[tortoise]

Moreover, even if all of these were discovered - it would nevertheless require a bootstrap on the front end to initiate the process. And the existence of such a bootstrap, if algorithmic, would point directly to intelligent design.

The core requirement for biological bootstrapping is a sufficiently coherent state machine context and a "finite control function" that executes at a pace somewhat greater than the context decoheres. Now, the entire molecular world is a state machine, but either doesn't contain sufficiently coherent context or does not have a usable control function that executes at sufficient speed.

There are some natural chemical systems on the planet (notably hydrothermal systems) where coherent molecular state machines can both spontaneously form and function in volume. You don't need any design here; the requirements for a state machine are really low as far as Kolmogorov complexity goes and can be easily realized by accident. However, to bootstrap from there to a usable biological system you need to increase the intrinsic Kolmogorov complexity of the initial molecular machine by quite a bit. For organic systems that usually means chain polymerization, which isn't a particularly rare or complex issue either in the right natural environment. At that point, you have all the machinery you need from an information theoretic point.

At this point, I would just mumble. The information theoretic machinery isn't the hard part, but the assembly of the ancilliary molecular hardware isn't really understood. It is interesting to note that many components (e.g. cell wall analogs) of very primitive single-celled organisms do spontaneously occur in nature (in the same natural environment we find spontaneously assembling state machines), but the precise conditions of how the original organism (an analog of which may not currently exist in nature) assembled is unknown. We have the information theoretic machine required, and it is easy to see how these could get trapped in side the odd molecular "cell walls" that are formed under certain naturally catalytic environments, but it would still require a number of other things happening to bootstrap to the organisms we have now.

We see enough of the pieces of a simple cellular organism(chemically speaking) occurring nature that bootstrapping to what we see now isn't infeasible, though certain not a common event either. A point that is important but which never seems to get mentioned is that, in all likelihood, the intermediate proto-organisms that were even simpler than the simplest organisms now in existence are long gone. Kolmogorov complexity of the state machine confers a survival advantage, and the original organisms would have a very tiny one indeed, not good for long term survival.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your informative post! You've summarized what would be necessary and what may have been possible.

You do not consider the information theoretic machinery to be the hard part - and that may be so, but until Von Neumann's challenge there was only a quest for a plausible description, not an explanation

For instance, function and complexity viewed separately and added together do not equal "functional complexity" when theorizing how things came to be. Other examples, from your post:

Now, the entire molecular world is a state machine, but either doesn't contain sufficiently coherent context or does not have a usable control function that executes at sufficient speed.

Kolmogorov complexity of the state machine confers a survival advantage, and the original organisms would have a very tiny one indeed, not good for long term survival.