Greg Boyles

OK, so all this pretty much boils down to the fact that Carl Sagan has assumed that extraterrestrial cultures have not discovered a mathematical means of generating prime numbers and that they would place the same signficance on them as our mathematicians do. I am not discounting it, but it places the prime number thing into a context that I can comprehend a little better. The point being that, if radio astronomers did discover a fibonacci or doubling sequence being pulsed out from a distant star system, then they would not necessarily dismiss it out of hand as being of natural origin simply because there is a mathematical means of generating it.

OK, almost closed then. Matter might be added through asteroids and space dust but, short of a catastrophic meteor hit and apart from our space probes and satellites, no matter leaves earth for all intents and purposes.

The Earth is a closed system. Regardless of all that goes on on planet earth, there is no increase in O, C and N etc. These are merely cycled through organisms and geological structures etc. Energy is neither destroyed nor created, merely cycled through various processes. Entropy is the available energy in a system to do work. Does that then mean that the universe is a closed system where entropy neither increases or decreases but merely cycles (in the opposite direction of the flow of energy) between various processes? Maximum entropy would mean no available energy to do any work? E.G. If all the matter in the universe was in the form of neutron stars, white dwarfs and black holes etc. White dwarfs eventually become cold and give off no energy or matter. But can this happen to neutron stars? Even black holes are supposed to entually 'evapourate' by giving off energy from what I have read of Steven Hawkings' theories. So does that mean that their mass and energy is eventually returned to the cosmos to do some form of work? I.E. Available energy increased / entropy decreased?

Fibonacci is associated intimately with life but not necessarily intelligence. But we are really talking about radio pulses being received from interstellar space. What natural phenomena would generate radio pulses, or pulses of some other form of energy, that form the sequence 2, 4, 8,...... or 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,.......

Can you cite any terrestrial or cosmic examples of these? Particularly with the Fibonacci sequence, I have great difficulty in conceiving of a natural example of this that does not some how involve life.

OK so they are not the same thing. It requires energy to reverse entropy, e.g. biogenisis, planet and star formation due to gravity. And as long as there is life in particular there is a contiual cycling between increasing and decreasing entropy. Is this correct? Or is, for example, biogenisis some how still consistent with the universal rule of increasing entropy? If so then how because it is one thing that I have never understood about entropy.

Entropy = chaos. Chaos theory dictates that it can generate order, e.g. forget the name but those solutions that oscillate between two equilibrium states in rythmical manor. So if chaos can generate or foster order then how is that entropy only ever increase in theory?

But why prime numbers? Why wouldn't a sequence of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32,..... or 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,... be an equal indication of intelligence? Would it not be the fact that the sequence of numbers is mathematically meaningful in some way regardless of whether it consisted of prime numbers or not?

I am refering to the novel 'Contact' by Carl Sagan, in which he writes that prime numbers are unlikely to be generated by natral events. I have absolutely no idea. Not being a trained mathematician or physicist, I have no context in which to place this concept in order to judge its validity.

But they are 'unaware' of the wider ecological or physiological processes in which they play a small part.

Can some one please briefly explain why natural cosmological events are unlikely to generate prime numbers.

Clearly you are interested in science and have of some what of a rational mind, otherwise you would be hanging around a religious or psychic website etc. So why not put Ringer's method of writing down people's names who pop into your head and then a tick beside those who then ring you. Put your belief to a simple but quite rigorous test. After 6 months or so post the results of your test here.

Yes the ability to detect electric fields and vibrations are present in fish. But fish ad humans are seperated by hundreds of millions of years on the evolutionary tree and we do not share those abilities wish them. Apart from the fact that sea water, and even fresh water, is a far better conductor of electricity than is air. The only way humans can detect brain waves is by attaching wires to the surface of the skull via a conductive gel. Brainwaves can not propagate from one brain to another through poorly conductive air and we no not have receptors to detect them anyway. Come one mate leave out the science fiction and deal with the science fact only. PLEASE!

If you are refering to the 'cuddling', then how the f can you possibly prove that these protists are really cuddling as humans do. It could be anything, just trying to get past each other, some form of sexual reproduction that necessitates close contact,............ You can't interpret the behaviour of non-human organisms through the lens of humanity - it is just idiotic.

I suspect what the original poster is attempting to argue here is that single cells are conscious or that single neurones have a proportion of the total conscious of a whole brain. Haven't we been through this before. All the evidence thus far is that single cells, protists or neurones, are not conscious or self aware. In your computer, does a single transister in your CPU possess 0.000x% of the functionality of Windows XP that you are interpreting on the screen? Answer - definitively no! A transistor simply sits there at lets current flow through it or not. It does not know whether it is helping to run Windows XP or Linux. It knows nothing of what is happening on the screen or how the user of the program running on the whole computer is interpreting it or interacting with it. If there was no video adapter in the PC and no screen, then we would not be able to interpret anything running on the PC. It would be just a bunch of meanlingless currents running and that we might be able to measure individually with a multimetre. Currents in individual transistors -> Windows XP is ermegent complexity made possible by the existence of a video adapter, a screen and of course our brains. The relationship between individual neurones in our brain, our whole brains and our consciousness/self awareness is similar to the relationships between individual transistors, the CPU, the whole PC and Windows XP.

That is the old dualism argument of the faithful. But all the medical evidence seems to point to the fact that the 'decision' and the 'I' are inseperable and the same.

Acetaldehyde is supposed to be a carcinogen and no amount of alcohol consumpting is entirely safe.

From memory the AIDS virus lipid coated and its pentration into the cells is at least partly a result of the virus 'dissolving' its way through the cell membrane. Is that correct?

Can you elaborate as I am not clear where you are going with this.

Emergent property of complexity? Same as 'mind' emerges from biochemistry. Arrow of time emerges from complex thermodynamic systems but is absent from the simplest of thermodynamic systems?

Perhaps the arrow of time/events is an emergent phenomenum of complexity!

Well entropy for starters. But it is abundantly clear to all, including yourself no doubt, that the physics of the cosmos is far from complete. Relativity and quantum theory are not reconciled for starters. Just because your mathematics may not currently distinguish past from future does not necessarily make it so. It may mean there is something missing from you mathematics. I use the word 'may' deliberately here.

The problem is that I can't see how this phenomenum is simply a psychological construct because there is abundant evidence on erth and throughout the cosmos that it has occured long before there were human minds to create the construct.

Well all the evidence around us suggests to me that the direction of the future is indeed special for everyone and everything in the universe, even if we/things may experience different rates of movement into the future due to relativistic effects.

My original most was about the arrow of time. Some one's argument was that time does not flow and therefore does not have an arrow. I came up with the ruler analogy for time where we change our position and time cordinate rather than time flowing around us - it was accepted. Makes sense since time is supposed to be a dimension according to relativity. But I still don't see how this scheme precludes an arrow. I.E. We can only increase our time coordinate but not decrease. We can't move back in time and therefore time still has an arrow - into the future only.