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Terence Mckenna who I generally think is kind of, really, nuts - criticized the way of thinking which anthropomorphized the idea of alien life, In this particul

by hurin 12y ago

Terence Mckenna who I generally think is kind of, really, nuts - criticized the way of thinking which anthropomorphized the idea of alien life, In this particular case I think it is a highly valid criticism: our conception of extra-terrestrial life is perhaps akin to the ancient greek's conception of gods. There is really no basis to assume that another life-form should in anyway resemble a human, a mammal, or some funny green dude. This should go for assumptions about an alien-life forms energy-use/requirements as well.

pakitan 12y ago
I used to think that way but not anymore. We didn't just pop out of somewhere with randomly created features. We are the result of an evolution and (almost) everything we have serves a purpose. If we imagine a distant planet similar to ours, bets are the evolution there will produce life forms similar to ours. Whatever the dominant life form is there, it still needs to move around, to be aware of its surroundings, to communicate, to breed, to get energy in some way. And even if you were designing a life form, it's hard to get creative with the "features". What would you invent to replace eyes? You may put eyes on the back, you may triple the count, you may call them "the seeing things"...but you still need to have something that makes the life form aware of its surroundings. Now, the fact that we have evolved from monkeys may be a matter of luck. On other planets the dominant life form may evolve from birds or fish but I don't think it's very likely that it will be something that we can't even imagine now. Of course, with all this I'm assuming a "simple" model of our universe - no God, no intelligent design, no artificial intelligence and no "living in the matrix".
- hurin 12y ago
  > bets are the evolution there will produce life forms similar to ours That's exactly the anthropomorphic bias. Why wouldn't it be a huge mycelium? How do we even know there aren't types of life-forms made of structures that current scientific theories wouldn't consider possible? More so it's entirely unclear why the life should have to be intelligent - or intelligent in a individual-animate-tool-building-animal kind of way. > And even if you were designing a life form, it's hard to get creative with the "features". It's hard to get creative, because creativity after-all builds from experience, therefore our imagination of alien life is still derived from the experience of Earth. For that matter I'm very unconvinced that even Human civilization or life (should it survive for another 10,000 let alone 100,000 or a million) years will resemble anything like the organic individuals, with similar interests (i.e. space-travel, colonization) as it has today.
  - pakitan 11y ago
    > Why wouldn't it be a huge mycelium? Why hadn't it? I mean, not only doesn't it posses a drop of intelligence, there isn't even something similar that does. And that's after billions of years. My guess is something like this - intelligence is the most powerful evolutionary weapon and due to the way evolution works, you only get that weapon if you have to survive among powerful adversaries. However, intelligence is of no use if the species can't react fast enough according to changing circumstances. Something with mycelium's structure can't run, can't hide and can't attack fast enough. If it somehow evolves to the point it could, it would start resembling existing intelligent species. > More so it's entirely unclear why the life should have to be intelligent - or intelligent in a individual-animate-tool-building-animal kind of way. All life doesn't have to be intelligent and it's not, even here on Earth. It's just that here we are discussing intelligent life that can build stuff. > I'm very unconvinced that even Human civilization or life (should it survive for another 10,000 let alone 100,000 or a million) years will resemble anything like the organic individuals Come on, we've had millions of years of evolution and we're still monkeys with less hair. Unless we start meddling with our DNA and/or actually develop artificial intelligence, we won't be changing much.
    - hurin 11y ago
      > Why hadn't it? I mean, not only doesn't it posses a drop of intelligence, there isn't even something similar that does. If you were an intelligent fungus (on a planet without humans) and could express similar thoughts, you would be saying exactly the same thing about monkeys. Same goes for all of your other reasoning.

by hurin 12y ago

pakitan 12y ago

I used to think that way but not anymore. We didn't just pop out of somewhere with randomly created features. We are the result of an evolution and (almost) everything we have serves a purpose. If we imagine a distant planet similar to ours, bets are the evolution there will produce life forms similar to ours. Whatever the dominant life form is there, it still needs to move around, to be aware of its surroundings, to communicate, to breed, to get energy in some way. And even if you were designing a life form, it's hard to get creative with the "features". What would you invent to replace eyes? You may put eyes on the back, you may triple the count, you may call them "the seeing things"...but you still need to have something that makes the life form aware of its surroundings. Now, the fact that we have evolved from monkeys may be a matter of luck. On other planets the dominant life form may evolve from birds or fish but I don't think it's very likely that it will be something that we can't even imagine now. Of course, with all this I'm assuming a "simple" model of our universe - no God, no intelligent design, no artificial intelligence and no "living in the matrix".

hurin 12y ago
> bets are the evolution there will produce life forms similar to ours That's exactly the anthropomorphic bias. Why wouldn't it be a huge mycelium? How do we even know there aren't types of life-forms made of structures that current scientific theories wouldn't consider possible? More so it's entirely unclear why the life should have to be intelligent - or intelligent in a individual-animate-tool-building-animal kind of way. > And even if you were designing a life form, it's hard to get creative with the "features". It's hard to get creative, because creativity after-all builds from experience, therefore our imagination of alien life is still derived from the experience of Earth. For that matter I'm very unconvinced that even Human civilization or life (should it survive for another 10,000 let alone 100,000 or a million) years will resemble anything like the organic individuals, with similar interests (i.e. space-travel, colonization) as it has today.
- pakitan 11y ago
  > Why wouldn't it be a huge mycelium? Why hadn't it? I mean, not only doesn't it posses a drop of intelligence, there isn't even something similar that does. And that's after billions of years. My guess is something like this - intelligence is the most powerful evolutionary weapon and due to the way evolution works, you only get that weapon if you have to survive among powerful adversaries. However, intelligence is of no use if the species can't react fast enough according to changing circumstances. Something with mycelium's structure can't run, can't hide and can't attack fast enough. If it somehow evolves to the point it could, it would start resembling existing intelligent species. > More so it's entirely unclear why the life should have to be intelligent - or intelligent in a individual-animate-tool-building-animal kind of way. All life doesn't have to be intelligent and it's not, even here on Earth. It's just that here we are discussing intelligent life that can build stuff. > I'm very unconvinced that even Human civilization or life (should it survive for another 10,000 let alone 100,000 or a million) years will resemble anything like the organic individuals Come on, we've had millions of years of evolution and we're still monkeys with less hair. Unless we start meddling with our DNA and/or actually develop artificial intelligence, we won't be changing much.
  - hurin 11y ago
    > Why hadn't it? I mean, not only doesn't it posses a drop of intelligence, there isn't even something similar that does. If you were an intelligent fungus (on a planet without humans) and could express similar thoughts, you would be saying exactly the same thing about monkeys. Same goes for all of your other reasoning.