Life: is it inevitable or just a fluke?

Lagamorph wrote:

Meep wrote:Humans are still basically slaves to evolution; much of our behaviour is determined by unruly natural forces we have no control over. This is why I am largely sympathetic towards transhumanism. Once we rid ourselves of that whch created us we can remake ourselves as we see fit. I'm not talking about simply making people more intelligent and stronger, as most people interpret transhumanism, but also making ourselves morally superior by eliminating base instincts, which dictate how individuals behave, and improving our capacity for reason and self-determination instead.

If we did that though, would we be human anymore?

That depends on your point of view. I prefer to think that humanity is not defined by its limitations but rathers its capacity to break free of them.

What's so great about being human in the first place?

I bet there is so much gooseberry fool going down right now on other planets. I wonder, what are the chances of there being another civilisation at around the same stage of development as us that uses a language similar to English and has a small forum on the internet that just happens to be called GRcade? Maybe someone at the other end of the universe is posting a similar message to this one right now.

But seriously, I believe that there will be, right now, several different civilisations on other planets living lives that are very similar to ours. And that is a bizarre feeling.

This is what happens when I stay up until 2am.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder what life is like for all the other sapient species in the universe. They may have a completely different anatomy (arthropod, cephlopod?) and have completely different culture and values. Even their daily routine would seem bizarre to us, just as ours would to them. In most science fiction shows the aliens are just humans with latex on their face and a few quirky customs but real aliens would be more different than you could even imagine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... exist.html

Meep wrote:Yeah, I sometimes wonder what life is like for all the other sapient species in the universe. They may have a completely different anatomy (arthropod, cephlopod?) and have completely different culture and values. Even their daily routine would seem bizarre to us, just as ours would to them. In most science fiction shows the aliens are just humans with latex on their face and a few quirky customs but real aliens would be more different than you could even imagine.

Could be. It's not actually a given that they won't be humanoid.

Convergent evolution may be something to consider in that instance. We might at first look dramatically different from other intelligent alien races, but could in general be considered analogous to one another.

This picture made me laugh



EDIT: Also, that's a fairly shoddy article. They never mention anything about Titan at all, then drop this in:

Her aliens would probably die on Earth, finding the damp oxygenated atmosphere lethally corrosive. Equally, humans would not survive on Titan.

No strawberry floating gooseberry fool.

aaronayl1 wrote:This picture made me laugh

Yeah

Alvin Flummux wrote:Convergent evolution may be something to consider in that instance. We might at first look dramatically different from other intelligent alien races, but could in general be considered analogous to one another.

I hope you're right, otherwise mankind will never realise its dream of teaching green skinned space babes how to love.

Seems appropriate for this thread:

[vimeo]44801709[/vimeo]

What a beautiful video. Absolutely astonishing.

I can't wait for google goggles and other personal video displays.

It's going to be fascinating to visually map normally invisible phenomenon like Wifi signals.

Not many people read the original article then?


To sum it all up: Cells take a lot of energy to power. Our ancestor cells at one point in time have managed to absorb another entire species into its own cells. It takes a lot of energy to reproduce DNA, which cells must to do at a constant rate, meaning they cannot grow larger than a certain size unless they have a constant supply of energy surplus to DNA reproduction. This living creature that was absorbed are what we now call mitochondria and they are little engines that provide your body with a shitload of energy to actually grow larger than bacteria.

That jump in evolution has only happened once in the history of the earth, and evidence shows that it took a huge amount of time for simple cells to evolve into larger creatures, and it was due to absorbing these ancestral mitochondria. Early mitochondria were not as efficient as what eukaryotes have now, and they have evolved greatly to increase efficiency. Essentially, the little engines seem to be products of a very unlikely event, and also seem to be necessary for any living creature to grow large.

What was once another species of living creature, is now fully absorbed and stripped of all remnants of itself, except for the energy producing properties. It is now an organelle that has been fine tuned by evolution, and appears to be the only solution to the energy barrier. So any intelligent life that we encounter in the universe will probably have one thing in common with us, mitochondria, as long as they are carbon based life forms.


Mitochondria:

TheTurnipKing wrote:

Meep wrote:Yeah, I sometimes wonder what life is like for all the other sapient species in the universe. They may have a completely different anatomy (arthropod, cephlopod?) and have completely different culture and values. Even their daily routine would seem bizarre to us, just as ours would to them. In most science fiction shows the aliens are just humans with latex on their face and a few quirky customs but real aliens would be more different than you could even imagine.

Could be. It's not actually a given that they won't be humanoid.

Doesn't the theory of evolution mean it's more likely a given due to the way you would evolve in different environments?

StayDead wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:

Meep wrote:Yeah, I sometimes wonder what life is like for all the other sapient species in the universe. They may have a completely different anatomy (arthropod, cephlopod?) and have completely different culture and values. Even their daily routine would seem bizarre to us, just as ours would to them. In most science fiction shows the aliens are just humans with latex on their face and a few quirky customs but real aliens would be more different than you could even imagine.

Could be. It's not actually a given that they won't be humanoid.

Doesn't the theory of evolution mean it's more likely a given due to the way you would evolve in different environments?

Just how different could environments be, which give rise to intelligent life?

Alvin Flummux wrote:

StayDead wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:

Meep wrote:Yeah, I sometimes wonder what life is like for all the other sapient species in the universe. They may have a completely different anatomy (arthropod, cephlopod?) and have completely different culture and values. Even their daily routine would seem bizarre to us, just as ours would to them. In most science fiction shows the aliens are just humans with latex on their face and a few quirky customs but real aliens would be more different than you could even imagine.

Could be. It's not actually a given that they won't be humanoid.

Doesn't the theory of evolution mean it's more likely a given due to the way you would evolve in different environments?

Just how different could environments be, which give rise to intelligent life?

Well considering the only anatomy we completely understand is human anatomy, we don't really have the right to say there can or cannot be intelligent life that is nothing like us. For example we still don't know the true intelligence of other beings on our planet let alone using the laws of the human race to base what life could be like billions of light years away.

Intelligence itself is hard enough to find in humans and even then it could be a complete fluke that we even became intelligent. If it wasn't for our early ancestors thumbs, we may not even be in the situation we are now.

$ilva $hadow wrote:What was once another species of living creature, is now fully absorbed and stripped of all remnants of itself, except for the energy producing properties. It is now an organelle that has been fine tuned by evolution, and appears to be the only solution to the energy barrier. So any intelligent life that we encounter in the universe will probably have one thing in common with us, mitochondria, as long as they are carbon based life forms.[/spoiler]

Sounds kind of like what can happens when computer virii infect each other.