Yeah, I guess there could be giant vegetables out there hunting the species, which would cause them to band together into a society, or the vegetation on this planet is so abundant, and the reproductive rate is so low, that the species never has to migrate.
Does anyone have answers that do not further complicate an already complicated scenario?
slythe:
I think you are missing one of the prime motivators of agressive instinct – mating competition. Even a vegetarian species can become quite barbaric when competing for females.
Actually, Slythe, that’s not what I meant, although that is a good point also.
I’m talking about the subject species, the sentient one, not the plants. It seems to me that certain dysfunctional attributes, like the lust for power, could cause the subject species to look for externalities even if all the plants are calm and perfect.
In other words, a corruption or imperfection in some members of the subject species could send the rest scurrying to invent weapons and such simply to protect themselves.
So now we are looking for a psychotic vegetarian species livinging alone on a planet with the proper atmosphere to sustain life, said planet with a stable axis on a stable orbit just far enough from the right type of sun, with a large planet nearby to deflect most asteroids.
No wonder people are seeing u.f.o.s all over the place-there must be billions of 'em out there! 
slythe asks:
Subject to DrFidelius’s correction, I suggest that we can use pretty much any species from New Zealand or similarly isolated islands as models.
This means that:
[list=1][li]Any such species will probably (not certainly) be mild of temper, curious, and unafraid of outsiders;[/li][li]As with virgins, one prick and it’s all over (cf. the unhappy fate of the dodo).[/list=1][/li]An assumption that has been thrown in here is that there is no interstellar travel. Without wanting to cross to that other thread (already in progress), I note that that assumption may not be true throughout the lifetime of the galaxy, and that this may significantly skew the end results.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
Slythe, you must recall James Arness as a giant predatory carrot – perhaps his best role! Movie title, anyone…“The Thing from Outer Space” is what sticks with me, but I’ve learned not to trust what I think I remember. (Influence of this board, no doubt!)
No, Slythe.
Once again, I am not talking about the plants. I am talking about the SENTIENT species. This is now the third time I have clarified this.
You are assuming that the sentient species, and not the plants, must be perfect, that is, must have not lust for power or any other imbalance that will send the other creatures of the same species scurrying to find weapons to protect themselves.
Slythe, this debate has already been settled with the lottery argument. How does the fact that some scientists increase the odds affect this argument? It’s still the same argument. Looks like you’ve gone from beating the dead horse to beating the “golden” dead horse.
There’s always another beer.
Lib, I got your point. But if you could specify what type of “power” a passive vegetarian species with no competition might garner, it would help bolster your arguement. IMHO, Akatsukami’s “dodo” reference says it all.
Beeruser, are you proposing that we stop flogging all the dead horses in this forum?
I don’t know about dodos. Never saw a dodo.
But I do know about cows and pigs and chickens and goats. When the food runs low, even if its just vegetables, you can see cow fights, pig fights, and chicken fights — some of those to the death. And when pussy is low, God help you if you’re a goat with a broken horn.
There is a lot more to compete for than carcasses. And the more intelligent a creature, the more bullshit it can devise. A vegetarian might not fight you over a piece of meat, but it might fight you over property and station.
Lib, who might be penning up our imaginary species so that they cannot go elsewhere for more food? That is why cows, pig, and chickens starve sometimes, right? Unless all of the vegetation has died out and they can’t migrate, they just move on to greener pastures. If they can’t migrate when the vegetation is gone, they don’t develop power plays to see who gets the most food, they die out!
To develop a tribe mentality, which is a precursor to a community mentality, a group must have a reason to cooperate. This reason is protection from others. If there are no others, a society nessessary to develop technology will not develop.
IMHO. Backed by the study of just about every species on this planet.
Yeah! Like slythe says, when was the last time a rooster society developed technology!
…uh slythe…all of the rest of us were talking about a sentient species…
Krispy Original – The original SDMB bad boy
Oh, okay, sorry.
I didn’t realize that there was only one surviving member of the sentient species. I was assuming there was more than one.
Libertarian, please tell me why, outside of a species-wide psychosis, this imaginary species would develop a society with power plays and agressive tendancies? They have no natural enemies and their food cannot run away.
Krispy, outside of the usual neener, neener, slythe said something, so I MUST attack!, do you have anything to contribute to this topic? I don’t mind the ad homonim attacks, but why don’t you start a thread in the pit about me to get it out of your system? I promise not to contribute to it, but I will read it from time to time, for the laughs.
To get back to the original purpose of this topic-All I’m proposing is that, considering the unlikelyhood of
- A star with the stability to put out the right amount of radiation to sustain but not destroy life
- A planet in orbit at just the place so that water will not entirely freeze or boil away
- Said planet having the right mixture of chemicals to both create and sustain life
- Said life developing society and technology in abundance
- Said technology being able to defy all know laws of physics and create a means to travel from star to star or even galaxy to galaxy…
maybe we shouldn’t spend so much time and energy looking for Zip-Zip the Martian, and more on people here.
slythe, I’m not attacking you dude. This has been one of our more civil exchanges. Just like about a dozen other people in this thread, I’m taking issue with your proclaimation that a single sentient species would not develop technology. We all think that it is possible…you obviously don’t. I can sympathize with you though. I’ve been in this same position that you currently find yourself in. The position where it is your opinion against about a dozen others. You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself.
I think that most of the people here believe that the odds are long that there is another sentient lifeform out there. Even fewer (like myself) believe that it certain that they’ve already visited. However, with this thread, you seem to want to close the book and tie up the ends all nice and neat…trying to convince us that it is all but impossible…give up, go home…nothing to see here.
I think that you’ve been shown that MOST people don’t agree with you.
Deal with it.
Krispy Original – The original SDMB bad boy
Their enemies are each other, Slythe.
I don’t suppose your scenario precludes them from developing art, does it? That seems like a nice peaceful endeavor by sentient creatures. So Mog, the most artistic of the lot, makes a trinket that is the most beautiful thing any of them have ever seen.
And just like the Coke bottle in “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, it is the only trinket of its kind in the tribe.
Can you take it from there, or do I need to spell it out? Can you say “greed”? How 'bout “envy”? Not to mention “lust”. Or do you argue that they would never covet anything that isn’t theirs?
Slythe,
In your revisit of the OP I have to question something…If a planetary species develops technology such as colon hydrotherapy, not only is there not enough interspecies competition, but I think it’s time to explore Zip-Zip’s world.
slythe, I will still argue that:
[list=1][li]SFAIK, Ward and Brownlee probably haven’t proven a case (I still haven’t read their book, but I haven’t seen their arguments reproduced at all).[/li]
Why cannot all single dwarfs from spectral classes F5 to K5, and special cases such as spectroscopic binaries, widely separated binaries (and all other multiples included for the sake of discussion under “binaries”), and single M-class dwarfs with closely orbiting jovian or superjovian planets, not be included as potential target stars? That’s not all of them, granted, but it’s a goodly proportion.
[li]Ditto on the above, plus: what arguments do they put forth that allow us to reject the Gaia hypothesis?[/li][li]Chemicals is chemicals. What is considered unique about Earth’s chemistry that we would not find it, say, around Epsilon Indi? Moreover, do W&B have anything to say about panspermia, directed or otherwise?[/li][li]Now here’s the point where W&B might have a case. I have long held, with Fermi and Tipler among others, to the argument that if there were other technological intelligences, we would see the effects in galactic-scale engineering. Conversely, since we do not see this, in this or other galaxies, we can suppose that there is no technological species that is both older than (roughly) 10 million years and possesses interstellar travel.[/li]
But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! I am aware that this is argument from silence, and that this rgument can be refuted. How do W&B strengthen it?
[li]Interstellar travel does not contradict the known laws of physics. Indeed, even FTL travel does not contradict them, although I freely concede that we have no idea how to go from that statement to building a working wrap drive. Rather, Sagan et al. assumed it to create their vision of a network of isolated technological civilizations peacefully comunicating by radio, secure in the knowledge that they could touch each other. (Although, even given his postulates, that’s not certain: “Now, after you’ve prepared your uranium hexafluoride…”)[/list=1][/li]All the powder that’s been burned in this thread has barely even touched on these objections to W&B’s thesis. They may succesfully refute every point here, but I haven’t seen those refutations.
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
An abstract, posted on Phil
Plait’s Bad Astronomy Board, of an article concerning obliquity (axial stability):
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means