Origin of Life in RNA Computing: Independent Suggestion of Organic von Neumann Probes

Previously I had advanced the idea that, if intelligence has arisen elsewhere in the galaxy, it is likely to have colonized the galaxy in some form, and therefore we are more likely to find their artifacts here in our solar system than hear or understand their EM signals.  Specifically I argue that von Neumann probes are more likely to be entities of organic chemistry we find on low gravity bodies, that as natural selection is universal law that such entities - even if dispatched to gather information - would eventually be selected for fecundity; that is, they would inevitably become cancerous.  If the water that seeded the early Earth contained such entities, whether or not they were intact, the tumor detritis of these cancerous von Neumann probes would provide the template for life on ancient Earth.  

We have not nearly approached the amount of solar system exploration, or elaborated an abstract theory of how to recognize life or its artifacts, to be able to say we have absence of evidence.  Indeed we find nucleobases on asteroids, though so far we have no evidence so far that they originated from processes beyond the natural ones we are aware of.  

In a new paper, Hessameddin Akhlaghpour makes the observation that while the RNA information processing behavior of life on Earth is not Turing complete, with some additional (not implausible) molecular machinery, it would be.  He then argues that life originated with such a molecular machine and we have not yet found it.  (H/T Marginal Revolution)

Akhlaghpour H.  A Theory of Natural Universal Computation Through RNA.  arXiv:2008.08814