Could the universe be just part of some bigger "living" lifeform?

Just incase you didn't know The Outer Limits has an episode you can watch free on Hulu just about this very thing http://www.hulu.com/watch/69866/outer-limits-in-the-blood

It was alright but not perfect, kinda funny.

 

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I have always wondered about this very question which has led me to here. I think it is a very interesting hypothesis. It blows my mind excuse the pun how the above picture, the map of the universe looks just like a neural network of the brain too. I think noope could be onto something. Our universe seems infinite or almost to our perception. Perception makes all the difference here for this argument. If our universe is just a tiny unit smaller than an atom, it would seem to be to the perception of a "giant". Yes giant is'nt the best analogy but hey there we go. The universe seems to behave like a living entity.
Size is relative to the perception of the viewer as such. I think maybe noope has'nt articulated what he meant in the best way. Still a very interesting hypothesis and I'm glad I wasn't the only weirdo who has been thinking of such things.

 

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The speed of light doesn't scale, so a universe sized brain could only think extremely slowly, if at all. And the universe has a limited lifespan.

 

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I think there are some interesting quirks in nature. for instance how mammals have roughly a set amount of heartbeats linked to their lifespan. sorry my shift key is stuck at the moment so forgive my lack of capitals at the beginning of sentences. how hurricanes or the swirling of a cup of coffee resemble large scale galaxies. how large mountain ranges behave almost like a liquid in super slo-mo. this may seem a little off topic but possibly linked. i didn't mean the universe map was like a giant brain. no scaling of the speed of light involved. its just another quirk of nature that these fundamental shapes repeat in the micro and macroscopic scale. i'm going to go all out here now on my own interpretation. i did say size would be in the eye of the beholder in last post but perhaps time also. So our 14 billion odd year history of our universe(to our perception) might be merely seconds to an outside observer in the "giant's view" universe.
I was just reading a paper by nickodem poplawski about a different matter, an alternative theory to the big bang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikodem_Popławski#Black_holes_as_doorways that made me think of this even though he doesn't mention this. there is no way to prove this of course the birth of our universe in or from the back of a black hole from another birther older universe. however i had been thinking about his hypothesis when it occurred to me about the size of our universe. Perhaps as time can be relative and if there is no singularity in a black hole and a white hole spurts out all the information into another universe or dimension. perhaps time and size are totally different in this postulated new universe. This is just a fun topic i like to dream about and i offer no proofs or evidence. it is difficult for me to articulate what i mean but please don't all kill me at once. sorry if i wondered off topic. the universe seems to behave like an ecosystem. everything is interdependent and interconnected. space itself seems to be like the blood in a body. there is waves like in an ocean when gravitational waves pass through it. I'm not some ancient aliens dude or anything and believe in scientific logical thinking. i have an intuition about this universe in a tiny atomic structure and/or the universe being part of a living system of sorts. maybe not a being but an ecosystem on a grand scale

 

Enjoyed the perspective .

river

 

Could the universe be part of a life form? No. The word life has meaning (as in a one celled organism and on up the food chain). The word universe has meaning (as existence, time, space, and all the relationships therein). There is too much energy, and not enough matter in the universe to support a life form. Except, what we know is very little. Human knowledge is a drop in an ocean of ignorance (or something like that). Even if a ghost could talk it would not be a life form. Life and the universe are separately defined, and so far it cannot be said that the universe is living. So could it be because anything is possible? No. To say that the universe could be living would be an unreasonable statement for us.

 

there just seems to be a pattern for everything. One day I was watching Adventure Time and came upon a quote, "Humans don't live long enough to recognise the pattern".
It's crazy dude, its like we are here wrapped up in our own world, having these rules for everything, fighting for land and money when we are just so insignificant and worthless. The way we are destroying the earth, some higher beings may perceive us as a kind of virus that landed on its resources..

 

so agree on your point where we have greatly limited the meaning of the word life and prevented the existence of far more possibilities. .

 

I read an article or a short story once about how life (artificial? natural?) in the extreme future might conserve energy under threat of the heat death of the universe by slowing down their processes to occur over vast stretches of time.

There's no hard and fast reason why a single thought can't take a billion years.

 

Good question.
But if the universe as a whole was a biome, we should have discovered life on other planets and supernovas would not be able to exist.
If you want to compare a unversal biome to a human biome, one could conclude the universe has a lot of cancerous patterns inside the greater pattern.

Humans don't survive catastrophic failure of its fundamental cell structure. Would the universe be able to persist, given the abundant catastrophic events taking place on a galactic scale? Supernovas, super massive Black Holes.

IMO, only a non-living but self-ordering mathematical function would be able to cope with such physical calamities.

After all, it was mathematical functions which self-organized the current universe from an original state of complete chaos.

 

Why? As you well know, the human body is host to all sorts of biomes for organisms to live. On the skin, in the stomach, in the intestines, the hair, the eyelashes, etc.

'Cancerous' presupposes the civilizations are harmful, rather than beneficial. And our own microbiomes are not only beneficial, they are critical to our survival.

 

Are you denying that humans get cancer, the uncontrolled and catastrophic explosion of cell growth, eventually killing the entire human biome? Cancers are not beneficial organisms contributing to the smooth interactions among the biome's constituent inhabitants.
They are the equivalent of exploding stars, irreversibly destroying critical parts of the biome.

I made the factual observation that if the universe were a biome, it would experience the catastrophic uncontrolled events of supernovas and super black holes, destroying entire galaxies and all supporting organic patterns within.

If the universe were an organic pattern, it would not be able to self-repair such damage to its biome and eventually die.
I compared it to a human biome combatting an aggressive cancer, eventually killing the host.

OTOH, if the universe was a non-living but dynamic mathematical pattern, it would be self-ordering and repair itself regardless of any catastrophic cosmic calamities.....

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I don't know much about quantum entanglement but my impression is there may be something going on beyond the speed of light and so our giant may not be a slow thinker.
Alex

 

From my POV of a self-referential mathematical universe, speculation about motivated sentience is superfluous.
Why would something need to be consciously self-aware to be causal and function responsive to causality?
That would be a God, no?

We know that sentience is not a requirement for cause and effect to be a functional process. It is required for motivated thought, but not for physical responsiveness, that is a mathematical mechanical process.

We also know that motivated thought requires an organic brain, but the universe has no known organic properties that are required for conscious thought, except for localized biological patterns. Is the Earth a self-aware brain?

Question; is the universe itself a biological organism or does it only have localized sentient organisms within it?

IMO, Occam's razor is very much a part of the equation, considering what we know about what it takes to produce sentient thought.

AFAIK, the universe does not need to be a self-aware sentience. It's language is purely mathematical......

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1 + 1 = 2 is a self-referential mathematical function, an equation. Nothing sentient about that.

We can make a case that the universe is a non-sentient, but quasi-intelligent dynamic pattern.....

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That hints at the speculation encouraged by the op.
I think you addressed the matter most rationally however the speculation perhaps needs rules that don't exist or that we are un aware about...I suppose folk think about the proposition merely because they detect a pattern with galactic layout that resembles patterns we associate with brains or blood systems. We respond to patterns...it's like seeing faces in the clouds...what do we call that?
In any event it would not mean this giant is god ...our giant may be just a dumb kid incapable of controlling anything in his system.
Alex

 

Going back more than 60 years I recall reading a comic book (take that Alzheimer's) were the story line was about our Universe being no more than part of the leg of a flea which lived on the back of a dog

Funny how that image has stuck with me for so long

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What breed?

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Flea or dog?

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Hmm...

It is evident that from posts # 29 to.. #38 age has stunted the collected intellect .

 

Of course our brains are triggered by observation of patterns which resemble stored information in our brains. That is the part Anil Seth calls "controlled hallucination".
The brain doesn't know the difference until it gathers sufficient information to make a best guess of what information it is processing, such as "what is the face attached to?" and "does the body resemble a human body?'
No????
Then it must be a God as I have learned to interpret "unseen living objects in the sky". And Thor is born in the mind.