Ways to Estimate the Minimal Specified Complexity of Reproduction

Because of the difficulty of estimating the complexity of biological reproduction of even the simplest cell, the minimal complexities of several simpler self-replicating systems are computed. These include viruses (both biological and computer, which require additional complex resources to replicate). Also considered are a proposed self-reproducing factory and two conceptual self-replicators. Because even some of those are difficult to evaluate, very, very low bounds are computed. Still, in all cases, the minimal complexities are enormous-more than all the quantum state changes in the entire history of the whole known universe in all time. Therefore, because biological reproduction is more complex, all origin-of-life proposals, including RNA hypotheses toward the first self-reproducing cell, must demonstrate how at least such minimal complexity could have accumulated beyond using simply trial-and-error.