What is the point of life?

All life moves in one way or another. Is it possible to even have a lifeform that does not move in any way at all? I am not sure that it is.

And yes, sometimes mutations are "freakish"! That's the point, isn't it? Most mutations that happen during duplication don't affect the lifeform much - but some do.



You're overthinking it. If an organism replicates/gives birth and one of its offspring is able to move better in some way.. then that might very well end up being an evolutionary advantage that gets passed down to future generations. And so the descendants of this lifeform would be able to move more effectively, etc.

The jump from stationary -> non-stationary seems to be your hangup - but there doesn't appear to be any life forms that don't move. It seems that maybe they never existed.



Are you suggesting that life was designed? That seems possible but far more unlikely than these characteristics evolving on their own.

Remember, it's not "purely random development". If it were, then I would completely agree.

I can't say if it was "designed", but even so, that would just move the question further back (to how it was for whatever "designed" it).
I also am not sure if movement is an actual property of the cosmos, instead of just a property (some) observers in the cosmos do pick up. It is impossible to know if an object has any relation to the properties you identify in it. For you it does have those properties (including movement), but it's not like matter exists simply so that you can observe it.
 
But it might only exist because you observe it.

Depends, if you mean that without an observer it simply wouldn't be there. For that to be true, I assume that the observer is himself tied to the object.
If you are alluding to the quantum stuff, I certainly can't say, although it may be that the issue is not having to do with ties between the observer and the object, but particularities of some inputs for this type of observer.
 
Depends, if you mean that without an observer it simply wouldn't be there. For that to be true, I assume that the observer is himself tied to the object.
If you are alluding to the quantum stuff, I certainly can't say, although it may be that the issue is not having to do with ties between the observer and the object, but particularities of some inputs for this type of observer.
Everything is related to quantum stuff. It is the deepest foundation we have yet found. Observation collapses uncertainty.
 
Everything is related to quantum stuff. It is the deepest foundation we have yet found. Observation collapses uncertainty.

I don't really believe in the whole observation collapsing uncertainty. Because if it were true, how come whenever I look away from objects in my room, they aren't completely different and mismatched when I look back at them?

You'd think that if observation really did have that big of an impact, reality would be constantly changing around us and nothing would make sense.
 
Everything is related to quantum stuff. It is the deepest foundation we have yet found. Observation collapses uncertainty.

I am not sure if "everything is related to quantum stuff". If it was known to be, there would be a unified theory by now.
Regardless, one has to make the following important distinction:

1) The observable object has qualities, which are not those picked up by any observer
2) The observable object presents qualities to an observer, which may be projections of the observer

The distinction between 1, which is by definition unknown and to remain unknown, and 2, which is potentially known but might be a loop with the observer, makes any guess about stuff "only existing because you observe it" rather vague, since by "1" you are not observing the actual object in the first place.
 
I don't really believe in the whole observation collapsing uncertainty. Because if it were true, how come whenever I look away from objects in my room, they aren't completely different and mismatched when I look back at them?

You'd think that if observation really did have that big of an impact, reality would be constantly changing around us and nothing would make sense.
There is no need for you to accept its truth. You should brush up on what "observer" means at both the quantum and higher levels.
 
There is no need for you to accept its truth. You should brush up on what "observer" means at both the quantum and higher levels.

Observer usually means something conscience in quantum terms. I mean that's basically how it's described in every science article more or less. Which is very vague considering an animal could have conscience, a machine could as well. Yet somehow the machine that records what's happening in the experiment is somehow not observing because it gives different results than when a human records it. So the machine isn't conscience? Despite humans being little more than slightly more complex biological machines themselves? I don't buy it.

If the human is getting a different result than a machine, then the result of the experiments is nothing more than human error. So either the human is wrong and ain't seeing it right, or the machine is wrong, in which case the human built it wrong.
 
Complicated isn't it? I would suggest that life and consciousness create the physical world and that there really isn't any "out there" to look at that is independent of life and consciousness. But we are getting way off track from life's purpose and the path forward on this is murky and complex. :)
 
Complicated isn't it? I would suggest that life and consciousness create the physical world and that there really isn't any "out there" to look at that is independent of life and consciousness. But we are getting way off track from life's purpose and the path forward on this is murky and complex. :)

I doubt it. The human brain just doesn't have enough data storage to generate the world around us. Also with people born with mental disorders and suffering brain injury, you'd think our reality would just disintegrate. Not to mention being drunk or high! Then we would actually be able to fly when on a trip! But we don't, hence why it's a bunch of b.s.
 
Oh, well then you must be right.
 
Not really sure what you mean. The first movement that evolved would have been.. very simple one-celled organisms.. prokaryotes? They seem to move through liquids by twitching, swimming, gliding, etc. I think they evolved flagella for this purpose? I am just going by a quick google search here.

There is no "sense" needed for that. All you need is an evolutionary advantage over lifeforms that do not move or do not move as effectively.

There was another organism, a lttle bit quicker and split in 3 parts. The Kyriakoses. :)
 
Observer usually means something conscience in quantum terms
I do not think there is any evidence for a quantum observer to require conscience.
 
I doubt it. The human brain just doesn't have enough data storage to generate the world around us. Also with people born with mental disorders and suffering brain injury, you'd think our reality would just disintegrate. Not to mention being drunk or high! Then we would actually be able to fly when on a trip! But we don't, hence why it's a bunch of b.s.
It is a bit naive to think that physicist philosophers mathematicians etc haven't had in mind all those considerations before, but i applaud your intellectual honestity.

I think the problem is that you are getting it all wrong. It is not about the human brain, but about how things really happen.

At quantum mechanics sizes any observation is a meaningful interaction between the observer and the object. To know a quantum property you need a way to see it, for instance looking at it. Macroscopically, looking at something means that your eye is receiving countless photons after they have interacted with the observed object. This is not an issue since photons are tiny and macroscopic object as a whole are huge, so they will not be meaningfully affected by the photons we have used to observe it. (Unless we are using X or gamma rays which could toast anything but that is other story)
Problem is that when speaking of atoms and fundamental particles individually we are at such a tiny scale that interacting with a simple photon will change the property you are observing. For instance the spin of an electron will change if you use an photon to observe it. It would be like trying to know the position of a pool ball hitting it with another pool ball.

All this seems pretty silly, but if you think it more carefully you will realize it is not, because there is not any way to know anything about anything in the universe without interacting with it somehow, and since at a microscopic level any interaction will altere the properties of the observed object, it is the very observation that will define the properties of the object. It is key to have in mind that there is not a more fundamental reality under it you can hold to, we are at the fundamental level already. For any effect particles are not defined until you observe it. It doesn't not even make sense to speak about the state of a particle before you observe it. Going even further they really have not a defined state until you observe it.

There is no way to realize the consequences of this and other quantum mechanics principles and really understand how deep the rabbit hole really goes without understanding the underlying mathematics, which predict all sort of weirds behaviours, like particles appearing from nothing, having two different natures at the same time, or being in infinite places simultaneously, or particles 'affecting ' other particles kilometers away without any interaction, among many others.

Most amazing thing is that all these weird predictions, direct consequence from the basic principles of quantum mechanics, have been proven true experimentally and are considered irrefutable scientific laws. In fact many direct consequences of quantum mechanics can be observed by us in our daily life, like the laser of a DVD or the screen of any TV, or even more fundamental things like sunlight, or chemistry, or whatever...
 
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Coral reef?

Hey, you're right! Coral reefs do not appear to move. Parts of trees do move towards the sun, though.

I am not an expert as to how exactly the locomotion of various species evolved, but it does not appear to be any sort of "showstopper" requiring an intelligent designer. Could coral reefs one day evolve to move in any sort of significant way? It seems unlikely, but what do I know.

The way the eye evolved is a bit fascinating. When you first think about it it seems that the eye must have had a designer and that there's no way that "random chance" could have produced such a complex design. Yet, we've discovered creatures with all sorts of intermediate stages of the "design" and now seem to understand how the thing evolved over time. The same dynamics are probably in place for any sort of complex 'design' of any lifeform's body, such as the ear or nose.. or whatever method the lifeform has to move around.
 
Hey, you're right! Coral reefs do not appear to move.
Not once they are established, but they start as motile organisms.
 
Do they move purposely or just drift?
I am fairly sure they are actively motile. I think you could say their depth is purposeful, in that they "chose" to start at the top and later occupy lower levels. I am not sure about their swimming direction, or if they have the sense organs or nervous system to say they have a purpose in the sense we mean it.
 
Observer usually means something conscience in quantum terms.
It very much does not mean 'conscious' when discussing quantum physics, and this would mean that you have a lot of unlearning to do. In really rough terms, an 'observer' is something that would change states once it interacts with the waveform successfully. A photon hitting an atom is a waveform until they interact with each other, and then this interaction occurs at a determined point that was unpredictable and unknowable until after the event happens.

I don't expect to be able to properly explain QM in a couple sentences, and am not an expert myself, but I'm enough of a neuroscientist to have picked up on the discussions between QM and consciousness to know that the 'consciousness is the observer' is a mischaracterization.
 
It very much does not mean 'conscious' when discussing quantum physics, and this would mean that you have a lot of unlearning to do. In really rough terms, an 'observer' is something that would change states once it interacts with the waveform successfully. A photon hitting an atom is a waveform until they interact with each other, and then this interaction occurs at a determined point that was unpredictable and unknowable until after the event happens.

I don't expect to be able to properly explain QM in a couple sentences, and am not an expert myself, but I'm enough of a neuroscientist to have picked up on the discussions between QM and consciousness to know that the 'consciousness is the observer' is a mischaracterization.

It should be noted, however, that the means of identifying what goes on is tied to the observer. If humans weren't aware of distinctions such as "point", the quantum event would still exist, but picked up very differently (assuming it would be picked up at all). This is why (philosophically) one speaks of the object as a "thing-in-itself", juxtaposed to qualities identified by an observer.
 
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