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Comment by julius_set | Hacker News Reader

I mean that’s all well and dandy but as the article itself mentions: “these parameters are toxic to human and animal life on Earth.”

Your definition and data for life is only the current life on Earth, since we don’t have a clear understanding of other types of life in the universe we cannot fully support this hypothesis.

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I highly recommend the book The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution[0] . While we don't have a clear understanding of what other types of life are possible, we can look at the empirical evidence of all the conditions on Earth where life has failed to succeed (temperature limits, water viscosity, etc) and the convergence of where it has, combined with fundamental constraints of elements in the period table, the universal laws of physics, the most common distributions of elements around stars, etc, to at least make reasonable claims that dramatically different forms of life, while not impossible, are much less likely than the forms we have here.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Equations-Life-Physics-Shapes-Evoluti...

The article mentions that the high degree of ultraviolet light emitted by Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1 stars would create large amounts of carbon monoxide which would bind to hemoglobin suffocating an oxygen breathing lifeform.

This is an assumption. I might have to read the book you linked, it looks very interesting, but I think lifeforms that have evolved to not use hemoglobin in their circulatory systems isn't that far of a stretch.

I do agree that specific of an assumption seems a little unwarranted.

Yep, all the obvious disclaimers apply regarding the acid-breathing snail-people of Xebron 5...

I prefer to imagine alien life as a sentient sludge with internal electrical signals as complex as the human brain, but with no notion of "self", "emotion", "purpose", "language", or other silly human things.

Heck, what's stopping us from classifying ocean currents as a sentient lifeform?

Thy're not stable over time, and so would be unable to maintain a coherent sequence of behaviour or 'thought'. Human brains are the most heavily armoured and environmentally controlled part of our bodies because complex behaviours are incredibly sensitive to environmental interference. Something as totally open and exposed as a bare sludge or ocean currents couldn't maintain sufficient coherence.

Your first paragraph almost perfectly described the science fiction novel Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Besides what others suggested, "Fiasko" [1] and maybe "The Invincible" [2] from Lem come to mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible

You should read Children of Time and then Children of Ruin.

I second the recommendation. Children of Time is my all-time favourite sci-fi/alien life novel.

Can't wait to finish what I'm reading currently to get started on Children of Ruin.

And Solaris if we're talking about oceans.

"Heck, what's stopping us from classifying ocean currents as a sentient lifeform?"

Section 6 of "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity": https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf In the context of the rest of the paper, of course.

Xebron 6.

the first life on earth evolved in an atmosphere toxic to us, and that life converted it to one that was toxic to itself but ok for us

We, remarkably, seem to be following that tradition.

Maybe this is where Groot came from.

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