this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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[–] dudinax@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

"I base this on the fact that our DNA complexity is currently around 2.5-3 billion years older than the planet."

That isn't a fact, it's extrapolation based on a simple exponential fit to rough estimates of present-day genome complexity.

Even if we knew complexity always grew exponentially, which we don't, small changes in an exponential fit will greatly affect an extrapolation.

And we don't know what the genome complexity was of the first prokaryotes, not to mention any number of forms of life that might have gone extinct between then and now.

For example, there was a group a of multi-cellular life that flourished long before the current group, but they lived for millions of years. We'll probably never know anything about their genetic complexity.