Lifelessness doesn't care. This is an extrapolation from his earlier assertion that 'I, for one, would not want to be a rock,' a statement that seems no more meaningful than 'I would not like to be the transcendental number pi.'

This writer seems not to have explored very much philosophy, and without wanting to damp his imagination or enthusiasm I have to say that the idea of making the universe resemble our domestic environment as much as possible strikes me as a bit...trite. I don't find it so hard to conceive of planetary or cosmic-scale dynamic systems that might be locally hostile to life but of staggering natural beauty. One might argue that skilled mathematicians enjoy private vistas whose extent is only limited by their cognitive capability, or conversely that the most elaborate and variegated manifestations of life are merely an expansion in conventional space of some higher-dimensional universal function.

Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad story collection considers the ends of endeavor from several perspectives, including that of a society that has reached the Highest Possible Level of Development which naturally proves to be a severe disappointment to its less-developed discoverers. Those engineers troubled by ethical or philosophical uncertainties would do well to read it (followed by everything else he's written, though not necessarily at the same time).

A sentiment written about many thousands of years ago by Solomon...

"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion." (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

Beautiful? I came here to react to it with awe at the sheer chutzpah it took to make that statement. So the author has determined that the universe is lifeless, and has nowhere in it other than Earth a single spark of consciousness that might experience a pleasant emotion? This is pretty significant news.

The author is reasoning along the premise that the universe is lifeless; he didn't declare it with absolute certainty (and in fact he specifically addressed the possibility of aliens and how they'd interact with his point).

Frankly I'm glad someone is publishing thoughts on bigger topics... we could use more of this and less myoptic focus on the latest my-tribe-other-tribe cultural dominance outrage circus.

There is 0 evidence of life outside earth.

There is also Drake's equation.... your opinion on that is probably already formed, so why discuss it?

There is 0 concrete definition of living vs dead on the cosmological level.

He's talking about the universe. The entire thing. From what portion of it do you suppose we have been able to gather enough evidence to determine there is no life?

It really frazzles me to see the the same presumptuous seeds that fruited in multiple genocides getting "happily" sprouted once more on such a potentially endless scale...

Seriously. If there was microbial life on Mars, the author would consider it "a lower form", and without question promote Elon Musk and Don T's shared vision to terraform mars into a glorified Disney world.

Okay that's not quite fair, nor am I entirely serious. But the point is that there are way too many assumptions going on in this article, and I'm seeing these same seeds still at work here on earth in the ways people treat, say, Cuban people, immigrants or bacteria.