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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Turanil" data-source="post: 2966981" data-attributes="member: 9646">It seems that evolution (in the broad sense) / lifespans, are subject to exponential trends, not linear paths. Lets see about a star (like our sun) and life on Earth:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------STAR EVOLUTIONSo, a star is an immense ball of hydrogen, which contracts due to the immense gravity it generates. Then, under the intense pressure hydrogen atoms are forced to reorganize themselves in more compact elements. This ignites the star which burns by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium atoms, releasing intense energies in the process. Then, later the helium will fuse, creating carbon; and thereafter carbon into neon/oxygen, etc. up to silicium turning into iron. (Of course, it is but a really short summary.) Now the trick is (very broadly):-- Hydrogen into Helium takes 10 billions of years (for our sun).-- Helium into Carbon takes 1 billion of years.-- Carbon to Oxygen/Neon in 10,000 years.-- Oxygen/Neon into Silicon takes 1 year.-- Silicon into Iron takes 1 day.-- Then a Supernova explosion occurs (during which are probably created the heavier elements: gold, etc.)So, you see the acceleration?LIFE EVOLUTIONRay Kurzweil (see his website <a href="http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1" target="_blank">Kurzweil.AI.net</a>) has studied the acceleration of evolution on Earth. He has found a similar exponential trend: "The evolution of life-forms required billions of years for its first steps (primitive cells, DNA), and then progress accelerated. During the Cambrian explosion, major paradigms shifts took only tens of millions of years. Later, humanoids developed over a period of millions of years, and Homo Sapiens over a period of only hundreds of thousands of years. With the advent of a technology-creating species the exponential pace became too fast for evolution through DNA-guided protein synthesis, and evolution moved on to human-created technology." Note then, that technology also follows such an exponential trend, from the use of simple stone tools for hundreds of thousands of years, to present day computer that improve at an incredibly fast pace.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------So what?Kurzweil do thinks that we are going to give birth to intelligent machines who will quickly get godly intelligences and expand all over the universe which will eventually become fully conscious. That he calls the "singularity".Me, pessimistic as I am, I see that in becoming a supernova the star dies. I fear this is also becoming our fate: we burn our last resources (food, energy sources, etc.) at an increased pace, and finally die while a sentient computer departs from our planet to the stars...</blockquote>

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