Joshua Swamidass - Philosophy of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence

What could life be as we don’t know it? Three transitions. Non-life to life. Life to intelligent life. Intelligent life to technological civilization. Fermi’s Paradox: with at least 10^22 planets in the universe, the evidence for alien life is zero.

S. Joshua Swamidass is a computational biologist, physician, academic, and author. He is an associate professor of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine, and a Faculty Lead of Translational Bioinformatics in the Institute for Informatics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[mickeybrumfield]

One thing that we seem to overlook and that we know is that on this particular planet, life doesn't just exist. It thrives and is everywhere. You can look in every nook and cranny on this planet and find life. When you have in mind just how robust life is on this planet and then think how many planets there must be out there, it seems unreal that this would be the only place life should exist. Something we should keep in mind humans have always thought of themselves as special from a historical perspective. It is somewhat natural for humans to think they are the only life or the only intelligent life. It is very human and should be anticipated.

[SandipChitale]

As Octopi came about naturally and they take steps to avoid danger and preserve their own lives, we should assume more likely than not that Octopi are conscious - by which I mean "self" conscious, because by definition Octopus tries to preserve it"self". And most people think that self-awareness is one of the - and potentially the most important - aspect of consciousness - over other aspects like sensing sensory inputs.

[jamesruscheinski]

does life on earth starting soon after solar system formed indicate that sun / star plays a large role in starting life?

[SandipChitale]

The possibility of life elsewhere in the universe is not willy-nilly idea, but is based on the assumption that the laws of physics (planet formation around stars) and laws of chemistry (especially carbon chemistry) are same through out the universe. And this fact of universality of laws of physics and chemistry bears out to the extent we can observe, In addition to that there is additional factor of elapsed time and the stability of the contextual environment is necessary for something like life to come about. Sure, for basic life that time is relatively shorter (still very long), and for intelligent life it is way more longer than that. Remember, for complexity to emerge, via a natural process of evolution, to the level that can produce structures which have human like intelligence, based on what we know on the Earth are very very long in the range of 3 billion years (give and take). But we also know that the universe is unimaginably big. SO if there is a non-zero reason to think that life will form where the conditions are right, it does not matter how that small probability is. Richard Dawkins calls the life being spread out at vast distances - Intergalactic Polynesia. But this also does not mean that life must be there only at distances that one life cannot detect other life because of the distance. It is just a matter of chance. We could have been lucky to find life with our current technology in a relatively nearby system. But then again by chance we may have not been lucky.

[percentSNAFU]

Religion does not necessarily prohibit yhe existence of extraterrestrial life, nor would the existence of extraterrestrial life necessarily prove religion to be false. I don't believe they are mutually exclusive concepts. My thought is that if God does exist, and God made everything, and there is a purpose to it all, then what would be the purpose of a gigantic lifeless universe except for one small speck?

[jackwt]

If we look into real history - humans and dogs and bobcats (who gave birth to cats) were born at the same time from hippos, 5, 500 years ago. Do humans consider dogs and cats to be intelligent? Probably not. But the nervous systems of dogs and cats match very well with those of humans. -- Isn't that an important topic in neuroscience?🦍🐕🐈🧿🧔‍♀🐺🐯

[ashwinwriter]

I simply don't understand why there is anything at all in the first place? Why there is space? Why everything exists in space? And It exists, is only verifiable by having conciusness. If this conciusness is taken away, nothing exists. However, someone else who has conciusness continues to see this cosmos . Why is it like that? So what exists in real, this whole cosmos or is it created through conciusness?

[jamesruscheinski]

is there something about human being more readily brings about awareness of consciousness?

[Bill..N]

Very good interview. .Here are a few opinions..An octopus is conscious since consciousness is ONLY an awareness of the environment.. Abiogenesis accounts for the origination of life very well.. Life will be EVERYWHERE in the universe where stable habitable environments exist but virtually ALL of it should be microbial..Peace.

[willrose]

@1:05 Sumerians? The pantheon? Myths?

[MS-odje]

You really got swamidass? What to tempt me to say something about the Mandelbrot set?
Life is a cobweb plot staircase feature ( Hall effects) so improbable as to be impossible… but it had to be set from the beginning.
But there I’ve said too much.

[FumbleFinger]

Even if we knew the exact conditions necessary for the spontaneous appearance of "living, capable of evolution" self-replicators and could replicate them in thousands of research labs running decades-long experiments, we wouldn't come close to the number of times those circumstances actually arose on the early Earth. Different versions of life could have arisen millions of times, with only one type (based on DNA as we now know it) surviving to the present day. New types of life could be arising *somewhere* on the planet every day, but rapidly being consumed / outcompeted by the well-established dominant forms.

[michaelhall]

We see the same processes duplicated everywhere in the universe, regardless of where we look. Assuming that the origins of life are entirely natural, what other natural process is so rare that it could happen only in one place in the universe and nowhere else? The odds of that, ironically, seem vanishingly small.

[streamofconsciousness]

There is a over abundance of Consciousness without intelligence right here on Earth.
I agree, if life started intelligence is the next step and all that lifeform is working towards. Intelligence makes you a better Hunter.

[courtlaw]

Would be funny, sad, and amazing if we discover that off world aliens are just Humans and we were the idiots that got stranded here. Also we could have been put here on purpose.

[rc]

octopuses the same as all multicellular life shares the sàme differences in genetic intelligence and behavioral intelligence... the jumps from non-intelligence to other intelligence levels is indeed very enigmatic 🤔

[thomasridley]

You can't hold that the universe was designed for the emergence of advanced intelligence and consciousness. And still believe we are alone at the same time.
Life will develop anywhere its possible. And our existence proves that it is possible.

[wmarema]

Love these conversations, but it is kind of funny when you take a step back and realize if you had to sum this up in three words, it'd be, "yeah, not sure."

[jamesruscheinski]

would a planet like earth more likely develop intelligence?

[ameralbadry]

Great distances, billions of stars and planets and billions of years, it would be stupid to assume we are alone! We will disappear after thousands of years and the cycle goes on and on