i know you don't want this here but it is relevant.


according to the bible the home of the spirit is the heart not the brain. what if the spirit is where the actual intelligence is. this would make the brain nothing more than a computer controlling the body and connecting the spirit to the world.


OK you can attack me for bringing it up

where does a computer get its intelligence. the motherboard or the person using it. the hard drive is just storage.


so if the spirit is the user of the body. that would make the brain the motherboard and the hard drive.


the motherboard controls the auto response of the computer. whether it is the monitor or the sound board. the program tells the motherboard how to handle my input. such as chatting or playing a game. but all the computer really does is math.

Usually motherboards need a little bit of a 'processor' to work.

I would compare the motherboard to being the central nervous system.
The processor ram and virtual memory combine to create thought.
The Hard drive is memory.

fair enough, i should have read the bet more carefully. you may indeed be right about a dedicated processor chip - i was still thinking more in terms of 'biological circuitry'. with regard to the computer version of a brain, i think that's a tough bet because 1) we can't, not now at least, built a fly brain chip the size of a fly brain, 2) we don't clearly understand enough of any brain's functioning to simulate anything but end results (the full details of a brain's computational process still aren't fully worked out) and 3) computers and brains don't work the same way. with better understanding of how the brain works, i think we could make a computer program that simulated all the same process. but with current, or even near-future, computer technology, i think such a mechanical brain would be much bigger than a natural one. i'm not saying this because i think it argues against your point, just to keep the convo going.

the trouble is right now we'd need to use binary computation to simulate processes that don't occur in binary--at least, to simulate a brain perfectly. to re-create the same effects a brain produces might be better achieved by different means altogether. same as with DNA and computers, anaologies between brains and computers only work up to a point.

i am beginning to think you both are mistaken power source for operating.

the brain is powered by chemicals. but the cells communicate with electric.

the computer is powered by electric. but the different parts communicate with electric.

I think too little is known about the brain to really say anything for certian. When I was thnking about it today, I noticed something about the Brain/Size theroy.

I think it can only apply to similar animals. You see, a fly's and and an Elephant's brains might not be even comparable even in ther terms of organization and functionality. Dytopic brought up a good point with his Eye examples. The needs of the organisms would dictate how its brain would function. For example, most insects can't hear, so that section of the brain wouldn't even exist in an insect.

The organisms are so dissimilar in anaotmy, etc, it would stand that their neurological systems would be totally different. The insect brain is just a simple set of ganglia (two Relay points, essentially). To compare it to a computer, were essentially talking about a set of repeaters (or hubs) that are linked together with some basic programming.

I think for this thoery to work, it would require a comparison between similar species. That would remove as many variables as possible. The theory ought to run like this: The Size/Weight ratio between two similarly sized species would allows us to determine which species may be more intelligent. By comparing similar sized organims from a similar class (or even as narrow as genus), I think you'd have a more accurate comparison and proper application of the theory. Hence extreme differences in body size, brain organization, organism ability, and senses would ne negated, allowing for a better comparison.

I doubt that very much. Try to think along the lines as if you are the person trying to build the software and hardware to replicate an insect, then come back and have another look at your above statement.



That is a fair remark. I was also thinking of it in terms of the percentage of recources each animal diverts to its brain. So an animal that has a larger brain for it's size, means that it's evolutionary path has led it to put more value on intelligence.

Oh you must mean kooks like the CIA or KGB,, They have the recources, and the need!



Now i am reminded of a previous thread where near death experiences were covered.

The near death experience in question was somone who remembered looking down on themselves in the operating theatre.

The questions i raised were as follows;

How does a spirit store memory to be uploaded to the brain when they come back to life? Or does the spirit remain connected somehow and transmits everything it sees directly into the unconscious mind to be remembered upon awakening?

Since people with alzimers and other brain problems forget things, I can only assume their spirit is not taking over the job of managing memories. Which begs the question as to weather or not we will remember our lives once we die and become a spirit?

Stories of people in the spirit realm seem to reflect that the person is pretty much the same person they are in life and therefore having the same level of intelligence in the spirit even though they do not have their brain with them!

denyasis, i've really enjoyed some of your recent posts on colonizing planets. i haven't given myself time to sit down and articulate a whole lot, until tonight. in summary you've been asking some of the same questions and pointing out some of the same things i have on my own. i'm still not even sure how to start...

i guess i'll start with my most basic dichotomy: there's a huge difference in terms when applied to human settlements in the same star system vs. separate star systems. a "colony" (of Earth) on Mars wouldn't necessarily be self-sufficient, thought of as independant, or even necessarily be home to a large number of people.

a colony in another star system is by necessity more like the seed of a new human civilization. it cannot be dependant on the mother civilization except with FTL travel, considering the physical difficulties of which, i'll ignore. if not a huge population when founded, they'd at least need a pretty large genetic sample, to keep from too strong a bottleneck effect and increase the chances of genetic success on a new world without much support.

i'll return to getting exosolar colonization later; for now i want to keep on track with intrasolar colonization. i think given enough time for technological development, we could even terraform a planet like venus. but i don't think we will; i think it'll almost invariably be more economically viable to build habitation complexes in space. one planet can only hold so many people, and over a long enough period of time, even the Earth's environment will change sufficiently that we'll have some trouble living here in our current anatomical state.

i think the majority of people in the future will not live on a planet at all. planets and other celestial bodies will still be useful places to aquire resources. i can almost imagine something like Cowboy Bebop. well, maybe that plus Brave New World.

but i think the real challenge will be creating sustainable Earth-like conditions on a large space station. nature exists in a tight balance. there are myriad micro-organisms that play a vital role in an ecosystem, and we don't really know much about their breadth and inter-relationship with each other and the more human-scale organic environment. until we learn a lot more about that, we're going to have some trouble trying to adapt any environment to suit our needs. that isn't to say we can't live without doing it. plants can be supported and cultivated on totally artificial conditions, but it's energy-intensive, and some species aren't as well-suited for it. that, however, relies on seeds and seedlings from Earth: AFAIK we haven't been able to come up with a consistently effective method to sexually reproduce all plants: be we can clone just about any of them, it just takes the right hormones (plants are a wonderful kingdom in that respect). i'd still like to work out more of the details of this.

and this isn't to say i think people won't continue to live on Earth for a very long time; but i think in time, there will come a point when conditions are such that we're mostly living in (mostly) self-contained hab complexes. i think environmental change is the exclusive reason: i think in time, we might want to 'let go' of the Earth we know and let it evolve, for lack of a better word. i think if molecular biology really takes off, one of the things we're going to want is lots of specimen of new and interesting life, to expore the possibility of new and beneficial organic compounds. and that's going to require reducing our ecological 'footprint' on the planet, so to speak - that, and the inevitability that the environment will change for one reason or another (many times if we manage not to go extinct). in that sense, given enough time even Earth will become "just another planet."

and it's for that very same reason i think we'll eventually be interested in "organiforming" planets. i don't say terraform because i'm not necessarily talking about making them Earth-like. and this transitions nicely into the exosolar aspect of my thoughts.

the near-exclusive form of interaction between human stellar civilizations will be information (again, presuming no FTL), both scientific (especially molecular-biological/genetic by measure of volume) and cultural. but the time for this stage to mature would be millenia - as long as recorded history so far a few times over. for one, i'm recalling my previous descriptions of why i think it'd take a certain critical mass of conditions before colonies outside our home solar system became and economically and culturally viable option: i think population growth will be one of the major factors, which is why i envisions absoluately massive colony ships, capable of carrying billions to a new home, and thus allowing larger family sizes and less cramped living quarters for the home system - i'd imagine lots of great PR for this, and really in my first plot i'm imagining it accomplished by a private business. a lot of the reasons i imagined the massive colony ships i have relates to this kind of explanation.

my understanding of how life came to be on earth is admittedly based on evolution, and i'll get that out of the way; make of it what you will, and i'll do what i can not to offend. my understanding is that the first precursors to genes, and thus life, were simple organic compounds thought to be seeded into the planet, along with water, by comets. as it turns out, ISM isn't just dust and gases; there's also fairly complicated organic compounds more than rarity (speaking relatively of course - we're talking about a substance of such low density it's practically absolute vacuum for any sake above the quantum phsyical).

at any rate, it stands to reason that many planets, by these conditions, have been exposed to the same precursors. but that doesn't help us to understand very much at all about the likelihood of finding life elsewhere - and in that, i'm only referring to genetic. i don't think there's a priori reason to suspect that "life" couldn't exist in many other media, so to speak. electronic life is an obvious possibility to point out - artificially it doesn't seem too far off (by a secular philosophy anyway - others may of course have a more metaphysical definition of life, and i welcome their contributions).

i think wherever conditions occur that a qualitative jump in phsyics-level interaction goes from reaction to reiteration, you've got the potential for what could be considered life. by 'reaction to reiteration' i mean that i think, yes, life can be described in purely physical laws in the same way unliving phenomena can, but it's vastly more complex, which is why i called it a qualitiative jump (i.e., a change in the qualities of the phenomenon). i think that complexity is best summed up by the term reiteration - which is a mathematical (and computational) term. but when you get down to it, psychology is rapidly becoming biology, which has been mostly chemistry since the 60s, which is pretty much a distillation of physics in modern form, and phsyics when total and perfect is really just math. these sciences share what can be called consilience: the same basic sets of principals, but different levels, styles and forms of practical application and inquiry.

so any reiterative system could be described as living, but i'm sure there are other criteria that can and should apply. but it's my explanation for how i think life could exist in other places in totally different ways that our own, but at the same time there's reason for me to believe genetic life might not be too uncommon. but even within the bounds of life existing in the genetic medium we know on Earth, i think there's an incredible level of possibility beyond what we have observed on Earth.

do i think it'll be common? i haven't a clue. do i think we'd destroy it? not if we understood it to be alive, and then the only gaurantee is for however long it takes to completely analyze the creature and determine if we can use it in some way. past that, it's a matter of culture and ethics how long and if we'll place nice with next door's mother nature. unless of course the alien life presents and obvious, demonstrated threat; then all bets are off.

but intelligence as we know it is another question. and if nothing else, the lack of (all but our own) intelligable radio noise in the universe is pretty damn conspicuous.

ok i think we have established the two reasons to colonize.


1 to get rich.

2 because you don't like what is going on at home.


so the questions become


1 how can we become rich by moving to the moon?


2 is there anything going on here that you don't like enough to move away?



as for if we can colonize the moon. yes according to NASA all you need is water and or a shovel. there seems to be lots of water in the rocks you just have distill it out. as for where to live. the cheapist place is in a cave. natural, dug or built.

did you buy a ticket to get there.


we have a special on tickets this month only 150 million each.

I've always wondered about radically different forms of life, with silicon or nitrogen based "genetic" structures. However, while I'm not saying they don't exist, the odds of us finding them would be incredibly low, if only because we simply have no clue to how it could possibly work; we wouldn't know what to look for.



I'll take that a step further: I think that alien life would actually be very similar to Earth life.

You mentioned how it is likely that all planets are exposed to the same "precursors", from which DNA (or whatever came first; we aren't sure yet are we?) is made. Then, this DNA works its way up through to single celled organisms, then multi-celled, etc. However, while sci-fi stories tell us of all sorts of aliens, like great tentacle beasts or twenty headed insects, how practical are these designs? While on Earth we have millions upon millions of different species, as a whole, common themes are prevalent, because those themes work. I will cite the example of bilateral symmetry. Bilateral symmetry means a creature has two sides, which are mirror images of one another. Humans are bilaterally symmetrical (our left looks the same as our right). In fact, almost every species exhibits this trend (some exceptions being primitive organisms like starfish, which are radially symmetrical). Why is this? Because, a creature that has nearly identical halves requires only half the genetic information. Less genes, less potential screw ups in gene replication. The point of all this is that, while many forms of life are possible, we have to consider the competitive environment that goes hand in hand with evolution. Bilateral symmetry is such a huge advantage, and this is evidenced by life on Earth. The same can be said for other general forms, like quadrupedalism in large animals. So yeah, we might find violently purple feathered cows, but I think we will still see similarities in basic shape amongst alien life.



LOL!

Oh, in case you guys were wondering, I have been keeping track with the thread, I just didn't feel I had anything worthy to contribute.

That, and I've been playing a lot of Halo 3.