Putting Some Thoughts In Order

[poliphilo]

If you think the universe is so much dead matter you'll consider it an amazing fluke that self-reflective life has emerged on planet Earth.

If, on the other hand, you think the universe- down to its tiniest constituent parts- is a living thing you'll expect to find life everywhere- and everywhere developing in the direction of self-aware intelligence.

Brian Cox- TV's newest science bod- is a dead universe man. Or seems to be. (I'll allow he may have been misrepresented in the press) He is reported as saying (in a programme I'm not bothering to watch because I can see I won't agree with it) that we could be the only civilisation in the galaxy.

Cox's position represents scientific orthodoxy as it exists in the year 2014. It's based not on scientific evidence but on a philosophical premise or presupposition.  Dead universe, living universe: Neither thesis is- scientifically speaking- any more respectable than the other.

At present the evidence simply doesn't exist to prove either case. I have my prejudices and can call up evidence which I know my opponents will dismiss out of hand ( Near Death experiences? just the last ditch convulsions of the dying brain.) so I'm not keen to get into arguments.

But I've very few doubts. Ask me how I can be so sure and I'll say because I'm sure. How annoying of me.

I am not, by the way, arguing for the esistence of God. God- as far as I'm concerned- is a distraction, a mistake- the artefact of minds accustomed to think in hierarchical terms. The universe isn't a concern that needs to be created and then bossed about but an endless unfolding. Think fractals. Think depth not height.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm not arguing for either position right now, but, if I were to make an argument about "we're the only civilization in the galaxy", I think I'd be basing it on the idea that "civilizations don't last all that long, all things considered." Obviously, it depends on what you call "civilization". If we say that "civilization" started with the Neolithic revolution, then we're saying that civilization started 10,000 years ago, more or less. Let's say that we're still babies -- let's say that we're still only 10% through the way of human civilization.

That would mean that human civilization would last 100,000 years. If civilization on a planet lasts 100,000 years, then that's just a tiny, tiny blip in the history of a planet.

Of coursed, that could be terribly pessimistic. Maybe, once you have civilization, it just goes on and on forever, which would completely change things.

Or maybe humans will last for another 30 million years (let's say that "humans" starts with homo habilis, about 3 million years ago, and, again, we're only now 10% through). Still, is 30 million years all that long?

Or maybe, after humans die off, another creature will evolve and have another civilization. So that would make the statistics a lot better. Maybe there will always be some sort of civilization on Earth from now on, even if it's not always humans. Maybe there are LOTS of civilizations out there, because there are lots of stars about the same age as ours, and there are lots of planets where something similar to on our planet happened, and so there are tons of places where things started to become people three million years ago, and started to have civilizations ten thousand years ago, or a hundred thousand years ago.

In any case, there are lots of options. One guess is that there are maybe 20 billion planets in our galaxy that can support life like us, and who knows how many planets that could support slightly different kinds of life. Maybe there are a hundred billion planets out there that could have life.

If there's a one in a million chance of life showing up, and a one in a million chance of intelligent life showing up if there is life, then there would STILL be twenty civilizations out there.

My gut feeling, though, is that life will show up almost everywhere that it possibly can, and that life will almost always get more and more complex, and that one strategy that complex life can use to get more success is to be able to interact with its environment in more flexible ways, which is almost always going to lead to intelligence, which is almost always going to lead to civilizations.

So I personally think that there are billions of planets with civilizations. If there are a billion planets which could ever have civilizations, and a planet lasts a billion years, and a civilization lasts 100,000 years, then there would still be ten thousand civilizations in the galaxy.

It's all guesswork, though. It's all based on your gut feeling of how common these things are. Really, my actual guess is that there are somewhere between 1 and 100 billion civilizations in the galaxy.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I too shall leave an open mind. i do not believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

It's obvious looking at the universe that the nature of matter is to arrange itself it more and more complex ways, and life and consciousness are just part of that nature, in my humble opinion.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies is a good book on why we haven't found any neighbors.

[matrixmann]

It depends on what you call "living universe". If you only want to call chains of carbon "life" or if you also count the various particles which have no metabolism that are swirling round.

[qatsi.livejournal.com]

I think the odds are quite good that we're not alone and that we'll never know for certain. The chances of picking up any signal from elsewhere are very small (likewise of them finding us).