There is no Paradise

[Berzerker]

If we assume life must struggle to survive, then life will be both aggressive and defended. Evolution...survival of the fittest... reigns supreme throughout the universe. Be wary of aliens, they aren't friendly.

I've seen 1 or 2 documentaries speculating about alien life forms and wonder why they'd be substantially different from life here. Given the narrow parameters for life, evolution should produce similar life forms wherever life exists.

[Az]

Reminds me of the stupid "hey, the aliens will be friendly, because if they've evolved so far, and managed not to destroy themselves, they must have achieved higher consciousnes" argument.

Somehow, I don't believe this.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: There is no Paradise

Originally posted by Berzerker
If we assume life must struggle to survive, then life will be both aggressive and defended. Evolution...survival of the fittest... reigns supreme throughout the universe. Be wary of aliens, they aren't friendly.

When did you become interested in Social Darwinism?

[Geronimo]

Re: There is no Paradise

Originally posted by Berzerker

I've seen 1 or 2 documentaries speculating about alien life forms and wonder why they'd be substantially different from life here. Given the narrow parameters for life, evolution should produce similar life forms wherever life exists.

The parameters are only narrow when the definition of life is narrow. Such logic becomes almost circular, "Life can only exist in the conditions that life such ourselves exists in, therefore all life must be like ourselves." The premise that all life would require conditions like those required by known earth life has not been demonstrated theoretically or empirically.

Our ignorance is so bad that we can not yet even rule out life evolving in the exotic interior of a neutron star (albiet exceedingly alien and bizarre life).

What's more when it comes to intelligent life natural selection might well be routinely short circuited culturally leading to an endpoint quite different from the sort of life we observe as a result of natural selection. Such intelligent 'life' could end up looking something like the super intelligence in smac transcendance or even a bunch of oragnisms plugged into perfect drug type machine that keep them perpetually content and happy or even bodies engineered to only be pertually content and happy with an ancient artifically intelligent infrastructure to maintain their bliss. Who knows!


Bottom line, it's probably a mistake to extrapolate from earth life to the characteristics of alien organisms much less to the behavior of alien civilizations. My guess is that if hostile technologically sophisticated aliens were the rule or even remotely common we wouldn't exist as any civ that lasted longer than a few hundred thousand years could have long since expanded through the entire galaxy millions of years ago and exterminated all potential rivals in their cribs so to speak. They wouldn't even need to discover a way to travel faster than light to finish the job in such a time frame.

[Az]

When did you become interested in Social Darwinism?

Dude, that's a silly question. He's a libertarian, you know.

[Frankychan]

Bah, that's just projecting human values and experiences to things we have no idea nor have any understanding about.

Whose to say that "survival of the fittest" is the only rule in the universe? Just because this law is true on Earth doesn't necessarily mean it applies to other "possible" worlds.



But if you're talking in a philosophical sense, I believe that life and growth is achieved by the Struggle.

[Dis]

I happen to live in paradise.

[Lancer]

Re: Re: There is no Paradise

Originally posted by Geronimo


The parameters are only narrow when the definition of life is narrow. Such logic becomes almost circular, "Life can only exist in the conditions that life such ourselves exists in, therefore all life must be like ourselves." The premise that all life would require conditions like those required by known earth life has not been demonstrated theoretically or empirically.

Our ignorance is so bad that we can not yet even rule out life evolving in the exotic interior of a neutron star (albiet exceedingly alien and bizarre life).

What's more when it comes to intelligent life natural selection might well be routinely short circuited culturally leading to an endpoint quite different from the sort of life we observe as a result of natural selection. Such intelligent 'life' could end up looking something like the super intelligence in smac transcendance or even a bunch of oragnisms plugged into perfect drug type machine that keep them perpetually content and happy or even bodies engineered to only be pertually content and happy with an ancient artifically intelligent infrastructure to maintain their bliss. Who knows!


Bottom line, it's probably a mistake to extrapolate from earth life to the characteristics of alien organisms much less to the behavior of alien civilizations. My guess is that if hostile technologically sophisticated aliens were the rule or even remotely common we wouldn't exist as any civ that lasted longer than a few hundred thousand years could have long since expanded through the entire galaxy millions of years ago and exterminated all potential rivals in their cribs so to speak. They wouldn't even need to discover a way to travel faster than light to finish the job in such a time frame.

Geronimo, thank you for this very interesting post.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Dis
I happen to live in paradise.

Las Vegas? I wouldn't bet on it.

[Berzerker]

When did you become interested in Social Darwinism?

Just observing nature, didn't know that was a bad thing

The parameters are only narrow when the definition of life is narrow. Such logic becomes almost circular, "Life can only exist in the conditions that life such ourselves exists in, therefore all life must be like ourselves." The premise that all life would require conditions like those required by known earth life has not been demonstrated theoretically or empirically.

Our ignorance is so bad that we can not yet even rule out life evolving in the exotic interior of a neutron star (albiet exceedingly alien and bizarre life).

We aren't just looking at earthly parameters to define life, we're looking at where life does not exist - and why it exists here and not there.

What's more when it comes to intelligent life natural selection might well be routinely short circuited culturally leading to an endpoint quite different from the sort of life we observe as a result of natural selection. Such intelligent 'life' could end up looking something like the super intelligence in smac transcendance or even a bunch of oragnisms plugged into perfect drug type machine that keep them perpetually content and happy or even bodies engineered to only be pertually content and happy with an ancient artifically intelligent infrastructure to maintain their bliss. Who knows!

Um...kay

Bottom line, it's probably a mistake to extrapolate from earth life to the characteristics of alien organisms much less to the behavior of alien civilizations. My guess is that if hostile technologically sophisticated aliens were the rule or even remotely common we wouldn't exist as any civ that lasted longer than a few hundred thousand years could have long since expanded through the entire galaxy millions of years ago and exterminated all potential rivals in their cribs so to speak. They wouldn't even need to discover a way to travel faster than light to finish the job in such a time frame.

If we ever meet up with a comparable alien intelligence, we'll be looking in the mirror.

[Lancer]

How can any life or any thing exist at all? Obviously it does, but how can it? I know it's an impossible question with the information we have, but maybe it's the one the inevitable galaxy spanning aliens are working on instead of hunting down all the sub species in the universe.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Berzerker


Just observing nature, didn't know that was a bad thing



We aren't just looking at earthly parameters to define life, we're looking at where life does not exist - and why it exists here and not there.



Um...kay



If we ever meet up with a comparable alien intelligence, we'll be looking in the mirror.

How do you know where life exists or does not? The only places we are sure about even for intelligent life is in our little solar system.

What do you mean when you say that we'd be looking in the mirror and why do you believe this?

[Sava]

Re: There is no Paradise

Originally posted by Berzerker
If we assume life must struggle to survive, then life will be both aggressive and defended. Evolution...survival of the fittest... reigns supreme throughout the universe. Be wary of aliens, they aren't friendly.

I've seen 1 or 2 documentaries speculating about alien life forms and wonder why they'd be substantially different from life here. Given the narrow parameters for life, evolution should produce similar life forms wherever life exists.

I think intelligence changes the rules as far as evolution goes.

Your line of reasoning would be okay if we are talking about another planet.

But for an alien race to go beyond their planet, they would have to develop technology... hence intelligence. And if humans are any indication of things, with intelligence comes emotions... including things like empathy and compassion.

We have no frame of reference with which to form any reasonable hypothesis. The only intelligent (and I use that term loosely) life form we know of is ourselves.

[Cort Haus]

No paradise - just 72 raisins!

[Last Conformist]

What do you mean by "similar"? Similar biochemistry? Similar shape? Similar cognition?