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UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

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Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#21

Post by moe »

ugh wrote: post #10
moe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Human arrogance I would say. If an alien civilization was to find and visit us (by means other than microbes riding an asteroid...) then their technology is at least a few hundred years ahead of ours.

Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_tim... You would most likely meet completely unintelligent microbes on Earth. Or no life at all. Maybe some stupid animals or plants. The likelihood of meeting intelligent life during the existence of this planet is something like 0.004 percent (200,000 years of intelligent life on a 4.5 billion year old planet…

That’s not human arrogance. That’s just how it looks to be at the moment.

Human arrogance I say (and that is not aimed at you personally).

We're making assumptions based on a ridiculously small and sparse amount of knowledge. We assume the universe is 14 billion years old, we assume other lifeforms are carbon based like us and evolve the same way we do, we assume faster-than-light travel is not possible.

I don't see how this is any different to how we assumed the earth is flat, just a few hundred years ago.

In the grand scheme of things we simply don't know enough to make anything but the wildest guesses about alien intelligent life. Considering ourselves to be the pinnacle of evolution at this point seems very naive.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#22

Post by Evgeny »

Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

A point to consider is the probability that microbes ever evolve into something more complex (multicellular organisms). After all, there are huge amounts of bacteria on Earth these days, but I'm not aware of any cases of them evolving into more complex organisms in the last billion year or so.

A book called "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" provides some insights. The author argues that the only reason multicellular organisms evolved is that one type of cells ("host") engulfed (or engaged into symbiotic relationship with) another, that became mitochondria and was used as a "power plant". This probably happened only once in history and under very specific conditions, which are very unlikely to be repeated.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#23

Post by joeyo »

Evgeny wrote: post #22
Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

A point to consider is the probability that microbes ever evolve into something more complex (multicellular organisms). After all, there are huge amounts of bacteria on Earth these days, but I'm not aware of any cases of them evolving into more complex organisms in the last billion year or so. A book called "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" provides some insights. The author argues that the…

  > This probably happened only once in history and under
  > very specific conditions, which are very unlikely to be
  > repeated.
Anything not forbidden is compulsory. -- Murray Gell-Mann

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#24

Post by ajju »

joeyo wrote: post #23
Evgeny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A point to consider is the probability that microbes ever evolve into something more complex (multicellular organisms). After all, there are huge amounts of bacteria on Earth these days, but I'm not aware of any cases of them evolving into more complex organisms in the last billion year or so. A book called "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" provides some insights. The author argues that the…

> This probably happened only once in history and under > very specific conditions, which are very unlikely to be > repeated. Anything not forbidden is compulsory. -- Murray Gell-Mann

"Anything not forbidden is compulsory" only if you assume an infinitely long time horizon

Without having more data points, it is hard to say whether the average life span of a planet in the Universe is long enough for multicellular life to inevitably develop.

So far, all evidence points to no. It is also true, however, that so far we have negligible data.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#25

Post by mortenjorck »

kyleslattery wrote: post #6
Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

Astrophysicist Neil Tyson makes a great point on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E Essentially: chimpanzees share ~98% of our DNA, yet we don't view them as having anything near our intelligence. If it only takes a 2% difference for this to happen, imagine how more advanced alien species might view us.

We may have a genome that is only two percent different from that of a primate, but the result is nothing short of a singularity. Chimpanzees may be amazingly advanced mammals, with complex social systems and the ability to use sticks as limited tools, but... Our two percentage points gave us Shakespeare, the Italian Renaissance, jazz, the wheel, skyscrapers, the Apollo Program, agriculture, global telecommunications networks, gunpowder, the Cold War...

Even an alien civilization that may seem like gods to us won't confuse us with our genomic neighbors.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#26

Post by carbocation »

ugh wrote: post #14
endtime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does DNA have to do with it?

The point is that our next relatives on the tree of life are very similar to us in many ways but we would nevertheless consider them pretty stupid. Pretty much all impressive human achievements will be forever inaccessible to them. DNA is just a very striking way of illustrating that similarity with the one big difference. It is similarly imaginable that evolution could, without breaking a sweat, spit out intelligenc…

That's a 60MB difference in a 3GB text file. The message could be wildly different...

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#27

Post by carbocation »

Evgeny wrote: post #22
Astro9k wrote: post #2

"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.

A point to consider is the probability that microbes ever evolve into something more complex (multicellular organisms). After all, there are huge amounts of bacteria on Earth these days, but I'm not aware of any cases of them evolving into more complex organisms in the last billion year or so. A book called "Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life" provides some insights. The author argues that the…

Wolbachia has a remarkable relationship, with some species dependent upon it for fertility. I'd say that endosymbiosis has occurred independently a few times.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#28

Post by endtime »

ugh wrote: post #14
endtime wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does DNA have to do with it?

The point is that our next relatives on the tree of life are very similar to us in many ways but we would nevertheless consider them pretty stupid. Pretty much all impressive human achievements will be forever inaccessible to them. DNA is just a very striking way of illustrating that similarity with the one big difference. It is similarly imaginable that evolution could, without breaking a sweat, spit out intelligenc…

I understood what he meant, I just didn't understand why DNA was helpful in illustrating it. I'm a lot smarter than a nematode, or a pebble, or a cell in Conway's Game of Life. The number of base pairs I share with any of those things (where applicable) is irrelevant.

Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens

#29

Post by sliverstorm »

jerf wrote: post #11
philwelch wrote: post #4

This is almost amusingly irrelevant--if contact is actually made with an alien intelligence and this guy tries to step up and say "I'm in charge of this", there's no doubt someone more powerful would try and take over.

If contact is made by an alien intelligence, it is very likely to end up being entirely on the alien's terms. Even if the aliens pursued a hands-off approach (or relevant-manipulator-off-approach as the case may be) and allowed us to duke out who represented Earth, it would be solely because they chose that path, not because we had any say in it. Maybe in another couple hundred years that won't be true, but it's like…

> If contact is made by an alien intelligence in the near future, it is very likely to end up being entirely on the alien's terms

Simply because for the next few hundred years, they will have to have come to us, which immediately places them in the position of power. Yet, (if) we become highly mobile in space and find other life, we could easily be the ones in power.

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