lander samples Mars water

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Karlos wrote:

amigaksi wrote:

I always thought there could be life out there but may not be in the form we know it.  As Karlos prudently points out, we have not detected life "as we know it".

It's a big universe. Abiogenesis here in our solar system, on this planet, has given rise to one principal set of common biochemistry. Given the limitless potential for carbon chemistry alone it makes me wonder if that set is is the only workable one or if there are others that work in conditions quite different from those we know. For instance, there could be life on Titan using radically unfamiliar biochemistry to that we are familiar with.

I agree, and that makes it hard to know what we want to look for...

There's even the possibility that life based on elements other than carbon may exist but given what we know so far of other elements abilities to form large, thermodynamically and kinetically stable molecules of the sort of diversity we see for carbon it would appear unlikely.

Again, I have to agree... but then again, a life form based not on Carbon, might not even be recognizable to us as a life form... in fact while we are at it we may need to redefine how we look at various objects that exist on earth... :-(

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Karlos wrote:
I've occasionally mused that the entire biosphere or even the entire planet is a single organism with a metabolism comprised of the many intersecting and interdependent regulatory systems maintain life as we know it...

Exactly!!! Let us not also forget the simulation theory of the universe...

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Karlos wrote:
You have my ear, sir...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality#We_are_living_in_a_simulation )

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Karlos wrote:
I know what it is; I was simply soliciting your opinion on the concept.

Well, at least others here now have the option of learning something new :-)

Ok.. well, I honestly don't know what to think. I can't rule out the possibility of a Simulated reality... I've suffered from solipsism from a young age... so I find the idea rather appealing. But if it were the case, then everything we consider real is nothing more than an experiment.. the universe will have a finite limit of complexity and everything here becomes very boring... The interesting question then becomes how do we determine the nature of reality, outside of our computed model... the obvious answer is that there is no possible way for anything within the simulation to ever determine the nature of anything outside of the simulation. It should however be possible, I suspect, that one should be able to determine if we are in a simulation though...

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Karlos wrote:
You could take it to the logical conclusion that we exist only in that simulation and never entered it from the outside. Again, you'd have no way of knowing. Furthermore, said simulation might not bear any resemblance to whatever passes for reality outside that simulation.

If our reality is a simulation then, yes, I could not entertain the idea of anything entering from the outside :-)

. the obvious answer is that there is no possible way for anything within the simulation to ever determine the nature of anything outside of the simulation. It should however be possible, I suspect, that one should be able to determine if we are in a simulation though...

What if something external to the simulation was able to interact with us as simulated entities? Such an event would give rise to the idea that both our existence within that simulation and the simulation itself is not all there is...

Any external force/influence would HAVE to follow the laws of our simulation... otherwise the nature of out reality would fall apart... The only way I think we can establish if we are a simulation or not, is to look for a finite complexity. Where the universe stops getting simpler as we learn more about it.

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Karlos wrote:
Assuming the nature of the simulation is entirely in the hands of its designers to specify, the rules of that simulation could readily include a one-way mechanism for information injection that, again by design, we'd never be able to identify.

Only the simulated entities within the simulation (i.e. us and everything else we perceive) are fully subject to the entire rules of the simulation, the same is not true for something outside trying to debug it :-D

Well, the more I think about, the less I can see how we could even be able to recognize an external influence... if the influence doe not follow the laws of our universe, then it would appear to us as a glitch, events that are totally impossible would exist, and given how fundamental our simulation is, the glitch would be devastating to us...

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Karlos wrote:

Well, the more I think about, the less I can see how we could even be able to recognize an external influence... if the influence doe not follow the laws of our universe, then it would appear to us as a glitch, events that are totally impossible would exist, and given how fundamental our simulation is, the glitch would be devastating to us...

That would very much depend on what that influence was. Provided the result of said influence did not violate the laws of the simulation, the mechanism is irrelevant. It's like me poking information into memory in a running OOP system where none of the code in our system would ever modify data at that address. The specification of that system cannot modify that data but uses it somehow. As far as the objects in that system are concerned it's a fundamental law of "nature" that the data there is immutable. Along come I, with full memory access privileges  and change it. An object that has any private copy of that data can know that it has changed but not how. This doesn't mean that everything to crash and burns.

Who knows? The strange ramblings of those we call prophets would be the only glitch we'd see. And then discount as being a glitch - ie, people regard them as bonkers.

I think you are thinking too high level... any simulation as detailed as ours simply couldn't work if it was interfered with at a high level... the complexity is too great...

If you poke around randomly in the memory of your computer right now (assuming you have full access rights of course) you are going to mess something up... Hmmm, I need to think how to express myself better here :-)

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motorollin wrote:

bloodline wrote:
If our reality is a simulation then, yes, I could not entertain the idea of anything entering from the outside :-)

ORLY? ;-)

--
moto

Um... err... hmmm... yeah :-)

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motorollin wrote:
I was just trying to lower the tone. I turn my back for one evening and you guys go all David Icke on me...

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moto

Aghhhh, I can't believe it I missed some innuendo! :boohoo:

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motorollin wrote:
You're losing your touch!

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moto

Right, I've not touched anything in ages!

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motorollin wrote:

bloodline wrote:
Right, I've not touched anything in ages!

Pfft, yeah right :-P

Only myself... :-D

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motorollin wrote:
That was what I was implying... Either I'm losing my ability to use innuendo, or you're losing your ability to spot it! :-P

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moto

What's wrong with me!?!? I'm gonna have to spend the next 6 hours watching Carry On films or something...

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motorollin wrote:
No, Carry On is too blatant. You need exposure to something more subtle. (In case you didn't spot it, I just did it again!)

I just need to get stuck in, give the material a good hard going over and work up a bit of a sweat... In no time I'll have a good firm grip of it again and will be splashing it liberally around these forums.

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motorollin wrote:

bloodline wrote:
I just need to get stuck in, give the material a good hard going over and work up a bit of a sweat... In no time I'll have a good firm grip of it again and will be splashing it liberally around these forums.

He's back, baby! :-D

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moto

I'm feeling a new man already!!

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motorollin wrote:
Oh behave!

I'm having difficulty withdrawing!