Re: We are, a mass extinction event.

Michio Kaku has an interesting viewpoint in the way an advanced
civilization would explore the cosmos.
They would send out Van Neuman probes.

Well what if along with these probes, they sent out a bit of DNA.
Or similar, knowing that as it travelled, it would spread seeds go
forth and where it could get a foothold develop on a reasonably well
known evolutionary path towards some higher form of life?

That seems reasonable to me.

Ourselves though, would we do that? Would we inflict such suffering on
the universe?

To be alive is a great deal of suffering. We would probably not send
out such a thing as we could concieve of to play God, and to spread
life, all over the universe because we might see that as maybe making
some huge painful mistake would we not?

What if we were sending out the makings of people's who would have this
will to live, and hover just above their will to off themselves, and
they would endure the maximum amount of pain that an organism could
endure, and it went on and on for billions of years?

Would we do that?

I mean we have no idea what it is like to be a turtle. Maybe if we
hooked up some equipment and found that it was itchy, all its life and
could not scratch it, and to be a turtle is to exist in a constant
torment, or maybe feathers are annoying. Maybe just to have feathers
pricking in you all the time, is unbearable to some living things.
The truth is we don't know and don't want to play Frankenstein not
knowing so we probably wouldn't even send out probes.

These things self replicate. The universe could be overrun with them.
That does not seem logical to send out self replicating probes, unless
you really really know what you are doing and maybe can see it all, and
can maybe turn the things off.
We might look at that as a virus.

But there are forms of life, that can exist at almost absolute 0, and
can even withstand radiation, and so to exist on comets or dust
particles floating in space, as panspermia suggests is quite possible.

It seems odd to me, that life began on earth, shortly after the earth
itself was formed.

In nfact really everything about us, seems to defy the odds, so we must
be missing some rather large piece of the puzzle.

.

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