Posts by wobblycogs

Re: Definition of alien life

You are correct in asserting that just because it's very salty doesn't mean there isn't life but at the same time from what we know of life it seems to make it less likely. Earth is a surprisingly hospitable place for life and yet after 3.6 billion years very little has managed to adapt itself to live in very salty water. You could argue that the reason for this is that all life on earth, at the cellular level, uses (very) broadly the same building blocks and perhaps those blocks can't be adapted for highly salty environments. The problem then is why hasn't weird and wonderful types of salty-environment-loving life appeared on earth?

When we get out into the stars (or even perhaps just the solar system) my guess is that we will occasionally find life on moons / planets that aren't even close to habitable for earth life but they will be few and far between compared to life on earth like planets. Shame we won't live to find out if that's correct.

Re: So much to do, so little time...

I couldn't agree more but I think you, and most AI researchers, are under estimating just how much "programming" humans start life with. Obviously I have no hard evidence, no one does, but watching two young children grow up from birth to four I'd say that evolution has pre-programmed us a lot more than people suspect.

Drawing an analogy between humans and computers I'd say the human POST is about 3 to 3.5 years in duration. The human BIOS provides a basic framework to acquire language, emotions, movement, self preservation etc. The parents role is to install higher level programs e.g. one or more spoken languages, don't touch that particular furry caterpillar etc.

If you look at this from an evolutionary point of view coming out partially pre-programmed makes a lot of sense as it's so much quicker than having to teach everything from scratch every time. That doesn't mean every bit of pre-programming has to become active immediately at birth though, it switches on at the appropriate developmental points.

As I say this is just a suspicion but I really think we need to move away from the idea that we are a blank slate at birth.