7 ms·

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. Th

by blhack 15y ago

>sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. Why? Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us, like wings on a bird. There millions of species animals on our planet, and only a handful of them are sentient. We have a bit of a cognitive bias towards thinking that sentient life is something that evolution would work towards, but that isn't really how evolution works.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago
It's not anthropocentric to assume that sentience will appear elsewhere in the universe, given the sheer number of opportunities for evolution to solve similar problems in similar ways. I expect sentience to exist in other species for the same reason that birds, bats and flying squirrels have convergent adaptations.
jarin 15y ago
Well I mean it runs kind of counter to your argument that there is not just one, but multiple sentient species on the planet. It also didn't take very long in cosmological terms for humans to go from sentient to supercomputers, either.
maratd 15y ago
> that isn't really how evolution works. Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible. The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess. We defined it based on our own nature. Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be impossible.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  > Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible What? How can you take this position? That's absolutely crazy. Really, you're going to take observations from just a couple of decades and determine that finding something is "impossible"?! No way. There's absolutely no way that finding intelligent life is impossible. > The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more intelligence that we can recognize that isn't like ours. > Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. I agree. That has nothing to do with intelligence though. > That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be impossible. identical? Sure, nearly impossible. But why bother making it identical? Do you need 20.946% O2 in the atmosphere? Nope! There are probably billions of planets in the Milky Way alone that could support Earth-like life, if we extrapolate from the Kepler mission data. The chances are better than you might think.
  - maratd 15y ago
    > Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more intelligence that we can recognize that isn't like ours. When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope.
    - cryptoz 15y ago
      > When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope. Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? We both have space travel, some sentience, a taste for weapons, etc. You think this happened only once in the entire (say) Milky Way, and that there is absolutely 0 chance of it occurring elsewhere? That's certainly possible. But it's not the only possible way things have unfolded.
      - maratd 15y ago
        > Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? You don't understand my argument. We (and our intelligence) are the unique product of our evolutionary environment. There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. There are far many more organisms on this planet in far greater numbers than us that don't even have a brain, nevermind a complex one like ours. We define intelligence based on traits that we (humans) possess. Some animals possess some of those traits (like dolphins, chimps, etc.), but no animal posses them all, save for us humans, by definition. For us to find a species that is identical or even just compatible with us psychologically, that species had to evolve in an identical evolutionary environment spanning millions of years. That is so astronomically unlikely that it might as well be impossible. You may find life that posses some of our traits (like dolphins), but you won't find life that has them all (like Klingons).
- jarin 15y ago
  Well I mean, how would you define intelligent life that does not possess metacognition at a minimum?
- jerfelix 15y ago
  > we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess There's also an article on HN right now about Dolphins proving to be intelligent beings [1]. It says: Our research has provided an answer to an age-old question highlighted by Dr Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, ‘Are we alone?’ We can now unequivocally answer, ‘no.’ SETI’s search for non-human intelligence in outer spacehas been found right here on earth in the graceful form of dolphins. I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. -- [1] http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/ http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin...
  - idonthack 15y ago
    >I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. >Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. That's a false equivalence, as well as untrue. It takes intentional effort on our part for a dog to learn even a small subset of our vocabulary. When dogs learn our language, they only learn the few words that we make an effort to teach them, and these typically correspond directly to an action we demand of them in exchange for a reward. Dogs cannot pass this knowledge amongst themselves, each dog has to be taught by a human individually. Dogs have made no specific effort to teach me, at least none that they managed to make recognizable to me, yet I can tell when they are excited, hurt, angry, &c, but mostly because a subset of body language and vocal attitude are instinctive or socially universal to most mammals (shouting and sharp poses convey aggression, for example). I believe I understand more dog body language than dogs understand human body language. There is no human equivalent of a wagging tail, yet I understand that. There is no dog equivalent of a pointing finger, and they do not understand it: dogs will look at your finger instead of where you point.
  - colanderman 15y ago
    I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. I agree with your sentiment but your logic is backward. Substitute dog for dolphin in your first sentence: [a] HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dog is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Since you cannot (by your own admission) understand your dog's language, by the logic of that statement, the dog would not be intelligent.
marshallp 15y ago
There's a fundamental flaw in that argument. Once a sentience, or as i would define it, a species capable of creating technology, exists, it is highly likely to not die out as other traits easily can. It only needs to occur once. One could argue it has -almost- occurred on earth many times, including dolphins, elephants, octopus along with apes right now.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  A lot of the more grandiose doom-and-gloom scenarios put forth regarding global warming are a bit overwrought. The Earth will continue to harbor life even if we pumped all of the carbon from every fossil fuel on the planet into the atmosphere. The main issue is that such a world will be different, it may have different species (more of some, less or none of some we've come to know) and it may be more difficult for human civilization to exist. But there's absolutely no risk of human activity re: CO2 emissions in making the Earth uninhabitable.
- extension 15y ago
  Lots of animals have technology.. beavers, for example.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
How can we know if there is life on any planet (close or far) if we can only look for it using our senses? Forget Mars, is it just possible that there is life on earth that we simply cannot know of because we do not have the required senses to perceive it.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Physicalism is essential to science. What sense could we (and our instruments) lack that still exists in the physical world? There is no doubt that there are species we have yet to identify and categorize, but those species will still be made of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means. The only major obstacle I see to knowing about some form of life on Earth is location -- we can't scan the entire ocean floor, nor can we penetrate into the mantle.
  - VladRussian 15y ago
    >of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means. man, that plugs nicely into the whole dark matter/energy discussion.
bluekeybox 15y ago
> Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us ... but that isn't really how evolution works. Actually that is how evolution works. Evolution results in species acquiring traits that are beneficial to them. Of course you could make a counter-case that perhaps sentience is only beneficial to us in particular, and not so much to other species -- To which I would completely disagree. There is this fascinating, relatively new theory of how humans became sentient. Previously (1960s) it was thought that humans became sentient either somehow out of the blue or due to having to construct tools etc., which then allowed them to organize into groups. The new theory, on the other hand, claims that high intelligence (and by extension sentience) is an inevitable consequence of living within a particular type of group -- largely the type of group that many primates live in (the original studies were done on baboons), though this is not limited to primates. The idea is that if you are a member of a group where grooming behavior, alliance-making, and status-related interactions are common, you benefit tremendously (in a reproductive sense) from possessing a "theory of mind" capable of making predictions about the actions of others that are at least a few percent more accurate than those of your peers. The way it works is a bit like the stock market -- all you need is to beat the market average. So this "theory of mind" -- being preoccupied with what others think -- is actually claimed to be a runaway effect of the intelligence "arms race" which always occurs among animals living within that type of group. Now, sentience is merely a theory of mind applied to self. I fully expect that within the next 10 million years at least two other mammal species will become sentient, if we humans don't make them extinct that is... Anyone willing to make a long bet?
- daliusd 15y ago
  I heard theory that there will be no other sentient creatures on Earth because humans will destroy them. I read this theory from article about Birutė Galdikas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas) who is studying orangutans. Let's not forget neanderthals as well in this context.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - 15y ago

by blhack 15y ago

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

It's not anthropocentric to assume that sentience will appear elsewhere in the universe, given the sheer number of opportunities for evolution to solve similar problems in similar ways. I expect sentience to exist in other species for the same reason that birds, bats and flying squirrels have convergent adaptations.

jarin 15y ago

Well I mean it runs kind of counter to your argument that there is not just one, but multiple sentient species on the planet. It also didn't take very long in cosmological terms for humans to go from sentient to supercomputers, either.

maratd 15y ago

> that isn't really how evolution works. Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible. The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess. We defined it based on our own nature. Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be impossible.

cryptoz 15y ago
> Taking this a step further, finding intelligent life out there is simply impossible What? How can you take this position? That's absolutely crazy. Really, you're going to take observations from just a couple of decades and determine that finding something is "impossible"?! No way. There's absolutely no way that finding intelligent life is impossible. > The reason our intelligence is unique to only humans on our planet is largely because we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more intelligence that we can recognize that isn't like ours. > Finding life out there that would be socially compatible with us is ridiculously unlikely. I agree. That has nothing to do with intelligence though. > That life would have had to spring up in an evolutionary environment identical to ours and that's so unlikely that it might as well be impossible. identical? Sure, nearly impossible. But why bother making it identical? Do you need 20.946% O2 in the atmosphere? Nope! There are probably billions of planets in the Milky Way alone that could support Earth-like life, if we extrapolate from the Kepler mission data. The chances are better than you might think.
- maratd 15y ago
  > Slow down there. Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. So are some of our computer systems. There's a lot more intelligence that we can recognize that isn't like ours. When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope.
  - cryptoz 15y ago
    > When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope. Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? We both have space travel, some sentience, a taste for weapons, etc. You think this happened only once in the entire (say) Milky Way, and that there is absolutely 0 chance of it occurring elsewhere? That's certainly possible. But it's not the only possible way things have unfolded.
    - maratd 15y ago
      > Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? You don't understand my argument. We (and our intelligence) are the unique product of our evolutionary environment. There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. There are far many more organisms on this planet in far greater numbers than us that don't even have a brain, nevermind a complex one like ours. We define intelligence based on traits that we (humans) possess. Some animals possess some of those traits (like dolphins, chimps, etc.), but no animal posses them all, save for us humans, by definition. For us to find a species that is identical or even just compatible with us psychologically, that species had to evolve in an identical evolutionary environment spanning millions of years. That is so astronomically unlikely that it might as well be impossible. You may find life that posses some of our traits (like dolphins), but you won't find life that has them all (like Klingons).
jarin 15y ago
Well I mean, how would you define intelligent life that does not possess metacognition at a minimum?
jerfelix 15y ago
> we defined intelligence as traits that only we possess There's also an article on HN right now about Dolphins proving to be intelligent beings [1]. It says: Our research has provided an answer to an age-old question highlighted by Dr Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, ‘Are we alone?’ We can now unequivocally answer, ‘no.’ SETI’s search for non-human intelligence in outer spacehas been found right here on earth in the graceful form of dolphins. I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. -- [1] http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/ http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin...
- idonthack 15y ago
  >I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. >Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. That's a false equivalence, as well as untrue. It takes intentional effort on our part for a dog to learn even a small subset of our vocabulary. When dogs learn our language, they only learn the few words that we make an effort to teach them, and these typically correspond directly to an action we demand of them in exchange for a reward. Dogs cannot pass this knowledge amongst themselves, each dog has to be taught by a human individually. Dogs have made no specific effort to teach me, at least none that they managed to make recognizable to me, yet I can tell when they are excited, hurt, angry, &c, but mostly because a subset of body language and vocal attitude are instinctive or socially universal to most mammals (shouting and sharp poses convey aggression, for example). I believe I understand more dog body language than dogs understand human body language. There is no human equivalent of a wagging tail, yet I understand that. There is no dog equivalent of a pointing finger, and they do not understand it: dogs will look at your finger instead of where you point.
- colanderman 15y ago
  I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own. I agree with your sentiment but your logic is backward. Substitute dog for dolphin in your first sentence: [a] HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dog is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language. Since you cannot (by your own admission) understand your dog's language, by the logic of that statement, the dog would not be intelligent.

marshallp 15y ago

There's a fundamental flaw in that argument. Once a sentience, or as i would define it, a species capable of creating technology, exists, it is highly likely to not die out as other traits easily can. It only needs to occur once. One could argue it has -almost- occurred on earth many times, including dolphins, elephants, octopus along with apes right now.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
A lot of the more grandiose doom-and-gloom scenarios put forth regarding global warming are a bit overwrought. The Earth will continue to harbor life even if we pumped all of the carbon from every fossil fuel on the planet into the atmosphere. The main issue is that such a world will be different, it may have different species (more of some, less or none of some we've come to know) and it may be more difficult for human civilization to exist. But there's absolutely no risk of human activity re: CO2 emissions in making the Earth uninhabitable.
extension 15y ago
Lots of animals have technology.. beavers, for example.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

How can we know if there is life on any planet (close or far) if we can only look for it using our senses? Forget Mars, is it just possible that there is life on earth that we simply cannot know of because we do not have the required senses to perceive it.

nitrogen 15y ago
Physicalism is essential to science. What sense could we (and our instruments) lack that still exists in the physical world? There is no doubt that there are species we have yet to identify and categorize, but those species will still be made of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means. The only major obstacle I see to knowing about some form of life on Earth is location -- we can't scan the entire ocean floor, nor can we penetrate into the mantle.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  >of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means. man, that plugs nicely into the whole dark matter/energy discussion.

bluekeybox 15y ago

> Sentience just happens to be an evolutionary trait that was beneficial to us ... but that isn't really how evolution works. Actually that is how evolution works. Evolution results in species acquiring traits that are beneficial to them. Of course you could make a counter-case that perhaps sentience is only beneficial to us in particular, and not so much to other species -- To which I would completely disagree. There is this fascinating, relatively new theory of how humans became sentient. Previously (1960s) it was thought that humans became sentient either somehow out of the blue or due to having to construct tools etc., which then allowed them to organize into groups. The new theory, on the other hand, claims that high intelligence (and by extension sentience) is an inevitable consequence of living within a particular type of group -- largely the type of group that many primates live in (the original studies were done on baboons), though this is not limited to primates. The idea is that if you are a member of a group where grooming behavior, alliance-making, and status-related interactions are common, you benefit tremendously (in a reproductive sense) from possessing a "theory of mind" capable of making predictions about the actions of others that are at least a few percent more accurate than those of your peers. The way it works is a bit like the stock market -- all you need is to beat the market average. So this "theory of mind" -- being preoccupied with what others think -- is actually claimed to be a runaway effect of the intelligence "arms race" which always occurs among animals living within that type of group. Now, sentience is merely a theory of mind applied to self. I fully expect that within the next 10 million years at least two other mammal species will become sentient, if we humans don't make them extinct that is... Anyone willing to make a long bet?

daliusd 15y ago
I heard theory that there will be no other sentient creatures on Earth because humans will destroy them. I read this theory from article about Birutė Galdikas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birut%C4%97_Galdikas) who is studying orangutans. Let's not forget neanderthals as well in this context.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- 15y ago