Philosophistry Wiki
Inevitability of Life

Anthropic Principle Issues

The evolution of intelligent life on Earth was inevitable

Once the preconditions for simple life forms were established on Earth, the evolution of intelligent life forms was inevitable. If we define order the way Kurzweil does, as information-rich complexity, and then we graph its growth on Earth over time, its shape would be a smooth exponential. The smoothness of it indicates inevitability, at least after the emergence of single-cell life.

The maximum intelligence of an open system is monotonically increasing

As per Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, order in an open system is, for the most part, monotonically increasing. The maximum intelligence of a species on Earth has increased consistently over time. It’s not that intelligence is inherently advantageous. On the contrary, there are many more species of bacteria than not. But rather, once a technology is established, it sticks around. Once DNA was invented, it didn’t get uninvented, for example. Once metabolism was invented, it didn’t get uninvented. So the sum of biological inventions on Earth can, for the most part, only increase. Because there’s no limit on the number of biological inventions, they can all coexist.