kg4jxt

kg4jxt t1_ix5vhf3 wrote

"Most of the world isn't paying attention, yet" yeah right. Of course they're/we're paying attention! The thing is that AI is what is called "disruptive", so it is very difficult to predict how things will unfold. It makes sense that AI should be able to replace various kinds of human labor, and a company dependent on human labor (all of them), should earn greater profit if it can reduce labor cost. But that is not necessarily true: sometimes cutting labor simply forces product costs lower - something that used to be expensive suddenly becomes cheap. That is not actually a path to riches -- just ask AT&T/Ma-bell.

The other thing about disruptive technologies is that they sometimes disrupt whole economies. If you are investing in a range of companies that might benefit from the advent of AI, you have to recognize that many of those same companies will have missed timing (aka bad luck), and be decimated by an economic downturn as economic disruptions hit the broader market.

The way to invest now is the same way that has been prudent all my life:

  1. dollar-cost-average - don't try to time the market. instead get in slowly and get out slowly, buying and selling over a span of many months to secure the average price.
  2. buy-and-hold the market - buy a diverse portfolio and don't be scared away by short-term fluctuations. The broad market will tend upward as you envision (until climate change starts the great collapse in industrialized companies, after which market investments won't matter anymore).
  3. manage risk - set a target for equity holdings and buy and sell to maintain that target. For example if you decide 70% equity (stock) holdings is right, the invest accordingly. once or thrice a year, review: if the market is up, you are over target so sell some equity to restore your balance - invest the proceeds in bonds. If the market is down, stocks are on sale! Liquidate some bonds to buy stocks and restore your balance.
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kg4jxt t1_ir4vaxr wrote

Are you making the distinction that the process occurred experimentally in "droplets of pure water"? First of all, by any definition the water in Miller-type experiments is not pure: it contains a mixture of gases. Second, peptides could never form in pure water for the same reason; pure water does not contain the elements necessary to construct amino acids. So the "in pure water" phrase is a bit of mumbo jumbo some creative writer at scitechdaily probably threw in there, not relevant to the quote, imho. I doubt it appears in an original publication on this work.

I have read (many years ago), that although amino acids form readily enough from ammonia and methane as precursors; getting more complex molecules was ever more hit-and-miss in these types of experiments. Partly this was thought to be due to the relatively small quantities of amino acids in the apparatus from the first-stage syntheses. So some modified experiments began with added amino acids to simulate hypothesized concentration effects, and/or adding clay or other substrate that might act to catalyze formation of more complex molecules. I do not have access to journal libraries, so I can't find better than https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26508401/ (which does not mention peptide formation).

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kg4jxt t1_ir04t3r wrote

These scientists are about 60 years late to the party. In the 1950s, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller experimented with the formation of amino acids from primordial atmosphere gases (ammonia, methane, and water). Subsequent "Miller experiment" work into the early 1960s extended this study to the formation of peptides and nucleic acids. I read about such experiments in books by Isaac Asimov when I was a kid and actually replicated such an experiment in a HIGH SCHOOL chemistry lab!

The statement in this article attributed to "Graham Cooks . . . the Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science, [that] 'This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides'" is false.

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