6 ms·

I wonder if there is space for only one human-level intelligent specie per world, or if it's a matter of circumstances. Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3

I wonder if there is space for only one human-level intelligent specie per world, or if it's a matter of circumstances. Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3 radically different civilized species sharing the land ? If we stopped killing everything and taking all the resources for ourselves, would we be able to witness the emergence of one in the next 5000 years ? More interestingly, would we be able to actually speed up said emergence by providing stimuli to a select number of species to drive them to self-realization ?

jbattle 7y ago
5000 is still the blink of an eye. Homo Sapiens as a species is something like 300,000 years old and arose from prior species that were already more advanced than any other animal living today.
- sametmax 7y ago
  Sure, and we estimate it took 200 000 years to develop spoken language. However, we had to come up with it by ourselves, without any external influence.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
  What happened to the “more advanced than any other living animal today” species? Based on my very limited understanding, it seems like some members of that advanced species would have diverged and eventually become Homo sapiens. But others would have remained members of that species and continued living today, or become some other advanced species that wasn’t homo sapien. Did something cause them to go extinct? Or am I understanding it wrong?
  - sametmax 7y ago
    We killed them all as they were competing with us.
lisper 7y ago
> Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3 radically different civilized species sharing the land? Extremely unlikely. We can barely manage to peacefully share the land with members of our own species. Can you really imagine homo sapiens making significant economic sacrifices in favor of a different species? > If we stopped killing everything and taking all the resources for ourselves, would we be able to witness the emergence of one in the next 5000 years? Almost certainly no. Other species are intelligent, but none of them have our innate ability to communicate using complex language. That is a biological trait that would almost certainly take a lot longer than 5000 years to reproduce.
- sametmax 7y ago
  Some primates can use a few signs from deaf language already, and combine them to make almost a sentence. The foundation seems there already. We also have no idea how much the dolphin language can convey. Your conclusion seems very definitive for a question that I meant very hypothetical and so many missing variables.
  - lisper 7y ago
    Yes, I'm well aware of the language abilities of other animals. (I'm a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D.) Animals are quite remarkable, but there is still an enormous gulf between them and us. A human child can learn any human language and form complex sentences well before age 2. Well before age 5 they can reason abstractly about cause and effect. No other animal gets close to that ability over their entire lifetime even with intense training.
    - bobobooey 7y ago
      What does being a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D. have anything to do with being aware of the language abilities of other animals?
      - lisper 7y ago
        It's something I studied. NLP is a sub-discipline of AI, and animal studies are used to inform NLP research. I'm not saying that this makes me right, only that my speculations are not completely uninformed.
vectorEQ 7y ago
humans feel already threatened by their own. putting them into 'minority' groups etc.... they would be threatened by another intelligent / linguistically advanced species and dominate / destroy them. perhaps they would serve as slaves... otherwis they would not survive. Look what happend when people explored the world and found other humans :S
L_226 7y ago
Dolphins are pretty smart, I have always thought that they are merely limited in their evolutionary progression by the fact that it is difficult to generate and control fire underwater (and therefore difficult to cook food, smelt metal etc.), and also difficult to domesticate oceanic creatures for agri(aqua?)culture. See also; octopodes.

jbattle 7y ago

5000 is still the blink of an eye. Homo Sapiens as a species is something like 300,000 years old and arose from prior species that were already more advanced than any other animal living today.

sametmax 7y ago
Sure, and we estimate it took 200 000 years to develop spoken language. However, we had to come up with it by ourselves, without any external influence.
buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
What happened to the “more advanced than any other living animal today” species? Based on my very limited understanding, it seems like some members of that advanced species would have diverged and eventually become Homo sapiens. But others would have remained members of that species and continued living today, or become some other advanced species that wasn’t homo sapien. Did something cause them to go extinct? Or am I understanding it wrong?
- sametmax 7y ago
  We killed them all as they were competing with us.

lisper 7y ago

> Are there worlds where there are 2 or 3 radically different civilized species sharing the land? Extremely unlikely. We can barely manage to peacefully share the land with members of our own species. Can you really imagine homo sapiens making significant economic sacrifices in favor of a different species? > If we stopped killing everything and taking all the resources for ourselves, would we be able to witness the emergence of one in the next 5000 years? Almost certainly no. Other species are intelligent, but none of them have our innate ability to communicate using complex language. That is a biological trait that would almost certainly take a lot longer than 5000 years to reproduce.

sametmax 7y ago
Some primates can use a few signs from deaf language already, and combine them to make almost a sentence. The foundation seems there already. We also have no idea how much the dolphin language can convey. Your conclusion seems very definitive for a question that I meant very hypothetical and so many missing variables.
- lisper 7y ago
  Yes, I'm well aware of the language abilities of other animals. (I'm a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D.) Animals are quite remarkable, but there is still an enormous gulf between them and us. A human child can learn any human language and form complex sentences well before age 2. Well before age 5 they can reason abstractly about cause and effect. No other animal gets close to that ability over their entire lifetime even with intense training.
  - bobobooey 7y ago
    What does being a retired AI researcher with a Ph.D. have anything to do with being aware of the language abilities of other animals?
    - lisper 7y ago
      It's something I studied. NLP is a sub-discipline of AI, and animal studies are used to inform NLP research. I'm not saying that this makes me right, only that my speculations are not completely uninformed.

vectorEQ 7y ago

humans feel already threatened by their own. putting them into 'minority' groups etc.... they would be threatened by another intelligent / linguistically advanced species and dominate / destroy them. perhaps they would serve as slaves... otherwis they would not survive. Look what happend when people explored the world and found other humans :S

L_226 7y ago

Dolphins are pretty smart, I have always thought that they are merely limited in their evolutionary progression by the fact that it is difficult to generate and control fire underwater (and therefore difficult to cook food, smelt metal etc.), and also difficult to domesticate oceanic creatures for agri(aqua?)culture. See also; octopodes.