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Interview With a Teenager

There are many periods in one person's life. To me, they all seem distinct from each other. Referring to those farthest in the past, in my mind, it was almost like they didn't really happen to me. Some of the choices I made before, from this perspective, looked like some other person made them on my behalf. Especially in the first couple of decades. But that's the point of growing up and all the changes that happen from early youth to adulthood. Later, we are left with tons of memories that we look back on most of the time with a smile on our faces, sometimes with a little sadness or shame, and once in a while with a confused look as if it happened at all. But one thing is certain: everything that happened, exactly how it happened, defines us as we are today.


Viktor, testing the drums before 'Some Like It Hot,' theatrical play

Of them all, no single period in life compares to the one called the teenage years. I remember those years. Vividly. If I could choose just one phrase to describe all that's happening during those seven years, it would definitely be 'trial and error'. It was just like tasting the life that was thrown at me for the first time. Understanding it. Embracing it. Maybe a little changing it on the way.

But enough about me; the rest of this post is about my son Viktor and the continuation of the 'Interview' series, started with him being seven and ten years old in 'Interview With an Expert' and 'Interview With an X'. Anyway, these are 15 questions for his 15 years I selected to ask him today. I'm really proud of all his answers and his way of thinking. 

Describe yourself in 5 words or less.
Determined, ambitious, loyal, generous, and honest.

What's the best part of your day at school? Why?
P.E. and all of the breaks in between subjects. Because I get to talk to my friends normally and rest a little bit.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to your birthday party, who would you choose? What would you talk about?
Einstein, Jesus, and my father. We would question Jesus.

Imagine you’re the president, and you need to have 3 people to assist you. Who would you pick and why? 
I'm not really into politics, so I don't know whom to pick.

What have you learned in life that you feel will be the most useful?
Motivation isn't real, but discipline is. Try to be as optimistic but as realistic as possible. Never give up.

If you could change anything in the world and make it idealistic, what 3 things would it be and why?
I would get rid of all the governments; there would be no more countries, and everyone would speak the same language.

How would you explain Earth to aliens?
I think there is a lot of diversity to this question, but let's say in the case that we come to them. I would most likely try in some way to use physics, math, and chemistry to explain Earth.

Do you think it's better to have one great skill you're an A+ at, or many skills you’re a B at, and why?
This question is very easy because if you had only one skill that you are A+ in, then the rest of the skills would not be so great... So that is horrible... I would rather have many skills that I'm a B at. I could easily improve in skills that I like. And I also have a lot of options if I ever change my mind.

Imagine you're the teacher tomorrow at school. What are 3 things you'd teach that you think would help make school better?
Self-defense, how to be a better person, and showing the kids the real world.

How would you explain the word 'love' to someone without using the word 'love'?
Umm... Make this with my hands. 🫶

What is the most important thing you learned in school NOT taught by a teacher?
The world isn't black or white. It's gray.

If you could travel back in time 3 years, what advice would you give yourself?
Make me proud.

If you could grow up to be famous, what would you be famous for?
I would be famous for motivating other people to become the best version of themselves and showing how to really be successful.

If you had enough money that you never had to work, what would you do with your time?
There is no money in this world that would make me not work.

What do you think your life would look like 10 years from now?
I hope I will be successful in the future and be more capable.

So there you go. When selecting the questions, I knew they should not be too detailed or too serious. Nevertheless, they were supposed to be appropriate for the age, and to make sure, I performed a little research first to find the right ones, which I thought were the most suitable. Sometimes, even the shortest answer to an apparently entertaining question shows a lot.

I wonder, if I had a chance, how I would answer them back then. Hopefully not too different.
 

Science of the Fountain of Youth

Cosmologically speaking, humans and all other animal forms of life (here on Earth) don't live very long. We can thank this fact for the evolutionary design of life based on the organic chemistry we are all made of. We came a long way from the point in history when evolution started to boost our development from hunter-gatherers into today's dominant species. But do we live longer today than before? Despite common belief and compared to our ancestors who lived in the past dozen millennia, the life span of humans today, enhanced by miracles of modern ways of living, which, in short, include improved health care and nutrition, better sanitation, access to clean running water, and immunization, is not dramatically extended, if at all.

Yes, the life expectancy (average life span of the entire population) of ancient times was way shorter than today, but this statistical data was misleading because of the vast number of people in the distant past who died very young due to high child mortality caused by numerous deaths of young people who didn't survive all the hazards of deadly diseases and various infections and epidemics. But many of those who experienced adulthood actually lived to a ripe old age. If we exclude life expectancy from the table and check a couple of known people from, for example, Roman history, Emperor Tiberius died at the age of 77 while Empress Livia, wife of Augustus, lived until she was 87 years old.


At the dawn of the third millennium, if we are talking about lifespan globally, it is estimated to be around 75 years on average. Depending on the quality of life in our societies, this number is a little higher or a little lower, but in retrospect, the rise of our civilization and all the benefits of the scientific discoveries 'only' managed to notably reduce a large number of deaths among the young population but not to extend individual life span itself. As it seems, significantly prolonging our carbon-based life with all we know today is a hard nut to crack.

The science of 'Why do we age?' is pretty much explored to the level that organic chemistry of invoking both aging and death is identified and well known. In the cell's power plant, within hundreds to thousands of mitochondria surrounding the nucleus, in the process called cell respiration, food we consume and oxygen we inhale are transformed into energy needed for the cell to operate. Unfortunately, it's the same process whereby various harmful products are discharged and released as waste products. Mitochondria uses oxygen and simple sugars to create the cell's main energy source, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), while byproducts' oxidative oxygen molecules in turn damage the adjacent mtDNA. Over time, the accumulation of mtDNA damage reaches a certain threshold value and damages the cell inevitably. The cell responds with a reproductive process in which, by using DNA instructions in the nucleus, it duplicates itself, and a new cell continues the work of the previous doomed one. Unfortunately, the number of duplications is limited until telomeres, or the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, run out. If we add intracellular and extracellular aggregates of various molecules that are no longer useful and potentially harmful but accumulated everywhere, what we get as a result is aging, potential various diseases, and ultimately death.


By knowing all this, we don’t have to be rocket scientists to pinpoint exactly where the mythical water of the fountain of youth should operate. There are about 100,000 trillion mitochondria in the human body, and it is obvious that the Holy Grail of modern medicine lies within research of how to either deal with cells' oxidative stress along with the accumulation of junk molecules or to find a way to bypass mitochondria altogether and deliver ATP directly to every cell on a daily basis and reduce consuming food and inhaling oxygen to the bare minimum.

The history of fountain(s) of youth is most likely connected to spa waters rich in mitochondria-friendly substances. For just an example, one of the mitochondrial byproducts is hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), a strong oxidizing agent, and to deal with its negative reaction to cells, the human body is producing the antioxidant glutathione peroxidase (GPx) in order to break hydrogen peroxide into harmless water. To produce it, an organism needs glutamine, glycine, and cysteine, and those are usually present in sulfur-rich water and food, as well as in ingredients rich in selenium and certain amino acids, etc. Of course, this is just an example of one antioxidant dealing with just one oxidant, but the list goes on. There's a possibility that once in the past there existed a spa spring with a combination of antioxidant ingredients that was just perfect to maintain all the toxins below dangerous levels for those who drank it regularly. Maybe it still exists somewhere on the surface of Earth, waiting to be found. Of course, if found, swimming in it won't work. It would require drinking it on a daily basis and is probably only effective when combined with certain diets.


On the other hand, administering ATP directly to the cells via the bloodstream, if such a mechanism is possible, seems to be more complicated than I previously thought, due to the fact that mitochondrial production and behavior are not actually passive. Mitochondria don't just produce it but also deliver it to the right site within the cell. In different cell types, mitochondria behave differently and resemble small, bacterial hive-like lifeforms; they are mobile, constantly change shape, and even merge/separate with other mitochondria or construct chains for the efficiency of what they do while administrating ATP where it is actually needed. Unless the fountain of youth is full of intelligent nanobots with the ability to replace trillions of mitochondria in a human's body, preventing aging in the near future, this way resembles more science fiction than anything else. 

To conclude with some wisdom, the magic fountain or scientific pill with certain ability to significantly enhance human life span is still out of reach. To find the Holy Grail, it seems, we would definitely need one or more breakthrough discoveries that we are still missing, but with each new scientific discovery, we seem to be getting closer every day.

 

Unthinkable Solutions of Fermi's Paradox

"At some point, the gluons will no longer be able to hold the quarks together, and the hadrons will decay. Which will mean the end of matter in this universe." - Albert Einstein 1

As it seems, in our universe, nothing is made to last. Eventually, everything gets old and dies or changes or decays into something else, and I am not referring to the life forms only but to all matter in the cosmos. For all we know, this might not be true within our own macroworld alone, but also deep below, the same goes for particles in the quantum realm as well. The fact is that everything in the universe has a tendency to achieve the lowest energy state and to finally rest within a stable system, even if that means going through various changes or decays. In the quantum world, this could be true for the Higgs field as well. According to Hawking, if it becomes metastable, the vacuum decay bubble will emerge and consume everything in order to eventually reach the lowest energy state possible. For Higgs field being everywhere in the universe, this would mean instantaneous collapse of the whole universe and it's own ultimate change into a new and ultimately alien environment with a completely new set of laws of physics in the aftermath that could not be as friendly to the living beings as they are today.


But relax, this is just a theory; it might be wrong; nothing like it happened in previous 13.8 billion years (or did it?) and the quote from the beginning is not really formulated by the famous physicist. Well, fictitious Einstein did say it in Phillip P. Peterson's 'Paradox', a remarkable piece of science fiction driven by this scientific premise, but still, it might be something he would say if he were still alive today.

'Paradox' is a relatively new novel series, so I am not going to spoil the content, but to really understand how vacuum decay relates to the well-known Fermi's paradox or to better understand aliens' actions towards Earth and other star systems throughout the universe, I'd warmly recommend the read. As a science fiction fan for years and decades, I could only say that I didn't stumble to the better science fiction in relation to concepts such as Dyson spheres, quantum mechanics, fusion engines, antimatter propulsion, warp drives, the creation of the Big Bang and inflationary space, virtual reality of enormous proportions, wormholes, travel, and communication... The list is going on, and I can only speculate what is inside the third book that has just been released (unfortunately, due to my illiteracy in German, I'll have to wait for the summer and its scheduled translation in English). Anyway, this was one of the rare book series with a sequel even more interesting than the first book, with perfectly connected endings in both of them.


The idea of vacuum decay behind Peterson novels for the solution of Fermi's paradox is indeed new in scientific background, but surely there is more logic we can think of and apply to the absence of aliens, and the idea, more than half a century old, is getting renewed attention in recent years. What I am referring to is the simulation theory and/or holographic principle. It is triggered by the very research of black holes and the information paradox, which states that physical information can be lost and swallowed by black holes despite quantum mechanics postulate that nothing, including information, can ever be lost, only transferred from one form to another. One of the solutions for the paradox I discussed a while ago with the question in the post title 'Are We Holograms?' answered Fermi's paradox perfectly.

However, to get back to science fiction, on several occasions in the past, I mentioned "The Thirteenth Floor", the movie that portrays so far the best story about a simulation of everything in existence. I don't know why, but I never read the backstory about this great film, and especially for this post, I went to check where the script came from in the first place and discovered that it was loosely based on the book called "Simulacron-3", written by Daniel F. Galouye way back in 1964. Needless to say, I downloaded the copy and liked it very, very much. Considering the year and the fact that it was written at the dawn of digital computers, the details and sophistication of the story were amazing. In relation to Fermi's paradox, if we are indeed living in a simulated world created by aliens themselves and we are all nothing more than just a bunch of artificial intelligence characters in the game, then the absence of other intelligent forms becomes clear. Or we will meet them when they become programmed and inserted in the simulation. Anytime now.


Next in line of the fictitious solution for Fermi's paradox on the first glance is not something that much unthinkable. But if we reason about communications over long distances in space, calling the ET and/or receiving a message from aliens from deep space is not as easy as we might think. By using our current technology, that is. The most obvious is the SETI project, which was founded half a century ago based on only monitoring electromagnetic radiation in search of ET broadcasts. After that, many years of looking for the signal from the above failed to find anything so far.

The most interesting and one of the first works of science fiction in this realm was Carl Sagan's 'Contact', in which aliens managed to receive the Earth's earliest TV broadcast 25 light years away, decoded it, and sent it back into SETI's antennas. Unfortunately, even though this looks much more plausible than vacuum decay or giant simulation, it really is not. Engineering and the science behind it are cruel. To broadcast anything at all in the electromagnetic spectrum, the signal must be focused and powerful enough to reach the destination without dissipation of the signal, to avoid the data being embedded in too much noise on the way, or to experience path loss while spreading out over long distances. Our EM broadcasts from Earth are meant for Earth only (or for the Moon on occasion or two in the past), and they are not powerful enough to reach even the closest stars without serious signal loss. To get weak transmissions like that, aliens around Vega might need solar system-wide antennas to detect UHF broadcasts from us. The same goes for SETI on Earth; it is unlikely we will ever get anything that is not narrow, focused, and aimed directly toward us. Nevertheless, ''Contact' will always stay on my physical and digital shelves for being one of the best science fiction films in the history of the genre.


At least for this post, the last and final obstacle with life forms swarming the vast space throughout the universe(s) is ... life itself and its potential limitations. Organic life based on carbon or something else exotic to us could be fragile and short in general. One small asteroid strikes the planet in the Goldilocks zone, and poof... everything dies and resets. Billions of years of evolution go into oblivion in a cosmic second. Even if major extinction events miraculously avoid the intelligent species, they might be destined to destroy themselves at the end of the path. Even more unthinkable scenarios we are still not aware of yet can pop into the equation. One of the obstacles could be that life could exist only in networked scenarios, or, to be precise, it could only work and evolve, more or less, in the form of a giant hive mind in relation to the mother planet. If that's true, there could be a limit in distance for a small number of individuals to leave their world, where they would ultimately lose connection to the hive and die. We never sent anyone or anything to live beyond moon orbit, so if this is true, the border of life could be anywhere beyond that.

I am not sure that Arthur C. Clarke had this in mind when he wrote 'Rendezvous with Rama' back then in 1973. Probably not. However, it was not far from common sense that in this unthinkable scenario, in order to sail toward the stars, the only way that could be done is to build enormous spaceships and giant cities that could carry everybody on the one-way journey. There are countless hazards for that kind of travel, and something along the way might happen to the people who originally populated Rama in the beginning. If we add to the story ultimate laws of physics and issues with limited speed of travel, vast distances between stars, and sparse sources when it comes to little things like food and fuel, 'the hive mind' problem could be another perfect solution to the paradox to consider.


But let's stop here with imagining all potential reasons why we still haven't met ET. If I would like only to spice it up with more unthinkable reasons, it would not be that hard. Just think about the "Zoo Hypothesis", in which we are created and observed by aliens in their science fair experiment, or the theory that we are the first intelligent civilization to emerge so far, or that there is 'The Great Filter' that limits intelligent life species from reaching the potential to dive into stars.

In the end, we could all be wrong. Evolution of species throughout the universe might not be headed toward stars at all. Perhaps we have to reset our minds and look elsewhere, no matter how strange it sounds.

1 Quote by Albert Einstein character from Phillip P. Peterson's Paradox novel series

 Novels:
http://raumvektor.de/paradox/
https://www.amazon.com/Contact-Carl-Sagan-ebook/
https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-C-Clarke

Image refs:
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/heres-how-universe-could-destroy-itself-horror-vacuum-decay
http://lcart3.narod.ru/image/fantasy/jim_burns/jim_burns_cylindrical_sea.jpg
http://starkovtattoo.spb.ru/titanfall-wallpapers

Refs:
http://www.bidstrup.com/seti.htm
https://briankoberlein.com/2015/02/19/e-t-phone-home/
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_F._Galouye
https://medium.com/o-s/6-mind-bending-solutions-to-the-fermi-paradox
 

What is Intelligent Life?

I remember reading an article in the Guardian last year with the title "Our galaxy may contain billions of planets with the same mass as Earth". Surely, it is a valid scientific guess as it is, but if it is really true, my first thought would be that intelligent life as we know it (assuming we are intelligent species) is as rare as we can imagine. If they are not, the big question is, why are we still not able to detect any single proof of their existence, or are they still not eaten by some violent alien species? The only logical answer, that we are the first ones to walk on the edge of impossibility, is logical to me. Most likely we are missing something important—a discovery as important as fire was.


While this statement is still accurate and generally speaking plausible, let's think a little more about it. So to start with the original statement, are there really that many planets with Earth-like properties in our galaxy? Ever since I read the Drake equation for the first time (shown above), I couldn't get rid of the feeling that there was nothing spectacular I could conclude from it. Come on, really, this is just another scientific speculation at best, as we simply don't have any valuable information about star systems other than our own. Not until the recent year did we have any observations of local star clusters related to potential planets. The only scientific data coming in this regard is the one from the Kepler mission, and after two and a half years, it still didn't find a single hint of an Earth-like planet. Yes, this is just the beginning, and the Kepler spacecraft only searches for changes in brightness of the nearby stars looking for planets, but still there is nothing so far. Just giant Jupiter-sized or supermassive rocky planets. I wanted to sound optimistic, but I would expect at least one stable candidate in these 2.5 years of Kepler's. Maybe it is there in scientific data still waiting to be revealed, or maybe those giant planets harbor Pandora-like satellites? Or nothing's there? The future will tell.

Next, there is a common interpretation that life-supporting planets exist in large numbers, but intelligent life is rare, or we are, by some rare possibility, the first one. As this sounds plausible on first glance, it is not. We simply have this one-time experience with Earth, where one single cell needed almost one billion years to evolve and almost three billion for the first multicellular creatures to arrive, not to mention that the first plant evolved only half a billion years ago. So, a life-supporting planet or satellite requires many billions of years of evolution, not many times interrupted with cataclysmic events. If we take this for granted, then it seems that complex life, like us, needs a small amount of time, astronomically speaking, compared to less complex ones like trees or grass. Therefore, again astronomically speaking, if we find a greenish environment on some planet, the chances of finding intelligent life on that planet in some sort of statistical existence are pretty big.


Ok, what's next? Oh yes, intelligent life... Is that what we are? Are these Hawking's famous sayings right? "Primitive life is very common, and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth". If you ask me, it is only half right. I'd say if primitive life is common, then complex life could be common as well, but the second statement is pretty much accurate. I don't want to sound pathetic, semi-scientific, or too philosophical here, but there is a simple fact that what differs humans from animals is that big rational brain of ours. On the other end, what is pretty much similar to animal life is that still hyperactive emotional or reptilian part of our inner head. I am not sure what the next centuries will bring to us, but it will be either further development of the rational brain at the expense of the emotional one or vice versa.

I am not saying that we must completely suppress emotions like Vulcans or try to augment people to reach this goal, but I am 100% sure that all human misbehavior today, like wars, global crises, hunger there and overfilled bellies here, and cultural or religion-based animosity between people, relatives, or neighbors, is simply caused by a reptilian complex deeply hidden in the center of the human brain. Of course, I really can't imagine living a life without emotions at all, but simply put, this part of human beings should not be in charge over reason. It's been proven too dangerous so many times.


So, in a nutshell, as soon as this part of the brain evolves down under the border of no return, I guess we should not call ourselves an intelligent species. Until then, it is unwise for some interstellar species to give us technology to leave the Earth—the chances that we would use it for star wars are bigger than that we would go to the next level and use it for peaceful exploration of the solar system and beyond.

The last and probably the most important from my original statement last year was the hint that we were missing something important, like a fire-like breakthrough discovery. Is that what we are missing—some space technology or a warp drive? Sure, this is the necessity; we definitely can't populate other planets or go interstellar with today's rockets, but in today's spirit, it seems that it is definitely something that will help our rational brain to become the real boss in our heads. Only then can we step further and say that intelligent life finally emerged on Earth. Only then can we say that our railguns are only made for mining the asteroids and not for killing people because they look different.

Is this possible?

Sure, if we are spared by some major cataclysmic event within the next couple of centuries or if we don't create one ourselves. I have all my hopes in the evolutionary process but also little doubts as well. But, when the day is bright and cheerful, I also have all my hopes that tomorrow humanity will overpass this current stage of evolution and head for something more.

Image credits:
http://eugenius330.deviantart.com/art/Message-413092189

Search for habitable planets:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Refs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/28/galaxy-planets-mass-earth-life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sumer_anunnaki/reptiles/reptiles14.htm
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/stephen-hawking-no-biological-life.html
http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/seti/drake_equation.html
 

Is Life a Zero-Player Game?

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Olivia Wilde & Garrett Hedlund in 'Tron: Legacy'*

It is obvious that the first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is a simple marionette type of world in which we, being game units, have little or no influence in the game, and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. From my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thought to. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating in one giant zero-player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution began with a predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm, and time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous zero-player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify the original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with the creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules as simple as possible, which would drive the entire system forward in time. Conway came up with a brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by underpopulation).
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (death by overpopulation).
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival).
4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for demonstration purposes the following example is finite matrix that. Just FYI, as a single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out, you would really need to use an old-fashioned computer screen and mouse pointer. Please feel free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is, of course, a zero-player game, so your godlike intervention in this game is only to create the initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own, and you can only watch.


Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with a small number of simple rules, yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in the evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, a very complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix, use the three-dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other, and we are today just a snapshot in the game's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game, the world before was less complex than it is today, and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions, and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game is without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game, I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best-fit model that we call reality."

Red Pill or Blue Pill?***

You might be asking now where free will fits in the game. If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such things? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct, then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain paths, which gives us the illusion of free will, but even if we choose one path in favor of another, we are not really capable of calculating where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too many unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what we will stumble on on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is that even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and the infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of the game's parts separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that has perhaps been pressed about five times so far.****


But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags, and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*). And I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far, so it's full of imperfection, but to sum it up, its plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. The entire movie is embedded above, and for more about all the filming and production, please find the referenced link within.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** Cornell Math Explorers' Club

Code ref:
** https://codepen.io/RBSpatz/pen/rLyNLb

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/
 

Science of Life in Solar System

There will come one day in the future. Relatively and astronomically speaking, it might come sooner than we think. It could happen way before we realize that there is no turning back. The day when Mother Earth will simply say, Sorry guys, I have no more energy to sustain this kind of life anymore, and when most of the biodiversity cocoons on Earth will reach the ultimate hazard and start imploding back into themselves. Air and water pollution will help a lot, and not even the planet's regular motions will be able to take us into another interglacial cycle. It is as much inevitable as what we are going to do next. We will take a long look toward the stars and say, "Well, we have to do this sooner or later. It's time to leave the Earth. Time to jump into Christopher Columbus's shoes again. And find the new home."

But we will not get far. There will be no warp drives, "phasers on stun", robots, AIs, or artificial gravity like in sci-fi blockbusters, and there will be no scientific breakthroughs that will bring Moon or Mars gravity to the comfortable number of 1. No, we will be completely helpless in all our efforts to terraform other planets and gas giants' moons. Not at first. Or fast. Or to make large asteroids rotate. Or to initiate Mars' core to fire its lost magnet. Or to make Venus act a little less than hell.


Artificial biodomes of Eden in Cornwall, England*