[extropy-chat] The Fifth Singularity and benefits of murder

Rafal Smigrodzki rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com
Tue Jan 10 06:19:11 UTC 2006


On 1/9/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
> wrote:
 However, plants are not the initial
> > source of oxygen - it
> > was first produced in large quantities by
> > cyanobacteria two billion
> > years ago, a billion years ago before the first tiny
> > leaves oriented
> > to the sun.
>
> Perhaps then, it is the cyanobacteria that struck the
> first blow of the evolutionary arms race by attempting
> to poison their peaceful methanogen neighbors with
> noxious oxygen. Then the anaerobic archaea would have
> no choice but to engulf the alpha-proteobacteria, to
> save them from the attempted genocide by the
> cyanobacterium. :)

### Indeed, the arrival of the cyanobacteria resulted in a titanic act
of mayhem, with massvie amounts of oxygen being elaborated in
geologically short periods of time. Most of the worlds iron ores date
from that time, as increasing concentrations of oxygen precipitated
the iron dissolved in the oceans and caused it to settle in a rain of
rust, sometimes hundreds of meters thick. The upper levels of the
ocean were scoured of non-cyan life for a time, until other bacteria
made a comeback.

Yes, that was an age of mayhem, too. Not even the cyans have a clean
conscience. Still, their crimes were impersonal, a murder by
externality (oxygen), and occurred by accident rather than design.
-------------------------
>
> Ironically, even if murder was rampant, it was an act
> of mercy by the progenitors of the eukaryotes in NOT
> digesting the progenitors of the mitochondria that
> enabled the survival of the eukaryotic line.

### Nick Lane favors the hydrogen theory of eukaryotic formation,
according to which the eukaryote didn't develop by incomplete
devouring of the mitochondrial progenitor by an archaea. Instead,
there was progressive attachment with mutual benefits, between an
archaea (the progenitor of the nucleus and the cytoplasm) and the
alpha-proteobacterium (the progenitor of mitochondria). Neither could
devour the other because at that time, murder by eating was still not
invented (for complex reasons well-described in the book).

Only after the two learned to live together in an unholy union did
their monstrous progeny take to chomping on the flesh of its
neighbors. Thus started the age of personalized, premeditated,
one-on-one slaughter, a killing with gusto rather than by accident.
------------------------------
> Yes there was carnage but there was cooperation too. I
> would think that a researcher of mitochondria would
> have more of an appreciation for the power of
> symbiosis. If natural history is red in tooth and
> claw, it is filled with acts of selfish kindness as
> well.

### Selfish kindness! This is a good way of putting it.

(There is something oddly amusing in applying anthropomorphic terms to
the mindless interactions of tiny chemical automata.)

Rafal



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