Intelligence and mitochondria

[Blind groper]

MiM

I think there is a slight flaw in that thinking.

You are assuming a terraformable planet is needed. I doubt that. The information we have to date would imply that every stellar system is likely to have a lot of assorted debris in orbit. Planets, moons, rings, comets, asteroids etc.

Within 1000 years from now, humanity should be able to survive and thrive in giant habitats in space - space cities. These would be rotating cylinders for gravity, and with radiation shielding. I would be inclined to suspect that the first will be built in Earth orbit within 200 years. They should be able to be resupplied with materials from off Earth, like the debris listed above. There is certainly heaps of water ice in space. Asteroids are rich in minerals and carbon compounds. New Scientist magazine estimated that a typical 20 km diameter asteroid will contain $US 80 trillion worth of minerals - everything from iron and aluminium to iridium and gold.

My view is that humanity will be at least as adapted to dwelling in space, in these giant space cities, as to living on planets in the centuries to come. In fact, I suspect that the first interstellar craft will be such a space city with gigantic ion drive engines attached. All of this means that a terraformable planet will not be needed for colonisation of another stellar system.

[Warren Dew]

the Fermi paradox really has a number of assumptions hidden into it. One is that stellar colonisation is technologically viable.

I got interested in this about 12 years ago, after reading an article written by a couple of NASA scientists in Scientific American about the prospects for interstellar travel. Their view was that the first vessel to go to another star system would do it within 500 to 1000 years, and would reach a velocity of 10 to 20% of light speed (0.1c to 0.2c).

I sat down to work out how long it would take the human species to fully colonise the entire galaxy. Assuming it would take 10,000 years after colonising a new star system to send out more colonising craft, and assuming the population would double each 100 years on those new star systems ( conservative, since the world's population more than tripled in the 20th Century), I calculated the entire Milky Way galaxy would be colonised to the point of over-population in less than 5 million years.

Since parts of the galaxy are up to 8 billion years old, the figure of 5 million years is tiny. A mere eye blink in time.

So the next thought is : If alien life was common, then it should have colonised the entire galaxy billions of years ago. Why did it not? I think this question is what lies behind the Fermi Paradox. Where are they?

I quite like Prof. Lanes explanation. It makes good sense.

I like the explanation too. I can believe that it might not have happened on most planets. With the number of likely habitable planets in the galaxy, though, I don't think it's very statistically probable.

I think a more likely explanation is that advanced civilizations tend to collapse rather quickly - within centuries - before they can colonize other stars. Perhaps they are doomed to develop some technology that eventually destroys them - nuclear weapons, perhaps, or genetic modification.

I don't like that idea at all, but it makes good sense.

[Blind groper]

I think a more likely explanation is that advanced civilizations tend to collapse rather quickly - within centuries - before they can colonize other stars.

This explanation works only if the total number of intelligent alien species is small. For reasons of statistics.

One of the few things we can reasonably credibly deduce about hypothetical alien intelligences is that they are likely to be all wildly different from each other. I deduce this based on the substantial differences we see between Earth life that evolved under different conditions, and knowing that extraterrestrial life will have evolved under conditions even more different.

If there are many alien intelligences, we can deduce a wide range of alien psychologies. That being the case, it is unlikely that they would all respond in the same way, and all kill themselves off. If many exist, some must survive for a long time.

If there were, for example, a million intelligent alien species over the past 3 billion years within our galaxy, statistically that means at least a few will be expansionist, but survivors. Those few would then go on to fully colonise the galaxy, and leave traces that even poor undeveloped Homo sapiens would recognise.

[Rum]

Deep deep time never seems to be considered. Life something like our or for that matter weirdly alien may have arisen, flourished and faded many many times, but it you factor in not only the unimaginable size of the universe and also the unimaginable time since life could have arisen it lowers the odds of them being around just now enormously.

[Warren Dew]

I think a more likely explanation is that advanced civilizations tend to collapse rather quickly - within centuries - before they can colonize other stars.

This explanation works only if the total number of intelligent alien species is small. For reasons of statistics.

One of the few things we can reasonably credibly deduce about hypothetical alien intelligences is that they are likely to be all wildly different from each other. I deduce this based on the substantial differences we see between Earth life that evolved under different conditions, and knowing that extraterrestrial life will have evolved under conditions even more different.

If there are many alien intelligences, we can deduce a wide range of alien psychologies. That being the case, it is unlikely that they would all respond in the same way, and all kill themselves off. If many exist, some must survive for a long time.

If there were, for example, a million intelligent alien species over the past 3 billion years within our galaxy, statistically that means at least a few will be expansionist, but survivors. Those few would then go on to fully colonise the galaxy, and leave traces that even poor undeveloped Homo sapiens would recognise.

You assume it would depend on their psychologies. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the technology itself - perhaps the very same technology that enables interstellar transportation - may cause the downfall of civilization in an unforseeable but statistically certain way.

Although, frankly, they will all be the product of evolution, and thus will all have some psychological similarities. They're likely all to have in groups and out groups, and thus be subject to wars, for example.

[Atheist-Lite]

In a complex universe with massive potential for predation either as sport or as a means to scavenge technology/cultures the primary marker for a advanced alien civilization may be it's potential to hide? You'd only need one or two aberrant species of high inteligence and extreme mobility to put all the others at the watering hole in fear? The silence may be clue that something wicked is coming this way, since 'alien friendlys' could have said something by now but decided against the risk?

With unknown data you can play these mind games all day using mitochondria or machievelli but with no data it isn't really getting you anywhere?

[JimC]

This is true. I suspect intelligence once it arises will quickly destroy itself and only exists as a rare and transient phenomana.

That is one of many possible answers to the Fermi Paradox. It might even be true. Lane presents another possible answer, in saying that the move from procaryote to eucaryote cell is a rare and special event, which may have happened only on rare occasions, and only on a few planets.

I read the same article, and it seems to be a real possibility...

Excellent!

The Terran Empire can conquer the galaxy - mats of blue-green algae will not defeat us!

Terra uber alles!

[mistermack]

There are so many assumptions in the fermi paradox.

One is that aliens would WANT us to know that they were there.

Two is that they would be INTERESTED in visiting other planets. That is just judging them by our own inclinations. Blind Groper made the point very well about living in space stations. It's highly likely that advanced aliens would do the same. Aliens would have NO need of planets like ours, even if they had the technology to get here.

Three is that they would communicate by wastefully blasting out electromagnetic waves 360 deg in three dimensions. I would say that it's far more likely that they would find ways to focus communications into extremely narrow laser-like beams, in a tiny fraction of time. So we would be very unlikely to stumble on it, or know what it was.

Four is that aliens would live on the surface of a planet. It's far more likely that they would live in water, and their communications would be of a different type to ours. We only evolved on land because the Earth's magnetic field is able to deflect the solar wind, and the resulting atmosphere can soak up many cosmic rays. The Earth IS pretty unusual, in that regard. We have plenty of energy from the Sun, but don't get much of the nasty stuff. That combination is probably extremely rare.
The vast majority of aliens would probably live in water. And on planets that were highly irradiated, it's likely that photosynthesis would be restricted to well below the surface, so would be less abundant, so there would be less oxygen available to animals. So the pace of life and evolution would be slow.

[Woodbutcher]

Maybe our definition of intelligent life is not viable. Maybe alien intelligences are so alien that we would not recognize them, and they not us. Perhaps their thoughts move at the same rate as trees grow. Maybe planets themselves have intelligence. Maybe a galaxy thinks. There are possibilities for intelligence oyt there that we have not considered. Or, maybe, the aliens just don't give a fuck about us because they do not recognize us as intelligent or even as life by their definition.

[Atheist-Lite]

Crumple gets out his packet of fags and opens up the fag packet discovering he's out of fags today. Decides to do some 'quationing on the reverse. Planets in the goldliocks zone can be either smaller or larger than earth. Over twelve earth diameters low density they could disintegrate with a decent hit from a iron asteroid like occurs every few hundred million years here. So low density planets that are big can't maybe be too big? Keep them to five diameters and they could take a hit and recover? These would retain quite large atmospheres - almost mini-gas giants? I suspect there is a optimal density/size for a planet but it is the topology of the land itself and hence how seas and oceans and rivers that governs both the pace of evolution and the diversity? Notice how most of the diversity hotspots are in the equatorial regions on earth? This clustering would be less likely on a big planet and hence diversification, a necassary ingredient for the development of complex and hence intelligent life, would be amplified. Water on a big planet may be in similar proportional volumetric abundance to earths but be much more more shallow. This too would amplify regions for diversification. Also a large low mass planet may have a greater likely hood of asteroid 'skim' events that give rise to moons like the one here? and hence complex tidal interractions that may be helpful in life leaving the oceans etc? I suspect there is enough data currently available, yet neglected, to model to a fair degree of accuracy the optimum ideal against the earth. Doing this for a array of planets with differing compositions to determine the optimum for the development of intelligence life might require a super-computer and more focused modeling than this pub can provide? But then looking for this precise sort of planet would be a powerful adjunct for SETI like missions or to simply stir the public imagination, and keep research funds secure. Novel innovations are directly proportionate to the surface area of the world available? the depth of oceans? the number of moons?

[Audley Strange]

Seems to me that the entire question of intelligent life begs huge amounts of questions. The most interesting one to me is that it seems to me like a sci-fi version of the pursuit of speculative entities previously the domain of the Church and mystic groups. In fact it has lead to a new form of "new age" mysticism as a casual perusal of ATS will evince.

So are we just chasing gods by another name? No evidence but subjective unrepeatable claims most of which are clearly nonsense and which we have seen turn into a religion.

Let's see if we can get a decent conversation from some of the alien species on this planet before we start making claims about what's out there.

[Blind groper]

The whole UFO business seems to me a variation on religion - aliens for gods. UFO enthusiasts are universally unwilling to accept that what people see and call UFOs are normally mundane things with mundane explanations.

What we are doing here, discussing complex life away from planet Earth, is quite different to the UFO issue, which seems to me to be at least semi-religious.

[mistermack]

Another point I would make is that it's not inevitable that life will produce species intelligent enough to use technology. It's true that on Earth, bigger forms of life have become gradually more intelligent. But if you take away man, why would you assume that dolphins, in ten million, or a hundred million years time, would be able to communicate with radio waves?

The fact is that, even here on Earth, humans are complete freaks. There is no inevitability about the increase of intelligence to our own levels. Nobody knows what caused our own dramatic increase in intelligence, but it might be a one-in-a-trillion chance.

Chimpanzees have a common ancestor with humans, going back about 7 million years. And yet they are basically no more intelligent than that ancestor. ( going by the brain-size/body-weight ratio ).
It was only the UPRIGHT apes that showed signs of increased brain size, and that might be for a completely freakish reason.

So there might be millions of life-bearing planets in the Universe, and the intelligence of the animals hit a brick wall, just like Chimpanzees seem to have.

Higher intelligence will not evolve, unless each miniscule increase has a real survival benefit.
We don't know what that was in humans, but it must have been so.

[Atheist-Lite]

I know Fermis paradox and the power of exponential growth. There is quite a difference between sending a vessel to the next starsystem and sending a crew to colonize a terraformable planet. The second might not be viable (other than in special cases) scale with any technology. What if the next suitable planet is 100 light years away. Then it would take 1000 years to get there even with 0.1c speed. Could you find a crew willing to go, and keep it alive for that long?

I like this explanation. It makes good sense too.

Doesn't make sense when fragile biological systems are superseded by robust artificial intelligence's....where are the robots who would have no problem worrying about fractional c speeds?

[MiM]

I know Fermis paradox and the power of exponential growth. There is quite a difference between sending a vessel to the next starsystem and sending a crew to colonize a terraformable planet. The second might not be viable (other than in special cases) scale with any technology. What if the next suitable planet is 100 light years away. Then it would take 1000 years to get there even with 0.1c speed. Could you find a crew willing to go, and keep it alive for that long?

I like this explanation. It makes good sense too.

Doesn't make sense when fragile biological systems are superseded by robust artificial intelligence's....where are the robots who would have no problem worrying about fractional c speeds?

I agree, that is a possible weakness in my reasoning. But what need does a robotic system, that does not need the support of inefficient biological subsystems have to expand?