Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe? • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer » Fri, Jan 26, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

namrog84 wrote: post #308

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more enthralled if this didn't also mean literal extinction of us and everything that matters to us.

Is it an extinction or just another type of evolution of humans? Evolution isn't the right word but AI will presumably be from us and carry some or the things that matter to us most likely. Sure you aren't passing on dna like to natural born children but not all children have same ideals or cares of same things.

Evolution usually doesn't mean watching I and everyone I know die (or worse) in real-time. Many people want children but few would be willing to die in childbirth to achieve it.

There's absolutely no guarantee that we can construct superintelligence that will perpetuate our values long-term or even short-term.

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

#402

Post by jodrellblank » Fri, Jan 26, 2024, 5:21 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #395

jodrellblank wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got photos from the surface of Venus: https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-... It's visibly not covered in moss, fungus, grasses, algae, slime. On Earth we talk about hot hydrothermal vents underwater: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vent... - this says " the Pompeii worm [...] is one of the most heat-resistant multicellular animals on the planet, able to withstand…

Agreed - Venus is particularly unlikely to have any life because of its temperatures, I wasn't trying to claim otherwise, just choosing a near neighbor for which we haven't ever tried to look at its rocks through a microscope. However, those pictures don't tell us anything about the presence of microscopic life. On Earth at least, only a quite tiny subset of unicellular life-forms leave any trace large enough to be v…

Given that I don’t see anything on toilets or kitchen worktops even knowing bacteria is there, no I wouldn’t expect to.

But I also wouldn’t expect to at 460C, and would rather see core samples from Mars’s ice caps

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

#403

Post by kthielen » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 2:55 PM UTC

wegfawefgawefg wrote: post #368

kthielen wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think they discussed that in the podcast.

I don't think they explained how it's different, I did listen to the podcast before posting my comment.

It's a pretty basic question that IMHO demands a clear and adequate explanation. If you read the 'abracadabra' example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_theory

... you could be reading the abstract to an early paper explaining LZW codes.

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

#404

Post by ben_w » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 11:08 AM UTC

eagerpace wrote: post #59

throwaway143829 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes you wonder what comes after AI. What's the "higher order" after AI that exists today or that will exist in 10 years? I'd guess we will never understand that level of intelligence, unless AI augments our brains somehow.

Perhaps they’ll keep creating smaller transistors and more powerful processors eventually landing on a soft tissue-based version powered by glucose.

Even back in 2017, transistors were already smaller[0] and faster[1] than biological synapses to the same ratio by which wolves are smaller and faster than the hills they roam around on.

[0] Human synapse size / 2017-transistor size ≅ 1µm / 11nm ≅ wolf body length / a specific hill I was thinking of ≅ 1.6m / 145m [3]

[1] synaptic pulse rate / transistor transition rate ≅ 200 Hz / 30 GHz [2] ≅ 2 cm/year / 25 km/day ≅ speed of continental drift / average daily range of a wolf as a speed [3]

[2] transistors flip significantly faster than overall clock speed

[3] https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/you-wont-be...