Heres a strange hypothesis...

sd123

Lets assume that somehow a scrap of metal and plastic and other raw materials somehow managed to end up scattered on the same area of planet X somewhere in the a solar system in the universe. Planet X has an atmosphere, and a wind blows these raw materials together perfectly into a fully functional robot with a solar power supply. Z years later, a meteor hits the planet and Cu, Zn and Si all come together to make a perfect microchip which somehow manages to fall into the perfect place on the robot to give it AI.

The robot becomes alive and is capable of making others of its species from the huge amount of raw materials available on the planet.

Now, although all of these things happening separately are unimaginely unlikely, if the universerse existed for millions of years previously and infinite number of years in the future, would we not eventually have a planet of Robots? Or perhaps it already happened and they have become extinct.

Spear

sd123 wrote: »

Lets assume that somehow a scrap of metal and plastic and other raw materials somehow managed to end up scattered on the same area of planet X somewhere in the a solar system in the universe. Planet X has an atmosphere, and a wind blows these raw materials together perfectly into a fully functional robot with a solar power supply. Z years later, a meteor hits the planet and Cu, Zn and Si all come together to make a perfect microchip which somehow manages to fall into the perfect place on the robot to give it AI.

The robot becomes alive and is capable of making others of its species from the huge amount of raw materials available on the planet.

Now, although all of these things happening separately are unimaginely unlikely, if the universerse existed for millions of years previously and infinite number of years in the future, would we not eventually have a planet of Robots? Or perhaps it already happened and they have become extinct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy

sd123

Taking the watchmaker analogy as true, would be to suggest that there must be a God, and if you don't believe in a god, one would have to accept that such random things could happen, just as in the creation of the life on Earth, which would help support my abovementioned hypothesis.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

Yea I agree quite a bit with the hypothesis.

Many of the intelligent design advocates argue that something so complex as human life (or in this case robotic life) is too complex to be the result of a fluke, but when one considers the enormity of the universe and the multitudinous goings on therein, the probabilities become a lot larger.

For instance if we take the probability of intelligent life developing on a planet to be one divided by ten to the power of some arbitrarily large number, it's unlikely

but then consider the number of planets in the universe, which we will asume to be ~10 to the power of another arbitrarily large number well we've got a situation where intelligent life is inevitable with the progresion of time, even if that time does not extend to infinity.

As complex as intelligent life is, it would be ignorant to assume it is infinitely complex (because it's clearly not), so the hypothesis stands:D

Hellm0

When one considers the likelihood of effects like quantum tunneling(which happens all the time on a quantum level) having any perceiveable effect upon the visable universe(ie upon large or comparitavly large amounts of matter) it is infact many times the lifetime of the universe.

Our existence aside, the likelyhood of intelligent life spontaniously forming from robotic components(which they themselves would have had to spontaniously formed) is highly HIGHLY unlikely. That said, from certain perspectives anything is possible, just not probable. I could disappear and rematerialise on mars for seemingly no reason(its possible) but the likelihood of that happening is so low it would take, again, many times the lifetime of the universe for it to become probable.

Xhristy

This post has been deleted.

Overheal

When you think about it arent the universal odds of binary life forming more likely than that of a cognitive lifeform? Its the difference between 0 and 1, and .... you know, cognition...

DadaKopf

This is some trick designed to fool us into indirectly 'proving' intelligent design, is it?

Hahaha, I'm not biting.

Good luck guys!

Carrigart Exile

DadaKopf wrote: »

This is some trick designed to fool us into indirectly 'proving' intelligent design, is it?

Hahaha, I'm not biting.

Good luck guys!

why would certain species choose to mutate lower down the food chain, surely, taking evolution to its fundamental conclusion every creature on the planet would be mankind

AckwelFoley

if the universe is of infinate size, then i presume the permutations of chance also infinate - would also mean that this very hypothesis is already in existance?

Hellm0

snyper wrote: »

if the universe is of infinate size, then i presume the permutations of chance also infinate - would also mean that this very hypothesis is already in existance?

The universe (that we know about) is very much finite.

AckwelFoley

Hellm0 wrote: »

The universe (that we know about) is very much finite.

Hmm..

Hellm0

Well I dont claim to be an expert on the subject, but what literature I have read and what little I understand does lead me to believe that the universe does have boundries. That said if you were a believer in the likes of M theory or the like then thats a different matter.

After all if there were life forms in a 2 dimensional universe then they would have no precident with which to even imagine that there was a 3rd dimension.

sd123

snyper wrote: »

if the universe is of infinate size, then i presume the permutations of chance also infinate - would also mean that this very hypothesis is already in existance?

The thing is though that some guy just said the robot thing to me and, as ridiculous as it sounds, I had no argument against. However, if he can throw something together like that, then you can make up absoloutly anything with absoloutly ridiculous odds of occuring and assume that it has happened on some unknown planet.....

DadaKopf

But it's not really a robust argument, it's a logical game designed to back a particular point of view into a corner. In logic, it'd be considered a reductio ad absurdum 'proof': you reduce the proposition to a contradiction, thus proving its opposite.

A logical proposition might make sense, but its foundations (predicates) might be flawed. 'Intelligent Design' supporters exploit this gap and play on people's ignorance. But the world is not made of logic, it's made of facts, a messy mess of facts and the dirt of the human condition. Intelligent Design does not propose evidence to support a theory in a scientific way; it doesn't assemble evidence/facts within a theory explaining a causal chain of events (science is not about pure proof but the rigorous testing of ideas to assert whether they are robust or not), it's junk science.

Richard Dawkins had a lovely refutation of Intelligent Design in the Guardian in 2005. Responding to Intelligent Design theorists' exploitation of gaps in fossil records to 'disprove' evolution, he said:

The equivalent evidential demand of creationism would be a complete cinematic record of God's behaviour on the day that he went to work on, say, the mammalian ear bones or the bacterial flagellum - the small, hair-like organ that propels mobile bacteria. Not even the most ardent advocate of intelligent design claims that any such divine videotape will ever become available.

Until I see that, I'll keep on hoping that, somewhere out there, is a planet of robots waiting to be discovered.