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Princeofcatpoop t1_j155peh wrote

Yes. However, the scale at which that intelligence would be expressed is difficult to project into larger scales. Both in terms of lifespan, affect on surroundings, and long term record, the evidence of sentience would be difficult to impossible. Orson Scott Card wrote about a sentient virus in Children of the Mind and addressed not only the difficulty inherent in communication between macro and micro life forms but also how such things would communicate.

The Game of Life demonstrates some of the 'qualties' of life, reproduction, evolutionary pressure, pattern seeking, but that's literally just ones and zeroes being expressed in a two-dimensional plane. Extrapolate how much more complex molecules can become in the three-dimension plane with at least 4-bit expressions (just counting valence electrons). Then take into account how many molecules are necessary to make up a single prokaryotic life form. There is room for the complexity of sentience in some form, as long as we allow for differences of scale.

One difference of scale we have observed in flies is that their reactions are faster than humans because they experience time differently. And we can see flies with the naked eye. Extrapolate that down to the cellular level and then imagine a single hour being a lifetime of experience for an amoeba.

Want to really go crazy with it? Imagine a pattern of energy created by pairs of bosons that develops 'sentience'. They would measure their lifetime in Planck seconds.

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