[Glorbutron]

You do realize that natural selection iterates through these same sorts of garbage proteins at a rate of trillions and trillions of bacteria per year for millions of years?, and with bias toward previously existing functional structures? It's a pretty potent optimization process, given the timeframes and scale. and the uncertainty is enough. It isn't equivalent to that, because there can also be incremental progress made toward a functional protein, unlike code.

[girvo]

Doesn't that presuppose we already _have_ life, and thus is irrelevant to the question, or am I misunderstanding?

[Cogito]

There is a question of where does the first self-replicating molecule come from, and how do we get to DNA from that, and how do we get the diversity of proteins that we see today.

Creating random DNA sequences and showing they don't produce 'useful' proteins has nothing to do with any of those questions (and how do we even know they are not useful?)

[vagrantJin]

I think the main stumbling block for me is the perception of time scales. It is impossible for me to say, with certainty, any information regarding time scales of a billion years and the randomness which permeates the evolutionary process. What we see and know are the winners of the race, not the mountains of failures.