Does Nature have a preference for life to exist?

[buttercup]

Well, we kind of already have the latter if you think about it. Willfully, even.

I don’t think so. Come on now, that’s a Calvinist view!

 

[Montrovant]

Just because it “succeeds” doesn’t mean chance didn’t not wipe it out. And in time... It will be wiped out, as 99% of all species have. At what point do you say most life has lost the will to survive?

Never. It is a requirement for intelligence to evolve. Life must sustain and survive long enough for intelligence to evolve.

The universe is an intelligence creating machine.

Are you a proponent of some variant of the anthropic principle?

I couldn't tell you one way or the other.

It's never entered my thinking.

My thinking is more about the direction and what that tells us.

I asked because the principle came up in another thread recently, and one variation of it says that intelligence was destined to evolve, or is even required to evolve, in the universe. That sounds very much like your stated beliefs in this thread.

I agree with that. We live in a universe where the laws of nature are such that given enough time and the right conditions intelligence will emerge.

It's the basis for SETI searching for intelligence in the universe. Are those guys wasting their time?

I disagree that it is the basis for SETI. One can believe in the existence of other life in the universe, or even hope for other life, without considering it some sort of inevitability or requirement.

SETI might be wasting its time, in the sense that they may never discover any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. There are too many unknowns to be sure. It seems like a worthwhile task to me, if someone is willing to foot the bill, though.

 

[ding]

Never. It is a requirement for intelligence to evolve. Life must sustain and survive long enough for intelligence to evolve.

The universe is an intelligence creating machine.

Are you a proponent of some variant of the anthropic principle?

I couldn't tell you one way or the other.

It's never entered my thinking.

My thinking is more about the direction and what that tells us.

I asked because the principle came up in another thread recently, and one variation of it says that intelligence was destined to evolve, or is even required to evolve, in the universe. That sounds very much like your stated beliefs in this thread.

I agree with that. We live in a universe where the laws of nature are such that given enough time and the right conditions intelligence will emerge.

It's the basis for SETI searching for intelligence in the universe. Are those guys wasting their time?

I disagree that it is the basis for SETI. One can believe in the existence of other life in the universe, or even hope for other life, without considering it some sort of inevitability or requirement.

SETI might be wasting its time, in the sense that they may never discover any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. There are too many unknowns to be sure. It seems like a worthwhile task to me, if someone is willing to foot the bill, though.

“In my life as scientist I have come upon two major problems which, though rooted in science, though they would occur in this form only to a scientist, project beyond science, and are I think ultimately insoluble as science. That is hardly to be wondered at, since one involves consciousness and the other, cosmology.

The consciousness problem was hardly avoidable by one who has spent most of his life studying mechanisms of vision. We have learned a lot, we hope to learn much more; but none of it touches or even points, however tentatively, in the direction of what it means to see. Our observations in human eyes and nervous systems and in those of frogs are basically much alike. I know that I see; but does a frog see? It reacts to light; so do cameras, garage doors, any number of photoelectric devices. But does it see? Is it aware that it is reacting? There is nothing I can do as a scientist to answer that question, no way that I can identify either the presence or absence of consciousness. I believe consciousness to be a permanent condition that involves all sensation and perception. Consciousness seems to me to be wholly impervious to science.

The second problem involves the special properties of our universe. Life seems increasingly to be part of the order of nature. We have good reason to believe that we find ourselves in a universe permeated with life, in which life arises inevitably, given enough time, wherever the conditions exist that make it possible. Yet were any one of a number of the physical properties of our universe otherwise - some of them basic, others seemingly trivial, almost accidental - that life, which seems now to be so prevalent, would become impossible, here or anywhere. It takes no great imagination to conceive of other possible universes, each stable and workable in itself, yet lifeless. How is it that, with so many other apparent options, we are in a universe that possesses just that peculiar nexus of properties that breeds life?

It has occurred to me lately - I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities - that both questions might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - that the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create.”

George Wald, Nobel Laureate, 1984, “Life and Mind in the Universe”, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology Symposium 11, 1984: 1-15.

 

[Taz]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

 

[Taz]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

 

[Vastator]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

What’s more; how could it not matter?

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

What’s more; how could it not matter?

Because the laws of this universe are such that intelligence was predestined to arise.

This we know.

 

[Vastator]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

What’s more; how could it not matter?

Because the laws of this universe are such that intelligence was predestined to arise.

This we know.

No. “We” don’t. You speak for yourself only, Others May share your belief. But it is only a belief, at this point...

 

[Vastator]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

That isn’t an argument.

 

[Taz]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

Each universe may have its own laws, we don't know.

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

Each universe may have its own laws, we don't know.

Why would it? Why wouldn't you expect matter and energy and the laws of nature to be the same everywhere?

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

That isn’t an argument.

Actually it is. We can only examine what we can access. To believe it is that way everywhere has basis. To believe it would be different has no basis.

 

[Taz]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

Each universe may have its own laws, we don't know.

Why would it? Why wouldn't you expect matter and energy and the laws of nature to be the same everywhere?

No, not really. Nothing points to that.

 

[ding]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

What’s more; how could it not matter?

Because the laws of this universe are such that intelligence was predestined to arise.

This we know.

No. “We” don’t. You speak for yourself only, Others May share your belief. But it is only a belief, at this point...

We absolutely know do because intelligence did arise and did so through natural processes, right? Why would you expect the natural processes to yield a different result?

Science is the study of the order within nature to understand the order of nature so as to be able to make predictions of nature.

Are you suggesting that we should discard those observations and make diametrically opposite predictions? That doesn't seem like it makes any sense.

 

[Taz]

The laws of nature as we know them might be specific to this universe. We don't know.

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

That isn’t an argument.

Actually it is. We can only examine what we can access. To believe it is that way everywhere has basis. To believe it would be different has no basis.

What basis?

 

[ding]

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

Each universe may have its own laws, we don't know.

Why would it? Why wouldn't you expect matter and energy and the laws of nature to be the same everywhere?

No, not really. Nothing points to that.

You mean besides the observations we are able to make here? Can you tell me why you would expect it to be different?

 

[ding]

That’s doubtful but doesn’t matter.

Why is it doubtful?

Because there is no basis for saying it would be different. Why would it?

That isn’t an argument.

Actually it is. We can only examine what we can access. To believe it is that way everywhere has basis. To believe it would be different has no basis.

What basis?

The laws of nature we can observe and study.

 

[ding]

It seems that some people are trying to say that if there were another universe with life in it that that life would not be programmed to survive and procreate. That seems like a strange position to me.