Life Ascending

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1. fallsoffbikesOct 2023
   I’d suggest the book Life Ascending. It talks about how certain major jumps in complexity occurs. It directly addresses the “bumping in the ocean” you mention — according to the book the likely explanation was these initial reactions occurred in local environments around certain types of thermal vents that were constrained by small geologic features. Interesting read.
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2. HPsquaredAug 2023
   Thanks for the reference, I didn't know he had a more thorough book on this. I remember reading "Life Ascending" and being amazed at the descriptions of the hydrothermal vents.
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3. kashyapcApr 2020
   On Nick Lane's "The Vital Question":

   I gifted myself The Vital Question in 2015 December. While Lane writes effectively without any mind-numbing jargon, the book still has quite a bit of technical chemistry (understandably). After the excellent first 80 pages, it took me a lot more will power to plough through. (I paused at page 112 to get back later.)

   Once when I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I told that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and only then get back to The Vital Question."

   PS: FWIW, I've previously mentioned the above in an older thread, where an ex-biochemist chimed in to confirm the above advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115

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4. knzhouDec 2019
   I try to only read books that are at least a few years old, so these aren’t timely recommendations.

   On the list for next year:

   The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

   Essays of Montaign

   Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

   Higher Speculations: Grand Theories and Failed Revolutions in Physics and Cosmology

   The Enigma of Reason

   Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

   Impro

   Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

   Invisible Cities

   Collapse of Complex Societies

   --

   Favorites from this year:

   Death's End

   One Man's Meat

   Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

   A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

   Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery

   Cosmicomics

   Why Quark Rhymes with Pork

   The Unfolding of Language

   A Sand County Almanac

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5. burning_hamsterDec 2018
   > pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and then get back to The Vital Question

   As an ex-biochemist who has read both books, this is excellent advice.

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6. misiti3780Jun 2016
   Has anyone else here read Nick Lane's new book - The Vital Question - I just finished it and this article really seems like a continuation of some of his theories he talks about.

   I found about the book from HN, and have since bought every single other book by him, almost done with Life Ascending now, which is also amazing

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