothing every second, and only a quadrillionth of those have these constants amenable to life? The odds that we evolved from a universe with these particular constants are just infinitesimally small, but yet here we are.
I have a few thoughts on why AI is so hard to actually create, but I've already typed enough. Keep up the good work, I'll be checking this blog on the regular.
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Man, I have no idea when we'll find the smallest building block for matter. It's just insane how deep that rabbit hole goes.
Humans are very unreliable as a measuring tool. We have a set of senses that operate in a very relative way. I strongly blieve, that a single thermoceptic entity, for example, has a limit to temperature it can sense. If the temperature limit x has been reached, then the impulse is the strongest (fuck it's so hot here, get the fuck out!), but if that temperature exceeds x, the receptor won't exceed that maximum output ability because it's physically unable to (I'm speculating here by the way  ).
One way to exceed the way of maximum output is to just use more receptors as the heat penetrates the body more.
I wouldn't be able to say how the brain would react to speed and how accurate we would perceive ourselves or the environment because photons are so weird, especially in relation to something with mass.
The evolution is something I'm going to address later, but I will tell you this for now: it's kind of random, but not quite. It's a controlled mechanic, but it's also a flimsy one.
The universe in itself is extremely interesting. I loved reading about the early universe, before mass was in play and how it came into play. I also love how stars collapse and give rise to new objects (in an almost cyclical way);
I think it's funny that you talk about the random genetic code that got us here and kind of pass it off as something normal, but then speculate about the quadrillion universes before us For me they're kind of analogous processes.
I really want to address your physical constants now, but I'll wait for my evolution part before I'm going to do that.
I'm glad you're already here man, I like speculating about these sort of things, to just kind of ponder into the infinite. Next part will be a bit more standard stuff that's more in line with actual biology, but I'll have some good things in there.
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Well my specialty is in math/physics, and I know absolutely nothing about biology/neuroscience/etc. Can't wait to see your next post!
EDIT: I think my nonchalance about the genetic code and the universes and physical constants are one and the same. Like it's not surprising we have this genetic code, and it's not surprising that this universe was created with these specific constants due to the sheer number of (supposed) attempts.
I can't wait for an update on this topic! Anything about biology I'm going to be totally ignorant about so I'd like to hear your piece.
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EPT
