♦ ficino ♦ Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 See link: http://io9.com/whats-the-purpose-of-the-universe-heres-one-possible-a-1564636270?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 An interesting idea, though I'm afraid we'll never really know. At least not during all our remaining lifetimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voice Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 That io9 site seems pretty good. I liked it on Facebook to see what kinds of feeds they put out. The article you posted links to a lot of other quality articles. The model seems plausible, the reproductive nature of the universe. I might question use of the word "purpose" implying intent or deliberation; it could just be happening naturally with no real intent behind it. But what is the universe? Something alive? Black holes forming are causal, results of the natures and laws of the universe. I like the term biocosm which they defined in the article. We needed that term, it transcends the egocentric notion that humans are the only life in the universe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kris Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 Yay!! The universe is having babies!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted April 19, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted April 19, 2014 BAA enters, stage right, in 3-2-1... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 How do you assign intent to a non-sentient process? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 BAA enters, stage right, in 3-2-1... Ta-daah!!!! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted April 19, 2014 Share Posted April 19, 2014 How do you assign intent to a non-sentient process? ...and exits, stage left. Vigile having covered all I've got to say on this. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted April 19, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted April 19, 2014 Standing ovation for Vigiles performance. Nobody plays a better BAA than you, mate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted April 19, 2014 Author Share Posted April 19, 2014 Sorry for putting "Purpose" in the title of this thread guys. That's because it was in the title of the article. This Smolin dude, and the people who criticize him, are not assigning "intent" to the universe. Smolin is trying to compare what he thinks is happening with genesis of universes with a Darwinian model of origin of species. Other people in the linked article criticize that. They all seem to be into the multiverse idea, from what I can tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voice Posted April 20, 2014 Share Posted April 20, 2014 How do you assign intent to a non-sentient process? ...and exits, stage left. Vigile having covered all I've got to say on this. Why do we assume it's a non-sentient process? I say we because most of my 50 years have been spent believing it's a non-sentient process. Lately I'm not so sure, it makes a lot more sense than being sentient on a scale from small to large and stopping right where humans are. Egocentrism has always been a stumbling block for science and progress and it throws red flags for me when I see it at play now. Some schools of faith believe it is sentient, as do branches of quantum physics (they speculate on the possibility at least). Is it really so hard to see a biocosm that doesn't stop where humans are the pinnacle? Everything else we observe in the universe is perceived by us as continuum, scale, why not sentience? BTW, humans are not the top of the food chain. The food chain is a circle. I'm not talking about God or gods but sentience "higher" than humans, and in numbers/quantity, not just one. See it as one if you will but my passive opinion is that there are colonies/communities of higher life forms more bizarre and inspiring than we could imagine any more than cells in our bodies could imagine us as the whole. ...and why do we think the cosms are "made" from the top down? Biologically, we are made from the small up. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCBooster Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Basically, what Voice said: science has immensely expanded our horizons, in terms of what we can/do know. But, if there's anything that the process of science itself is based on, it's that we must never take it for granted that what we know now is all there is to know. There are always more questions, and the universe is always bigger, more complex, and weirder than we could have imagined before. Models of the universe under human belief systems, like religions, are usually very small, by comparison, and simplistic. Naturally, they're also human-centric: the "purpose" for these is based on our species, and cultural assumptions. I'd also caution, for the same reasons, that the idea of "reproduction" for a universe is bio-centric. The philosophy of science - produced by and for human needs - is also somewhat vulnerable to the same set of assumptions, but, unlike religion, science as a process has methods for transcending these assumptions. After all, science is a process. Give it time, and keep an eye to the wide-open possibilities. The horizon of science is exactly that: a horizon, demarcating what we observe from what lies beyond. What is over the boundary at any given time could become the known landscape of the future. If we think that what we can see now is all there is, we lose the chance to explore, questions never get asked, and science breaks down. Voice's comment here is the stuff that sometimes keeps me up at nights: we live on a terribly thin skin of known reality, on boundless infinite seas of the unknown, and I suspect in the small hours of early morning sometimes that there's so much else out there, in a sort of Lovecraftian sense. I've got a creeping suspicion that sentience maybe isn't a matter of something magic happening when you get enough neurons together in one place. Maybe everything is, just a bit, and it's not a matter of a clear line, but a matter of degree and complexity. Maybe not, but questions are always worth asking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 How do you assign intent to a non-sentient process? ...and exits, stage left. Vigile having covered all I've got to say on this. Why do we assume it's a non-sentient process? I say we because most of my 50 years have been spent believing it's a non-sentient process. Lately I'm not so sure, it makes a lot more sense than being sentient on a scale from small to large and stopping right where humans are. Egocentrism has always been a stumbling block for science and progress and it throws red flags for me when I see it at play now. Some schools of faith believe it is sentient, as do branches of quantum physics (they speculate on the possibility at least). Is it really so hard to see a biocosm that doesn't stop where humans are the pinnacle? Everything else we observe in the universe is perceived by us as continuum, scale, why not sentience? BTW, humans are not the top of the food chain. The food chain is a circle. I'm not talking about God or gods but sentience "higher" than humans, and in numbers/quantity, not just one. See it as one if you will but my passive opinion is that there are colonies/communities of higher life forms more bizarre and inspiring than we could imagine any more than cells in our bodies could imagine us as the whole. ...and why do we think the cosms are "made" from the top down? Biologically, we are made from the small up. I don't have any problem with that other than the lack of evidence for it. I'm open to being convinced, but I think it reasonable to default to non-sentience until provided with more than just speculation just like I think it's reasonable to default to 'no invisible elves living under my house' until evidence to the contrary is presented. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voice Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 I wouldn't call the coalescence of a "soul" as a conglomeration of smaller life forms magic, but a projection, a foci of a sort. It wasn't until I started thinking of it this way that I could appreciate what some of the more scientific persons here argue that consciousness and soul could be an illusion. From where we are in science right now, it would be difficult if not impossible to drum up evidence for higher life forms or sentience greater than ours. There's really not even evidence to show that animals or plants have sentience. We simply say they do based on the definition of life. All life is sentient. As to evidence of higher life forms, it may come. I'm patient. Have to be. Science is slow to move. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 All life is sentient. It is? Plants are self-aware? As to evidence of higher life forms, it may come. I'm patient. Have to be. Science is slow to move. It may. It may not. If it does, I'll let the evidence persuade me. I'm just not in the practice of expecting things that 'may' happen. The odds are too small in the realm of total possibility to get my hopes up over things we imagine might be yet have no evidence for yet. That's just me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sexton Blake Posted April 28, 2014 Share Posted April 28, 2014 That article had a serious amount of BS in it. So why does the universe need a purpose unless you are a god botherer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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