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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Like, what is the natural process that results in the probabilistic construction of a jet engine?

Simple: Some self-replicating biological robots gradually improve through natural selection, eventually forming large multicellular organisms, some of which create jet engines as a by-product of reproductive competition and predatory defense. It's more or less the same natural process that creates ambergris, really, differing in only minor details (like evolutionary pathways) that are meaningless on the scales we're talking about. Jet engines are a thing naturally formed by humans in the same sense that boogers are.

It's worth considering that we do, in fact, live in the universe that natural processes formed a jet engine. Of course people seem to draw a (to me) completely arbitrary distinction between our actions and those of a protocell.

Now if the question is "How would a jet engine be naturally formed without going through the natural processes that form jet engines," well the answer is clearly that it wouldn't, the same as nothing, not life, not an engine, not even a simple rock, will simply wink into existence spontaneously.

The make-it-or-break-it question at hand with abiogenesis isn't "what are the odds of this?" it's "is this the natural process via which life is formed?" The research seems to be gradually moving towards showing that yes, it is, but we also definitely aren't there yet.

clearly it wouldn't

It could through chance quantum fluctuations, for example, that's just astronomically unlikely compared to your previously mentioned route.