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This does feel like there's some selection bias here. The assumption is that intelligence hasn't developed before humans. If a planet wide civilization would ha

This does feel like there's some selection bias here. The assumption is that intelligence hasn't developed before humans. If a planet wide civilization would have sprung up say with the dinosaurs, would we have gotten a shot? It seems somewhat plausible that such a civilization would either have survived ruling any subsequent rise out or have blown up the planet in a way that none would arise either.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
The only answer to such questions is "there's no way to know." Which implies that selection bias is the best we can do. Ultimately, we're here. And we may only be here because we genocided all the other proto-human races (at least four of them). But no one likes talking about that, since it seems much more... personal... than a meteor. Was it intelligent to slay the neighbors? Maybe. But it was a comparatively rare event, since once it was done, it couldn't be done again. The interesting thing is that there's no way to know how many events like that have happened throughout all of history. We have very little data compared to the entire timeline. So any kind of measurement of "If this, then that" is very hard, and I have serious respect for the careful work that scientists manage to do in spite of the limitations.
- nefitty 5y ago
  By the time I was done with school, subgroup dominance was shared among jocks and punk kids. Previously, it seemed that jocks were the most admired. After my time in school, the shift towards "weird and smart" kept increasing, to the point that bullying is now anathema and kids seem much freer to express their non-normie views. I think this is a micro example of a tendency for people to value raw physical power over mental faculties, and how it eventually shifts as the environment changes. On earth and elsewhere, there may be species that evolved to dominate through power, snuffing out those with the potential for dominating through intelligence. I agree, this might be one of those filters that are hard to surpass. For example, by sheer luck, dinosaurs were wiped out leaving room for mammals to take over the planet. Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation? On an intraspecies level, we breached a similar filter when we began organizing into agricultural/specializing societies. Those societies were started as a way for the physically powerful to harness lower-status humans. The consequence was the emergence of information-societies where intelligence is more valuable than physical power.
  - Vetch 5y ago
    > Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation? At least judged by brain-case, (predatory) theropods would have been on the upper-end of dinosaur intelligence. Therefore we have that birds/avian dinosaurs are descendants of possibly the most intelligent branch of dinosaurs. Birds had as much time as mammals to evolve a candidate for human level general intelligence but never did. The most intelligent dinosaurs† that have ever evolved seem to be Parrots, Crows, Ravens and their close relatives. Though bird brains (IMO) are better designed, able to keep up with higher primates using fewer more densely packed lower energy neurons, they do not match later homininans in generality. ----------- †The Silurian hypothesis essentially observes it would be extremely difficult for definitive evidence of a past advanced civilization to persist for longer than 10^6 to 10^7 years. It also notes that it's more difficult than one would naively assume to rule out the possibility of an advanced civ based on the geological record. It's unlikely to be correct however. I went into more detail in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514626.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oneoff786 5y ago
A planet wide civ would be pretty difficult. I don’t think the earth would have enough Coal or oil to allow for easy energy access.
- SEJeff 5y ago
  If only there were abundant sources of energy around like maybe nuclear fusion from a giant orange ball in the sky? Or perhaps hydro electric from the plethora of oceans? It wouldn't be easy, but it would be possible to create enormous amounts of energy from the normal daily cycle of the waves if it became necessary. There are plenty of ways to create energy given the abundance of resources on this planet, even before homo sapiens.
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    > It wouldn't be easy, It would be multiple orders of magnitude more difficult, and for all practical purposes impossible. You’re drastically underestimating civilization’s historic reliance on coal. Also, fwiw you don’t get hydro electric power from the ocean. Hydro power is from water falling. Tidal power is a thing but it’s not easily achieved.
    - wyattpeak 5y ago
      Civilisation started heavily relying on coal a few hundred years ago. The Earth was well-dominated by humans by then. It very probably would have taken a lot longer to get to where we are now, but I don't think there was any danger of seventeenth century civilisation falling to dust because there was no coal to be found.
      - oneoff786 5y ago
        There were plenty of dangers. One such threat could be the reliance on charcoal (burning trees) for high heat tasks like smelting metals. If you don’t have coal you’re gonna have a tough time making something like steel in an economically viable fashion. You will, in time, run out of trees to burn. And no, comparisons to modern day don’t count. You need to discount our ability to import tree biomass from other areas against the dependence on fossil fuels that enable that cheap transportation of goods.
Waterluvian 5y ago
I’m not sure this is what you meant, but onto a tangent: I feel like us humans have deeply romanticized dinosaurs as these incredibly dangerous, vicious, aggressive creatures. And I’m just not sure there’s any evidence to support that. If we unearthed bear skeletons a million years from now, we’d think that humans couldn’t cohabitate with bears. Such size. Those teeth. The claws! But bears generally steer clear of humans. Perhaps dinosaurs would too. Of course I barely know what I’m talking about. But it has me quite curious.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  "we can't prove they weren't huge fatbirds!" https://imgur.com/gallery/rmad4 https://imgur.com/gallery/rmad4
  - rembicilious 5y ago
    I find that equally terrifying. I’ve seen firsthand what happens to a frog when it hops into a coop of 7 chickens
  - causi 5y ago
    I hate this recent trend of shitting on paleoartists as if they have no idea what they're doing. Many species of dinosaurs had feathers. Thus far there's no evidence T. Rex did. If it did, they wouldn't be a huge coat like that due to thermal consequences.
    - zuminator 5y ago
      At the very least we had no particular reason to assume dinos had the canonical stone colored skin with no markings.
- roenxi 5y ago
  It seems a bit optimistic to say that humans are willing to cohabitate with bears. If there are bears in a human population centre they will be exterminated. Ignoring a different climate humans probably could have existed at the same time as dinosaurs. We would also have all-but wiped out anything larger than us by now though.
eevilspock 5y ago
Intelligence evolving before humans doesn't refute or contradict anything about this article unless it evolved independently on a different branch from humans.
nkrisc 5y ago
There were some very large mammalian predators around during the time of our early ancestors, and even around today, though not quite as large. And yet here we are. Perhaps if humans had arisen in the time of the dinosaurs they’d have hunted them to extinction or destroyed their habitats.
zw123456 5y ago
Maybe there were multiple intelligent civilizations before humans, then the Great Filter Theory kicks in and they wipe themselves out with Global warming or whatever. I have a pet theory (just a fantasy really) that Dolphins were once land mammals with an advanced civilization but then they too heated the planet up until all the ice melted and they had to adapt and evolve to be sea mammals.
- gjvnq 5y ago
  Sounds like something Douglas Adams would write.
  - parineum 5y ago
    Or something Kurt Vonnegut did write (Galapagos).
  - zw123456 5y ago
    Thanks!
- ErikCorry 5y ago
  I mean, it's true that dolphins evolved from land mammals.
- 8note 5y ago
  Afaik we don't see any geological evidence of such a thing
Smoosh 5y ago
This seems like an appropriate time to recommend the book West of Eden [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden]. It posits an earth where humans and dinosaurs co-exist, but the dinosaurs, having been around longer, are the dominant species.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

The only answer to such questions is "there's no way to know." Which implies that selection bias is the best we can do. Ultimately, we're here. And we may only be here because we genocided all the other proto-human races (at least four of them). But no one likes talking about that, since it seems much more... personal... than a meteor. Was it intelligent to slay the neighbors? Maybe. But it was a comparatively rare event, since once it was done, it couldn't be done again. The interesting thing is that there's no way to know how many events like that have happened throughout all of history. We have very little data compared to the entire timeline. So any kind of measurement of "If this, then that" is very hard, and I have serious respect for the careful work that scientists manage to do in spite of the limitations.

nefitty 5y ago
By the time I was done with school, subgroup dominance was shared among jocks and punk kids. Previously, it seemed that jocks were the most admired. After my time in school, the shift towards "weird and smart" kept increasing, to the point that bullying is now anathema and kids seem much freer to express their non-normie views. I think this is a micro example of a tendency for people to value raw physical power over mental faculties, and how it eventually shifts as the environment changes. On earth and elsewhere, there may be species that evolved to dominate through power, snuffing out those with the potential for dominating through intelligence. I agree, this might be one of those filters that are hard to surpass. For example, by sheer luck, dinosaurs were wiped out leaving room for mammals to take over the planet. Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation? On an intraspecies level, we breached a similar filter when we began organizing into agricultural/specializing societies. Those societies were started as a way for the physically powerful to harness lower-status humans. The consequence was the emergence of information-societies where intelligence is more valuable than physical power.
- Vetch 5y ago
  > Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation? At least judged by brain-case, (predatory) theropods would have been on the upper-end of dinosaur intelligence. Therefore we have that birds/avian dinosaurs are descendants of possibly the most intelligent branch of dinosaurs. Birds had as much time as mammals to evolve a candidate for human level general intelligence but never did. The most intelligent dinosaurs† that have ever evolved seem to be Parrots, Crows, Ravens and their close relatives. Though bird brains (IMO) are better designed, able to keep up with higher primates using fewer more densely packed lower energy neurons, they do not match later homininans in generality. ----------- †The Silurian hypothesis essentially observes it would be extremely difficult for definitive evidence of a past advanced civilization to persist for longer than 10^6 to 10^7 years. It also notes that it's more difficult than one would naively assume to rule out the possibility of an advanced civ based on the geological record. It's unlikely to be correct however. I went into more detail in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514626.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

oneoff786 5y ago

A planet wide civ would be pretty difficult. I don’t think the earth would have enough Coal or oil to allow for easy energy access.

SEJeff 5y ago
If only there were abundant sources of energy around like maybe nuclear fusion from a giant orange ball in the sky? Or perhaps hydro electric from the plethora of oceans? It wouldn't be easy, but it would be possible to create enormous amounts of energy from the normal daily cycle of the waves if it became necessary. There are plenty of ways to create energy given the abundance of resources on this planet, even before homo sapiens.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  > It wouldn't be easy, It would be multiple orders of magnitude more difficult, and for all practical purposes impossible. You’re drastically underestimating civilization’s historic reliance on coal. Also, fwiw you don’t get hydro electric power from the ocean. Hydro power is from water falling. Tidal power is a thing but it’s not easily achieved.
  - wyattpeak 5y ago
    Civilisation started heavily relying on coal a few hundred years ago. The Earth was well-dominated by humans by then. It very probably would have taken a lot longer to get to where we are now, but I don't think there was any danger of seventeenth century civilisation falling to dust because there was no coal to be found.
    - oneoff786 5y ago
      There were plenty of dangers. One such threat could be the reliance on charcoal (burning trees) for high heat tasks like smelting metals. If you don’t have coal you’re gonna have a tough time making something like steel in an economically viable fashion. You will, in time, run out of trees to burn. And no, comparisons to modern day don’t count. You need to discount our ability to import tree biomass from other areas against the dependence on fossil fuels that enable that cheap transportation of goods.

Waterluvian 5y ago

I’m not sure this is what you meant, but onto a tangent: I feel like us humans have deeply romanticized dinosaurs as these incredibly dangerous, vicious, aggressive creatures. And I’m just not sure there’s any evidence to support that. If we unearthed bear skeletons a million years from now, we’d think that humans couldn’t cohabitate with bears. Such size. Those teeth. The claws! But bears generally steer clear of humans. Perhaps dinosaurs would too. Of course I barely know what I’m talking about. But it has me quite curious.

hprotagonist 5y ago
"we can't prove they weren't huge fatbirds!" https://imgur.com/gallery/rmad4 https://imgur.com/gallery/rmad4
- rembicilious 5y ago
  I find that equally terrifying. I’ve seen firsthand what happens to a frog when it hops into a coop of 7 chickens
- causi 5y ago
  I hate this recent trend of shitting on paleoartists as if they have no idea what they're doing. Many species of dinosaurs had feathers. Thus far there's no evidence T. Rex did. If it did, they wouldn't be a huge coat like that due to thermal consequences.
  - zuminator 5y ago
    At the very least we had no particular reason to assume dinos had the canonical stone colored skin with no markings.
roenxi 5y ago
It seems a bit optimistic to say that humans are willing to cohabitate with bears. If there are bears in a human population centre they will be exterminated. Ignoring a different climate humans probably could have existed at the same time as dinosaurs. We would also have all-but wiped out anything larger than us by now though.

eevilspock 5y ago

Intelligence evolving before humans doesn't refute or contradict anything about this article unless it evolved independently on a different branch from humans.

nkrisc 5y ago

There were some very large mammalian predators around during the time of our early ancestors, and even around today, though not quite as large. And yet here we are. Perhaps if humans had arisen in the time of the dinosaurs they’d have hunted them to extinction or destroyed their habitats.

zw123456 5y ago

Maybe there were multiple intelligent civilizations before humans, then the Great Filter Theory kicks in and they wipe themselves out with Global warming or whatever. I have a pet theory (just a fantasy really) that Dolphins were once land mammals with an advanced civilization but then they too heated the planet up until all the ice melted and they had to adapt and evolve to be sea mammals.

gjvnq 5y ago
Sounds like something Douglas Adams would write.
- parineum 5y ago
  Or something Kurt Vonnegut did write (Galapagos).
- zw123456 5y ago
  Thanks!
ErikCorry 5y ago
I mean, it's true that dolphins evolved from land mammals.
8note 5y ago
Afaik we don't see any geological evidence of such a thing

Smoosh 5y ago

This seems like an appropriate time to recommend the book West of Eden [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden]. It posits an earth where humans and dinosaurs co-exist, but the dinosaurs, having been around longer, are the dominant species.