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Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

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Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#361

Post by illuminant »

blueprint wrote: post #220
johngossman wrote: post #162

There is a whole genre of these, starting with (as mentioned in the paper's introduction) "What is Life?" by Schrodinger. I've been idly working my way through a bunch of them, including Monod's "Chance and Necessity" (dated but excellent), Nick Lane's whole series of books (notably "The Vital Question"), Nurse's "What is Life?" (good if you want to learn about yeast), Zimmer's "Life's Edge" (haven't finished it yet,…

"life is the process from birth until death" "life is the way to make anything happen to you" without a body (via life), a consciousness cant do anything

It is amazing this (perhaps pithy) comment is so down voted, yet you do make one very appropriate observation. Without a body a consciousness cannot do anything.

The obvious answer the so-called-science occult refuse to entertain is that consciousness is the universe inflecting itself and life is a subjective scope of potential capacitating this consciousness.

Life is the vessel and consciousness the universe peering back upon itself.

That is good philosophy.

Maybe not "science", yet neither is refusing to believe until someone else explains it to you.

Truth is not confined to the horizon of our ignorance, and science is merely our ignorance rigorously explained away.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#362

Post by mensetmanusman »

lukifer wrote: post #318
mensetmanusman wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we scale the rock up to earth, the ontological boundary would be similar, so maybe the earth is conscious?

I'd certainly entertain it as possibility. From a purely physical perspective, I think the Gaia Hypothesis [0] has some validity to it, even if the analogy to DNA organisms is deeply imperfect. Where I stumble, though, is identifying a way in which the Earth is actively chasing any sort of free energy differential, meaning no iterated selection pressures, and (probably) nothing we could call intelligence. [0] https:/…

The choice of where to place natural disasters to increase entropy production of life:)

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#363

Post by pfdietz »

_yb2s wrote: post #217
lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

> It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. This isn't true- many things evolved to be simpler over time. For example, some viruses are beleived to have evolved from parasitic bacteria, which themselves evolved from free living bacteria. Many other parasites have simplified and lost the ability to survive without a host. You also have examples like many cave and underground animals losing eye…

A great example is tunicates. They're a subgroup of chordates, and so are closely related to us, but they've been brutally simplified over time.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#364

Post by mathewsanders »

vixen99 wrote: post #352
creer wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this "want" of pop science is annoying. I don't see anything lacking with simply using something like "enables", "allows". An environment with sticks allows evolutionary paths that can use sticks. A world with pools of high energy makes it easier for energy-using systems to develop there as opposed to outside of them. A world with light - go figure - makes it possible for light-using systems to subsist.

So are the atomic accretions known as humans who have 'wants' part of 'pop science'? Free will? If not, our justice system needs massive reconsideration, an idea with which many people concur but (I would have thought) is unlikely to prevail.

Maybe you’ve read this already (I still have it in my stack to read so can’t give any personal review) but ‘Determined’ by Robert Sapolsky sets the argument that we don’t have free will and that the justice system is flawed because of that.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398369-why-free-will-d...

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#365

Post by jgarzon »

photonthug wrote: post #293
ixaxaar wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the complexity researchers over the years have created a wide range of tooling for analysing complex systems across a large number of domains. Consider complexity economics, computational social sciences, network sciences and cascading networks, evolutionary theories, parts of systems biology, connectomics and computational neuroscience etc. The Santa Fe institute has been at the forefront and has an amazing…

I've been on this same journey through the Santa Fe institute pubs on this topic, which all started in a weird place because I wondered what kind of bizarre scientific research outfit had cormac McCarthy on staff as an artist in residence apart from the rest of the conspicuously multidisciplinary luminaries. What a unique, strange, and special intellectual atmosphere they must have had going in their prime and hopefu…

Santa Fe institute pubs? I’m curious to go there is it open to the public?

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#366

Post by Wissenschafter »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #289
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tweak your intuition: energy IS motion. When things are not moving, there is no energy. When there is energy, things are moving.

How would you describe a rock sitting on the top of a mountain? It is not moving relative to the matter around it, but it certainly contains quite a bit of energy, in a variety of different forms. I am trying to recognize that even in that rock, energy is dissipating in multiple ways, and any number of different events can lead to it dissipating in different ways. I suppose you can say that the individual atoms compo…

That rock is moving though, at c through time.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#367

Post by bmitc »

ajuc wrote: post #347
bmitc wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the conditions for life on the Moon? You can't have something if the conditions to form it are missing. Your question is equivalent to asking why stars don't form outside dust clouds.

There are ways for the matter on the moon to dissipate energy faster than moon dust. We could build a moon base for example. It doesn't do it. In fact as far as we know - most of the space in the universe is doing the dissipation in a very inefficient way. Which means the theory that it will do it simply because of the "selection pressure" is empirically wrong. Let's say a huge asteroid sterilized Earth 100 years ago…

> Which means the theory that it will do it simply because of the "selection pressure" is empirically wrong.

Again, this is not true. We have empirical evidence that life on Earth began as soon as it could. And the universe doesn't spontaneously do things as you're wishing it to do to support your argument.

> Let's say a huge asteroid sterilized Earth 100 years ago. What could the life do to outcompete that?

That doesn't negate anything. Entropy increases over time. Given the various conditions available in the universe, its processes follow that directive relevant to their conditions.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#368

Post by wegfawefgawefg »

kthielen wrote: post #355
jiggawatts wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lex Fridman interview with Lee Cronin "Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe" really opened my eyes. I find myself agreeing with the essential points Lee lays out, that there is a mathematical / physics-based definition for life or life-like systems such as advanced AI and robotics. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGiDqhSdLHk

Yeah but, how is an assembly index different than an LZW code?

I think they discussed that in the podcast.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#369

Post by tsimionescu »

jgarzon wrote: post #365
photonthug wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on this same journey through the Santa Fe institute pubs on this topic, which all started in a weird place because I wondered what kind of bizarre scientific research outfit had cormac McCarthy on staff as an artist in residence apart from the rest of the conspicuously multidisciplinary luminaries. What a unique, strange, and special intellectual atmosphere they must have had going in their prime and hopefu…

Santa Fe institute pubs? I’m curious to go there is it open to the public?

I believe they mean "publications".

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#370

Post by saiya-jin »

namaria wrote: post #172
WaxProlix wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we're all agents of Entropy, spinning our circles until we die all in the service of heat death? I don't like it!

I don't understand this view at all. We are what we are. Entropy is a concept in our mind and heat death is a very particular phenomenon that depends on the systems experiencing it being very specifically defined in ways that the Universe cannot be. We are. Descartes had the right idea. The experience of consciousness is irreducible. To say "we are atoms thinking" and variations thereof is utterly meaningless. All wo…

> A universe without consciousness experiencing it really exists?

As long as we don't discover something truly novel this is how reality of this universe looked like before we came since its creation. And it fared just fine.

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