LONG STORY SHORT: Can Nature Tell Good Knock-Knock Jokes?

Unless you have been living your entire life in some alternate universe where the first appearance of the sense of humor remains somewhere way, way off in the future, you know what is meant when somebody mentions “Knock-Knock” jokes.

How do we explain how and why the first human cell was turned on?

Whatever else we may think about any particular Knock-Knock joke, when we hear one, we know somebody — most likely somebody with too much time on their hands! — had to think it up. It didn’t just randomly plop out of nowhere into human conversation.

Funny or not, a Knock-Knock joke is an example of what may well be the single most basic and essential building block of life and that is I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N.

To choose just one illustration, think about the laptop or cell phone on which you are reading this Internet post. Computers do nothing without programming. Programming doesn’t happen without a programmer. Programmers got nothing to program with without prior Information.

That’s the key thesis underlying the latest installation of the “Long Story Short” video series produced by some really creative types in the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. Information is one of the essential ingredients to understand the origin of life. It’s a bit longer than usual at 14:40, but highly entertaining and full of, well, truly interesting information!