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CronoDAS comments on Demands for Particular Proof: Appendices - Less Wrong
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Um... that's a rather odd argument to make, considering steel, wheels, nuclear power, transistors, radio, lasers, books, LEDs...
Proteins are held together by van der Waals forces, which are much weaker than covalent bonds. Preliminary calculations show gargantuan opportunities for improvement (see Drexler's Nanosystems).
::urge to play devil's advocate rising::
Well, our power sources still have some disadvantages when compared to cellular respiration - we can't yet build insect-size robots because we don't have a practical way to power them. And wheels are bad when there are no roads. Ever ridden a bicycle on rough terrain? It's awful. Also, how does the information storage density of DNA compare to books? As for LEDs, fireflies are still more efficient than anything humans designed. Steel? Spider silk has a higher tensile strength. Given the constraints that biological systems operate under, they tend to be very, very good at what they do.
Transistors, though, I'll give you. ;)
:)
Still, all your arguments could have been said half billionion years ago: There was DNA, super developed arthropods (maybe fireflies and spiders?) and plants that photosynthesized more efficiently than today's solar cells.
Still, evolution did not stop there, the Cambrian explosion and the rise of vertebrates was imminent...
Now we are having a new explosion which is based on a completely different paradigm, is a million times faster and accelerates.
Nit-pick: 500 million years ago the Cambrian explosion had happened already. It was 530 million years ago.