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I am trying to find a way to justify the creation of a single celled sentient (sorry intelligent) being. It's general structure is not specifically apparent although it should have the ability to either compel or "convince" other types of cells to do what it wishes. I am really unsure how to explain its existence. I had one idea, which was "these things just get created when humans time travel", but that just feels... A bit ridiculous to be honest. It kinda feels like a convenient cop out, and so I would rather look for other options.

JDługosz
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user64742
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  • Don't give up on your first idea "these thing just get created when humans time travel", it just needs extra development. – Edmund Frost Jul 01 '16 at 20:40
  • The only sentient creatures we know of have multi-million-cellular brains, and there's absolutely no way you're going to be able to recreate that in a single cell. I'm having trouble imagining what a "sentient cell" even means. Could you elaborate on what specific properties and abilities you want the cell to have? – ApproachingDarknessFish Jul 01 '16 at 20:41
  • @ApproachingDarknessFish it has the same mental abilities of a human, but it is a single cell (or at least a very close indistinguishable approximation of one). – user64742 Jul 01 '16 at 20:44
  • @EdmundFrost Well, I won't go into extreme detail, but the idea is that it shears off of as an aspect of the person's comsciousness. The problem with that isn't neccessarily that, but rather the fact that there is other time travel which shouldn't have such a side effect. In fact, there is one circumstance of it occurring which leads me to feel that maybe I should find some alternative. – user64742 Jul 01 '16 at 20:48
  • Why wouldn't you want time travel to have a side effect? – Edmund Frost Jul 01 '16 at 21:03
  • @EdmundFrost well... There are other portions of the story that contain time travel but do not have those side effects. – user64742 Jul 01 '16 at 23:02
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    You should wait a full 24 hours (or more) before accepting an answer. It discourages others from posting! Wait for all timezones to have a crack at it, and allow commentary to feed back. – JDługosz Jul 02 '16 at 00:09
  • @JDługosz why? If an answer is suiting me, then why should I be forced to wait? – user64742 Jul 02 '16 at 02:00
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    It's not just about an objective solution to a real-world problem like in technical subject SEs, or a correct answer to something like “what was that movie/book” in some other SEs. Here it's mutual entertainment challenging each other to be creative and articulete. So it's more like code golf where a first good answer is not the end of the exhibition. It's like throwing a party and ending it when the first guest shows up. In this case, you have yet to see the massed creativity of this group! The first answer may be criticised, discussed, and improved; others may be better. – JDługosz Jul 02 '16 at 03:14
  • @JDługosz Sorry, I did not realize it was a problem. I thought people who answered question rarely looked at whether they had accepted answers. If a better or more desirable one emerges, one simply switches the accepted answer. – user64742 Jul 02 '16 at 04:27
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    Each SE has a different culture. Some are more different than others. – JDługosz Jul 02 '16 at 04:31
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    I agree with @JDługosz, it is better to wait with accepting. It makes it more encouraging for people to come up with alternative answers some of which might suit you even better. Some people might stear clear of a question with an accepted answer as it shows quite easily in the list. I try to wait at least a week myself. – Martine Votvik Jul 02 '16 at 09:30
  • You may be interested in looking Physarum polycephalum and soome videos about it Slime mold solving maze, Physarum polycephalum, this, this and lot of other about it. Not totaly single cell, but .... – MolbOrg Jul 02 '16 at 19:10

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I think you may find it more plausible if you leave the conventions of terrestrial biologies behind. The term 'single cell' connotes something of lesser complexity than a multi celled organism.

I suggest starting instead with the two largest challenges, Undifferentiated 'life' ( more on 'life) and 'intelligent' beings. I think that given the restrictions, something with properties of a liquid, or amorphous solid, as well as a flexible, but organized crystalline structure, (think silicon) would open possibilities for information storage in an electrochemical matrix, and maintain undifferentiated structure.

This may require some unusual and exotic chemistry, not just your standard C/N/H/O terrestrial ingredients.

Please also consider that 'life' and 'intelligence' might be trickier to define, when presented with something truly alien.

I hope this helps, good luck !

JDługosz
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Joe
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  • I fixed the formatting for you. Please look to see how paragraph breaks are indicated. You seem to have found a shortcut for forced linebreak instead. – JDługosz Jul 02 '16 at 00:28
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I've thought about a science fiction setting in which intelligent space-faring beings are the size of microorganisms.

The key is that intelligence is achieved through quantum-mechanical processes involving a small number of atoms, capable of fitting inside a single cell. The downside is that processing is not massively parallel like our brains! They exist on a much slower time scale. In my story, they experienced approximately 1 day for each human year.

In their ecosystem they have cells that are more like ours, too; they call it fast life and understand that blindingly fast reaction time and fecundity is another choice in being successful, as an alternative to the simple crystal structure and deliberate planning and intentional actions of being intelligent.

Or, you could simply go the route of James Blish and not explain it.

More generally, (I guess I was on a theme of very tiny intelligences) I looked at the computational complexity and capacity of the human brain and did some hard-science calculation that it could just fit in a mosquito. It would be hard pressed to be any smaller if made out of atoms, even when coming up with such clever ways to avoid wireing between them.

In order to work at all, without magic, you need a richer source of state. That's why I bring up quantum mechanics, as the Hilbert Space is unresonably large. Doing computation on this state and then reading out some kind of results without destroying it is a subject of deeper research, but at some point you start handwaving.

JDługosz
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  • Interested in the proposed physical nature of your space microbes and their quantum processors. I admit to entertaining a similar idea of intelligent microbes with humanity converting itself into single cells with artificial brains. Since the microbe population of a large pond exceeds the world's population. A planet's microscopically reconstructed population would be many, many orders of magnitude bigger. Living in ponds would be nice and gentle. – a4android Jul 05 '16 at 11:58
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One way I could imagine a single cell organism gaining sentience would be through adopting of various strains of other organisms into its system. Kind of like we have mitochondria in our cells that make energy for the cell. Mitochondria have its own dna.

If at on some point (which could possibly be related to human time travel, by all means) a cell incorporated another simple organism (or more)into its system it could make it possible for the cell to both navigate and alter the behaviour of neighbouring cells. Or even more.

Martine Votvik
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  • That actually would make sense and explain other (not neccessarily relevant) things as well! Thank you! – user64742 Jul 01 '16 at 23:03
  • How does having organelles (as eucaryotes do) provide for this, when it takes us having billions of brain cells to accomplish it? – JDługosz Jul 02 '16 at 00:11
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    @JDługosz we don't know how intelligence or sentience works. We also don't know about its requirements. We do know a bit about what makes it stop working in our own brain, but that is not the same as knowing what could make it start working somewhere else. In this respect I believe we still have some leeway in posing how it could work somewhere else for the purpose of a story. However in my answer I only made account for behaviour assosiated with such. I tend to like suggestion better than stating things outright in fiction when it comes to these things. More creepy. – Martine Votvik Jul 02 '16 at 06:46