What was the stage of evolution where single celled organisms began to form colonies which would eventually become multicellular organisms? Did this process make the individual cells more secure at the expense of freedom, autonomy, intelligence, and strength? Is humanity undergoing a similar transition at a higher level right now? Would it be a bad thing to become a hivemind? If programmed cell death benefits the human body, could programmed human death benefit society? If cells are expected to commit suicide to prevent the spread of cancer, could a similar culture of suicide for the greater good of the species spread within humanity? Is security just the negative form of freedom? The freedom to exploit is negated by the freedom from exploitation, after all. If humans create a technology that renders humanity obsolete, should humans merge with technology or simply allow themselves to be replaced? If humans could invent a technology to stop feeling emotions like anger, lust, sadness, should they use it, even at the expense of meaning? Is optimization of heat distribution the ultimate goal of the universe, and what we call "life" just a temporary step to achieving that goal? Is anything inevitable?
9 posts and 3 image replies omitted.>>824955
>the single-cell organisms were really no more independent nor autonomous than the multicellular organisms, even if they were not bound to each other or other organisms, they remained bound to the inorganic substrate of their environment, i.e. bound to the mineral deposits they colonized and the chemical elements they consumed for energy. and even the most rudimentary primordial forms of life are not nearly as simple or robust as they appear, the earliest prokaryotic cell was an extremely intricate and delicate web of labyrinthine complexity that took hundreds of millions of years worth of random chance to come together and would die in seconds if the proper conditions for its survival were not met. furthermore, one could argue that the distinction between unicellular and multicellular life is really just a matter of perspective and that no lifeform is truly discrete unto itself; from our macroscopic point of view a cow is a singular lifeform eating grass, but at the cellular level the cow is an entire living universe of trillions of cells of all different kinds all operating in tandem performing different functions and continuously sucking in billions of other kinds of cells and processing them into energy to sustain and propagate itself and the distinction we see between the cow and the grass and the singularity we see in the cow completely vanishes.
good reply. a shame it disappeared
the single-cell organisms were really no more independent nor autonomous than the multicellular organisms, even if they were not bound to each other or other organisms, they remained bound to the inorganic substrate of their environment, i.e. bound to the mineral deposits they colonized and the chemical elements they consumed for energy. and even the most rudimentary primordial forms of life are not nearly as simple or robust as they appear, the earliest prokaryotic cell was an extremely intricate and delicate web of labyrinthine complexity that took hundreds of millions of years worth of random chance to come together and would die in seconds if the proper conditions for its survival were not met. and you're making a teleological assumption that all of this happens in discrete stages of evolution but its really all a continuous and cumulative process, right now as we speak there are zillions of novel cells and viruses evolving and changing and going extinct all over the world every second. furthermore, one could argue that the distinction between unicellular and multicellular life is really just a matter of perspective and that no lifeform is truly discrete unto itself; from our macroscopic point of view a cow is a singular lifeform eating grass, but at the cellular level the cow is an entire living universe of trillions of cells of all different kinds all operating in tandem performing different functions and continuously sucking in billions of other kinds of cells and processing them into energy to sustain and propagate itself and the distinction we see between the cow and the grass and the singularity we see in the cow completely vanishes.
>>824935Is torture a type of trolling? You're trolling the nervous system of a mammal.
>>824887Well OP im not a philosophically inclined guy but I can give you a quick list of different organisms that have evolved multicellularity in weird ways
>Cable Bacteria >Myxogastrids/Ceratiomyxogastrids in general >ParamyxidsAnd a couple examples of the opposite of single cells getting huge
>Spirostomum sp.>Caulerpa taxifolia >Valonia ventricosa >>824936meld of all human consciousness im guessing