If ET exists, odds it's intelligent

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Harzburgite

Sorry, it is not at all obvious to me. After 300 million years of large land animals we finally get the right combination of some environmental shocks. That is not easy evolution.

Awwww, yer just being a pessimist. This is all like counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin because, yes, we only have a sample size of one. So what? The point made by several postings recently make the point that intelligence isn't a "goal" of evolution, but you're assuming it is. Its more likely one of many strategies for DNA propagation. Size worked pretty good for the dinosaurs: "We don't need no steeeking brains!" But the fact of the matter is that there are animals *here* who have all the same "intelligence" we do, they just have not seen the need to do what we have done with it, and there's no compelling reason to do so (yet!). And most importantly, brain size is a very recent invention in evolution on Earth (going back only a few tens of millions of years at *most*), so its manifestations are not at all clear. And as I said, its really only taken us 20,000 years to go from rudimentary language and hunting tools to sending men into space: if that's ALL the time it take to do that, hundreds of millions of years provide ample time for it to occur....

Cheers,
Buffy

[CraigD]

No disrespect to spectroscopists, who’ve made amazing deductions about large molecules in faraway places, but wouldn’t it be great to get a couple of dozen or thousands of close-up observations from some other star systems?

Starwisps. Start taking advantage of our cultures’ current insecurity about future sources of energy to steer the resources of the major energy-pig nations in this direction. Robert Forward would want us to.

[Harzburgite]

Originally Posted by Buffy

Awwww, yer just being a pessimist.

One slayer's pessimism is another man's realism.

Originally Posted by Buffy

The point made by several postings recently make the point that intelligence isn't a "goal" of evolution, but you're assuming it is.

Nowhere do I assume this. Evolution has no goals. The original post asked about the possibilities of intelligent life, that is why I am addressing intelligence.

Originally Posted by Buffy

And most importantly, brain size is a very recent invention in evolution on Earth (going back only a few tens of millions of years at *most*),

Exactly. It took a very long time to develop and, arguably, the odds were well stacked against it.

[Eclogite]

Originally Posted by CraigD

No disrespect to spectroscopists, who’ve made amazing deductions about large molecules in faraway places, but wouldn’t it be great to get a couple of dozen or thousands of close-up observations from some other star systems?.

We do have a host of data on comets and interstellar dust clouds
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...py&btnG=Search
Which is a google of "interstellar clouds" "organic chemicals" spectroscopy
There are a wide range of quite complex chemicals already identified in these clouds and on comets. (Dust impacting the atmosphere has a composition very similar to carbonaceous chondrites.) Any self respecting pan spermiaist will tell you these data are highly suggestive that we originated out there.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by Harzburgite

Nowhere do I assume this. Evolution has no goals.

Exactly. It took a very long time to develop and, arguably, the odds were well stacked against it.

No, you contradict yourself here rather severely: if intelligence is NOT a goal of evolution, then there's no *reason* to evolve it unless its useful. Given that notion, then there's no reason that in some other situation, intelligence could not possibly develop *much more rapidly* given a sequence of evolutionary events. Just because it took a "long" time here, does not mean it will *always* take at least that long. Size in the dinosaurs dominated so completely for so long, it definitely sidetracked intelligence as a possible evolutionary route.

Cheers,
Buffy

[damocles]

No comments.(I don't know enough.)

But several questions;

1. Why assume dolphins are qualitatively human intelligent? I thought their brains were organized around their "sonars", the way our brains are organized around eyesight hand co-ordination.

2. From whence comes this notion that organized life is common? The chemistry required calls for relatively stable environmental conditions confined to a narrow zone of temperatures/pressures not exceeding a band of fluidic catalytic interactions. That may be several hundred degrees either way, depending on the base solvent, but it is NARROW and unlikely to be normal for any star systems' planets as a statistical mean.

3. Why assume that the exact confluence of events that produced tool using hominids will ever be duplicated elsewhere or that tool use itself is possible without such strange environmental drivers such as a large moon or a cyclic radiation variation in the local star?

4. Without symbology, is there recordable memory? Without recordable memory is there environmentally manipulative useful intelligence? We do it, but as has been pointed out, it is recent(Less than fifty thousand years BCE since we drew pictures?)

5. I don't believe in the Anthropic Principle or Original Design at all, but I am still struck by the uniqueness of matter properties in the universe that allows for the volumes and shapes distributed throughout "space" that make life possible at all. Even more so am I amazed at the unique proper relationships of the binding forces. I conclude that different "constants" could still result in a universe that could sustain "life" and a self-aware group of intelligences that could observe it, but the odds of that being a normal distribution of possible outcomes in an infinite set of such possible inflations is vanishing small. So if the potential outcomes for life are so statistically small in the universe set and the potential of "intelligent" life in this universe, supposedly friendly to life's possibility again(to my working through the odds against life itself) incredibly slim, I have to ask, does anybody seriously suggest that intelligent life exists where we would be able to reach it congruent in our time?( I anticipate we will be extinct within a few hundred thousand years to maybe a couple of million years.)

6. Which leads to my last question, already asked by somebody a lot smarter than I will ever be. If there are other tool using intelligences out there with as little as a ten thousand year headstart on us, why don't we see them? Tool users alter their environment, and the more of them there are the more of a visible mark they make. Where is the infra-red glowing object emitting 2 cm. radio waves that screams; "Here we are!"

Damocles

[EWright]

Why do we compare the intellect of chimps and dolphins to our own in this discussion? Neither is capable or has interest in interstellar communication. I doubt chimps have even looked to the stars and wondered if there is other life out there. And I don't believe they've even left drawing on cave walls as far as an effort to communicate. For all species other than humans, their existance is aimed at survival, food and mating. Evelution dictates that those who are good at these things and make the right choices along the way, advance their species to the next generation. There is generally little use for the level of intelligence that we have obtained, in propegating our existance to the next generation; everything down to microorganisms can and does do that. So why intelligence to the level that we've obtained and why believe it would result elsewhere? Minus us as the sole example in 5+ million species, and there's little argument that we're the final product of evolution. We just happen to be at the top of the intellect and arguably food chains.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by EWright

Why do we compare the intellect of chimps and dolphins to our own in this discussion? Neither is capable or has interest in interstellar communication. I doubt chimps have even looked to the stars and wondered if there is other life out there. And I don't believe they've even left drawing on cave walls as far as an effort to communicate.

You''re using a very limited definition of "intelligence", and you're ignoring the fact that although we are the first to go to writing and mega-tool-use, we have proven its a *very* efficient mechanism for dominating an ecosystem (although the question of can such intellectual abilities lead to self-extinction is still open!). Dolphins and whales both have brain capacities that exceed humans, but they've used it in very different ways: to answer one of damocles' questions, if big brains are used for memory storage and communications is concentrated through verbal/visual means, symbology is not necessarily required for very sophisticated intelligence, although we probably won't see a dolphin on the Moon without that opposable thumb....

Originally Posted by EWright

There is generally little use for the level of intelligence that we have obtained, in propegating our existance to the next generation; everything down to microorganisms can and does do that. So why intelligence to the level that we've obtained and why believe it would result elsewhere?

We don't know that. Its a recent evolutionary event, and we have only us as a datapoint. It sure seems to be a successful mechanism for gene propagation, and more importantly, considering the massive decline in biodiversity, for gene dominance. No argument exists that this level of efficiency would from an evolutionary view NOT be very popular whereever it evolved...

Cheers,
Buffy

[damocles]

A question?

"if big brains are used for memory storage and communications is concentrated through verbal/visual means, symbology is not necessarily required for very sophisticated intelligence, although we probably won't see a dolphin on the Moon without that opposable thumb...."

Buffy

What form of data storage and transmission would a non-symbol using but tool-using intelligence use to get to a moon?

Consider that the Saturn Five had several billion data points, and several million tooled parts to put Neil Armstrong on the moon.

Maybe if the answer is obvious enough to see then we can posit a better chance for distributed intelligence detectable locally?

Damocles

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by damocles

What form of data storage and transmission would a non-symbol using but tool-using intelligence use to get to a moon?

Consider that the Saturn Five had several billion data points, and several million tooled parts to put Neil Armstrong on the moon.

This is a *facinating* question! Think about it though: we're kind of trapped by our conception of how computers should work. In fact however, entirely analog systems that use no symbology whatsoever are possible. <aside>For the technical, they would not be Turing Machines, or even Finite State Machines, in fact the best analogue to point to is an oil refinery with completely continuous/non-discrete processes!</aside> You could deal with all those "datapoints" with continuous mechanisms that involved no conventional symbology whatsoever!

Now on the other hand, symbology can be a very broad term, and as a result, verbal communication alone could be a sole mechanism for communication and be *recorded* but not *written*. Is that symbology? If so, then dolphins definitely already use it and they are closer to us than we imagine....

Cheers,
Buffy