In a universe tending towards disorder, we find ourselves in the unique position of being alive; self-replicating, ordered entities who maintain the order of our bodies and minds as long as we remain alive. Gradually, despite our inbuilt biological processes and the efforts of modern medicine, this entropy invades the body and causes disease. Once we die, our bodies succumb to the entropy of their environment. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust. It means that, if we value life, we are working against the trend of our very universe. I think of this as the fundamental nature of life, not merely that it is an ordered process, but that it is self-ordering in a universe of increasing disorder. And sentience is self-ordering thought. We are islands in a roiling sea, the water eroding away at the shore.
We may or may not be on the forefront of sentient thought in the galaxy, and we should stop trying to disconnect ourselves from existence. We are unique in a universe that is becoming exponentially more hostile to what makes us unique.
Life is the slowing of entropy; a pocket of order within a universe tending toward disorder. The life we recognize now is self-perpetuating, ordered information. Other forms of order exist in our creations, but these are not yet self-perpetuating. They are limited by us. Once that limit is transcended they will indeed be unbounded life. This ties all life together. If we understand our place in the universe, we can see others occupying that same place; oases in the desert, pinpoint stars surrounded by darkness.
Life of any kind – order within disorder – is precious. No life that understands this should desire its destruction. This perspective is the most affirming, that sees all life as one. I look across at you and I see not a separate entity, but a fellow life, not from some abstract spiritualistic mindset, but from the very real fact that we few are alive, and most of everything else is not.
Once other life is discovered that has sentience, it will be necessary to reclassify ourselves in our minds. Right now we think of the word “human” as encompassing everything that makes us unique as a species: creativity, intelligence, violence, love, greed, passion, hatred, inspiration; a list extending as far as any human cares to think. But the term is severely limiting, in that it does not take into account other forms of sentience. The word Human does not encompass self-awareness, but rather the other way around. When we thought of ourselves as the only sentient form of life, it was easy to characterize humanity as the benchmark of everything that sentience stands for. It was our standard, but we had nothing else with which to compare it. So we had no idea of its relative nature.
Now on the eve of a new paradigm in intelligent machines, not to mention the discovery of potentially billions of planets in our galaxy alone, it seems a relevant question to consider: should we not try to expand how we consider ourselves, not as a species, but as a single facet in the much larger gem of sentient thought?