5AF Philosophy Thread
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 6:07 pm
A Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey Message Board
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I'm surprised you came to this thought, shmeguin. Our POV's/worldviews are completely different, but I've thought of intelligent life (well, life in general) on other planets in a similar way.Starting to think that intelligent life on other planets shouldn’t just be assumed.
I think that the 4 fundamental forces, combined with matter had an absolutely astronomical shot of producing a central nervous system, DNA and a fleshy cage. There may be other modalities of consciousness, but that’s very speculative.
So let’s say there are a trillion planets in the Goldilocks zone. And a 1 in a trillion chance of this phenomenon. The exact numbers don’t matter of course. But I just don’t think it’s a given that the dominos fell the right way widespread throughout the cosmos.
There are a lot of conceits about the nature of consciousness that feed into this, but maybe we are just that special.
But you agree that certain conditions need met for sentience to exist. I simply don’t think it’s a given that it’s a widespread phenomenon. Not only is there a need for matter to mush together the right way initially, but you also need this initial mush to be protected enough to reproduce.I don't think of "intelligent" life in the universe in terms of whether it's out this, but rather when it was/will be out there. Time is a motherf*cker of a concept to wrap your mind around. Life on Earth has existed in such a minuscule amount time (let alone humanity) compared to the lifetime of the universe. Statistically speaking, I'd imagine life has happened before Earth, life will happen after Earth.
Infinity is too strong of a concept to use to explain these things. It's carte blanche for anything and everything to possibly happen, when in reality there are only a finite number of events in the universe (hypothetically, of course).I always go back to the infinite monkey theorem... a monkey at a typewriter hitting keys at random, if given infinite time, will type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
I agree with you that it's likely not as wide spread at this current point in time as people imagine; however, I don't agree that it's not wide spread through the course of time.
I've thought of this as well. There could very well be "life" out there, but what we perceive as life (carbon based, water dependent entities) may not be encapsulating the entire spectrum of universal life.I get that there could be permutations of intelligence we can’t fathom. But the earthly model seems very unlikely to exist as much as most people imagine.
"life" isn't that interesting to me. i imagine there is an immense amount of life in the universe. but does that move the needle? energy being consumed to multiply cells? "consciousness" is where it gets twisted.Infinity is too strong of a concept to use to explain these things. It's carte blanche for anything and everything to possibly happen, when in reality there are only a finite number of events in the universe (hypothetically, of course).I always go back to the infinite monkey theorem... a monkey at a typewriter hitting keys at random, if given infinite time, will type out the complete works of Shakespeare.
I agree with you that it's likely not as wide spread at this current point in time as people imagine; however, I don't agree that it's not wide spread through the course of time.
I've thought of this as well. There could very well be "life" out there, but what we perceive as life (carbon based, water dependent entities) may not be encapsulating the entire spectrum of universal life.I get that there could be permutations of intelligence we can’t fathom. But the earthly model seems very unlikely to exist as much as most people imagine.
Yup, corrected myself.
and c2i - check your initial phrasing. read as "they WILL produce shakespeare".
but if you have an infinite amount of permutations of an event that are repeated an infinite amount of times, it's not possible to have a probability of 1. do you mean "near 1". come on science boy. don't confuse me.Yup, corrected myself.
and c2i - check your initial phrasing. read as "they WILL produce shakespeare".
At a certain point, if a number is near 1, it can be assumed as 1.but if you have an infinite amount of permutations of an event that are repeated an infinite amount of times, it's not possible to have a probability of 1. do you mean "near 1". come on science boy. don't confuse me.Yup, corrected myself.
and c2i - check your initial phrasing. read as "they WILL produce shakespeare".
Move what needle? Not trying to dump on you, just curious regarding your angle here. Do you take an active interest in knowing whether there are conscious beings out there, or is it one of those things where if "they" exist, great, if not, no hair lost on my head.Source of the post "life" isn't that interesting to me. i imagine there is an immense amount of life in the universe. but does that move the needle? energy being consumed to multiply cells? "consciousness" is where it gets twisted.
what thread are we in? the probability of me not understanding you is 1.I see life largely as just a certain set of chemical reactions. Those reactions will happen if conditions are favorable. There are a large number of planets/moons out there where the conditions are favorable. The only thing that's left is the activation energy required to kick start those chemical reactions.
If you want to move to "consciousness" and "intelligence" that's a matter of philosophy, so move it to the appropriate thread, please.
just distinguishing life from consciousness. the former is represented in simple organisms, devoid of any brain activity/intelligence. i find this to be likely spread out across the universe.Move what needle? Not trying to dump on you, just curious regarding your angle here. Do you take an active interest in knowing whether there are conscious beings out there, or is it one of those things where if "they" exist, great, if not, no hair lost on my head.Source of the post "life" isn't that interesting to me. i imagine there is an immense amount of life in the universe. but does that move the needle? energy being consumed to multiply cells? "consciousness" is where it gets twisted.
i am a monkey that got lucky. you are communicating with the infinite abyss in real time.Probability of you missing my joke is most certainly 1.
Ok. Let’s take this for a whirl...It's not proven to be inaccurate. It's been proven to be correct as the theorem states "almost surely". In any case, once you apply time limits to it, the probability drops to nearly zero, but in infinite time the probability is 1.
That's the fun thing about infinity...
Yes. Not every time around, in fact in relation to the number of possible configurations of matter it would be beyond exceedingly rare, but an infinite number of times.Not once. Not a hundred times. Not a trillion times. But we do this an infinite amount of times.
Are we really though? No information can be passed on from one iteration to the next, so instead of 'living forever' it's really more living the same life (and an almost infinite number of variations) an infinite number of times.we’re all living forever.