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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."
It's not. It's not even intelligent.
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.)
This is really about dark matter and the crazy ideas that crop up in physics when we don't understand something and lack the tools to even start figuring it out.
It's not scientifically reasonable to ascribe life to a set of physics that we don't have any direct evidence of existing, but it's fun to think about. In the past, this would just be written up as science fiction. I'd be interested to know if Caleb Scharf is a fan of Greg Benford, or any of the other physicist created science fiction out there that contains similar ideas.
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.
We're all seeing that this and saying we live in a simulation, etc., is simply recasting spirituality and the idea of gods in a new form, right?
Which is fine, you can do that. But as someone used to seeing their religion in the crosshairs, it does strike me as a bit weird whenever the people instinctively scathing about religious ideas decide they really want them afterall, just co-opted under different labels.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
New Headline: Astronomer does bad theology.
If the idea is inherently un-testable, it's not science.
That's not to say it's right or wrong, just that you shouldn't be discussing it as if it were science. After all, the world may very well have been created by an outside-this-universe entity 1 second ago with all of our brain cells wired to think we've been alive for years or decades, but that's not a testable hypothesis and it has no place in science.
Now, if an idea is un-testable now but it might be someday, well, that might be within the realm of science.
However, the very words "indistinguishable from" seems to put this squarely in the realm of non-science.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is even worse then a article asking if God exists...
1 - You can't Prof it, ever, just like God.
2 - You will still end up with the question of what is the basic law on witch that intelligence would exist, making it a recursive paradox. Just like "who created God"
3 - And the worse part is that ppl already believe some Alien created and rules this existence... Aka "GOD".
If we exist in some kind of a contained/simulated existence then who ever owns this existence may be a Alien to it's peers but will be a God to us..
Let's face it, in the best case scenario is a attempt to explain God without using the word "God", in the worse case it is just a click bait...
Don't we have better articles to talk about?
Why is this crap here?
If physics is considered a form of life, then we'd also have to consider global warming to be a form of life. This of course raises a serious problem: if we try to stop global warming, then we're potentially killing a very unique and special form of life.
And if we don't try to stop global warming, then we're potentially killing a very unique and special form of life. Namely, us.
We may be part of the grander "life equation" of the universe, but we also have freedom of choice. In particular, the ability to make choices that preserve our existence.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It's the same as "we're all living in a sim", isn't it?
That's a very good question.
So far as I can tell, there are testable predictions that the sim theory makes. These are predictions that are not required by the theory, but that, if we see them, would be good indications of the sim.
Consider scanning a color document, separating the color channels into R, G, and B, and then doing a histogram of each channel.
If the envelope of the red histogram is smooth and goes to zero at each end (at R=0 and R=255). then we might conclude that the scanner spans the entire range of "red".
If the envelope is smooth but has discontinuous jumps at zero and 255, it means that there are intensities of red smaller than the minimum value the scanner can distinguish, and intensities higher than the highest value. Basically, all the high intensity pixels in the image max out the A/D converter in the scanner, and all the low intensity pixels register as zero even though there is significant variation.
The discontinuities at either end of the measurement imply that there is information outside the measurement range of the scanner.
We can apply that logic to certain astrophysical measurements in the universe in certain cases. If we see measurement distributions which are smooth, but have discontinuous jumps at either end it might indicate that there is information outside the measurable universe, even though we cannot measure it.
But that could easily because we can't see the "big picture". Once we develop an understanding of all the laws of the physical world, then it could be that there is inevitably only one way they could all be fitted together. There would be no need for an alien intelligence or "higher being" to have created them
The only question that would arise would be: who or what is the picture about?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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 !
Pirsig was a paranoid schizophrenic who wrote memoirs disguised as pseudophilosophical twaddle.
Sad memoirs being a way for him to deal with remembering that at one time he was institutionalized and treated with electroshocks, which caused him to suffer memory loss.
At one point he stopped giving interviews after hearing himself on TV and thinking he was having hallucinations again.
Also, he wrote as a way to prop up his own ego.
Which is why he writes himself a ready and inquisitive yet flawed audience to listen and admire his ramblings and to serve as an example he can apply his wast Mary Sue wisdom to.
One might as well pick up any daily paper and read the horoscope. Same quality of fact and wisdom.
Any daily paper will do.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Bear in mind sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from trollery.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
SETI and the computational universe
Also, if you are interested, there's a short paper by Robert Freitas on the Sentience Quotient and xenopsychology.
Mighty small straw you have there. Planning to murder your neighbor for shits and giggles is bad thinking.
Planning to murder your neighbour is not bad thinking - it's the "for" part that makes it bad thinking, putting the cart before the horse.
Not following through is good thinking winning out.
Not necessarily, no. The not following through is likely related to jumping to a conclusion from a premise that either murder or being caught is bad. Without justifying either premise, it's bad thinking.
Given infinite time, every person should ponder things unlikely to become action, including how to murder one's neighbour, or how to make white asparagus ice cream. That's not bad thinking. Being able to explain why it shouldn't be done, without inserting any unfounded premises is good thinking. Jumping to conclusions is bad thinking.
Speculating on possible reasons why the universe exists or is the way it is is not bad thinking.
Saying "ergo, it must be god or aliens" is bad thinking.
Saying "there is no god/aliens, so the question is bullshit" is bad thinking.
Saying "gods/aliens are irrelevant to the question; we need to answer how before we answer why" is good thinking.
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.
The article is the same old $deity argument. The we live in a bottle, matrix, simulation argument, which always points to a higher being who controls the damn thing. I have read some nice science fiction books on that topic. Nice thought, but really not a thought experiment. And yes it shows the demise of the enlightenment in the US. And as always Europe is behind you be 20 years. So the rest of western civilization will convert back to a gelatinous state or medieval times. Currently, we are approaching feudalism, a.k.a., oligarchy. Other lead civilizations have also gone down this path. Sadly, we will ruin the climate so that our stupid progenies in 100+x years will certainly face harsh conditions put onto them by the God(s).
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
Where would be the intelligence in physical laws? I would expect an intelligence form to make decisions, and we do not say "physical laws" by mistake: they are supposed to be valid anywhere, anytime.
When out observations mismatch with a physical laws, it is not the law that took a decision. We just got outside of the law's domain of application, and we start over with a more general physical law.
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.