Some of the consequences of atheism..alien life forms

[AshtonBlack]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

Besides carbon-based life, conjecture I've heard included sulphur-based and silicon-based.

Indeed. We may even "invent" some ourselves, eventually.

Betting on "silicon-based"? "Grey Goo Planet!"

I meant the computational singularity, which could lead to sentience. Hence life, therefore "silicon" or whatever we're using at the time.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Intelligent life is probably rare (or maybe inevitable, I don't know), but the odds that two different alien races were close enough together in time and space to interact are, I'll bet, very large against. So, we will all play out our existence without ever knowing if we're alone.

Actually I disagree. Even if on average the distance between any two islands of intelligent life existing at any one time is way too far for contact to ever be made (say 0.33 found per Milky Way sized Galaxy), the vast size of the universe and the laws of probability mean that there must be (very rare) places somewhere where two such islands would be found close enough (in fact there'd be some exceptionally rare locations where three or even more may be 'within range' of each other).

Of course this thought does nothing really to give us hope of making contact ourselves. Even if you used (for the sake of argument) a much more optimistic estimate of the frequency of intelligent life (say 42 at any one time per Milky Way sized Galaxy), well, 1/42 of the volume of this galaxy still represents a huge big vast lonely area to find yourself in.

Now factor in time.

I did.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

Besides carbon-based life, conjecture I've heard included sulphur-based and silicon-based.

Indeed. We may even "invent" some ourselves, eventually.

Betting on "silicon-based"? "Grey Goo Planet!"

I meant the computational singularity, which could lead to sentience. Hence life, therefore "silicon" or whatever we're using at the time.

I was thinking of nanbots run amok.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Intelligent life is probably rare (or maybe inevitable, I don't know), but the odds that two different alien races were close enough together in time and space to interact are, I'll bet, very large against. So, we will all play out our existence without ever knowing if we're alone.

Actually I disagree. Even if on average the distance between any two islands of intelligent life existing at any one time is way too far for contact to ever be made (say 0.33 found per Milky Way sized Galaxy), the vast size of the universe and the laws of probability mean that there must be (very rare) places somewhere where two such islands would be found close enough (in fact there'd be some exceptionally rare locations where three or even more may be 'within range' of each other).

Of course this thought does nothing really to give us hope of making contact ourselves. Even if you used (for the sake of argument) a much more optimistic estimate of the frequency of intelligent life (say 42 at any one time per Milky Way sized Galaxy), well, 1/42 of the volume of this galaxy still represents a huge big vast lonely area to find yourself in.

Now factor in time.

I did.

Okay then.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Silicon just doesn't form the huge amount of polymer compounds that carbon does. It doesn't easily form the single and double bonds, along with the intermediate bonding such as is found in the benzene ring. I think that any life has to be carbon based and remarkably similar to our own biochemically.

For example, can you conceive of a silicon equivalent to photosynthesis? That would require gaseous SiO2 - vaporised sand FFS!

Nope. Life = carbon as far as I am concerned.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Silicon just doesn't form the huge amount of polymer compounds that carbon does. It doesn't easily form the single and double bonds, along with the intermediate bonding such as is found in the benzene ring. I think that any life has to be carbon based and remarkably similar to our own biochemically.

For example, can you conceive of a silicon equivalent to photosynthesis? That would require gaseous SiO2 - vaporised sand FFS!

Nope. Life = carbon as far as I am concerned.

True, the NASA boys pointed out that we might not even recognized silicon-based lifeforms as actually being alive. But we should be looking on a broad scan for life, not just limited to what we expect to find.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

I am coming to the opinion that intelligent life is inevitable...

4,540,000,000 years for Earth to produce a civilization like our's? Sorry if intelligent life was inevitable it wouldn't have taken nearly that long.



Unless you're setting a much lower bar for what you mean by 'intelligent' here. Do you mean 'intelligent' like a squid is 'intelligent'? In that case maybe it is inevitable once multicellularity emerges (although that took us a fair long time by itself). But if you mean 'intelligent' like launching rockets...

[FedUpWithFaith]

I think the chances of two biologically-evolved intelligent species from different stars interacting entity-to-entity is probably extremely low. But I'm not so sure about intelligences evolved from the original biological intelligence, i.e., AI. Such AI could theoretically have virtual immortality of a sorts while consuming minimal resources and if they had any drive to explore the universe, some interaction seems inevitable someplace. I think that outwardly-driven curiosity may be more the limiting factor because of the virtually limitless number of virtual universes such AI will be able to create for itself on it's own home system. Why travel any farther than you ever need to stay safe and have a secure energy supply?

[AshtonBlack]

The issue, HBM, is that we have only one example of biological life to go by. With a life to sentience of 4 billion years we assume that "all" life would take this long. It is more probable that it is a bell curve, so even without the full data, we could infer that there are some life that could evolve intelligence at a faster (and obviously slower) rate. So the number "could be" higher (and conversely slower).

We can't know, without more data. Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before we find something.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think the chances of two biologically-evolved intelligent species from different stars interacting entity-to-entity is probably extremely low. But I'm not so sure about intelligences evolved from the original biological intelligence, i.e., AI. Such AI could theoretically have virtual immortality of a sorts while consuming minimal resources and if they had any drive to explore the universe, some interaction seems inevitable someplace. I think that outwardly-driven curiosity may be more the limiting factor because of the virtually limitless number of virtual universes such AI will be able to create for itself on it's own home system. Why travel any farther than you ever need to stay safe and have a secure energy supply?

Hopefully somebody will always want to "go out there". I think we're dead if that dies out.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before we find something.

Oh, I'm sure we'll find life. I'm cautiously optimistic we'll conform the existence of life beyond our planet within my lifetime. I really don't buy the idea of abiogenisis as a rare, freakish event. I think there was a process at work, and that it is a process that will be seen to occur inevitably wherever conditions are right.


But intelligent life is a whole other ballgame.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I am coming to the opinion that intelligent life is inevitable...

4,540,000,000 years for Earth to produce a civilization like our's? Sorry if intelligent life was inevitable it wouldn't have taken nearly that long.



Unless you're setting a much lower bar for what you mean by 'intelligent' here. Do you mean 'intelligent' like a squid is 'intelligent'? In that case maybe it is inevitable once multicellularity emerges (although that took us a fair long time by itself). But if you mean 'intelligent' like launching rockets...

I said inevitable once life reaches a sufficient level of complexity (last paragraph of my post.) The vast majority of life on Earth consisted of single-celled organisms. There have only been multi-celled creatures for 1 billion years and vertebrates for half of that. But once that stage was reached, there has been a steady, overall increase in the complexity of nervous systems. That wouldn't have happened if it wasn't beneficial to the propagation of the genes involved. Hence, I claim, once a nervous system evolves in any gene pool, it will increase in complexity over time and hence organisms of increasing intelligence will arise.

My reasoning for the evolutionary pressure of such an increase in complexity is as follows: Being able to predict changes to your environment and to remember important locations/events and to modify ones behaviour accordingly gives any animal a distinct evolutionary advantage - we are just the (so far) most advanced example of that process.

[FedUpWithFaith]

I think the chances of two biologically-evolved intelligent species from different stars interacting entity-to-entity is probably extremely low. But I'm not so sure about intelligences evolved from the original biological intelligence, i.e., AI. Such AI could theoretically have virtual immortality of a sorts while consuming minimal resources and if they had any drive to explore the universe, some interaction seems inevitable someplace. I think that outwardly-driven curiosity may be more the limiting factor because of the virtually limitless number of virtual universes such AI will be able to create for itself on it's own home system. Why travel any farther than you ever need to stay safe and have a secure energy supply?

Hopefully somebody will always want to "go out there". I think we're dead if that dies out.

Not so sure. I do think that whatever intelligence inherits our planet will have some very curious subpopulation, hopefully as vibrant as our own. But I wonder if it will decide, based on its greater intelligence, that exploration should be limited in some ways. It will be very cheap and easy for them to explore "inner space" which could be every bit a variable and unexpected as anything they could find "outside" in the external universe. But what are the chances of two intelligences interacting well should they meet? Probably very low. I don't see any of our hominid "brothers" coexisting with us today. Even among humans (same species) clashes between advanced and less-advanced civilizations almost always start badly and often end badly too. What are the chances that two advanced civilizations will meet that are sufficiently equal and enlightened? That has to be much less likely than even the tiny chance of two intelligent civilizations meeting. And even if one civilization judges another to be sufficiently advanced, there would still be the possibility of one advancing over the other due to chance discoveries or new choices for self-directed evolution.

A very advanced civilization might evaluate all these possibilities and decide to apply their resources elsewhere. As for curiosity, as soon as man figures out how to plug his mind into a virtual sex machine - like The Matrix I expect our urge to explore anything but "inner space" will go way, way down.

[AshtonBlack]

...Personally, I think it's only a matter of time before we find something.

Oh, I'm sure we'll find life. I'm cautiously optimistic we'll conform the existence of life beyond our planet within my lifetime. I really don't buy the idea of abiogenisis as a rare, freakish event. I think there was a process at work, and that it is a process that will be seen to occur inevitably wherever conditions are right.


But intelligent life is a whole other ballgame.

Indeed. I agree there.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think the chances of two biologically-evolved intelligent species from different stars interacting entity-to-entity is probably extremely low. But I'm not so sure about intelligences evolved from the original biological intelligence, i.e., AI. Such AI could theoretically have virtual immortality of a sorts while consuming minimal resources and if they had any drive to explore the universe, some interaction seems inevitable someplace. I think that outwardly-driven curiosity may be more the limiting factor because of the virtually limitless number of virtual universes such AI will be able to create for itself on it's own home system. Why travel any farther than you ever need to stay safe and have a secure energy supply?

Hopefully somebody will always want to "go out there". I think we're dead if that dies out.

Not so sure. I do think that whatever intelligence inherits our planet will have some very curious subpopulation, hopefully as vibrant as our own. But I wonder if it will decide, based on its greater intelligence, that exploration should be limited in some ways. It will be very cheap and easy for them to explore "inner space" which could be every bit a variable and unexpected as anything they could find "outside" in the external universe. But what are the chances of two intelligences interacting well should they meet? Probably very low. I don't see any of our hominid "brothers" coexisting with us today. Even among humans (same species) clashes between advanced and less-advanced civilizations almost always start badly and often end badly too. What are the chances that two advanced civilizations will meet that are sufficiently equal and enlightened? That has to be much less likely than even the tiny chance of two intelligent civilizations meeting. And even if one civilization judges another to be sufficiently advanced, there would still be the possibility of one advancing over the other due to chance discoveries.

A very advanced civilization might evaluate all these possibilities and decide to apply their resources elsewhere. As for curiosity, as soon as man figures out how to plug his mind into a virtual sex machine - like The Matrix I expect our urge to explore anything but "inner space" will go way, way down.

I'd rather be Beowulf Schaefer than a Pierson's Puppeteer. I think I was meant for an earlier age.