On my walk this morning I listened to very stimulating discussion about what (philosophically not chemically) it would take for complex life to develop. Sam Harris and guest Sara Irma Walker, also discussed the Fermi Paradox and likelihood of life on other planets, and what it would take to even measure that likelihood in a nearly infinite universe and within the limited time before either the sun goes red giant or Trump wins the coming US election, either of which would destroy all intelligent life on the planet. (In which case, after next week, there will be no-one left to read this near-defunct blog.)
Anyhows... When my eyes and brain weren’t glazed over with the abstract theories and physics jargon, I really enjoyed it.
According to Sam’s guest, the multiverse is crap (my word). The “block universe”, where the past present and future are all "now”, as with the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse Five, and the inky octopi in Arrival, is also crap.
However, she keeps flipping on Yes, there is life and No, no life.
My take on the Fermi Paradox, given that if the earth could be reset to its beginning, there would be way less than fuck-all chance of complex life developing again, and that this current time around, of all the planets in the brain-numbing extent of the universe, over the life of the universe from its the past, before there even was time, and into its future, our earth was the single typewriter where one of those infinite monkeys randomly typed the complete works of Shakespeare. (Prof Brian Cox, not the actor, would agree, I think.) Or then again maybe, like prime numbers, there will always be one more, we just haven’t conceived of it, or indeed constructed it (listen to discussion) yet.
Just we still haven’t constructed a timeless
E@L
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