Thanks for the thoughtful critique — I think you’re absolutely right that evolution by natural selection, as we know it, relies on mechanisms like reproduction, variation, and interaction happening on relatively fast timescales and small spatial scales. Galaxies and planets don’t seem to fit that model: they don’t reproduce, they rarely interact meaningfully, and they change far too slowly for classic Darwinian evolution to work.
But I realize now that I may have been too loose with my use of “life” or “intelligence” in the original post. What I’m really interested in exploring is this:
Are there forms of structure or information-processing at different scales — even planetary or galactic — that could be analogous to intelligence, adaptation, or life-like behavior, without being literal biological evolution?
We already have some examples that stretch the definition:
Artificial neural nets don’t evolve biologically — they adapt through learning and feedback.
Planetary weather systems “compute” outcomes via chaotic interactions and feedback, without reproduction.
Civilizational or economic systems exhibit adaptive behavior over centuries, though they don’t replicate like organisms.
So maybe galaxies aren’t evolving minds — but could they still participate in slow, emergent feedback structures we’d recognize as life-like, if we weren’t so bound to human-scale definitions of cognition or change?
I appreciate you pushing me to clarify this — I think the real idea I’m after is whether structure + time + interaction could lead to complex, adaptive dynamics at any scale, even if it doesn’t meet the biological criteria for life or intelligence.
Thanks for the thoughtful critique — I think you’re absolutely right that evolution by natural selection, as we know it, relies on mechanisms like reproduction, variation, and interaction happening on relatively fast timescales and small spatial scales. Galaxies and planets don’t seem to fit that model: they don’t reproduce, they rarely interact meaningfully, and they change far too slowly for classic Darwinian evolution to work.
But I realize now that I may have been too loose with my use of “life” or “intelligence” in the original post. What I’m really interested in exploring is this:
Are there forms of structure or information-processing at different scales — even planetary or galactic — that could be analogous to intelligence, adaptation, or life-like behavior, without being literal biological evolution?
We already have some examples that stretch the definition:
Artificial neural nets don’t evolve biologically — they adapt through learning and feedback.
Planetary weather systems “compute” outcomes via chaotic interactions and feedback, without reproduction.
Civilizational or economic systems exhibit adaptive behavior over centuries, though they don’t replicate like organisms.
So maybe galaxies aren’t evolving minds — but could they still participate in slow, emergent feedback structures we’d recognize as life-like, if we weren’t so bound to human-scale definitions of cognition or change?
I appreciate you pushing me to clarify this — I think the real idea I’m after is whether structure + time + interaction could lead to complex, adaptive dynamics at any scale, even if it doesn’t meet the biological criteria for life or intelligence.