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Particle Life

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Re: Particle Life

#31

Post by pixl97 »

aacid wrote: post #17
billytetrud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been…

I honestly believe that high intelligence while short term is extremely advantageous, long term it is self-destructive. I like to imagine there are countless planets with perfect ecosystems of living organisms where no single species dominates whole planet.

There is no such thing as a perfect ecosystem because we live in an imperfect universe, this is if you look at any significant timescale. Eventually you're going to get hit by an asteroid or a gamma ray burst, or some mega volcano is going to pop and cause world wide levels of destruction. And generally we see some reestablishment species is going to dominate for some time.

Re: Particle Life

#32

Post by downboots »

matt-attack wrote: post #27
downboots wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how does it show it? what is meant by life? are rules necessary or just transitions? what enables rules at all?

A general question by those that support ideas like Intelligent Design seem to focus on the notion of order from randomness. Specifically the natural intuition is that the vast amount of order associated with life could never arise on its own from just randomness. It's encouraging to be able to so quickly demonstrate that in fact order can emerge from chaos. Even if the organelles or molecules or whatever you might c…

where do the rules come from? Is it randomness all the way down? how come they run at all? how can a lifeform in a dynamic mess of jiggling things have a claim to understanding?

Re: Particle Life

#33

Post by billytetrud »

squigz wrote: post #21
billytetrud wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a fact that we haven't been eaten by a swarm of anything. Facts are evidence. If you don't understand that, I don't think we'll be having a productive or fun converstion. Sound more like you're interested in making innane snarky comments to fuel your own ego. Good luck with that.

Would you like to actually address the point I made about simple life?

If you made a point about that, it was not clear to me. Perhaps you were implying that simple life could be very common even if intelligent life isn't. While yes, that is a possibility, that says nothing of its probability. Were that the circumstance, it leaves the question open as to why simple life would be common but intelligent life not common.

Re: Particle Life

#35

Post by billytetrud »

geraldwhen wrote: post #23
billytetrud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been…

There is no evidence that space travel is practical or sustainable. The only viable spaceship known to man is Earth, and we don’t steer it. Maybe there are lots of earth-like planets with intelligent beings, but travel is impossible and communication is useless given the time delay.

Saying there is "no evidence" is factually absurd. There are a whole host of possibilities for practical long distance space travel. At very least for small light-weight robots. And it even seems possible that we can viably transport our entire solarsystem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU . No evidence indeed... only if you lack imagination.

Re: Particle Life

#36

Post by nox100 »

geraldwhen wrote: post #23
billytetrud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been…

There is no evidence that space travel is practical or sustainable. The only viable spaceship known to man is Earth, and we don’t steer it. Maybe there are lots of earth-like planets with intelligent beings, but travel is impossible and communication is useless given the time delay.

It's not hard to believe that we could make self replicating drones in the next 100 years that go from system to system, make a few more, and continue. We've already sent drones out of our solar system. They don't have to go fast. They'd still visit every system in the known universe in a "relatively" small amount of time. (relative to the age of the known universe).

Re: Particle Life

#38

Post by dekhn »

geraldwhen wrote: post #23
billytetrud wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are, in fact, reasons to believe that. Nothing definitive of course. But the fact that we haven't been absorbed by a von neumann swarm or something like it places strict limits on the prevalence of life and/or what stages that life can achieve. One would either have to belive that intelligent life is vastly less likely than non-intelligent life, or that life itself is quite rare, or that life simply hasn't been…

There is no evidence that space travel is practical or sustainable. The only viable spaceship known to man is Earth, and we don’t steer it. Maybe there are lots of earth-like planets with intelligent beings, but travel is impossible and communication is useless given the time delay.

I think it's reasonable to say that we could probably build a fleet of ships containing tardigrades in their dried-out tun state (which is biologically inert, up to tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and extremely resilient to radiation and vacuum), launch them with enough mass to reach a nearby (up to 10 LY at 0.001c?) solar system with a planet that has water, and deliver the payload to the water, such that the tardigrades would revert to their normal living state.

It would cost a lot of money. It would take a very long time (hundreds of thousands of years). Nobody alive today would see the results. There are any number of systematic and non-systematic failures that could occur. building things that work autonomously for 100Kyears is nontrivial. Even if you succeeded- say, 100Kyears from now, one out of a thousand of your samples crash-lands onto a remote planet and revives- congratulations, you've maybe just contaminated an otherwise unknown ecosystem.

The story gets more interesting if earth has fusion, stable government and research funding, then you could make humans into tuns that can travel for 10K years, and have advanced propulsion (.01-.1c), pre-deliver full infrastructure...

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