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I prefer to imagine alien life as a sentient sludge with internal electrical signals as complex as the human brain, but with no notion of "self", "emotion", "pu
by ddxxdd 7y ago
I prefer to imagine alien life as a sentient sludge with internal electrical signals as complex as the human brain, but with no notion of "self", "emotion", "purpose", "language", or other silly human things.
Heck, what's stopping us from classifying ocean currents as a sentient lifeform?
- sweetheart 7y agoYou should read Children of Time and then Children of Ruin.
- simonh 7y agoThy're not stable over time, and so would be unable to maintain a coherent sequence of behaviour or 'thought'. Human brains are the most heavily armoured and environmentally controlled part of our bodies because complex behaviours are incredibly sensitive to environmental interference. Something as totally open and exposed as a bare sludge or ocean currents couldn't maintain sufficient coherence.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoYour first paragraph almost perfectly described the science fiction novel Blindsight by Peter Watts.
- jerf 7y ago"Heck, what's stopping us from classifying ocean currents as a sentient lifeform?" Section 6 of "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity": https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf In the context of the rest of the paper, of course.
- virtualritz 7y agoBesides what others suggested, "Fiasko" [1] and maybe "The Invincible" [2] from Lem come to mind. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible