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Other Topics => Off-Topic Discussions => Philosophy => Topic started by: Nepycros on August 09, 2011, 10:12:24 pm
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I have an idea... not even a hypothesis. It's not nearly thought out well enough to be considered a viable option. Which is why I bring it to this community, so they can pick at it and it will hopefully evolve to become a theory. Hell, if this happens to be a theory already put forward, I'll just stop after its existence is shown, but until then...
The complexity of intelligent life is proportional to the complexity of the universe it occupies.
I don't mean the margin of differences between the complexity of the most standard cell, and the most complex. I refer to how intelligent life would ultimately be more or less complex, if the laws of physics in this universe were different by either more complex, or less complex means. My reasoning?
Our brains are orchestrated so we can directly interact with the universe. If the universe functioned under different laws, but our brains remained unchanged, our ability to interact with it would be diminished. However, this is hypothetical. In my example, the entire universe, since the beginning of time, has functioned under different laws of physics. Because of the massive amount of time give, life has occurred and resulted in organisms that evolve (bear with me, evolution nay-sayers. Hypothetical situation ish hypothetical) into intelligent life forms. I believe that their ability to process information would be completely foreign to our own, so as to interact with the universe.
Anthropic principle? I discount it.
Please discuss, and if I'm just blowing smoke, or repeating an ancient argument, please tell me and I'll just end this outright. Or, if I've said it, but it's still a topic for conversation, I'll leave it at that.
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So what you're saying, is if the universe were different, the life in that universe would be different? :P Different universe ish different.
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So what you're saying, is if the universe were different, the life in that universe would be different? :P Different universe ish different.
Naturally. Not just different, the way they behaved would be under the laws of the universe they inhabit. Everything would be correctly proportioned according to the universe. Life is made to match the universe it inhabits.
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Well, while I know you are intelligent and I'm sure that this thread took quite a bit of thought, you're not really stating anything other than a difference would make things different, which isn't really a new idea...
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Well, while I know you are intelligent and I'm sure that this thread took quite a bit of thought, you're not really stating anything other than a difference would make things different, which isn't really a new idea...
Then this is simply the starting thread for discussing it. I know it's not a new idea, but this also branches into the concept of 'Free Will'. Free will, the ability for the mind to make choices independently (my definition), is limited by the complexity of the universe. Not only would a more complex intelligent life form in a more complex universe be different, they would also have independence that is unimaginable to us, who are stuck with seeing only within the boundaries of the complexity of this universe.
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On top of that, just stating it would be different from our own doesn't fulfill the full purpose of the statement. It would not be different on just any scale. The difference would not be a random margin. The difference would be precise and perfectly proportioned based on the difference in complexity of universes.
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hmm, point taken.
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Define complexity. Maybe you can say that a mathematical equation is more complex if it has more operations in it. Does that make 1+4-2+8+20-1=30 more complex than 8x^2 + 5x + 4 = 26? You can always simplify complex things into less complex concepts, while on the other hand there is always more and more to understand about what--at face value--is as simple as a piece of bread. The bread is made up a complex netting made up of compounds made up of atoms made of up quarks... And complexity doesn't necessarily call for higher-order thinking processes, as you can make a complex program with 999 lines of code that can only do 1+1=2, while you can also make a program with maybe 20 lines of code that can do any operation with integers.
So, my first gripe is that we're throwing a meaningless adjective around.
Now, it's great that we can directly interact with the universe, but can we interact with the whole universe as it is? We can interact with the environment around us, but even then, we cannot comprehend everything. Is our current universe not already too complex for us? Therefore, if the universe became more complex, then maybe it is so that we would not be able to "handle it" with our brains, but how are you so sure that it'll affect us? If someone on the other side of the world from where you live is born, that most likely doesn't affect your ability to interact with those around you. With the same reasoning, if something outside of the environment around us became more complex, then it wouldn't affect us. In addition, since we do not currently comprehend the universe, how do you know that the complexity of the universe is what directly causes the complexity of our minds? How can you have such faith on the capabilities of evolution, that our line of species evolved to understand the universe by creating a brain with enough complexity? And the human species, like all species, is extremely recent. How can we say that during all these years in this universe all the species have maintained a complexity that scales with the complexity of our universe, a complexity that no other organism in any other universe has reached/passed unless their universe is around the same complexity?
So there is little chance that complexity of the universe affects the complexity of the mind, and complexity of the mind of "intelligent" life is always changing/increasing...At any point in time, the organisms in two universes may be in different "stages" of evolution, so evolution goes against this idea.
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Our brains are orchestrated so we can directly interact with the universe. If the universe functioned under different laws, but our brains remained unchanged, our ability to interact with it would be diminished.
Your second sentence is not an hypothesis, it's a fact. How we humans can say that they are harmonized with the universe while most of them deny the existence of other intelligent life forms? Human nature selfishness or advanced programming? I go for the second.
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That's weird, our brains can adapt. Let's say for a moment earth was 'special' and outside of earth is was completely different (newtons laws didn't even come close), then our brains would observe and as always, even with new discoveries, we find patterns.
If we find patterns, then we can think of ways to build a space ship to be able to fly and maintain itself in that area. The brain can adapt, it can understand something new.
What that means is the complexity of the Universe didn't cause the complexity of our brain, in fact our brain is more complex than our universe according to a lot of astronomers/scientists. I don't think our brains got some software update from being chemically made.
"Well north, your wrong."
"How did we from chemicals get things like free will and morality?"
If we were just chemicals, we would follow the laws of chemicals, but we don't. Our bodies follow chemical laws, but our self our 'soul' if I may does not. Something beyond the natural and by definition=supernatural.
I am not stating a claim, just stating an opposition and want to know how someone might refute this.
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This universe is constant in its complexity.
Life has not been constant in its complexity.
Intelligent life has not been constant in its complexity.
Theory falsified within our own universe?
Perhaps the upper limit of complexity of intelligent life is related to the complexity of the universe. However that is the most I could salvage.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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)
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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.