151–160 of 268 posts
Excuse the cliche question, but what is Life? If we make an AI whose thoughts and communication are practically indistinguishable from humans, and it controls a bunch of things that affect the physical world, is it alive? If there's a disembodied mind somewhere that can think and imagine but never communicate or interact with anything, is it dead? What about a human in a coma or permanent dreaming state? What about w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How did the "mother" creature come to be? It could be a human "mad scientist" creating hordes of Pikachus. Suppose the scientist has also attained biological immortality for himself, and the Pikachus have spread to multiple planets over thousands of years. You come upon such a colony planet, but you have no knowledge of their creator. They display no clues that hint at the scientist's role in their civilization (fo…
I assume by "spreading" you mean that the Pikachus can reproduce? Can they mutate? If so, then they satisfy all four boxes and they count as life. If the Pikachus are made of cells, they'll certainly mutate/vary, since their heritable material is DNA, which is quite fragile. Really, it's hard to imagine having "reproduction" without "mutation" in the imperfect physical world where errors are possible— I can't imagine…
No, they're all created by the mad scientist but can think, reason, communicate, teach, interact, invent and construct perfectly fine on their own.
> I don't think "what material they're made of" matters much ... If the Pikachus don't reproduce themselves, and/or are created with perfect fidelity every time, then yes, I would call them technology and not life.
So, to distill your criteria for life, it comes down to:
• Species must consist of "individuals" who join in pairs to produce another individual.
• New individuals must be slightly different from the individuals who reproduced them.
In other comment [0] you say that you could consider software to be alive:
> Note that "alive" by the given definition doesn't imply "conscious" or "intelligent"
> We certainly wouldn't say that iPads (Pikachus) coming from a factory ("mother creature") are alive.
But if an iPad had a software process that connected to another iPad, and they both commanded the factory to create a new, slightly different iPad, would they be considered alive? :)
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In the "swapping spit" scenario, we the aliens and they are us. If genetic material did travel in either direction, it would be easily verified.
There is life on Mars -- JPL just doesn't want to tell us. Follow this logic: 1) two planets in habitable zone - both spontaneously cause life; 2) then many or most habitable zone planets have life; 3) Of the trillions of stars in our galaxy, there must be multitudes that have hosted intelligent life; 4) we don't hear SETI signals; 5) that means SETI must have snuffed themselves out with some super-technology; 6) erg…
If life is found NASA will not get funding.
Therefore NASA is doing all the science it can before it does a test for life. At least we will be able to say something about what it is and the context that it's in.
Then the plug will get pulled.
The search for life is the way NASA gets funding. If life is found NASA will not get funding. Therefore NASA is doing all the science it can before it does a test for life. At least we will be able to say something about what it is and the context that it's in. Then the plug will get pulled.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is life on Mars -- JPL just doesn't want to tell us. Follow this logic: 1) two planets in habitable zone - both spontaneously cause life; 2) then many or most habitable zone planets have life; 3) Of the trillions of stars in our galaxy, there must be multitudes that have hosted intelligent life; 4) we don't hear SETI signals; 5) that means SETI must have snuffed themselves out with some super-technology; 6) erg…
I wonder if Type 3 civilizations might engulf their star in a Dyson Sphere to block out light and make it harder to find. A dark forest where the life-bearing trees aren’t even visible.
I was surprised by this statement. I thought atmosphere on Mars is too thin to support any kind of combustion.
After some searching the closest thing I found was a bunch of popular science articles seeing aliens in white pixels on images from Curiosity [1]. It seems all very much like people trying to make a thing out of image artifacts. NASA's much more reasonable explanation is stray reflections in the optics or cosmic particles striking the detector.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-mars-curiosity-rover-saw-a-we...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume by "spreading" you mean that the Pikachus can reproduce? Can they mutate? If so, then they satisfy all four boxes and they count as life. If the Pikachus are made of cells, they'll certainly mutate/vary, since their heritable material is DNA, which is quite fragile. Really, it's hard to imagine having "reproduction" without "mutation" in the imperfect physical world where errors are possible— I can't imagine…
> I assume by "spreading" you mean that the Pikachus can reproduce? No, they're all created by the mad scientist but can think, reason, communicate, teach, interact, invent and construct perfectly fine on their own. > I don't think "what material they're made of" matters much ... If the Pikachus don't reproduce themselves, and/or are created with perfect fidelity every time, then yes, I would call them technology and…
Where did you get pairs from? If the Pikachus reproduced by binary fission (splitting in half and then growing a new half, like cells do), or had 18 genders, they would still evolve. They only have to make copies. Doesn't matter how.
> No, they're all created by the mad scientist but can think, reason, communicate, teach, interact, invent
If they can't reproduce (and/or aren't made of stuff that can reproduce), I would say complexity of behavior is irrelevant.
For example, the identical iPads coming off the factory line are still technology, whether they are loaded with simple software or complex software. The complexity could go all the way up to AI, but they would still be technology.
Note that we are used to "intelligent" meaning "alive", because the only intelligent thing we know of at this point in history (us) is alive. But I think it is perfectly valid to suppose that non-living things could be intelligent or even conscious.
> So if an iPad [...] created a new, slightly different iPad, would they be considered alive?
Yes, under those conditions they would certainly start evolving, and I think that's a perfectly reasonable line to draw between technology and life. In this new example, the "phenotype" of the iPads would change in a self-sustaining way, emergently, independent of any design or intent.
I wonder if there is an incentive to NOT find life there because of what that discovery might do to slow industrialization and colonization plans. Do we need to conserve that life? Do we need to set up preserves that are off limits to development? Opens a big can of worms (or bacteria) that I imagine some would rather see kept closed
realistically mars is way more interesting if its more than a boring rock