Quote Originally Posted by kevster


I'm not sure this is really true. Lifeforms of this type operate purely at a cellular level where everything is instinct. Surely this is different from AI programmed bots.
They may not be as different as they seem. Our reasoned processes are chemical reactions just like our instinctive ones, they're just more complex chemical reactions. The distinction between instinctive action and reasoned action is also a misleading distinction. It is possible that reason itself is instinct, we just comprehend this differently due to perspective.

An analogy that can be provided (though analogy isn't proof, it's not really even evidence) is found in the theory of evolution, and the mistaken distinction between macro and micro evolution. According creationists, there is a difference between macro and micro evolution, but according to actual scientists, this distinction is an illusion; all evolution is due to the same exact process, it just looks different due to different factors expressing themselves more deeply than others at certain times.

It is possible that the same kind of process that provides with instinctive actions also provides reasoned actions. It's just that the reasoned actions take much more elaborate usage of those processes.

I think Hawking, many years back, said something like "we cannot say how the earth/universe came to be, we can only presume it has always been there".

Anyway guys it's no biggy if you can't get your head round it. Hawking and his team haven't managed to figure it all out so what chance do we have?
Yeah, the unfortunate thing is that physicists will probably never figure it out. M-theory and any related theory of everything is greatly hindered by not being testable. This is one reason that we really wanna see the LHC up to full strength because then a lot of theory we've had for a long time would be testable. But alas, no matter what question is answered, ten more will take their place.

Like M-theory suggests that outside of the universe exists an innumerable amount of other stuff. How the fuck could we ever know about that stuff? The only real tool we have is math, but we know that we can't project this universe's mathematical paradigm into any non-universe entities. Honestly, if I was a professional scientist, I possibly wouldn't be a physicist for this reason. I just don't think that we'll ever have a theory of everything. It may be possible, but since our closest thing (M-theory) includes factors 'outside' the universe, I just don't see that happening