Life is a distributed system, and one that was artificially created.
What you call "biological life" (from now on, simply "life"), that is, the set of all biological life forms, is in fact just the dynamic part of the system.
The complete system is made of certain chemical elements (eg.: organic elements in carbon-based life) that are slowly accumulated onto the part of the planet that will harbor the system (eg.: the surface, or some underground sea). Most of this biomatter is in dead form, and only a small part of it is alive. To be able to sustain the live bioforms, a greater proportion of dead biomatter must exist. Live forms literally raise from dead biomatter, and return to it when they die. Live forms cannot appear out of mere rock and dust. You need a huge substrate of biomatter to support them (e.g.: the "humus" in the case of Earth). For bioformation to take place in a barren planet, the engineers must either bring a sufficient ammount of biomatter from outside of the planet, or gather it in-situ.
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Life is first seeded onto a dead planet with the intent of EXPANDING it. Primitive plants and algae are designed to survive in the initial environment, and to collect and bring the desired elements to the target part of the planet (surface, seas, etc). This is what earthly plants are: machines that extract "nutrients" from the soil and also modify the atmosphere. These primitive bioforming machines also reproduce, thus achieving expansion. However, at first they cannot hold onto the environment by themselves, and must be kickstarted with a bit of help. Because of this critical initial situation, these primitive forms are not designed to compete against each other, and no predators species are introduced yet. But also because of this, they have a short adaption span. They must work quickly or they will be wiped out by environmental changes.
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No that's bollocks. Life is energy maintaining information to displace entropy. It can start very simply and elaborate over time.
Yes, it is an information system, but it needs hardware support. I'm describing the operation of the system, not the intent of the system. That, only the engineers will know.
Blablabla
After the expansive stage, a lot of bioelements have been deposited in the target area, and life can now enter the next phase: the auto-sustainable stage. The system must be able to withstand change by itself: climatic changes, solar cycles, etc. For this, a distributed genetic algorithm is used. It must adapt globally by using mostly immutable individuals with a limited lifespan. A new population of more complex and diverse forms is first manually introduced by the engineers. These are programmed with parts of the distributed algorithm. The goal here is PERSISTENCE THROUGH ADAPTION. For adaption to take place, life forms must go through mutation and selection, as the algorithm dictates. Their life span should be such that it is enough to mutate a bit, but short enough as to not to lose adaption to the environment. The optimal lifespan is found by the algorithm itself, and is different for each species. The reproductive selection criteria (eg.: the most colourful feathers in case of birds, a certain body shape, big horns in game, etc) also evolves over time. Adaption is also achieved via inter-species predatory selection: specialized species exist that predate others and take down the "weakest" (less adapted to the environment) individuals. Over time, entire ecosystems appear, each ecosystem adated to a particular environment. Globally, the system self-selects and transforms itself at a ("hopefully") greater pace than environmental changes occour.
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That's a very interesting idea anon, but I have one question for you. If the purpose of doing this is to expand the planet, well, how? Unless the life on that planet can somehow draw resources from elsewhere, then there is only a limited amount of material available on the planet, so all they can do is redistribute it in different ways.
>If the purpose of doing this is to expand the planet
How can you expand the planet? It is limited.
You got me wrong. Life expands only at the initial colonization stage, after that it no longer expands uncontrolledly, the goal being mere persistence.
So you mean expansion as in, with the intention to spread life outwards to other planets or areas of space? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Either way, what would be the goal of such a thing? As a resource? An object of study? Maybe used to calculate a problem in some abstract way? Or something else entirely?
Only thing I think applicable is Ancient Alien Theroy.
The "we're engineered mining slaves" version.
Sure, it's cost effective, if it can wait a few epochs before collection.
But surely drone tech would be most desirable.
Lest it's a case of space bandits/separatist movement that was repelled at some point.
Like you say, I don't think such a capable form of life would need us to produce resources for them. They would certainly have far more efficient means of getting such things. If they did want something from us, my guess is that it would be far more abstract or esoteric. Then again, who knows? Trying to guess what aliens might be like, based on what we know about life on Mother Earth is like trying to guess a trend with only one data point. We could very well be outliers. There's no way to know, not yet.
If your theory is true and they provided the basis for life to propagate across this planet, I just wonder why. I understand what you said before, only the engineers would really know, but I still wonder. Are you saying this because you think it's the most probable reason for life apparently coming from inanimate matter? Because that's certainly a very strange thing that we still don't really understand. People argue about evolution and such all the time, but not many people argue about the deeper questions, like how (and why) life began. Or even how the universe began.
Even the most commonly accepted theory for the birth of the universe today, the Big Bang, is still pretty "magical" if you think about it. Like, did everything just pop out of nowhere? Or did it come from somewhere? Or... something crazy that we can hardly imagine?
"Humus" means ground in latin.
>artificially created
By something that wasn't artificially created?
Idk. There could be several layers of creators. Even we humans can create.
>expansion as in, with the intention to spread life outwards to other planets
No, expansion across the surface of the Earth. You need a lot of plants to bioform the surface and the atmosphere.
That is a certainly a mystery. Humans don't seem to fit in the animal kingdom, they are outliers, and neither are they adapted to the environment.
> A new population of more complex and diverse forms is first manually introduced by the engineers.
And where do they hail from? This is Ringworld-tier fantasy.
>And where do they hail from?
Probably derived from pre-existing lifeforms that the engineers might have found in other planets. I don't believe they can create life, just modify it.
I meant where do "the engineers" come from?
Anyway, not science, needs pruning.
It's science to consider the origins of life, homosexual. Go to another thread to argue about evolution or gravity.
What's the purpose of consciousness in this system? If biological life is created merely as a cog in a greater machine that is fixed for the planet's expansion, then why were humans granted higher level of intellect and consciousness to ponder these ideas?
Seems depressing to think that all we're her for is to serve the planet once we decay. I'm still convinced that humans are special because of their consciousness.
>What's the purpose of consciousness in this system?
That is a really difficult question. All I can infer is that it was a later addition. Life was first, then conscient humans.
>do you have any evidence
You can see that all the other planets around are big balls of rock, dust and sand. Life is quite rare, and so far we can only find it on Earth (with pardon of the Israeli lunar tardigrades and the American bacteria on the martian rovers).
>Life is quite rare, and so far we can only find it on Earth
And that proves what, exactly?
Nothing. You want proofs, but there are none, other than what we can reason about.
Idk about who. The point of this thread is to discuss the how.
Biology is LULZ, distributed systems and genetic algos are c/sci/. It is on topic.
Well, how? How did they do it? Let's disregard the why, for now. Was it the introduction of mitochondria?
They have their own chains of rna, they are independent individuals and carry epigenetic information
You do what they command
This is a neat story, but do you have any evidence at all suggesting that it is actually true?
This is kinda bullshit because ~~*they*~~ would've intervened when we made enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet a bunch of times. ~~*they*~~ could not have known wether we use them or not so unless this is a zoo where ~~*they*~~ just plant the seed and watch for entertainment your theory is kinda stupid
Maybe they did. Every time that all out nuclear warfare could have happened, numerous times, it didn't. Through statistically improbable events like loyal soldiers, the kind that are given nuclear authority, disobeying orders. And being punished for it. Also machine malfunctions, machines designed and built by the best and brightest, mysteriously not working at the crucial moment.