[DoctorMichael]

So what?

To listen to the disparaging remarks made by some of our fellow posters here at FR on numerous Threads, scientists are to be shunned because it is assumed they are irreligious. Thats what.

[donh]

I think it was Alan Turing that proposed that eventually, we'd send tiny physical automata to the astroid belt, to mine and manufacture endless copies of themselves, in order to eventually ship processed materials back to us, and send scouts on to the rest of a solar system, and, eventually, galaxy.

...

There is a theory about the origins of life I don't recall seeing bandied about here on FR. The Silicon-Carbon Flip-Flop holds that organic life was constructed by silicon life of advanced intelligence, as a way of trying to get computing power of a different sort, in that getting more silicon computer power seemed to have reached a dead-end addressing combinatorially explosive problems, in uncovering the nature of the universe.

Eventually, but much sooner than inherent computational limits begin to pinch, carbon-based life, which is inherently more flexible, produces silicon-based life.

So...the purpose of life on earth is to create un-date-able four-eyed hackers who live in the basements of computer science institutes, and live on coca-cola: aint the majestic cosmic cycle awesome?