When I think about the possibility that there might be aliens, I like to imagine they would be unlike anything we could describe or understand: Why should they be carbon based? Why should they have a body? Why should they react the way we envisage what a reaction is?
But, of course, you both are right: the universe looks the same in all directions, and it is made up of the same ingredients, so it is "reasonable" to make the assumptions you just did.
You know what really fascinates me: that we don't even know what we don't know. All our ideas are based on our knowledge of baryonic matter (matter made up of atomic particles).
What if there's a whole lot of universe that we don't even understand?
... oh wait, THERE IS!
About 95% of it. It's called dark energy and dark matter.
Okay let's say the were somehow fundamentally different from us, but they were still individual beings; so let's say they might be complex patterns in an electromagnetic field or something.
First of all they would have had to evolve somehow, otherwise you would have to say that it was the most unlikely event ever in the universe and all the matter or patterns or whatever they are constituted of just randomly happened to align in the exact configuration of that complex being. But if there is some sort of evolutionary process, they have to die and compete with each other or the environment, so there have to be pressures upon the system and they have to reproduce and die, otherwise they would go extinct very quickly.
This whole question is problematic though because if you say you think the life forms would be fundamentally different (like patterns in an electromagnetic field) what would qualify them as lifeforms? If not the fact that they consume energy, reproduce, evolve and die? Why not call a rock a lifeforms then or gravitational waves?
I say as long as they are sentient and required to move and consume things some mechanism to signal to them a deprivation would be necessary.
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I could see a non suffering being only as a "pattern" or arrangement of matter that has no competitors, is supplied with energy from external sources forever (let's say the electromagnetic winds supply the pattern in the storm with energy) and it had to come about suddenly by a random configuration of all the elements to it (I think there is this hypothetical of a lightbulb randomly assembling in space by some physicist I can't remember right now; that's how it would have to happen).
So it would be a immortal, lonely, thinking cloud of electromagnetic waves.
But then what would it think about? All human thought wouldn't make any sense to it.
Lol yeah I don't think so :-P
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You can't seperated thought or sentience from feeling, need and deprivation in my opinion since the whole mechanism serves the sole function of surviving, finding food, playing hierarchy games, reproducing etc... And thus are linked inextricably to pain and deprivation
en.wikipedia.org
Ah right the Boltzmann Brain. It had to be like that and not require energy/ have an unending external supply of it for it's operation.