[gpderetta]

> Accidentally stumbling on a mechanism that is simple enough to be recreated with every human birth might be possible, accidentally stumbling on a mechanism that took evolution billions of years to find and which it has hung onto by copying it and has never recreated it from scratch, could be much less likely, in a much bigger search space.

Maybe, but you could make the same argument about anything artificial.

[jodrellblank]

I don't know what point you're making; I'm making the point that it might be harder to discover what makes humans human, than is often suggested. You can't make the same claim about "anything artificial", we know how to dry muddy clay into clay bricks and stack them into a brick wall, and that can be taught from scratch to new people in hours.

You can make a similar argument with a company like ASML where their secret sauce is the organisational ability to fine-tune 100,000 components into a precision Silicon-wafer etching machine. You're far more likely to accidentally stumble upon "how to recreate a mud hut" than "how to recreate ASML". Okay, and...?