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What is the universe doing? |
Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
|  Posted: 2009-07-13 02:20
I have a thought-process game/challenge, although there is no correct answer. This is just supposed to make you think. You will understand by reading it. I cannot really explain it any other way. Think:
Primary Rules:
1) The extreme of any Level is NOT the next Level. Next Levels are not necessarily larger in scale, nor more energetic. The next Level is simply the utilization of the previous level for a high order of being. This means matter does not become a new level by filling the universe with matter, and life does not reach a new level by filling the universe with life.
2) At no point does a new level negate the necessity of any previous level (i.e. Ascension to a higher plane, which no longer requires ‘life’ to maintain its higher orders of being).
Level 1: Existence (Space, time, matter, energy).
Details: The zero'th level (non-existence) arranged in a complex manner (split into two equal and opposite momentum and charges, etc.) to create more complex events. The Awareness of the absence of existence is achieved.
Level 2: Life.
Details: The first level arranged in a complex manner to create more complex events. The Awareness of existence is achieved.
Level 3: Self-Awareness, Sentience.
Details: The second level arranged in a complex manner to create more complex events. The Awareness of life is achieved.
Level 4: ??? (What is the purpose of the existence of self-aware life?)
Details: This level cannot be complex computer networks, knowledge or understanding, as this would be an extreme of Level 3 (Bringing self-awareness to a planet or celestial body on a grander scale than that found in humans). This level must be a more complex arrangement of self-awareness and sentience which achieves more complex events. It is difficult to figure, as it is like asking someone to think of a color they have never seen before. (It occurred to me when typing this that it may well be 'society' that is the next level. If that is the case, what is the 5th level?
Stew over this. Do not type a response right away. Really think on this for a time before responding. Then, respond with an explanation and supporting details behind your logic. Try to avoid ‘religion’ as a Level 4, unless your thought process simply brings you back there every time, no matter how many ways you look at it. If you do go that way, try to avoid quoting scripture as a supporting detail, and aim for a more generalized and universal statement to convey your perspective. I am not a religious man, and I still seriously considered ‘the manufacturing of souls’ as a possible Level 4. I have also considered ‘universe reproduction processes (which may well require self-aware life to be achieved)’ as a possible Level 4, but am having trouble making that really fit into place.
This is a free-thought logic sequence, which can have no right or wrong answer, only arguable answers. Don’t be shy, but don’t be obnoxious either. Feel free to challenge my Levels 2 and 3 (or all my levels) if you see things in this universe going in a different way, and lets see how that chain of levels developes.
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Tael
2nd Rear Admiral
Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002
Posts: 3695
From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2009-07-13 02:29
Levels? Starting to start sounding a lot like Scientology in here...
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befuddled
Fleet Admiral
Joined: December 01, 2002
Posts: 42
From: befuddled
| Posted: 2009-07-13 04:59
Quote:
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Level 4: ??? (What is the purpose of the existence of self-aware life?)
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Loaded question. What makes you think there has to be a purpose?
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Nexus01
Cadet
Joined: May 20, 2006
Posts: 35
| Posted: 2009-07-13 12:14
Wow tael. Thinking doesn't seem to be your strong point. If you're going to throw flamebait as usual, at least do something constructive as well and give us a different word to use. 'Level' works fine as a generic term, as far as I'm concerned.
And to befuddled: Matter/energy always do what they do for a reason - something that may very well be beyond our understanding as a species. I have never seen the reasons behind the actions of matter and energy truly explained, although many have tried. Using this thought, I'm pretty sure that everything has a use - not so much purpose - for everything else.
Regarding the orginal post:
1. The actions of matter and energy have 'created', 'caused', or 'built' 1 and 2, and mostly (if not completely) created/caused/built 3, using your system.
2. If the use of matter/energy to 'build' the next level gets smaller every time, but never hits zero use, something else has to be used as well. Life? Maybe. But what do you build with life? This is something that I don't believe we as a species will ever know or understand.
3. We have not explored even 1% of our galaxy, how do we know that somewhere/something else has not gone through this 'cycle' further than we have?
[ This Message was edited by: Nexus01 on 2009-07-13 12:14 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Nexus01 on 2009-07-13 12:18 ]
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Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
| Posted: 2009-07-13 12:39
Keep in mind that it is just a thought game. It doesnt have to be a religious or personal belief system-loaded respond. It's just a game. Yes, the game's construct sort of requires admission of a kind of 'fate', but its just a parameter of the game. You need not truly believe in fate to play, just as you need not believe in FTL travel to play darkspace.
After thinking more about it as I fell asleep last night, I would like to adjust my original list to the following:
1) Existence.
2) Single-cell Life
3) Multi-cell Life
4) Self-Awareness
5) Society
Support of logic:
Change 1: The splitting of Life into single and multi cell. Each level builds a new, more complex thing out of the previous level, like building blocks or Legos. I know that molecules collect to make a single cell and then many cells collect to make a multi-cellular organism.
Change 2: Introduction of Society. I was reluctant to admit this, as non-self-aware life (like merecats and lions) gather into a social orders and a basic societies. However, when examining the basic criteria for a new level, i saw it is to use many units of the previous level as building blocks to construct something new. When we gather people together in the world, societies result. This claim to Level 5 is still on somewhat flimsy ground, but I can think of nothing better at this time.
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Lark of Serenity
Grand Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: June 02, 2002
Posts: 2516
| Posted: 2009-07-13 12:49
basic aristotilean philosophy; household, city, and then when we created countries we add those as well. ie. self-conciousness organizes itself into units, which organize themselves into a larger unit capable of politics, civilization, culture, and then beyond that into a larger unit with diverse politics and cultures that yet mingle together, compromise, and coexist with one another.
greek philosphers would say all of this is in pursuit of the "good life," some others would simply say its in pursuit of the truth (though we've been doing a pretty poor job of that one).
i would suspect that as relatively simple objects in a complex universe we are incapable of comprehending the purpose of our own existence.
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2009-07-13 12:56
Their is no Level 4. Once you have achieved Self Awareness, you have nothing left to do. Their is no "higher" amount of intelligence then being Self Aware of your intelligence
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Leonide
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: October 01, 2005
Posts: 1553
From: Newport News, Virginia
| Posted: 2009-07-13 15:03
it's not scientology. your not even close, Tael.
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$yTHe {C?}
Grand Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: September 29, 2002
Posts: 1292
From: Arlington, VA
| Posted: 2009-07-13 16:01
That's just your bad thetins talking, Leo.
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Sens [R33]
Admiral
Joined: September 27, 2008
Posts: 1020
From: Edge of th...
| Posted: 2009-07-13 16:17
realisation that life is comparable to a petty game
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-Shadowalker-™
Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: September 23, 2007
Posts: 709
From: Shadows
| Posted: 2009-07-13 17:21
How can we know what level 4 is if we havent completed level 3. Or what if we have gone through lvl 4 in the past and level 4 is not a stage higher but a reset stage. An Extinction, to balance out the forces of nature.
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befuddled
Fleet Admiral
Joined: December 01, 2002
Posts: 42
From: befuddled
| Posted: 2009-07-13 18:29
Quote:
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On 2009-07-13 12:14, Nexus01 wrote:
I'm pretty sure that everything has a use - not so much purpose - for everything else.
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Thanks for elucidating the distinction that was at the nub of my question. I, perhaps mistakenly, understand purpose as implying directed use towards an intended end. That multicellular organisms make use of unicellular ones does not imply that unicellular life arose for the purpose of enabling multicellular life. That higher orders of complexity arise from simpler ones does not necessitate the presupposition of purpose (though, of course, I do not suggest that it precludes it).
That aside, self-awareness may be an evolutionary experiment that does not necessarily survive the test of time. This was a theme that Stephen Baxter had fun with in Evolution as did Peter Watts in Blindsight.
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Tael
2nd Rear Admiral
Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002
Posts: 3695
From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2009-07-13 19:52
You also missed the distinction that Multicellular life is also considered a society in biological terms.
Thus society comes before self awareness...
[ This Message was edited by: Tael on 2009-07-13 19:59 ]
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Veronw
Marshal
Joined: December 13, 2004
Posts: 554
| Posted: 2009-07-13 20:07
I do not think society has anything to do with the ordered teirs (if such a thing exists) of existance. Truly, it is just a result of a collective need for each other, which resulted in the sharing of knowledge which was derived from the thirst of said knowledge. Knowledge was applied, groups began to really form and become powerful, and well, you all know what happens from there.
I think that Level 4 (once more, if such an attempt were to be made to catagorize the universal existance) is indeed the purpose of self aware life, or rather the discovery of that purpose. The entirety of this level is devoted to the incredibly long endeaver of discovering why we are self aware, of course, not just us, but whatever other possibly sentient life exists in the universe. Perhaps the purpose is indeed beyond our understanding, but we have to remember that a thousand years ago, the concept of space flight, faster then light technology, atoms, nuclear weapons, quantum mechanics; all of those were impossibly beyond our comprehension too.
So we have to take into account that in another thousand years, in all probability (provided we survive another thousand years..) we will have achieved things that none of us in this day and age could have ever dreamed of. So whose to say that we do not possess what is needed to comprehend our own existance and the meaning of it? We hardly know anything, and the attempt to delve into such a deeply compex matter is rather laughable if you consider that we creatures of less then 10% brain computing power are trying to discover the meaning of life via an online forum 
Moving on!
Perhaps the 5th level is the creation of a group consciouness that is not trapped beneath the sub-conscious realm of our minds, but rather used in the day-to-day life of that particular civilization (of course, unless civlization was an accident, in which case this would hold true to only us). The culmination and end of this level is the discovery of this purpose, at which point in all probability Level 5 is achieved, and if not realized before hand, is created.
Of course this theory depends upon the idea that life is not just a randomly ordered accident that exists soley on this planet and actually has an instinctive drive universally to hunger for and drive for knowledge, all knowledge.
Although, in the end it could be a myriad of things, a single thing, or a combination of all things that we could possibly, or not, imagine.
[ This Message was edited by: Veronw on 2009-07-13 20:16 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Veronw on 2009-07-13 20:17 ]
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Supertrooper
Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: March 18, 2004
Posts: 1895
From: Maryland, U.S.A
| Posted: 2009-07-13 22:56
Quote:
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On 2009-07-13 04:59, befuddled wrote:
Quote:
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Level 4: ??? (What is the purpose of the existence of self-aware life?)
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Loaded question. What makes you think there has to be a purpose?
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Being human. We want to believe theres more to life then dieing, which there really isn't.
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