[idiocache]

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.

[blamestross]

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.

[bko]

> 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.

[cwmoore]

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.

[idiocache]

Can't we believe that life is a terrible cosmic mistake and still be pro-human?

[croes]

Not a mistake just a happy little accident.

[jagged-chisel]

“Mistake” imparts intentionality. Perhaps life is an accident, but it can only be a mistake if intelligence is behind the cosmos. Observation, not argument.

[deadbabe]

Thinking this way is a necessary prerequisite before pushing humans into an oven.

[cwmoore]

How about after?

[falcor84]

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 Schrödinger'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]

Without life nothing is precious or a mistake. There is nothing to make a value judgement.

[aacid]

Life on Earth would be perfect ecosystem without human. Sure lion eats zebra but there are no animal species capable of eradicating other species. my (very amateurish) opinion is that "high inteligence" is very effective and successful short term genetic strategy (it allowed very average mammal species to become absolute apex predator) but long term it is very unsustainable and self destructive. Look at the lion, apex predator in his environment and it is completely content. People are never content, always need more and more. We are intelligent but so bored that we spend most of our time finding out new ways to kill or at least hate each other.

yea, I'm not a big fan of Humanity...

[oh_my_goodness]

Are you personally alive?