4 ms·

You're making three specific claims and have provided zero evidence: that it is impossible to develop fire underwater, that it is impossible to develop chemistr

You're making three specific claims and have provided zero evidence: that it is impossible to develop fire underwater, that it is impossible to develop chemistry underwater, and that it is impossible to build a technological civilization without these things. I say hogwash; show me the proof for your claims. Your proposed alternative is to play "what if" until either I come up with an imaginary scenario that strikes your fancy or, more likely, you reject out of hand anything brought to you and claim to be right by default. Well, that's hogwash too. It's certainly no way to advance a scientific claim, let alone three of them. I'm particularly skeptical of the claim that you could not develop chemistry underwater; it seems equally as implausible as saying that you could not develop chemistry in air for exactly the same reasons.

autokad 9y ago
"I'm particularly skeptical of the claim that you could not develop chemistry underwater; it seems equally as implausible as saying that you could not develop chemistry in air for exactly the same reasons." what? you think its possible to develop fire under water? chemistry? have you done any chemistry? what about electricity? (a huge but impossible one to do under water)? I am trying really hard not to say something mean
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKdHa5TlYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKdHa5TlYM We did it.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Now show me an evolutionary path towards that that is feasible underwater.
- debatem1 9y ago
  There is literally no reason to believe that developing chemistry is impossible underwater. Interesting and useful chemical reactions happen underwater every second of every day; it is irrational to assume that there is no path by which an intelligent but not technological entity would observe this, utilize those reactions, and refine them. Electricity is far from impossible either to develop or use underwater, and in fact nature has already done so in the form of the electric eel. More to the point, many aquatic species have specially developed sense organs for electricity, increasing the odds of it being developed for communication. Similarly, although it doesn't look much like your childhood campfire underwater lava flows can be stable and useful sources of heat great enough for refining ores and similar. Further shaping using hydraulic pressure (equivalent to waterjet cutting or forming) would hardly be unimaginable. And please feel free to say your mean things-- it certainly can't damage my view of the evidence you've put forth so far.
  - autokad 9y ago
    ok, I'll make things a bit more simple for you. there are two kinds of impossible. as far as we know, its impossible to create energy from nothing. The 2nd kind of impossible is a tornado going through a junk yard and building IMB Watson. sure, you can play lawyerball and say its possible. yes, AFTER 40 THOUSAND YEARS, we humans have figured a lot of this stuff out in an easy environment. Sure, we can take the knowledge we have gained over the last 40k years, and do some stuff under water, because we have already figured it out. i also hate your type of person. your the type of person that says: give me evidence, you are wrong until you give me evidence. but you provide none of your own.
    - debatem1 9y ago
      I don't think you intended it this way, but the analogy of a tornado going through a junkyard and building Watson is very apt for the emergence of any intelligence. Any individual path or outcome is itself fantastically unlikely, and you're right to regard it as a low probability event. But we've already had one such event-- the development of human intelligence. So if the random emergence of sentience from undirected physical processes is your bar for impossible, I'd say you need a new bar. Regarding human technology, 40 thousand years is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. But even having said that, none of the claims I make rest on having human tech: the electric eel is not a human invention, nor are lorenzini organs. Use of a lava flow for heat is natural to many aquatic ecosystems, and requires no more intelligence than the ability to win at "hotter or colder". Many aquatic life forms already make use of simple hydraulic effects to move along the sea floor, anchor themselves into tidepools, or hunt prey. The preponderance of evidence we have for life on Earth suggests that that these skills will develop over time. Proposing that there is some reason that advancement inevitably stops under the sea is a bold and surprising claim, and yes-- requires evidence. Regarding hating my type of person, that's on you. I think your position is narrow-minded and in error, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
- Elv13 9y ago
  Thermite or alkaline metals will burn just fine under water. As long as you have an oxidizer, some combustible and a source of energy to kickstart the reaction, it will burn. Also, I don't see why fire is so important. It was important for us to better digest food, that's a concidence, nothing else. And so does electricity. If the water isn't saline (why would it be), then it is as good as air from an isolation PoV. I did put a motherboard in mineral oil at some point and it did work until the fan died. Other fluids that could make life possible are also good at being non conductive. Even in salt water, a circuit just has to be bigger or better isolated to work. electricity takes the path of least resistance. Vast distances in salt water vs a good conductor, at some point the good conductor will still win. We have undersea cables since centuries and they work. Then, about smelting and complex chemistry, hydrothermal vents provides both a source of energy and of complex chemicals.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Salt isn't the only thing that makes water a conductor, is it? It's any ionic compound, and I imagine life isn't going to have a very easy start in pure water...
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    And how would you refine aluminium for thermite under water or refine highly reactive alkaline metals? People here come at it from the wrong point of view which is the application of advanced technologies, expertise and knowledge applied to overcome environmental challenges. You need to look at it from an evolutionary point of view (both biological and technical). Show me a feasible technological evolutionary path to our current level of technology for a life form that is limited to living in a solvent this can be water, ammonia, liquid hydrocarbons or anything else similar. When I say technological life is likely to be very similar to us is not due to lack of imagination, and this isn't just my own opinion. Here are several other factors to account for the evolutionary path to a technological society. Gravity, no direct bounds on lower gravity other than the fact that low mass planets will have trouble holding an atmosphere. Limits on the upper bound are both biological very high gravity would restrict the development of fine appendages which would restrict tool making, and in general when a fall from any relatively small height could kill you it would likely force evolutionary paths that could likely be against the development of complex technical intelligence. This limit can be somewhat mitigated by atmospheric density that would provide buoyancy some what countering some of the direct affects of gravity but that's both limited and can impose limiting factors on it's own. Gravity also would impose a limit on the feasibility of rockets, chemistry is universal and the rocket equation combined with the available energy in chemical fuels would impose a limit on how massive a planet can be from which you could use rockets to go into space. Biological attributes, fine motor skills are pretty much a must for fine tool making which is a critical part of technical and biological advancements in intelligence. Sight is also likely a critical factor, while other types of sight than non light, and non visible light might be present coverage of most of the visible spectrum is likely going to be very common if not mandatory. The amount of information you can gain from the and near visible spectrum is much higher than any other forms of vision such as echo location. That information is both needed for inference of underlying properties of "things" as well as would serve as a catalyst for development of higher brain functions. And those are just a few examples, if you start looking at what conditions are either mandatory, beneficial or detrimental to the evolution of a technologically advanced species from both a biological and then technical/societal aspect you would end up with a much more limited spectrum of possible life forms and planets on which a species that can reach our own level of technology can evolve. Don't get me wrong a super intelligent organism spanning an entire planet that you could debate the meaning of life with until the cold death of the universe is possible, so is any other type of conscious or "philosophical" intelligence, but these types of life forms won't be building rockets or iPhones.

autokad 9y ago

"I'm particularly skeptical of the claim that you could not develop chemistry underwater; it seems equally as implausible as saying that you could not develop chemistry in air for exactly the same reasons." what? you think its possible to develop fire under water? chemistry? have you done any chemistry? what about electricity? (a huge but impossible one to do under water)? I am trying really hard not to say something mean

aalleavitch 9y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKdHa5TlYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKdHa5TlYM We did it.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Now show me an evolutionary path towards that that is feasible underwater.
debatem1 9y ago
There is literally no reason to believe that developing chemistry is impossible underwater. Interesting and useful chemical reactions happen underwater every second of every day; it is irrational to assume that there is no path by which an intelligent but not technological entity would observe this, utilize those reactions, and refine them. Electricity is far from impossible either to develop or use underwater, and in fact nature has already done so in the form of the electric eel. More to the point, many aquatic species have specially developed sense organs for electricity, increasing the odds of it being developed for communication. Similarly, although it doesn't look much like your childhood campfire underwater lava flows can be stable and useful sources of heat great enough for refining ores and similar. Further shaping using hydraulic pressure (equivalent to waterjet cutting or forming) would hardly be unimaginable. And please feel free to say your mean things-- it certainly can't damage my view of the evidence you've put forth so far.
- autokad 9y ago
  ok, I'll make things a bit more simple for you. there are two kinds of impossible. as far as we know, its impossible to create energy from nothing. The 2nd kind of impossible is a tornado going through a junk yard and building IMB Watson. sure, you can play lawyerball and say its possible. yes, AFTER 40 THOUSAND YEARS, we humans have figured a lot of this stuff out in an easy environment. Sure, we can take the knowledge we have gained over the last 40k years, and do some stuff under water, because we have already figured it out. i also hate your type of person. your the type of person that says: give me evidence, you are wrong until you give me evidence. but you provide none of your own.
  - debatem1 9y ago
    I don't think you intended it this way, but the analogy of a tornado going through a junkyard and building Watson is very apt for the emergence of any intelligence. Any individual path or outcome is itself fantastically unlikely, and you're right to regard it as a low probability event. But we've already had one such event-- the development of human intelligence. So if the random emergence of sentience from undirected physical processes is your bar for impossible, I'd say you need a new bar. Regarding human technology, 40 thousand years is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. But even having said that, none of the claims I make rest on having human tech: the electric eel is not a human invention, nor are lorenzini organs. Use of a lava flow for heat is natural to many aquatic ecosystems, and requires no more intelligence than the ability to win at "hotter or colder". Many aquatic life forms already make use of simple hydraulic effects to move along the sea floor, anchor themselves into tidepools, or hunt prey. The preponderance of evidence we have for life on Earth suggests that that these skills will develop over time. Proposing that there is some reason that advancement inevitably stops under the sea is a bold and surprising claim, and yes-- requires evidence. Regarding hating my type of person, that's on you. I think your position is narrow-minded and in error, but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler.
Elv13 9y ago
Thermite or alkaline metals will burn just fine under water. As long as you have an oxidizer, some combustible and a source of energy to kickstart the reaction, it will burn. Also, I don't see why fire is so important. It was important for us to better digest food, that's a concidence, nothing else. And so does electricity. If the water isn't saline (why would it be), then it is as good as air from an isolation PoV. I did put a motherboard in mineral oil at some point and it did work until the fan died. Other fluids that could make life possible are also good at being non conductive. Even in salt water, a circuit just has to be bigger or better isolated to work. electricity takes the path of least resistance. Vast distances in salt water vs a good conductor, at some point the good conductor will still win. We have undersea cables since centuries and they work. Then, about smelting and complex chemistry, hydrothermal vents provides both a source of energy and of complex chemicals.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  Salt isn't the only thing that makes water a conductor, is it? It's any ionic compound, and I imagine life isn't going to have a very easy start in pure water...
- dogma1138 9y ago
  And how would you refine aluminium for thermite under water or refine highly reactive alkaline metals? People here come at it from the wrong point of view which is the application of advanced technologies, expertise and knowledge applied to overcome environmental challenges. You need to look at it from an evolutionary point of view (both biological and technical). Show me a feasible technological evolutionary path to our current level of technology for a life form that is limited to living in a solvent this can be water, ammonia, liquid hydrocarbons or anything else similar. When I say technological life is likely to be very similar to us is not due to lack of imagination, and this isn't just my own opinion. Here are several other factors to account for the evolutionary path to a technological society. Gravity, no direct bounds on lower gravity other than the fact that low mass planets will have trouble holding an atmosphere. Limits on the upper bound are both biological very high gravity would restrict the development of fine appendages which would restrict tool making, and in general when a fall from any relatively small height could kill you it would likely force evolutionary paths that could likely be against the development of complex technical intelligence. This limit can be somewhat mitigated by atmospheric density that would provide buoyancy some what countering some of the direct affects of gravity but that's both limited and can impose limiting factors on it's own. Gravity also would impose a limit on the feasibility of rockets, chemistry is universal and the rocket equation combined with the available energy in chemical fuels would impose a limit on how massive a planet can be from which you could use rockets to go into space. Biological attributes, fine motor skills are pretty much a must for fine tool making which is a critical part of technical and biological advancements in intelligence. Sight is also likely a critical factor, while other types of sight than non light, and non visible light might be present coverage of most of the visible spectrum is likely going to be very common if not mandatory. The amount of information you can gain from the and near visible spectrum is much higher than any other forms of vision such as echo location. That information is both needed for inference of underlying properties of "things" as well as would serve as a catalyst for development of higher brain functions. And those are just a few examples, if you start looking at what conditions are either mandatory, beneficial or detrimental to the evolution of a technologically advanced species from both a biological and then technical/societal aspect you would end up with a much more limited spectrum of possible life forms and planets on which a species that can reach our own level of technology can evolve. Don't get me wrong a super intelligent organism spanning an entire planet that you could debate the meaning of life with until the cold death of the universe is possible, so is any other type of conscious or "philosophical" intelligence, but these types of life forms won't be building rockets or iPhones.