4 ms·

Mars almost certainly doesn't have life anymore, except maybe underground or in caves or something. The thing is that Mars used to be very similar to Earth, and

Mars almost certainly doesn't have life anymore, except maybe underground or in caves or something. The thing is that Mars used to be very similar to Earth, and it's even been suggested that life was seeded on Earth from Mars. What they are looking for is signs that Mars had life at some point in the past, because it would prove that life is not something that is unique and special to Earth. Also, I would be very curious how Martian life differed from life on Earth on a molecular level. I'd be willing to bet they were based on the same principles, but diverged pretty quickly. For example, they may not use the structure of the amino acid to produce protein, which is: H NH3-C-COOH | functional group If they did, they probably don't use the same codon code to present them in RNA or have the same functional groups that all Earth based life does. I'm certain there is life places other than Earth, but the question is what does that life look like? It may not even remotely resemble Earth based life. Finding life on Mars might give us a clue about what types of things to look for to identify life elsewhere.

asdflkj 19y ago
>I'm certain there is life places other than Earth, Any evidence for that? Edit: this is my pet peeve, and I'm still peeved, so I'll write some more. Nobody has any idea how probable the appearance of life is. Nobody even has an idea how it happened. The only thing we do know about that probability is that it's very low, since we haven't been able to observe life anywhere. Just how low is anyone's guess. It could be 1/(number of particles in the universe * googolplex). Or it could be much lower still. My other pet peeve is singularity. If you show an 19th century man our world and give him the definition of singularity, he'll tell you it already happened. That's because it's totally meaningless, and essentially amounts to this: "singularity is when technological progress goes so fast, that, like, dude, totally". There, now I feel better.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  Just playing devil's advocate here, we're alive, aren't we? So the odds can't be much less than 1/(number of planets in the universe) As for the singularity, I believe the point is the nature of being a human will change. The 19th century man will fit into our world just fine. A "regular" man might not fit into a world where we're all part cyborgs. You are correct in that it's the same unknowable impenetrable future state for us and the 19th century guy, but the idea is that the nature of change will be different in the next 100 years than it ever has been -- because it deals with what it means to be human. The Fermi Paradox, Drake Equation, and the quest for life is one of my pet subjects. I like it because it is pseudo-science -- and I mean that in a good way. We simply have no means of actually performing experiments, since our knowledge of life consists of just one example for a brief period of time. I am tempted to think that life is just about everywhere in the universe, but heck if I know. If there is life everywhere, then where is everybody?
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
  - asdflkj 19y ago
    >we're alive, aren't we? So the odds can't be much less than 1/(number of planets in the universe) That argument takes for granted that the probability space comprises only the things in our observable universe. In other words, it claims that there doesn't exist anything that we don't already know about. That's a false premise. re: singularity. I think we are already part-cyborgs. For all practical purposes, Internet is a part of me--it's a sense organ. Ask yourself, what would you rather lose: your sense of hearing, or the technologies of the last 100 years? For me, it's the former, any day of the week. What it means to be human changes continuously, and has been changing since before we were officially human. Now it's changing faster than ever before, but it changed faster than ever before at almost every point in human history.
    - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
      "In other words, it claims that there doesn't exist anything that we don't already know about." -- that's not a false premise, that's the basis for science. I can only deal with things I can observe. If you put 4 black balls and one white ball into a bag and ask me the chances of drawing a white ball, it's 1/5. If you then say, "hey -- but I really put 9 black balls in there. Your math is wrong" that's not much in the way of an argument. We measure and calculate those things we can observe. Yes, one could speculate on non-observable things. But that's a game that has no end. We are conceptually part cyborgs. I think there will be a line that is crossed, perhaps in our lifetime, where the average person will be physically part cyborg. No matter how you measure it, that's a change of a different nature than simple discovery and invention. I think you are muddling the point a bit. One of the reasons the Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation are so interesting to me is that they rely on speculation. While I think the minimum is 1/(number of planets), who knows what that number is? And for all the other terms in the Drake Equation, you're just pulling numbers out of the air. It's as much a religion as science. Fascinating stuff, both from a science angle and as an observation of human nature.
      - 19y ago
- jey 19y ago
  Re: Singularity There are several incompatible definitions of "Singularity" floating around, as pointed out by Eliezer Yudkowsky here: http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/ http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singular... I personally subscribe to the "Intelligence Explosion" idea, because of two very simple beliefs: - AI is feasible. - AI will have a profound impact on our lives. I try to avoid using the word "Singularity" and just describe that I think AI is a very important problem because the word "Singularity" is too soiled. Everyone pretty much associates "Singularity" with Ray Kurzweil's vague and strange intersecting-expoential-curves idea which makes no sense (which Eliezer calls "Accelerating Change" in the blog post).

asdflkj 19y ago

>I'm certain there is life places other than Earth, Any evidence for that? Edit: this is my pet peeve, and I'm still peeved, so I'll write some more. Nobody has any idea how probable the appearance of life is. Nobody even has an idea how it happened. The only thing we do know about that probability is that it's very low, since we haven't been able to observe life anywhere. Just how low is anyone's guess. It could be 1/(number of particles in the universe * googolplex). Or it could be much lower still. My other pet peeve is singularity. If you show an 19th century man our world and give him the definition of singularity, he'll tell you it already happened. That's because it's totally meaningless, and essentially amounts to this: "singularity is when technological progress goes so fast, that, like, dude, totally". There, now I feel better.

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Just playing devil's advocate here, we're alive, aren't we? So the odds can't be much less than 1/(number of planets in the universe) As for the singularity, I believe the point is the nature of being a human will change. The 19th century man will fit into our world just fine. A "regular" man might not fit into a world where we're all part cyborgs. You are correct in that it's the same unknowable impenetrable future state for us and the 19th century guy, but the idea is that the nature of change will be different in the next 100 years than it ever has been -- because it deals with what it means to be human. The Fermi Paradox, Drake Equation, and the quest for life is one of my pet subjects. I like it because it is pseudo-science -- and I mean that in a good way. We simply have no means of actually performing experiments, since our knowledge of life consists of just one example for a brief period of time. I am tempted to think that life is just about everywhere in the universe, but heck if I know. If there is life everywhere, then where is everybody?
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- asdflkj 19y ago
  >we're alive, aren't we? So the odds can't be much less than 1/(number of planets in the universe) That argument takes for granted that the probability space comprises only the things in our observable universe. In other words, it claims that there doesn't exist anything that we don't already know about. That's a false premise. re: singularity. I think we are already part-cyborgs. For all practical purposes, Internet is a part of me--it's a sense organ. Ask yourself, what would you rather lose: your sense of hearing, or the technologies of the last 100 years? For me, it's the former, any day of the week. What it means to be human changes continuously, and has been changing since before we were officially human. Now it's changing faster than ever before, but it changed faster than ever before at almost every point in human history.
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    "In other words, it claims that there doesn't exist anything that we don't already know about." -- that's not a false premise, that's the basis for science. I can only deal with things I can observe. If you put 4 black balls and one white ball into a bag and ask me the chances of drawing a white ball, it's 1/5. If you then say, "hey -- but I really put 9 black balls in there. Your math is wrong" that's not much in the way of an argument. We measure and calculate those things we can observe. Yes, one could speculate on non-observable things. But that's a game that has no end. We are conceptually part cyborgs. I think there will be a line that is crossed, perhaps in our lifetime, where the average person will be physically part cyborg. No matter how you measure it, that's a change of a different nature than simple discovery and invention. I think you are muddling the point a bit. One of the reasons the Fermi Paradox and Drake Equation are so interesting to me is that they rely on speculation. While I think the minimum is 1/(number of planets), who knows what that number is? And for all the other terms in the Drake Equation, you're just pulling numbers out of the air. It's as much a religion as science. Fascinating stuff, both from a science angle and as an observation of human nature.
    - 19y ago
jey 19y ago
Re: Singularity There are several incompatible definitions of "Singularity" floating around, as pointed out by Eliezer Yudkowsky here: http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/ http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singular... I personally subscribe to the "Intelligence Explosion" idea, because of two very simple beliefs: - AI is feasible. - AI will have a profound impact on our lives. I try to avoid using the word "Singularity" and just describe that I think AI is a very important problem because the word "Singularity" is too soiled. Everyone pretty much associates "Singularity" with Ray Kurzweil's vague and strange intersecting-expoential-curves idea which makes no sense (which Eliezer calls "Accelerating Change" in the blog post).