imho, the language didn't age as well as other popular multi-paradigm predecessors. I never got my head around their OO implementation, or handling of arguments.
If you want to delve into his work, please note that his editor John Martin/Black Sparrow heavily defaced most of his original work with mediocre edits that bordered vandalism [0]. The manuscripts is where the better stuff is.
Spiders are also useful. My exgf lived in a farm and had dozens of harmless spiders in the ceiling of her bedroom that ate all mosquitoes. It nuanced my view on spiders.
The fundamental premise of the title seems misleading to me. Life existence doesn't depend on dimensions, it's perception that does. As the author later says, the paper is predicated upon an anthropic consideration of reality: if it can't be observed or compatible with the human mental model, then it doesn't exist. Has that been proven to be the case?
A definite classic. What's unique about human intelligence? There doesn't seem to be anything in our carbon based systems that can't be theoretically replicated on silicon. Turing may not have been religious, but the amazement I think he felt about human intelligence was close to religious awe.
Are you sure? Doesn't work have value under any scenario, if only a residual educational value: a lesson for you and/or others? That would reduce "hard" and/or "smart" to multipliers of that value.
There is something inextricably human about this sort of anecdote though, like modern reenactments of the drowning of Hippasus by the Pythagoreans after bringing up irrational numbers.
Reminds me of Microsoft. They only had two engineers working on MS-DOS 1.0, their most important and profitable product at the time. Despite recurrent industry criticism of the product and the launch of competing DR DOS (faster, better and 33% the price), it took Gates two years to react, with commercial tactics first (and eventually overdue product changes later)...
That's exactly the crucial question I don't see being asked anywhere. It's answer has huge implications, it's non answer leads to a schizophrenic nation.
No microbe map in the paper unfortunately, just global maps of where the samples were taken. Like many papers these days: wonderful titles, disappointing abstracts and empty conclusions.