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Thankfully plenty of hard sci-fi writers have done that for us. It's something that I've been very interested in for a long time, especially the idea of "scale

Thankfully plenty of hard sci-fi writers have done that for us. It's something that I've been very interested in for a long time, especially the idea of "scale of life" - could there be a brain the size of a solar system? How would we even understand it? What about life which operates on a different time scale (in the solar-system brain example, it would operate on a different scale on two axis - space and time).

jrumbut 3y ago
The timescale issue is fun to think about. Even in my own life, there have been times that I've responded to a message within a second and other times that I've taken multiple years. Our lifespan also seems quite arbitrary. Some sophisticated animals live quite a bit longer than us and others live a tiny fraction of a percent as long. One would imagine that between solar systems there is a much greater degree of variance. It would be difficult to understand the time horizons of a collectively intelligent swarm of fruit flies or a serene pod of whales, but imagine if interstellar life has a geologic component to its life cycle?
archargelod 3y ago
I'd still consider all sci-fi stories and images quite inside the box thinking. The idea is that our brains are hard-wired to think the way they do. So we can't really think outside of our small subset of reality. I believe, In the slim chance we encounter some kind of 'life', it wouldn't be even considered as life by our standards. Just a simple quiz to exercise the brain: - should life move at all? - what's the maximum distance between molecules we can still consider as one entity? - can a state of matter be 'life'. Not a matter itself, but just a state of it?
andix 3y ago
I would trust a group of biologists, chemists and physicists way more than some sci-fi writers that focus on telling good stories. The reality might be very boring. Way too boring for a good story.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Sci-fi writers often tend to percolate interesting ideas from biologists, chemists, and physicists into interesting stories. I wouldn't discard them so easily.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> could there be a brain the size of a solar system? Life? Don't talk to me about life.

jrumbut 3y ago

The timescale issue is fun to think about. Even in my own life, there have been times that I've responded to a message within a second and other times that I've taken multiple years. Our lifespan also seems quite arbitrary. Some sophisticated animals live quite a bit longer than us and others live a tiny fraction of a percent as long. One would imagine that between solar systems there is a much greater degree of variance. It would be difficult to understand the time horizons of a collectively intelligent swarm of fruit flies or a serene pod of whales, but imagine if interstellar life has a geologic component to its life cycle?

archargelod 3y ago

I'd still consider all sci-fi stories and images quite inside the box thinking. The idea is that our brains are hard-wired to think the way they do. So we can't really think outside of our small subset of reality. I believe, In the slim chance we encounter some kind of 'life', it wouldn't be even considered as life by our standards. Just a simple quiz to exercise the brain: - should life move at all? - what's the maximum distance between molecules we can still consider as one entity? - can a state of matter be 'life'. Not a matter itself, but just a state of it?

andix 3y ago

I would trust a group of biologists, chemists and physicists way more than some sci-fi writers that focus on telling good stories. The reality might be very boring. Way too boring for a good story.

idiotsecant 3y ago
Sci-fi writers often tend to percolate interesting ideas from biologists, chemists, and physicists into interesting stories. I wouldn't discard them so easily.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

> could there be a brain the size of a solar system? Life? Don't talk to me about life.