[ExI] They're Made out of Meat

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, May 24, 2026, 10:36 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 May 2026 at 14:20, Jason Resch via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > I've always enjoyed this story as a means of loosening one's carbon
> chauvinism, but I heard an argument against its likelihood that I find
> rather compelling.
> > It goes like this: if you consider all the vastly improbable fine-tuning
> coincidences necessary to support the self-emergence of water-soluble
> carbon-based life, it would be vastly more improbable that we would exist
> in a universe whose laws were simultaneously optimized to support other
> classes of self-emerging life based on entirely different mechanisms.
> >
> > Jason
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> I think you need to rephrase that slightly.  :)
> The fine-tuning of the fundamental universe constants wasn't aimed at
> creating water-soluble carbon life. The fine-tuning was aimed at
> creating the universe. If any of the fundamental constants had been
> different, then you wouldn't have created a universe at all.
> Our carbon life form just happened to be more likely than any other
> form of life.
>

It depends on which constants you consider. Some constants are fine-tuned
to result in large scale structures like galaxies, stars, and planets.

But other constants had to be fine-tuned for carbon to be abundant, for
there to be oxygen available outside cores of supermassive stars, for there
to be any elemental hydrogen left over after the Big bang, for star light
to be strong enough to power chemistry but not so strong it irradiates and
break chemical bonds.

All these things were necessary for complex chemical based life, for oxygen
breathing life, for life arising in aqueous solutions, and made of large
molecules glued together with carbon.

I've written about all these life-essential tuning factors here:
https://alwaysasking.com/is-the-universe-fine-tuned/



> Another way of thinking about it is that the carbon-based life forms
> are the 'starter' life form. Once that gets going, then it can enable
> many secondary life forms. Probably starting with computer
> intelligence, but who knows where the limit might be?
>

I agree that ither life forms can be made that need not be biological (once
bootstrapped by biological intelligence). But can you envision any
self-emerging intelligence that doesn't go through a biochemical stage in
this universe?

It's not easy.

Jason
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