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Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

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Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#91

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Nomentatus wrote: post #36
foo101 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think JoeAltmaier (your parent commenter) still has a point. If the leap in complexity of octopuses is so obvious that we can tell it's an alien, do you mean other earlier life in our planet was not alien? That would not make sense because it would be hard to imagine that two independent evolutions of life led to the same protein-based, DNA-based life. So the only reasonable theory is that both the earlier life in…

The 33 scientists do not mean that. I think, in fact, to make their argument go forward, you pretty much have to assume that squid arrived earlier from a different branch of the same alien lineage, but were quickly - so quickly - followed by vasty more complex octopi, that we know that octopi didn't evolve here. The authors aren't anti-panspermists. JoeAltmaier's wasn't the one introducing the idea of panspermia. His…

But it also then supports the much larger issue of Panspermia. That should have been the title/main point then? Yes this is quite a strange article.

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#92

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Nomentatus wrote: post #39
jonny_eh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument sounds awfully similar to that of Intelligent Design. I imagine that Punctuated Equilibrium is a far simpler explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

If you find a watch on a beach... was the old argument. The argument in the paper is that the Octopi change is so fast and so immense it leaves every known instance of PE, including human evolution, far behind along with every other known leap forward. I'm not endorsing that view, just retailing it.

I'm wondering if the fossil record supports the conclusion that octopuses actually got all the claimed features at once? How does a fossil (of a soft creature, notoriously rare to fossilize at all) indicate the presence of color change, large eye and so on.

Or is it a DNA argument. Then I'm back to why DNA at all unless everything is alien. In which case, why the article. Its like "there's this one alien guy in Idaho..." instead of "There's other intelligent life in the universe!!!"

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#93

Post by gmuslera »

foo101 wrote: post #30

Here is what I would like to understand: If there is any truth to the theory that Octopuses indeed evolved in outer space and were delivered to our planet via a cosmic payload, how is it that they happened to have the same kind of protein-based, DNA-based genetics like we have? Isn't it too much of a stretch to imagine that an alien evolved under similar conditions with similar genetic foundation like life evolved in…

Think in computers. It may be possible that there are alien computers that use the binary numbering system? Think on it as the DNA (oversimplifying, of course). Now, there is any possibility that they use python as their programming language or the intel processors instruction set? That chains of DNA are interpreted in the exact same way, specially the very basic ones (i.e. how to turn sugar into energy) is what makes very improbable, or at least easy to verify, that something from here have in fact alien origin.

Maybe we had 2 waves of incoming DNA from another specific planet, one that bring here the basic building blocks and another the octopus branch (that had the same way to read DNA as it have the same origin), but if that evolution could happen somewhere else, why it couldn't had happened here?

The idea that their evolution could had been triggered by an alien virus still have the same origin requirement. You still have DNA that must be interpreted in the exact same way as ours to work. Occam's Razor would be useful here, just push the moment of the split from our branch closer to the point when we went from unicellular to multicellular

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#94

Post by TimTheTinker »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #85
TimTheTinker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is his will to remain self-consistent, i.e. he cannot change and has no desire to do so. God is entirely different from us in that there is no contradiction anywhere in his person, nature, or work.

You're saying that he chose to have no choice. This implies there was a point at which he had a choice, then chose to have no choice. Can you see how nonsensical this is?

> He chose to have no choice

I never said that. God’s existence and nature are eternal and outside of spacetime. Neither changes with time.

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#95

Post by TimTheTinker »

peteretep wrote: post #79
TimTheTinker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for Christianity, God's omnipotence does not mean he can violate his own nature. In fact, he is very limited in the sense that there are an infinite number of things that he cannot do because they are inconsistent with his nature -- his holiness, truth, love, and wisdom.

> In fact, he is very limited in the sense That's blasphemy, and you take it upon yourself to interpret and understand His divine will, and second guess Him, despite being warned over and over that His will is beyond your understanding. Your comments are a textbook example of the type of human arrogance that gets Biblical characters unstuck, over and over and over again. > he is very limited in the sense that there a…

Not blasphemy, since these statements are proceeding directly from what God has said about himself in scripture.

I’ll break out the Bible references and reply this evening. Cheers :-)

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#96

Post by stephengillie »

mirimir wrote: post #68
Nomentatus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, true. But these aren't bacteria and this is a whole lotta genes - so life here absorbing so much DNA coherently doesn't sound more plausible than eggs hatching to me. (Meteorites are freezing cold if you touch them right after they land, despite ablating most of their mass on the way down. Or rather, iron ones are - carbonaceous, I have no idea.)

We humans use genes that were delivered by viruses.

We get DNA not just from viruses, but also vesicles. All cells, from humble bacteria all the way to our relatively huge and dynamic human cells, package snippets of DNA to send to other cells.

It's like a message in a bottle, thrown out into the "sea" of our atmosphere. Or an email, and viruses are spam.

Previously on HN:

Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses. [0]

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [1]

Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005810

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#97

Post by anotheryou »

"The Hawaiʻian creation myth relates that the present cosmos is only the last of a series, having arisen in stages from the wreck of the previous universe. In this account, the octopus is the lone survivor of the previous, alien universe."

( https://archive.org/details/oceanicmytholog02dixogoog )

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#98

Post by Nomentatus »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #92
Nomentatus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you find a watch on a beach... was the old argument. The argument in the paper is that the Octopi change is so fast and so immense it leaves every known instance of PE, including human evolution, far behind along with every other known leap forward. I'm not endorsing that view, just retailing it.

I'm wondering if the fossil record supports the conclusion that octopuses actually got all the claimed features at once? How does a fossil (of a soft creature, notoriously rare to fossilize at all) indicate the presence of color change, large eye and so on. Or is it a DNA argument. Then I'm back to why DNA at all unless everything is alien. In which case, why the article. Its like "there's this one alien guy in Idaho…

Good point, re soft bodies fossilizing more rarely - because what may have happened is the squids just didn't show up in the fossil record for a very long time, nor the proto-squids. Ocean acidification at various periods (say due to CO2 variations at different periods, which were large) would be a factor.

I'm not saying the 33 scientists weren't well aware of these considerations, though.

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#99

Post by Nomentatus »

mirimir wrote: post #68
Nomentatus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, true. But these aren't bacteria and this is a whole lotta genes - so life here absorbing so much DNA coherently doesn't sound more plausible than eggs hatching to me. (Meteorites are freezing cold if you touch them right after they land, despite ablating most of their mass on the way down. Or rather, iron ones are - carbonaceous, I have no idea.)

We humans use genes that were delivered by viruses.

Yes - a bit at a time, I take it whereas some bacteria can swallow whole chromosomes entire (so-called "competence"); so I was skeptical about so much DNA transferring to just one kind of creature, at once.

But now I think about it, the frozen octopi or eggs would bring a lot of alien octopi viruses along with them that might be able to do the job for all I know.

Re: Group of scientists suggest that octopuses might actually be aliens

#100

Post by xtracto »

agar wrote: post #12

As much as I love the concept, I can only imagine what a professional with expertise in cephalopods and their DNA would think while reading this article. If you've ever read a popular press story in your area of expertise, you immediately see how many things writers oversimplify to the point of absurdity, or just get plain wrong. I'm guessing the authors of that journal article, were they to read this news story, wou…

And that kind of irresponsible press also has managed to hinder the progress of science. Take for example Podkletnov's research, which was hastly taken into popular press and caused a halt in the studies (whereas the actual paper was conservative and measured).
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