13 ms·

> I'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before. How intelligent is intelligent? Ho

by Swizec 10y ago

> I'm kinda curious if there's any evidence that would support or rule out intelligent life having existed on earth before. How intelligent is intelligent? Homo Neanderthalensis predated Homo Sapiens by about 100,000 years. They were intelligent enough to build tools and have communities. Oldest corvid fossils are 25 million years old[1]. They are known to be very intelligent and modern crows can solve 8-step puzzles, build tools, teach their young etc. etc. I mean, intelligence has evolved independently many times in animals on earth. It's hard to say which species was first to become intelligent, but I'm pretty sure humans weren't the first. [1] http://www.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/web_2010/ndr_site/phylogeny.html http://www.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/teaching/...

rojobuffalo 10y ago
We're sharing the planet with several intelligent species at this moment. Maybe a worthwhile distinction would be intelligence sufficient to dominant an entire planetary ecology; or sufficient to intentionally become multi-planetary.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Dominate the planet is tricky too. Corvids for instance are almost as widespread as humans. They don't do greenland and the southern parts of south america. But they happen to be less destructive to their environment than humans so maybe that disqualifies them from the "dominate" part? That said, humans also don't quality for multi-planetary. I like that definition, though.
  - rojobuffalo 10y ago
    Good point about corvids. Ants are another example I was thinking about. They actually do engineer ecology on the scale of individual mounds by feeding and growing fungi that they eat. They are spread all over the Earth, and I think they have us beat in terms of biomass. Maybe there could be another definition for a weaker form of intelligence that covers those cases.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
      Ants are especially interesting. Each individual is very simple, you could probably create an accurate ant model with a (very big) finite state machine. Yet entire colonies are extremely complex. I suspect that it's analogous to human brain cells vs the entire brain. Each cell isn't intelligent alone, but the whole is.
  - eric_h 10y ago
    > That said, humans also don't quality for multi-planetary. True, but we've definitely sent probes to other planets, and a few people did manage to walk on the moon, so we're certainly farther to the right on the multi-planetary spectrum than any other species on our planet.
ars 10y ago
> It's hard to say which species was first to become intelligent, but I'm pretty sure humans weren't the first. And yet, somehow Humans are in a completely different category than all other life. It's not just a matter a degree ("more" intelligent), it's a completely different category. So that means your definition of intelligent is flawed because it is unable to capture that distinction. Perhaps you need a new word.
- Swizec 10y ago
  How do you know it's a completely different category? We used to think all animals are incapable of intelligence and everything they do is "instinct". Now we know they can think, organize, have complex social structures, even imagine and form plans. Many show evidence of being self aware. So we're not special enough anymore and we have to come up with a new word? I don't buy it. It's likely that humans' extraordinary achievements stem from our immense ability to communicate and cooperate. A single human on its own isn't all that smart really. Many intelligent animals suffer from limited knowledge transfer between generations and low cooperation between individuals. So each is only as smart as itself. Or maybe as itself and a couple of friends. Whereas every human is able to tap into the intelligence of very many other humans. That's really one of our biggest superpowers.
  - losvedir 10y ago
    Heh, I originally started this comment "oh come on!" as I thought you were being needlessly obtuse. Agriculture, written language, metal smelting, universities, space shuttles, nuclear bombs, radio, computers, etc. It was obvious to me that we're in a whole other category from other species. But then I thought about human tribes in the rain forest that don't have any of those. Are they not as intelligent us? But they are us... Hm, well you've made me think. Thanks!
    - Baeocystin 10y ago
      Human tribes in the rainforest have levels of social sophistication, technology, and manipulation of their local environment that outstrips any other animal. It's not close. Look at the recent discoveries in the Amazon basin. Layers of dirt thousands of years old, still filled with the charcoal used to improve soil quality. Species of plants that were clearly selected for over time. The list goes on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
hyperpallium 10y ago
I thought corvids a strong candidate, but if they've been around for 25 million years without getting human-level intelligence, they mightn't ever get it, like the dinosaurs. General commemt: we can have increasing complexity, without a specific trend towards it, by positing evolution in all directions. We'd get mostly simple life, and fewer instances as complexity increases - which is what we do see. Most life is unicellular; there are more insect species than mammals etc. I like that paper applying Moore's Law to biocomplexity, showing an exponential increase of the most complex life existing over time. - It seems complexity increase is inevitable (but there could be barriers, as there seemed to be for dinosaurs). - intelligence seems to increase with complexity. Would mammals have expanded to today's diversity if the dinosaurs had survived? Would the ur-mammal instead have remained just one minor species or family, without those niches available? And what caused the sudden increase in brain size of our own ape-like ancestors? (Surely, some killer application of intelligence, perhaps trade, that gave it incredible survival value, far above the value it already had).
- Swizec 10y ago
  Well, birds are dinosaurs. Avian theropods to be precise. So maybe dinosaurs are still working towards their limit. We know that their brains produce more pound per pound intelligence than mammalian brains. It's like they're more efficient. But maybe something about that efficiency is Good Enough so they don't progress further. Although watching my parrot at home is quite something. He's definitely on par with a young human in terms of coercing cooperation and puzzle solving.
  - hyperpallium 10y ago
    Spiders also produce more pound per pound intelligence. They are solitary. What if they became social? Brain-body ratio is provocative, but not the whole story. Seeing galahs (Australian corvid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah) socialize in trees in monkey troop-like fashion, dextrous in tooth and claw, makes me believe they are on the way. Though maybe raccons are next. > efficiency is Good Enough I was thinking that, now I think it may be the niche environment, which we somehow happened to stumble into, giving a more rewarding gradient for intelligence. OTOH, it could have been some neuroanatomy trick, eg faciliating abstraction/hypothesis. IDK. I think it's one of the more fascinating questions of our intelligence, and will be telling. I don't want to harp on this point, but the birds-are-dinosaurs seems a meaningless semantic classification to me, more about our definitions than reality. Like "Pluto, planet?" I mean, why not call mammals a subgroup of reptiles, since we evolved from them? Anyway, I'm sure this debate has raged hotly across the centuries amoungst taxonomic philosophers, and carefully taking into account all the perspectives, they've collectively come up with... something.

by Swizec 10y ago

rojobuffalo 10y ago

We're sharing the planet with several intelligent species at this moment. Maybe a worthwhile distinction would be intelligence sufficient to dominant an entire planetary ecology; or sufficient to intentionally become multi-planetary.

Swizec 10y ago
Dominate the planet is tricky too. Corvids for instance are almost as widespread as humans. They don't do greenland and the southern parts of south america. But they happen to be less destructive to their environment than humans so maybe that disqualifies them from the "dominate" part? That said, humans also don't quality for multi-planetary. I like that definition, though.
- rojobuffalo 10y ago
  Good point about corvids. Ants are another example I was thinking about. They actually do engineer ecology on the scale of individual mounds by feeding and growing fungi that they eat. They are spread all over the Earth, and I think they have us beat in terms of biomass. Maybe there could be another definition for a weaker form of intelligence that covers those cases.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
    Ants are especially interesting. Each individual is very simple, you could probably create an accurate ant model with a (very big) finite state machine. Yet entire colonies are extremely complex. I suspect that it's analogous to human brain cells vs the entire brain. Each cell isn't intelligent alone, but the whole is.
- eric_h 10y ago
  > That said, humans also don't quality for multi-planetary. True, but we've definitely sent probes to other planets, and a few people did manage to walk on the moon, so we're certainly farther to the right on the multi-planetary spectrum than any other species on our planet.

ars 10y ago

> It's hard to say which species was first to become intelligent, but I'm pretty sure humans weren't the first. And yet, somehow Humans are in a completely different category than all other life. It's not just a matter a degree ("more" intelligent), it's a completely different category. So that means your definition of intelligent is flawed because it is unable to capture that distinction. Perhaps you need a new word.

Swizec 10y ago
How do you know it's a completely different category? We used to think all animals are incapable of intelligence and everything they do is "instinct". Now we know they can think, organize, have complex social structures, even imagine and form plans. Many show evidence of being self aware. So we're not special enough anymore and we have to come up with a new word? I don't buy it. It's likely that humans' extraordinary achievements stem from our immense ability to communicate and cooperate. A single human on its own isn't all that smart really. Many intelligent animals suffer from limited knowledge transfer between generations and low cooperation between individuals. So each is only as smart as itself. Or maybe as itself and a couple of friends. Whereas every human is able to tap into the intelligence of very many other humans. That's really one of our biggest superpowers.
- losvedir 10y ago
  Heh, I originally started this comment "oh come on!" as I thought you were being needlessly obtuse. Agriculture, written language, metal smelting, universities, space shuttles, nuclear bombs, radio, computers, etc. It was obvious to me that we're in a whole other category from other species. But then I thought about human tribes in the rain forest that don't have any of those. Are they not as intelligent us? But they are us... Hm, well you've made me think. Thanks!
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    Human tribes in the rainforest have levels of social sophistication, technology, and manipulation of their local environment that outstrips any other animal. It's not close. Look at the recent discoveries in the Amazon basin. Layers of dirt thousands of years old, still filled with the charcoal used to improve soil quality. Species of plants that were clearly selected for over time. The list goes on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

hyperpallium 10y ago

I thought corvids a strong candidate, but if they've been around for 25 million years without getting human-level intelligence, they mightn't ever get it, like the dinosaurs. General commemt: we can have increasing complexity, without a specific trend towards it, by positing evolution in all directions. We'd get mostly simple life, and fewer instances as complexity increases - which is what we do see. Most life is unicellular; there are more insect species than mammals etc. I like that paper applying Moore's Law to biocomplexity, showing an exponential increase of the most complex life existing over time. - It seems complexity increase is inevitable (but there could be barriers, as there seemed to be for dinosaurs). - intelligence seems to increase with complexity. Would mammals have expanded to today's diversity if the dinosaurs had survived? Would the ur-mammal instead have remained just one minor species or family, without those niches available? And what caused the sudden increase in brain size of our own ape-like ancestors? (Surely, some killer application of intelligence, perhaps trade, that gave it incredible survival value, far above the value it already had).

Swizec 10y ago
Well, birds are dinosaurs. Avian theropods to be precise. So maybe dinosaurs are still working towards their limit. We know that their brains produce more pound per pound intelligence than mammalian brains. It's like they're more efficient. But maybe something about that efficiency is Good Enough so they don't progress further. Although watching my parrot at home is quite something. He's definitely on par with a young human in terms of coercing cooperation and puzzle solving.
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  Spiders also produce more pound per pound intelligence. They are solitary. What if they became social? Brain-body ratio is provocative, but not the whole story. Seeing galahs (Australian corvid https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah) socialize in trees in monkey troop-like fashion, dextrous in tooth and claw, makes me believe they are on the way. Though maybe raccons are next. > efficiency is Good Enough I was thinking that, now I think it may be the niche environment, which we somehow happened to stumble into, giving a more rewarding gradient for intelligence. OTOH, it could have been some neuroanatomy trick, eg faciliating abstraction/hypothesis. IDK. I think it's one of the more fascinating questions of our intelligence, and will be telling. I don't want to harp on this point, but the birds-are-dinosaurs seems a meaningless semantic classification to me, more about our definitions than reality. Like "Pluto, planet?" I mean, why not call mammals a subgroup of reptiles, since we evolved from them? Anyway, I'm sure this debate has raged hotly across the centuries amoungst taxonomic philosophers, and carefully taking into account all the perspectives, they've collectively come up with... something.