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What if life is a fundamental property of a sufficiently complex universe and a stable energy gradient? That's where I'd put my money.

keithwhor 7y ago
This right here. Provided a body that can retain and emit heat from a star, it intuitively makes sense that given correct conditions the warm body would trend towards more complex head dissipation mechanisms. Life is just a more complex — and sustainable — exothermic reaction than standard oxidative mechanisms (fire). By the way: this isn't a new concept. Jeremy England at MIT has been espousing the concept for a while [0]. [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...
Koshkin 7y ago
Hm. Also, money could be a fundamental property of a sufficiently complex life.
- kleer001 7y ago
  I understand the downvote, but I also agree with the statement. IMHO money, markets, even democracy seem to me to follow directly from the challenges of living in a complex society which follows from the benefits of working at large scales. They even seem to me to be simply abstracted versions of more naturally evolved systems baked into life on Earth a billion years ago, i.e. ATP metabolism and multi-cellular life
- asfarley 7y ago
  The real question is - are iPhones a fundamental property of sufficiently complex life? Will the first alien culture we encounter have a 2D vision & touch-based thin interface to their global (galatic) network?
not_kurt_godel 7y ago
Seems like a bad bet given that from the evidence we have so far, life is an unbelievable statistical anomaly. There's no reason why life had to have evolve on Earth or survive long-term; it is sheer luck that we haven't been hit by gamma ray bursts or a supernova or any one of the other nasty, super-deadly things the cosmos could throw at us.
- kleer001 7y ago
  Don't confuse the delicate dynamic and charismatic oxygen breathing multi-cellular life on land, sea, and air, for life its self at all. Consider extremeophiles, namely endoliths that live two miles below the earth's crust. They're not going to be bothered by most the universe has to throw their way. And once things like mushroom spores hit intersystem space it's all over. Also, don't fall for innumeracy. Considering the amount of material on Earth, let alone the universe, the spontaneous ease of amino acids, the inherent self construction of simple RNA strands. We only need Generation III stars for Sulfur which is the heaviest atom in Animo acids. So, chances are there was the potential for life 400 million years after the big bang, 13.4 billion years ago.
  - not_kurt_godel 7y ago
    Fair points through and through; big picture, it would be surprising to me if something else we'd recognize as "life" didn't exist elsewhere in the universe. I just wouldn't go so far as to put money on it being a "fundamental property" of the universe from a strictly objective, statistical view based on what we know for certain in the here and now (which arguably is a needlessly pedantic stance, but eh...).
    - kleer001 7y ago
      I concede, "fundamental property" is a bit more poetic than the strictest version of that term. I'll stand by "inevitable" though, by sheer numbers it just HAS to happen by sheer chance alone (or so says my deepest heart of hearts backed up by my brain reading up on state of the art cosmology, biology, and material science).

keithwhor 7y ago

This right here. Provided a body that can retain and emit heat from a star, it intuitively makes sense that given correct conditions the warm body would trend towards more complex head dissipation mechanisms. Life is just a more complex — and sustainable — exothermic reaction than standard oxidative mechanisms (fire). By the way: this isn't a new concept. Jeremy England at MIT has been espousing the concept for a while [0]. [0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...

Koshkin 7y ago

Hm. Also, money could be a fundamental property of a sufficiently complex life.

kleer001 7y ago
I understand the downvote, but I also agree with the statement. IMHO money, markets, even democracy seem to me to follow directly from the challenges of living in a complex society which follows from the benefits of working at large scales. They even seem to me to be simply abstracted versions of more naturally evolved systems baked into life on Earth a billion years ago, i.e. ATP metabolism and multi-cellular life
asfarley 7y ago
The real question is - are iPhones a fundamental property of sufficiently complex life? Will the first alien culture we encounter have a 2D vision & touch-based thin interface to their global (galatic) network?

not_kurt_godel 7y ago

Seems like a bad bet given that from the evidence we have so far, life is an unbelievable statistical anomaly. There's no reason why life had to have evolve on Earth or survive long-term; it is sheer luck that we haven't been hit by gamma ray bursts or a supernova or any one of the other nasty, super-deadly things the cosmos could throw at us.

kleer001 7y ago
Don't confuse the delicate dynamic and charismatic oxygen breathing multi-cellular life on land, sea, and air, for life its self at all. Consider extremeophiles, namely endoliths that live two miles below the earth's crust. They're not going to be bothered by most the universe has to throw their way. And once things like mushroom spores hit intersystem space it's all over. Also, don't fall for innumeracy. Considering the amount of material on Earth, let alone the universe, the spontaneous ease of amino acids, the inherent self construction of simple RNA strands. We only need Generation III stars for Sulfur which is the heaviest atom in Animo acids. So, chances are there was the potential for life 400 million years after the big bang, 13.4 billion years ago.
- not_kurt_godel 7y ago
  Fair points through and through; big picture, it would be surprising to me if something else we'd recognize as "life" didn't exist elsewhere in the universe. I just wouldn't go so far as to put money on it being a "fundamental property" of the universe from a strictly objective, statistical view based on what we know for certain in the here and now (which arguably is a needlessly pedantic stance, but eh...).
  - kleer001 7y ago
    I concede, "fundamental property" is a bit more poetic than the strictest version of that term. I'll stand by "inevitable" though, by sheer numbers it just HAS to happen by sheer chance alone (or so says my deepest heart of hearts backed up by my brain reading up on state of the art cosmology, biology, and material science).