Post #4049367

2026-07-23 23:48 UTC

I mean...they exist here, therefore they're optimal. No, really, that's what Dick Dawkins, god of #biology, actually once tweeted on this subject. Of course I tried to challenge him; of course he merely clammed up again. Dawkins is tetchy about being an Internet "character" these days, mocked endlessly for his intellectual bankruptcy while sticking hard to the dignity that becomes an Oxbridge don. By his lights, he doesn't answer to anyone but himself anyway. But that circularity is intrinsic to the "anthropic principle". It seeks to argue that merely because we can observe ourselves and our environment, these things must be necessary not merely to our lives but to all life. Surely it's impossible that any life could have a different biochemistry than Earth life, right? (cont'd)

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@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 23:53

I don't believe that and thus the Pnictogen Wing has been thinking about plausible chemical (or even nucleo-chemical) systems in which complex self-sustaining structures might emerge. Our science advisor, @alyx_woodward@eldritch.cafe, has had a few unusual ideas, such as the possibility that a living system might be confined to the single planes of graphene that's been highly selectively doped or modified to introduce mutable patterns of defects within the graphene. Polyoxometalate ions exhibit the capacity for self-organization into very large and complex forms, with some systems even capable of forming membranes and microspheres. Why should there be no other #life in #space? It seems to us irrational to rule the possibility dead without observation. (cont'd)

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