Equation 6 · Structure from Sequence: What Protein Folding Prediction Did and Did Not Settle
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Two things about this argument are routinely misreported. First, the specific numbers are illustrative and depend entirely on the assumed and sampling rate — they are a scaling argument dressed as a calculation. What survives any choice of parameters is that the configuration count grows exponentially in L while folding times do not. Second, Levinthal was not proposing that folding is a random search and then expressing surprise. The arithmetic was constructed precisely to rule that mechanism out. The paradox is a paradox only for someone who assumed search in the first place.
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