The Intelligent Universe(Golem)

Here's a theory for what it's worth: Humans have evolved from a signal that has been transmitted here from another planet; This signal has the code and fundamental formulas for the building blocks of all life here on earth. It has been transmitted out in a random fashion, by an intelligent being like ourselves who have evolved to the state where they have created the 'formula' for the building blocks of life, and now must spread this formula to continue the spread of their species. How else are you going to find a hospitable planet for humans unless you figure out the formula for all life on our planet, then beam this signal out as fast as possible in as many directions as possible with the 'code' so that suitable planets can take the code, run with it, and end up where we are now? Eventually, we will end advancing enough here on earth to create this Golem's code, and send it out ourselves. Because ultimately, the creation of life and the evolution of life forms has to be looked at on the large scale - billions of years to get there, find the right conditions, and then to evolve to the point where the cycle can continue, to send the 'code' out again to keep life spreading throughout the universe. In this scenario, there could be millions of life forms out there. Would they be sending a signal that SETI is looking for? Not likely. If they are far enough along, they are sending a signal that contains the code for building life, we've already received it, and we're working our way towards the same solution. And it isn't a quick solution, because the solution is code, which contains the formula to create life to create a species that can take the formula and physical environment to recreating and sending it out again. This completely ties in with 'scanning' a human brain and reproducing it digitally, but what ultimately we should be looking to do is to create the code/formula for life that can be transmitted to another planet to continue our species. Isn't that what we do on this planet anyway???

Is this a joke/word game (Golem theory-Little Golem)?

If not, here are some arguments against your theory:

Any species with an advanced technology that can send signals faster than speed of light, could transform a planet into a place for living, regardless the conditions on the planet (and of course could travel with a speed higher than light).

SETI is looking for signals under the speed light. But there's no point to send such signals due to huge distances between stars.

The goal for a being is survival+reproducing. There's no point to spread the species on other planets without any connection.

Any system, whether you choose to call it a being or not, can be stable (over a significant time) if it replicates itself. That's exactly what is being proposed. And the signals woudn't have to be sent FTL.

Of course, there are lots of other problems with the theory as anything more than a thought-experiment, but I don't think you've hit on any of them.

To me, the attempt at contrasting the ideas of "dumb forces of cosmology" and "biological intelligence" is misleading. How can intelligence really be anything other than simply an aspect of these dumb forces of cosmology? I prefer to view the "universe" holistically; so that what we refer to, as intelligence is merely an inherent attribute of what we mean by "the universe" as it is filtered through perception. Can the moon's orbit around the earth be considered a manifestation of the moon "perceiving" (and therefore "intelligizing") "the mass of the earth? Are we any closer to the "real nature of the universe" by considering that orbital interaction merely a "dumb force" on display, rather than as an example of what it is that makes the universe intelligent? At what level of the micro/macro universe spectrum of perception does an interaction become merely "mechanical" and supposedly thereby unintelligent? That is why I have problem with statement like: "Intelligence is, in fact, a powerful force and we can see that its power is going to grow not linearly but exponentially, and will ultimately be powerful enough to change the destiny of the universe." Teleological implications aside, I would like to know what is it is exactly that the Golem player sees as growing exponentially? Is it the base of perceptual feedback nodes (self-aware entities) that will grow and, perhaps by attaining some critical threshold or other, cause what we now consider intelligence to transcend itself and alter the basic characteristics of the perceived universe? I assert that intelligence transcends itself all the time and that the rate of that transcendence is directly proportional to the rate of expnasion of the universe; both of which may appear to be accelerate, but compared to what?

Thanx for the space.

I have two problems with your very interesting thought experiment. First, the building blocks of life have already been created in a test tube under conditions approximating early conditions on earth thereby showing life can start without the necessity for it to be 'beamed' in.

Second, if life did need to be beamed in, then who beamed in to the first planet to get life?

Cheers, Bill

Bye the way, Dvd, were those your objections too?

I can understand your qualms about an intelligent universe that may already be around us, but I hold the belief that intensely complex sytems (ie the universe) can develop in a such a way that seems very "smooth" as you put it. Because of the intense interconnection, and varying forces that compose our universe, these systems can form, and interact. You can also explain your "smoothness" paradox by realizing that complex systems since the beginning of our universe have been slowly gaining momentum. Whether that momentum is expanding outwards, or with evolution, which generally favors more complex organisms. Like a boulder rolling down a hill all of these systems are going towards something. Whether this something is "intelligent universe" is yet to be determined. But when something has momentum it has direction, and when something has direction, it creates the illusion that there is an "intelligent purpose" to the universe. As you put it, the universe appears to be an interactive learning machine and we were meant to figure it out. I believe that this is a by-product of a natural momentum that is carrying us along and we were created because of this momentum towards something. The important thing to realize is that a momentum does not require an intelligent force to initiate. It can start by itself and end by itself.

just a thought...

Bill, I agree that it wouldn't have been necessary, but that wouldn't make it impossible.

My objection amount of energy required to send off speculative beams in all sorts of directions is staggering. And I have doubts that anything we'd call beams would do the job, regardless of how scientifically andvanced the sender. The construction of all the needed amino acids is of non-trivial complexity. To send a packet capable of communicating that, you might be better off just sending self-replicating samples.

Also, you'd need to know which planets to communicate with, and have packets (of energy, matter, or whatever) of sufficeient strength to remain coherant while passing through light years of space and a then a layer of atmosphere.

Dvd, your objections sound formidable, but of course they are just technical, so of like in the 1950's when people said computers could never be practical because they were so big and took up so much space...guess they hadn't anticipated quantum computing.

it seems to me that the anthropic principle makes it impossible to tell whether we are here by chance or by some other method...if there is life all over the universe, then we could be created by other life, or life beginning could be all that common...on the other hand, maybe this is the only planet capable of supporting life, which is why we are here...until we have any evidence of other life, i don't think we're going to come up with a supportable theory

Ah, the origins of humankind. I could talk about this all day. :)

The anthropic principle is a strange principle according to me. It asserts that because the conditions for carbon-based and human life are fortunate on Earth, life has got to exist. (At least that's my interpretation of the principle.) I've never seen how one can jump from "fortunate conditions" to "it must exist". Just because something is very likely to exist, it doesn't mean it does.

But maybe aliens, or something like aliens, HAVE already come here and effectively taken over. How could we be sure if we had never seen the universe without them? Maybe the natural universe is nothing like the one we perceive around us. Maybe this is a synthetic universe. Perhaps the reason why photons do not decide what to be until someone observes them is that they are actually very small, very sophisticated automatons. The intelligence of the universe could be running on a bandwidth so narrow that we cannot discern it. My point is that there is a smooth gradient from the idea that someone else has probably done the things Bill LeBoeuf has described to the idea that the whole universe is already running on an intelligent platform. There is a smooth gradient from the idea that aliens have merely taken over the known universe to the idea that something even stranger has been around since the dawn of time and nothing has ever happened without its intervention. Reasonable extrapolation puts us far enough along the gradient to be sure that the gradient reaches fairly high. Is it more likely that the universe is already somewhere on that gradient, or is it more likely that we are the very first? Is there anything to tip the scale in favor of one conclusion or the other? Like I said before, there is something very suspicious about our universe. Actually, there is something very suspicious about our history. I’m not referring to anything obvious like irreducible complexity or the unlikelihood of the weak nuclear force being such that it permits fusion in stars. I’m not even referring to the unlikelihood of our earth having a stabilizing moon. I would expect some intelligent life in the universe to eventually be provided the right circumstances to arrive at the point that we have arrived at. It just seems like it has happened too “smoothly”. Have you ever played a video game where the scenarios kept getting harder, but always in a very gradual and continuous fashion? Most video games are designed that way on purpose. Most textbooks are designed that way also. Not only is the universe comprehensible, it is also comprehensible on a remarkably smooth curve that has allowed our technology and our social structure to advance at a continuous pace. It seems like the universe has been set up more like an interactive education machine than like a device designed for function alone. If a primitive person tried to understand a calculator, they would have no starting point. That is the way things designed entirely for function tend to be. Our universe seems to be like a big interactive puzzle—one designed to be figured out maybe in the Board games on www.littlegolem.net.

I see no mystery in societal complexity increasing. It does so, and at a pace that people can keep up with, because each layer only gets invented when previous layers make the new one comprehensible and useful. As for the rest, I see little reason to posit explanations which ask at least as many questions as they answer. Aachem's razor may be a cliche, but it's to the point.

my understanding of the anthropic principle is a little different, it's not that the because the requirements for life to exist are met, life must exist, but that because life exists, the conditions for life to exist must be met...that's why we're on the perfect planet for life, because if we weren't, there would be no life and we wouldn't be discussing it...

You're absolutely right, Tray. It's been so long since I argumented against the anthropic principle that I'd even forgotten exactly what I thought was wrong with it. :) But now when you write it in that way I remember what it was.

First off, it's not a principle, it's an observation; the observation that we are here discussing the presence of life in the first place. This is not splitting hairs because as a principle it should be good for something, whereas as an observation it needn't mean anything more than it states.

The fact that conditions are favourable for life since we are here in the first place, is not very revolutionary, neither very surprising. It doesn't garantuee that we will be here tomorrow, nor does it say something specific about the favourable conditions, just that they must exist.

"We know that life exists in at least one place in the universe, therefore conditions must allow for life in at least one place in the universe." -- That's one way of stating the anthropic principle.

Now let me state it like this.

"I exist, therefore conditions must allow for me existing in at least one place."

Note how the sentence, put in this form, says nothing at all about whether there are other copies of me elsewhere in the universe. The sentence makes it neither more nor less believable that there exists copies of me elsewhere.

The same goes for the anthropic principle.

What happens when you saturate the universe with intelligence, and come to the boundary? What happens when you intrinsically run into the opposite barrier of the "string" Do you fall into a dyanmic equilibrium, with intelligence constantly chugging away, yet contricted within the bounds of the system? And that we stay that way until the end of time? For some reason that seems ludicrous to me. The beauty of intelligence is to question. The desire and the force to know. But not only to know, but to experience, to live (as the poets say). Yet how can we live, how can we experience, how can we know, once we reach the boundaries of the system. How can we reconcile existence (or live) once everything is known. Won't we be dead then? Won't intelligence die, in that moment of true epiphany? I suppose you could argue that we will break the boundary of the universe itself, and flood out into a multiverse...or whatever is out there. It would be terribly ironic if there was merely an infinite nothinginess, and voided our existence in a heartbeat. How humans killed the universe...

But hey were going somewhere...and i'll enjoy the ride while it lasts.

Josef, I love your writing. Are you going to write a book eventually?

I heard a cute thing about Life recently (I know you will agree) : you best have some fun in life cause noone is getting out of it alive.

I heard a cute thing about the current increase in knowledge: there is only one other thing in this universe that can be compared to it, the Big Bang.

It is leading to some serious consequences. Did you know that within ten years time the Rain Forest will be History and everything in it gone till the end of time. I wonder if the people who beamed its DNA to us are going to be pissed?

The world has survived the comings and goings of generations of observers. It seems to persist during one's inattention or sleep. It must have existed before we were born and even before the arising of life. It is reasonable to think that it will continue to exist after one's personal death and after the passing of all life from the earth. While the existence of the universe may not depend on us as observers, certainly our knowledge of it does. The universe we know is a product of our own mental activity in a specifically human cognitive domain. It is this knowledge we mistake for the universe itself. But surely something must exist "out there", in its own right and not just as the experience of some creature. If cognition is a map, surely there is a territory! The problem is how exactly to conceive it. Experience is the product of the map, and the territory can only be known through experience-- through the map. Every perception or conception concerning the territory is part of the map. The territory itself is unknowable, since knowing is by definition the map-making activity of a cognitive agent. "If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view".But it cannot abandon all point of view. An individual subject is absolutely unique if only because no other observer can share precisely his point of view in space-time. The observer in physics is an idealized standard based on the relative interchangeability of subjects, but the point of view of the observer is nevertheless a point of view. What makes the standard possible is the agreement precisely not to consider "subjective" aspects of experience in the field of discussion. What does this actually mean? It means not applying the subjective frame to one's own experience of observing, as well as eliminating measures which cannot be quantified, repeated, etc. It would be irrelevant for an observer to record her personal experience of observing-- unless it qualified the reliability of the observation-- for the physical world is the field of discussion, not the experience of the observer. But this does not mean that the observation could be made without personal conscious experience-- by an unconscious observer or by a spiritual machine. Perhaps some observations are so routine that they can be made as "automatically" as one drives a car. Many are recorded by instruments. Nevertheless the significance of the measurement must be considered at some point if it is meaningfully held to be an "observation" at all. At some point consciousness enters.

We are certainly grappling with questions on the cutting edge. I love it. Are you (have you) writing a book. I want a copy.

Are you in alignment with Ray Kurzwell then?

I can understand your qualms about an intelligent universe that may already be around us, but I hold the belief that intensely complex sytems (ie the universe) can develop in a such a way that seems very "smooth" as you put it. Because of the intense interconnection, and varying forces that compose our universe, these systems can form, and interact. You can also explain your "smoothness" paradox by realizing that complex systems since the beginning of our universe have been slowly gaining momentum. Whether that momentum is expanding outwards, or with evolution, which generally favors more complex organisms. Like a boulder rolling down a hill all of these systems are going towards something. Whether this something is RK's "intelligent universe" is yet to be determined. But when something has momentum it has direction, and when something has direction, it creates the illusion that there is an "intelligent purpose" to the universe. As you put it, the universe appears to be an interactive learning machine and we were meant to figure it out. I believe that this is a by-product of a natural momentum that is carrying us along and we were created because of this momentum towards something. The important thing to realize is that a momentum does not require an intelligent force to initiate. It can start by itself and end by itself.

We can observe then, that modern physicists appear to be coalescing around a model of the universe that may be visualized as a dual cone with branching portals to similar, present-but-parallel universes. These universes all operate in accordance with principles of quantum mechanics characterized by quantum waves and quantum wave collapses, evolving into super-positions of macroscopically distinguishable possibilities. The cause-and-effect relationship between human consciousness and the environment represented as a universe around that conscious entity are still murky at best. It is unclear whether the human species "creates" our universe by virtue of conscious and unconscious processing, actualizing "templates" as has been theorized by Stapp, or the universe presents itself in a manner independent of conscious activity. Whichever of these is correct, some underlying principles about the operation of information as the fundamental material of the universe may well provide invaluable tools for comprehending the mechanics of the overall system.

Perhaps there is still time to meet the challenge of SECULAR humanism in the West. But indeed the window is closing rapidly. In fact, there are signs the window is about to be slammed shut by that latest chess move now in progress. The church, in its sudden wakefulness to the devastation already wrought by materialistic secularism, is in danger of being blindsided by the current - and I believe, final - move on the chessboard: COSMIC humanism. Rushing into the spiritual vacuum, purposely devised, of unstable atheism and agnosticism will be the original plu-potent lie spoken in Eden: "You will not surely die...you will be like God." Reincarnation and Self-realization in ten easy words - ten delicious words! It's all there: "evolution's" manifest goal: the breathing, becoming Goddess - the Self! the One! The Greek word translated antichrist in the New Testament can mean "in place of Christ" as well as "against Christ." The religion of the counterfeit who will declare himself to be God is already being practiced, and not exactly in a corner. Before God's Messiah and His "New Age" appear, the superhuman chessplayer seeks to activate and validate decoys of both. The new gloss on the original lie is that any path pursued fervently enough will lead to the same mountaintop - even the path where "truth" and "lie" alike dissolve in an ocean of subjective experience: After the storm, there is indeed a New Age coming , and, however incredibly, it will open with a literal 1000 year "Reich" - one long Sabbath's rest - in dusty old Jerusalem! See Revelation 20:3, Daniel 2:44, Isaiah 9:6-7, Zechariah 14:9, Hosea 3:5, Ezekiel 43:7, Isaiah 66:23, Habakkuk 2:14, Luke 1:32-33 for starters. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

What sort of spectrum is currently being emitted by earth? Is that signal visible say 10 or 50 light years away? If SETI were on a planet say 10-50 light years from here and running this project there, would it be able to detect earth's signal (assuming it was looking in our direction)?

Earth is polluting space with radio and television signals that might be detected by nearby advanced civilizations, but it would be difficult for such a civilization to discover these signals if they only have Earth's current level of technology (eg: if they have an Arecibo like telescope and SETI@home like search).

Early TV shows like I Love Lucy and Ed Sullivan left the earth about 40 years ago, so have gone out 40 light years, reaching several thousand nearby stars. But these signals are relatively weak and SETI@home is not likely to detect the equivalent of Earth type TV transmitters, even on the nearest stars.

Earth's strongest transmitters might be somewhat easier to detect, such as those emitted by military radars, or some radio telescopes. The Arecibo telescope transmits very powerful signals when it is used as a radar system to study planets, asteroids and the ionosphere. These radar signals are powerful enough to be detected 10,000 light years away by searches like SETI@home, except for three big caveats:

a) The Arecibo transmissions are in a very tight beam (they are not omnidirectional, like TV and military radar), so they only cover a very small part of the sky at once (about a millionth of the total sky). It's is unlikely another civilization will be within one of these narrow beams.

b) The Arecibo transmitter's oldest signals left Earth about 30 years ago, so have only travelled 30 light years.

c) SETI@home is not searching the band of frequencies that the Arecibo transmitters utilize (although our older SERENDIP III program did survey one of those bands).

The evolution of complex adaptive systems proceeds through sensitivity to awareness to self-consciousness. If the organism has transcended its programs once in creating awareness, twice in creating subjective consciousness, perhaps a third movement toward objectivity lies in abandoning the subject/object duality of subjective consciousness. From an evolutionary point of view, this freedom to play God exists only for the purpose of serving the mandate of life on a higher level than we may already recognize. To transcend a truth is to find a larger truth, to open to a greater, more objective reality that is binding on a higher level. We could say that the evolutionary purpose of subjective consciousness is to liberate the subject from the object. This means creating a subject that is utterly free from the dictates of the projected system of cognitive behaviors that is usually taken to be the self. The core of this self-- whether considered as the subject's experience or his cognitive behavior-- is belief or thought mistaken as reality. Before subjective consciousness, there is only the world, which is the unconscious projection of such thought and belief. In subjective consciousness, there is both world and self at odds. After subjective consciousness, there is no more distinction between world and self. Having played its role, perhaps the separate self with its imagined freedoms will ultimately be discarded as an expedient that has outlived its usefulness in the evolutionary quest for objectivity. Of course, language, reflexive consciousness and (non-material) culture is possible without a technological orientation. Again, the cetaceans may be a case in point, with their elaborate communication skills. We could think it is a person or agent pointing, but this begins to make the subject an object of thought, even a body, which it is not. Since awareness can always point to any pointer, the subject is always interior to what can be pointed to. The Arecibo telescope transmits very powerful signals when it is used as a radar system to study planets, asteroids and the ionosphere. These radar signals are powerful enough to be detected 10,000 light years away by searches like SETI@home, except for three big caveats: The Arecibo transmitter's oldest signals left Earth about 30 years ago, so have only traveled 30 light years. The Arecibo transmissions are in a very tight beam ,so they only cover a very small part of the sky at once (about a millionth of the total sky). It's is unlikely another civilization will be within one of these narrow beams. SETI@home is not searching the band of frequencies that the Arecibo transmitters utilize (although our older SERENDIP III program did survey one of those bands). Yet, if signals are to be sent across space, some means of directing electromagnetic energy seems to be implied. If a species communicated using electromagnetic signals (rather than sound), perhaps some natural means of amplification could be evolve (without externally fabricated amplification devices). Does the age of spiritual machines will be damage by the past centuries of human historical errors? or this past damage will create a new future virus undetectable by those telescope lens in which are related to a Psychological electrical impulses between the unconscious and collectives conscious of humanity history? By definition, the subject stands always on the opposite side, of the arrow (or lens) of mind, from objects. The subject is not any object of consciousness, but is consciousness itself. Not itself a thing, it is a point of view, never what is seen from that point of view.

For the same reason, whenever there is serious speculation on the existence of extraterrestrial life, we immediately talk about other intelligent life-forms. We hope some day to discover that we are not alone. The first thing that we'd be looking for in alienlife would be intelligence. We refer to ourselves as intelligent life: we know that finally, that's what we are. The crux of the matter is intelligence.To believe that consciousness is ultimately a function of the human being, that it is created by the human brain, is a very anthropocentric thought. It is like believing that the earth is the center of the universe, or that the sun moves around the earth. It is believing that the human being is what existence was built around. This paradigm-shift takes us away from the human being to an understanding of consciousness as such.

"We have to begin to view the Universe as ultimately constituted not of matter and energy, but of pure information!" - Michael Talbot

2004-02-07

Bill LeBoeuf

"I heard a cute thing about Life recently (I know you will agree) : you best have some fun in life cause noone is getting out of it alive".

" Aye Capt. Kirk please please beam me back up ...... "

Scotty

Having read several replies about life & its origins

one finds it all both funny and amusing. To think that

mere mortals can figure this thing out. To hell you say,

or not.

{ "Since her return from her stay on the moon, she listens

like Spring & she talks like June ..... " } Drops Of

Jupiter

Ok, I digress but I like that song.

We are not meant to understand the origin(s) or meaning

of life. Our creator has given us all the necessary

information we need. Just read all of Saint Matthew or

Luke! Why he even gave Saint Peter the keys to the

kingdom in heaven. ( I call this the 'Good News' about

life). Our mission is simple... go out & spread the

good news.

And smile

bump

Thanks! Scottygr8 for you good sense of humor and specially for having or/and showing good manners.

And Smile

The Russian spacecraft TMA-04M is ready for launch at 0301 UTC on Wednesday from Baikonur (8:01 PM Tuesday Phoenix time).

The three men on the launch are Expedition 31/32 Flight Engineer Joe Acaba,from Puerto Rico and cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, a veteran space flyer dating back to the Mir Space Station and Sergey Revin, a rookie. You can follow Joe Acaba on his blog. The Arecibo transmitter’s oldest signals left Earth about 30 years ago, so have only travelled 30 light years.

Currently, American Astronaut Don Pettit, Dutch Astronaut Andre Kuipers and Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko (ISS Expedition 31) are aboard the space station. Once they depart in early July, Acaba, Padalka and Revin will be joined by Astronaut Suni Williams, Japanese Astronaut Aki Hoshide and Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (ISS Expedition 32) aboard Soyuz TMA-05M. In honor to Seti Not itself a thing, it is a point of view, never what is seen from that point of view.

I assert that intelligence transcends itself all the time and that the rate of that transcendence is directly proportional to the rate of expnasion of the universe; both of which may appear to be accelerate, but compared to what?
More images can be found at the S. P. Korolev web site.

Muchas Gracias for the SPACE!!.