I Had A Random Thought...

[Dirk Anger]

 know this is far from an original question but why in a universe of non-living stuff did life emerge?

 

Say hello to the Anthropic Prinicple. The strong Anthropic Principle.

You see, all of this is pretty much speculation. But from what we know, life is rare. I mean, really fucking rare. And I'm not even talking about the kind of life that we so assuredly call "complex". You know, Insects, Fungi, and all the rest. 

We just (or rather: not just) happen to life on a Planet that has the odds stacked immensly in it's favor.

There's the Moon, there's Jupiter - both conveniently positioned to keep a maximum of foreign bodies from Earth's orbit around the sun. Also, we're right in the Butter Zone of solar irradiation. And let's not get into all the billions of lucky accidents our Planet has(n't) endured.

What I'm trying to say:

The Universe does, theoretically, allow for live. The circumstances for it to happen are insanely specific - but when it comes to insanity, sheer size beats anything else by some orders of magnitude.

So, there's bound to be life at least on some worlds. 

And we're on one - or perhaps even the only - world where intelligent life has developed. To us, that might seem like "design". Maybe. But I'm pretty sure, that same feeling is shared by rain water, wondering how perfectly it was formed for the puddle it's resting in, right in the middle of a hot, dry desert. 

[SecretAsianMan]

As a sort of tangent to that, I am of the belief that life does exist on other planets.  Intelligent life even, perhaps in the form of Kerbals.  I don't think we've ever met it.  I don't think it's ever met us.  I don't think we'll ever met.  I don't think we'll ever have tangible proof that it exists.  But I still believe it's out there, despite things like the Fermi Paradox.

[Zeusthecat]

Say hello to the Anthropic Prinicple. The strong Anthropic Principle.

 

I'm curious to see what philosophical principals are out there that take this a bit further into the 'why'. Not quite as far as "Why does anything even exist?" (I think a lot of other stuff needs to be answered first) but more like "What is our role as living things in the universe?". If we were able to just observe the universe passively without having any impact on it, it would follow a specific set of rules. But the fact that we are part of it means that we are actively doing things that change what we see as the prescribed course.

 

I really think, given enough time to advance our scientific capabilites, we would eventually be capable of altering the course of meteors or negate the effects of a star exploding. Not that we would be violating any physical laws in doing so, just that we would be smart enough to manipulate those events to diminish what we perceive as their 'negative' effects. It seems like we would naturally progress to a point where we would eventually try to make every corner of the universe as safe for life as possible. So it would be interesting to see if science gets to a point where it can quantify that kind of natural trend into some kind of theory just like any other law of physics. I assume there's some philosophical principle out there that delves into the rules that dictate why life does what it does and I'd be interested to learn about what's been developed in that area.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Philosophy has mostly moved past the idea that anything has "roles," which the exception of stuff we create. For example, the role of scissors is to cut papers, but what is the role of human beings? Back when people thought God created us, that might be a source of an answer, and lots of other philosophers had other views according to which natural things had roles they were fit for (Aristotle is perhaps the most famous person to hold a view like this - views in this category are called teleological, from the Greek telos, meaning "end" or "aim" or "goal"). You might think that humans exist to rule over the other animals, cats exist to be assholes to mice, etc.

Modern philosophy (or, much of it, at least) thinks that (at the cosmic scale) nothing really exists for reasons, except for boring scientific reasons, which are just descriptions of how things came about. Evolution through natural selection has resulted in the living creatures we have today, including ourselves, but this doesn't mean we are for anything. We just are.

[miffy495]

Yeah, "what is our role" assumes that we have one, which is honestly pretty fucking arrogant. We're a result of a bunch of pretty damn random happenings, and whatever we ascribe meaning to may as well be our role. For example, tonight it was my role to drink three 40s of Korean beer and do a lot of karaoke, then come home and write this. Role fulfilled.

 

While this is an honest expression of my beliefs, don't read too much into it. While that beer was kind of weak, three 40s of it still does a number on a man.

[Ben X]

I'm pretty sure, that same feeling is shared by rain water, wondering how perfectly it was formed for the puddle it's resting in, right in the middle of a hot, dry desert. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddle#Puddle_theory

[Zeusthecat]

Good arguments Tycho and Miffy, that makes sense. I guess what I'm asking is a futile way of thinking about things. When my daughter goes through her endless series of 'why' questions I eventually run out of answers and end up back where I started or having to just say "because it just is".

[Patrick R]

[elmuerte]

He! That's not your thought, it's CK's thought.

[Zeusthecat]

Never watched CKs stuff before, I think that is just a fundamental truth of parenting.

Edit: I feel like a fucking jackass now for posting something that's already been said by someone so prominent in modern culture and not being aware if it. My apologies. Damn its near impossible to have an original thought these days. Do you ever wish you could rewind time?

[melmer]

[melmer]

What the fuck when did I hit 1003 posts!? I missed my milestone

[tegan]

I notice that sometimes the forum lags behind and only adds to your visible postcount in batches. If you post infrequently enough, you can keep it perpetually at 0 while still having a presence. I never thought it was really worth bringing up.

[Patrick R]

Never watched CKs stuff before, I think that is just a fundamental truth of parenting.

Edit: I feel like a fucking jackass now for posting something that's already been said by someone so prominent in modern culture and not being aware if it. My apologies. Damn its near impossible to have an original thought these days. Do you ever wish you could rewind time?

It's the fundamental truth of it that makes it funny, but it's the phrase "Because nothing wouldn't be, you can't have fucking nothing isn't!" that makes it a masterpiece.

[subbes]

one of our cats is sat in his cat tree looking out the window meowing at a bird

 

i cant stop thinking how funny it would be if i pushed him off

[subbes]

Patrick "Scoops" Klepek.

 

P.S.  I loathe Patrick Klepek and he is the reason I don't like Giant Bomb any more.  They should fire his whiny manchild ass and get someone qualified instead.

 

 

ITT:  SUBBES COMPLAININ ABOUT INTERNET WEBSITES

[toblix]

Wow, that's harsh. Ignoring the ad hominem stuff, what makes him unqualified?

[Max Ernst]

Sometimes I read someone's Twitter bio and read the phrase "Tech Enthusiast" or "Gamer" and unfollow unmercifully. 

 

"Gamer. Mother of four. Tech enthusiast. Vegetarian. Liberal. Deadhead. Interesting Person."

[tegan]

Sometimes I read someone's Twitter bio and read the phrase "Tech Enthusiast" or "Gamer" and unfollow unmercifully. 

 

"Gamer. Mother of four. Tech enthusiast. Vegetarian. Liberal. Deadhead. Interesting Person."

 

What if her four children are named Tech Enthusiant, Vegetarian, Liberal and Deadhead (Interesting Person is what they're planning on naming the new baby)?

[Skalpadda]

"What is our role as living things in the universe?".

 

Reminded me of something I heard Terry Pratchett say in an interview: "..we are shaped by the universe to be its consciousness. We tell the universe what it is. In my religion, the building of a telescope is the building of a cathedral".

I don't believe that's true, but it's a nice thought.

 

 

I've often wondered how exactly the thought processes of babies work. Without language and experience forming expectations about how the world works, how do you think? Imagining being concious but not having the vocabulary needed to reason about anything is almost a scary thought for an adult but clearly we've all been there.

[Sententia]

I guess I still think in a childish way then, because I frequently don't codify my idle thought in language until I'm nearing the end of finding my opinion.

 

The way I see it languages are all just verbalizing concepts that already existed in your mind.  Layering on the words to your thoughts is the final step to conversing, but you don't need to do that when you're just thinking inside your head.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Right, I don't think in language at all. When I think about, for example, getting up from a chair to wash a bowl in the sink and then get an apple, I don't think to myself "maybe I will get up from this chair" etc. The thoughts aren't in any concrete linguistic form. When I do more complicated reasoning it's the same thing - I come to conclusions first and then put them into language.

[TheLastBaron]

For me personally if I'm doing anything that takes a high level of thinking or concentration I think I usually think of things in terms of words pretty early on just so I have something I can manipulate, sort of like writing a math problem down on paper so that you can work it out (which I guess is a bad example because I almost never write down stuff when doing math, I probably did in like linear algebra, but for most stuff I don't or do only at the very end).  I have a friend who was born in China but moved to the states pretty young so he's perfectly fluent in speaking and writing both English and Chinese.  I once asked him what language he thinks in and he said basically both for ambient thoughts and he only thinks in just one when having a conversation in one language, but I think he said even then his background thoughts and reasoning were probably still both English and Chinese (and on top of this he probably think in terms of both English/Chinese and non linguistic thoughts). 

[Patrick R]

I talk to myself a lot, so I do end up thinking in words more often than not. Usually it ends up being me pacing my apartment saying "It's ok. You're ok. It's ok. You're ok." over and over again.

[tegan]

I think that language might get tied to our thoughts at least a little; it's not uncommon for someone to have some difficulty understanding a concept that their language has no word for.