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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6719529" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, in one way it changes our understanding only a little - what you describe is the way things are now - General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are not united into a single set of laws at this moment.&nbsp; But, you speak of interactions *between* these sets.&nbsp; If those interactions are not akin to the whims of gods, then those interactions may be charted.&nbsp; And then we get a set of rules for the interactions, and we then have, in a sense, a unified theory.&nbsp; It may be unified in the sense that a patchwork quilt is unified, instead of the way a knitted lace is all one thread, but it is unified, a complete working fabric still.As an aside, sometimes I think we may generate issues with flowery language - &quot;the universe existing as an interaction between those sets of rules&quot; would be incomplete, as there are also interactions found *within* the sets.&nbsp; Stop and take a look at how little we know of what that probability is!&nbsp; Each of us has an *intuition* about that probability, but we *know*, very, very little.It has been shown (by Freeman Dyson, among others) that with a supply of a relatively small set of units with slightly varying interactions (like, say, a soup containing supplies of just a few different kinds of peptides) and a bit of free energy around, that a transition from a disordered state to an ordered but dynamic state is nigh inevitable.&nbsp; Self-organizing systems *happen*.&nbsp; How much of a bigger step is it to life from there?&nbsp; *NOBODY KNOWS*.&nbsp; You keep asserting how much blind luck it may be... but it could just as easily be nigh inevitable, and not lucky at all.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 6719529, member: 177"] Well, in one way it changes our understanding only a little - what you describe is the way things are now - General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are not united into a single set of laws at this moment. But, you speak of interactions *between* these sets. If those interactions are not akin to the whims of gods, then those interactions may be charted. And then we get a set of rules for the interactions, and we then have, in a sense, a unified theory. It may be unified in the sense that a patchwork quilt is unified, instead of the way a knitted lace is all one thread, but it is unified, a complete working fabric still. As an aside, sometimes I think we may generate issues with flowery language - "the universe existing as an interaction between those sets of rules" would be incomplete, as there are also interactions found *within* the sets. Stop and take a look at how little we know of what that probability is! Each of us has an *intuition* about that probability, but we *know*, very, very little. It has been shown (by Freeman Dyson, among others) that with a supply of a relatively small set of units with slightly varying interactions (like, say, a soup containing supplies of just a few different kinds of peptides) and a bit of free energy around, that a transition from a disordered state to an ordered but dynamic state is nigh inevitable. Self-organizing systems *happen*. How much of a bigger step is it to life from there? *NOBODY KNOWS*. You keep asserting how much blind luck it may be... but it could just as easily be nigh inevitable, and not lucky at all. [/QUOTE]

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