3 ms·
It is just our human bias to envision complexity as only occurring on earth-like planets, on human-like time and size scales, communicating over the EM spectrum
by caf 8y ago
It is just our human bias to envision complexity as only occurring on earth-like planets, on human-like time and size scales, communicating over the EM spectrum, formed of baryonic matter...
The argument works just as well if you stipulate that it covers only sufficiently human-like complex life. The speculated existence of life composed of galaxy-scale non-baryonic matter or something doesn't affect at all the question of where all the other more prosaic life is.
- perl4ever 8y agoI vaguely recall an article describing reasons why really exotic (e.g. galaxy scale) life doesn't make a whole lot of sense. One problem is that no matter how it is organized or what it is made of, light speed prevents it from communicating rapidly. If it doesn't communicate rapidly within itself, it can't develop or evolve much in the lifespan of the universe, at least so far. You can deduce various constraints on "intelligent life" without making simplistic assumptions a priori that humans are normal, but rather starting with what we know about physics.
- mysterypie 8y agoSince we're on the topic of really exotic, how about a complex proton arrangement inside a star having all the properties of intelligent life? This wouldn't suffer from light speed constraints. Would it violate other constraints from fundamental physics?
- bullosB 8y agoIt reminds me of the Boltzmann brain hypothesis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain. It's indeed really exotic and I'm not sure how long this intelligence could exist.
- plushpuffin 8y agoFrederik Pohl wrote a novel about just such a creature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_the_End_of_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_the_End_of_Time