Scientists are now seriously asking if humans were seeded by aliens — RogueAI

The article doesn’t say anything about humans being seeded by aliens. It says that some of the components for life might have been transported to earth on meteorites or comets.

No.
:up:

guided evolution also be taken seriously — RogueAI

Should theistic evolution be taken seriously because life could move from planet to planet within a solar system by accident?

Just because life could be seeded doesn't explain abiogensis, or whether it requires or does not require a supernatural explanation.

You're right. This is probably the sorriest thread I ever started here.

This is probably the sorriest thread I ever started here. — RogueAI

Here's to many more. :grin:

(also, you can request a Mod to move it to the Lounge, if you'd like. I mean, the article literally does mention aliens in the link so, your beguilement does not rest solely on your shoulders alone FWIW...)

Well, I was rushing to get my kids back from recess and made some clearly wrong assumptions.

You're right. This is probably the sorriest thread I ever started here. — RogueAI

Congratulations.

Let's say you are the alien/god who can seed life but you don't get to guide the process in such a way to produce something specific relative to you, like pugs, purple carrots, cloth wearing apes who can talk to each other and build an internet.

There is a big red button that every time you press it seeds life on some viable planet in the universe, even if the chemical substrate is vastly different. What reasons might you give for why you ought to or ought not to press the button? Let's say the way in which life is seeded on these planets is in the way life would've naturally started there in the first place, so you aren't imposing an overarching goal much, except for the process of natural selection.

Compare this kind of non-guided seeding of life to a scenario of guided seeding, such that the panspermia seed reproduces our particular kind of life elsewhere (humans with a carefully chosen set of symbiotic organisms, like purple carrots, potatoes and dogs). Is the imposition of this kind of specific life in new areas of the universe any more morally questionable than the impositions of any kind of life anywhere?

If there is plenty of space and resources out there, seemingly empty, and our type life cannot escape the inevitable transformation at the hands of an evolutionary process, whether it incorporates goals or no goals, does it matter whether we seed life or not?

Don't answer if you don't care to.

abiogenesis is poorly understood for as to how life can come from non life I think the naturalistic and supernatural explanation would be equally valid although I prefer the theistic or supernatural explanation because even simple life like plants utilise and exhibit extremely intelligent design in being able to sustain and reproduce themselves which would imply a pre existing intelligence.

naturalistic and supernatural explanation would be equally valid — kindred

Supernatural explanations are plural (every culture has its own gods and mythologies). The gods/Gods resemble projected variations of ourselves or other creatures, metaphorical amalgamations pulled from nature, beings with supreme agency yet still limited in power over what happens in the natural world. They don't appear to us except as extensions/combinations of entities entirely natural.

We often can't help our anthropomorphisms and our metaphorcial flights of fancy. They are helpful because they comfort and amuse us.

Sure I know that different cultures and epochs have different conceptions of God and the various mythologising that goes around the creation of life or creation stories. I’m a theist by nature (and former atheist) but only believe in a higher power or architect of the universe rather than follow any established religion although I agree with a few moral teachings especially the golden rule espoused by Christianity of “do unto others…”

The point I’m trying to make is that life in its various guises exhibits various levels intelligence in implementation and I therefore consider this manifestation in nature to be a sign of a higher intelligence which preceded life on earth.

This would make the alien seeding theory moot as the same explanation of how life emerged would apply to them too as to how their life emerged from abiogenesis. I guess you could apply this to God too … in terms of asking what created him/it/she.

Although I prefer to believe that god has always been and is vastly different to created life forms.

Is the imposition of this kind of specific life in new areas of the universe any more morally questionable than the impositions of any kind of life anywhere? — Nils Loc

That's a good question. Are we talking about imposing life on a barren planet or "overriding" the life that would have evolved on a life-bearing planet with life of our choosing?

I have a book published mid 1980’s The Intelligent Universe, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingha mentioned in the article. They made a good case for panspermia, I felt. They say there are vast clouds of proto-organic matter drifting around in the cosmos, and that when planetary conditions are right, some of it might fall to ground and begin to combine and develop. Also that viruses arrive in interstellar matter. Hence the name ‘panspermia’ - the idea of the earth as a fertile ovum and comets as interstellar sperm. I like it more than Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’.

I think the naturalistic and supernatural explanation would be equally valid ... — kindred

The latter does not explain anything in a testable – predictive – manner unlike the former which (even if only in principle) tends to be very testable. They're clearly not "equally valid" as "explanations".

["Supernatual explanations"] are helpful because they comfort and amuse us. — Nils Loc

:up: Yep, like placebos.

I like it more than Darwin’s ‘warm little pond’. — Wayfarer

The lack of enchantment is these three words could well be a turn off; perhaps he should have called it a prebiotic aqueous niche with sustained thermal input.

:smirk:

Are we talking about imposing life on a barren planet or "overriding" the life that would have evolved on a life-bearing planet with life of our choosing? — RogueAI

For the purpose of the hypothetical, let's say no direct overriding. We seed only lifeless planets that could maintain life, with the kind of early life it would naturally develop if it could. Problem here is the degree to which initiating this kind life could be successful in time. Many seeding attempts would realistically fail as a matter of chance, through many levels of the Great Filter idea. So there is no telling how effective pressing the button really would be anyway in terms of stages of evolution. Even if we got global levels of bacteria, is evolving complexity inevitable if it doesn't go extinct for 5 billion years?

Or you can run with any version of guided panspermia. Ought we send civilizational seeds to other worlds that grow version of ourselves as we are at the time? Is this any worse than jump-starting in situ natural selection on a planet by magic. I guess the technological process of the seeding technology could be its own form of life (autonomous robots growing humans).

Think my sci fi hypothetical collapsed... The only reason we don't want to contaminate other planets in our solar system is because we want to find evidence for how common independent events of abiogenesis might be in the universe.

Although I prefer to believe that god has always been and is vastly different to created life forms. — kindred

We can have all/any of the gods though in any way we want them but they remain disembodied abstractions.

I'm partial to the idea of achieving some kind of mystical union with the universe, however ridiculous that sounds. I need a placebo. Maybe it is just the hope for existential peace, achieving greater ease in the world. I think the true function of kinds of religious life (discipline) helps us to get to a better way of being in the world.

Will the civilizational seed contain one's choice of religion?

I don't see why it would be immoral unless one had views similar to antinatilism.

I don't see why it would be immoral unless one had views similar to antinatilism. — RogueAI

Let's give you the seat of that monotheistic god, architect of the universe, at his control panel. To seed the universe with extra life, trillions upon trillions of new organisms, some will evolve the ability to feel pain. Add to this the great resource competition of organisms eating other organisms, every momentary pleasure/satisfaction comes at another's pain and annihilation. Further still some worlds gain intelligent species, socially complex agents, and the capacity of suffering grows in proportion to their complex needs.

Is a universe that filled/seeded with life, vastly more events of suffering, any more or less preferable than a universe that is by comparison empty? Would it matter what the internal state of god/alien was (motivated by purely selfish pleasure/amusement) in guiding its decision to have more life in the universe?

Are these questions ridiculous?

No, they're not ridiculous.

"Scientists are now seriously asking if humans were seeded by aliens. Here's why" — RogueAI

I don't care whether life on earth was seeded or just happened in a warm little puddle. In either case, life is here, as likely or unlikely as that may be in the universe. Most likely there is life elsewhere as well, perhaps very different than the life in which we are participants. Whether we are the only life in the universe, or whether the universe is crawling with life--either way is amazing.

should guided evolution also be taken seriously — RogueAI

I reject intelligent design and guided evolution because, at least in the case of humans, we seem to have various problems that the ever-so-wise agents of intelligent design and guided evolution should have been able to avoid. (Or the intelligent designers and evolutionary guides were sons of bitches who knew damn well they were putting bad code in the Big Plan.)

Also, @RogueAI this isn't a sorry, sorrier, or sorriest thread.

Or the intelligent designers and evolutionary guides were sons of bitches who knew damn well they were putting bad code in the Big Plan. — BC

:up:

Though, to take the idea of panspermia somewhat more seriously...

Suppose humanity, 1000 years from now, were to embark on a project to seed biologically engineered life around other stars. It seems reasonable to think that any such seeding would amount to some sort of single celled organisms being fired into other star systems. I don't think such future biological engineers could be responsible for multicellular life that resulted. It would be too much of a crap shoot.

So individual human lives being a crap shoot doesn't seem incompatible with panspermia.

So individual human lives being a crap shoot doesn't seem incompatible with panspermia. — wonderer1

Of course not. Seriously:

One of humankind's problems with seeding life on other planets is that our lives, our civilizations, are too short to know how such an experiment turned out and to improve on our methods. Let's say that we have already (accidentally) seeded Mars with some bacteria. It might well be at least 10,000 or 50,000 years--who knows--before the innoculation could have achieved visible success. 1000 years is a very, very long time for us; 10,000,100,000, or 1,000,000 years is too long for us to pay attention to something so slow, even if we still exist for a million years more. (Now, if seeding bacteria turned Mars green in 50 years, that we would probably notice.)

Presumably an intelligent designer of planetary life would have the longevity to monitor results over the very long term.

More likely, panspermia was/is/would be an unguided process without intelligent agents.

I do not know how far ejecta from a planet in our solar system can travel. We know rocks from Mars are on earth, and maybe visa versa. Farther out in the solar orbits? I have not the faintest idea. I don't know how likely it is that ejecta from another solar system planet could travel to even a close by solar system and bear intact biological material.

I don't think life on earth (and elsewhere) required a primer, like a batch of organic chemicals. It seems like earth had the wherewithal to generate basic amino acids, for instance. All the elements (O, FE, N, etc.) which could be used were here. Given time, given a reasonably rich soupy environment, life will develop. It might have happened more than once (maybe many times) right here. It also might have failed to achieve a toe-hold (no toes yet) in the existing environment, and that also might have happened more than once.

Having achieved a cell of some sort containing biological functions, life could take off in any direction and proceed forward as long as the environment was reasonably stable and rich enough. The last time I looked at drawings based on Precambrian fossils was too long ago to say anything about it, but it seems like "weirdness" was a feature of earlier life forms, compared to later life forms. Weirdness should be expected.

The initiation of life processes was a crap-shoot, and organisms have been rolling the dice ever since.

The "guided" version of any evolutionary process is always susceptible to returning to the "unguided" version in time due to unforeseen accidents/contingencies. The great spans of time, as BC said, make these accidents/contingencies more likely to happen (inevitable).

There was a fun simulation game called Surviving Mars that came out in 2018. It's a resource management game which is a race against time to build and maintain a colony on Mars (kind of like Starcraft, SimCity) Technology is constantly breaking down and requires maintenance. All your scout/extraction vehicles are running out of fuel. There are trade-offs to each energy production type (like having to clean dust off solar panels). You have to reach a kind of technological threshold for resource abundance before you run out of everything you need to maintain the colony but so much chance is involved that any minor problem can snowball to catastrophe.

Eventually if you get rich enough you can get fusion generators and a space elevator and this turns the game into a cakewalk, as it frees your from the limitations of extracting what you need from the surface of Mars. But just input enough time and realistically, with the complexity of a real Mars, you're likely to fail. Any boostrapping remote/self-automated technology is going to appear like a form of life in itself.

Consider the scenario of facing a Chicxulub level impact (%70 of life wiped out) event today. Could we manage to prevent that? Just move backwards 100 years from now and the answer to that question is an obvious no. The Wright bros are just flying their glider then bam!, Chicxulub II ( the return of the great death).

Managing our own evolution, as conserving our level complexity as an ecologically embedded species, requires us to have all sorts of redundancies in place. Ideally, we need another comfy planet, or new bodies/adaptations to sustain this project in inhospitable environs.

"Scientists are now seriously asking if humans were seeded by aliens. Here's why"
https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/humans-seeded-aliens-panspermia — RogueAI

it's obviously possible, but this doesn't seem like the most proposing hypothesis to pursue. If I follow this correctly, they've merely observed the presence of amino acids in asteroids - the same sort of thing that Urey-Miller showed to be feasible in the 1950s, and more recently has been shown to be prone to occur due to natural electrostatic action in water (see this).


It seems to me more attention to panspermia would be justified only if MORE complex prebiotic chemicals is found in extra-terrestrial environments.

If the article is correct, should guided evolution also be taken seriously?

I see no logical relation between the two. What connection are you making?