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Humans are probably unique. Intelligent life probably not and life at all is likely commonplace. It would be quite a miracle if given the size and scale of the

Humans are probably unique. Intelligent life probably not and life at all is likely commonplace. It would be quite a miracle if given the size and scale of the universe Earth is the only place where life arose and also managed to evolve multiple intelligent species also emerged (cephalopods, dolphins, elephants, and primates at least)

wruza 2y ago
It depends. If simple life is common, how rare is GOE or a similar event? If GOE is not that rare, it feels like intelligent life is just a matter of time, ice ages and enough branches to grab on. Otoh if we are the result of a long domino chain, the universe life is screwed.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  I have no idea what GOE is, but everything we learn about astronomy indicates that neither Earth nor our solar system is particularly unique, so “long sequence of dominoes” would be a very unlikely situation in something as large as the know universe, even ignoring the parts we could never observe.
shiroiushi 2y ago
There is a theory that humanoids aren't actually unique, if there's large animals on other planets in the universe. Our body plan has several survival advantages so it's quite possible evolution could have had similar results elsewhere. Bipedalism is really great for efficiency of locomotion (humans can walk really really far), and having two limbs with opposable thumbs is really useful for grasping and manipulating, which makes it much more likely that species will invent tools and technology. Note I'm not claiming humanoids are all over the place, but with 400B stars in our galaxy, 1T stars in Andromeda next door, and other galaxies with similarly huge numbers of stars, multiplied by all the number of galaxies in the observable universe, multiplied by the number of exoplanets in the "Goldilocks zone", it's quite possible intelligent, humanoid life has evolved somewhere out there.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  That would be a stronger claim than the one I made which is just that life exists in some form somewhere else in the universe with a relatively high abundance and it’s highly likely intelligent life exists somewhere as well. It becomes harder to reason that humanoid life and even intelligent humanoid life must exist somewhere else without any actual data points.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >That would be a stronger claim than the one I made which is just that life exists in some form somewhere else in the universe with a relatively high abundance and it’s highly likely intelligent life exists somewhere as well. Sure, but we're probably thinking of "intelligent life that can build a civilization", right? In that case, highly-intelligent alien orcas aren't going to meet the requirement. They just don't have a body type that allows them to change their environment and build technology. If there really are alien civilizations out there, like in Star Trek, that show might not actually be that far off with its assumption that 95% of them are humanoid. And in this case, there could very well be lots of other intelligent life, but which never managed to build a civilization.
    - vlovich123 2y ago
      If we’re bringing up fiction, why are we assuming Star Trek and not Cephalopods like in Arrival or completely alien morphologies like in Scavenger’s Reign. Even if there is a humanoid involved it could be as a host or slave for the intelligent life that controls it (eg dominion in Star Trek). With a sample size of n=1 of our planet (with no quantifiable way to even measure and compare intelligence), I think we’d be assuming a lot to make the conclusions you are making even if we restrict ourselves to those that can build up industry or even leave their planet. I’m also not sure why we’d care so much about leaving a planet - we’re desperately looking for any sign of life which would be a momentous discovery in and of itself. As for Orcas, don’t underestimate just how deadly humans are - we outcompeted concurrent competing intelligent hominids by killing or mating with them and regularly decimate wildlife and consume resources at a rapid pace. No reason to believe that an alien Orca with thumbs couldn’t eventually accomplish the things we did without ever leaving the water. Star Trek used humanoids because of practical special effects at the time and because it would be easier for the audience to identify with the aliens and make the show more accessible, not because there’s some underlying scientific reasoning going on. To make any predictions about the shape that intelligent aliens would take would require some probabilistic falsifiable model that would tell us where to look and what we’d find. Anything other than that would rely on very shaky first order reasoning which is what we’re doing to guess that there is likely intelligent life somewhere.

wruza 2y ago

It depends. If simple life is common, how rare is GOE or a similar event? If GOE is not that rare, it feels like intelligent life is just a matter of time, ice ages and enough branches to grab on. Otoh if we are the result of a long domino chain, the universe life is screwed.

vlovich123 2y ago
I have no idea what GOE is, but everything we learn about astronomy indicates that neither Earth nor our solar system is particularly unique, so “long sequence of dominoes” would be a very unlikely situation in something as large as the know universe, even ignoring the parts we could never observe.

shiroiushi 2y ago

There is a theory that humanoids aren't actually unique, if there's large animals on other planets in the universe. Our body plan has several survival advantages so it's quite possible evolution could have had similar results elsewhere. Bipedalism is really great for efficiency of locomotion (humans can walk really really far), and having two limbs with opposable thumbs is really useful for grasping and manipulating, which makes it much more likely that species will invent tools and technology. Note I'm not claiming humanoids are all over the place, but with 400B stars in our galaxy, 1T stars in Andromeda next door, and other galaxies with similarly huge numbers of stars, multiplied by all the number of galaxies in the observable universe, multiplied by the number of exoplanets in the "Goldilocks zone", it's quite possible intelligent, humanoid life has evolved somewhere out there.

vlovich123 2y ago
That would be a stronger claim than the one I made which is just that life exists in some form somewhere else in the universe with a relatively high abundance and it’s highly likely intelligent life exists somewhere as well. It becomes harder to reason that humanoid life and even intelligent humanoid life must exist somewhere else without any actual data points.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >That would be a stronger claim than the one I made which is just that life exists in some form somewhere else in the universe with a relatively high abundance and it’s highly likely intelligent life exists somewhere as well. Sure, but we're probably thinking of "intelligent life that can build a civilization", right? In that case, highly-intelligent alien orcas aren't going to meet the requirement. They just don't have a body type that allows them to change their environment and build technology. If there really are alien civilizations out there, like in Star Trek, that show might not actually be that far off with its assumption that 95% of them are humanoid. And in this case, there could very well be lots of other intelligent life, but which never managed to build a civilization.
  - vlovich123 2y ago
    If we’re bringing up fiction, why are we assuming Star Trek and not Cephalopods like in Arrival or completely alien morphologies like in Scavenger’s Reign. Even if there is a humanoid involved it could be as a host or slave for the intelligent life that controls it (eg dominion in Star Trek). With a sample size of n=1 of our planet (with no quantifiable way to even measure and compare intelligence), I think we’d be assuming a lot to make the conclusions you are making even if we restrict ourselves to those that can build up industry or even leave their planet. I’m also not sure why we’d care so much about leaving a planet - we’re desperately looking for any sign of life which would be a momentous discovery in and of itself. As for Orcas, don’t underestimate just how deadly humans are - we outcompeted concurrent competing intelligent hominids by killing or mating with them and regularly decimate wildlife and consume resources at a rapid pace. No reason to believe that an alien Orca with thumbs couldn’t eventually accomplish the things we did without ever leaving the water. Star Trek used humanoids because of practical special effects at the time and because it would be easier for the audience to identify with the aliens and make the show more accessible, not because there’s some underlying scientific reasoning going on. To make any predictions about the shape that intelligent aliens would take would require some probabilistic falsifiable model that would tell us where to look and what we’d find. Anything other than that would rely on very shaky first order reasoning which is what we’re doing to guess that there is likely intelligent life somewhere.