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A comment on Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds nothing (2008). Parent comment

Re:Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds n... by caf on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @07:44PM (#18499258)
It is just our human bias to envision complexity as only occurring on earth-like planets, on human-like time and size scales, communicating over the EM spectrum, formed of baryonic matter...

The argument works just as well if you stipulate that it covers only sufficiently human-like complex life. The speculated existence of life composed of galaxy-scale non-baryonic matter or something doesn't affect at all the question of where all the other more prosaic life is.

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Re:Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds n... by perl4ever on Tuesday November 20, 2018 @09:24PM (#18499746)
I vaguely recall an article describing reasons why really exotic (e.g. galaxy scale) life doesn't make a whole lot of sense. One problem is that no matter how it is organized or what it is made of, light speed prevents it from communicating rapidly. If it doesn't communicate rapidly within itself, it can't develop or evolve much in the lifespan of the universe, at least so far. You can deduce various constraints on "intelligent life" without making simplistic assumptions a priori that humans are normal, but rather starting with what we know about physics.
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Re:Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds n... by mysterypie on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @06:01AM (#18501735)
Since we're on the topic of really exotic, how about a complex proton arrangement inside a star having all the properties of intelligent life? This wouldn't suffer from light speed constraints. Would it violate other constraints from fundamental physics?
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Re:Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds n... by bullosB on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @09:12AM (#18502776)
It reminds me of the Boltzmann brain hypothesis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain. It's indeed really exotic and I'm not sure how long this intelligence could exist.
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Re:Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds n... by plushpuffin on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @02:32PM (#18505336)
Frederik Pohl wrote a novel about just such a creature.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_the_End_of_Time

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