Abiogenesis is misnamed.
It assumes dead matter first - I reject that.
There was always ΔT: tension, process, proto-experience.
Life isn't added; it's what happens when process stabilizes and models itself.
Emergence = integration crossing a threshold into self-reference.
Not non-life → life,
but matter learning to feel itself happening.
Life is not a category.
It is a phase transition in INTEGRATION.
@licho I call it a phase transition because nothing "new' is added from outside. It's the same underlying process reorganizing itself until it crosses a critical *threshold*.
So, like water -> ice or noise -> signal, you don't get new stuff, you get a new mode.
Here, integration reaches a point where the system can maintain and model itself. That shift--into self-reference--is what we experience as "life."
@licho You're right that "phase transition" can sound like a hard discontinuity, but in many systems (esp. complex ones) it's more like a threshold effect: gradual buildup -> sudden qualitative shift. That's what I mean.
The underlying process is continuous, but once integration crosses a certain point, you get a new regime- self-maintenance, self-modeling, etc.
So, not a rigid binary (alive/not alive), but a soft boundary with sharp consequences.
@licho Good point. That's a helpful distinction. I'm using "phase transition" loosely. What I really mean is something closer to a glass transition or critical threshold-continuous underneath, but with a real qualitative shift.
So call it: threshold transition.
@licho
Phase transitions involve symmetry breaking of some sort, but not always a discontinuity. If interested check Ginzburg-Landau theory, where they describe higher order phase transitions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landau_theory
@PrettyGnosticMaschine
Previously we discussed integration and emergence as necessity for consciousness. Do you think it is similar with life, on s different level, that does not require awareness? What would be the phase transition here? I am tempted to say reproduction (maybe with some extra quirks) but I'm also not fully convinced.
@gsc I did my Batchelder thesis in Landau Ginsburg theory, on critical phenomena. It features a second order phase transition but it doesn't define them and it definitely doesn't define them by symmetry breaking. Moreover, the second order phase transitions still do have a discontinuity in a parameter, but in a parameter that is a derivative. The discontinuity is required to call anything a phase transition. Also in complex systems.
@gsc fair enough, I also can't think of any phase transition without symmetry breaking. Imo @PrettyGnosticMaschine describes something that isn't a phase transition. The gradual nature of the growing interconnectedness, the absence of a sharp, distinct point where it happens. Imo it's a transition, but not a phase transition.
I mean the abiogenesis could be a phase transition, no issue with that. That would make perfect sense in the traditional approach to abiogenesis. The process described in the OP implies there isn't one, that's why I had questions.
That's helpful. Thanks, both of you. I think it's clear I'm outside the strict Landau/GL usage here. I'm really pointing to something more like a critical transition in organization, not necessarily symmetry breaking in the physical sense.
So I'll drop "phase transition" and keep it as a threshold/regime shift in complex systems.
@PrettyGnosticMaschine @licho
Heh, the funny thing is, that 'phase transition' is a really good term here. Even if it doesn't match the technical definition, which I wouldn't be too sure about, it pinpoints the concept really well.
Imagine that order parameter, and tune it from ordered (frozen, low energy, boring) to chaos (hot, crazy...) at some point certain systems will have a small regime where it is neither not, but rather complex. Many (complex) systems exhibit such behavior, such as the brain, internet connectivity and many other graphs. At this point they show funny properties, one of them is scale-invariance, i. e. the system looks the same at every 'zoom level'. Features appear over and over again, at any given size.
This is exactly the property of fractals!
I believe the brain is at this very edge, between boring and crazy, where self-referencing becomes possible, maybe even unavoidable, but that is too far of a stretch to make a real assertion while babbling here. Nevertheless I like how it circles around :)
Yeah, I think it's the same logic at a lower level. I wouldn't pick reproduction as the boundary though - it feels more like a consequence. The threshold is when a system becomes self-maintaining and self-stabilizing (autocatalytic, homeostatic). Reproduction comes later as an extension of that.
This also has strong precedent in work on autocatalytic sets and autopoiesis, so it's not a stretch, more a reframing.
Pretty Gnostic Machine
Licho
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