{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/607",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 607,
    "subject": "don't drink the water? don't eat the berries!!",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-06T00:53:44+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-06T00:53:44+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0009-0112@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Greg Neyman",
        "address": "greg.neyman at gte.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-06T00:53:44+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) don't drink the water? don't eat the berries!!",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "While I find the probability-based arguments for the existence of\nbiospheres on other planets to be fairly plausible, I see no reason to\nexpect that their life-chemistry will be in any way compatible with ours."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "you make a good point, Robert ... I don't know how it relates to robot\nrights, but ...\n\nchances are that complex organic chemicals will be INCOMPATIBLE between\nplanets ... if anyone has read Clarke's 2061, there was this scene where a\ngiant fish on nearby Europa ate the carcass of a human ... 2 minuets later,\nit surfaced, vomited the carcass, thrashed around, and died ... chemical\nincompatibility to the toxic extreme.\n\nbut the basic nutrients will be there, stuff life amino acids and simple\nlipids ... there was this experiment conducted a few years ago ... a student\ncreated a proto-earth-like environment in a class tube ... methane/ammonia\nrich air ... UV and electrical (lightning) bombardment ... the next morning,\nhe had simple organic chemical chains dripping from the electrodes ...\nchemicals that were compatible with earth life.  further repeats yielded the\nEXACT same chemical yield ... assuming a habitable world would be the third\nor fourth rock out from a G type star (that's Sol's classification, right?\nor am I getting things screwed up again?) ... it would probably undergo\nsimilar formation/evolution, and have the same proto-environment ... that\nmeans ... the basic organic chemicals generated would be compatible with\nhuman processes ... all we'd have to do is seed the planet with organisms\nthat would feed on those chemicals in the environment ... or heck ... humans\ncan live on those chemicals alone ... it wouldn't be the most culinarily\nfulfilling life, but we'd live ... just don't eat the alien berries ...\n\nno wait ... I have some ramble left in me yet ... Michael ... I don't see\nwhy terraforming robots necessarily need to be self aware ... anymore so\nthan the pathfinder probe that's rusting on mars right now is \"self-aware\"\n... the path finder probe was limitedly self-aware ... it knew it was the\nthing that was to respond to all instructions from earth ... and that's all\nthe terraforming robots need to know ... they're the agents that will be\nenacting all implanted commands ... they maybe very complex commands, ones\nthat demand a very sophisticated AI, but that doesn't necessarily demand\nsapience\n\nuntil we meet again ... hat\n\n    /\\/\\     Greg Neyman               Greg.Neyman at gte.net\n___/____\\___      http://home1.gte.net/web100to/\n  |HE  HA|\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}