Intelligent design without god

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
1

4 billion years may be too little for evolution to naturally evolve up to us. But if evolved in steps, on other planets, then maybe its total time is 10 billion years. Then again the age of the universe may be largely greater than 20 billion years (I always had a feeling that this age is too short), or maybe there are infinite universes and the age is eternity.

Also it is possible to have the sum greater than the parts. There is a pseudoscientific theory that claims that our technology is evolving at an ever increasing rate towards a “singularity” upon which computers will surpass human intelligence. After that, the computers would “design” other smarter computers and we as humans would no longer even know what happens.

Now if some process, in different terms and with different structures occured on other planets with alien structures “designing” structures that “surpass” there own (just as humans may end up designing computers smarter than us) , then you can see how evolution may be quite feasable through this.

Lets put it upside down. Imagine that we are the computers trying to figure out how we came to be. We would think first there was a small program then a larger than a different CPU etc. without ever suspecting that there could be a completely different way matter may interact. Then some “program” comes along and says you guys got it all wrong, we were “designed” by a bag of water full of carbon molecules, that there is no silicon or bits or software. That is the position I am trying to imagine.

Imagine that intelligence “emerges” from a plasma at the center of stars. That these plasmas may create structured electromagnetic fields that are intelligent and that these “self organized” structures emerge as “soliton” solutions to some differential equations.
We can further imagine these organized EM fields can manipulate atoms and molecules beyond anything we can imagine, and they somehow designed us or DNA completely in one shot just like we write a program. So we have a case where intelligence is explained in a very simple way from the solution of equations and we completely bypass billions of years of “evolution”, Or maybe evolution is only part of the story.

I repeat, look at the parallelism of us designing computers smarter than us. It is like there are 2 ways to add and subtract, with a biological brain with all its neurons and DNA and chemical circuits or with a simple 8 bit silicon CPU. There may be very simple ways matter can organize itself to provide intelligence, without the need of billions of neurons as our brain.

2

Lets put it upside down. Imagine that we are the computers trying to figure out how we came to be. We would think first there was a small program then a larger than a different CPU etc. without ever suspecting that there could be a completely different way matter may interact. Then some “program” comes along and says you guys got it all wrong, we were “designed” by a bag of water full of carbon molecules, that there is no silicon or bits or software. That is the position I am trying to imagine.

Imagine that intelligence “emerges” from a plasma at the center of stars. That these plasmas may create structured electromagnetic fields that are intelligent and that these “self organized” structures emerge as “soliton” solutions to some differential equations.
We can further imagine these organized EM fields can manipulate atoms and molecules beyond anything we can imagine, and they somehow designed us or DNA completely in one shot just like we write a program. So we have a case where intelligence is explained in a very simple way from the solution of equations and we completely bypass billions of years of “evolution”, Or maybe evolution is only part of the story.

I repeat, look at the parallelism of us designing computers smarter than us. It is like there are 2 ways to add and subtract, with a biological brain with all its neurons and DNA and chemical circuits or with a simple 8 bit silicon CPU. There may be very simple ways matter can organize itself to provide intelligence, without the need of billions of neurons as our brain.

Maybe we have reverse engineered evolution. Maybe on some distant planet silicon and electricity evolved microprocessors that then started evolving to the point of being able to manipulate carbon atoms and design us. Then we were thrown on other planets and after many generations rediscovered digital electronics and chips etc. So the cycle may be first silicon itself evolved into computers directly, then these computers got so smart as to design biological matter and then we rediscovered our roots by reinventing chips.

Interesting idea; a silicon planet with metals and all kinds of heavy elements that slowly evolves into a cpu that slowly evolves into a superbrain that manipulates carbon atoms. Maybe bacteria are their computers! It sounds far out but if you look at it from the “end result” , a CPU is effectively much much simpler than a bacteria. It could be possible if evolution goes from simpler to more complex items.

So maybe evolution started on other planets with other elements and other processes we can’t even imagine…

Why call that “spontaneous generation” and call carbon molecules that synthesize into amino acids that automatically evolve into DNA and cells and bacteria and man “evolution” ? Is it just an “aesthetical” choice ? Fundamentally we are always talking about physical systems that “spontaneously” evolve into complex forms and processes. Why should this be allowed and apply only to carbon molecules ? A silicon planet could have storms and electricity and germanium that “evolve” into a full blown 8080 CPU and then a pentium and then a trillion bit CPU etc…

Or maybe the strange new processes occur in a superfluid ocean where self organized vortices grow larger and larger with turbulance and then become intelligent and manipulate carbon atoms and then decide to design US humans. Then they threw us around the galaxy and here we are.

The real problem is how to explain the first single cell from the molecule soup that was in oceans 4 billion years ago. Since the first cell is very complex it seems hard to imagine all the steps that lead to it. So the idea is that maybe a much simpler physical system with fewer “steps” could self organize into a somehow intelligent “designer” that designed the first cell. Now an 8 bit CPU is way more simpler than the simplest cell. If there is a process that can somehow evolve matter into an 8 bit cpu and then this evolves into a superbrain that can design a biological cell, you have the problem licked. The fact is an alternative physical process that can generate intelligence more directly without all the very complex biology would be very welcome. Is there one available ? There are “complexity” theories and chaos theories that somehow suggest some remote possibility. Or maybe the origin of life problem will never be understood because we can’t perform a planet wide experiment with all the trillions of macromolecules in the oceans to see what happens.

  1. why is “complexity” considered special and therefore built by intelligence and simplicity not ? what is complexity and simplicity ? is gravity simple and biochemistry complex ?

  2. If there is an “intelligent designer” ( aside from the fact that even intelligence is a very vague concept) then he was designed by another intelligence and on and on in a loop and maybe the fundamental structure of the universe is only pure “intentional” intelligence without any physical laws.

  3. There could be an “intelligent” design in that we are all “brains in a vat” or inside a giant computer simulation. The alien race governing it all could be made up of completely different matter and physical laws and even much simpler physical laws that quickly evolve super intelligence.

  4. Biochemistry seems to suggest that life is the result of thousands of levels and interactions between protein foldings, chemical reactions , neurons etc.
    Then what we actually touch and feel is just pure infromation or electric signals. Then any substrate could create the same informational structure and be alive. Then in these cases life is truly an arbitrary invention, and any other invention that has the same information organization could become alive and actually could inhabit a radically different universe as seen by that life form. Protein folding and biochemistry is no closer to matter or reality than a transistor switch.

I can imagine within stars at a given depth there could be self organized plasma organizations and reactions that evolve just like biochemistry even though in a completely different “ecosystem”, magnetic fields, electrons protons etc.

These are just some of many odd philosophical problems that arise when thinking about this topic.

If we were a brain in a vat, well then maybe we could be a chip in a computer, just as long as all the electrical signals simulate the world perfectly. These chips then could be made up of a completely different matter and physical laws than we can ever imagine. Then maybe that chip is inside yet another simulation in yet another matter/physical world. The loops could be endless, the physical worlds and laws endless hence infinite universes. Then even a given simulation could correspond to one universe as seen by the chip, another simulation could be another universe, there is truly no limits to what is conceivable and possible.

3

… I like the idea.

4

This man… this is what good speculative science fiction is about. Maybe someday, I’ll write a book on it. Maybe you will. You know how humans can do mathematical calculations, but it’s infintessimally slower than a computer or calculator? What if in an alternate past or future, computers were developed to where they could do the same thing with creativity and abstract thinking. They could do it, just horribly slowly and it would be flawed. What if they used humans for abstract thinking to help them invent better and better computers to evolve themselves until they gave birth to something even greater. Or it could be a story about human freedom and what humanity means. It could be really great. It could be or it could be paired with another story about the aftermath of a war between the two, and the greatest abstract thinking or emotional or most human computers hid out and searched for acceptance among humans or vice versa, where the greatest human calculators did this same thing, until eventually they became exactly like organic computers. Or you could write about the development of organic computers. This is good shit.

5

Scroll over this post (all posts ?), I am (have always been ?) vomiting on the Internet, as usual.

With regards to the Silicon to Man transition Matter may undertake, as described in :

viewtopic.php?t=144656

two things come to mind:

  1. As the previous examples showed, the two identical persons may be exactly the same with one alive and one dead, but there is no reason for this, so in a sense, the entire deal of simple Matter self manipulating itself to create a complex contraption that is alive may not have any reason at all, no reason at all is a good reason, no explanation at all is the simplest explanation, hence Science has finished its task. The observation is the explanation.

  2. The fact that simple matter can goof around and play around with itself and create a Man Brain (or especially a simple cell that is way beyond anything we can make), while the Man Brain with its logic and theories and all the decodings and logic applied to reality can’t even create the simplest life form from first principles may mean that either the reason for this is:

  3. Just Because, there is No Reason, No Explanation is the Simplest and most Correct Explanation, you can’t say or do or “occupy more time (as the subtle reason why we do all is to occupy time and waste time and search and try to find some cheap thrills)” on this situation, the story is ended, Science has Concluded its Task, suck it up and go home and watch TV;

  4. Matter Self Manipulating itself can transit from very simple to very complex constructions (through Trial and Error also known as Natural Evolution), said constructions having repetitive patterns and processes, occupying ever longer sequences of planned events for ever longer time spans (think a human cell is born and lives for 80 years and all the “intentionalities of use” implicit in the design of the cells from the very start, like hands and eyes, etc.) all by itself, by pure chance, without any reasoning or logic, without any consciousness like all our thought processes are, by pure BLIND FORCES. While our very elaborate and best thought processes can’t ( follow the sequence BLIND FORCES perform in their transit ?) transit from very complex (the Man Brain guiding the process) to much simpler (although complex) like a simple living cell.

This means that pure BLIND FORCES are much smarter than our Man Brain will ever be, or that:

There are hidden layers of logic, hidden thought patterns and structures and systems operating which we can never have access to or which we will eventually have access to but only by getting farther and farther away from our common thought sequences and logics and sequence of symbols, hence only through totally new designs of Man Brains, thought structures, as the new Man Brain may be a chunk of matter configured to resonate and have more contact points with what Natural Evolution did (and thought and designed, since evolution is just a subset of a particular kind of Intelligent Design) than our puny one transistor circuit man Brain.

Am I OK now ? Am I OK ? I will never be OK…

AN APE