I disagree. We are rapidly moving away from simply modulated waveforms for radio signals. More and more we are compressing audio and visual signals when we wend them so the signals look more and more like noise. Then the are complex multiple access schemes which create an even more complex signal. I believe that there will only be say a 200 year window with any simple periodic signals broadcast with a lot of power.
They are only required to practice self restraint on their own species in order to survive, not other intelligent life. That leads right to the sci-fi scenario of the rabidly xenophobic species that considers only it’s own kind to be of value. They won’t blow themselves up, but they might cheerfully drop an asteroid on us, or round us all up onto ranches as meat animals.
No, you’re right. They will be able to see that the signal was generated by an intelligence, But they would not be able to decrypt, decode or interpret it. They don’t know what NTSC standard is and even if they did, they might not even have eyes or ears like we understand them in which to hear and see!
You’re still thinking they think like we do. What if the alien is say…a giant AI the size of a planet. It doesn’t have a lifespan like we do. It just cruises around the galaxy at it’s own pace. It comes across Earth and sees a planet covered with some low-level organisms that are of no more consequence to it than a termite mound is to us. Maybe it finds us interesting so it scoops up a sample (say…California) for study and then grinds the rest of the Earth down into raw materials to continue it’s voyage.
Think about how the old European empires viewed undeveloped human cultures. Imagine how a civilization or entity that could travel between stars might view us.
Something I forgot to include in my expectations for alien physiology is the ability to be tool makers. In old sci-fi you see something like a giant eyeball arriving in a silver spaceship. But on consideration, I wonder who mined the metals and forged the steel and hammered it into shape and set the rivets in place? An Eye? Or a creature that looks like a praying mantis. What is it using for hands? I think in addition to the basic design features mentioned in my last post, there must be a way to finely manipulate objects. Four arms with three fingers each? Fine. Ten tentacle-like appendages with fine motor control? Okay. Something with hands like a lion or and elephant? No.
There may be an intelligence that is more whale-like in that it considers it’s surroundings and communicates with it’s fellow creatures but these are not city builders and unlikely to alter their surroundings to in significant ways to be see as the tool-users we are seeking here.
A free-roaming, self-aware Death Star is not the intelligent civilization we were attempting to target here.
Voyager- You said
. I am not opposed to humanity spreading out through space. It wasn’t my intention to suggest that. I was trying to consider if Earth-like planets are as common as sometimes portrayed and, even if they are fairly typical in similar star systems, what is the likelihood of
a) life
b) complex life
c) intelligent life in the tool-user, city builder sense.
I certainly hope humanity will get off this rock if only to keep from having “all of our eggs in one basket”. However, I doubt the Star Trek fantasy of many star systems with intelligent life that look like us (even breeds with us) and other quick fix outlooks.
I think that we may well be it for all practical purposes (excluding vastly distant life forms too far flung for us to interact with either by travel or communication) and if there is a time in the future with multiple civilizations in multiple systems it will be through slow and methodical work on the part of humans and that our wish for instant gratification will not bring us to were we want to be in this situation.
It has been estimated that there are 10^22 stars in the universe. More suns than grains of sand on earth.
Even though the set of conditions required for life to form on earth is exceeedingly improbable, there are many opportinities for it to do so. So I think out there somewhere there is at least some form of life. However since it will be an incredible distance/time from us, it may as well not exist.
Another condition necessary for development of life: gas gaints to protect earth life by decreasing liklihood of extiniction collisions.
As for sentient life, I think that is nothing special (other than from our point of view). I think higher intelligence with language and memes is just a weird quirk of evolution like the peacocks tail or bombardier beetles spray. On might as well ask what are the chances of peacock tails existing anywhere else in the universe.
IMHO, sentient life is unique to earth.
Great OP by the way Nic2004.
It seems to me if there is a niche for peacock tails or for instance, giraffes, then we can expect to find things on other planets that are very much like peacock tails & giraffes. If there’s a niche for it, it’ll get filled. We filled the language using opposable thumbs having radio transmitting spaceship building niche. Why wouldn’t someone else?
It seems to come down to whether you follow the Rare Earth Hypothesis or the Mediocraty Principle.
I tend towards the Mediocraty Principle. Problem is, intelligent tool using humans have only been doing cool stuff for a hundred years or so. It could turn out intelligent tool using species are wildly common. But they only do cool stuff for a hundred years or so. :eek:
And if I can’t even spell mediocrity right, who the heck cares what I think?
You may be right about this. An Asimov Galaxy, with only one or a few cultures spreading everywhere, might be more likely. Using sf as a model for what the future will actually look like is a bit dangerous, because most sf universes are more driven by story than plausibility.
http://www.netro.ca/disclosure/npccmenu.htm I almost hate to refer to this. It is a video and long. I was browsing a couple months ago and read a story about the government losing a long lawsuit to supress some information. I had to follow it up and was surprised that it was this. I am not a believer . I wish there were visitors so we could understand we share this planet and should treat it properly.
antechinus- Thanks for the compliment. I agree with your conclusion in the sense that I don’t see us fining any peacocks but if complex life exists on a world, I would expect to find a creature that uses wildly colorful displays to increase the chance of continuing it’s gene line.
levdrakon- What a LINK! I am floored and almost feel like a plagiarist in that the reasoning and examples follow so well, only better. The addition of a planet being somewhat smaller or larger affecting the shape of the surface and thus life’s origin is interesting. To much mass, makes a smooth sphere and no mountains or valleys. Too little, and the extremes tend to be the norm. Also, the position in the galaxy (too near the galactic center or out in the arm) is an approach I also had not considered. The “habitable zone” not just in relation to the parent star but it’s location and eccentricity of it’s galactic orbit is dumbfounding. They also mention the need for a Jupiter size planet in the outer system to limit the number of near-fatal strikes to the planet. I was aware of this but failed to include it as it seems to be getting much longer than I had intended as it was.
Thanks very much.
Although I hesitate to refer to a sci-fi view, in general I feel like the one presented in Dune is the most likely in that it is set something like 10,000 years in the future were humanity has spread out through space and as a result, the beings there have changed over time due to physical, political, philosophical differences much like the finch in Darwin’s studies. I don’t know about that off-shoot worm-thingy but who knows.
Voyager- I have always held a view of a galaxy filled with strange and wonderful civilizations since I was a boy. Now I tend to see it as devoid of intelligent life and lonely. I kinda makes me sad. However, the thought that we are it brings a certain challenge and sense of pride. The onus may well be on Humanity to make a vast civilization spread throughout he stars and when we have existed as long as the dinosaurs did, there will be many forms of human and hopefully they will be aware of their origins and we will be the ancients.
As you know, there are many examples of runaway evolutionary traits that benefit survival, many of which are visual and auditory mate attracting displays. I agree this trend for runaway traits in itself would not be that rare (could be giant floating, sail supporting gasbags on some distant ocean trailing long, irridescent red and orange plumes in the water in order to attract mates), just that IMHO, sentience is just another runaway trait with nothing special about it.
<bolding mine>
I like this phrase and agree wit the concept. Do you know if this particular phrase/concept has been put forth by a field of study like zoology perhaps?
For intelligence, I’ve heard of the “Machiavelli Theory”. The idea being that the origin of our much greater intellect was a runaway competition with each other. After all, we only need to have so much intelligence to outwit a lion; since we are in the same gene pool, any gene that lets protohuman A outwit Protohuman B will eventually end up in B’s descendents, cancelling the advantage. Therefore, there was a constant evolutionary pressure for greater intelligence, since being smarter was such an advantage, but never lasted.
I think it may be from The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. I read this a loong time ago so not definate. Susan Blackmore expanded on the informational aspect of this in The Meme Machine. Both books are essential reading.
Just found this on ‘runaway evolution’ in wiki.
That is an interesting article and a concept that kind of makes think “Well, yeah” in that I feel like somewhere in my mind I must know this but haven’t seen it put into words. And intelligence, at least advanced intelligence, may be such a case. Yet another curious side line to the possibility of alien intelligence.
I vaguely recall a Saturday Night Live sketch with Steve Martin were they are cavemen at the opening of the cave and dressed in skins and SM is speaking as a modern human would and the others were enthralled by what he is saying. I recall one cave woman (Laraine Newman) says something like “I am wet for you” and this is basically the same thing. Don’t remember how it ended though.
I will have to check out these books. Thanks
It would be more unusual that there is no other life out there than there being life out there.
What if humans had decided , ca 1300, that everything that could be known was known? Suppose we had no industrial revolution? maybe sentient life goes into phases where there is no intellectual curiosity?
I don’t think we stamp out intellectual curiosity…but there’s no reason to suspect that an “Industrial Revolution” was in any way inevitable, even given technological advances.
Take the example of China. There were a steady stream of chinese technological advancements. Water clocks, gunpowder, civil engineering, and so on. But never any hint of a scientific revolution or an industrial revolution. Or we look at the beginnings of science among the Greeks…with no hint of an industrial revolution.
We’ve had ONE industrial revolution, which spread modernism around the globe. But it wasn’t inevitable, I don’t think, except in the sense that any event with a finite chance of occuring will eventually occur. Europe and China weren’t in a race to see which would have an industrial revolution first, Civilization IV style, and China which was richer, larger, and more technologically advanced never even began to have one.
Only time I’ve ever seen the concept was in Hinz’s Paratwa Saga where sentience was see by an alien species as “a useful survival trait”, but they didn’t see it as giving a species any particular significance.
A sentient species lacking in what they considered important was just an interesting perversion.
A good statement on preconceived notions, actually.
-Joe
This too is an interesting concept. I submit the Native Americans in that they existed with nature for many thousands of years but, for all practical purposes, the technology stopped with the development of basic weapons and living quarters. There was apparently no rush to industry or significant changes to their environment. I wonder what changes would be found in North America by this point in time if the Europeans (or any outsiders) had never shown up. Even the Mayan, Aztec and Inca had architectural skills and some engineering but even they never discovered the wheel on their own.
Does does brain capacity and cognitive skills necessarily lead to technology and city building? And if not, what are the possibilites of a long-lived, city building culture of intelligent aliens without the discovery of electricity and later, radiowaves.