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I've long thought "life is inevitable". Why? In a universe where every possibility plays out, some outcomes are bound to lead to life. [Diverse] Chaos => univer

I've long thought "life is inevitable". Why? In a universe where every possibility plays out, some outcomes are bound to lead to life. [Diverse] Chaos => universal turing machines occurring somewhere + random codes being executed + sufficient computation => life. I'd love to see these notions made rigorous. Somehow they appear obvious to me. Order (i.e. life) is necessary to reach the ultimate unordered state (i.e. a cosmic soup of energy)? Now that's a pretty non-trivial statement. Video by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4

jamesrcole 9y ago
> In a universe where every possibility plays out I think that's an assumption.
root_axis 9y ago
> In a universe where every possibility plays out Why would we assume this is the case? Certainly an infinite number of possibilities have already been ruled out, like the possibility that the entire universe would be totally devoid of all matter.
xelxebar 9y ago
This is a beautiful, romantic view, though I don't see how it can me made all that physically rigorous interpretation. Here are some thoughts on the philosophy of what you say. > Life is inevitable On one level, this is a tautology: the physics of the universe are such that life has formed therefore life occurs with 100% frequency in all known universes. On a different level, it's not too hard to build "physics" that are too trivial to even encode Peano Arithmetic much less "life" as we would identify it. Thus life isn't obviously inevitable in all physical models of the universe, so we can take the emergence of life as an "experimental constraint". On a personal level, I too feel the importance of life. However, I don't think any of that special feeling is compromised by taking life to not be somehow "universally fundamental" in some way. > Life is a fractal The mathematician in me kind of flinches at this a bit. :p Fractals are super cool though! But, heck, the eastern coast of Cambodia exhibits fractal-like qualities too. As do coupled-pendulum setups and the x86 execution pipeline. This line of thinking feels to me like putting The Mysterious into some spiritually special place in our thinking. For myself, when I think something is "obviously true" I usually find that I just don't know enough to appreciate the intricacy of what's really going on. Dunning-Kruger and all that. Anyway, just some 2 cents.
Retra 9y ago
When you have insights that solve no problems, they are not actually insights worth having.

jamesrcole 9y ago

> In a universe where every possibility plays out I think that's an assumption.

root_axis 9y ago

> In a universe where every possibility plays out Why would we assume this is the case? Certainly an infinite number of possibilities have already been ruled out, like the possibility that the entire universe would be totally devoid of all matter.

xelxebar 9y ago

This is a beautiful, romantic view, though I don't see how it can me made all that physically rigorous interpretation. Here are some thoughts on the philosophy of what you say. > Life is inevitable On one level, this is a tautology: the physics of the universe are such that life has formed therefore life occurs with 100% frequency in all known universes. On a different level, it's not too hard to build "physics" that are too trivial to even encode Peano Arithmetic much less "life" as we would identify it. Thus life isn't obviously inevitable in all physical models of the universe, so we can take the emergence of life as an "experimental constraint". On a personal level, I too feel the importance of life. However, I don't think any of that special feeling is compromised by taking life to not be somehow "universally fundamental" in some way. > Life is a fractal The mathematician in me kind of flinches at this a bit. :p Fractals are super cool though! But, heck, the eastern coast of Cambodia exhibits fractal-like qualities too. As do coupled-pendulum setups and the x86 execution pipeline. This line of thinking feels to me like putting The Mysterious into some spiritually special place in our thinking. For myself, when I think something is "obviously true" I usually find that I just don't know enough to appreciate the intricacy of what's really going on. Dunning-Kruger and all that. Anyway, just some 2 cents.

Retra 9y ago

When you have insights that solve no problems, they are not actually insights worth having.