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Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence? (nautil.us)
What if alien life were so advanced that its powers were indistinguishable from physics? It's the one-year anniversary of a startling article which appeared in Nautilus magazine. Long-time Slashdot reader wjcofkc writes: Caleb Scharf, astronomer and the director of the multidisciplinary Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University presents an intriguing thought experiment.
"Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you'd undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they'd be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn't just appear magical, but appears like physics?"
The original submitter included their own counterarguments against the idea, but the astronomer follows his proposal to its ultimate conclusion.
"Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn't just external. Perhaps it's already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence."
"Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you'd undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they'd be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn't just appear magical, but appears like physics?"
The original submitter included their own counterarguments against the idea, but the astronomer follows his proposal to its ultimate conclusion.
"Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn't just external. Perhaps it's already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence."
We already have a name for their possible existence: god.
Some quick questions:
1) Does this hypothesis have testable predictions,
2) Does the theory imply observations that we could make that would invalidate the theory?
I'm a fan of "Hey, Martha!" stories, they're entertaining and thought provoking, but I don't know how much serious consideration such a proposal warrants. (Compared to, say, the survivability of "The Martian" or whether aspects of the "Star Trek" universe are physically realizable.)
And what if the physicis of the physics-alien of our physics-alien was an alien intelligence also?
The alien intelligences will converge to being turtles, all the way down.
Maybe people are so affraid to imagine a world without gods that they find a way to create another one!
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
I'm fine with calling it science fiction, or more broadly, art.
Art often presents the vanguard of human ideas, before they make their way into other fields.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No. The lizard remains motionless to:
1) be hard-to-see by predators. This is the "freeze" in the freeze-flight-fight response, which is popularly misrepresented as merely "fight or flight".
2) be hard-to-see by prey.
3) have an easy time observing both predators and prey as moving objects in an otherwise still environment.
4) absorb warmth from the sun, which primes their muscles for optimal performance (they are cold-blooded).
5) conserve calories.
You are anthropomorphizing them. This "shared experience" is entirely in your imagination.
And the lizard brain is primarily responsible for basic survival. The moral judgments placed on principles of sound survival notwithstanding.
Pass the bong.
I read the book. It does not explain anything about physics. If you cannot elaborate, then the only thing I can do is believe or do not believe. Therefore, this is not physics, but religion. BTW: Have you ever read a physics book? Including those in high school. I doubt that.
As is said here, physics requires not only an idea that matches the data, but an idea the results in tangible novel predictions that can be tested. Physics is open to new ideas, such as the idea that energy is quantized, but requires those ideas to be formalized and used to create new verifiable knowledge, like the tunneling electron.
In short, physics focuses on practical results while natural philosophy focuses on fanciful conjectures. Physics is does not necessarily lead to a more absolute 'truth' but does provide a reasonably objective method to determine if a particular truth is personal or universal.
In this case, there may be an intelligence behind the physics. My question would be, how does this change the laws and assumptions and results we already have? One this I would suggest is that intelligence can change it's mind, so we would see evidence in the universe of differing laws. In fact we might see this, for instance the lack of antimatter. The second question is does assuming an intelligence help us develop a formal result to explain the discrepancy.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So for me God exists and my existence is the proof
Maybe you're right.. who am I to say? But that's not "proof." I could just as easily claim that "my God is a carton of milk and my ability to eat soggy cereal is the proof."
I don't mean to mock your faith.. just arguing that what you call "proof" is indeed still just taken on faith.
Then again if you want to get really philosophical, even your own existence that you're premising your "proof" on is up for debate ;).. There's actually no way to prove that you (and the rest of the universe) aren't just some figment of my fever dream and I may wake up at any moment and you all just poof into nothingness.