I always assumed that the chirality asymmetry of organic molecules on
earth was a simple feedback loop or the "sensitive dependence on initial
conditions" of a complex adaptive system (biosphere). I've heard (but
not parsed fully) similar arguments about matter/anti-matter? Or like
the Highlander Franchise "there can be only one!" (chirality).
Is the chirality dystopian vision more like "grey goo" or a
protein-molecule "kessler syndrome" scenario from my pantheon/quiver of
existential threats?
One of my never-to-be-realized novels would be titled /"We Shall Know
our Chirality"/.
this is a nod to Egger's 2002 "We Shall Know our Velocity", a bit of an
absurdist "road novel" vaguely relevant to Pirsig's earlier "Motorcycle"
one.
I did not remember (or know) that Egger's took the theme even further in
his 2013 "The Circle" novel which became a movie (2017) by the same
name. A dystopian story painfully apropos of the moment prophecying
(sp?) the various parodies and paradoxes of "complete knowledge" and
"whatever I say means what I want it to mean" (paraphrase of virtually
every Right Wing figure today). Also shared with "follow the science"
mantras.
FWiW GPT 4o mini believes/hallucinates thus:
The phrase *"We shall know our velocities"* comes from *Mark
Twain*’s novel */The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/ (1884)*. It is
part of a speech made by *The Duke* in the book, where he is talking
about his plans to make money by deceiving people.
The full quote goes:
*"We shall know our velocities, and we shall know how fast we are
going, and how far, and where we are going."*
It is often interpreted as Twain's satirical commentary on the human
tendency to overthink or complicate matters. Twain is not only
mocking the characters in the novel who are trying to calculate or
control things that are uncontrollable but also commenting on the
absurdity of putting too much emphasis on knowledge or control over
something that doesn't need to be calculated in such a manner.
I say "hallucinates" because upon searching the text of Huckelberry Finn
I find no such quote (or even a reference to "velocities" or
"velocity". I *was* just asking GPT to help me find/recognize the
*previous* quote from Clemens/Twain regarding "reading the news two
weeks late"... so I think GPTs eagerness to please me maybe sent it that
way?
Others have suggested that soon all original reference material will be
buried by recursive hallucinations of LLMs quoting the output of LLMs,
etc. I was skeptical when this was first mentioned, I'm now feeling
like I might be living it?
Bah!
- Steve
Back to perseverating on Capitol Hill/DC events. Do we think Hegseth
was on the chopper that hit the passenger jet? A last romantic flight
with his next ex-wife, the female combat pilot just before he drums her
out of the military (but before he discovers she is Trans)?
On 1/30/25 8:18 AM, glen wrote:
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3
"Glavin is most perplexed by the discovery of an equal mixture of
left-handed and right-handed amino acids on Bennu. He, like many
scientists, had thought that organic molecules from primordial
asteroids would have had the same left-handed dominance as those from
life on Earth. Now, researchers have to go back to the drawing board
to understand how life might have been seeded on Earth."
I remember but now can't find a recent article about how dangerous
right-handed molecules are to life on earth. Peter Ward's book gifted
me some rhetoric for a basic belief I'd held for awhile. Renee'
believes in (complex) extraterrestrials. I don't, at least within some
observation window (i.e. maybe they're out there but we'll never meet
them). But it's completely reasonable that life emerged all over the
universe. It's just difficult for me to imagine it (life) jumping
through all these gen-phen ratchets.
There must be a sci-fi novel out there where some cluster (alive or
not) of right-handed molecules lands on earth and eats away at the
biosphere. I can see 2 basic outcomes: 1. death or 2. chirality
co-evolution (including where 1 or the other wins out in the "end").
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--- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-..
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