3 ms·

Is it inevitable that given enough time, the dominant life form in a sufficiently hospitable environment will develop higher intelligence and civilization? I'm

Is it inevitable that given enough time, the dominant life form in a sufficiently hospitable environment will develop higher intelligence and civilization? I'm not sure we know whether that's the case or not.

krisoft 5y ago
“Dominant life form” is not really a well defined concept. I assume you would say humans are the dominant life form of the present day earth, and many would agree with that. Ants are more numerous, cattle and antarctic krill are heavier by biomass so clearly such simple metrics are not what we are after. And clearly back when humans started developing “higher inteligence” they were just funny monkeys running around the savana harased by jackals left and right. Very much not a “dominant life form” in any sense of the word. One could attribute any special significance to them only in hindsight by what they become, rather than what they were.
- tempestn 5y ago
  True, more a matter of the intelligence resulting in dominance than the reverse. I think you could define dominant as, basically, top of the food chain - able to kill any other animal it wishes to, and able to defend itself from all others. It would certainly be possible to be dominant without high intelligence, but it seems unlikely it would be possible to be dominant over a competitor that has a significant intelligence advantage, assuming the competitor survives long enough to exploit it. But the question is, does that mean that if such an evolutionary path is possible in a given environment, it will always eventually occur? My guess would be yes, but I'm certainly not 100% confident. ('Eventually' meaning, say, within a hundred million years. Presumably given infinite time, everything possible would occur, so that's not really interesting.)
andyp-kw 5y ago
This is true. Even though some species excel in certain areas (beavers are good at building, dolphins can communicate), no other species come close to human intelligence. We don't know if there's some special sauce that makes humans unique.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Life has existed on Earth for at least 4 billion years --- it seems to have emerged within 500 million years of the planet's initial formation. Complex life --- multicellular life with differentiated structures --- took another 3.4 billion years to form, emerging only about 600 million years ago. Much of the biological hardware and processes for intelligence seems to have emerged with the first mammals (~200 million years ago), particularly emotional-hormonal systems that seem broadly common. It still took most of the intervening time for clever apes to emerge (about 2 million years ago), with anatomically modern humans showing up 200,000 years ago. When language developed isn't clear, but likely by degrees somewhere between 2 million and 50,000 years ago. (There's a great presentation on the anthropological evidence of complex thinking in this 2012 presentation by Sander van der Leeuw: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pOyQqPi28ug https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pOyQqPi28ug 69 minutes, most of the meat is in the first 20--30 minutes, high-density information.) And modern technological society is really about 200 years old, with "peak invention" being variously defined, but the 50 to 100 years beginning about 1875 would be a good choice. So: over 4.6 billion years, life has existed for over 4 billion, and developed complex and technological intelligence only within the past 1 million years, and quite possibly substantially less. That's 0.02% of the total time. Earth itself will remain generally habitable for only about another 800 million years. If humans or other intelligent species survive over that period, they'll still account for less than 15% of the history of life on Earth. Considering intelligence to be inevitable is ... somewhat poorly supported, at least based on that timeline. (Related, see the Drake Equation, and yes, we're working with a single sample study and numerous unknowns.)
- dormento 5y ago
  Just wanted to say that comments like this are what makes me return to hacker news every once in a while. Thanks!

krisoft 5y ago

“Dominant life form” is not really a well defined concept. I assume you would say humans are the dominant life form of the present day earth, and many would agree with that. Ants are more numerous, cattle and antarctic krill are heavier by biomass so clearly such simple metrics are not what we are after. And clearly back when humans started developing “higher inteligence” they were just funny monkeys running around the savana harased by jackals left and right. Very much not a “dominant life form” in any sense of the word. One could attribute any special significance to them only in hindsight by what they become, rather than what they were.

tempestn 5y ago
True, more a matter of the intelligence resulting in dominance than the reverse. I think you could define dominant as, basically, top of the food chain - able to kill any other animal it wishes to, and able to defend itself from all others. It would certainly be possible to be dominant without high intelligence, but it seems unlikely it would be possible to be dominant over a competitor that has a significant intelligence advantage, assuming the competitor survives long enough to exploit it. But the question is, does that mean that if such an evolutionary path is possible in a given environment, it will always eventually occur? My guess would be yes, but I'm certainly not 100% confident. ('Eventually' meaning, say, within a hundred million years. Presumably given infinite time, everything possible would occur, so that's not really interesting.)

andyp-kw 5y ago

This is true. Even though some species excel in certain areas (beavers are good at building, dolphins can communicate), no other species come close to human intelligence. We don't know if there's some special sauce that makes humans unique.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Life has existed on Earth for at least 4 billion years --- it seems to have emerged within 500 million years of the planet's initial formation. Complex life --- multicellular life with differentiated structures --- took another 3.4 billion years to form, emerging only about 600 million years ago. Much of the biological hardware and processes for intelligence seems to have emerged with the first mammals (~200 million years ago), particularly emotional-hormonal systems that seem broadly common. It still took most of the intervening time for clever apes to emerge (about 2 million years ago), with anatomically modern humans showing up 200,000 years ago. When language developed isn't clear, but likely by degrees somewhere between 2 million and 50,000 years ago. (There's a great presentation on the anthropological evidence of complex thinking in this 2012 presentation by Sander van der Leeuw: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pOyQqPi28ug https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pOyQqPi28ug 69 minutes, most of the meat is in the first 20--30 minutes, high-density information.) And modern technological society is really about 200 years old, with "peak invention" being variously defined, but the 50 to 100 years beginning about 1875 would be a good choice. So: over 4.6 billion years, life has existed for over 4 billion, and developed complex and technological intelligence only within the past 1 million years, and quite possibly substantially less. That's 0.02% of the total time. Earth itself will remain generally habitable for only about another 800 million years. If humans or other intelligent species survive over that period, they'll still account for less than 15% of the history of life on Earth. Considering intelligence to be inevitable is ... somewhat poorly supported, at least based on that timeline. (Related, see the Drake Equation, and yes, we're working with a single sample study and numerous unknowns.)

dormento 5y ago
Just wanted to say that comments like this are what makes me return to hacker news every once in a while. Thanks!