confidence level: I am a physicist, not a biologist, so don’t take this the account of a domain level expert. But this is really basic stuff, and is very easy to verify. Recently I encountered a scientific claim about biology, made by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I searched around for the source of the claim, and found that he has been repeating versions of the claim for over a decade and a half, including in “the sequences” and his TED talk. In recent years, this claim has primarily been used as an argument for why an AGI attack would be extremely deadly. I believe this claim is factually incorrect.
The paragraph about gullibility resonates strongly with me. One of the first things in organic chemistry (a course I repeatedly failed) is that carbon doesn’t behave like the ions which we normally manipulate in undergraduate chemistry laboratories. Instead, carbon is like a Lego brick or K’Nex connector, with four ports which clip together in a variety of configurations. This is used to explain many quirks of biology, like why diamond or nanotubes can’t be easily produced by enzymatic processes; as you explain, carbon’s bonding process makes it very difficult to put into place atomically, and instead we need some sort of external force like immense pressure or heat to reconfigure large masses of carbon into carbon-only structures.
I suppose when talking about science to a popular audience it can be hard not to make generalizations and oversimplifications and if it’s done poorly that oversimplification can cross over into plain old inaccuracy (if I were to be charitable to Yud I would say that this is what happened here).
To wit: even the “K’nex connector with 4 ports” model of carbon doesn’t really explain the bonding of aromatic molecules like benzene or carbon nanotubes; I’ve likewise seen people confidently make the generalization “noble gases don’t react”, apparently unaware of the existence of noble gas compounds.