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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

The alternatives tend to have a lot of problems that seem very difficult to overcome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...

It's not just some sort of failure of the imagination. The idea that life might be really weird isn't a new idea; everybody's read and/or seen the same science fiction you have too. But if it's going to exist in this real universe, it has to follow the real rules of the universe, and it's not particularly obvious that there are any alternatives that can even theoretically work.

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Somewhere out there silicon based life is having the same argument about carbon based life.

Did you read the link I provided? Intelligent silicon life has good reason to believe that carbon life is quite a bit more likely than their form of life. Just as we have good reason to think intelligent silicon life is very unlikely.

My point is precisely that this isn't just random chauvinism, which is rather than being some sort of way-cool open-minded "whoa" opinion is really rather insulting to the huge number of scientists who have considered this matter very carefully. There are a looooooooot of good reasons to think carbon is the only possible substrate for life in this universe, and a lot (still italicized, but with fewer "o"s) of good reasons to think water is the most likely choice.

To be fair, the estimated reading time for the link you provide is roughly 20 minutes and contains roughly 5000 words.

If silicon life makes so little sense then maybe we could get further if we were using organic compounds for computational equipment. I.e. Maybe there's a link between computational ability and the factors (raw materials and 'above') that make the basic components.

There's some research going into this now.

Here's an article about it from this past summer: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160714120650.h...

A researcher at GA tech has built a simple computer out of neurons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer

And I remember reading about storing data in DNA strands, but I can't find the article at the moment.

Anyway, it's a really interesting area of research. I expect we'll only see more of this stuff in the near future.

Saying that silicon life is less likely than carbon based life and that general AI is inevitable in the same breath would be a contradiction. I know you didn't mention AI yourself but there are plenty here on HN that would espouse those views.

But if we produce general AI in the near future it will have taken us billions of years, a considerable fraction of all time in this universe.

That would be assuming that the evolutionary progression to organic life as intelligent as humans must follow a similar path. Is there evidence that evolution is directed and that intelligence is some sort of "higher form", or is intelligence an arbitrary adaptation like any other, and could have occurred earlier in history? I could be wrong but I believe the latter is the current interpretation of evolution, in that humans could eventually evolve to something with _less_ intelligence.

If you know anything about silicon chemistry, you'd know it's a poor substitute for carbon.

For example, CH4 (methane) is a nice stable molecule. It exists underground for millennia. SiH4 (silane) is an unstable, pyrophoric (spontaneously ignites in air). There is no evidence to suggest that a silicon-based life form could exist.

> SiH4 (silane) is an unstable, pyrophoric (spontaneously ignites in air)

I'm no chemist, and I buy the line of reasoning that Carbon is by far the most likely substrate for life, but this statement seems to assume an oxygen-rich atmosphere. That's another assumption that could, in theory I guess, be invalid.

That's a good point, but another thing to consider is what the pyrophoric nature of silane indicates - highly unstable molecule. Even in an oxygen-free atmosphere, silicon hydrides just aren't that stable.

Why would silane be such an important factor in silicon based life?

The point made is the silicon-hydrogen bonds are much weaker than carbon hydrogen bonds.

This seems to, at the very least, discount silicon as a drop-in replacement for carbon.

So do we expect AGIs to be built on architectures that require silicon hydrogen bonds?

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