4 ms·
The Fermi paradox seems to take for granted that complex multicellular life will eventually develop technological civilization, but there is no reason for that
by aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
The Fermi paradox seems to take for granted that complex multicellular life will eventually develop technological civilization, but there is no reason for that to be true. Orcas could very well be more intelligent than humans, but they are physiologically incapable of building tools. Human hands and visual processing were an evolutionary fluke that took tens of millions of years of natural selection, long before apes started using these adaptations to build simple tools. It is plausible that "bipeds with hands" will eventually lead to civilization: getting there is the hard part.
Put another way: birds are very intelligent bipeds, but I am not convinced that the dinosaurs would have developed advanced technology if the meteor didn't hit. There has to be an evolutionary path to develop something like hands, which means either sprouting extra arms or compromising a claw / leg / wing. Perhaps that path shows up, perhaps it doesn't - maybe there are fossils of raptor-like dinos with unusually dextrous claws. But without hands, even superintelligent animals cannot reliably make fire, build ropes, sew leather, carve stone, etc etc.
- pc86 2y agoI've often thought about how likely it is there are intelligent and sentient civilizations that are content to their planet, or bounded to it by - as you mentioned - physiological constraints. I never connected that to "you probably need hands or something very closely approximating a hand" but it makes perfect sense.
- asdff 2y agoIntelligence is such a bewildering fixation too when you think about it for ourselves. Due to science fiction writers and our insistence on anthropomorphisation we assume we will be forming treaties aboard an alien ship meanwhile we have yet to communicate let alone form a treaty with any other form of life just here on earth. The hubris is massive and it invades even the scientific community to a degree. Whoever put that human pictograph on voyager evidently did not consult an evolutionary biologist nor a statistician, probably watched an episode of Star Trek.
- Earw0rm 2y agoI wonder what the likelihood is of big leaps forward there, in terms of communicating with other intelligent Earth life. As in, will our ability to wrangle vast amounts of data and characterise it gives us enough insight into what whales are saying to one another that we might be able to start asking them questions? It doesn't seem absurdly far-fetched at this point. But they're probably even more pissed at us for the last couple of centuries' behaviour than the various Indigenous peoples we Westerners have screwed over.
- asdff 2y agoThe hard part is that it goes two ways. Most animals are adapted for interactions within their own species. A seagull is adapted to react a certain way when another seagull screams the same way we smile when someone laughs or get a sense of panic if we hear someone shriek. A seagull has no concept of our behavior really beyond if we move at it in a threatening manner like other potential predators. The most you can do is probably some simple conditional learning akin to dog training considering seagulls in recreational areas have associated beachgoers with potential food source already. Why might a whale speak back to us? Maybe it we chum the water when whales make certain noises they will begin making those noises and expect chum. I wouldn’t call that communication as people expect it to be with ET however. A primitive form of trade perhaps.
- Earw0rm 2y agoWhales are unusual in that they use complex sound for beyond visual range communication, and they may (emphasis may) be intelligent enough to treat our proxy sounds as an attempt to recreate their own and respond in kind. I doubt we'd get much out of a seagull or even a cat. They don't seem to communicate much. Whales however seem to be able to "speak" over long distances and emit long phrases in which individuals are identified by something like a name. There's a lot more to work with there than even most mammals.
- MichaelZuo 2y agoWell most science fiction writers have to be mediocre, by definition. There are some really intriguing works out there but they are very few and far inbetween.
- sightbroke 2y agoHands, or tentacles, or a really long snout. There appear to be a variety of appendages that can be rather good at manipulating the environment for the users purpose. Forgot also swarms of many cooperativing organisms. Ants appear quite adapt at manipulating things to a degree.
- Teever 2y agoMaybe Earth is rare in that most life evolved in a way that locks in morphology. It's entirely possible that it's far more common place for intelligent life to evolve in a way that allows that intelligence to direct the growth of an arbitrary body shape to solve arbitrary tasks.
- anjel 2y agoPterodactyls when on the ground are believed to have been quadripeds that walked on "hands" with finger-like appendages[0] hence the "Dactyl" part of its species-name. They perished agter the meteor. More up-to-date, I believe Bats have a similar skeletal feature in their design. Cetaceans have finger-like skeletal features in their flippers.[1] [0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pterodactll+walking+&t=newext&atb=v459-1&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pterodactll+walking+&t=newext&atb=... [1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whales+used+to+have+hands&t=newext&atb=v459-1&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=whales+used+to+have+hands&t=newext...
- WhyNotHugo 2y agoEven if you had human-like civilisations, they might simply opt for a simpler but more sustainable way of life, like many ancient civilisations which have been eradicated by more uncivilised ones. There’s no evidence that societies based on our technological direction last more than a couple of centuries. Maybe societies with nukes and rockets always kill each other, and Mayan-like societies thrive for far longer periods without ever reaching outer space.