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> Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these constructs. It could hinge on principles entirely alien to our comprehension, making it "life" in the trues

> Yet, life elsewhere in the universe may defy these constructs. It could hinge on principles entirely alien to our comprehension, making it "life" in the truest sense of the word. Consequently, our current definitions might fail to recognize or comprehend such forms of existence. This is a cop-out. It might make for a good episode (or a bad one) of Star Trek, but in the real world, life's going to be made out of particles. Likely even out of atoms/molecules. It will be recognizable, in that it is self-sustaining... it creates itself. It will, for lack of a better term, "do things". The chemistry might be weird (hell, we almost expect that). The effects might be subtle (at minimum, we imagine we'll need microscopes, but it gets more difficult from there). But none of these things are incomprehensible. "Incomprehensible" is probably nearly non-overlapping with "life", if not outright incompatible. > But should we find green plants on another planet, can we instinctively conclude that they indicate life as we know it? Probably not, as such assumptions hinge on our Earth-centric model of life. This is incoherent. I don't even know how to parse it. "We found photosynthetic organisms on another planet, but are they life?" Like, seriously? Are you saying that plants aren't really alive here on Earth, or that plants are only alive if on Earth? If I take a potted plant to Mars, "is it really life as we know it"? > We may have to accept that some entities might exist beyond our grasp of understanding and should develop novel tools that seek not only life as we know it, I think that some people learn to think like this because their mouth-breathing public school system teachers gave them B+s for this bullshit in 7th grade. It's bizarrely bad. Have you never listened to yourself? > Such a perspective fundamentally changes the narrative of our search for alien life. Yes. It hobbles the search in any number of ways. Entire generations of children grow up thinking this poorly. Influencers and politicians start thinking such is somehow clever or insightful, and money/effort is wasted on it.

harshalizee 3y ago
Why can't you fathom that something cannot be incomprehensible to the human mind? Imagine an ant sitting on your arm. Do you believe it's cognizant and aware of your existence? Now imagine humanity being the ant to a higher intelligence.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  I think it's a flawed analogy. An ant doesn't possess any abstract thinking. No matter how you'd dumb it down, an ant won't understand you're a thinking entity because it has no such concept. Aliens might be very different from us, but surely there's some dumbed down way we could recognize/conceptualize them. There might be some cases of extremely enigmatic alien species, but I think that would be rather rare, and the majority would be quite recognizable (physical body, metabolism, reproduction).
  - yadingus 3y ago
    Ants don't know they lack conceptual thinking. There can be some perspective or perception that we simply don't know that we lack. For example if there's life that exists across 7 spatial dimensions instead of 3, how would we parse it? I'm not asking as a gotcha question, if you have a legit answer I'm very curious.
yadingus 3y ago
The mathematics of black holes and quantum mechanics would be incomprehensible to a mind before written language because you'd be missing a lot of levels of abstraction and imagination. To assume that things must look significantly similar to how they've looked before, ignores that we can be in the dark about what constitutes life in the same way we've been in the past. > This is incoherent. I don't even know how to parse it. I can parse what he said easily. People used to look at the sun and think it was actual fire, because they only had fire on earth to compare it to. You might see something on another planet that looks like a plant so you assume it has the same biological characteristics as a plant, but that's just an assumption.

harshalizee 3y ago

Why can't you fathom that something cannot be incomprehensible to the human mind? Imagine an ant sitting on your arm. Do you believe it's cognizant and aware of your existence? Now imagine humanity being the ant to a higher intelligence.

The_Colonel 3y ago
I think it's a flawed analogy. An ant doesn't possess any abstract thinking. No matter how you'd dumb it down, an ant won't understand you're a thinking entity because it has no such concept. Aliens might be very different from us, but surely there's some dumbed down way we could recognize/conceptualize them. There might be some cases of extremely enigmatic alien species, but I think that would be rather rare, and the majority would be quite recognizable (physical body, metabolism, reproduction).
- yadingus 3y ago
  Ants don't know they lack conceptual thinking. There can be some perspective or perception that we simply don't know that we lack. For example if there's life that exists across 7 spatial dimensions instead of 3, how would we parse it? I'm not asking as a gotcha question, if you have a legit answer I'm very curious.

yadingus 3y ago

The mathematics of black holes and quantum mechanics would be incomprehensible to a mind before written language because you'd be missing a lot of levels of abstraction and imagination. To assume that things must look significantly similar to how they've looked before, ignores that we can be in the dark about what constitutes life in the same way we've been in the past. > This is incoherent. I don't even know how to parse it. I can parse what he said easily. People used to look at the sun and think it was actual fire, because they only had fire on earth to compare it to. You might see something on another planet that looks like a plant so you assume it has the same biological characteristics as a plant, but that's just an assumption.