I. HYPOTHESIS: Aqueous RNA becomes stable against hydrolysis under high hydrostatic pressure, 1-4000 atm. Weaker also-sufficient hypothesis: it works for some exponentially-large subset of RNA-like molecules; also salinity has most of the same beneficial effects as pressure, and both can work together. This and related hypotheses can resolve the gaping holes in L.E.Orgel's "RNA world" paradigm about life's origin. It deserves direct experimental tests, but even without them we present 4 independent lines of evidence for it apparently yielding confidence>99.9999%.

II. I explain how to measure the "true vital information content" of a lifeform. It is hugely wrong to claim an N-base pair DNA genome has information content 2N bits. The simplest estimate instead should be ≤-Nlog₂(1-3ε/4)∼3εN/ln16≈1.082εN bits, where ε is the chance that a random single-base mutation would kill the organism and experimentally for bacteria ε≈1%, and the "≤" is because of further refinements I'll describe, which can reduce the bit-count further. I explain how to get more precise estimates with more experimental and computational work. Then calculating numbers shows that the genesis of life was not necessarily absurdly improbable; predicted and observed genesis rates plausibly can roughly agree.

Together, ideas I (if correct) and II overcome the two top obstacles blocking understanding how genesis could have happened, and suggest many experiments. Unfortunately version 3 adds a new section "(Pessimistic) Post Mortem" which discusses another class experiments (on "apparent molar volumes") whose results suggest I is false.