Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 478200)

You need to define terms. "Life" does not seem terribly unlikely given the math involved. Once you start talking about "organisms" those numbers collapse a bit, because life as we know it, with discrete bodies that compete and cooperate and fuck every now and then, is far from a likely outcome a second time around. The precise order of events in the geological record won't have happened in those exactly the same way anywhere else. Our present condition was an outcome of a billion trillion coin flips, were even a single heads where there should have been tails would change literally everything.

I know what I think, and it's this: there is almost definitely life out there. But the chances it has organisms on a physical scale similar or identical to ours can be ruled out, as can several other quirks of our environment -- bilateral symmetry, communication by patterned disturbance of air -- hell, even being "organic" (deriving energy and accumulating mass through the rearrangement of carbon) is supremely unlikely. Billion times a billion times is a lot, but if there's a form of life capable of traveling to meet us, we will not recognize it as "living" when it gets here. And its intelligence will also be unrecognizable, because it will have evolved to make success more likely in a totally different environment.

tl;dr: Slime molds yes; gaseous energy clouds yes; bipedal carbon-based humanoids ¡absoluamente no!

ETA: And by "supremely unlikely" I'm aware of the scale of the universe, and I'm ruling out that the billion trillion coin flips all came out the same in one or more other places.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 478200)

You need to define terms. "Life" does not seem terribly unlikely given the math involved. Once you start talking about "organisms" those numbers collapse a bit, because life as we know it, with discrete bodies that compete and cooperate and fuck every now and then, is far from a likely outcome a second time around. The precise order of events in the geological record won't have happened in those exactly the same way anywhere else. Our present condition was an outcome of a billion trillion coin flips, were even a single heads where there should have been tails would change literally everything.

I know what I think, and it's this: there is almost definitely life out there. But the chances it has organisms on a physical scale similar or identical to ours can be ruled out, as can several other quirks of our environment -- bilateral symmetry, communication by patterned disturbance of air -- hell, even being "organic" (deriving energy and accumulating mass through the rearrangement of carbon) is supremely unlikely. Billion times a billion times is a lot, but if there's a form of life capable of traveling to meet us, we will not recognize it as "living" when it gets here. And its intelligence will also be unrecognizable, because it will have evolved to make success more likely in a totally different environment.

tl;dr: Slime molds yes; gaseous energy clouds yes; bipedal carbon-based humanoids ¡absoluamente no!

ETA: And by "supremely unlikely" I'm aware of the scale of the universe, and I'm ruling out that the billion trillion coin flips all came out the same in one or more other places.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 478200)

You need to define terms. "Life" does not seem terribly unlikely given the math involved. Once you start talking about "organisms" those numbers collapse a bit, because life as we know it, with discrete bodies that compete and cooperate and fuck every now and then, is far from a likely outcome a second time around. The precise order of events in the geological record won't have happened in those exactly the same way anywhere else. Our present condition was an outcome of a billion trillion coin flips, were even a single heads where there should have been tails would change literally everything.

I know what I think, and it's this: there is almost definitely life out there. But the chances it has organisms on a physical scale similar or identical to ours can be ruled out, as can several other quirks of our environment -- bilateral symmetry, communication by patterned disturbance of air -- hell, even being "organic" (deriving energy and accumulating mass through the rearrangement of carbon) is supremely unlikely. Billion times a billion times is a lot, but if there's a form of life capable of traveling to meet us, we will not recognize it as "living" when it gets here. And its intelligence will also be unrecognizable, because it will have evolved to make success more likely in a totally different environment.

tl;dr: Slime molds yes; gaseous energy clouds yes; bipedal carbon-based humanoids ¡absoluamente no!

ETA: And by "supremely unlikely" I'm aware of the scale of the universe, and I'm ruling out that the billion trillion coin flips all came out the same in one or more other places.

Originally Posted by Paisley (Post 478196)

Done- sparkly and clean!

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower (Post 478201)

So you basically rule out the possibility that other life forms in the universe are bi-pedal, carbon-based humanoids displaying bilateral symmetry, but you think they use the same currency that we do?

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower (Post 478201)

So you basically rule out the possibility that other life forms in the universe are bi-pedal, carbon-based humanoids displaying bilateral symmetry, but you think they use the same currency that we do?

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 478187)

One with an Angry Fist?

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 478204)

I don't know where you get this shit. Do you think matter is different in some other galaxy? Life will be formed of matter. Obviously a lot could be different- some unique way of gathering energy, reproducing, communicating, etc. And it might look like nothing we've seen but it would still move or grow, I don't get why we wouldn't recognize it as life. Do you think it'll be invisible?

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 478216)

God fisting shouldn't be an anger thing, you know.

Originally Posted by Oliver_Wendell_Ramone (Post 478218)

Is it about power, or about sex? It can't be about both; I think I heard that somewhere.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 478217)

I didn't say it wouldn't be made of matter. But all life on earth is carbon-based, meaning that it derives either energy or additional mass (for growth or reproduction) from the difference between carbon being bonded to one type molecule versus another type. In the grand scheme of physics, it's a highly specific chemical process, but it's the thing that puts "bio" in "biochemistry." All life on earth descended from some single-celled organisms that invented it. For all we know, other forms of life will wring their existence from the energy states of atoms of gold or lead or some such.

In addition, it's only been in the past 300 years that we even knew there were forms of life smaller than fleas. Now we know that the tree of life is heavily weighted toward single-cell life forms. We think the smallest unit of life is the cell, and we can observe things that small. But what scale will alien life operate on? There's nothing magical about the size of a cell, except that it was a good size range for water-rich environments and r-selection evolutionary strategies. If alien life occurs at "organism" levels at the atomic scale, or even at the interplanetary or galaxy scale, we wouldn't see it. Not to get all Animal House on you, but our whole galaxy could be just a component in a large life form and it would just look like the Universe to us -- we'd never think "Ah, an organism."

I should warn you I got a 5 on the Bio AP and a 770 on the Bio Achievement test, so you'd best step off.

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch (Post 478217)

I didn't say it wouldn't be made of matter. But all life on earth is carbon-based, meaning that it derives either energy or additional mass (for growth or reproduction) from the difference between carbon being bonded to one type molecule versus another type. In the grand scheme of physics, it's a highly specific chemical process, but it's the thing that puts "bio" in "biochemistry." All life on earth descended from some single-celled organisms that invented it. For all we know, other forms of life will wring their existence from the energy states of atoms of gold or lead or some such.

In addition, it's only been in the past 300 years that we even knew there were forms of life smaller than fleas. Now we know that the tree of life is heavily weighted toward single-cell life forms. We think the smallest unit of life is the cell, and we can observe things that small. But what scale will alien life operate on? There's nothing magical about the size of a cell, except that it was a good size range for water-rich environments and r-selection evolutionary strategies. If alien life occurs at "organism" levels at the atomic scale, or even at the interplanetary or galaxy scale, we wouldn't see it. Not to get all Animal House on you, but our whole galaxy could be just a component in a large life form and it would just look like the Universe to us -- we'd never think "Ah, an organism."

I should warn you I got a 5 on the Bio AP and a 770 on the Bio Achievement test, so you'd best step off.

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower (Post 478220)

If they are gold-based beings, how does this fact affect your theory that they use the same coins that we do?