News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Space Is Full of Planets, and Most of Them Don't Even Hav... by neuronic on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @05:02AM (#17186180)
But that's mostly because humans aren't an achievement of "life". We were never a development goal of "life" nor does the universe care very much about us - even if we built megastructures directly harnessing the energy of black holes and stars.

If current knowledge is remotely correct, heat death will happen, no matter how immortal Homo deus will become. The quarks are against us.

And if complex systems theory teaches us anything then it would be preposterous to assume any ultimate superiority in understanding the universe on our part.

Who knows who wrote crazy alien versions of Hacker News posts 2 billion years ago in one of the other couple of thousands of galaxies seen in Hubble Deep Field alone...

Re:Space Is Full of Planets, and Most of Them Don't Even Hav... by quietbritishjim on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @05:06AM (#17186203)
Humans are really just an example, I regret mentioning it. All significant developments in life (e.g. multi-cellular lifeforms, post-Cumbrian explosian animals) took hundreds of millions to billions of years.
Re:Space Is Full of Planets, and Most of Them Don't Even Hav... by kamaal on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @06:19AM (#17186476)
In fact given the fact evolution is a process without a goal. Intelligence could be even more rare among multicellular lifeforms.
Re:Space Is Full of Planets, and Most of Them Don't Even Hav... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @09:19AM (#17187407)
I remember reading that 4 or 5 intelligent hominids coexisted in Africa a million years ago. More or less intelligent. It can't be that rare then.

In fact, dolphins. Octopi. Yeah, pretty much a given I'd imagine, in the right complex ecosystem, that intelligence is a thing.

Re:Space Is Full of Planets, and Most of Them Don't Even Hav... by Brockenstein on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @09:17AM (#17187397)
Or the consequence of great intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. What if intelligent life becomes smart enough to destroy itself, but doesn't survive quite long enough to use that intelligence to save itself.