from Hacker News

The emergence of eukaryotes as an evolutionary algorithmic phase transition

by programd on 4/18/25, 6:45 PM with 1 comments

• by programd on 4/18/25, 6:56 PM

  As I understand it this paper basically says that the emergence of eukaryotes is inevitable given evolution and time. This has interesting implications for astrobiology, implying that eukaryotes are not a "hard step" [1] in the emergence of life.

  I'm willing to speculate that the emergence of intelligence is also not a hard step, although it does take time and maybe the right geoplanetary conditions as [1] argues. So I suspect the fraction of such planets with life that go on to develop intelligent life is close to 1 in the Drake equation.

  [1] A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life:

  https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10293