Why we're the only intelligent life in our galaxy
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You can have drastic differences in culture among people of the same race. The advent of intelligence requires a significant amount of separation between cultural traits and genetic traits. For example, there's basically no way to evolve a gene that gives a person the instinct of how to drive a car: this is learned behavior.NANOTEC said:
Does a person who is building a house give a second thought to the trees that have to be cut down to make room for it? Or to the grass that can no longer grow on the space held by the home? Or to the rodent dens that are covered? In order to build a civilization, some amount of not caring about lower life forms is required. Thus while there may be elements that arise in such a culture that would get some people to not want to colonize, there will be other elements that will. Those cultures that don't mind displacing lower life forms (within reason) are the ones that will come to economic prominence.
No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is that with humans around, apes will not get the chance to evolve intelligence. Consider that we are slowly spreading out into the last pieces of uninhabited land the world has to offer. Within a thousand years, it is unlikely that any apes will survive except in protected areas and zoos (this would also apply to any large animal that requires a significant amount of space). Protected areas are managed by humans, and thus we would be controlling the evolutionary pressures. Then it just becomes a question of whether humans want to provide the evolutionary pressures required to develop intelligence: my bet is that any such attempt would be met with significant resistance, because it would require making life very hard for the animals in the preserve (not to mention it could take millions of years just from evolutionary pressures, and I'd be rather surprised if people wanted to genetically engineer them to do it more quickly).
Things like ammonia might be less optimal than water, but they could work. And if you look at many biological molecules, like chlorophyl, you might wonder why another, more efficient one isn't used instead. But that's not how life evolved. Lots of things aren't optimal, or even desirable, but on the whole it works. With all the quirks that go with it.
So, if you're only looking for optimal solutions, you would never envision our kind of life. But if you're looking at our kind of life as the only example, so it must be the best, you're getting awfully close to Intelligent Design.
Edit: if things weren't like that, there would be no evolution, as you cannot go from nothing directly to perfection.
So, if you're only looking for optimal solutions, you would never envision our kind of life. But if you're looking at our kind of life as the only example, so it must be the best, you're getting awfully close to Intelligent Design.
Edit: if things weren't like that, there would be no evolution, as you cannot go from nothing directly to perfection.
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Chalnoth said:
Well sure we can have differences in culture, but that assumes inhabitants of the civilization are free to do whatever they want. Even personality can be argued as a sub culture but that's not the point. The point is if a civilization is under strict control, there is the possibility that culture can also be controlled. In fact laws are a kind of culture control.
Now you're mixing all kinds of stuff ithat may not be of any relevence to other intelligent life. How do you know that other intelligent life requires economic prominence? How do you know they require living on a "planet"? Maybe they've evolved to the point where they can build their own "planet" or habitat. Think of a super giant spacestation that's continually being increased in size. For argument sake let's say this intelligent lifeform wants to colonize other planets for whatever reason. Who's to say they won't want to control population growth? Who's to say this other intelligent life willl not have the means to terraform dead planets? Your agument is that this inteligent species will infinitely grow in population therefore needs to go to other planets to take over? Maybe they're happy living on their own planet right now and have aleady developed unlimited energy resources. Maybe their populations is very small, but each individual is super intelligent? Maybe they don't need to reproduce anymore like us humans and instead synthesize them when others die?
Well my ape example was for here on earth where we already have an evolutionary advantage over apes. What I'm saying is what if 30 thousand years ago, apes followed a similar evolutionary path as us? What if by today they have caught up to us in intelligence? Do we destoy them to make room for humans? If for some reason we cannot get off this planet then what happens next? Do we keep multiplying? What is our purpose to multiply and reproduce?
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I don't think that is feasible, unless you eliminate all interpersonal connections, which I don't think would be possible in any civilization (even if the civilization did away with physical connections and went entirely "online" for their social life, you'd still get separate groups that would develop different cultures...sure, they wouldn't be geographically separated, but so what?).NANOTEC said:
Right, so in the past there were apparently multiple pre-human species living even in the same areas at the same time. One eventually came to dominate. Whether it was through war or interbreeding, I don't know. But I don't believe for a moment it was an accident.
chavvdarrr
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big IFChalnoth said:
Also, the second big problem - how long a species "stays" in technological era?
You do agree that we are still far away(10s and hundreds of years away) from colonizing planets in our Solar system , do you?
Will the mankind survive long enough?
chavvdarrr
Veteran
and? Do we have any idea what kind of engine to use in order to travel 1 l.y. ? Not to mention keeping humans on board alive...Chalnoth said:
Compare how hard will be colonizing Mars with how easy is to destroy mankind (10-100 nuclear/H bombs is all that is needed)
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Well, an ion drive with a long-duration power source seems like it should be a good method.chavvdarrr said:
It may also be good to have a launch mechanism that gives a very large initial velocity. Think something like the space pier:
http://discuss.foresight.org/~josh/tower/tower.html
...but mounted on, say, Mars or the moon, where it can be made much larger due to the lower gravity and less or no atmosphere.
chavvdarrr
Veteran
My point is - compare how hard is "to reach the stars" and how easy to make them impossible to reach... ( as for engines - i had made kind of thesis some years ago on possible decisions - but ALL of them are sc-fi. Yet . While destroying rational being on the Earth is possible even now, and its become easier...)Chalnoth said:
Bigus Dickus
Regular
While I understand where you're coming from in just about every argument you've made in this thread, this one I just don't get. We might not be concerned about the trees or the ants, but we do have laws regarding the human treatment of rodents in labs. Even moreso for cats and dogs, and especially so for primates. As we slowly learned that dolphins are relatively intelligent, we became more and more concerned about their wellbeing. In fact, the trend seems to be that the more advanced we get as a civilization, the more "primitive" we extend our respect, concern, and protections of lower life forms.Chalnoth said:
I see the comparison you've made quite often in these types of discussions, and it never really makes sense to me. It always takes the form of "well, we slaughter chickens for food, or have no problem kill a million ants in an anthill, so an advanced civilization would have no problem doing the same to us." But that ignores the fact that we do make a moral attempt to differentiate our treatment of species based on believed intelligence (and ability to perceive pain etc.). And when we think a species has anything resembling the level of cognitive function we possess (see chimps for an example), our concern runs very deep.
Anyway, the point is that I don't think it is a safe assumption that a colonizing civilization would treat us like lumber, simply because there is a very big difference between us and lumber. It isn't just a sliding scale of intelligence... we have crossed a very clear threshold that other intelligent species would likely recognize just as we do. It isn't an "everything is relative" sort of thing. There is an abrupt demarcation between sentient and non-sentient, and given that we recognize this I think the more likely assumption is that more highly evolved species would as well.
zidane1strife
Banned
chavvdarrr said:
In at most a century we'll have the capability to easily start colonizing this solar system, that is if we're not sent back to the stone age.
Chalnoth said:
But will you be able to embrace change? Beautiful change? Or will you attempt to impede change, to conserve preserve that which is now. Ask yourself will you allow the world to become ideal? For a world that is not ideal can be corrupted and will corrupt, inevitably coming to an end.
Two things: Chalnoth makes a good case, essentially making a paraphrased version of the Rare Earth Hypothesis or the temporal Rare Earth hypothesis (Earths are Rare in Time, not in Space). There are very good reasons for believing both of these hypotheses. Sure, one can always claim that life elsewhere can be radically different than animal life here, but one cannot play both sides of the fence. That is, one cannot point to earth and say "see, we have an example of animal life evolving here. Therefore, it can happen elsewhere." Which is essentially saying that Earth-like planets with similar histories can happen elsewhere, and at the same time, assert that life elsewhere can/will be radically different, which is essentially an admission (and a backup argument) "ok, you're right. There might not be other earths, but who says life needs earth-like planets!" , which undermines the former argument.
The naive assumption about Earth like planets being common is the assumption that what makes the Earth special is its star, its material makeup (what elements we have available). However, the *physical* aspects of Earth are just one of the elements needed to get humanoids. The earth has a unique history too, its trajectory in phase space, which may turn out to be the real key to getting humanoids, and phase space configurations that may lead to human beings may be far less probable. People will argue that the sheer number of stars in the universe increase the probability to 1 that Earth will recur somewhere else, but the fact is, the number of earth-like histories compared to the number of possible histories is so much much much larger.
Secondly, Chalnoth's assertion about Statistical Mechanics. He's right. People arguing against it are arguing as if in other universes, PI could be anything other than 3.1415... or that you could solve the Halting Problem or avoid Godel's Theorem in another universe.
At its heart, Statistical Mechanics is a theory of information. The information that it operates on happens to be the states of particles, and the relationship between macroscopic knowledge and microscopic knowledge. The laws that cause particles to transistion from one state to another are irrelevent. Like Shannon's Information theory, it's not really relevant what the physics are.
There are many mathematical laws we can deduce in our universe that limit what can exist in other universes because they are invariant with respect to physics.
The naive assumption about Earth like planets being common is the assumption that what makes the Earth special is its star, its material makeup (what elements we have available). However, the *physical* aspects of Earth are just one of the elements needed to get humanoids. The earth has a unique history too, its trajectory in phase space, which may turn out to be the real key to getting humanoids, and phase space configurations that may lead to human beings may be far less probable. People will argue that the sheer number of stars in the universe increase the probability to 1 that Earth will recur somewhere else, but the fact is, the number of earth-like histories compared to the number of possible histories is so much much much larger.
Secondly, Chalnoth's assertion about Statistical Mechanics. He's right. People arguing against it are arguing as if in other universes, PI could be anything other than 3.1415... or that you could solve the Halting Problem or avoid Godel's Theorem in another universe.
At its heart, Statistical Mechanics is a theory of information. The information that it operates on happens to be the states of particles, and the relationship between macroscopic knowledge and microscopic knowledge. The laws that cause particles to transistion from one state to another are irrelevent. Like Shannon's Information theory, it's not really relevant what the physics are.
There are many mathematical laws we can deduce in our universe that limit what can exist in other universes because they are invariant with respect to physics.
Another point, after begrudgingly accepting Rare Earth arguments, many proponents fallback to "well, who says we have to talk about HUMAN-like life", which brings up discussions of disembodied energy beings, crystalline lakebed hyper-intelligences, and other fanciful Star Trek lifeforms.
This kind of argument is too vague and non-rigorous. First and foremost, if one wants to assert intelligence, one has to define it, and on what substrate intelligent (human-level) behavior can occur. A first step would be stating that minimally, intelligence would require a substrate capable of universal computation (if you are unfamilar with the terminology, go read a book on Computation that covers universal Turing Machines and equivalent automata)
It has been proven that extremely simple 1-dimensional cellular automata can be universal (once something is proven universal, it means it can compute *anything* that is computable). Thus, the minimal substrate for intelligence would be some physical system, which transistions between states according to a universal cellular automata (or equivalent up to isomorphism). We then wave our hands and say that if you have enough of these systems, large enough space of materials, and seeded randomly, you'll get intelligence after a sufficiently long time.
Then, you'd have to compute how many different types of physical systems resemble primitive cellular automata (or Turing equivalent) and than compute the number of these which are universal, thus arriving at
The number of different physical systems which are universal
We then go applying this to cosmology and geology trying to calculate the number of planets and other systems that contain these systems, thus arriving at the total number of possible evolving universal turing machine systems throughout the universe.
But even that arduous (and maybe impossible task) you'd face the uphill battle of trying to show that universality+evolution ends with sentience. (and let's leave out the question of whether consciousness is computable. Lest we get into more Searle/Penrose/Aging-physicist-who-wants-to-believe-in-dualism/vitalism/soul)
Fact is, if you want to start discussign non-DNA non-human-like intelligent, you enter a gray area where logic can't be used, unless you want to enter into rigorous arguments such as I outline above. Arguments where no one (that I know of) has done the calculations, and which may even be impossible to calculate. (Calculating in general whether a Turing Machine halts on a given program is impossible, is calculating whether a given unknown automata is universal or not, undecidable in general?)
This kind of argument is too vague and non-rigorous. First and foremost, if one wants to assert intelligence, one has to define it, and on what substrate intelligent (human-level) behavior can occur. A first step would be stating that minimally, intelligence would require a substrate capable of universal computation (if you are unfamilar with the terminology, go read a book on Computation that covers universal Turing Machines and equivalent automata)
It has been proven that extremely simple 1-dimensional cellular automata can be universal (once something is proven universal, it means it can compute *anything* that is computable). Thus, the minimal substrate for intelligence would be some physical system, which transistions between states according to a universal cellular automata (or equivalent up to isomorphism). We then wave our hands and say that if you have enough of these systems, large enough space of materials, and seeded randomly, you'll get intelligence after a sufficiently long time.
Then, you'd have to compute how many different types of physical systems resemble primitive cellular automata (or Turing equivalent) and than compute the number of these which are universal, thus arriving at
The number of different physical systems which are universal
We then go applying this to cosmology and geology trying to calculate the number of planets and other systems that contain these systems, thus arriving at the total number of possible evolving universal turing machine systems throughout the universe.
But even that arduous (and maybe impossible task) you'd face the uphill battle of trying to show that universality+evolution ends with sentience. (and let's leave out the question of whether consciousness is computable. Lest we get into more Searle/Penrose/Aging-physicist-who-wants-to-believe-in-dualism/vitalism/soul)
Fact is, if you want to start discussign non-DNA non-human-like intelligent, you enter a gray area where logic can't be used, unless you want to enter into rigorous arguments such as I outline above. Arguments where no one (that I know of) has done the calculations, and which may even be impossible to calculate. (Calculating in general whether a Turing Machine halts on a given program is impossible, is calculating whether a given unknown automata is universal or not, undecidable in general?)
DemoCoder said:
I don't see it as a fallback or an admission of anything at all, much less fence-riding - because they're both true. Not only could similar situations to our own occur elsewhere in the galaxy (what the scope of this disucssion seems limited to), but far different situations could also occur, situations that would still meet and satisfy our criteria. The implication here is that the presented scenarios are mutually exclusive, when they most certainly are not.
But this is exactly where we are though - we *are*discussing non-DNA, non-human-like intelligence - and yes it is a grey area. But to discuss 'alien' life based soley on a terrestrial understanding... I mean it seems almost self-defeating. If that means we can't come to a consensus, well honestly that's the case anyway, because no one here will have any proof to back up their side of the argument anytime soon I imagine, since indeed we're stuck here on Earth and not doing surveys of other solar systems. I think a lot of people taking the 'rare Earth' stance do so almost as a backlash against the otherwise doe-eyed dreamers who think ET life must be a 'fact.' That's fair enough, but understand that the theory does itself stem from that very possibility. Even the most strident antagonists to these dreamers acknowledge the possibility - it's the odds that are in question here. If we want to discuss 'grey areas,' well this entire concept is frankly beyond the scope of our own life experiences, so we should either drop it entirely and discuss topics of 'practical' importance - like how to ensure human survival in the here and now - or do it right and keep it ephemeral and completely open to 'alien' possibilities.
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