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Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#211

Post by theli0nheart »

harryf wrote: post #206
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

We like to assume they are many orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. But it might be that the human brain represents the optimum size and capability possible for a living organism to sustain, based on requirements for energy consumption and evolutionary competitiveness. We know that Neanderthals may have had bigger brains, and may have been pushed to extinction by homo sapiens. A bigger brain will require mo…

> We know that Neanderthals may have had bigger brains, and may have been pushed to extinction by homo sapiens. A bigger brain will require more food and take longer to develop, potentially putting Neanderthals at an evolutionary disadvantage to humans.

Where are you getting this data?

Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal), Neanderthal brains were similar to those of modern humans:

> The braincases of Neanderthal men and women averaged about 1,600 cm3 (98 cu in) and 1,300 cm3 (79 cu in) respectively, which is within the range of the values for modern humans.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#212

Post by alisonkisk »

BlueTie wrote: post #155
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

A better version of that argument might be: "if ants evolved to have higher than human intellect and technology - would they be interested in studying us humans?" I think the answer is far less clear in that scenario.

Why wouldn't they?

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#213

Post by cortic »

drichel wrote: post #193
cortic wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are the first, then its likely the 'great filter' is behind us. And it means we will never find life that isn't related to us.

I can't quite follow how the "early bloomers" theory would imply either of those two conclusions. What I meant is the concept that our galaxy is young and the conditions just became right for ingelligent life to form, and here we are.

I've never heard of any theories that earth like conditions are new or unique, in fact half of all stars like ours are over 9 billion years old. And the universe has almost stopped making new stars.

If you believe it takes, on average 9 billion years X 100 billion star systems to create 1 civilization, then you believe in some kind of 'filter' that stops life almost completely. A filter that we have passed to be the first.

And by the time any other life statistically emerges we will have colonized the galaxy many times over.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#214

Post by blueblisters »

lisper wrote: post #166
karteum wrote: post #138

There are also aspects that should be considered in my opinion 1°/ individual intelligence and technological innovation is not necessary an ultimate achivement that enables competitive advantage : human beings may be individually smart (compared to some other species) yet the collective intelligence of humanity is rather poor (which translates to the unability to solve collective problems such as sustainable manageme…

It is important to remember when analyzing such things that evolution does not optimize the reproductive fitness of organisms, it optimizes the reproductive fitness of genes. Organisms are a side-effect, a result of the fact that cooperation often provides a competitive advantage [1]. But evolution neither knows nor cares about civilization. It just so happens that, at the moment here on earth, genes that build brain…

Isn't all of modern healthcare an example of civilization being in active conflict with evolution? If "weaker" genes are not eliminated as often, we have effectively ruled out natural selection of survivalist traits.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#215

Post by klmadfejno »

whatshisface wrote: post #200
klmadfejno wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because at some point you run out of food, and if you write birdsong in spite of that you just die out. It may be possible but its not much an effective long term strategy. Too stupid to survive doesn't earn a lot of marks towards being an intelligent species. Individuals with a desire to improve their survivability being evicted from the gene pool is the opposite of how natural selection works. Humans would still in…

I am suggesting that intelligent populations may often die out. Evolution doesn't look ahead to avoid dead ends.

An I'm suggesting that a population that dies out before accomplishing any intellectual achievements wasn't all that intelligent or make sense as a species. How a species would appear that decides to forego its basic needs in favor of making art is beyond me.

A species that spends its time making birdsongs is effectively just a dumber version of birds.

> Evolution doesn't look ahead to avoid dead ends.

It does though, by many metrics. Many steps of evolution are not just the outright outcomes, but traits that make it easier for competitive adaptations to develop later on. That is, natural selection works on multiple levels of derivatives of fitness scores. Humanity's intelligence is built on top of everything else, and is often overruled, by base survival instincts.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#217

Post by baja_blast »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #205
Caprinicus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have devoted large amounts of time and resources to studying the differences between seemingly similar ant colonies, and we have lived alongside ants for our entire existence as a species. Imagine now that we had never seen an ant, had a totally different biological origin to the ants, and had no idea why they did what they do because we had no cultural conception of them as an entity. We’d only be more interested…

We might not be unique in those senses. If DNA and carbon based life is the standard then we are likely more similar to most life in the universe even if we have small differences in physiology or culture. We don’t share a direct biological origin but we are still made of the same stuff, probably originated under very similar conditions, etc. Unique forms of life likely develop under equally rare conditions in exotic…

I disagree that Aliens even if we share the exact same building blocks would look similar to us. For example even for planets that would be habitable for us would have minor differences in atmospheric pressure, gravity, the types of radiation their star produces would result in drastically different evolutionary paths. Also even if there was a clone of our solar system evolution would be random and the life would look different from each other, I mean look at Australia, or even look at Earth's history the fauna during the Jurassic looks way different than what we have today.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#218

Post by BlueTie »

alisonkisk wrote: post #212
BlueTie wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better version of that argument might be: "if ants evolved to have higher than human intellect and technology - would they be interested in studying us humans?" I think the answer is far less clear in that scenario.

Why wouldn't they?

It's possible they would, possible they wouldn't. The point is that if you project things about human intelligence i.e. "but humans like ants so why wouldn't the reverse be true? "or "most humans don't pay attention to ants so why would aliens care?"on to other types of intelligence, you're making a big assumption.

A superintelligent ant colony with an "of ant" intellect is going to be so alien to our kind of intellect that the goals are just impossible to compare. Probably same for aliens unless there are many humanoid ones for some reason.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#220

Post by burlesona »

drclau wrote: post #48

What bothers me quite a bit, both in more-or-less scientific conversations and in Science Fiction, is that we virtually always assume a human-like psychology for aliens, and we judge what they may want or not based on our thinking. Even when we think about potentially highly advanced aliens, we still assume they'll have a psychology similar to ours, and they'll just be more advanced technologically (ie. the aliens an…

I agree with you, but I think it's worth remembering/noting that this happens mostly because it's very difficult if not impossible to imagine what a sentient being with a psychology entirely unlike our own would be like.

I think that most people (who think about such things) realize that extraterrestrials, if they exist, may well be more alien than we can even imagine.

But it's fun to imagine things, so we try anyway :)

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