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With all this talk of human immortals I thought it might be interesting to explore other ways in which mankind is integral to the lifecycle of the universe. I generally believe that the current attempts for tranhumanists to depict a future replete with biogenically, technologically transformed remnants of humanity is a failure not because its imaginings are too outlandish, but for exactly the opposite reason: transhumanists are far too short-sighted in their proposals.
Panspermia is the hypothesis that the seeds of life are ubiquitous in the Universe, that they may have delivered life to Earth, and that they may deliver or have delivered life to other habitable bodies; also the process of such delivery.
Exogenesis is a related, but less radical, hypothesis that simply proposes life originated elsewhere in the Universe and was transferred to Earth, with no prediction about how widespread life is. The term "panspermia" is more well-known, however, and tends to be used in reference to what would properly be called exogenesis, too.
Stepping around the issue of whether this idea holds any weight, I suggest it makes a good model by which to project our current evolutionary status forward in time, rather than backwards.
The seeding of life did not begin when the first bacteria evolved, or even when the first organic molecule coalesced in some giant gas cloud. It began much earlier than that, in fact when the first hydrogen atoms stabilised not long after the big bang. From that moment on evolutionary processes carved niches out of interstellar place for increasingly complex structural components to be built.
At the current stage of cosmic evolution systems composed of some trillion atoms can be said to maintain a semblance of order, where in earlier epochs it took many trillions of times more atoms to form any kind of higher level system. These trillion atoms are now capable of self awareness! Humans are surely one of the most complex systems in the universe, yet the complexity can only increase.
I believe that as we continue to digitise and mass produce the world around us into ever more minutely complex arrangements so the realm of self awareness will shift from entities of trillions of atoms in construct to billions, then millions and so on down to the nano scale. We are already seeing the 'seeds' of this all around us, exciting and utopian as it is I rarely see it as the precurser to mankind's evolution. We are but one stage in a whole chain of processes which will eventually permit a vast array of small scale systems in the universe to react to their environment consciously.
Could these tiny, self sufficient nano entities become so minute that they were capable of drifting off the planet Earth and out into space? Perhaps their interelations will permit them to communicate as conscious clouds of matter, to reform themselves in new arrangements of complexity thereby completely altering the nature of 'organic life'.
Panspermia seems to me the way the universe is headed. Screw organic entities still governed by hormones and bundles of near inanimate cell arrangements. In the future the cells themselves will be conscious, independant and capable of matters of perception far beyond anything we can now comprehend."Cities are no more artificial than Bee-hives. The internet is as natural as a spider's web...
...We ourselves are technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as means of genetic survival - we are part of an intricate network that comes from the original takeover of the Earth. Our power and intelligence do not belong specifically to us, but to all life..."
- John Gray, Straw Dogs
What do you reckon? -
YEP, 100% AGREE. tOTALLY SPOT ON.
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CommentAuthorDr. Orphusi
- CommentTimeApr 24th 2006
I reckon you're right - I've been thinking along this sort of a path recently. I also reckon I should get myself a copy of Straw Dogs, which seems to be a treasure-trove of intelligent ideas. -
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My best guess is that you are correct, Dan, in thinking that intelligence will eventually exist in entities much smaller than human beings. And biological, non-intelligent life (or at least bio-molecules) may well have originated off-earth and drfited down here ages ago. However, I suspect that the degree of intelligence of any beings will almost always be dependent on the scale of their "engine of thought" (brain, computer, whatever).
So while there will likely be smart little guys coursing through the universe on tides of light pressure someday, and other little guys coursing through your bloodstream to find and destroy cancer cells and so forth, none of these small time operators will hold an intellectual candle to the Jupiter brains constructed on a cosmic scale.
Personally, I'd settle for some nice neural enhancements with a few in-skull hypercomputers to help me in the daily grind.
Regards,
Mike
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CommentAuthorDr. Orphusi
- CommentTimeApr 25th 2006
Ah yes but Mike, I think what Danieru is also suggesting is that these smaller, smarter little guys will cluster together into microbial clouds to form neural networks of a higher intelligence, not unlike an ant colony or indeed the connected neurons in our brains. -
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Exactly, Jupiter Brains would surely be all the more powerful if they were composed entirely of nano-scale components, each conscious at some level themselves...
I adhere to aspects of panpsychism, as in, I believe that consciousness is fundamental to all matter in some respect. Although I do not believe that atoms are conscious, I believe that it is in the perceived intention of order that consciousness arises. Let me explain this a little further before I wrap myself up into a ball of nonsense.
The old zombie thought experiment in philosophy of mind shows us that perceived intention is indistiguishable from actual, subjective intention. It is possible to imagine a zombie with no inner-realm of self, exhibiting outward intention in its acts. The feedback it has with its environment is devoid of subjective intention, qualia if you like, but from the outside objective realm it would be impossible to know this for sure. In this sense for me consciousness is the same as perceived intention, maybe in the same way that acceleration under certain circumstances is interchangeable with gravity.
We look out into the depths of space and we perceive intention all around us. It appears that evolution has a goal which it strives towards, although rational enquiry and scientific evidence show us this need not be the case. So too if we were to watch over a billion years as coral reefs were deposited by microscopic oragnisms, and then we watched at tectonic shifts caused these deposits to jut out of the Earth as limestone landscapes, which over many millions of years more were carved by wind and rain into the mountains we see all around us we may perceive an intention at work, although in truth none exists. This is simplified consciousness for me. Systems working in blind chaotic symphony to produce a perceived order over time.
At the present point in the evolution of life this perceived order can exist at incredibly tiny timescales. Humans have the ability to create, destroy, arrange and manipulate the universe in mere moments. The order we extrude from our own perspective appears anything but chaotic, yet if we were to stretch our perceptions out to timescales on a par with the coral reef example given above this perceived order would once again be transformed into chaotic flux. Forests falling, being replanted, cities climbing to great heights before being destroyed again. Rivers diverting, climates fluctuating, carbon erupting, civilisations emerging and being extinguished again. Human intention is no more real than that of the coral reefs. On a grandscale our actions have an illusionary quality of intention, on cosmic timescales this illusion is equal in stature to that of all organic, atomic or maybe even subatomic forces.
This though is not the whole story. If we follow the structural evolution of conscious order over the past 13 billion years a kind of pattern can be seen emerging. Massive scale perceived intention has changed from scales of galactic proportion through various levels of size differentiation to the microscopic realm we humans now interact with. 10 billion years ago it took a gas cloud composed of more atoms than now exist in our entire galaxy to forge anything we would perceive as intention. These gas clouds coelesced over billions of years into small pockets of anti-entropy, eventually forming the galaxies we see around us today.
As time rolled on the scales at which 'perceived intention' could occur grew ever smaller:Whole universe scale - galactic cluster scale - nebula scale - galaxy scale - solar system scale - planetary scale - ecosystem scale - organism scale - cultural scale - nano-scale
The brains which rule over our individual bodies should not be seen as completely individual devices, running each their own segment of reality. Humanity as a whole is more crucial to cosmic evolution. We are a mass organism. Our individual intention creates mass scale perceived intention. From the aspect of an alien race watching us from a distant star system humanity's perceived intention has been to convert the atmosphere of Earth from Nitrogen/Oxygen based back into the Nitrogen/Carbon based atmosphere of a billion years ago. Perhaps in 100 years from now the Earth from a distance will exhibit greater levels of intention as humanity carves through the mountains, increases sea levels, wipes out other forms of organic life AND, crucial to my original argument, reforms atomic structures into self contained, nano-scale, possibly self aware, digital systems.
The universe is moving towards a state where ALL MATTER is in some sense capable of acting intentionally upon its surroundings. Organic life evolved and began altering its environment at ever decreasing scales. Perhaps organic life everywhere in the universe is a precurser to digital life, which in turn, reconstructs the atoms in its local environment into self sustained nano-aware systems. These nano scale entities would not be alone, just as humans are not alone. The Earth in a sense is conscious of itself, is acting upon itself through us. This nano-life will have very little perceived intention on a nanoscale, but collect trillions of them together, convert the entire subatomic structure of a planet, a solar system and perhaps in turn an ENTIRE GALAXY OF MATTER into the nano systems and suddenly the connected matter for millions of light years in every direction is capable of conscious interaction, of widescale perceived intention. Consciousness will not be Jupiter sized, it will be Milky-Way sized, perhaps universe sized.
The universe itself will be conscious. The era of the God's will truly have risen.
At least, that's the way that makes most sense to my idea of perceived intention, but who knows. Even cosmic scale consciousness might be insignificant if multiple universes turn out to be real. Perhaps in the multiverse, an infinity of universes ebbing and evolving in dimensions of space-time imperceptible to our three dimensional brains, perhaps here universes compete in Darwinian competition, passing on their genetic information through the black holes smattering their being, those universes which become conscious go on to further their lineage, those which do not die out, are preyed upon, become extinct. Perhaps here too the universes will gather together, collect their infinity sized, nanoscale aware consciousnesses together until the multiverse itself is self aware. Perhaps reality is destined to evolve higher levels of awareness forever.
Perhaps.
Transhumanists ain't got my vote anyway. Human, transhuman, hyper human are each nothing on the grand stage of reality.
What do you think? -
Sorry, that's a little too long... I'd love to know your thoughts on all this...
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CommentAuthorDr. Orphusi
- CommentTimeApr 26th 2006
I love this topic.
Highly intriguing concepts, especially the notion that entire universes may be in competition with one another.
The universal Gaia, consisting of her own micro-Gaian worlds (e.g. Earth) is highly plausible. What we’re debating is the structural intent of the universe… has it an aim, or is it merely a pulsating orb of chaos and entropy and life? Can we use Earth-based examples as guides with regards to universal intention? What grand evolutionary revolutions might be occurring millions of light years from us, by other intelligent beings? Just throwing some questions out there, I’m tired right now, but willing to throw some ideas of my own in tomorrow. -
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I find it hard to believe that my own degree of conscious awareness is not somehow distinct from the 'panpsychist' ideas I gave above, but it is hard to prove such a position (as 2000 years of the philosophy of mind has shown). I also don't believe that the universe itself has any intention, in what we would understand as a subjective sense. Chaos is the key.
What if consciousness is just a consequence of a highly disordered system acheiving a chaotic diffusion amongst its parts? That is, a galaxy may have a small degree of consciousness, perhaps even something we might label simple intention. A planet covered in coral depositing organisms has a perceived intention brought about by its more defined order than the highly disordered galaxy. Perhaps its conscious perception is several levels higher than the galaxy. Then there is a human mind. Incredibly complex at the fundamental level, and breathing with a quantum diffused order from which a very high level consciousness arises.
Perhaps the nano scale minds of our future will have even great degrees of consciousness, beyond our comprehension. I mean, for their size, the perceptive realm these 'nano-minds' will be capable of gaining access to will no doubt be minute in comparison to our realm. So their consciousness will have finer detail.
Consciousness is THE biggest mystery of the universe as far as I'm concerned. For any distinct portion of the universe (a human mind) to be able to question, to partially understand their perceptive slice of reality is as close to 'miracle' as any non-religious inclination in me will allow my imagination to leap. -
Check out some of the links in this forum post for 'early evidence' of the emergence of technological life...
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I like the idea of a multiverse -- which doesn't make it true, of course, but at least renders it worth entertaining as a scientific possibility. There is something mind-bogglingly wonderful about an Everett-Wheeler multiverse in which every yes/no decision by an acting entity within a particular universe splits that universe further into different universes. Add to this Lee Smolin's idea that universes within this multiverse are in Darwinian competition via the production of black holes, and the whole scheme goes up a notch on the "Wow!" meter.
Now let me go back down the scale to consider those microscopic intelligences that, as Dr. Orphusi put it in summarizing Danieru's post, "cluster together into microbial clouds to form neural networks of a higher intelligence." This form of distributed intelligence has operational advatnages analogous to the internet: many semi-independent nodes can perform lots of processes in parallel and are quite robust against the failure of any small number of nodes. However, there is a price to pay for these advantages, which is processing and signalling speed. The reason microchips can operate at billions of cycles per second is that the distance between chip components is measured in microns, not miles. And since the speed of light seems like a true barrier we cannot cross, there will always be an advantage to local information processing over widely distributed processing. Which is why Jupiter Brains will solve problems faster than thinking nebulae.
Regards,
Mike
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Indeed. Perhaps it will take a Jupiter Brain to come up with a solution to the speed of light barrier, by which point nebulae sized intelligences will have arisen.
Following on from a point forum user What? made on a different post, because time is relative to speed, at the speed of light time is an infinite. This means that photons, and all other entities travelling at the speed of light would perceive all things at once.
Increase processing speed to the capacity of photons and processing power vs time would be a meaningless graph to plot.
I also entirely forgot to go into Quantum Computation. This definitely deserves a forum post all of its own, but its worth pointing out that in some theories of quantum theory all atoms exist simultenously in a variety of parallel universes. A true Quantum Processor then, in this theory, would interact with versions of itself carrying out similar computations in alternate universes, thereby delimiting the speed of calculation only to how many atoms, and thereby parallel universes, your computer is built upon.
Perhaps when nanoscale conscious apparatus does appear it will function across the boundaries of the multiverse. Perhaps then one need only have a Jupiter Sized intelligence multitasking across countless universes to perceive all matters of reality in entirely.
I will endeavour to write about Quantum Computing some more. Its possibilities are mind boggling. -
This, too, is a favourite area of contemplation for me and I've proposed a completely theoretical, and probably completely nonsensical, 'solution' to some perplexing questions such as the EPR paradox, the dual nature of light, what is 'consciousness' and can we have 'free will' in some long posts to the Atheism On-line forum [http://atheismonline.com] under the title 'The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything," which, of course, it isn't. They're long because of the subject matter and because I tried to make them entertaining, and incomplete because of a disappointing but probably justifiable lack of feed-back.
So just to very briefly summarise my thesis I propose the following scheme:
1. The Universe consists of a 'corporeal' entity which is ultimately defined by the energy contained within the Big Bang, and a non-physical entity I call the Quantum Ghost.
2. Completely essential to the Quantum Ghost yet as far as I know unsupported by any scientific evidence whatsoever is the assumption that quanta alternate between 'positive' and 'negative' states.
3. Likewise speculatively, all the quanta in the Universe were created in a serial fashion during the period of Inflation which followed the Big Bang, and thus quata are alternating between states asynchronously. (Underlying both contentions here is the proposal that the Universe was formed by the vibration of a two-dimensional plane into an empty third dimension, but I won't go into that now.)
4. As each quantum passes through its Zero state it absolutely ceases to exist. However, when it re-manifests itself in its opposite state it does so in accordance with the 'expectation' of every other quantum with which it was previously interacting. As that expectation depends of what is happening to those other quanta from their particular viewpoints it can be slightly fuzzy and the quantum must then rematerialise where the expectation is strongest, which might not be where it was previously. Hence quantum uncertainty.
To illustrate, imagine all the rocks and particles of dust in Saturn's rings blinking momentarily but asynchronously out of existance say once a second. During their momentary non-existance the dance of the rings moves on without them, but when they re-materialise they do so where the gravity of the whole system requires them to be, not where they were.
So the gravity of the system of Saturn Rings, which is a single thing greater than the sum of its parts, is much like the Quantum Ghost of the Universe. It has no purpose and no self-awareness but simply responds to things from moment to moment as they are. Blow up one of Saturn's outer moons with a nuclear bomb and the entire system would re-arrange itself to accommodate the changed circumstances not from the top down but from the bottom up to the top and then down to the bottom again, over and over, via the unity of the gravity field. If the whole system broke down the larger scale gravity unit of the solar system would then 'take over' on the same bottom up basis.
The physical universe is just 'dead' matter and energy, and during their physical manifestation phase quanta are actually inert. Change can only take place during that instant they pass through their Zero state just as the picture on your monitor can only change during the refresh period of its pixels. "Intelligence' and 'consciousness' are attributes of the Quantum Ghost from moment to moment, and perhaps we have learned to manipulate the Quantum Ghost of our physical minds to a small degree independently of its physical manifestation - as thoughts. If so this divorce of the Quantum Ghost from the physical universe could presumably be extended to other systems than the mind, or the mind's Quantum Ghost could even manipulate the Quantum Ghost of other systems - a suitably gobbledegook explanation for magic, but perhaps an explanation of "charisma" and (if you believe in it) ESP, telekinesis &tc - or even reach some sort of critical mass that could indeed trigger a Universal consciousness.
But i expect there's enough there for the average 10-year-old to shoot me down in flames, so I'll leave it here and see if anything happens. -
I'm not ten years old, but I used to be. Does that count?
Your idea about 'quanta' emerging where they are expected to by the system at large is reminiscent of a similarly off the wall concept by the writer of the Dilbert comics. In his mini novella 'God's Debris' he theorises that the universe is made up from bits of God and is in the process of rebuilding itself from the little information it has as to its original state (when it was a whole God).
Nice concepts. I had a friend at uni who decided to use his dissertation to outline his 'theory of everything'. He cancelled out the weirdness of quantum theory by theorising that the universe was a computer which existed in a higher dimension of space. He wrote the first draft, consulted his personal tutor on the topic and wrote an entirely different thesis on medical ethics instead.
Some theories get harder to justify the more deeply you engage with them. Simplicity is God. -
Probably.
What is more simple than the binary system? The quantum is something. The alternative is nothing. That's all there is.
But how can it be? If every quantum exists in the quantum vacuum it is effectively isolated from every other quantum by infinity. From the point of view of the quantum it exists in total isolation How, then do they, 'act' in concert to create the illusion of reality?
I can see no escape from the conclusion that there is a non-physical process running in parallel with the physical but this gets uncomfortably mystical and opens the door for religious friends to pounce and say "Aha, that's God!" I don't believe it is in any sense they do but as an atheist need to be able to say, "well, it COULD happen like this." I'm not saying that it does happen like that, but the fact that it COULD happen like that means that I don't have to believe in a god doing it, which I find a more comfortable situation.
So while it might be off the wall, your simply saying so doesn't make it so. So please explain WHY it is off the wall. -
Perhaps the problem is that it's not 'off the wall' enough
How about the idea that there is only one quanta, (which I am still unsure of the nature of), and it exists at every point in the universe when perceived devoid of time?
I.E. the illusion of time forces us to posit many quanta. Get rid of it, or spin it from a different angle, and every quanta in the universe, at every possible point, time, binary on or off is simply the single quanta at a different stage of its cycle through infinity. Sounds simpler to me, and more off the wall.
There is 1 quanta. It has been and will be everywhere everywhen.
Philip K Dick in later life wrote his ridiculously abstract, and possibly insane, Exegesis in which he posited a holographic being he called 'Zebra'. The universe, in this theory, was in the process of evolving to a state where it would reflect the true nature of Zebra thus allowing the higher entity to perceive what it was. Is this Zebra similar to your 'Quantum Ghost' perhaps? I'm lost in abstract weirdness here... -
I'm quite happy with the idea of only one quanta. In fact it's another way of looking at what I said - if every quanta is alone in the quantum vacuum there is only one, or One!
However, the problem I raise is still there. How does one quanta, or infinity-1 quanta each isolated from every other one by the quantum vacuum, give rise to the illusion of coherence = 'reality' we experience?
Statements such as 'off-the-wall' and 'ridiculously abstract and possibly insane' do not advance the matter one iota and are regrettably found on both sides of the creationist/evolutionist debate, to the extent it can be called a debate at all.
Now, I'm perfectly aware we are not going to reach a conclusion here in the absence of a foolproof 'theory' of everything' but if I'm wrong please point out the fallacy of my argument.
This thread appears to be converging with the one entitled 'entropy' and I liked the idea expressed by idoru345 in the Exploding the Forum thread "to tackle complex ideas collectively over time - that is, to build on concepts metioned in posts so they mature and become more complex." Perhaps this is a classic of that kind.
In the Entropy thread you linked Plotinus with the statement "the 'seer' determines the 'seen' of the quantum realm," in a way I take to be scornful. I've never heard of Plotinus but I'd argue the statement you ascribe to him accords with what I'm suggesting, with the rider that what the 'seer' detirmines of the quantum realm depends upon what he sees. -
I have no scorn towards Plotinus, nor the theory of quantum physics which posits consciousness as an integral aspect of the system.
I think the major problem here is one of perception, in that popular theory has a large bearing on how reality is constructed. Quantum Theory is a framework which works beautifully well to predict the interactions we make with reality at a relatively fundamental level. But, just as the idea of atoms is now widely accepted as a model rather than a truth, so in time the quantum realm will have to make way for newer and more finely tuned theories.
Without doubt it is hard to accept that distinct quantas, or whatever your fundamental element is, can interact without a medium. At the most fine level there has to be 1 entity of existence, 1 energy perhaps, from which all reality arises. This seething mass cannot be made of up distinct elements because there could be no intermediary by which the elements could interact with each other (I'm pretty much repeating your point here). I believe this is a problem that consciousness may never fully be transcendant of. Some things are simply beyond.
However deep into abstract physical meanderings one gets there is always going to be the niggling sensation that something is missing. Even if we managed to plough right down through the layers of truth to expose a one fundamental energy we are still left pondering what exactly this energy is and how it is composed. Infinity is just that.
Maybe, as you allude to in relation to my Pontius statement, the make up of consciousness is the fundamental element we need to expose. I read a nice (though rather crude) analogy recently which I think is useful here:Snails have very slow nervous systems. It takes them several seconds to record each new visual impression. What this means is that if someone walks by very quickly and drops a penny in front of a snail, the person will be invisible and the penny will seem to appear form nowhere. In reverse, if a snail is picked up and moved very quickly, it will believe it has teleported from one place to the other.
Now, we can theorise all we like, we can devise better models with which to better understand reality, but the hurdle of conscious perception will always remain.
Our senses play the same trick with reality at large. Our brains are too slow to register that every concrete object is winking in and out of existence at the quantum level thousands of times per second; therefore, we see solid objects where none in fact exist. - link
My instinct is to see reality as somehow transcendant of consciousness, but time and again quantum models factor time over perception into their workings. It is at this point where the mystic in everyone offers a hand out for forces beyond scientific enquiry, I abhore this, but realise that any theorising beyond the usual can appear to appeal to this kind of thinking.
Take your quanta, give it consciousness, project it along axis of time and space in various arrangements and perhaps a coherent reality can be imagined. Whether this coherence advances our understanding beyond the (much more defined) models we already have is highly unlikely.
So my starting point would not be quanta it would be consciousness. Figure out what that is and how reality is in symbiosis with it and true fundamentals will begin to dissolve from the quantum mass. -
Wow, from the depths does rise a monster.
Max Tegmark on his vision of our optimistic future:We're Not Insignificant After All
Took the words right out of my mouth. The definition of 'Transhumanist' ain't enough for perspective of this calibre. Try 'Transorganic' or 'Transbaryonic' instead...
When gazing up on a clear night, it's easy to feel insignificant. Since our earliest ancestors admired the stars, our human egos have suffered a series of blows. For starters, we're smaller than we thought. Eratosthenes showed that Earth was larger than millions of humans, and his Hellenic compatriots realized that the solar system was thousands of times larger still. Yet for all its grandeur, our Sun turned out to be merely one rather ordinary star among hundreds of billions in a galaxy that in turn is merely one of billions in our observable universe, the spherical region from which light has had time to reach us during the 14 billion years since our big bang. Then there are probably more (perhaps infinitely many) such regions. Our lives are small temporally as well as spatially: if this 14 billion year cosmic history were scaled to one day, then 100,000 years of human history would be 4 minutes and a 100 year life would be 0.2 seconds. Further deflating our hubris, we've learned that we're not that special either. Darwin taught us that we're animals, Freud taught us that we're irrational, machines now outpower us, and just last month, Deep Fritz outsmarted our Chess champion Vladimir Kramnik. Adding insult to injury, cosmologists have found that we're not even made out of the majority substance.
The more I learned about this, the less significant I felt. Yet in recent years, I've suddenly turned more optimistic about our cosmic significance. I've come to believe that advanced evolved life is very rare, yet has huge growth potential, making our place in space and time remarkably significant.
The nature of life and consciousness is of course a hotly debated subject. My guess is that these phenomena can exist much more generally that in the carbon-based examples we know of.
I believe that consciousness is, essentially, the way information feels when being processed. Since matter can be arranged to process information in numerous ways of vastly varying complexity, this implies a rich variety of levels and types of consciousness. The particular type of consciousness that we subjectively know is then a phenomenon that arises in certain highly complex physical systems that input, process, store and output information. Clearly, if atoms can be assembled to make humans, the laws of physics also permit the construction of vastly more advanced forms of sentient life. Yet such advanced beings can probably only come about in a two-step process: first intelligent beings evolve through natural selection, then they choose to pass on the torch of life by building more advanced consciousness that can further improve itself.
Unshackled by the limitations of our human bodies, such advanced life could rise up and eventually inhabit much of our observable universe. Science fiction writers, AI-aficionados and transhumanist thinkers have long explored this idea, and to me the question isn't if it can happen, but if it will happen.
My guess is that evolved life as advanced as ours is very rare. Our universe contains countless other solar systems, many of which are billions of years older than ours. Enrico Fermi pointed out that if advanced civilizations have evolved in many of them, then some have a vast head start on us — so where are they? I don't buy the explanation that they're all choosing to keep a low profile: natural selection operates on all scales, and as soon as one life form adopts expansionism (sending off rogue self-replicating interstellar nanoprobes, say), others can't afford to ignore it. My personal guess is that we're the only life form in our entire observable universe that has advanced to the point of building telescopes, so let's explore that hypothesis. It was the cosmic vastness that made me feel insignificant to start with. Yet those galaxies are visible and beautiful to us — and only us. It is only we who give them any meaning, making our small planet the most significant place in our observable universe.
Moreover, this brief century of ours is arguably the most significant one in the history of our universe: the one when its meaningful future gets decided. We'll have the technology to either self-destruct or to seed our cosmos with life. The situation is so unstable that I doubt that we can dwell at this fork in the road for more than another century. If we end up going the life route rather than the death route, then in a distant future, our cosmos will be teeming with life that all traces back to what we do here and now. I have no idea how we'll be thought of, but I'm sure that we won't be remembered as insignificant.
Read more of Edge's yearly Question Centre here... -
To quote Homer (J), 'What is matter? never mind. What is mind? no matter'.
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- CommentAuthorcapslockf9
- CommentTimeJan 13th 2007
What is humans...
The Great Spirit that exists outside the boundaries of the "material" manifestation
is a reality. This sentient being made of pure consciousness . All "matter" is endowed
with sentience. Sentience refers to possession of sensory organs, the ability to feel or
perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-perception. Self-perception appears
to be processed in the superior frontal gyrus. Partner this perception to consciousness
and it's intent to find a reflection of itself in physical form . Consciousness is a
non-material energy. We are NOT the static within our minds ( a pack of neurons, made
up of a chain of "lifeless" molecules and atoms). Most minds, instead of serving as a link
to the infinite worlds of multi-dimensional expression, have become locked into a rigid
sense of separate "material" identity. Most minds are lost in the "matter" and it's
diversified incredible beautiful physical forms.
Within classical Physics the void is a simple absence of all matter and energy while
quantum theory tells us that in fact it is a seething mass of quantum particles that
constantly appear into and disappear from our observable universe. Everything (us
included)is made of atoms. Atoms are made of electrons and protons. Electrons and
protons are made of quarks and gluons. And these things are made of yet smaller things.
And these things are so small that they have NO MASS at all but are pure vibrating
energy. It is from these vibrations from which we perceive "matter". Electrons
exchanged (the static) in the synapses is thought. AND NOW this thinking gives the mind
an Ego ( ego as applied here is the perception of self). Evil ego concepts amoung others
are Races, tribes, nationalities, superiority over other fellow humans, preference from a god
that it created for its own use, dominance of nature, patriotism, religion, etc.. Most minds
are lost in matter; which you know is an illusion. Alas even color does not exist in the
material; what does exist is frequencies or vibrations. These vibrations enter our eyes and
its in our mind where we apply color.
What follows is my own personal knowledge. Consciousness (The Great Spirit) is a
non-material energy. Soul searching will reveal that we are love, fearless, and compassion.
Without the great spirit the human thing will cease and dissipate, and it's ego will
disappear. There is only one only one living being only one living being. The ego or the
rigid sense of seperate deters manifestation of THE GREAT SPIRIT intent.
Thank you for your time, my brother.
Alejandro Garcia
capslockf9@hotmail.com
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