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We keep discovering life on Earth


Genady

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Another large community has been discovered in an unsuspected location:

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Deep beneath the ice covering the central Arctic Ocean, an unlikely community thrives off of ancient relics.

Underwater cameras revealed expansive sponge gardens clustered over extinct underwater volcanoes, called seamounts, along the ocean floor.
In order to survive, these largely 300-year-old sponge communities feed off of the fossilized remains of now-extinct animals and fauna. Those creatures likely once relied on the heat and nutrients supplied by the volcanic activity several thousand years ago.

Sprawling sponge gardens found deep beneath the Arctic sea ice - CNN

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45 minutes ago, Genady said:

... and then you can publish your findings in the Nature Communications.

...doubtful that they would be interested in knowing about AI in e.g. a game-engine/simulation that has gained self-awareness..

(and it's doubtful I'd be interested in being published in any newspaper for mortals in the first place)

how do you prove that the AI has gained self-awareness?

..prove me, you gained self-awareness.. ;)

 

Edited by Sensei
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3 minutes ago, Sensei said:

...doubtful that they would be interested in knowing about AI in e.g. a game engine that has gained self-awareness..

how do you prove that the AI has gained self-awareness?

..prove me, you gained self-awareness.. ;)

 

The point is not self-awareness. The point is life.

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2 minutes ago, Genady said:

Why? Isn't it clear that these sponges are alive? We don't live by definitions in the real life :) 

..the same can be said by AI "living" inside a game-engine/simulation.. about the things AI sees around it..

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Another recent discovery:

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Deep in the ocean off the coast of Tahiti, scientists made an incredible discovery in November: acres of giant, pristine, rose-shaped corals blossoming from the sea floor in what's known as the ocean's "twilight zone."

That a coral reef so large and so beautiful had yet to be discovered emphasizes how little we still know about the world's oceans, scientists say.

 BTW, I've been in that "zone", 70+ m. Yes, there is still plenty of light there, at least in our waters here. And, it is pitch black down from there.

Rare coral reef discovered near Tahiti in ocean's 'twilight zone' - CNN

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Sea bottoms are not that boring after all...

30 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Define what is alive..

I'll try:

Anything that derives from a ribosome and can make ribosomes itself.

You can't make a ribosome? You're dead to me. ;) 

 

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46 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Define what is alive..

I suppose trying to define life is entertaining. It probably also has some value in encouraging an appreciation of the inter-relationship of metabolic cycles and replication processes in organic life, or in nested sub-routines within y'our posited AIs. But ultimately the attempt seems based on the flawed belief that life is a binary expression: things are either life, or they are not life. No in between.

The reality is surely more nuanced than that. There is a transition from non-life to life, a spectrum of the expresson of the aspects of life. Let's invest our effort in discerning the character of those aspects, rather than debating if there are enough to the right kind in place to consider the entity possessing them to be alive.

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Define what is a chair...

49 minutes ago, Genady said:

The pictures in this article are very nice, allow to identify the corals. They are mostly - or all - from the family Agariciidae. Most of the corals in this family are specifically adapted for low-light conditions, hence their flat, open, "rose-shaped" structures. Their normal depth is something like 100-300 feet, 30 - 90 m. It is incorrect to compare them to "corals" in general which mostly live at much shallower depths, like they do in the article.

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14 hours ago, Sensei said:

Poor Data..

Data.thumb.png.48089cfcd3324122586eabc1ce904ec8.png

ps. ...but is the simulated ribosome molecule OK to meet your definition.... ?

 

If this thing can make ribosomes that can make ribosomes, I guess it does. Because it derived from something that could make ribosomes that could make ribosomes. :D 

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Do we keep discovering life or life forms? I am not a native English speaker, so I am not sure if 'discovering life' is to mean discovering new separate life or new forms within the same single life (as you can see, I don't know how to even ask this question properly)?

15 hours ago, joigus said:

I'll try:

Anything that derives from a ribosome and can make ribosomes itself.

Ah, but you must be aware that this is a limiting definition - If you strictly use it, you might not detect extra-terrestrial life even if it slaps you in the face.

I don't know how to define life, but always felt the best way would have something to do with actively maintaining complexity within less complex environment (that is, in spite of statistical mechanics that works against life).

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42 minutes ago, Genady said:

In the case described in the OP, it's neither discovering life, not discovering a new life form. It's a new ecosystem.

You're right. Thank you for reminding us.

The truth is these sponges could be enormously interesting in regards to appearance of life. Sponges are very primitive. They were there before the Cambrian explosion and Ediacara... And guess what, just before the Ediacara there was Snow Ball Earth. All life was presumably under the ice.

Now these sponges are Arctic... Coincidence?

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8 minutes ago, joigus said:

And guess what, just before the Ediacara there was Snow Ball Earth. All life was presumably under the ice.

Now these sponges are Arctic... Coincidence?

Perhaps, not. There are plenty of life forms in the deep ocean, where there is constant temperature, constant darkness, and not much mixing with the surface water. Why would they care about the surface being covered or not with ice? They might depend on a dead organic matter that falls down from above. Ice on the surface would stop that. The organisms that don't depend on this DOM would continue like nothing happened. The other would be of two kinds. Many would die. The others could switch from the DOM falling from above to the DOM created by the ones that died. Like these sponges.

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9 hours ago, Danijel Gorupec said:

Do we keep discovering life or life forms? I am not a native English speaker, so I am not sure if 'discovering life' is to mean discovering new separate life or new forms within the same single life (as you can see, I don't know how to even ask this question properly)?

Ah, but you must be aware that this is a limiting definition - If you strictly use it, you might not detect extra-terrestrial life even if it slaps you in the face.

I don't know how to define life, but always felt the best way would have something to do with actively maintaining complexity within less complex environment (that is, in spite of statistical mechanics that works against life).

But Danijel, aren't all definitions limiting?

By definition?

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