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On top of that, Earth itself had the potential for intelligent life long before humans came around. But instead of evolving some overgrown monkeys, it evolved

On top of that, Earth itself had the potential for intelligent life long before humans came around. But instead of evolving some overgrown monkeys, it evolved some overgrown birds who were too selfish and shortsighted to work together and develop a space program and watch out for large asteroids. They were mostly wiped out because of this, and it took 65 million years for another selfish and shortsighted group of animals to evolve and become dominant. Unlike the last ones, they developed a space program, but it's not really enough to handle threatening asteroids yet, but they're busy destroying themselves and their environment in other ways, so it may be moot. It might take Earth 3 tries to finally evolve a sentient species that becomes a spacefaring civilization.

WJW 3y ago
With you until the last sentence. Why would the "third try" not just be dinosaurs again? Same for the 4th, 5th an subsequent "attempts". The fact that the second try got further than the first does not mean that the 3rd will get further than the second. In fact, given that most of the easily accessible coal and oil deposits will have been used up it might even be much more difficult for a subsequent species to get as far as humanity has. (Although that might be balanced a bit by lots of the metal ore being pre-mined and near the surface)
- jagged-chisel 3y ago
  > ... most of the easily accessible coal and oil deposits will have been used up . There'll be plenty of time for nature to compact and bury much of the biomass from the previous sentience attempts.
  - WJW 3y ago
    Depends. Most of the current coal deposits were from before fungi and bacteria evolved the ability to digest lignins and similar compounds. Now that they can do that, no more (or at least much less) coal deposits are being created.
zeckalpha 3y ago
Some ongoing research into this timeline: https://www.science.org/content/article/some-dinos-may-have-been-brainy-modern-primates-controversial-study-argues https://www.science.org/content/article/some-dinos-may-have-...
- bmitc 3y ago
  Orcas very likely have human adjacent intelligence and evolved earlier than humans. They arrived several to tens of million years before humans, as far as I can tell. Orcas are simply constrained by their environment as far as technological development goes.

WJW 3y ago

With you until the last sentence. Why would the "third try" not just be dinosaurs again? Same for the 4th, 5th an subsequent "attempts". The fact that the second try got further than the first does not mean that the 3rd will get further than the second. In fact, given that most of the easily accessible coal and oil deposits will have been used up it might even be much more difficult for a subsequent species to get as far as humanity has. (Although that might be balanced a bit by lots of the metal ore being pre-mined and near the surface)

jagged-chisel 3y ago
> ... most of the easily accessible coal and oil deposits will have been used up . There'll be plenty of time for nature to compact and bury much of the biomass from the previous sentience attempts.
- WJW 3y ago
  Depends. Most of the current coal deposits were from before fungi and bacteria evolved the ability to digest lignins and similar compounds. Now that they can do that, no more (or at least much less) coal deposits are being created.

zeckalpha 3y ago

Some ongoing research into this timeline: https://www.science.org/content/article/some-dinos-may-have-been-brainy-modern-primates-controversial-study-argues https://www.science.org/content/article/some-dinos-may-have-...

bmitc 3y ago
Orcas very likely have human adjacent intelligence and evolved earlier than humans. They arrived several to tens of million years before humans, as far as I can tell. Orcas are simply constrained by their environment as far as technological development goes.