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I often think that a more interesting question would be that if there were another civilisation here on earth right now, would we even recognise it as such? We

I often think that a more interesting question would be that if there were another civilisation here on earth right now, would we even recognise it as such? We are terribly preoccupied with tool use and physical artefacts as a defining factor of intelligence - anthropocentrism is of course pretty much inevitable, even when we talk of cephalopods.

malfist 2y ago
Check out the book "Mountain in the Sea", it's based on that premise and is a nebula award winner
- world2vec 2y ago
  It's an amazing book, highly recommend.
- madaxe_again 2y ago
  Sounds very much like my cup of tea, thanks! I’ve ordered it.
necroforest 2y ago
yeah, and as far as I'm aware there isn't even a definition of "civilization" or "intelligence" that doesn't boil down to "sufficiently like me".
- empath75 2y ago
  I'm with you on intelligence, but the hallmark of civilization is right in the etymology -- the existence of cities.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Well, all right, do ants form cities? Yes, they do, at least of a kind. You could even argue that lichen is a city, inhabited by multiple species. I mean, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to argue than either of those really are a civilization. But if "city" is your sole criterion...
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Or a beehive. Bees moved into the basement window of my house and watching them go in and out it seemed to me that this single beehive had more departures and arrivals than all the commercial airports in the world put together. If you look at the problem of "bee decline" from the viewpoint of the beekeeper where you are responsible for it you are responsible for a "city" of 50,000 insects that faces all kinds of threats from the inside and outside.
      - saalweachter 2y ago
        Ant nests and beehives aren't cities, they are households, consisting of a single family.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > hallmark of civilization is right in the etymology -- the existence of cities. That is not really the etymology of "civilisation" though. City and civilisation share etymological roots, but city is not the etymological origin of the world civilisation. And of course then we just ask the question: what are cities? Do gopher, or prairie dog colonies count? (or are those just towns? :)) How about ant colonies or bee hives? Clearly all of the above share some similarities with some human settlements. They also have important differences of course. So if we want to decide if there are other "civilisations" on Earth parallel with us, we have to be more precise with our definitions.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > city is not the etymological origin of the world civilisation Civilisations are a subset of societies [1]. Urbanisation is commonly held as a divider between complex societies and full-blown civilisations. > then we just ask the question: what are cities? This is valid. I’d say the defining attribute is economies of scale. Ant colonies and bee hives demonstrate elements of this; the sum is greater than the whole. Whether ants and bees form complex societies is less debatable, unless we reduce the terms to mean intricate where we begin enveloping colonies of trees and every social animal, potentially even just multicellular life, which while poetically pleasing isn’t useful. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization
pvg 2y ago
tool use and physical artefacts Maybe but it's also because these things are evidence of cultural transmission - a thing for which there hasn't been strong evidence of in other species and people do look for it in other ways.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> We are terribly preoccupied with tool use and physical artefacts as a defining factor of intelligence In the context of civilisation, intelligence isn’t enough. Nomadic tribes are sapient, intelligent and have rich cultures, but they aren’t strictly civilisations. The urban distinction is important because of economies of scale: pastoral societies are energy constrained. That doesn’t make them less interesting, again strictly speaking, personally it sort of does, but it does make them less powerful. Within the Silurian context, the urban distinction is almost demanding: if humans stopped at Neolithic pastoralism, there is a good chance all evidence of our tool use would have disappeared within a few millennia, let alone millions of years.
- pvg 2y ago
  Nomadic tribes are sapient, intelligent and have rich cultures, but they aren’t strictly civilisations. Some pastoral societies have taken serious issue with this view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#/media/File:Mongol_Empire_map_2.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#/media/File:Mong...
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Some pastoral societies have taken serious issue with this view Where is the evidence the Mongols took issue with this view? They certainly seemed to recognise the value of cities. To my knowledge, the practice of falsely conflating intelligence and civilisation to be offended that not every society formed a civilisation is a modern occupation.
    - pvg 2y ago
      Where is the evidence the Mongols took issue with this view? I think if you eat all neighbouring civilizations in a few decades, you're definitely a civilization.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > if you eat all neighbouring civilizations in a few decades, you're definitely a civilization If you run the cities, yes. If you only raid them, no. (The Mongols built roads and founded a Chinese dynasty. They were a civilisation.)
kijin 2y ago
Trust me, if there were another civilization anywhere near us, we'd be at war with it. No matter what the other civilization looks like, that's how we've always reacted. It's almost a defining characteristic of our civilization.
bloak 2y ago
When talking about aliens people often use the word "civilisation" to mean just "intelligence" and perhaps that's what you're doing because you're thinking about something that doesn't resemble a human civilisation. I agree with you that an alien intelligence might be very different from a human civilisation. Also, an alien intelligence might not even qualify as a form of life (it might be an artificial intelligence).
Liquix 2y ago
our senses are only equipped to experience small subsets of the whole - there's a huge range of sounds impercetible to human ears, our eyes can only perceive light in the visible spectrum, a dog's nose can detect orders of magnitude more information than a human's. if the five senses can only percieve a fraction of that which they have been honed for over millennia, it's not unreasonable to wonder if there is much more to the world/earth than meets the eye, inaccessible and unintelligible to physical ape life or existing in ways we aren't equipped to percieve.
lazypenguin 2y ago
There probably is depending on your definition of a civilization. I’d imagine it looks something like an https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_supercolony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_supercolony

malfist 2y ago

Check out the book "Mountain in the Sea", it's based on that premise and is a nebula award winner

world2vec 2y ago
It's an amazing book, highly recommend.
madaxe_again 2y ago
Sounds very much like my cup of tea, thanks! I’ve ordered it.

necroforest 2y ago

yeah, and as far as I'm aware there isn't even a definition of "civilization" or "intelligence" that doesn't boil down to "sufficiently like me".

empath75 2y ago
I'm with you on intelligence, but the hallmark of civilization is right in the etymology -- the existence of cities.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Well, all right, do ants form cities? Yes, they do, at least of a kind. You could even argue that lichen is a city, inhabited by multiple species. I mean, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to argue than either of those really are a civilization. But if "city" is your sole criterion...
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    Or a beehive. Bees moved into the basement window of my house and watching them go in and out it seemed to me that this single beehive had more departures and arrivals than all the commercial airports in the world put together. If you look at the problem of "bee decline" from the viewpoint of the beekeeper where you are responsible for it you are responsible for a "city" of 50,000 insects that faces all kinds of threats from the inside and outside.
    - saalweachter 2y ago
      Ant nests and beehives aren't cities, they are households, consisting of a single family.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > hallmark of civilization is right in the etymology -- the existence of cities. That is not really the etymology of "civilisation" though. City and civilisation share etymological roots, but city is not the etymological origin of the world civilisation. And of course then we just ask the question: what are cities? Do gopher, or prairie dog colonies count? (or are those just towns? :)) How about ant colonies or bee hives? Clearly all of the above share some similarities with some human settlements. They also have important differences of course. So if we want to decide if there are other "civilisations" on Earth parallel with us, we have to be more precise with our definitions.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > city is not the etymological origin of the world civilisation Civilisations are a subset of societies [1]. Urbanisation is commonly held as a divider between complex societies and full-blown civilisations. > then we just ask the question: what are cities? This is valid. I’d say the defining attribute is economies of scale. Ant colonies and bee hives demonstrate elements of this; the sum is greater than the whole. Whether ants and bees form complex societies is less debatable, unless we reduce the terms to mean intricate where we begin enveloping colonies of trees and every social animal, potentially even just multicellular life, which while poetically pleasing isn’t useful. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

pvg 2y ago

tool use and physical artefacts Maybe but it's also because these things are evidence of cultural transmission - a thing for which there hasn't been strong evidence of in other species and people do look for it in other ways.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> We are terribly preoccupied with tool use and physical artefacts as a defining factor of intelligence In the context of civilisation, intelligence isn’t enough. Nomadic tribes are sapient, intelligent and have rich cultures, but they aren’t strictly civilisations. The urban distinction is important because of economies of scale: pastoral societies are energy constrained. That doesn’t make them less interesting, again strictly speaking, personally it sort of does, but it does make them less powerful. Within the Silurian context, the urban distinction is almost demanding: if humans stopped at Neolithic pastoralism, there is a good chance all evidence of our tool use would have disappeared within a few millennia, let alone millions of years.

pvg 2y ago
Nomadic tribes are sapient, intelligent and have rich cultures, but they aren’t strictly civilisations. Some pastoral societies have taken serious issue with this view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#/media/File:Mongol_Empire_map_2.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#/media/File:Mong...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Some pastoral societies have taken serious issue with this view Where is the evidence the Mongols took issue with this view? They certainly seemed to recognise the value of cities. To my knowledge, the practice of falsely conflating intelligence and civilisation to be offended that not every society formed a civilisation is a modern occupation.
  - pvg 2y ago
    Where is the evidence the Mongols took issue with this view? I think if you eat all neighbouring civilizations in a few decades, you're definitely a civilization.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > if you eat all neighbouring civilizations in a few decades, you're definitely a civilization If you run the cities, yes. If you only raid them, no. (The Mongols built roads and founded a Chinese dynasty. They were a civilisation.)

kijin 2y ago

Trust me, if there were another civilization anywhere near us, we'd be at war with it. No matter what the other civilization looks like, that's how we've always reacted. It's almost a defining characteristic of our civilization.

bloak 2y ago

When talking about aliens people often use the word "civilisation" to mean just "intelligence" and perhaps that's what you're doing because you're thinking about something that doesn't resemble a human civilisation. I agree with you that an alien intelligence might be very different from a human civilisation. Also, an alien intelligence might not even qualify as a form of life (it might be an artificial intelligence).

Liquix 2y ago

our senses are only equipped to experience small subsets of the whole - there's a huge range of sounds impercetible to human ears, our eyes can only perceive light in the visible spectrum, a dog's nose can detect orders of magnitude more information than a human's. if the five senses can only percieve a fraction of that which they have been honed for over millennia, it's not unreasonable to wonder if there is much more to the world/earth than meets the eye, inaccessible and unintelligible to physical ape life or existing in ways we aren't equipped to percieve.

lazypenguin 2y ago

There probably is depending on your definition of a civilization. I’d imagine it looks something like an https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_supercolony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_supercolony