Even though we still struggle with finding a satisfactory definition of life, that doesn’t mean that we can’t think about ways that life might be so different, so alien, that we would also struggle with noticing its existence.
In the past I’ve played around with this idea in a variety of ways. For example, considering life so different (or advanced) that its fundamental substrate is radically unlike ours. A suggestion that life could exist in dark matter made for great tabloid fodder. But the basic argument was, I think, an okay one: If dark matter has microstructure it could conceivably maintain the necessary complexity for living systems. And if dark matter does exist it must also constitute the majority of matter in the universe and therefore represents an awful lot of juicy real estate.
Similarly, what if complex, thinking biological life is fleeting on the cosmic scale but its machine progeny are more robust and more widespread? Such entities might also be very hard for us to recognize as such, either whizzing around at high velocities between the stars or massively encrypted in their fundamental design and their communication strategies.
Are there other forms of extreme alienness though? Qualities that would make life extremely hard for us to notice or understand?
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