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."

Comments

Re:There is indeed a strong argument that physics

[myowntrueself]

Indeed there is a strong argument to be made that physics is (part of) God, that whatever existed at the time of the big bang and will continue to exist is God.

I don't have time to go into detail at the moment, but new discoveries in quantum physics align amazingly well with Biblical explanations of the creation of the universe, wording in the ancient explanations that didn't really make sense until we understood quantum physics.

Language issues make it difficult to express in English since "is" has many meanings, Spanish and other languages are more precise, but basically whenever "God" was asked "what are you?" or "who are you?" the answer was "I am what has always been". (Soy que es in Spanish) To the extent that physics is timeless, physics *is* God and God is physics, according to God's word.

There is this branch of Hinduism, part of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist philosophy; there is no dualism, no "us and God") which says that the universe comes from Gods efforts to know more about itself.

God wanted to understand itself. So it shattered itself into countless shards, forming this universe, everything in this universe and every possible universe.
Each of these shards goes on to experience everything that can possibly be experienced, gathering up all knowledge and information.
Eventually, in some infinitely distant future, these shards combine together again into God.
In that moment, God 'remembers' every experience of every one of its fragments and comes to understand its own nature.
In this philosophy your personal self-experience and self-consciousness is, in fact, God in the far distant future remembering your life, recollecting what it was to be you.

And so, you (the self that dwells within, the one who observes your life and your experiences) really are God.