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So there are a few things to this. We don't even know what life is fundamentally, beyond a continuing entropy generating process. By that logic the storms on Ju

So there are a few things to this. We don't even know what life is fundamentally, beyond a continuing entropy generating process. By that logic the storms on Jupiter are alive. Then there's consciousness. What even is it? Who knows. There is Wolfram's principle of computational equivalence, which implies that we wouldn't even know life if we were looking right at it if it didn't evolve with us. And beyond that, do you think a beetle on a leaf knows you're looking down at it, does it recognize that you have a face, is it even capable of comprehending your motivations or knowing you have them at all? When an ant is walking on your arm, do you think it knows it's on a living creature and not a wall? Can you tell me what bacteria are floating in front of your eyes right now and their natures? That's a thought experiment to drive home a point: we could be surrounded in the universe by agents, consciousnesses, life, big and small, up to all kinds of things interesting and uninteresting, we could even look right at them and still have no idea what we are seeing or that they're even there. In the end I come back to where you are, but from a different angle. I don't think we will find life because I don't think it even matters to us, because we won't even be able to recognize or comprehend it if we did see it. It could be everywhere or it could not be there at all and I don't think we could ever hope to tell the difference.

rhn_mk1 3y ago
By the same logic, we could be looking at a computer system turn into an agent, and we wouldn't notice it.
anon291 3y ago
life is not an entropy generating process. All processes generate entropy. Life locally reduces entropy (but of course globally generates it, like all other changes). As for this, > In the end I come back to where you are, but from a different angle. I don't think we will find life because I don't think it even matters to us, because we won't even be able to recognize or comprehend it if we did see it. It could be everywhere or it could not be there at all and I don't think we could ever hope to tell the difference. I kind of agree with you. A lot of the 'alien' stories I read about seem to have stories eerily similary to movies and books that preceded it. For example, some on reddit are convinced that aliens want to save us from climate change. The unanswered question is why would aliens care? or nuclear proliferation? Again... that's the plot of a movie.

rhn_mk1 3y ago

By the same logic, we could be looking at a computer system turn into an agent, and we wouldn't notice it.

anon291 3y ago

life is not an entropy generating process. All processes generate entropy. Life locally reduces entropy (but of course globally generates it, like all other changes). As for this, > In the end I come back to where you are, but from a different angle. I don't think we will find life because I don't think it even matters to us, because we won't even be able to recognize or comprehend it if we did see it. It could be everywhere or it could not be there at all and I don't think we could ever hope to tell the difference. I kind of agree with you. A lot of the 'alien' stories I read about seem to have stories eerily similary to movies and books that preceded it. For example, some on reddit are convinced that aliens want to save us from climate change. The unanswered question is why would aliens care? or nuclear proliferation? Again... that's the plot of a movie.