You've all seen the matrix, right?! Well there's this scene where the agent "mr. smith" explains to morpheous how humans are not mammals but virus. This made me think abit (well, duh) and I have come to the conclution that mr. smith is both wrong and right. Yes we exploit all resources we can, and yes we do multiply without any inherent limit, thus needing ever more resources. But not only viruses (and humans) carry this trait. So do bacteria. As some might know (or think to be true at least) life started with bacteria. Ever evolving into new lifeforms, more complex and more greedy for resources. We ourself would not be lest for bacteria. Indeed, within us are billions of these little sweet one-celled organisms. They make food into energy amongst others. They protect us from disease. Some couse disease, but they're more like the exception, not the rule. Bacteria organised into more complex beeings, found that they could live off that complexity, instead of just the barren land and elements that do not contain life. So we are ourself nothing more than a system of cells living and evolved from that humble beginning. Life lives of life (Bringing me onto another thought; why cant veggies understand that a plant and an animal is essentially the same thing; Living) And yes, like bacteria we shall conquer the world (done that) and the universe (doing it tomorrow). Our destiny is in the stars. Right now we carry all our eggs in one fragile basket. We need to spread and prosper, spreading life on our way, all life. Else we will peril at the failing resources of this world. Imagine if the dollars that now goes to weapons and wars were funneled into productive work, like food and care for all and some heavy duty space research and exploration. Bringing it back to the matrix, machines can never prosper as a seperate society as such. Machines do not, will not ever quite simply, have the drive for evolution that living things do. Self preference maybe, but the art, creativety and cunning of a living beeing will never be matched by any machine. That is what makes life special. And we who are sentient can revel in it! As such we will never, ever be content with what we have. We will always want more. It's called greed. And that is not such a bad thing. Given as the resources of this world is limited, our limitless want for more will force us to expand or expire. That bodes for a bright future, but not without it's pains. Ahh, I'm dreaming again... make hay, not war, else we're done for...
I think that someway the matrix utopia is goin on at the moment (the one where people were batteries for the machine) I mean computers don't evolve by them selves but there's thousands of hundreds of people who everyday sit in front of the monitor and use hours of time to make the computers more faster, and when you want to make the work faster (to make computers faster) you have to operate the computer to do somethings by itself independently, so is it that impossible that at sometime somewhere a person realises how he can operate the computer to evolve by itself? And note: people are allready acting like machines, society works like a microchip, there's different areas for different jobs. People use drugs like machines and machines like drugs. Most people take cocke, heroin, MJ, hash, speed to "get that feeling" and the feeling should always be somewhat similar, and when it's radicaly different it's usually thought as an "bad trip", we use machines to chance the reality, virtual worlds, computer games, movies, lights, music etc.
If bacteria begat intelligent life then imagine what the things we create could be one day. My belief is that intelligent life is here (by design or otherwise) to bring order to it's surroundings. The general nature of things is to come apart after time (in simpler terms; things change no matter what). Rocks erode, water churns, things grow and die. But once something came along powerful enough to not only change it's surroundings but do it by choice then there was a force that could and would bring order to existence. Not only that but the things we didn't understand could be put into terms that we could so that new ways of controlling and altering were avaliable. If we were able to do that then why couldn't a robot, especially considering they'd have several evolutionary advantages over us? As long as they needed us we'd take care of them but once we need them they will be the superior beings. If you think it's necessary to avoid this fate then the place to start is improving ourselves through philosophy (one thing that we may always be better at than them) and tools; things that will improve our binds and bodies (things that are available in the matrix).
Timothy Leroys Chaos and cyber culture is great for this kind of conversations. It's all about how people came from the sea and some other forms of life choosed to stay underwater world, and now in these very times some people are looking to the future and thinking how to evolve outside earth world, the place to evolve being it outer space or Cyberia, and then there's these people that choose to stay in earth world..
ah well erm.. first I'm not sure about that theory of life starting as bacteria. First off because bactirium (most of it) is much much much much smaller than most animal cells. However it is true that we are partly bacteria. See the theory goes that the first cell (for animals and plants- anything) which would develop into a multi celled organism tried to digest a bactirium. It took the bacteria into itself and then "realised" that by providing the bacterium with oxygen and glucose it could make the bacterium produce energy (ATP). And hence today your cells have inside them evolved bacteria which make you able to produce energy- these are called: mitochondrea. The amazing thing is that if this theory of science IS correct then we are all descended from one single cell- hence me, you EVERYTHING even plants (like good old MJ) may well have evolved from ONE SINGLE CELL... Second Agent Smith is wrong a virus is technicaly a strand of RNA within a protein casing... So no we're not a virus...
Thank you mr. switch for that enlightenment on the topic of bacteria vs. single celled organisms. I'm no biologist, but it makes sense to me. I won't start a discussion here 'bout the origins of life, of which we have no *concrete* answer, only a general idea. The idea of discussion was rather 1: will machines surpass (and excact control over) us humans. 2: what is the "mission" of life, as represented by the only sentient beeings we know of, ourselves. Do not confuse this with "the meaning of life" in a specific sense, only in the general. To take point 2 first. I believe the mission of life is to evolve and expand, and then evolve and expand again. This based on the two things we know for a certainty regarding life. We conquer barren lands, and make it prosper by virtue of life adapting. Call it a sort of Gaia theory if you wish. As to the machines. Indeed, 5k years ago a lightbulb (and the generator needed to supply its power) would seem like magick. A light without fire ye say, never! However, sentient machines will not surpass a living sentient beeing in complexity and ingenuity. By definition machines are programmed to a larger or smaller extent. That a computer can add millions of complex numbers in a second does not make it smart, merely fast at addition. Whatever a system is programmed to do, that system will, by definition, do. If we (supposing it can be done) make a self replicating, self modifying, AI controlled machine and tell it to "expand and evolve" we will get a machine that will expand and evolve... but it will not wonder at why, or indeed, where to go to next if there is no *apparent* way to go. It will not make art, and will be inferior in every aspect to living intelligence with one exception. Rationality. A machine will always be rational to the extent of beeing downright predictable. That is why machines will never dominate humans i think. They lack the creativity and madness we posess. It boils down to that nature is governed by random events, whilst machines are, and most likely always will be, governed by predefined rules of interaction. [on a total sidenote: If sentient machines do try to take over the world, i hope microsoft made the code for it. At first hint of stress, it would kneel down in a fatal systems crash ]
Chaos, that's what it is, there's no logigal reason or a specific misson in life, it just is. In totally random circumstances in "the sea of life" where it all started, bacterium, cells etc. just formed and reformed in to various of forms wich slowly developed from the sea etc. we all know how it went, now we are here. and after a 2000 years we will be in different shape and polace etc. The point is: there is no point. We live.
Ah, but I think there is a reason for life, more specifically intelligent life. I once heard a man (can't remember who) say that humans are the universe's way of knowing itself; from this point of view humans are no less part of the universe than any other living thing or non-living thing. The difference between us and non-living things is that we can control ourselves and alter our surroundings with purpose. We understand things, we can imagine things that haven't yet been created, and because of this we can and do change things to suit us, make them 'better'. But that's just whimsy unless there's some sort of tangible process or pattern that can be distinguished from the rest of the universe. So what is there that humans do that's different enough from everything else that it could be called a 'purpose'? I think we're here to not only understand our reality but to bring order to it. We make the universe 'more efficient' by creating new paterns, processes and concepts. This would also explain why the two biggest groups throughout humanity are those who want things to stay the same and those who want to change things for the better. Or maybe I'm wrong, perhaps this is just a way to have an excuse to feel righteous about something.
Humans have always had the need to controll stuff, but controlling the universe is impossible, yeah we are the only known species that thinks thinking, Universe gets bigger and bigger all the time, planets etc. implodes and are born, both of these happenings create more stars and planets, some of them may work (earth) and some are just plain useless (jupiter, I mean it's only a bog lump of crabon and has a gravity field so strong we can't get to pluto so easy) and speaking of pluto they've apparently found water under the ice coverage of the planet, and we also are from water, so maybe there's life in pluto? or something, H.P.Lovecraft told in the cthulhu mythos that "they came behind --------" I don't know what it was called in there but he meant pluto (based on the astronomical mummble and etc.) and this was written 30 years before pluto was "found"
I've never seen the matrix, and since that was your attention grabber I can't bother with the rest... I'm sorry but thats what I learned in school. "Bringing it back to the matrix, machines can never prosper as a seperate society as such. Machines do not, will not ever quite simply, have the drive for evolution that living things do. Self preference maybe, but the art, creativety and cunning of a living beeing will never be matched by any machine. That is what makes life special. And we who are sentient can revel in it!" You lost me again with the Matrix... Seriously though, art, creativity, etc... These are part of being conscious aren't they? We have no idea what being conscious means, or whether or not we can replicate consciousness. We think we do, but look at how much of our universe we have absolutely no comprehension of. I too wait for the day that we leave this planet. Hopefully it will be in my life time... I think just about all we need at this point is a good power source right? Edit: Holy shit this thread was made when I was getting pubes.
something joe rogan said. when you fly to los angele from the east, you come over beautiful natural green mountains, then you see the city. and you see it, and youre like wtf is that!. were a virus. were a virus on earth and the earth will get rid of us one day