[HN Gopher] Life as Slime
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Life as Slime
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 47 points
Date : 2025-06-17 13:03 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| idiocache wrote:
| It's a wonderful article but I can't accept the core argument.
|
| Life is rare = life is precious is just a version of the
| naturalistic fallacy. You are entitled to believe that life is
| beautiful; you are equally entitled to believe it is a terrible
| cosmic mistake - acknowledging the rarity of life doesn't
| obligate you to change your belief.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Thinking this way is a necessary prerequisite before pushing
| humans into an oven.
| cwmoore wrote:
| How about after?
| braingravy wrote:
| Only necessary for those who carried out those actions and
| want to live afterward without remorse.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I agree that "precious" might be too much of a leap, but
| nevertheless think that there's a legitimate argument here for
| life being "interesting". I'm particularly reminded of
| Schrodinger's "What Is Life?", which (amongst other great
| arguments) posits that life is what actively rejects within
| itself the increase in entropy (via homeostasis). I'm not aware
| of any mechanisms doing so that aren't either alive or were
| assembled by living beings.
|
| This function comes hand in hand with the creation and
| maintenance of information, and in my opinion makes life
| particularly "interesting", especially if it is rare in the
| universe. In other words, if our universe is to be analyzed by
| a hypothetical external entity, it is likely that a significant
| fraction of the analysis effort would go towards our small
| corner of the universe (and any others) with living organisms.
| api wrote:
| Without life nothing is precious or a mistake. There is nothing
| to make a value judgement.
| bko wrote:
| > you are equally entitled to believe it is a terrible cosmic
| mistake - acknowledging the rarity of life doesn't obligate you
| to change your belief.
|
| I don't know, thinking life and humanity is a "cosmic mistake"
| seems to be a destructive nihilistic take. Easy to justify
| horrible things, because why not?
|
| Shouldn't we all seek to be pro-human? All of the things I care
| about most in this life are human.
| idiocache wrote:
| Can't we believe that life is a terrible cosmic mistake and
| still be pro-human?
| kurthr wrote:
| Create whatever joyful apocalypse your putrid hateful heart
| desires.
|
| I think the key here is "mistake". I don't really like that
| word here, any more than I like "precious" as opposed to
| interesting. Many rare things are just dangerously
| destructive.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Destructive and horrible events are often very hard to
| justify without resort to nihilism, which indicates that it
| may secretly be the truer core belief, and therefore the
| better foundation for understanding how humanity can become
| over the arc of time, less often mistaken.
| braingravy wrote:
| Justifying the existence of horror and evil is not
| necessary.
|
| It is possible to accept that things happen that you don't
| endorse or control, horrible things, without providing a
| justifying reason for those events.
|
| Unless, of course, you are the one knowingly carrying out
| those acts. In that case, a level of nihilistic
| justification is necessary from both leadership and those
| doing the dirty work.
|
| Death, vile and evil behavior are a part of life. This
| doesn't justify their existence.
|
| Nihilism promotes the idea that life is meaningless.
| Perhaps an attractive idea in a complicated world with
| countless examples of suffering, horror, and death. I would
| urge you to consider an alternative conclusion when faced
| with these realities: The presence of death is necessary
| for life itself to have any distinct meaning. Once you
| accept that death is a necessary element for any "life"
| framework ever evidenced or argued for, vile behavior like
| systematic genocide can be understood as an outgrowth of
| the intertwined nature of life and death.
|
| This still doesn't justify a nihilistic conclusion. For
| example, if I dropped my cup and it broke, I might be
| tempted to provide a reason for the destruction of that cup
| (I was distracted, the coffee was hot, etc.). These
| explanations might be appropriate, or they might not. Since
| we are examining the event after it happened, we won't ever
| know the exact causal reason (though we might get really
| close!).
|
| The post-hoc rationalization of past events can only go so
| far. The causal reasons cannot be fully sussed after an
| event. (You can get pretty darn close! So it's worth
| rationalizing explanations for the possibility of
| prevention of something like that.)
|
| Regardless, these explanations are not necessary to accept
| the reality of my broken cup. I may dearly want to know why
| my cup broke. Perhaps because I liked that cup, or because
| I simply don't want to break another cup in the same way,
| but knowing the reason my cup broke is not a necessary or
| sufficient element for me to know that I miss my cup and,
| all things considered, would have rather not had it break.
|
| In the same way, the suffering you see in the world does
| not need to be justified for it to be condemned.
|
| So, because nihilistic beliefs are (a) unnecessary for
| condemnation of suffering and evil (bad things are bad, A =
| A), (b) highly useful for justifying suffering and evil (as
| you noted), and (c) naturally lead to (at best) inaction in
| the face of suffering and (at worst) acceptance or even
| endorsement of suffering ("Well, life has no meaning, so I
| may as well accept the suffering, and maybe even go so far
| as to fuel a bit of it for my own benefit. After all, there
| isn't a meaningful moral difference between those two
| options.")
|
| With those three outcomes as just a few of the natural
| consequences of practicing nihilism, I fail to see either
| the logic or utility of nihilism in anything other than
| providing a very shallow justification for the suffering in
| the world. It's an easy puddle to splash around in, but I
| would encourage you to keep thinking through it: You don't
| need to reject morality and ethics simply because
| immorality, unethical behavior, and unethical people exist.
|
| As a final note: If you want to keep your nihilistic
| beliefs, you must reject the stated premise above that bad
| things are bad (A = A in symbolic logic). However, I'd
| suggest you be very careful about rejecting what you feel
| to be true (i.e., that destructive and horrible events are
| indeed destructive and horrible).
|
| Hope this helps. Try not to get trapped by nihilism. It
| doesn't lead to anything meaningful, as it's logically
| impossible to do so under that framework.
| croes wrote:
| Not a mistake just a happy little accident.
| blamestross wrote:
| The nifty feature of intelligence is that you get to examine
| what you value. Critical peer comments (so far) don't seem to
| address the "naturalistic fallacy" part, or even lean into it.
|
| As far as I am tell, life can be maximally ambiguously defined
| as "entropy deferral". Nothing can stop entropy, but life crams
| as much organization into that lifetime as possible. I think
| that is kinda cool and I want to help, so I think we should
| make as much matter alive as possible before the universe
| fizzles out.
|
| Rationalizing value judgments is always a challenge. We can
| argue over facts and implication of facts all we want, but the
| "predicate values" are arbitrary and you can't change them in
| others. I generally don't bother unless I have a strong idea of
| my audience's "predicate values". If they don't match mine, or
| I can't manipulate others into agreeing we share instrumental
| values, I am just out of luck.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| Are you personally alive?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| "Mistake" imparts intentionality. Perhaps life is an accident,
| but it can only be a mistake if intelligence is behind the
| cosmos. Observation, not argument.
| megaloblasto wrote:
| Life as a slime shouldn't be so rough
| tempodox wrote:
| Indeed, it should be slick and smooth.
| Isamu wrote:
| No mention of Rimuru Tempest? I don't know why I expected it but
| I did.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| I see you're a man of culture as well.
| valenterry wrote:
| Happy to see I'm not alone.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| > "it's time to retire the just slime' metaphor"
|
| hits hard. we've used that phrase to downplay life's complexity,
| but statistically, life is the anomaly not the default. the blog
| nails it: we've only found life in one corner of one planet,
| under a very narrow set of conditions. framing it as mundane is a
| denial. we're surrounded by sterile rock and radiation and
| somehow expect slime to be obvious
| tim333 wrote:
| >we're surrounded by sterile rock
|
| The jury's out on Mars. It may well not be sterile.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| I thought the slime metaphor was to illustrate the fragility
| and rarity of it. It's a thin film of slime and that's all life
| is in the grand scheme of things. Like the surface of a bubble.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| > So, is it right to say biology is "just" a planetary fungal
| infection?
|
| Excellent closing statement. In my own life, I'm working to
| remove "just" from my vocabulary so it's fun seeing this called
| out in other context.
| tim333 wrote:
| "slime on a spinning rock" is maybe a bit scientifically
| outdated. Quoting from an NYT article (The Mysterious, Deep-
| Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet):
|
| >even today, some scientists, especially in geology and related
| fields, continue to describe life as a relatively inconsequential
| layer of goo coating a vastly greater mass of inanimate rock.
|
| >Such characterizations belie life's true power. Life
| significantly expands the surface area of the planet capable of
| absorbing energy, exchanging gases and performing complex
| chemical reactions. The Earth-system scientist Tyler Volk has
| calculated that all the plant roots on Earth, finely furred with
| tiny absorptive hairs, make up a surface area 35 times greater
| than the entire surface of our planet. Microbes are collectively
| equivalent to 200 Earth areas... https://archive.ph/VgzKD
|
| And life may have shaped the continents by infesting the crust so
| much that it breaks off and sinks in the magma. More than slime
| we may be dry rot too!
|
| And soon to begat AI descendants to spread over the galaxy if you
| buy the singularity stuff. Which I have to say seems kinda
| inevitable to me though others may differ.
| necovek wrote:
| If anyone is to say "life is just slime on a planet", I'd mostly
| read into it as how insignificant life forms on Earth really are
| to the entirety of the Universe.
|
| So, to me, the entire article is arguing a non-point: that's how
| I would read into the Hawking's statement. It's not about the
| beauty or complexity of life (or lack of it), but how even such
| complexity pales in comparison to the vastness of universe
| itself!
|
| While life as we know it might not exist elsewhere in the
| universe due to a set of conditions required for it to evolve in
| such a complex way, there is likely other similarly awe-inspiring
| stuff (slime or not) throughout the universe -- but, we are
| likely never going to experience any of it, with how restricted
| we are to existing within the boundaries of our little planet.
| xvilka wrote:
| Unless we find the "slow life" whose basic building blocks are
| stars, galaxies, or even galaxy clusters.
| ElFitz wrote:
| Now that would be a sight.
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