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Life as Slime
- tim333 1y ago"slime on a spinning rock" is maybe a bit scientifically outdated. Quoting from an NYT article (The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet): >even today, some scientists, especially in geology and related fields, continue to describe life as a relatively inconsequential layer of goo coating a vastly greater mass of inanimate rock. >Such characterizations belie life’s true power. Life significantly expands the surface area of the planet capable of absorbing energy, exchanging gases and performing complex chemical reactions. The Earth-system scientist Tyler Volk has calculated that all the plant roots on Earth, finely furred with tiny absorptive hairs, make up a surface area 35 times greater than the entire surface of our planet. Microbes are collectively equivalent to 200 Earth areas... https://archive.ph/VgzKD https://archive.ph/VgzKD And life may have shaped the continents by infesting the crust so much that it breaks off and sinks in the magma. More than slime we may be dry rot too! And soon to begat AI descendants to spread over the galaxy if you buy the singularity stuff. Which I have to say seems kinda inevitable to me though others may differ.
- necovek 1y agoIf anyone is to say "life is just slime on a planet", I'd mostly read into it as how insignificant life forms on Earth really are to the entirety of the Universe. So, to me, the entire article is arguing a non-point: that's how I would read into the Hawking's statement. It's not about the beauty or complexity of life (or lack of it), but how even such complexity pales in comparison to the vastness of universe itself! While life as we know it might not exist elsewhere in the universe due to a set of conditions required for it to evolve in such a complex way, there is likely other similarly awe-inspiring stuff (slime or not) throughout the universe — but, we are likely never going to experience any of it, with how restricted we are to existing within the boundaries of our little planet.
- xvilka 1y agoUnless we find the "slow life" whose basic building blocks are stars, galaxies, or even galaxy clusters.
- ElFitz 1y agoNow that would be a sight.
- fellowniusmonk 1y agoThe universe is full of RNG generators, until we find another entity with the structure requiried to make semantic assertion about the universe I'd say we shouldn't be too hasty in saying we aren't that important. We take energy and spit out complex semantic meaning, there are huge structures that take in matter and spit out stars but how many places have structures that take inputs and spit out complex semantics? Not many that we've observed so far and those ones are kind of in a precarious situation. We haven't fully explored physics yet, I'd say it's too early to call it at this point. Casual chains are fragile, we should preserve the structures that enable the generation of complex semantic meaning.
- idiocache 1y agoIt's a wonderful article but I can't accept the core argument. Life is rare = life is precious is just a version of the naturalistic fallacy. You are entitled to believe that life is beautiful; you are equally entitled to believe it is a terrible cosmic mistake - acknowledging the rarity of life doesn't obligate you to change your belief.
- deadbabe 1y agoThinking this way is a necessary prerequisite before pushing humans into an oven.
- cwmoore 1y agoHow about after?
- braingravy 1y agoOnly necessary for those who carried out those actions and want to live afterward without remorse.
- cwmoore 1y agoI disagree that rarity is a decider for remorse. We are all related and our actions influenced in many ways by the experiences of others. The very commonness of modest stars on uninteresting arms of a minor galaxy in a narrow window of time leads me to expect that indeed, an essential humility about our expression of certain moral virtue might be in order.
- falcor84 1y agoI agree that "precious" might be too much of a leap, but nevertheless think that there's a legitimate argument here for life being "interesting". I'm particularly reminded of Schrödinger's "What Is Life?", which (amongst other great arguments) posits that life is what actively rejects within itself the increase in entropy (via homeostasis). I'm not aware of any mechanisms doing so that aren't either alive or were assembled by living beings. This function comes hand in hand with the creation and maintenance of information, and in my opinion makes life particularly "interesting", especially if it is rare in the universe. In other words, if our universe is to be analyzed by a hypothetical external entity, it is likely that a significant fraction of the analysis effort would go towards our small corner of the universe (and any others) with living organisms.
- megaloblasto 1y agoLife as a slime shouldn't be so rough
- tempodox 1y agoIndeed, it should be slick and smooth.
- Isamu 1y agoNo mention of Rimuru Tempest? I don’t know why I expected it but I did.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoI see you're a man of culture as well.
- valenterry 1y agoHappy to see I'm not alone.
- b0a04gl 1y ago> “it's time to retire the just slime’ metaphor” hits hard. we’ve used that phrase to downplay life’s complexity, but statistically, life is the anomaly not the default. the blog nails it: we’ve only found life in one corner of one planet, under a very narrow set of conditions. framing it as mundane is a denial. we’re surrounded by sterile rock and radiation and somehow expect slime to be obvious
- tim333 1y ago>we’re surrounded by sterile rock The jury's out on Mars. It may well not be sterile.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoI thought the slime metaphor was to illustrate the fragility and rarity of it. It’s a thin film of slime and that’s all life is in the grand scheme of things. Like the surface of a bubble.
- bevr1337 1y ago> So, is it right to say biology is “just” a planetary fungal infection? Excellent closing statement. In my own life, I'm working to remove "just" from my vocabulary so it's fun seeing this called out in other context.