Re: SETI
- From: "Art Basaran" <GreenRobe22@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 30 Apr 2006 12:51:55 -0700
uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Art Basaran wrote:
(snip)
I don't think you have any idea how very peculiar --how very
unlikely--human evolution was.
There was absolutley nothing inevitable about our evolution.
In fact, I think I know exactly how "very peculiar" our evolution was,
but "unlikely" is an a prioi judgement. What sample of planets with an
evolutionary history are you making a comparison to?
Earth. Millions of species, none as intelligent as we are.
So? There is always a species best at something. Intelligence just
happens to be ours.
For that matter,
can you really be certain that human species was the first time that
our advanced stage intelligence ever evolved here on Earth, or that it
will be the last time?
Yes.
Well, then, clearly you think you know everything. Good luck with
that.
Can you dismiss the advanced cognitive
abilities of a whole range of primate creatures as "flukes"? And what
about elephants, and dolphins?
They are 'relatively' intelligent compared to many other species, but
their physiology prevents them from making tools and having lnaguage.
Given enough time between extinctions,
nature plays around with a whole lot of different options. Your
argument that only tree climbing
I didn't say that!
Perhaps not, but it is the only thing you mentioned, despite that
intelligence of varying degrees can be driven by many different
processes.
promotes bigger brains is flawed on
the grounds that the two species I just mentioned (dolphins and
elephants) had no feedback loop for grasping, yet their own cognitive
development was quite advanced, and given many hundreds of millions of
more years quite likely they would develop to more and more intelligent
stages.
The elephants and dolphins have no language or tools. It's not JUST
bigger brains.
Yes, but there is no unique component to human language, it is merely a
fortuitous combination of different elements possessed by many species.
Given millions of years, perhaps the right combination would occur in
either of these species, or some others. As for tool use, well, I
don't think that tools qualify as a form of intelligence in themselves,
just a product of intelligence enabled by hands with opposable thumbs.
Possibly elephants and dolphins CAN'T develop tool use (although don't
count out the elephant, a few modifications to the trunk and it could
make a very efficient means of using tools; as to the dolphin, well, it
would likely never be able to develop very advanced tools due to a lack
of fire in their environment), but it just goes to show you that it
does not take all that many fortuitous elements to make a human-like
creature capable of generating advanced technology. Long evolutionary
histories of sociality, the combination of a few elements in animal
communication to make the basis of a language, terrestriality (for
access to fire), and evolutionary selection pressures for gripping, and
presto, bingo, got yourself a fully thinking being there! Thus, it is
nowhere near as impossible to imagine as you make it seem. Such a
creature does not even necessarily have to be bipedal, or walk upright,
or be hairless, or have eyes (sonar might serve), or a nose, or ten
fingers and ten toes, or an opposable thumb (though it helps), or any
of those other frivolties that just happen to be a part of our
constitution, they need only a few basic elements to achieve this.
Furthermore, it is hardly true that the entire story of human cognitive
development can be reduced to grasping, because grasping needs alone
would have produced only greater grasping abilities, and not the whole
range of our cognitive abilities. In fact, the one factor which seems
to promote intelligence greater than any other is gregariousness and
its more organized child sociality, both of which promote the need for
complex interactions between members of a species, and sociality
especially provides "social niches" in which the same creatures, with
the same potential abilities, must learn to use these abilities
differently according to the risks and benefits afforded by any given
strategy in any given context (I am here excluding eusocial creatures
like ants, in which the "niches" are defined by developmental
differences in the physiology of different 'roles' within the society).
This creates an "arms race" for greater levels of intellience;
furthermore intelligence can be sexually selected for in and of itself,
like the brighter plumage of a bird, if it is a reliable cue to at
least some type of fitness (extravagant 'wasteful' displays are very
common under conditions of sexual selection, because it does in fact
indicate reliable cues of health, fertility, success, status, etc...).
If some ancestral females who preferred more intelligent males
experienced greater reproductive success, then intelligence itself need
not even necessarily be an adaptation, instead it may be that other
uses of intelligence are exaptations.
Yes, social interaction is important. It stimulated language in humans
too.
Yes, so all that the cognitively advanced species on this planet (i.e.
dolphins, elephants, perhaps others i am forgetting to mention) might
need to develop language is to become more 'social', thus developing
niches promoting higher intelligence and new abilities.
All in all, I would say there is every reason to believe that
intelligence, broadly defined, is not very rare, and narrowly defined
as the strictly human level of intelligence, rare to be sure but not
unthinkably so, and that there are many conceivable ways that
intelligence of our level could evolve, many reasons why it would
evolve at a lower level of sophistication at least, and that perhaps it
may only be possible for social or gregarious creatures, but this may
also not be true. We cannot claim any absolute certainty about what
conditions would or would not create our level of intelligence, but we
can certainly think of a lot of good reasons why some forms of
intelligence would have to evolve given long enough periods between
extinctions. We cannot know for sure the rarity of our level of
intelligence evolving, and we should not make any a priori
determinations of this.
Art Basaran
Show me another one of our level, anywhere. In the entire universe, I
doubt that there are fewer than the number of fingers on a badly
mutilated hand.
Well, frankly, I don't take your word on it, and have yet to see what
expertise you claim in making such an assertion. At one time it was
thought there were few stars with planets, now we know there are
probably few without, and then it was thought Earthlike planets were
rare and we know that there could be hundreds of thousands in our
galaxy alone, and then it was realized that even the Earth was not
Earthlike when life first evolved, and that life in fact has played a
huge part in terraforming the Earth to its current environment, and so
life might be almost anywhere, but then it was thought that the
elements of organic life were rare, and then it became known they were
abundant in the universe, and now it is thought by most that only these
constituents can combine into the self-replicating system called life,
but some are beginning to challenge even these assertions, arguing that
some forms of life may be very different from ours, perhaps not even
carbon based. We are learning way too much about the possibility of
life in the universe to dismiss the possibility of a common recurrence
of human levels of intelligence and tool use in the universe, perhaps
on a great percentage of inhabited planets, especially when, while
learning about all of this potential, we do not yet have the technology
to have a good chance of finding it. We may never find ET
intelligence, or we may, or (and this is another possibility) they may
find us or may already have.
Never be so open minded your brain falls out, but never be so close
minded that your brain gets squashed.
Art Basaran
.
- References:
- Prev by Date: Re: "Scientific" Praying.
- Next by Date: Re: "Scientific" Praying.
- Previous by thread: Re: SETI
- Next by thread: Re: SETI
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
