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> 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, yo

by 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).
    - moe 15y ago
      astronomically unlikely Interesting choice of words. So while we're talking in astronomical terms: How big is the universe? How many earth-like planets does it contain? Are there other universes? Until we can answer at least one of these questions I would refrain from calling anything in this context "astronomically unlikely".
      - daemin 15y ago
        I think that in the whole universe there is intelligent life out there like ours (not in body but in mind/thought). However due to the time/distance scales that are required to interact with them, it might as well not exist, since we'd require a huge amount of luck to ever interact with them.
    - ericd 15y ago
      >There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. What? An obvious ability to learn is found in lots of animals, and in the cases where the benefit outweighs the additional caloric requirements, the evolutionary tendency is towards intelligence. Of course it's not the only one, but it's a pretty big trump card natural selection-wise when it reaches a sufficient level, as humans have clearly demonstrated. Millions of years are a dime a dozen in the time scales of the universe, and parallelize that across more than trillions of planets. I think your intuition is way off here.
- polyfractal 15y ago
  So if some alien spaceship flew up to the planet Earth today, you'd say they aren't intelligent? Just alien dolphins that happen to have built spaceships? What? I don't even know what you are arguing against.
  - uxp 15y ago
    I think the point was that some organisms on earth exhibit traits of intelligence, like Dolphins, and that there could be Alien organisms that are like Dolphins that also show signs of intelligence. But just as humans and dolphins on earth cannot live together socially, that intelligence is either too primitive for them to travel to other planets to seek out life alien to them (have you ever seen a Dolphin craft material into a structure that could be used for interplanetary travel?), or is too complex for us to recognize that it is actual intelligence. Although science fiction has been littered with thousands of stories of alien life visiting us, we humans only know of the fact that humans from Earth are the only organisms looking for life on other planets that we know of. I don't think anyone would doubt that any organism with the capacity to travel to other planets, let alone other solar systems and possibly other galaxies, is un-intelligent. Although we might be biased, we're a pretty intelligent species, as long as the metric is ourselves.
wheels 15y ago
> Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. One proviso there is that it'd be very hard to establish that there are dolphins on another planet since the only signature that we have to go on are things that manipulate the light spectrum. We could, perhaps, infer something from an atmospheric condition that we might someday be able to detect, but observe, for instance, how difficult it is for us to determine if there is or has ever been life on Mars, even though it's right next door. For all we know, there could be dolphins on Titan. Sending an exploratory probe that would take millennia to reach its target (and then several hundred years to send data back) will probably remain impractical for an extended period of time.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  You cut out the part where I mentioned computer systems when you quoted me. That part was important. It was an attempt to show that there could be radio-communicating, non-human entities with entirely different 'intelligences'. > will probably remain impractical for an extended period of time. I don't deny that. I only deny that it's impossible.

by cryptoz 15y ago

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).
  - moe 15y ago
    astronomically unlikely Interesting choice of words. So while we're talking in astronomical terms: How big is the universe? How many earth-like planets does it contain? Are there other universes? Until we can answer at least one of these questions I would refrain from calling anything in this context "astronomically unlikely".
    - daemin 15y ago
      I think that in the whole universe there is intelligent life out there like ours (not in body but in mind/thought). However due to the time/distance scales that are required to interact with them, it might as well not exist, since we'd require a huge amount of luck to ever interact with them.
  - ericd 15y ago
    >There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. What? An obvious ability to learn is found in lots of animals, and in the cases where the benefit outweighs the additional caloric requirements, the evolutionary tendency is towards intelligence. Of course it's not the only one, but it's a pretty big trump card natural selection-wise when it reaches a sufficient level, as humans have clearly demonstrated. Millions of years are a dime a dozen in the time scales of the universe, and parallelize that across more than trillions of planets. I think your intuition is way off here.
polyfractal 15y ago
So if some alien spaceship flew up to the planet Earth today, you'd say they aren't intelligent? Just alien dolphins that happen to have built spaceships? What? I don't even know what you are arguing against.
- uxp 15y ago
  I think the point was that some organisms on earth exhibit traits of intelligence, like Dolphins, and that there could be Alien organisms that are like Dolphins that also show signs of intelligence. But just as humans and dolphins on earth cannot live together socially, that intelligence is either too primitive for them to travel to other planets to seek out life alien to them (have you ever seen a Dolphin craft material into a structure that could be used for interplanetary travel?), or is too complex for us to recognize that it is actual intelligence. Although science fiction has been littered with thousands of stories of alien life visiting us, we humans only know of the fact that humans from Earth are the only organisms looking for life on other planets that we know of. I don't think anyone would doubt that any organism with the capacity to travel to other planets, let alone other solar systems and possibly other galaxies, is un-intelligent. Although we might be biased, we're a pretty intelligent species, as long as the metric is ourselves.

wheels 15y ago

> Nobody is looking for "human intelligence" on other planets. Maybe that's why you think it's impossible. I'd say dolphins are intelligent. One proviso there is that it'd be very hard to establish that there are dolphins on another planet since the only signature that we have to go on are things that manipulate the light spectrum. We could, perhaps, infer something from an atmospheric condition that we might someday be able to detect, but observe, for instance, how difficult it is for us to determine if there is or has ever been life on Mars, even though it's right next door. For all we know, there could be dolphins on Titan. Sending an exploratory probe that would take millennia to reach its target (and then several hundred years to send data back) will probably remain impractical for an extended period of time.

cryptoz 15y ago
You cut out the part where I mentioned computer systems when you quoted me. That part was important. It was an attempt to show that there could be radio-communicating, non-human entities with entirely different 'intelligences'. > will probably remain impractical for an extended period of time. I don't deny that. I only deny that it's impossible.