# Suppose the universe is teaming with life: how advanced do you think the human race is, relatively? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 3, 2010, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510 "2010-02-03T08:44:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/21 "2010-02-04T00:33:02Z")
I think that we’re one of the most advanced civilizations around in the universe. Humanity has advanced far and fast and has had many lucky breaks. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/22 "2010-02-04T00:33:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Suppose the universe is teaming with life: how advanced do you think the human race is, relatively? It’s a tricky business to rank anything on an imaginary scale. Kinda reminds me of that old proposition: No one is allowed ever to set eyes on the Emperor of China. But the question arises: how long is the Emperor’s beard? The question is resolved by asking thousands of people for their guess, and then averaging all the replies. You end up with an answer that can appear very precise. But how accurate is it likely to be? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/23 "2010-02-04T03:22:13Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > It’s a tricky business to rank anything on an imaginary scale. > > Kinda reminds me of that old proposition: No one is allowed ever to set eyes on the Emperor of China. But the question arises: how long is the Emperor’s beard? The question is resolved by asking thousands of people for their guess, and then averaging all the replies. You end up with an answer that can appear very precise. But how accurate is it likely to be? Precisely. The [Drake equation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) would tell us how many civilizations in the Galaxy are broadcasting radio transmissions at any given time, except that four of the seven variables are not only unknown but, at our present state of knowledge, imponderable. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/24 "2010-02-04T03:57:34Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > Our ancestors competed with stronger and faster predators because they were smart. It certainly is a competitive advantage. Any animal that competes with us for a niche in the environment will lose in the end, because other animals aren’t smart enough to make their own food. We can protect ourselves from the bad parts of nature in ways no dumb animal possibly could. There is no doubt that any creature which competes with us has absolutely no chance to thrive, while the creatures that cooperate with us, our parasites, and the creatures we domesticated are thriving. We’re like a big hinge that the whole food chain swings from. > > I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that any ecosystem with a reasonably stable environment for a long time will eventually lead to one smart dominant species, as it has here. Let’s also keep in mind that intelligence is an extremely risky genetic survival strategy. Human brains (BRAIIINNNNSSS!!) require an enormous amount of calories to maintain and those calories are not necessarily available for fight or flight when truly and badly needed. In many instances smarter is going to make you extincter. Neanderthals had larger brain cases than we do. On average, this is going to make them smarter according to anthropologists. Yet their reaction to us was to let us squeeze them out while they hid, or not sufficiently smarter to beat us at outright warfare, or other possibilities. Perhaps their greater caloric needs during an ice age were the difference. more reading [Homo neanderthalensis – The Neanderthals - The Australian Museum](http://australianmuseum.net.au/Homo-neanderthalensis) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/25 "2010-02-04T04:25:34Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Let’s also keep in mind that intelligence is an extremely risky genetic survival strategy. Human brains (BRAIIINNNNSSS!!) require an enormous amount of calories to maintain and those calories are not necessarily available for fight or flight when truly and badly needed. In many instances smarter is going to make you extincter. Neanderthals had larger brain cases than we do. On average, this is going to make them smarter according to anthropologists. Yet their reaction to us was to let us squeeze them out while they hid, or not sufficiently smarter to beat us at outright warfare, or other possibilities. Perhaps their greater caloric needs during an ice age were the difference. > > more reading [Homo neanderthalensis – The Neanderthals - The Australian Museum](http://australianmuseum.net.au/Homo-neanderthalensis) > [@](#): > > "You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness, " Swarm said. “As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait.” > > Afriel wiped sweat from his face. “We’ve done well,” he said. “We came to you, and peacefully. You didn’t come to us.” > > “I refer to exactly that,” Swarm said urbanely. "This urge to expand, to explore, to develop, is just what will make you extinct. You naively suppose that you can continue to feed your curiosity indefinitely. It is an old story, pursued by countless races before you. Within a thousand years, perhaps a little longer, your species will vanish. > > “Intelligence is very much a two-edged sword, Captain-Doctor. It is useful only up to a point. It interferes with the business of living. Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. They are not at all closely related, as you childishly assume.” – “Swarm,” by Bruce Sterling ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/26 "2010-02-04T22:33:02Z")
Let’s make a few assumptions to get an idea of the situation. Assumption 1, all life-bearing planets follow the same track as Earth does, just starting at different times. This is a bad assumption, but it’s the best assumption we can make, until we get more data. Assumption 2, at any point in Earth’s future, the planet’s alpha civilization will be at least as advanced as we are, if not more so. We’ve spread over enough of the globe that it would be very hard to drive us or our technology extinct. Assumption 3, our civilization (or rather, that of our successors) will have its end on this planet when the Sun turns into a red giant. So, using these assumptions, we find that it takes a planet about 3.8 billion years to go from “no life at all” to something comparable to us, and then another 5 billion years or so to go from something comparable to us back to no life at all. For 3.8 billion years of a planet’s life, its alpha is something less than us, and for 5 billion years, its alpha is ahead of us. That would put us in about the 43rd percentile, a little below the median. Of course, those numbers are shaky as heck, since we don’t know how good my assumptions are, but I think it’s safe to say that those assumptions are the best we can make, so any other numbers would be even shakier. ---
**Author:** ![This\_Just\_In\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@This\_Just\_In\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/This_Just_In_2)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2010, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/27 "2010-02-04T23:17:09Z")
If humans do not destroy themselves, we have about a billion years before the sun makes our planet unlivable. This could probably be extended if advanced humans are able to redirect asteroids to cause Earth to move further away from the sun. The universe is 10 billion years old. On earth, single celled life has existed about 3.5 billion years. For a long time the earth remained pretty inhospitable, but multi-cell life began about 1 billion years ago. In 1 billion years we went from the most simple multi-cell organism to humans. If there has never been monkeys, would intelligent civilization never have evolved on earth? I think it would have - some other creature is bound to evolve to the ultimate form of dominance. Who knows, perhaps given another 50 million years ancestors of modern kangaroos would have grown larger brains and started using their free hands to create fire. From there it is just a few hundred thousand years to kangaroo civilization. 50 million years is a long time to us but is just a blip on the cosmic time scale. I think that any habitable planet with an environment that remains stable for a few billion years is likely to create life that eventually evolves to civilization - mainly because it establishes that species as the top of the food chain and maximizes its survivability. Assuming from this that in our galaxy alone there are probably from either dozens to thousands of advanced lifeforms out there - we are pretty low on the technological ladder. As I stated earlier, humans have been around just a few hundred thousand years - but we have billions more to go. If other planets have intelligent life then it has likely been around a lot longer than us, and thereby more likely further advanced than we are. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/28 "2010-02-05T00:02:29Z")
> [@This\_Just\_In\_2](#): > > Assuming from this that in our galaxy alone there are probably from either dozens to thousands of advanced lifeforms out there - we are pretty low on the technological ladder. As I stated earlier, humans have been around just a few hundred thousand years - but we have billions more to go. If other planets have intelligent life then it has likely been around a lot longer than us, and thereby more likely further advanced than we are. In years yes. But see my previous post. I am not sure that massive advancement beyond what we have is either possible or inevitable. So, IMO, they may be ahead of us, but it would not be OMG! ahead in relative terms. ---
**Author:** ![This\_Just\_In\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@This\_Just\_In\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/This_Just_In_2)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/29 "2010-02-05T00:16:13Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > In years yes. > > But see my previous post. I am not sure that massive advancement beyond what we have is either possible or inevitable. > > So, IMO, they may be ahead of us, but it would not be OMG! ahead in relative terms. I think one true advancement a civilization that has been around for millions of years would establish is interstellar settlements. I could certainly see humans wanting to do this as centuries tick by. All it would take is sending out enough probes to stars with possible planets within 50 ly or so. Somewhere out there is probably a planet or moon we could survive/thrive on. Then, it is just a matter of sending a generational ship to it to establish the actual colony. I would be willing to bet money that humans have some colony out of our solar system by 10,000 AD (if we don’t destroy ourselves). If only because we have a curiousity about such things and often see the grass as being greener somewhere else. And it is a good thing for our race as well, because if we continue to establish these colonies then humans can concievably live on for trillions of years, until all the red dwarf suns are burnt out. But given the huge time scales other alien civilizations have probably had - I think it likely many of them have already expanded to all habitable planets in their area of the galaxy. Again, the time scales to accomplish this are huge to us, but it is all relative to how long this civilization has been around. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/30 "2010-02-05T00:26:35Z")
> [@This\_Just\_In\_2](#): > > I think one true advancement a civilization that has been around for millions of years would establish is interstellar settlements. I could certainly see humans wanting to do this as centuries tick by. > > . True enough, but we’ve had threads about that here recently. Its not an uncommon position that such a thing is VERY hard to do and there are good reasons that our technology would never become such that it became easy peasy. IMO if our technology hasnt really advanced but we have just managed to barely and with much effort spread across vast areas in billions of years thats not really “advanced”. It would be cool, however. ---
**Author:** ![BrassyPhrase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea666f/32.png) [@BrassyPhrase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrassyPhrase)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/31 "2010-02-05T03:18:41Z")
Every time I see this kind of conversation or thread I think about this story. _Meat_ by Terry Bisson [http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/32 "2010-02-05T04:01:54Z")
We went from Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base in 66 years. I tend to think we’ll do all right once we bump into ET somewhere out there. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2010, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/33 "2010-02-05T07:29:10Z")
I think we’re close to as advanced as can be, at least in our local region. Either that, or we’re far behind. Those are based on the two solutions I favour to the Fermi Paradox - there are no more advanced civilizations than us, or there are, and they communicate in ways we can’t detect, like wormhole relays or somesuch. ---
**Author:** ![Perciful](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b38774/32.png) [@Perciful](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perciful)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/34 "2010-02-06T15:22:53Z")
> [@BrassyPhrase](#): > > Every time I see this kind of conversation or thread I think about this story. _Meat_ by Terry Bisson > > [http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html) Loved it! We have advanced so much in the last century it should be no time at all before we reach our glass ceiling. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/35 "2010-02-06T15:38:12Z")
The universe is a violent place. Planets get destroyed, life gets wiped out in cycles. Planets get hit by asteroids . Then it gets reborn as something else. I suppose most planets with life would go through the same problems. We will be lucky to survive our warring ways until the next super volcano or comet puts us back to zero. ---
**Author:** ![Frank\_apisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/47e85d/32.png) [@Frank\_apisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_apisa)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/36 "2010-02-07T17:30:05Z")
If life develops elsewhere the way it seems to have here…and if most civilizations arrive where we are (at a time where we are evolved technologically to the point where we can destroy ourselves and our planet…while at the same time NOT evolved philosophically to the point where we won’t)… …then probably most civilizations destroy themselves at this juncture or very near it. We seem intent on doing that…and may well do so. It may be that NO sentient species ever gets past this stage in its development…and that every sentient species gets to this stage. We may well be the most advanced sentient species anywhere in the universe! ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510/37 "2010-02-07T20:31:31Z")
And what a waste of a universe that would be! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suppose-the-universe-is-teaming-with-life-how-advanced-do-you-think-the-human-race-is-relatively/527510.md?page=1)