"Life, uh, finds a way." - Dr. Ian Malcolm

Me: guys how do we slow down the heat death of the universe? Isaac: die.

this may be the hardest question to answer.......Isaac makes a Video about it. Nice. happy Arthurs Day :D

Last time I was this Early, you had under 30k subscribers. Congrats on the massive success, you deserve it!

My life has been extrordinarily difficult of late. These videos are the only thing that helps me take my mind off of it and relax. I don't think thank you really says it.

*Judges quietly from space*

"Life exists in order to expedite the heat death of the universe." Lmao Entropy BTFO

The universe "creates" life to contemplate its self. Sounds incredibly poetic but that is exactly what we are a conscious part of the universes matter contemplating ther rest of it.

"Why did black make this move?" "The activation potentials in certain neurons reached a point that they made that move."

I've been periodically thinking about this topic for the last few years and its really interesting and affirming to hear someone else's thoughts on it, I've been binging your videos lately and I can't say how happy I am to have stumbled on your channel. Thank you so much for all the work you do!

Short answer: "Because it can."

Since we are talking about concept of the life, there are news about biological robot called xenobots which is robot composed of the living cells. The first xenobot used the cells from Africa frog.

I like to think that that life is just a reflection of the universe's innate tendency to complexify. Perhaps life will eventually develop into something far greater in time. If there are other universes out there, then perhaps life plays a role in evolution on the grandest of scales. With the way you brought up the heat dissipation idea, perhaps life & entropy are more intertwined than we previously imagined. Here me out here for a bit. Think about it. Universes that are incapable of producing stable conditions & thus form more complex structures are in a sense "infertile" so to speak. They either rip themselves apart or contract to rebound once more until the fundamental constants achieve a steady state. It does not necessarily have to be the lowest energy state but one stable enough to allow complex sub-structures to form out of the primordial froth & so on, the rest from here is history. Perhaps there really is no defeating entropy; which does not necessarily mean we cannot fight it, but such endeavors are futile & nothing more than a purposeless struggle against the inevitable fate that is the result of a universe growing inexorably old without a catalyst to give it a push. That catalyst is us - life. Life can break that "cycle" so to speak. We can produce energy densities only possible by intelligent design. The type of event that could in theory allow the universe to have "children" so to speak. Baby universes; disconnected bubbles of space-time budding from the parent universe. Perhaps that is the role of life? Simply to create a gigantic explosion. An explosion of life, of potentialities. Additional rivers of time from which new tributaries of intelligence could arise. Perhaps that is our role.

When isaac uploads new videos I always tell my girlfriend about it, and she pretends to be into his videos. It’s a joke we have going, the jist of it is that Isaac Arthur is wayyy underrated and I want everyone to know who he is!

It is amazing to see how much your channel has evolved over the years. It's made every Thursday a treat. Keep up the amazing work.

"0:30 welcome to our 220 second episode" what? this is gonna be like 3 minutes?

The stuff Isaac Arthur puts out is so underrated, so incredibly educational and fascinating. Your videos should be a college class by itself lol. Keep'em coming!

3:44 the pinnacle of evolution

I'm not "one of the greatest minds in history" but I do have my own theory. Everything in the universe drifts towards lowest energy state possible, and while life creates local dips in entropy, overall it increases it. example: bacterium grows, creating a tiny bubble of organized matter, but in the process and during normal life functions it eats and it's excrement is in a lower energy state. Net result is increased entropy and it happens faster than if a batch of molecules was just left to it's own.

I think "why" is a human construct. The hardest thing to escape from is our own perspective. I have no problem with reserving conclusions for a time when more data is available. Thank you for your thoughtful vids.

Thank you for another amazing video, Isaac, this is a great thing to enjoy with breakfast!

"I'm not saying it's rivers... but, RIVERS."

Man you hit on a lot of ideas I've stumbled upon while researching things like life and the universe and how entropy affects us all, but you wrap it up in a fairly succinct but interesting package. Your videos are always so great.

This is going to be great. 1 minute since release. Buckle up!

Since 'why' is so broad, it can have many 'answers' (meaning 'perspectives'). One perspective I like to take is that we are the universe trying to prevent its own heat death (via our problem-solving abilities). A sci-fi possibility (I'll make it a Galactic Thinker short story) is, within the perspective of enlightened/non-enlightened (in terms of addressing Broader Survival), where there is an Inquisition Ministry that evaluates life on planets, and, if the planet's species have leveled out at a less-than-enlightenable level (think of a planet dominated by dinosaurs for millions of years), then the Ministry orders a cosmic calamity to cause a mass extinction to restart life on the planet, in hopes that an enlightenable species will have higher odds of developing in the cleared-out aftermath (such as humans after the extinction of dinosaurs). Another is a landslide perspective, where life is like a landslide down the energy gradient of the Big Bang. There we are, and there are viruses (for example, though they are not alive), both tumbling down the 'landslide' (using up the universe's energy caused by the Big Bang, a negative energy gradient where entropy is increasing), and occasionally interacting, and which provides the 'energy' to facilitate molecular self-assembly and lipid vacuoles giving rise to cells and cell operation driven by chaos but enhanced by increasing the odds in a contained environment (facilitated by molecule-selective cell walls), with the functioning of their internal components driven by the molecular storm driven by what thermal energy remains in the universe. Note that we formulate questions, and solutions, based on perspectives. In the case of the landslide, it promotes a 'dynamic' view of life (and disease), which may be beneficial in formulating questions and solutions. An example of a bad perspective is 'time travel', which misdirects questions and solutions which will fail because you are approaching the problem from the wrong perspective (the right perspective being 'change travel', or going back in change).

I missed literally everything you said during the Langstrom's Ant section. Twice. "Ha! Look at the little guy go!"

Your channel is beyond amazing Mr. Arthur. I have been following for about three year now and have yet to find a channel that is consistently as precise and in depth as what you present to us. We all greatly appreciate the effort you put in everyday to make sure we have something new every week. It’s truly incredible and this is the one channel that I believe should be recognized worldwide to give people a POV that they can get nowhere else. It’s truly an honor and privilege to be able to listen to you everyday. May your future endeavors bring you everything you desire. Take care sir.

Hey Isaac, you ever consider doing physics classes or courses? I'd love to attend them and I'm sure many others here would as well.

Thank you very much Isaac, I think this is one of your best episodes so far. I hope we can see more episodes on this topic :)

It would be just as easy to sink a half hour into asking, "What is life?" as it is to ask "Why does life exist?"

I've seen them all and I think that might just be the best one you've ever done Isaac - bravo. I _love_ "life exists to hasten the heat death of the universe" - I'm definitely stealing that one. One thing though, you spend the whole episode from a physical-emergent-complexity point of view - and yet you still contend that you personally have free will. I still find it hard to square that circle. Keep up the awesome work.

I listen to your videos at work. Every once in a while I get to watch the screen for like 30 seconds. Those moments make me wish I could constantly watch. Love the art

I used to use Langton's ants to compose music. It can get pretty interesting to listen to, though it's often kind of weird sounding.

You are one of the gems in KZfaq! Thank you!

This could not have been uploaded anymore conspicuously, or sooner and rightly. I've got some exams coming up and I am diving back into some basic biology precepts to refresh myself. Great work.

Isaac you deserve a medal, your video's keep getting better and giving it a hitchhikers guide intro was sublime

How much time did you spend trying to get the SFIA logo to spontaneously form in Conway's Game of Life?

Because we were made to see your awesome videos!

It was a pretty entertaining video, but the word emergence was the answer for every mystery. I prefer to say that there are organizing principles in nature that result in the appearance of design or order. A hurricane could be called an emergent property of the atmosphere, but we understand the underlying principles of organization, so we don't need to say emergent. Also, while a hurricane appears to be an orderly structure within the atmosphere, it is actually a chaotic feature that forms temporarily due to underlying forces and interactions, just like life.

Excellent. re: My ongoing project of consuming ALL of Isaac's back catalogue. I've been online a long time and am well aware of the foolishness of allowing oneself to feel parasocial relationships. But dammit! I'm so grateful for Isaac's method of thinking and downright courageous willingness to consider wildly speculative or intellectually challenging ideas, that I can't hep but feel an affection, bordering on actually caring for the guy. It's crazy, but I can tell that this is a good and special person, and sometimes that's such a rare and valuable thing I can't help but :heart emoji: Thanks for everything, Mr. Arthur.

I read this funny story about how a human discovered by chance that all life in the galaxy had been seeded and later fund out the reason why it was done. The seeders were lonely ! An idea just popped into my head so I'm adding it. If a cell tries to reach stability as a result of life and then found its self in a place where stability was difficult, if this cell can change to reach stability, then modifying itself to reach stability would be a result of life. If the cells environment then was exposed to an extreme, the cell might adapt to reach stability, but if the environment changed, the cell would have to modify its self again and again and again. Each such change to reach stability might increase complexity. And by result of reaching stability the cell starts to gain, functions to handle extreme environments, but that requires more energy, so to reach stability the cells would need to change again. By affecting such a cell in a push pull environment where it has time to adapt to its current state before the next change occurs, life as we know it would evolve over time. So in my ind life evolved because the lack of stability, and lack of stability is death to a simple cell, so it needs to evolve to stay stable. It would explain a hell of a lot of odd little quirks that life of this planet has evolved. Life seek stability. If so, it might also cause divergent evolution down different stable paths. Throw in a slowly changing system between stable and unstable (push pull) and life could potentially evolve in any direction that seemed more stable. Too unstable is end of life and too stable is stagnation. But how that fist cell seeking to be stable came to bo, well that's a whole different question. Maybe it was a panspermia event, a soup of chemicals being struck by lighting or aliens tinkering to see what would happen, who knows! My bet would be on either the soup or panspermia . Something triggered that first reaction that started the chain, but what?

Life is just a bunch of chemistry doing something physical. We just call it biology

I loved this video. I felt like the quality of these videos noticeably fell in the past year or so (sorry, no offense, great channel), but this one is excellent. I'm even gonna watch it again!

Whenever I think I came up with an original explanation to something, Isaac Arthur always steals the words right out my mind. It’s nice to see other people talk about these kinds of things in depth

For those in a hurry Isaac answers the meaning of life at 0:14 and the purpose of life at 18:10. Have a nice day!

Isaac Arthur videos are emergent phenomena that this emergent phenomenon enjoys immensely!

Life's teleological "why" is to overcome the entropy that fosters its existence in the first place. Only intelligent life can possibly do this. Your subsequent video on escaping the consequences of entropy is a first step to this.

Happy Arthur's Day! A bright point in an otherwise astronomically large and ever expanding dark universe!

Man, i cant wait to watch this one!!

to sacrifice ourselves for the Imperium of Man and bring glory to Holy Terra and his majesty the God-Emperor of Mankind!

The ideas in this video are incredibly well articulated, well done & thank you!

Damn, as someone who aspires to work as a biologist (we all have our aspirations in life) all i have to say is that you explained so well both evolution and abiogenesis without mentioning or explaining once things like liposomes, protocells, the relationship between DNA and RNA etc. (in the case of abiogenesis) or the natural, artificial and sexual selections (in the case of evolution). Fantastic job! Well done sir!👍👍👍

Yup, life is an agent of entropy.

There are really two questions to "why?" The first is "what caused it to exist (all the required happenstances)?" The second is "what is its purpose, if any?"

This is literally the first time in my life that someone else has come to the idea that life exists to accelerate the heat death. Literally no one I've ever tried to talk to about the concept has ever even listened to me. Thank you, Issac. I've been battling it's philosophical implications for about 2 years now, and I haven't really gotten anywhere, because no one understands and I can't talk about it with people.

Love these existential & fermi paradox vids on this chanel

Cliffs notes: Science cannot answer 'why' questions. It can answer 'how' questions.

Life exists to create information, as a means of combating entropy. Least that's my interpretation. Now to watch the vid and see how wrong I am heh.

After all these episodes you've made over the years I really would've expected you to run out of things to talk about. Then you're like "Oh btw, episode on postponing the heat death of the universe coming out in a few weeks" and I'm all excited for it. And then at the end you tease the O'Neill Cylinder video and I'm like "Oh hey, that's another thing I need in my life!" It's kind of amazing you've managed to cover so many subjects in such depth and are still putting out videos that people can get excited for.

Isaac so pleased your high quality, infirmative videos have been so well received that you have the 450k + subscribers.

Life is exist because it is exist like many other chemical rections, you cant say why gunpowder explode, why oxygen and hydrogen create h2o and etc... Life is exist because it is possible!

IIRC, a while ago you did an episode topic poll in which "big aliens" was an option. Is that still on the table as an idea for a future video?

Another mind blowing episode. Love you Isaac. Keep it up.

Real smooth editing on this one

George Carlin had a theory - the Earth wanted plastic and couldn’t figure out how to get it, so it created humanity and now that Earth has plastic, we’ll slowly get phased out.

2:25 Chocolate covered DNA. My favorite!

Complexity from simple rules is why I love Cellular automata so much.

Very good episode Isaac, Thanks a lot!

Even at over 400K subscribers the comments are constructive, meaningful and even the jokes have a connection to the videos. This has got to be in my opinion one of the greatest science channels on KZfaq. I'm glad Isaac pulled through and didn't give up early on.

I love the joke at the beginning

I regret I can't like this video twice, Isaac is talking about what I'm thinking, I love it.

Yet another amazing video on a complex and weighty topic Isaac. Fantastic work.

im early and i dont have a joke. but its Chinese New Year this saturday. so i wish everybody here Happy Chinese New Year.

Well...since I haven't seen anyone else say it.... The last time I was this early, abiogenesis hadn't occurred.

I am never disappointed when I watch one of your videos. Great stuff, keep it up!

Your writing is unbelievable--just fantastic.

With the death of Terry Jones I would refer to Monty Python - The Meaning of Life and also their final song from "The Life of Brian" - "Always look on the bright side of life ". :-)

Repent simmers, and give glory to The Algorithm, lest ye be cast into the Great Recycle Bin! Also, don't forget, next Sunday is our potluck, so please reach out to Sandra and let her know which dish you plan on bringing.

Hi Issac, Great video as usual, I like how you were able to tie Chao Theory into a Statistical Mechanics perspective on QM. Good stuff, also I’m sure this is a great prior for most people who probably haven’t spent their careers (like me) chasing the molecular meaning of life. The theory that life actually speeds up the heat death of the universe is actually a great one (thank you for sharing the source, I will use it); though, it’s not as counterintuitive as you may think. I like to teach my students about the hydrophobic effect forming micelles with this same concept; while to our sentient minds clearly the bubble seems more ordered than random, in a molecular reality when hydrophobic molecules are aggregated together this is the lowest energy state- since, the energetic cost to hydrate each molecule is much higher than to only hydrate a large volume, limited surface area monolayer, thus actually is more disordered. In another nutshell, the polarity (which itself is emergent, and a great place to further discuss) and volume/surface area ratios can be summoned to explain the emergence of complex molecular systems-> -> -> life. :) Remembering, heat is a waste from chemical reactions which are performed by manipulating electronic distributions, across similarly energy state atomically associated molecules (bonds don’t exist), then life totally does persist and fight a complete equilibrium once it starts forcing chemistry and then feeding off “the fat (energy) of the land/universe.” Either way, a nice point to also add to this thought is something my old advisor (whom taught me modeling) used to say, “you could conceivably unwrap every climate model into a deep and more complex electronic description, but at the end of the day you need to consider the limited mental capacity of the human brain to intuitively comprehend the model is going to be related to its usefulness and ultimate success.” Though, I will admit I was a bit offended that you went from Chemistry directly to Microbiology. I mean, I know you’re a Physicist by training so I can forgive it, but that would be like saying there was Metaphysics and then Chemistry happened....! Anyways, I’ve also noticed in your other videos you tend to overgeneralize and tend to make factual errors specifically when you discuss certain biological concepts (specifically the macromolecular polymer world, sub-organelle but super-small molecule ala pharmaceutical world)- for ex: mixing up nucleic and amino acids. Respectfully, if you want to discuss these concepts some time in the future or need to bounce some ideas around and see what sticks (or could stick), I would be definitely willing to help just reply or PM me. I can also send you my CV if you have any doubts.

This is one of your finest episodes, Isaac.

why would you just *assume* that the alleged “true reality” that contained whatever “conscious agent” “designed” our simulation would require its “life” to have originated at some point in time, when for all we know, “time” is exclusive to our simulation? EDIT: oh you answered me lol 24:49

42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, NOT the answer to life! Edit: I was just trying to say that the reference wasn't quite right, that's all

For some reason the idea of entropy finally clicked for me while watching this video.

When Isaac mentioned the Counting Trees, I got so excited about the Discworld reference that I totally lost track of of the video. XD

I was hoping for a 42 point list.

We *all* should ask this unique and wonderous question to the most unimaginable; 'lifeforms' on the planet and known biology; *Virus'es*

Brilliant! Your best episode yet!

At ~ 25 minutes, he brings up the point that general principals ("life is a consequence of heat dissipation and entropy") do not guarantee that life will pop up whenever conditions are met. Certainly true. But I'm not sure Robert Forward's Dragon Egg scenario is a great example of that. He says life wouldn't form on surface of neutron star because life depends on chemistry, and there's no chemistry going on there. But Forward's whole reason for writing this novel was to explore the possibility that NUCLEAR chemistry could go on there. If it could, it would be far more rapid than "electron chemistry" that we're familiar with -- from which the novel's plot derives. It seems very unlikely nuclear chemistry could actually become complex enough to create this version of "Life as we do NOT know it". But if you allow that iffy proposition, then it could check off all the boxes required for what we call life. His larger point, that life won't automatically arise everywhere the basic requirements are met, is surely correct however. You can't just collect an energy source, a body with liquid water and all the right elements, and expect life will always pop up eventually. But at this point, we are far from being able to predict just when it would, and would not occur, or even what the probability would be.

26:40 I've seen enough hintai to know where this is going.

I know this isn't "super relative" to this video, however I was watching a video about a technology to create 3d images in color, by using ultrasonic waves to levitate a small ball rapidly, creating moving shapes. I was thinking this technology could somehow be altered, to fling a ball of plasma, or some Hydrogen around rapidly as a Lightsaber. Probably more like a "Proto-Saber" but got me thinking that with Elon Musk's neurolink making Psychic Thought transmission a reality in a decade or so, why not go full Jedi?

Thanks, Isaac. Can't wait for the episode on Heat Death.

I should have known SFIA would be where I, finally, learnt the answer to this question.

2:01 wtf are those guys even doing? Why is that dude wearing VR goggles?

Why life exists? Because it can. That's literally it.

I like that the clip with the hundreds of universe spheres arrayed in series takes place in the backdrop of a star field. It shows how difficult it is for human beings to place existence of anything outside of a space [space-time] context. Our mindscape has a space overlay and anything beyond that is math.

Life exists to continue existing. That is purpose. That is why. That is the fundamental priority underneath all others. Because each of us matters, inherently, beyond any excuse we will ever imagine.

Life: *exists* Everyone: "Why?"

dmt told me conciousness is universal and every life form taps into it with different capacity. so life is the means of experimenting conciousness which is the universe. for real i dont know why life exists but i know my purpouse in it but it's subjective. iam here to experience conciousness. love your channel btw. Keep it going

I've given the theory that life occurs as a mechanism to increase entropy, as well as its philosophical implications, the name "moral thermodynamics." I intend to proselytize vigorously on its behalf.

Great video! I wish this question would be more present in media coverage as a serious topic.