aman

I always thought that for something to be alive it must respirate, or consume and excrete. A virus only replicates but it is organic. I don't think it is life. Since our mind can go where no body has gone before, I hope you'll indulge me. A planet has semi-liquid pools of silicon and is bombarded for millions of years by metal rich meteorites. Like our amino acid pools the silicon and metal evolve clumps of transistors over eons. Using magnetic fields they finally become mobile and then move to land for the previously unreachable metal deposits. Under stresses they evolve to sentience. They travel off planet and carry large magnetic field generators to produce energy for them to consume and their toilet is a ground point. Would they be alive? Isn't that what we are trying to create with AI? Would they be brothers? We better be careful. Just aman.

If we look at an electronic device with memory and computational abilities, sensory and motor abilities, and we add recognition and cognative abilities by parallel processing beyond our abilities, would it be life. It consumes electricty end excretes it to ground circuits. It is programmed to survive and reproduce itself. What do we need to prove it is alive and what also to prove it is sentient? If you put it in front of a mirror and it discovered on its own that the imaga was itself, is that enough? Just aman

The interfaces we are developing will only have the abilities to enhance sensory reception or enhance motor abilities. I am all for this and God bless the scientists working for the good of mankind. As far as computing or memory or enhancing cognative thinking I think we are just too complicated for that. Just my opinion but I think our sentience is something that is larger then the sum of our brains parts. I don't think that electronics will ever do anything other than damage our cognative selves if we try to enhance our decision making abilities. Concerning ideas about animals and bugs. I read in my last PS magazine that scientists developed a new molecular pump. When this long molecule is hit by a certain wavelength of light it crumples, pulling its attached ends closer and squeezing the pump. Turn the light off and the molecule relaxes, refilling the pump. Could be soon we might have artificial kidneys or livers or glands. My suggestion for use of this pump is to make artificial flying insects. They could use the nanoparts to make wings flap since the power source would be external. Let the animals just be animals. Just aman

Also a TV screens phosphorus coating is only hit by a small beam running top to bottom horizontaly sixty times a second to refresh the glow so at any one point in time only one pixel is being illuminated. On a plasma screen the whole screen is illuminated constantly through each 1/60 of a second cycle. Just aman

Seeing a ghost is subjective. To explain it with math or physics is going to be difficult. Since we can explain just about everything in our existance except consciousness then I would imagine that it is where the key is. How can we observe our own existence. Even blind and deaf people can learn to see the universe inside our heads and reach out to the stars. I feel consciousness is not confined to the body and can appear to other minds even after the body is gone. Once you attain sentience, you are eternal. Its a lot more complicated than this but I like to keep it short and not ramble. Thanks for posting the question, Just aman

I would like to see some references qouted or even that you saw some of this information on PBS. Maybe some statistics in People magazine. Where do you get your conclusions from. If it's from your head you should start with "I imagine" or "maybe" or "I think". That might be a start. Just food for thought. It would probably rile a lot less feathers. Just aman

If you consider the idea of the big bang particle with all of its energy weaving the hologram of existance, visiting each point of space over and over to make the relative existance that appears to us. Then it must visit larger mass areas more often and empty space areas least. It decelerates and spins to make a virtual quark and accelerates and travels to make one on the other side of the universe. Criss crossing and by average time in any space the areas most visited would seem to have the most mass. The decelerations we perceive as gravity. The speeds could be near infinite. Inertia could be transformed into spin as the particle slows or back again to accelerate and if it could travel the universe over and over changing incrementally, we would perceive substance and gravity and the other forces around us. Because there might be some substance to sentience that lets us observe the the effect that makes us, I think this is an arguable idea. Just for thought. Just aman

But we still don't have a camera that can photograph an electron dropping out of its excited shell and releasing a photon of light until the photon reaches the camera. Thats quite a big chunk of microcosom time. We can touch it with math. We can explain it with quarks but we can never physically know it. We can't get past this barrier of very small slices of time into the microcosom. Except with imagination first and the math will follow. There's a lot going on beyond the universe we know. Just aman

since m=E/C2, it also amounts to an increadibly fast moving amount of energy being at all points in the universe for very very short slices of time, each beyond our limits to sense. Example: I put a scale in the middle of a room. I point a regular camera at it. If I take a picture as a bullet flies through the room across the top of the scale, the camera and scale sense nothing. If I stop the bullet above the scale for a second and then accelerate it again, you will see the bullet and also be able to weigh it for only that instant. Another example could be 5000 fifty cal. machine guns in a circle pointed at one central point. If they all fired at a synchronized interval so there was always a bullet leaving the central point as another entered, we as observers would see a stationary platter of lead floating in the center. Just more for thought. Just aman

I am interested in the life forms around the black smokers deep in the sea. One aspect of intelligence you did not consider is the speed of the nervous system. Our nerve impulses travel about 400ft/sec. Do these sulfer shrimp and crabs have faster or slower sensing and processing power. Would their biology ever evolve to our sentience in a properly stressful enviroment over time? Would they think faster or slower? Also our brains store memory and process logic. We have found so many ways in nature to store memory and build logic gates. Most of them inorganic. I think our understanding of these things will make it possible to comunicate with other life forms because we know how transistors work and we know many ways data can be stored which will help show us how they think. If they are a silicon based life form they should be able to be way faster and higher IQ'd than us. Or if its defective silicon maybe equal to us. Just for thought, a pool of silicon, on a planet with iron meteorites pounding its surface and an intense planetary magnetic field. Transistors might form and be magnetically attracted to build circuits and from there follow an evolutionary path. It might finally manipulate magnetic fields for locomotion Just for thought It will depend from which materials the lifeform evolves, as to what degree of intelligence it can attain. And one last question. What form of transmissions could we expect from a silicon based life form. Would they be modulated on the level of quartz crystal vibrations. Just aman

The universe seems to be structured to allow life and sentience to evolve like in a zoos nursery. Our life is that we have memory storage and logic gates that operate at incredible speed and synchronicity. We can duplicate these processes with so many materials like silicon, molecules, electrons and quantum effects. We don't need to change an enviroment to evolve. It helped in our case but some life forms will just have to use what they have and by stress be forced to evolve. It's a fascinating observation that free O2 is a product of earlier life but it is not the sole reason we are here. Still it is fun to breath and to think, to imagine. Just for thought. Just aman:p

I don't know a lucky person worth a diddly. Hard working and get what you earned or sometimes earn lots people have the wisdom for the power their money brings. If Bill Gates is using his money wisely, making the world better, he earned it. If he's a dick, he was lucky. Just aman

I theorize the big bang was a near infinite amount of mass and energy being injected into our universe through a near infinitley small point and that it never got any larger. Moving faster than C it travels our universe over and over in an expanding matrix to create a hologram of existance we observe. By changing its accelerations and decelerations and infinite spins it gives us, trapped in a light speed universe the appearance of mass and forces of nature. It incrementally changes its positions and spins to give us the appearance of time moving forward. It repeatedly refreshes the universe in a time and speed scale beyond our ability to touch except with imagination. Just for thought Just aman

If the aluminum exposure comes from beer cans, I can see why a persons mental abilities might retard over time. My great Grandmother died with no mental capacities and she came over on a boat from Hungary. She was only exposed to clean living on a farm and iron skillets. My own feeling is alzheimer's is biological and all the other indicators are just pollution. Evolution will just make some lucky ones handle it and others are going to be effected. Just aman

Since we are able to make logic and memory circuits out of just about any material then over infinite time I imagine anything has a possibility of gaining sentience. I think a vacuum universe gained sentience and injected mass and energy into our universe with a progam to create enviroments for sentience to evolve. I don't think were alone either. Just for thought. Just aman

We all see as an option that the big bang was an incredible amount of mass and energy being injected into our empty universe through an infinitley small point in space. I propose the point of mass never became larger but used its energy to move through the universe at C+ speed. Like a beam of energy constantly refreshing a picture on a TV screen giving us the appearence of reality The particle constantly visits every point in our expanding universe and refreshes reality for us. By using its accelerations, decelerations, and spins it can give the appearance and forces related to each iota of matter and by average time in one space it can give the appearance of mass. If mass is twice as big as other mass then the particle had to visit this space twice as many times so its forces and mass give this appearance in our reality. It changes a little each pass incrementally to give us the illusion of time. We may live in a hologram incrementaly changing being created by one single point. Because of the construction of our minds we can see it but parodoxicaly we see with our eyes the same thing that is makeing our eys at the moment. Just for thought. Just aman

We knew back in the 70"s that on a cellular level the rind of a fruit produces the carbohydrate storing cells as it expands outward making the fruit larger. Then a chemical hormone at some point tells it to stop and orders it to ripen. Can't we interupt the cycle and block the stopping hormone and with hydroponics assist supporting the extra growth? The fruits, vegetables, and grains could be supported to grow rice grains as big as a room. Just for thought. Just aman