Well in hindsight, I suppose you do actually have a good point. If life is not a unique phenomenon here, I suppose there’s a perfectly good reason to think that the spread of intelligence is that same as here on Earth. In which case amongst all species in the universe, we’d most likely be near the top. I mean, would the human perspective on the universe really be shaken if we found out that bacteria-style lifeforms exist on a lot of planets?
Out of advanced civilizations, however, I think the time issue is the most important. The statistical mean would be heavily weighted by how long a species had been around, and thus statistically our rank would be more or less proportional to where our planet stands age-wise. Even a species that was significantly dumber than us (hard to imagine at times) could run circles around us with a billion year head start.
‘Out of advanced civilizations, however, I think the time issue is the most important. The statistical mean would be heavily weighted by how long a species had been around, and thus statistically our rank would be more or less proportional to where our planet stands age-wise. Even a species that was significantly dumber than us (hard to imagine at times) could run circles around us with a billion year head start.’
OOOKAY, so if the first intelligent life developed a billion years ago (a good approximation given the increasing metallicity of stars in galaxies like ours)
we can expect the most advanced examples to have developed interstellar travel - probably limited in real life to about 10% of light speed.
As we have not seen convincing evidence of advanced aliens they must be more than 100 million light years away.
In a completely different cluster of galaxies, in fact.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, because we’ve combed through every square inch of those 100 million cubic lightyears and not been able to find anything at all.:dubious:
Of course, it’s entirely possible that we’re the first sentient species to evolve.
Impossible. You don’t even need to look to other planets. The dinosuars right here had us beat all by themselves by several hundred million years and while not as smart as humans I’d describe them as sentient. Imagine if the earth had skipped dinosaurs and started with humans. Humans are only around 3 million years old if you stretch the definition a bit (those three million year old ancestors were certainly a bit different although probably modern humans in a genetic sense). Societies, in a more ‘modern’ sense, are only 5,000 years or so old. We have made more technological advances in the past 100 years than in all of human history before that combined.
Where might we be today had we started in the time of the dinosaurs and be 300 million years past where we are today?
Of course, intelligence is a dicey thing. Nothing to say with more time another species would manage as well as we have. They might be dumber overall, they might have had less environmentla pressure to innovate (including wars and such). They might be like dolphins that while smart have no ability to manipulate their environment and build spaceships. Fact is it is all speculation and if life is common you’ll probably see a cross-section of all this and more. However in the end, if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t lay very good odds on humans being the most advanced species in the Universe (but I would lay great odds that we are not the only species).
Doesn’t matter how msart or dumb they were (although I think some would have been considered smarter than a turkey…just a guess though). Sentience does not imply high intelligence (see definition below).
Whackie, that may be the dictionary definition (and I’d be willing to bet that the OED’s is a bit different), but I’ve always seen “sentience” used to describe a level of intelligence equal to that of humans. Generally, I’ve seen it used as a synonym for “self-aware” and that was the manner in which I was using the term.
I’ll check tomorrow (I’m house sitting so don’t have access to my copy). Sadly the OED Online requires a year subscription so I’ll pass on that for now. I prefer the OED to any other dictionary but considering that Merriam-Webster does the trick just fine 99.9% of the time and is free (online) I see no need to spend the $$$.
However, at the risk of being a pain-in-the-ass nitpicker I’d say your definition of ‘self aware’ still fits dinos. I guess it depends on where you draw the ‘self aware’ line. Humans…definitely. Dogs…definitely. Turkeys…probably. Mosquitos…probably not. Fungus…no way. Super Intelligent Shades of the Color Blue…???
The best argument in favor of the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence IMHO is the sheer tenacity of life that we observe here on earth. There is life at the ocean bottom around vents that belch water at a temperature that would cook us immediately, there is life in boiling pools at Yellowstone, there is life deep in rocks in Antarctica. With all that it seems to me that any rocky world with a bit of water, heavy elements and heat will develop simple life. From there it’s a matter of having a stable environment for billions of years over which life can explore more complex forms. That is probably extremely rare. But it happened here, and the general rule is that you’re not likely to be the first or the last in anything. The great middle is where most of us are. I’m with eburacum45, though. The nearest ETs are probably very far away indeed and we may be only ones in the sense that the others are so far away that we are entirely outside their light cones (i.e if they’ve been technologically capable for 10,000 years and are 50,000 LY away we won’t know about them)
Fair enough but does anyone have a sense whether it would even be possible to detect a typical TV transmission (in terms of the power range we use here on earth) as far away as our nearest stellar neighbor some 4.5 light years away? I have always been of the opinion we’d be hard pressed to detect such a signal ‘as close’ as Pluto much less light years away. If that is so it would mean some alien species would have to really be pumping out the signal power and aim it at earth for us to detect it even if they were a ‘mere’ 50 light years away.
Nope (unless you count eating them). However a guy I work with is an avid turkey hunter. The first time I heard this I quipped that that must be just a bit more challenging than shooting ducks in a barrel. Dumb bird combined with can’t fly combined with big target…how hard can it be? Apparently VERY hard. I’m only taking this guy at his word but he says they are exceedingly alert birds and quite good at avoiding his ambushes. As your other link on dogs and cats shows intelligence is indeed a dicey business to nail down. I am not suggesting turkeys are the Einsteins of the bird world but I think they are smart enough to be self aware…if only dimly.
As off-topic as all of that is it does relate to the point you made about sentience. Clearly it is not a hard and fast line one can draw yet I think it is safe to say sentience existed on earth before humans wandered on the scene. Even more to the point is about relative times societies developed. If the dinos were not around it would have allowed what ultimately became humans to start evolving into humans sooner (rather than be encouraged to stay small and fast to avoid being dino snacks). Considering what humans have managed in just the last 5,000 years one can only wonder where we might be with even just a million year jump on that…an evolutionary eyeblink.
Wild turkeys are nowhere near as dumb as the domesticated ones.
Also, we’re assuming that human like intelligence is ultimate goal of evolution, when as we well know, evolution doesn’t have any such goals. It may simply be (though I hope not) that human intelligence is simply a freak of nature and found nowhere else in the universe.
Maybe our galaxy is really way out ‘in the sticks’ so to speak, and the other civilizations haven’t discovered us yet. Personally I doubt whether UFOs exist in the conventional sense of the term - and if they did show up - that would likely be a very bad thing, for us anyway. Attempts to contact aliens may well be among the dumber things we could do, who knows. Alternatively, UFOs might be knuckleheads from the future? Perhaps that’s more plausible than little green men.
Originally posted by eburacum45
As we have not seen convincing evidence of advanced aliens they must be more than 100 million light years away.
In a completely different cluster of galaxies, in fact.
Originally posted by Tuckerfan
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, because we’ve combed through every square inch of those 100 million cubic lightyears and not been able to find anything at all.
Sorry, I was just re-stating the Fermi paradox- if they have existed for a billion years, perhaps the reason they have not got here is that they are still on their way- which puts them 100 million light years away at 0.1c.
I like to think that there are intelligent aliens closer than that- but they aren’t here, and that is the paradox.
No paradox at all. We’ve still got crap surfacing on our beaches that we’ve never seen before, and this is a planet we’ve been inhabiting for quite awhile. It’s only a paradox if you assume that if aliens were nearby, we’d have no way of not knowing about them. The only way that’s possible is if we know every square nanometer, and that, is impossible.
I worked out the areal energy density of a 100,000 W signal coming from Alpha Centauri to be about 4.81 10E-30 W/m^2 on earth. Very weak signal indeed. Even allowing for a few hundred thousand such transmitters per planet we are still around 10E-25 - 10E-24 W/m^2 for the signal from the whole planet. I have no idea if Arecibo or similar giant radio dishes can pick up signals this weak. I imagine you would need to integrate the signal over the common range of frequencies that would be used in a terrestrial environment as well. You won’t know what the aliens are watching on TV but the planet would be anomalously loud in certain radio bands.
