Complexity of Intelligent Life

[OldTrees]

Wait, are you saying life is stilling more complex and the universe is even more complex, but one day life will be just as complex as the universe, maybe even surpass it? If evolution is true, wouldn't life not be able to pass it? Would passing the universe's complexity give evidence for something else?

The only claim I made was life was less complex (relative to now) but the universe was not less complex (relative to now). Thus the complexity of life and the universe does not correlate.

(Although it is obvious to say that a subset cannot be more complex than the entire set. This is a mathematically proven fact.)

My post did not refer to or depend on evolution.

[Nepycros]

Good grief, it's been far too long since I've come here. I've even forgotten most of the original mindset I possessed when I made this thread.

Little knowledge of relativity, little idea of the prevailing system of events that results in any complex reaction occurring...

If we want to continue this, then I will go with the current idea that there is an 'upper limit' to the complexity that any self-replicating structure (including us) can provide.

Perhaps comparing our minds to the dimensional patterns that we observe in nature is a good starting point...

In "A Brief History of Time", Stephen Hawking effectively reasons as to why life could not function in a complex manner (by comparison to the necessities for life we have in our current state of existence) if all of space-time was contained in 2 spatial dimensions. The complexity had an obvious upper limit (relative to how we view it).

So a third dimension merely adds another upper echelon of complex variants as possibilities. That is what I'm inferring by all of this. A fourth spatial dimension (like in string theory, but more profound and prominent so we can be observantly affected by this) would possibly be a better state for all of life as we know it to become more complex far beyond the 'limits' of a three-spatial-dimensional universe.

[cometbah]

I recommend playing Conway's Game of Life to observe the complexity of 2-dimensional systems. 'Golly' is a good open-source software for this purpose.

However, bear in mind the scale of your simulation:

If we take 1 dimension of 1 cell to be 1 Planck Length, the 2-D equivalence of a single atom would be about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cells. (don't attempt to actually run that, even if you have the patience to draw it! Your computer will crash)

If we take 1 generation to be 1 Planck Time, you would need to run that gigantic simulation of a '2-D atom' for about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 generation to reach the equivalence of 1 second.

[andretimpa]

In "A Brief History of Time", Stephen Hawking effectively reasons as to why life could not function in a complex manner (by comparison to the necessities for life we have in our current state of existence) if all of space-time was contained in 2 spatial dimensions. The complexity had an obvious upper limit (relative to how we view it).

So a third dimension merely adds another upper echelon of complex variants as possibilities. That is what I'm inferring by all of this. A fourth spatial dimension (like in string theory, but more profound and prominent so we can be observantly affected by this) would possibly be a better state for all of life as we know it to become more complex far beyond the 'limits' of a three-spatial-dimensional universe.

The problem with more than 3 dimensions is that if eletromagnetism and gravity worked in the same way (which is at best, a guess) then planetary orbits and the orbits of electrons around atom nuclei wouldn't be stable (thinking from a classical viewpoint, the centrifugal force would dominate the eletrical and gravitational forces)

[shadow303]

The complexity of intelligent life is proportional to the complexity of the universe it occupies.

I find this statement has a lot of problematic factors:

First of all, saying that something is proportional, implies that you have two values for complexity or two functions that calculate the complexity.

Even though there might be factors that can be identified to participate in a potential complexity formula for a universe (maybe number and type of galaxies, number and spectral-type of stars in that galaxies, rate of star creation, distance of galaxies, age of the galaxies, ..) I would say it's rather improbably to be able to calculate the complexity of a whole universe, especially if you take into consideration also physical laws.

At the same time, I find it almost impossible to calculate the complexity of intelligent life. Sure, there might be factors also here (e.g. a 1 cell organism is less complex than a human), but we have basically almost no reference model for other intelligent lifeforms, so how can we define a formula?
Also, if you define that "intelligent life" (in general) is related to the universe it is containing, being it a fact that there are lifeforms with different complexity on earth (and maybe also on other planets), it could only be a average of the complexity of all lifeforms in that universe, but not for a specific lifeform.

There are a lot of other questions:
What about different physical conditions. If you refer to complexity of a universe, you presume uniformity of a whole universe?
What about the the time factor - both, life within a universe and the universe itself are not static, they change over time, how does that go together with the mentioned proportion? (What if humanity and all life on earth gets extinct in something like a nuclear war.. wouldn't that imply that the complexity of the universe is decreased in your formula?)

There are also a lot of other aspects that come to my mind, but are too long and complex to explain.
(Btw sorry for bad grammar, I'm not a native English)

[Nepycros]

In "A Brief History of Time", Stephen Hawking effectively reasons as to why life could not function in a complex manner (by comparison to the necessities for life we have in our current state of existence) if all of space-time was contained in 2 spatial dimensions. The complexity had an obvious upper limit (relative to how we view it).

So a third dimension merely adds another upper echelon of complex variants as possibilities. That is what I'm inferring by all of this. A fourth spatial dimension (like in string theory, but more profound and prominent so we can be observantly affected by this) would possibly be a better state for all of life as we know it to become more complex far beyond the 'limits' of a three-spatial-dimensional universe.

The problem with more than 3 dimensions is that if eletromagnetism and gravity worked in the same way (which is at best, a guess) then planetary orbits and the orbits of electrons around atom nuclei wouldn't be stable (thinking from a classical viewpoint, the centrifugal force would dominate the eletrical and gravitational forces)

As already stated somewhere earlier in this thread, the laws of the universe in that specified reality could be different to the degree that they will allow for a stable universe.

The complexity of intelligent life is proportional to the complexity of the universe it occupies.

I find this statement has a lot of problematic factors:

First of all, saying that something is proportional, implies that you have two values for complexity or two functions that calculate the complexity.

Even though there might be factors that can be identified to participate in a potential complexity formula for a universe (maybe number and type of galaxies, number and spectral-type of stars in that galaxies, rate of star creation, distance of galaxies, age of the galaxies, ..) I would say it's rather improbably to be able to calculate the complexity of a whole universe, especially if you take into consideration also physical laws.

At the same time, I find it almost impossible to calculate the complexity of intelligent life. Sure, there might be factors also here (e.g. a 1 cell organism is less complex than a human), but we have basically almost no reference model for other intelligent lifeforms, so how can we define a formula?
Also, if you define that "intelligent life" (in general) is related to the universe it is containing, being it a fact that there are lifeforms with different complexity on earth (and maybe also on other planets), it could only be a average of the complexity of all lifeforms in that universe, but not for a specific lifeform.

There are a lot of other questions:
What about different physical conditions. If you refer to complexity of a universe, you presume uniformity of a whole universe?
What about the the time factor - both, life within a universe and the universe itself are not static, they change over time, how does that go together with the mentioned proportion? (What if humanity and all life on earth gets extinct in something like a nuclear war.. wouldn't that imply that the complexity of the universe is decreased in your formula?)

There are also a lot of other aspects that come to my mind, but are too long and complex to explain.
(Btw sorry for bad grammar, I'm not a native English)

Good grief, that does indeed cause a lot of problems. I'm not yet knowledgeable enough to specify the values behind what I define complexity to be. I need more time to get a better understanding, and I will possibly retract my position if it seems hopeless.