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There Have Probably Been Aliens
61–70 of 163 posts
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And then you can say, "us being the first is egocentric". Well, but we're the first when it comes to building radio stations, so we clearly won that lottery big time. Who told you we're "the first when it comes to building radio stations"? There could be 200 other explanations for "radio silence" from advanced civilizations (if they exist).
First on earth out of billions of species. That was my hole point... I edited it to make it clearer.
>First on earth out of billions of species
That's par for the course. That's how evolution works. And we're also gonna be the last on earth (we or our evolved successors), because we have the evolutionary upper hand.
But that doesn't say much for other planets. We expect them too to have billions of species and a race to produce an intelligent being too.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#63> a probability for civilizations to form of one in 10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic I think people underestimate how low probabilities can really be. According to wiki the shortest self-replicating RNA is 165-bases long. Even if you convert all observable universe in RNA this is still not enough for this RNA to form by chance (4^165 is much larger than number of atoms in observable universe).
Not if you only give it one chance. Those are incredibly grim odds just for life - nevermind civilization, which would be rarer still - somehow arising.
But aren't those chances constantly being created, on the scale of uncountable -illions of interactions of molecules that happen every second, across the billions of square and cubic kilometers of the surfaces and oceans of those billions of planets, across billions of years?
I mean, doesn't that improve the odds just a little bit?
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And then you can say, "us being the first is egocentric". Well, but we're the first when it comes to building radio stations, so we clearly won that lottery big time. Who told you we're "the first when it comes to building radio stations"? There could be 200 other explanations for "radio silence" from advanced civilizations (if they exist).
First on earth out of billions of species. That was my hole point... I edited it to make it clearer.
Also only 121 years old. Radio is a very recent phenomena on Earth.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#65By pure probability, if we're the first intelligent species here on earth (that is able to build radio communicators) out of what, ~4 billion species that ever existed, what are the odds of us being the first in the entire universe? My logic is that intelligence (as defined above) is clearly rare here on earth where life is prolific, hence by no means a certain development of evolution. I wouldn't be surprised if we'…
I'm not sure you can draw the conclusion that since there is one intelligent (as defined above) species, out of many on earth, that intelligence is unlikely to develop. The main issue I see is that there were other species that were close to as intelligent us, but we out competed them and they went extinct. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sort of "first one wins" effect where the first species to reach a certa…
Even if we outcompeted the Neanderthals (or other very intelligent species), they were still very close to us in the tree of life (they were cousins). For a trait to be a high probability outcome of evolution it needs to happen independently in many different species - take binocular sight for instance which happens in all kinds of very far related species.
Even if our close relatives had similar intelligence and we outcompeted them, it's still safe to say that intelligence (as defined) appeared in only a small branch of the evolutionary tree.
Why don't we see species underwater building radio stations? There's lots of life diversity underwater and they certainly weren't in our "competing" ground (being underwater) so they could've developed intelligence independently... but didn't. That's my point.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#66By pure probability, if we're the first intelligent species here on earth (that is able to build radio communicators) out of what, ~4 billion species that ever existed, what are the odds of us being the first in the entire universe? My logic is that intelligence (as defined above) is clearly rare here on earth where life is prolific, hence by no means a certain development of evolution. I wouldn't be surprised if we'…
I'm not sure you can draw the conclusion that since there is one intelligent (as defined above) species, out of many on earth, that intelligence is unlikely to develop. The main issue I see is that there were other species that were close to as intelligent us, but we out competed them and they went extinct. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sort of "first one wins" effect where the first species to reach a certa…
And, I don't think it's even correct that we are the only intelligent species on Earth. Most intelligent, yes. But, certainly not the only intelligent.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what will really help us to get at a better estimate is to answer the question whether there exists life in our solar system that evolved independently of that on Earth. If we should find traces of bacteria on Mars or another planet, that would immediately take the corresponding probability factor in the Drake equation to a number close to 1 (i.e. most solar systems with planets in the habitable zone produce…
I think what will really help us to get at a better estimate is to answer the question whether there exists life in our solar system that evolved independently of that on Earth. That's definitely the big question. But you left out the elephant in the room: is there life right here on Earth that's evolved independently? Abiogenesis doesn't simply halt after it's achieved its "goal". Perhaps we take the common-origin h…
As soon as you get v1.0 life, it starts bioforming its environment.
v2.0 life would have to evolve in the changed environment - which would be considerably less hospitable, because the most useful chemical processes and energy sources will be colonised by v1.0 life.
v1.0 life will (more or less literally) get the low hanging fruit. v2.0 would have to evolve around the edges, which means the probability gradient is higher and therefore less likely.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
First on earth out of billions of species. That was my hole point... I edited it to make it clearer.
> First on earth out of billions of species That's par for the course. That's how evolution works. And we're also gonna be the last on earth (we or our evolved successors), because we have the evolutionary upper hand. But that doesn't say much for other planets. We expect them too to have billions of species and a race to produce an intelligent being too.
Why compare stuff happening elsewhere that you don't know about (other planets) when you can compare stuff that you know about (here on earth?).
My point is that intelligent life as defined above seems not to be a certain development of evolution. I showcased the evidence for that. You seem to think that it is, but you didn't argue why - other than "it happens so it will for sure on other planets as well".
There are tons of other traits that are singular in the evolutionary tree, simply because they didn't stick for whatever reason. If intelligence was as common as binocular eyesight, say, then we'd see it appearing in all kinds of very different species.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#69There have been aliens -- and they don't care about us. To assume that a collection of beings which have obtained the ability to travel amongst the stars would focus their attention on a single species on a single planet is fundamentally selfish. What resources does our earth contain that are not (more easily) obtainable elsewhere? If Drake's equation "holds", then what novelty do _we_ provide?
There are many reasons alien races would interact with primitives. Morality - they might be utilitarian and desire to relieve the suffering of other sentient beings. Or force their weird alien morals onto them. Competition - we might not be a threat now, but given a sufficiently long time, we could evolve into one. If they really don't care about us, it would cost them very little to exterminate us early.
This assumes we'd recognise the interaction as an interaction.
A super-intelligent species would have no trouble modelling and manipulating human politics from behind the scenes.
It's naive to assume that an interaction will look like the old explorer or conquistador model - a ship arrives, someone gets off it, and then demands to talk to the chieftain, or starts killing people and blowing shit up to make a point about power.
The set of all possible - and effective - interactions which doesn't look like that is much bigger than the set that does.
Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many reasons alien races would interact with primitives. Morality - they might be utilitarian and desire to relieve the suffering of other sentient beings. Or force their weird alien morals onto them. Competition - we might not be a threat now, but given a sufficiently long time, we could evolve into one. If they really don't care about us, it would cost them very little to exterminate us early.
I see these mentioned a lot, and sci-fi is big on the latter. The one I rarely see come up is "entertainment." If we were traveling amongst the stars today, with our values and morality as they currently are, and happened upon a world of what we'd consider to be primitive life, we'd probably scoop some up and put them in a zoo, or broadcast them on TV. We'd want to study them, learn what makes them tick, maybe try to…
If we discover intelligent alien civilization, there'll be a massive effort put into simply tapping into their culture. Their internet, TV, magazines, history, everything we can our hands on. The sheer volume of cross-cultural exchange which would be suddenly and immediately valuable would be enormous.