Eric Platon
@ic
Water may be taking a more central place in Life and organic matter. Possibly bad news for silicon trans-humanism and panpsychism. Definitely relevant to exobiology puzzles, and hopefully to “AI”. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-scientists-molecules-materials.html
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John Hoang
@jhoang
How is this relevant to each of these? I'm def a noob on these topics.
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Eric Platon
@ic
Great multi-question! Trans-humanism separates body and mind. An appealing consequence is that mind could be transferred to another “body”, so potentially infinite life, etc, notably on computers (currently basically silicon). If life requires water, part of this plan collapses.
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Eric Platon
@ic
Panpsychism states all matter is “intelligent”. Intelligence is here more general than “human intelligence”—too specific form of intelligence. If water is needed, rocks may cause the collapse of panpsychism. Debatable as assuming life is intelligence.
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Eric Platon
@ic
Exobiology (aka astrobiology) studies out-of-our-world biological possibilities. Basically alien life. There are models of likely “life” based on say ammonia and silicon. If water is required, that would restrict options, and dissolve some exobiology problems.
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Eric Platon
@ic
Last is quoted AI. Quoted because it is a term that is looking for a definition, let alone AGI. Too many recently talk about Altman’s helpful remote assistant definition, etc. Basically digital slaves. If water is needed for life, and human intelligence, we need to better understand what we talk about and expect.
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