The Fermi Paradox and SETI Success
K_h
Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time. Here on the
Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
evolution.
This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
commonly believed. That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
reasons.
For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
From the study of DNA and genes, it is known that all life on the Earth has
a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
aforementioned kind) arisen? If it had, then life on the Earth would have
organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
else.
Since all Earthly life is based on DNA, this suggests that, over the four
billion years of life on Earth, this has never happened again. That is,
over the last four billion years, no other molecule has arisen by inorganic
and non-evolutionary processes that can make approximate copies of itself.
And Earth is a life-friendly planet so chances are optimal that such a
molecule should arise.
This suggests that the formation of such a molecule is a very rare event.
In other words, the reaction rate of inorganic chemistry per square meter
times the surface area of the Earth, times the average depth such reactions
take place, times four billion years is <<, much less, than the number of
such reactions needed before an approximately self reproducing molecule
arises by chance.
If that first molecule had not arisen here on the Earth then the Earth would
probably have been lifeless ever since. This same reasoning applies if life
first started somewhere else in the solar system and then migrated to Earth
(for example from Mars). If life rose independently on Mars once, over the
past four billion years, then that suggests that the reaction rate of
inorganic chemistry per square meter, times the surface area of a Mars sized
world, times the average depth such reactions take place, times four billion
years is about the number needed so that an approximately self reproducing
molecule arises by chance once, ~ 1.
It seems too much of a coincidence that the laws of chemistry work out in
such a way that life arises, on average, once per terrestrial world per
several billion years. Rather, for such cases, it seems much more likely
that life arises multiple times or almost never. The latter possibility
makes sense from a combinatorial perspective. A self reproducing molecule
will be composed of dozens to hundreds of other molecules. But the total
number of permutations for such a molecule's components will far exceed the
total number of inorganic chemical interactions that take place per
terrestrial world per several billion years.
A simple combinatorial thought experiment explains why. The number of ways
of stacking a deck of playing cards is so huge that if 67.8 billion solar
masses were converted entirely into protons then each proton stands for a
different way of stacking the deck. But there are 92 naturally occurring
chemical elements and a self reproducing molecule will probably be composed
of hundreds of atoms from the set of 92 different kinds (there only 52 cards
in a playing deck).
So, in the Drake equation, f_L could be something really small like 10^-90.
In this case the fact that life exists on the Earth simply shows that the
universe is super huge and its true size far exceeds the visible universe.
General relativity says that the universe sits on top of an infinite amount
of gravitational potential energy. During both cosmic inflation and dark
energy inflation the universe falls down its own gravity well converting
huge quantities of its gravitational potential energy into vacuum energy and
expansion energy. This probably explains why the universe is so huge.
So the universe could contain 10^150 planets, for example. If f_L is 10^-90
then the total number of planets in the universe that have life is around
10^60. So there are a lot of planets with life out there but none of them
are close by. So this is one possible explanation for why there is only one
example of life in the solar system. And this explanation is consistent
with Fermi's paradox. It also suggests that any other life in our solar
system got there via migration.
In light of all this, it cannot be concluded that water, oxygen, and
methane, for example, are indicators of extraterrestrial life. The presence
of these simple gases in the atmospheres of other planets can easily be
explained by inorganic processes.
If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
universe is fine tuned for Earthly life. If a substantial fraction of the
10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
tuned for life. If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
In conclusion, it seems there are lots of planets with life out there but
none of them will ever communicate with humans.
k
John Harshman
> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
> Here on the
> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
> many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
> evolution.
Yes, if there were indeed strong selection pushing them toward greater
intelligence. What makes you think there is?
> This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
> commonly believed.
Easier to resolve it by doubting your central claim, that there is a
general trend toward increasing intelligence. The great majority of the
world's living species will not disagree with you, because they're
bacteria without so much as a nerve among them.
> That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
> reasons.
>
> For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
> itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
> molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
> sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
> molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
> From the study of DNA and genes, it is known that all life on the Earth has
> a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
> Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
> aforementioned kind) arisen? If it had, then life on the Earth would have
> organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
> else.
Not necessarily. What if DNA is the only reasonable basis? It would be
invented independently more than once. But of course all life we know of
is related. Either life arose here once because it's just that unlikely,
or it arose several times and only one survives (look up coalescence, if
you will), or the first origin to happen changed conditions to make it
unlikely for a second origin to happen. You're going to have to rule out
the other two alternatives if you want to pick the first one. Another
problem is that life arose comparatively soon after the world became
hostpitable to attempts; it doesn't sound that unlikely.
> Since all Earthly life is based on DNA, this suggests that, over the four
> billion years of life on Earth, this has never happened again. That is,
> over the last four billion years, no other molecule has arisen by inorganic
> and non-evolutionary processes that can make approximate copies of itself.
> And Earth is a life-friendly planet so chances are optimal that such a
> molecule should arise.
Not true. Earth is now a very life-unfriendly planet. Organic molecules
are eaten before they have much chance to evolve, and that nasty
poisonous oxygen degrades organic compounds.
[snips]
> In light of all this, it cannot be concluded that water, oxygen, and
> methane, for example, are indicators of extraterrestrial life. The presence
> of these simple gases in the atmospheres of other planets can easily be
> explained by inorganic processes.
Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an inorganic
process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.
> If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
> universe is fine tuned for Earthly life. If a substantial fraction of the
> 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
> tuned for life. If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
> suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
> middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
That's what we might call number salad. Can you present a real argument
why any of these numbers would mean what you claim?
> In conclusion, it seems there are lots of planets with life out there but
> none of them will ever communicate with humans.
In conclusion? You have just denied the entire rest of your post. First
you claim that life is rare but intelligence is inevitable given life.
And to conclude you claim that life is common but intelligence is rare.
What exactly are you smoking?
Chris L Peterson
>This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
>commonly believed...
My thinking is that life is easy, and probably common. It's the part
about it becoming (technologically) intelligent that's more likely to be
difficult and rare.
I see nothing to suggest that there are many species on Earth poised to
become technological given a few million years of evolution. Most
species have been around and stable for at least that long. Given the
vast numbers of species on Earth, living and extinct, and the presence
of only one technological one- which happens to be of very recent origin
and likely on the edge of extinction itself- that seems like the weak
link in the Drake chain, and therefore a reasonable answer to the Fermi
Paradox.
_________________________________________________
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
Eric
>
>
> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy.
Not to me it doesnt. To me, it simply says either they havent found this
area interesting to explore, or (more likely) its too far to travel.
Even if ET can travel at faster than light, it will take a very very long
time to explore even a small part of the galaxy.
> On the other hand, intelligent
> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time. Here on the
> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence
> and many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million
> years of evolution.
>
I also think you're wrong here. If evolution tended to select out the more
intelligent, then (to quote Fermi) "Where are they?" Why are there no other
beings on this entire planet with anything on a par with, or better than,
our level of intelligence?
[ rest of post snipped]
Timberwoof
"K_h" <KHo...@SX729.com> wrote:
> For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
> itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
> molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
> sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
> molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
There are actually two schools of thought on this. The other one is
called metabolism-first, and holds that a network of chemical reactions
that can transport energy is easier to establish and thus precedes the
self-replication. (I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn, but I do read
Scientific American.)
Another thing you should consider when discussing biochemistry is the
chemist's definition of the word organic. Since we care discussing
biochemistry, I will ask the question in that semantic context: why do
you exclude inorganic molecules and processes?
> From the study of DNA and genes, it is known that all life on the Earth has
> a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
> Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
> aforementioned kind) arisen? If it had, then life on the Earth would have
> organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
> else.
Any such molecules that showed up late would get eaten.
> This suggests that the formation of such a molecule is a very rare event.
No, it suggests that once a particular chemical basis of life gets
established, another one won't.
Unfortunately, that pretty much negates the rest of your argument.
--
Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com> http://www.timberwoof.com
People who can't spell get kicked out of Hogwarts.
Timberwoof
Chris L Peterson <c...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:12:57 -0700, "K_h" <KHo...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> >This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
> >commonly believed...
>
> My thinking is that life is easy, and probably common. It's the part
> about it becoming (technologically) intelligent that's more likely to be
> difficult and rare.
>
> I see nothing to suggest that there are many species on Earth poised to
> become technological given a few million years of evolution. Most
> species have been around and stable for at least that long. Given the
> vast numbers of species on Earth, living and extinct, and the presence
> of only one technological one- which happens to be of very recent origin
> and likely on the edge of extinction itself- that seems like the weak
> link in the Drake chain, and therefore a reasonable answer to the Fermi
> Paradox.
I suspect that just as when one system of biochemistry establishes the
pattern of life, things that use it will eat anything else that shows
up, it is likely that when one highly intelligent species shows up, it
will limit the opportunities for anything else to evolve into sentience.
The final events that drove human evolution to intelligence were all
climatic changes. For example, when forests of Africa became savannah,
the apes that lived there had to adapt, and they ended up going down the
road to high intelligence. It's interesting to note that this also
happened only in once place, and then humans spread out to everywhere.
There are plenty of species running around on the Earth now that are at
about the level of intelligence of our ancestors, oh, twenty million
years ago. They're not likely to develop to sentience any time soon, and
certainly not while we're around unless we help them. (David Brin has
written science fiction novels around that concept ... in his universe
we're a rare event, independently developed sentience. That causes a lot
of political trouble for us in the interstellar culture.) But if we were
to off ourselves suddenly, the Earth would heal and something might have
a chance to develop sentience.
Timberwoof
John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
> necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
> Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an inorganic
> process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.
Only oxygen?
Yeah... it's common and it does some handy chemical reactions. But
similar arguments can be made for water.
William Hamblen
<timberw...@inferNOnoSPAMsoft.com> wrote:
>In article <W7Lok.19952$uE5....@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com>,
> John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
>> necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
>> Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an inorganic
>> process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.
>
>Only oxygen?
>
>Yeah... it's common and it does some handy chemical reactions. But
>similar arguments can be made for water.
Oxygen is reactive enough that oxygen in the atmosphere would be
depleted unless restored from some source. The only likely source is
photosynthesis. Where you have atmospheric oxygen you have living
plants.
Bud
Timberwoof
William Hamblen <wrha...@comcast.net> wrote:
Yes, that makes sense. I had it in my head that other chemical bases for
live were being discussed, and perhaps some other element or compound
could fulfill a similar role.
But I agree: If oxygen is present in an atmosphere, that would be a
really really probable sign of life. :-)
John Harshman
> In article <W7Lok.19952$uE5....@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com>,
> John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> Who says water is an indicator of life? It's only claimed to be
>> necessary for life. Methane, as far as I know, is never mentioned.
>> Oxygen is the indicator of life, and if you want to suggest an inorganic
>> process that can make a lot of free oxygen in an atmosphere, feel free.
>
> Only oxygen?
>
> Yeah... it's common and it does some handy chemical reactions. But
> similar arguments can be made for water.
>
know of except on earth, where it's made by life. Water is all over, a
product of inorganic chemistry.
Friar Broccoli
wrote:
> K_h wrote:
> > Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> > civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
> > life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> > natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>
> Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
species on earth with time.
Chris L Peterson
<Eli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
>species on earth with time.
That is not obvious. We have almost no idea at all about the
intelligence of animals over most of the period they have existed.
Except for humans, and possibly a handful of other species, it isn't
clear that a "broad range of species" is any more intelligent now than
several hundred million years ago.
John Harshman
increased intelligence with time, we would expect all species to be
undergoing this push, wouldn't we? Yet we see that brains exist only in
a small subset of species within one restricted clade (Metazoa), and
that, depending on how you define the word, complex brains exist only in
a small subset of those (which I will choose to interpret here as
Cephalopoda and Gnathostomata), and that particular complex ones exist
only in a small subset of those (Aves and Mammalia), and that only one
species has human-level intelligence, and from observing usenet, that
only rarely. It's hard to consider this a general trend. Similar results
could be achieved by random diffusion starting at a barrier, with a
great deal of variance in the intelligence of the extreme tail.
Chris.B
almost nothing about our own planet. Particularly below the surface of
the seas which cover much of our own world. We cannot imagine any
dominantly intelligent species not having our avarice, aggression and
chronic immorality. It is completely beyond our way of thinking except
in sci-fantasy terms. Our intelligence is based on learning to take
something from somebody else, by force, rather than obtaining it for
ourselves. Hierarchy is a corruption built into our genes. A coat of
paint to disguise theft by the strongest from the weakest. Strongest
always wins. We even equate this with survival of species. Survival of
the fittest. Fittest for what exactly? Resource depletion and
genocide?
We assume that no other "alien" species is as curious or driven to
explore because they haven't yet taken advanatge of the White House
Lawn's excellent landing facilities. Did any other species need to
escape endlessly from the destruction of its habitat due to
overcrowding, corruption at the top of the local mafia and yet more
resource depletion? Africa has hardly moved on in millions of years.
Is Afria on another planet? Are the present inhabitants another race?
Or have they merely borrowed our more destructive toys to continue
their inter-tribal wars of stick waving? Is modern America any more
than a bunch of stick wavers ihabiting the last remaining vestiges of
their particular bit of the global jungle? They took it from the last
lot and it seems that others will soon outbreed them. To repeat the
land theft trick in a more subtle way. Survival of the fittest? Fit
for what? Slum dwelling, crime and drugs abuse?
Who knows how many intelligent races out there see the scourge of the
human race as the most dangerous threat to *their* survival? They may
be operating a no-go zone around us out to dozens of light years. Just
to keep us safely locked in. If we ever go hyperdrive we may suddenly
cease to exist. Survival of the fittest may have not count for us when
we finally have the ability to spread the human infection. The bared
teeth are only ever a moment away. Pass me my stick. No, I like yours
better. I will take yours!
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
> On the other hand, intelligent
> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
which we live.
It seems pretty logical to me that there should be NO other
technological intelligent species in the universe at the current time,
because they all kill themselves off (probably taking much of their
planet's life with them) before anyone else even knows they are there.
"Intelligence" is an evolutionary path to quick suicide. A dead end.
Literally.
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedAndBlackPublishers.com
er...@swva.net
wrote:
> In article <jh07a4d7oohrrc6i6tn78aa8niaeng0...@4ax.com>,
> Chris L Peterson <c...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:12:57 -0700, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> > >This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
> > >commonly believed...
>
> > My thinking is that life is easy, and probably common. It's the part
> > about it becoming (technologically) intelligent that's more likely to be
> > difficult and rare.
>
> > I see nothing to suggest that there are many species on Earth poised to
> > become technological given a few million years of evolution. Most
> > species have been around and stable for at least that long. Given the
> > vast numbers of species on Earth, living and extinct, and the presence
> > of only one technological one- which happens to be of very recent origin
> > and likely on the edge of extinction itself- that seems like the weak
> > link in the Drake chain, and therefore a reasonable answer to the Fermi
> > Paradox.
>
> I suspect that just as when one system of biochemistry establishes the
> pattern of life, things that use it will eat anything else that shows
> up, it is likely that when one highly intelligent species shows up, it
> will limit the opportunities for anything else to evolve into sentience.
>
I am not a scientist, but I get the notion that that applies to niches
in general: organisms will usually be more successful if they find a
new niche, or an underutilized one, than if they try to horn in on a
niche that already has well-adapted occupants.
> The final events that drove human evolution to intelligence were all
> climatic changes. For example, when forests of Africa became savannah,
> the apes that lived there had to adapt, and they ended up going down the
> road to high intelligence. It's interesting to note that this also
> happened only in once place, and then humans spread out to everywhere.
>
> There are plenty of species running around on the Earth now that are at
> about the level of intelligence of our ancestors, oh, twenty million
> years ago. They're not likely to develop to sentience any time soon, and
> certainly not while we're around unless we help them. (David Brin has
> written science fiction novels around that concept ... in his universe
> we're a rare event, independently developed sentience. That causes a lot
> of political trouble for us in the interstellar culture.) But if we were
> to off ourselves suddenly, the Earth would heal and something might have
> a chance to develop sentience.
>
> --
> Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com>http://www.timberwoof.com
> People who can't spell get kicked out of Hogwarts.
Eric Root
er...@swva.net
Hmm, you are probably right.
Eric Root
Charlie Siegrist
>> This suggests that the formation of such a molecule is a very rare
>> event.
>
> No, it suggests that once a particular chemical basis of life gets
> established, another one won't.
That is the conclusion, if I recall correctly, of a recent Scientific
American article about this subject. There is an effort afoot to try to
find some evidence of a different form of organic material still on Earth.
Vend
> On Aug 13, 8:12 pm, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, intelligent
> > life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> > natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>
> I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
> particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
> for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
> species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
> species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
> the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
> risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
> which we live.
>
> It seems pretty logical to me that there should be NO other
> technological intelligent species in the universe at the current time,
> because they all kill themselves off (probably taking much of their
> planet's life with them) before anyone else even knows they are there.
> "Intelligence" is an evolutionary path to quick suicide. A dead end.
> Literally.
It depends. Human-level intelligence allowed our species to
proliferate and spread in the world at expense of the biosphere. In
this aspect we have been like a cancer which reproduces at the expense
of the organism and eventually dies with it.
Maybe we are doomed, maybe we will be intelligent enough to find a
social organization that will allow our descendants to live until the
sun turns into a red giant, maybe we will develop interstellar travel
and spread in the Galaxy exploiting alien ecosystems like a pest.
Both solutions would require high intelligence anyway, thus even if we
were intelligent and wise enough to avoid self-destruction, it could
be unlikely that any other intelligent species will be too.
David Williams
short by cosmological standards, all species that are intelligent enough
to develop high technology end up using it to destroy themselves, maybe
by wars, or environmental degradation, or whatever.
There is no evidence that life has not arisen more than once on Earth
(if, indeed, it originated here at all). The fact that all life on this
planet that now exists has the same basic biochemistry may just mean
that in the competition to survive this biochemistry has proved more
successful than the others.
-> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
-> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
-> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
-> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time. Here on the
-> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
-> many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
-> evolution.
-> This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
-> commonly believed. That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
-> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
-> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
-> reasons.
-> For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
-> itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
-> molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
-> sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
-> molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
-> From the study of DNA and genes, it is known that all life on the Earth has
-> a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
-> Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
-> aforementioned kind) arisen? If it had, then life on the Earth would have
-> organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
-> else.
-> Since all Earthly life is based on DNA, this suggests that, over the four
-> billion years of life on Earth, this has never happened again. That is,
-> over the last four billion years, no other molecule has arisen by inorganic
-> and non-evolutionary processes that can make approximate copies of itself.
-> And Earth is a life-friendly planet so chances are optimal that such a
-> molecule should arise.
-> This suggests that the formation of such a molecule is a very rare event.
-> In other words, the reaction rate of inorganic chemistry per square meter
-> times the surface area of the Earth, times the average depth such reactions
-> take place, times four billion years is <<, much less, than the number of
-> such reactions needed before an approximately self reproducing molecule
-> arises by chance.
-> If that first molecule had not arisen here on the Earth then the Earth would
-> probably have been lifeless ever since. This same reasoning applies if life
-> first started somewhere else in the solar system and then migrated to Earth
-> (for example from Mars). If life rose independently on Mars once, over the
-> past four billion years, then that suggests that the reaction rate of
-> inorganic chemistry per square meter, times the surface area of a Mars sized
-> world, times the average depth such reactions take place, times four billion
-> years is about the number needed so that an approximately self reproducing
-> molecule arises by chance once, ~ 1.
-> It seems too much of a coincidence that the laws of chemistry work out in
-> such a way that life arises, on average, once per terrestrial world per
-> several billion years. Rather, for such cases, it seems much more likely
-> that life arises multiple times or almost never. The latter possibility
-> makes sense from a combinatorial perspective. A self reproducing molecule
-> will be composed of dozens to hundreds of other molecules. But the total
-> number of permutations for such a molecule's components will far exceed the
-> total number of inorganic chemical interactions that take place per
-> terrestrial world per several billion years.
-> A simple combinatorial thought experiment explains why. The number of ways
-> of stacking a deck of playing cards is so huge that if 67.8 billion solar
-> masses were converted entirely into protons then each proton stands for a
-> different way of stacking the deck. But there are 92 naturally occurring
-> chemical elements and a self reproducing molecule will probably be composed
-> of hundreds of atoms from the set of 92 different kinds (there only 52 cards
-> in a playing deck).
-> So, in the Drake equation, f_L could be something really small like 10^-90.
-> In this case the fact that life exists on the Earth simply shows that the
-> universe is super huge and its true size far exceeds the visible universe.
-> General relativity says that the universe sits on top of an infinite amount
-> of gravitational potential energy. During both cosmic inflation and dark
-> energy inflation the universe falls down its own gravity well converting
-> huge quantities of its gravitational potential energy into vacuum energy and
-> expansion energy. This probably explains why the universe is so huge.
-> So the universe could contain 10^150 planets, for example. If f_L is 10^-90
-> then the total number of planets in the universe that have life is around
-> 10^60. So there are a lot of planets with life out there but none of them
-> are close by. So this is one possible explanation for why there is only one
-> example of life in the solar system. And this explanation is consistent
-> with Fermi's paradox. It also suggests that any other life in our solar
-> system got there via migration.
-> In light of all this, it cannot be concluded that water, oxygen, and
-> methane, for example, are indicators of extraterrestrial life. The presence
-> of these simple gases in the atmospheres of other planets can easily be
-> explained by inorganic processes.
-> If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
-> universe is fine tuned for Earthly life. If a substantial fraction of the
-> 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
-> tuned for life. If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
-> suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
-> middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
-> In conclusion, it seems there are lots of planets with life out there but
-> none of them will ever communicate with humans.
-> k
Ben Standeven
> On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:41:58 -0700 (PDT), Friar Broccoli
>
> >There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
> >species on earth with time.
>
> That is not obvious. We have almost no idea at all about the
> intelligence of animals over most of the period they have existed.
> Except for humans, and possibly a handful of other species, it isn't
> clear that a "broad range of species" is any more intelligent now than
> several hundred million years ago.
> _________________________________________________
>
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatoryhttp://www.cloudbait.com
You can lose the "except for humans"; we don't actually know that
some of those fossil animals weren't more intelligent than we are,
after all. They just didn't leave any signs of civilization, a hundred
million years later.
Paul J Gans
>K_h wrote:
>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
There is also the problem that there could easily be more than one
kind of intelligence. Many living (and non-living) things respond
to stimuli. At what point does that become intelligence?
Does the definition of intelligence require that television be
invented?
[snip]
>> That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
>> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
>> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
>> reasons.
The Drake equation assumes that the ETs will be blasting out
electromagnetic waves at a furious rate. *We* started doing
that only in around 1920 or so and already we are doing less
and less of it. By 2120 we could easily be using wired or
directed sources and no indiscriminate electromagnetic radiation
at all.
--
--- Paul J. Gans
Paul J Gans
But its absence would not be a sign that there is no life...
John Harshman
> In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> K_h wrote:
>>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
>>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>>> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>
>> Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
>
> There is also the problem that there could easily be more than one
> kind of intelligence. Many living (and non-living) things respond
> to stimuli. At what point does that become intelligence?
>
> Does the definition of intelligence require that television be
> invented?
I believe that the operational definition of intelligence as used in the
Drake equation does require this, or at least an intelligence capable of
inventing interstellar communication and/or travel.
>>> That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
>>> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
>>> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
>>> reasons.
>
> The Drake equation assumes that the ETs will be blasting out
> electromagnetic waves at a furious rate. *We* started doing
> that only in around 1920 or so and already we are doing less
> and less of it. By 2120 we could easily be using wired or
> directed sources and no indiscriminate electromagnetic radiation
> at all.
Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
John Stockwell
Such arguments are based on using life on earth as a model, but
are also loaded with incorrect notions. First of all, there is no
"doctrine of progress" in evolution. Who says that intelligence is
sellected for? The most successful organisms on the earth are
the dumbest---bacteria---at least "dumbest by our standards".
Of all the human societies that have existed over the past 10,000
years, only one became oriented in the direction of intersteller
communication. We are new on the scene. There is no guarantee
that our culture will retain its high tech ways.
Take, for example, the Olduvai Theory:
http://dieoff.org/page125.htm
which basically is Richard Dunkin's theory
stating that over the long haul, our
high-population, high-resource demanding culture will
collapse leaving a low population, low resource demanding
stone age culture.
This notion follows other biological growth scenarios that are
governed by the logistic equation. So, it may be that there
are some flash-in-the-pan high tech worlds out there, that last
a time measured in decades or centuries, and quickly drop
back to that more efficient totally renewable low tech stone age
culture that they sprang from. The Universe could be jam-packed
with human scale intelligent life forms, that are happly chipping
flint into arrowheads and burning wood fires.
Or, it could be worse. The universe could be filled with ecologically
spent "Easter Islands", where there are only ruins, and not even
wood to burn.
>
> k
-John
Chris L Peterson
<be...@pop.networkusa.net> wrote:
>You can lose the "except for humans"; we don't actually know that
>some of those fossil animals weren't more intelligent than we are,
>after all. They just didn't leave any signs of civilization, a hundred
>million years later.
In a sense that is true. Defining "intelligence" seems extraordinarily
difficult. But in the context of this discussion, I think it can be
taken as the ability to create sophisticated technology (a likely
requirement for traveling between the stars). I think that if a
technological species had inhabited the Earth at some earlier time, we'd
probably have evidence of it.
Inez
> If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
> universe is fine tuned for Earthly life.
I don't see that conclusion at all. To me it suggests that Earthly
life is finely tuned for Earth, and that the universe as a whole is
scarily life-averse.
> If a substantial fraction of the
> 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
> tuned for life.
What about it would suggest fine tuning? Maybe the universe is
untuned, and life adapts to the universe.
> If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
> suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
> middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
>
Why does it suggest that?
> In conclusion, it seems there are lots of planets with life out there but
> none of them will ever communicate with humans.
>
> k
Inez
wrote:
> In article <jh07a4d7oohrrc6i6tn78aa8niaeng0...@4ax.com>,
> Chris L Peterson <c...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:12:57 -0700, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> > >This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
> > >commonly believed...
>
> > My thinking is that life is easy, and probably common. It's the part
> > about it becoming (technologically) intelligent that's more likely to be
> > difficult and rare.
>
> > I see nothing to suggest that there are many species on Earth poised to
> > become technological given a few million years of evolution. Most
> > species have been around and stable for at least that long. Given the
> > vast numbers of species on Earth, living and extinct, and the presence
> > of only one technological one- which happens to be of very recent origin
> > and likely on the edge of extinction itself- that seems like the weak
> > link in the Drake chain, and therefore a reasonable answer to the Fermi
> > Paradox.
>
> I suspect that just as when one system of biochemistry establishes the
> pattern of life, things that use it will eat anything else that shows
> up, it is likely that when one highly intelligent species shows up, it
> will limit the opportunities for anything else to evolve into sentience.
Obviously you haven't seen the documentary "Planet of the Apes."
> The final events that drove human evolution to intelligence were all
> climatic changes. For example, when forests of Africa became savannah,
> the apes that lived there had to adapt, and they ended up going down the
> road to high intelligence. It's interesting to note that this also
> happened only in once place, and then humans spread out to everywhere.
>
> There are plenty of species running around on the Earth now that are at
> about the level of intelligence of our ancestors, oh, twenty million
> years ago. They're not likely to develop to sentience any time soon, and
> certainly not while we're around unless we help them. (David Brin has
> written science fiction novels around that concept ... in his universe
> we're a rare event, independently developed sentience. That causes a lot
> of political trouble for us in the interstellar culture.) But if we were
> to off ourselves suddenly, the Earth would heal and something might have
> a chance to develop sentience.
>
> --
> Timberwoof <me at timberwoof dot com>http://www.timberwoof.com
> People who can't spell get kicked out of Hogwarts.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Inez
>
> Such arguments are based on using life on earth as a model, but
> are also loaded with incorrect notions. First of all, there is no
> "doctrine of progress" in evolution. Who says that intelligence is
> sellected for? The most successful organisms on the earth are
> the dumbest---bacteria---at least "dumbest by our standards".
Although to be fair to bacteria, few if any of them are creationists.
Nor do they follow Britney Spears' personal life excepting when she
has an STD.
> Of all the human societies that have existed over the past 10,000
> years, only one became oriented in the direction of intersteller
> communication. We are new on the scene. There is no guarantee
> that our culture will retain its high tech ways.
>
> Take, for example, the Olduvai Theory:http://dieoff.org/page125.htm
>
> which basically is Richard Dunkin's theory
> stating that over the long haul, our
> high-population, high-resource demanding culture will
> collapse leaving a low population, low resource demanding
> stone age culture.
>
> This notion follows other biological growth scenarios that are
> governed by the logistic equation. So, it may be that there
> are some flash-in-the-pan high tech worlds out there, that last
> a time measured in decades or centuries, and quickly drop
> back to that more efficient totally renewable low tech stone age
> culture that they sprang from. The Universe could be jam-packed
> with human scale intelligent life forms, that are happly chipping
> flint into arrowheads and burning wood fires.
>
> Or, it could be worse. The universe could be filled with ecologically
> spent "Easter Islands", where there are only ruins, and not even
> wood to burn.
>
>
>
> > k
>
> -John- Hide quoted text -
Kermit
> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time. Here on the
> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
> many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
> evolution.
>
> 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
> suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
> middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
>
> none of them will ever communicate with humans.
>
> k
It seems like once multicelled life evolves, intelligence would be
almost inevitable given sufficient time. It's not that NS has any
progressive trend, it's just that it's an attribute which would be a
possible path for a species, given the right variables. Just as larger
animals are inevitable, given that we started very small. Not that
larger is the trend so much as a common direction taken with a random
walk. Look at how many times camouflage, poison, flying, snaring
appendages, armor, and the like evolved. If a plague wiped out humans
this year, there would likely be intelligent tool makers within 20
million years: apes, otters, cephalopods, elephants, cetaceans,
monkeys, parrots all have species comparable to our recent ancestors
in intelligence. (To the degree that the term means *anything in such
disparate species).
I can imagine *many reasons why we haven't seen any visitors, and
since we don' t know enough to assign probabilities to these, none of
us are offering anything more than idle speculation.
The Light speed barrier is a pretty trivial consideration for this
question, I think; if there were many species out there making tools
and vehicles, then I would think it likely that there would be a few
at least comfortable with slower colony ships. At 1% of C, and several
thousand years to establish new colonies and send out a new wave, the
first species to do this would have filled up the milky way in a few
tens of millions of years.
Where are they?
Maybe multicelled life is tricky to develop, and takes a while. Terran
life was unicelled for longer than we've had eukaryotes, yes? And it
may be that other planets weren't as stable as ours for so long; if
the dino-killer asteroids rained down here just ten times as often we
might still be little more than cockroaches and nematodes. But even if
only one planet in a million were right, there would still be many
planets teeming with multicelled organisms.
Maybe we're simply the first, and will later be known as the Galactic
Elders.
Or we're somebody's property! And we don't know it yet; but anyone who
wanders by sees the "pwned" sign, and they have their reason for
honoring it.
Or there is a predator culture out there, and any species loud enough
to attract attention, gets eaten. (You *will be assimilated.)
Or there is a sort of Prime Directive, and they are leaving us alone
because it is the right thing to do, and minds that get smart enough
to survive their own technology are wise enough to follow this. Maybe
it will be obvious to our great-grandchildren.
The thing is, when we find out why, it will seem obvious in
retrospect. But we won't know until we can get out there. It's not a
paradox yet; it's just another question (albeit on an exciting topic
(depending on its answer)).
Kermit
John Harshman
Sure, with the important bit being "sufficient time".
> It's not that NS has any
> progressive trend, it's just that it's an attribute which would be a
> possible path for a species, given the right variables. Just as larger
> animals are inevitable, given that we started very small. Not that
> larger is the trend so much as a common direction taken with a random
> walk. Look at how many times camouflage, poison, flying, snaring
> appendages, armor, and the like evolved. If a plague wiped out humans
> this year, there would likely be intelligent tool makers within 20
> million years: apes, otters, cephalopods, elephants, cetaceans,
> monkeys, parrots all have species comparable to our recent ancestors
> in intelligence. (To the degree that the term means *anything in such
> disparate species).
I would be interested to know how you figured out that 20 million years
would be "sufficient time". That's where you lose me. It seems to me
that if that were the case, we would have seen additional intelligent
species by now, since cephalopods etc. have been around for quite a bit
longer than 20 million years. That would suggest that "sufficient time"
is quite a bit longer too. As many others have pointed out, the other
adaptations you mention have happened convergently many times (except
flight, which has only been achieved 4 times that we know of). Yet
there's only one intelligent species, a quite recent one, and the
absolute minimum necessary for anyone to be there to count. And it took
4 billion years to get that one. By contrast (though only, apparently,
by contrast), multicellularity is easy; it happened at least 5 times
(animals, plants, fungi, red algae, brown algae), more if you're generous.
> I can imagine *many reasons why we haven't seen any visitors, and
> since we don' t know enough to assign probabilities to these, none of
> us are offering anything more than idle speculation.
[snip idle speculation]
Chris.B
> On Aug 13, 8:12 pm, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, intelligent
> > life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> > natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>
> I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
> particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
> for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
> species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
> species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
> the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
> risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
> which we live.
>
> It seems pretty logical to me that there should be NO other
> technological intelligent species in the universe at the current time,
> because they all kill themselves off (probably taking much of their
> planet's life with them) before anyone else even knows they are there.
> "Intelligence" is an evolutionary path to quick suicide. A dead end.
> Literally.
Man's next evolutionary step is the total emancipation of woman.
Woman left Africa to have a choice over sexual partner.
She got fed up being used like a female chimp's orifice so took off
with a chosen partner.
Africa still denies women that choice. The Aids epidemic is adequate
proof.
Asia follows closely behind with arranged mariages, inequality, sexual
organ butchery, etc...
Man without fully emancipated woman is a blind and deaf cripple.
He exploits much less than half of his true potential. Only quite a
small fraction, in fact.
His wild ideas, wars, inequality and failure to educate and nurture
all is an evolutionary cul.de-sac.
Man has organised the planet without women's consent, help or input.
Top down leadership is simply big male domination of the chimp group
with a thin veneer of respectability.
When woman enjoys total control over her body, her mind, her education
and creativity then man will be forced to rearrange his status-riddled
nonsense and grow up to face the awful truth.
He cannot organise himself without hierarchy. It is a fatal genetic
flaw.
Professional women are already choosing to avoid having offspring.
Those who have no choice are overcrowding the planet to extinction
with no-hopers.
Women are the new human super race who will have to save the planet
from man.
There is nobody else who can possibly manage this task beause it is
far beyond man's capability.
Man himself is not programmed to survive until he releases his rigid
bonds to the chimp's lifestyle.
But being a blind cripple he cannot see the wood for the trees.
Not until there are no trees left will he finally realise that he has
been using his wood for a million years.
Instead of her brain.
And we all know that this makes you go blind!
John Harshman
[snip]
That was Chris. B's second bizarre, stream-of-consciousness post in this
thread. What newsgroup does he/she usually live in, and is he/she always
like that?
David Williams
-> some of those fossil animals weren't more intelligent than we are,
-> after all. They just didn't leave any signs of civilization, a hundred
-> million years later.
Why did they die out? If they had behaved like we are behaving, they'd
have taken most or all of the rest of the biosphere with them.
And if they had launched spacecraft into orbit, or onto the surface of
the moon, they'd still be there.
Most fossil animals had very small brains. Intelligence wouldn't have
fitted in there.
dow
Max
wrote:
> Paul J Gans wrote:
Will we? It seems without a strong stimulus the impetus is lacking.
And when we do feel like communicating, will we decide to start
broadcasting radio waves fiercely enough to be detected by one of the
local star systems using the same technology we presently use? Seems
unlikely to me. And does the drake equation take into account the
number of star systems within a given range. The farther the system
the less likely we are to detect any kind of signal.
John Harshman
That's my take.
> It seems without a strong stimulus the impetus is lacking.
Depends on how much it costs. I see slight extrapolations of current
technology as bringing that cost way down. It will eventually be cheap
to explore and inhabit the solar system, and this will make it very
cheap to start using a major fraction of the sun's energy, to the point
where even interstellar travel would become feasible. If it's feasible,
someone will do it.
> And when we do feel like communicating, will we decide to start
> broadcasting radio waves fiercely enough to be detected by one of the
> local star systems using the same technology we presently use?
What, other than electromagnetic radiation, would you suggest? If we
want to communicate with hypothetical aliens, what else is there?
It seems to me that your first statement assumes that there will be no
advance in technology, such that communication and travel are forever
prohibitively expensive, and your second assumes there will be a
fundamental breakthrough in physics that's incomprehensible to current
science. Which seems mutually contradictory.
> Seems
> unlikely to me. And does the drake equation take into account the
> number of star systems within a given range. The farther the system
> the less likely we are to detect any kind of signal.
No, the Drake equation attempts to calculate the density of
civilizations in the galaxy, from which you could calculate mean range
if you wanted to. If there are very few civilizations, and if they don't
travel or send out probes, you have a point. But I think, if humans are
a guide, that they eventually would do both. And a very slow rate of
expansion fills up the galaxy rather quickly in geological terms.
Friar Broccoli
wrote:
> Friar Broccoli wrote:
>> On Aug 13, 8:38 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
>> wrote:
>>> K_h wrote:
>>>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>>>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
>>>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>>>> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
.
>>> Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
.
>> There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
>> species on earth with time.
> Has there? What broad range, exactly? And if natural selection
> broadly increased intelligence with time, we would expect all
> species to be undergoing this push, wouldn't we?
I don't see how this follows at all. I would expect different
species to adopt widely differing strategies depending on
circumstances. In plants, intelligence would be a complete
waste of resources. Others like Starfish and Jellyfish have
used other strategies to ensure they can navigate and persist in
their environments without needing intelligence.
Brains are one method for allowing adaptive behaviour which in
turn allows creatures to harvest an often wide range of
resources, while avoiding a wider range of dangers in an
increasingly complex environment. (Not all species need or use
this strategy, just as not all use hard parts, or get really
big or whatever.)
> Yet we see that brains exist only in a small subset of species
> within one restricted clade (Metazoa), and that, depending on
> how you define the word, complex brains exist only in a small
> subset of those (which I will choose to interpret here as
> Cephalopoda and Gnathostomata), and that particular complex
> ones exist only in a small subset of those (Aves and
> Mammalia), and that only one species has human-level
> intelligence, and from observing usenet, that only rarely.
> It's hard to consider this a general trend. Similar results
> could be achieved by random diffusion starting at a barrier,
> with a great deal of variance in the intelligence of the
> extreme tail.
But you don't appear to be arguing a diffusion model. When we
had this same discussion (with respect to the broader measure
complexity - of which intelligence is a subset) and I pointed
out that trees had added complexity; you asserted that that
increase had ended in the Permian.
(that discussion was here:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/dd0e90c2d77de083)
So you appear to be arguing that such characteristics pop (rather
slowly) into existence and then remain static for the rest of
time. Your entire model bears an eerie similarity to an Old
Earth Creationist model. Are Pagano, Martinez, and Pitman
starting to wear you down?
And even if you are arguing a diffusion model it plainly
doesn't fit some obvious facts:
Assuming that brain size as shown in the fossil record is an
adequate surrogate for intelligence (admittedly it is far from
perfect):
If we consider the starting gate for the dinosaurs was the
beginning of the Triassic and the gate for modern mammals the
beginning of the Paleocene then mammals today are
proportionately at the Middle Jurassic, but the brain to body
ratio of the average large mammal vastly exceeds anything the
dinosaurs produced then or at any other time in their history.
And with the exception of the Ratites we don't (as far as I
know) see any large small-brained reptile-like land animals
competing with us.
Furthermore, our own recent evolutionary history in no way
matches a diffusion model. Something caused a spike in primate
brain size about 15 million years ago, and then we saw an even
more dramatic spike during the last 3 million years. I know a
few theories about what drove the latter spike, and while I
don't have the slightest idea, which, if any of them are "true"
it is clear from the abrupt change in slope of the curve that
something was DRIVING that increase.
Now returning to the specifics of which groups have done well
in the brain game, it appears to me that we have enough data
points to show an increase in brain size with time:
1- Metazoa/multicellars - begin with no nervous system
Obviously intelligence depends on the development of
multicellularity but that seems to be an inevitable outcome
of evolution given enough time. You said further down that
it occurred at least five times.
Brain development began in three separate lines of multicellular
animal:
2a - Cephalopoda (squids, octopuses)
2b - Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
2c - Arthropod (crabs and insects)
Your paragraph above mentions aves (together with mammalia) as
achieving exceptional levels of intelligence, but I know of no
work suggesting that birds are smarter than crocodiles, or
sharks (which have a brain/body ratio similar to mammals), or
octopus.
So in my book we see significant advances in intelligence in
at least five group lines:
3a - Cephalopoda(squids, octopuses)
And within Gnathostomata:
3b - Sauropsida/reptiles (Crocodiles)
3c - Chondrichthyes (Sharks)
3d - Aves (birds)
3e - Mammals (John Harshman)
Since Sauropsida began evolving about 300 million years ago and
Aves about 150 million years ago and modern mammals began
seriously diversifying 65 million years ago, we know that the
enhancement of intelligence (or its surrogate - brain size) has
been more or less continuous since the Cambrian although
probably not in all the reference groups over the entire
period.
So it seems to me that we have passable physical and
inferential evidence for a steady increase in brain size and
intelligence over time, as well as a plausible model
(adaptation to an increasingly complex and competitive
environment) to explain why it occurred.
Once again, I will ask you for evidence that the self-evident
and expected pattern is not (more or less) the one I am
describing. Can you do any better than:
"I'm wary of claims that anything is self-evident, and
attempts to push the burden of proof onto the negative."
Cordially;
Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com
--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------
Paul J Gans
Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
techniques we've not yet invented.
John Wilkins
> In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
...
> >Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
> >undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
> >don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
> >changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
> >that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
> >intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
> >as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>
> Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
> techniques we've not yet invented.
Or techniques we have abandoned? Semaphores?
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
Paul J Gans
> .
> .
The definition of evolutionary success is reproduction. Using
that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
is totally useless for evolutionary success.
No, I'm not just being cute. Take a deep breath and look around
at the most successful life forms.
> Brains are one method for allowing adaptive behaviour which in
> turn allows creatures to harvest an often wide range of
> resources, while avoiding a wider range of dangers in an
> increasingly complex environment. (Not all species need or use
> this strategy, just as not all use hard parts, or get really
> big or whatever.)
However, we note that many non-mammels, including plants, have
managed to survive quite nicely without that sort of adaptive
behavior.
And none of this considers other forms of intelligence.
Mark VandeWettering
On 2008-08-14, K_h <KHo...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
>
> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
> many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
> evolution.
It may only take a few hundred thousand more years for humans to become
intelligent!
Honestly, this paragraph is just puffery. Saying that natural selection
broadly increases intelligence with time is just absurd. It does nothing
of the sort.
> This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far harder than
> commonly believed.
It can be solved by tweaking any of the terms of Drake's equation (which
incidently never was an argument against Fermi's paradox in the first place).
> That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
> reasons.
>
> For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
> itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
> molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
> sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
> molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
This is an assertion, and one not supported by any evidence. The first
replicators need not have been so complex.
> From the study of DNA and genes, it is known that all life on the Earth has
> a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
> Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
> aforementioned kind) arisen?
There may have in fact been many kinds of replicators. All we know is that
all current life forms to date seem to have descended from a last common
ancestor that was based upon DNA. DNA has proved to be a rather good thing
as far as replication goes, and DNA organisms now seem to fill all available
niches.
> If it had, then life on the Earth would have
> organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
> else.
>
> Since all Earthly life is based on DNA, this suggests that, over the four
> billion years of life on Earth, this has never happened again.
It suggests nothing of the sort. It suggests that nothing has been able to
out reproduce the DNA-based organisms that already exist in virtually every
niche on the planet. Other, primitive replicators could be forming all the
time, but quickly go extinct.
> That is,
> over the last four billion years, no other molecule has arisen by inorganic
> and non-evolutionary processes that can make approximate copies of itself.
> And Earth is a life-friendly planet so chances are optimal that such a
> molecule should arise.
Another meaningless assertion. It's hard to say that Earth is life-friendly
or optimal with any precision. The Earth itself isn't exactly uniform in its
ability to support life.
> This suggests that the formation of such a molecule is a very rare event.
> In other words, the reaction rate of inorganic chemistry per square meter
> times the surface area of the Earth, times the average depth such reactions
> take place, times four billion years is <<, much less, than the number of
> such reactions needed before an approximately self reproducing molecule
> arises by chance.
>
> If that first molecule had not arisen here on the Earth then the Earth would
> probably have been lifeless ever since.
This also is a misleading statement. There was likely no first molecule, for
more or less the same reason as their being no first Frenchmen.
> This same reasoning applies if life
> first started somewhere else in the solar system and then migrated to Earth
> (for example from Mars). If life rose independently on Mars once, over the
> past four billion years, then that suggests that the reaction rate of
> inorganic chemistry per square meter, times the surface area of a Mars sized
> world, times the average depth such reactions take place, times four billion
> years is about the number needed so that an approximately self reproducing
> molecule arises by chance once, ~ 1.
>
>
> It seems too much of a coincidence that the laws of chemistry work out in
> such a way that life arises, on average, once per terrestrial world per
> several billion years.
Perhaps your problem arises from the silliness of the "probability"
calculation that you did.
> Rather, for such cases, it seems much more likely
> that life arises multiple times or almost never. The latter possibility
> makes sense from a combinatorial perspective. A self reproducing molecule
> will be composed of dozens to hundreds of other molecules.
A molecule is a molecule. It is not composed of molecules, it is composed
of atoms.
> But the total
> number of permutations for such a molecule's components will far exceed the
> total number of inorganic chemical interactions that take place per
> terrestrial world per several billion years.
Sigh.
> A simple combinatorial thought experiment explains why. The number of ways
> of stacking a deck of playing cards is so huge that if 67.8 billion solar
> masses were converted entirely into protons then each proton stands for a
> different way of stacking the deck.
Yep. That's about right.... I'm braced for lunacy here...
> But there are 92 naturally occurring
> chemical elements and a self reproducing molecule will probably be composed
> of hundreds of atoms from the set of 92 different kinds (there only 52 cards
> in a playing deck).
Uh, no. Chemistry is not a card game.
> So, in the Drake equation, f_L could be something really small like 10^-90.
Or, it could be 10^-2. Nobody knows what it is.
> In this case the fact that life exists on the Earth simply shows that the
> universe is super huge and its true size far exceeds the visible universe.
It does nothing of the sort.
> General relativity says that the universe sits on top of an infinite amount
> of gravitational potential energy.
No, it doesn't.
> During both cosmic inflation and dark
> energy inflation the universe falls down its own gravity well converting
> huge quantities of its gravitational potential energy into vacuum energy and
> expansion energy. This probably explains why the universe is so huge.
Sigh.
> So the universe could contain 10^150 planets, for example. If f_L is 10^-90
> then the total number of planets in the universe that have life is around
> 10^60. So there are a lot of planets with life out there but none of them
> are close by.
You don't know that. Nobody does.
> So this is one possible explanation for why there is only one
> example of life in the solar system.
You don't know this either.
> And this explanation is consistent
> with Fermi's paradox. It also suggests that any other life in our solar
> system got there via migration.
You don't know this either.
> In light of all this, it cannot be concluded that water, oxygen, and
> methane, for example, are indicators of extraterrestrial life.
Did someone say they were?
> The presence of these simple gases in the atmospheres of other planets
> can easily be explained by inorganic processes.
>
> If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
> universe is fine tuned for Earthly life.
It seems odd to conclude that if life exists on only 1 in 10^150 planets, that
the universe itself is tuned for Earthly life. Just what the heck are all
those other planets for?
> If a substantial fraction of the
> 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
> tuned for life. If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
> suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
> middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
This is really highly entertaining.
Tim Tyler
> The definition of evolutionary success is reproduction. Using
> that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
> is totally useless for evolutionary success.
That's not logical. The same argument "proves" that sex,
multicellularity, DNA, lipid membranes and mitochondria
are "totally useless for evolutionary success".
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
Tim Tyler
> I suspect that just as when one system of biochemistry establishes the
> pattern of life, things that use it will eat anything else that shows
> up, it is likely that when one highly intelligent species shows up, it
> will limit the opportunities for anything else to evolve into sentience.
Whales are not "highly intelligent", then?
Tim Tyler
> I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
> particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
> for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
> species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
> species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
> the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
> risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
> which we live.
Right. Six billion humans and going strong and we are a *failure*?!?
What on earth does it take to be a success?
Chris.B
>
> That was Chris. B's second bizarre, stream-of-consciousness post in this
> thread. What newsgroup does he/she usually live in, and is he/she always
> like that?
Merely pointing out the gaping flaws in the acceptance that the human
race is an optimised intelligence.Thanks to "man's" intelligence
working alone we are on the brink of destroying our only home. Most of
our human population enjoys utterly apalling living conditions with a
large fraction suffering constant hunger and an almost stone age
existence. Only a vanishingly small minority truly enjoy any degree of
security in their comfortable existence. And their sopoilt offspring
are feeling so guilty they hide their pain in drugs ad self abuse. No
form of poltical organisation yet tried has provided reasonable
stability, security and equality except for the left-of-center
Scandinavian form of proportional representation. This is now under
severe threat from economic immigration and a massive move to the
political right to try and limit the damage already done. The vast
majority of the human race which is actively employed has a totally
pointless job intended only to keep them employed and ensure the
wealth passes constantly upwards to the very few. Our rituals and
superstitions are holding back billions from an active and productive
life by actually doing something useful for the human race. Or at the
very least causing it no obvious harm. Woman's present place in our
male-organised world is utterly incomprehensivbe for a planet on the
edge of the precipice. Do you advocate more of the same as we don our
diving suits and brace ourselves against mass exctinction? Only to be
replaced by the same petty "biggest ape" warlord system which has
flourished since man fell out of a tree onto his head. Basically, we
are all fucked. No Drake equation and sciencespeak jousting online is
going to save the planet.The dominant male ape is just that and plays
the part to the full. Even down to the narrow set eyes and bulging
eyebrow ridges. (you couldn't make it up!) Bizzarre? Yes of course. To
someone without the slightest grasp of the dangers now facing this
particular "intelligent species". Our personal security is no higher
than at any time in history and much of the worlds GNP is spent on
protecting the economically strong from the billions of weak and
hungry. Our perfomance as a race is pathetic based on the present and
past ability to support the general population in comfort and limit
dangerous expansion and inevitable conflict for resources. We have no
capacity for avoiding war because of the veto right of the most
corrupt governments/arms dealers on the planet. Who have always
managed to swing the entire planet's orbit around their advantages of
natural resources thanks to the economic habits of the great white
shark. Dangerous monopolies abound. Not least in the communication of
the daily misery to the entire planet's population. The superrich,
superright own the TV stations, the papers and the magazines. Their
record of sharing the truth and ensuring natural justice is no better
than apalling. Our planet's ability to surive our human plague is
growing literally weaker by the moment. Species are dropping like
flies. We cannot even offer survival to the prettiest and cuddliest
animals on the planet! Yet we have several guns and a ton of
amunition for every man, woman and child still scraping a.living from
the bare, parched earth with their fingernails. The status quo is
locked down and nothing must veer the superrich, superright from
enjoying the fruits of the labours of others. Human cooperation is a
farce fousted by top down ideas. Our whole world can be thought of as
a South American banana republic crossed with Wallmart and CocaCola
all writ large. Our streets become increasingly dangerous as
governments introduce yet more surveillance systems and forces and
restrict our freedoms in the name of safety. Bin Laden was bought
incredibly cheaply considering how he helped them to armour themselves
against public protest. We prod the billions of poor with a sharp
stick and endlessly deny them justice and peace and then call them
terrorists when they lash out in pain and frustration. Our dwindling
energy reserves are in the hands of the most evil men on the planet
without a shred of morality. There is no sign of a sea change in the
thinking of the ultra-right political puppeteers as they steer the
bobbing craft of self-seeking incompetents towards the roaring chasm.
If most of the human race were destroyed by an asteroid tomorrow the
few survivors would ape our present system to perfection. They have no
choice. They *are* apes. No lore and no less. Nothing could be more
bizarre than the present global set up and the imminent dangers we all
face. If we don't evolve from the "biggest male" dominates monkey
group soon you can kiss both your arses goodbye, John.
Me Bizarre? You Monkey!
JennyB
> 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank wrote:
>
> > I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
> > particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
> > for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
> > species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
> > species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
> > the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
> > risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
> > which we live.
>
> Right. Six billion humans and going strong and we are a *failure*?!?
>
Robert Carnegie
> Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> ...
> > >Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
> > >undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
> > >don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
> > >changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
> > >that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
> > >intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
> > >as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>
> > Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
> > techniques we've not yet invented.
>
> Or techniques we have abandoned? Semaphores?
No, John, the constellation Flagellum ("The Semaphorist") merely
coincidetntally has the /appearance/ of a humanoid figure making
exaggerated gesture-signals. Actually it is a natural formation.
For more examples see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tainted_Love#Soft_Cell_version
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreaker_(will.i.am_song)
depending upon generation.
(I wonder what Sean would make of it.)
Robert Carnegie
> The Drake equation assumes that the ETs will be blasting out
> electromagnetic waves at a furious rate. *We* started doing
> that only in around 1920 or so and already we are doing less
> and less of it. By 2120 we could easily be using wired or
> directed sources and no indiscriminate electromagnetic radiation
> at all.
I'd look for industrial emissions, such as signals from the cross-
country electric power grid. But maybe we will quickly improve our
efficiency and reduce energy losses, or switch to a 100% hydrogen
economy.
I'm told that the United Kingdom is unique in having power demand
surges in the evening at particular times each day. This is because
certain television programmes have large numbers of viewers, and when
the programme breaks or ends, tea is brewed, by using electric
kettles. With digital choices, catch-up, and services such as
YouTube, this may soon change. (And anyway, I recently heard about it
once more from the people who broadcast the television programmes for
which claims are made.)
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
> 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank wrote:
>
> > I quite disagree witht his part. Indeed, I think "intelligence",
> > particularly in the form of the "technological intelligence" required
> > for SETI, is an abject evolutionary failure. In our short tenure as a
> > species, and even in our microscopic-timed tenure as a technological
> > species, we've managed to produce the largest mass extinction since
> > the Cretaceous, and have put not only our own survival as a species at
> > risk, but the very existence of nearly the entire biosphere within
> > which we live.
>
> Right. Six billion humans and going strong and we are a *failure*?!?
>
> What on earth does it take to be a success?
> --
How many bacteria are there on earth . . . . . . . . . .. ?
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedAndBlackPublishers.com
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
>
> How many bacteria are there on earth . . . . . . . . . .. ?
I think mass would be a better measure than number. Still, the insects
outweigh the mammalian population and are better adapted to Earth, as it
is, than mammals.
The first forms of line on this planet were one celled thingies. I
suspect such like organisms will be the last forms of life on this planet.
Bob Kolker
Robert J. Kolker
>
>
> Right. Six billion humans and going strong and we are a *failure*?!?
>
> What on earth does it take to be a success?
Be an ant or a cocroach.
Bob Kolker
tgde...@earthlink.net
> On Aug 13, 6:12 pm, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
> > civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
> > life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
> > natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time. Here on the
> > Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of intelligence and
> > many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million years of
> > evolution.
>
> > smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
> > friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
> > reasons.
>
> > For life to start, a molecule must arise that can make approximate copies of
> > itself. Once that happens then natural selection can work its magic. But a
> > molecule that can make approximate copies of itself must be a fairly
> > sophisticated nano-machine being comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of
> > molecules and it must arise via inorganic and non-evolutionary processes.
>
> > a common origin (undoubtedly from a molecule of the aforementioned kind).
> > Since Earth is a life friendly planet, why hasn't another molecule (of the
> > organisms with two different molecules for genetic codes: DNA and something
> > else.
>
> > Since all Earthly life is based on DNA, this suggests that, over the four
> > over the last four billion years, no other molecule has arisen by inorganic
> > and non-evolutionary processes that can make approximate copies of itself.
> > And Earth is a life-friendly planet so chances are optimal that such a
> > molecule should arise.
>
> > In other words, the reaction rate of inorganic chemistry per square meter
> > times the surface area of the Earth, times the average depth such reactions
> > take place, times four billion years is <<, much less, than the number of
> > such reactions needed before an approximately self reproducing molecule
> > arises by chance.
>
> > If that first molecule had not arisen here on the Earth then the Earth would
> > first started somewhere else in the solar system and then migrated to Earth
> > (for example from Mars). If life rose independently on Mars once, over the
> > past four billion years, then that suggests that the reaction rate of
> > inorganic chemistry per square meter, times the surface area of a Mars sized
> > world, times the average depth such reactions take place, times four billion
> > years is about the number needed so that an approximately self reproducing
> > molecule arises by chance once, ~ 1.
>
> > It seems too much of a coincidence that the laws of chemistry work out in
> > such a way that life arises, on average, once per terrestrial world per
> > that life arises multiple times or almost never. The latter possibility
> > makes sense from a combinatorial perspective. A self reproducing molecule
> > number of permutations for such a molecule's components will far exceed the
> > total number of inorganic chemical interactions that take place per
> > terrestrial world per several billion years.
>
> > of stacking a deck of playing cards is so huge that if 67.8 billion solar
> > masses were converted entirely into protons then each proton stands for a
> > chemical elements and a self reproducing molecule will probably be composed
> > of hundreds of atoms from the set of 92 different kinds (there only 52 cards
> > in a playing deck).
>
> > universe is super huge and its true size far exceeds the visible universe.
>
> > energy inflation the universe falls down its own gravity well converting
> > huge quantities of its gravitational potential energy into vacuum energy and
> > expansion energy. This probably explains why the universe is so huge.
>
> > then the total number of planets in the universe that have life is around
> > 10^60. So there are a lot of planets with life out there but none of them
> > example of life in the solar system. And this explanation is consistent
> > with Fermi's paradox. It also suggests that any other life in our solar
> > system got there via migration.
>
> > of these simple gases in the atmospheres of other planets can easily be
> > explained by inorganic processes.
>
> > If Earth is the only planet in 10^150 with life then that suggests that the
> > 10^150 planets have life then that suggests the whole universe is finely
> > tuned for life. If the universe if not fine-tuned for life then that
> > suggests the number of planets with life should be around the logarithmic
> > middle of 10^150 or around 10^75.
>
> > none of them will ever communicate with humans.
>
> are also loaded with incorrect notions. First of all, there is no
> "doctrine of progress" in evolution. Who says that intelligence is
> sellected for? The most successful organisms on the earth are
> the dumbest---bacteria---at least "dumbest by our standards".
> years, only one became oriented in the direction of intersteller
> communication. We are new on the scene. There is no guarantee
> that our culture will retain its high tech ways.
>
> Take, for example, the Olduvai Theory:http://dieoff.org/page125.htm
>
> which basically is Richard Dunkin's theory
> stating that over the long haul, our
> high-population, high-resource demanding culture will
> collapse leaving a low population, low resource demanding
> stone age culture.
>
> This notion follows other biological growth scenarios that are
> governed by the logistic equation. So, it may be that there
> are some flash-in-the-pan high tech worlds out there, that last
> a time measured in decades or centuries, and quickly drop
> back to that more efficient totally renewable low tech stone age
> culture that they sprang from. The Universe could be jam-packed
> with human scale intelligent life forms, that are happly chipping
> flint into arrowheads and burning wood fires.
>
Once again, the distinction between correlation and causality must be
explained.
The human population has increased in correlation with technological
innovation. That *does not* mean that if there is a small population,
technology will vanish. Indeed, if the population were to start
dropping tomorrow, it would likely *stimulate* the development of
technology to replace labor.
First-world high-tech high-consumption living standards are perfectly
'sustainable' as long as there are few enough people.
-tg
Free Lunch
<bobk...@comcast.net> wrote in talk.origins:
Don't bacteria outweigh insects?
John Harshman
Exactly. So the blanket statement that there's been an increase in a
broad range of species, because natural selection selects for
intelligence, is wrong. Natural selection occasionally selects for
greater intelligence, sometimes for lesser. There is no general pattern.
> Brains are one method for allowing adaptive behaviour which in
> turn allows creatures to harvest an often wide range of
> resources, while avoiding a wider range of dangers in an
> increasingly complex environment. (Not all species need or use
> this strategy, just as not all use hard parts, or get really
> big or whatever.)
However, there is no general striving, even among those with brains,
toward human-level intelligence. That's my point.
>> Yet we see that brains exist only in a small subset of species
>> within one restricted clade (Metazoa), and that, depending on
>> how you define the word, complex brains exist only in a small
>> subset of those (which I will choose to interpret here as
>> Cephalopoda and Gnathostomata), and that particular complex
>> ones exist only in a small subset of those (Aves and
>> Mammalia), and that only one species has human-level
>> intelligence, and from observing usenet, that only rarely.
>
>> It's hard to consider this a general trend. Similar results
>> could be achieved by random diffusion starting at a barrier,
>> with a great deal of variance in the intelligence of the
>> extreme tail.
>
> But you don't appear to be arguing a diffusion model. When we
> had this same discussion (with respect to the broader measure
> complexity - of which intelligence is a subset) and I pointed
> out that trees had added complexity; you asserted that that
> increase had ended in the Permian.
>
> (that discussion was here:
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/dd0e90c2d77de083)
>
> So you appear to be arguing that such characteristics pop (rather
> slowly) into existence and then remain static for the rest of
> time. Your entire model bears an eerie similarity to an Old
> Earth Creationist model. Are Pagano, Martinez, and Pitman
> starting to wear you down?
I agree that the random diffusion model is only a first approximation,
and it doesn't really work that way. Sometimes there are big
innovations, though not at any predictable rate; perhaps "chaotic" is a
better model than "random".
> And even if you are arguing a diffusion model it plainly
> doesn't fit some obvious facts:
>
> Assuming that brain size as shown in the fossil record is an
> adequate surrogate for intelligence (admittedly it is far from
> perfect):
>
> If we consider the starting gate for the dinosaurs was the
> beginning of the Triassic and the gate for modern mammals the
> beginning of the Paleocene then mammals today are
> proportionately at the Middle Jurassic, but the brain to body
> ratio of the average large mammal vastly exceeds anything the
> dinosaurs produced then or at any other time in their history.
> And with the exception of the Ratites we don't (as far as I
> know) see any large small-brained reptile-like land animals
> competing with us.
>
> Furthermore, our own recent evolutionary history in no way
> matches a diffusion model. Something caused a spike in primate
> brain size about 15 million years ago, and then we saw an even
> more dramatic spike during the last 3 million years. I know a
> few theories about what drove the latter spike, and while I
> don't have the slightest idea, which, if any of them are "true"
> it is clear from the abrupt change in slope of the curve that
> something was DRIVING that increase.
All more or less true. There was a big increase in mean mammal brain
sizes (controlled for body size) sometime in the Oligocene, if I
remember, usually interpreted as an arms race between predators and
prey. And there have been several episodes of brain size increase in
various primates. Obviously it's not really diffusion, though it
resembles diffusion in gross characteristics. Even in diffusion, if you
want to predict what particles will be in the right tail tomorrow, which
will be further right than the right tail today, you say that some of
the particles in the right tail today are going to make up that new
right tail. The animals with the biggest brains today are likely to be
those with the biggest brains tomorrow, and some may be bigger than they
are today. But in fact the impetus toward bigger brains, even in
primates, seems a rare thing, because the conditions favoring
human-level intelligence are rare, even in primates.
> Now returning to the specifics of which groups have done well
> in the brain game, it appears to me that we have enough data
> points to show an increase in brain size with time:
>
> 1- Metazoa/multicellars - begin with no nervous system
> Obviously intelligence depends on the development of
> multicellularity but that seems to be an inevitable outcome
> of evolution given enough time. You said further down that
> it occurred at least five times.
"Inevitable" is too strong a word. For one thing, on earth it seems to
have crucially depended on the evolution of eukaryotes, which of course
happened only once, and after several billion years of evolution. It may
be that the most probable outcome is single-celled prokaryotes forever.
> Brain development began in three separate lines of multicellular
> animal:
>
> 2a - Cephalopoda (squids, octopuses)
> 2b - Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
> 2c - Arthropod (crabs and insects)
Why 2c? They have no more complex brains than most non-gnathostomes.
There seems to be a level of brain power beyond which it's unlikely to
go, and the ancestral bilaterian may have had that sort of brain.
> Your paragraph above mentions aves (together with mammalia) as
> achieving exceptional levels of intelligence, but I know of no
> work suggesting that birds are smarter than crocodiles, or
> sharks (which have a brain/body ratio similar to mammals), or
> octopus.
No? My understanding is that modern birds have unusually large
brain/body ratios for archosaurs. Sharks are another possible addition
to the list; hadn't considered them.
> So in my book we see significant advances in intelligence in
> at least five group lines:
>
> 3a - Cephalopoda(squids, octopuses)
>
> And within Gnathostomata:
> 3b - Sauropsida/reptiles (Crocodiles)
> 3c - Chondrichthyes (Sharks)
> 3d - Aves (birds)
> 3e - Mammals (John Harshman)
Aren't 3b and 3d the same instance, even if you accept 3d? Now in fact
I'd say that within gnathostomes we have no particular increases in
brain power between the root and Sauropsida. So we should leave 3b out.
Still 4, though.
> Since Sauropsida began evolving about 300 million years ago and
> Aves about 150 million years ago and modern mammals began
> seriously diversifying 65 million years ago, we know that the
> enhancement of intelligence (or its surrogate - brain size) has
> been more or less continuous since the Cambrian although
> probably not in all the reference groups over the entire
> period.
I would deny that claim. There is no particular increase in brain size
in Sauropsida.
> So it seems to me that we have passable physical and
> inferential evidence for a steady increase in brain size and
> intelligence over time, as well as a plausible model
> (adaptation to an increasingly complex and competitive
> environment) to explain why it occurred.
I don't think so. We have a few episodes of brain size increase in a few
groups, some of those episodes building on previous episodes. We find
ourselves in a group that has gone through more such episodes than any
other group, but it's always a small subset of each group that undergoes
a new episode, with the possible exception of the Oligocene arms race in
mammals.
> Once again, I will ask you for evidence that the self-evident
> and expected pattern is not (more or less) the one I am
> describing. Can you do any better than:
>
> "I'm wary of claims that anything is self-evident, and
> attempts to push the burden of proof onto the negative."
Sure. If the pattern were of a general increase in brain size in animals
in response to an environment of increasing complexity, we would expect
such increases to be broadly distributed over most or all groups.
Instead we get occasional bumps in a few groups. (And I see no sign that
arthropods are more clever now than in the Cambrian.) We certainly see
no trend, even in the groups that have received these bumps, toward
human-level intelligence.
It's very hard to generalize from a single example, which is what all
these probability calculations have to do. And clearly the diffusion
model is wrong in detail. We have two main departures: pre-adaptation
and incumbency.
Some innovations are impossible except in a background of particular,
previous innovations. So we can't talk about intelligence until we have
a multicellular animal with a nervous system. Human-level intelligence
must arise through a series of adaptations of varying probability. We
couldn't possibly have expected it to happen until the evolution of
bilaterians. Which happened only once, and so may be considered unlikely
by the only guide we have. After that crucial event, it took another
half billion years or more to get us; again, doesn't seem a likely thing.
Incumbency would argue in the opposite direction. Perhaps the presence
of a group with a particular innovation fills up that slot and prevents
any other group from achieving it. This certainly happens sometimes.
Maybe the otters are just raring to start chipping stone tools, but we
keep them from it. This too seems unlikely, since we are only a recent
development, and otters have had plenty of time to try it before we
showed up. Hey, we've only been in the Americas for 15,000 years or so.
Where are the American intelligent species? So incumbency, in this case,
doesn't seem to be a credible factor.
John Harshman
> On Aug 15, 1:18 am, John Harshman mumbled:
>> That was Chris. B's second bizarre, stream-of-consciousness post in this
>> thread. What newsgroup does he/she usually live in, and is he/she always
>> like that?
>
Third. Can someone answer my question?
[snip]
Kermit
wrote:
> Kermit wrote:
> > On Aug 13, 5:12 pm, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
<snip>
>
> > It seems like once multicelled life evolves, intelligence would be
> > almost inevitable given sufficient time.
>
> Sure, with the important bit being "sufficient time".
This may turn out to be the limiting factor. I can easily imagine
planets where there aren'*t 4 billion years of stability to allow the
development of intelligence. We may turn out to be outliers in that
respect, which may be the mundane (and ultimately disappointing)
explanation for why we have seen so few visitors (i.e. none).
We are on the edge of the galaxy. Could it be that this is conducive
to fewer disruptive events than planets on stars with nearby
neighbors? Do they have higher rates of radiation - which would be a
problem I would think for complex molecules equivalent to DNA, or more
asteroid strikes?
>
> > It's not that NS has any
> > progressive trend, it's just that it's an attribute which would be a
> > possible path for a species, given the right variables. Just as larger
> > animals are inevitable, given that we started very small. Not that
> > larger is the trend so much as a common direction taken with a random
> > walk. Look at how many times camouflage, poison, flying, snaring
> > appendages, armor, and the like evolved. If a plague wiped out humans
> > this year, there would likely be intelligent tool makers within 20
> > million years: apes, otters, cephalopods, elephants, cetaceans,
> > monkeys, parrots all have species comparable to our recent ancestors
> > in intelligence. (To the degree that the term means *anything in such
> > disparate species).
>
> I would be interested to know how you figured out that 20 million years
> would be "sufficient time".
There are several species who seem to be at the level of intelligence
of our 20 MYA-ancestors (ignoring for the moment what this means for
mollusks and cetaceans), and plenty at the level of our ancestors 100
million years ago. It's not surprising, after all, that our "recent"
ancestors were considerably smarter than our more distant ancestors.
The common ancestor of us all were undoubtedly not very bright... our
line had to pass thru monkey intelligence to get to us. Surely, if
conditions favored it, another line of critters that is comparable to
those ancestors could achieve the same level as we are now, in the
same length of time?
> That's where you lose me. It seems to me
> that if that were the case, we would have seen additional intelligent
> species by now, since cephalopods etc. have been around for quite a bit
> longer than 20 million years. That would suggest that "sufficient time"
> is quite a bit longer too.
Why? We are simply the first to reach human levels of intelligence (as
far as the evidence shows). But there are many that are as smart as
Cetaceous mammals. I can argue that some cetaceans, apes, and the
elephants are as smart as our 20 MYA-ancestors. Maybe if we don't
interfere, there will be others as smart as we are now in 20 MY or
less.
> As many others have pointed out, the other
> adaptations you mention have happened convergently many times (except
> flight, which has only been achieved 4 times that we know of). Yet
> there's only one intelligent species, a quite recent one, and the
> absolute minimum necessary for anyone to be there to count.
At one point, there was a first flying species. The first tool-using,
high tech species may interfere, wittingly or unwittingly, with the
development of others - witness the environmental effect we are having
on the planet. I should point out that there was at least one other
intelligent species - neanderthal - who used tools and might have
flown spaceships by now, if we (or something) hadn't somehow wiped
them out.
I don't think you would consider unreasonable the suggestion that if
some virus wiped out bats and birds overnight, that in 20 million
years there might be numerous species of mammals with true flight.
> And it took
> 4 billion years to get that one. By contrast (though only, apparently,
> by contrast), multicellularity is easy; it happened at least 5 times
> (animals, plants, fungi, red algae, brown algae), more if you're generous.
Any potentially intelligent tools users out there wouldn't have to
start from scratch. Tsk. Sounds almost like something Pitman would
say; but I'm sure I'm just reading you wrong. It is not 4 billion
years from an otter brain to the equivalent of a human brain. Yeast
doesn't pick up rocks to open lunch with, nor use mud slides just to
have fun with.
>
> > I can imagine *many reasons why we haven't seen any visitors, and
> > since we don' t know enough to assign probabilities to these, none of
> > us are offering anything more than idle speculation.
>
> [snip idle speculation]
Kermit
Kermit
wrote:
Looks like he recently has posted to alt.bible and alt.astro.amateur
http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=d2U50w8AAAAiJDwXyuFA0CbdjKiggdp6
Here in an alt. bible post he responds to someone quoting Genesis. He
is no friend of creationists, but it's not very clear what he's saying
here, either, except the tone of disdain is clear.
"Your sources are propagandist fiction dealing with non-historical
figures invented by authors prone to severe hallucination,
schizophrenia or chronic substance abuse. (or worse) Given the
superstitious subject matter and the number of offspring claimed one
must question the value to the gene pool of such inbreeding. It
certainly explains our present plight on the brink of mass extinction
by the destruction of our only habitatable environment thanks to rules
laid out by these mentally unstable, stone age, desert dwelling
authors. You'd think mentally ill hippies with a death insurance scam
would get the bum's rush these days. But many are still able to
exploit this corrupt fiction to ensure an easy life for themselves.
Where gainful employment for these parasitic insurance salesman can be
safely avoided for their entire lives. Unfortunately the gullible and
uneducated amongst us will still believe in almost anything rather
than face the awful reality of how our world has been stolen from us.
Just to support a few in obscene luxury at the expense of the rest of
us. You couldn't make it up. Well they did. And now look at the mess
we are in! "
Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
persuasive. Or perhaps not.
Kermit
Paul J Gans
>> In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>...
>> >Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
>> >undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
>> >don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
>> >changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
>> >that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
>> >intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
>> >as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>>
>> Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
>> techniques we've not yet invented.
>Or techniques we have abandoned? Semaphores?
Or obviously artificial signals such as the ones that begin:
"I am Mr. Harson Gumbaw, nephew of the reigning oligarch
of Obway. I would like you to join me in a business venture
that will make us both rich..."
Paul J Gans
>Paul J Gans wrote:
>> The definition of evolutionary success is reproduction. Using
>> that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
>> is totally useless for evolutionary success.
>That's not logical. The same argument "proves" that sex,
>multicellularity, DNA, lipid membranes and mitochondria
>are "totally useless for evolutionary success".
Not really. My point was made too obscurely. Lots of
"unintelligent" things reproduce. Clearly intelligence
is not *required*.
Inez
> Timberwoof wrote:
> > I suspect that just as when one system of biochemistry establishes the
> > pattern of life, things that use it will eat anything else that shows
> > up, it is likely that when one highly intelligent species shows up, it
> > will limit the opportunities for anything else to evolve into sentience.
>
> Whales are not "highly intelligent", then?
> --
No. They're all at or below sea level.
Paul J Gans
[massive deletions]
>Once again, the distinction between correlation and causality must be
>explained.
>The human population has increased in correlation with technological
>innovation. That *does not* mean that if there is a small population,
>technology will vanish. Indeed, if the population were to start
>dropping tomorrow, it would likely *stimulate* the development of
>technology to replace labor.
>First-world high-tech high-consumption living standards are perfectly
>'sustainable' as long as there are few enough people.
I agree. I suspect it would be far easier to create an
electric generator than to start over with stone age
technology.
After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
a proper stone age tool? But lots of us know the fundamentals of
building a generator.
Ernest Major
<26f68794-a939-4105...@j1g2000prb.googlegroups.com>, Inez
<savagem...@hotmail.com> writes
--
alias Ernest Major
Mike Dworetsky
news:g84av5$76p$1...@reader1.panix.com...
Contest proposal: the best interstellar Nigeria-scam radiogram.
Mike Dworetsky
news:8534bc0e-ed47-43a4...@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
Especially at the end of the soap "East Enders". Last week a documentary
about Britain included the National Grid controller who keeps a TV on in the
control room, so he knows when the program ends, and he is able to bring up
the various hydroelectric pumped storage dynamos on time until the 50-Hz
average frequency is stabilized again.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)
Steven L.
> we don't actually know that
> some of those fossil animals weren't more intelligent than we are,
> after all. They just didn't leave any signs of civilization, a hundred
> million years later.
For extinct species, you can get clues from the shape of the brain case
and from its encephalization quotient: the ratio of brain mass to body
mass. As you would expect, humans have the highest ratio of brain mass
to body mass of any of the medium and larger sized animals today. (This
method breaks down for the smallest creatures like insects; obviously
you need an animal of sufficient size to have any decent functioning brain.)
The dinosaur Troodon had a brain mass to body mass ratio comparable to a
modern baboon. And I believe that's the highest such ratio for any of
the dinosaur genera. Most had a smaller ratio; the sauropods especially
so. The Permian fauna were even worse.
But even the brain case of Troodon shows that it didn't have prefrontal
lobes like the modern human brain or the modern dolphin brain. So was
it intelligent? Probably at the level of a monkey or a cat. Not like a
human or a dolphin.
Finally, notice that "civilization" advanced relatively rapidly once
humans developed those prefrontal lobes. In the space of just 150,000
years (which is tiny compared to the age of the earth), we advanced from
spears and stone axes to interplanetary spaceships. The dinosaurs had
160 million years to play around and never did any such thing--or they
would have been all through our Solar System by now. That tells you
they didn't have that level of intelligence. It's a kind of "Fermi
Paradox" applied to extinct species right here on earth.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Steven L.
> Sod the chemistry! Every assumption we make is only that. We know
> almost nothing about our own planet. Particularly below the surface of
> the seas which cover much of our own world. We cannot imagine any
> dominantly intelligent species not having our avarice, aggression and
> chronic immorality. It is completely beyond our way of thinking except
> in sci-fantasy terms. Our intelligence is based on learning to take
> something from somebody else, by force, rather than obtaining it for
> ourselves.
The fact that ants and termites conduct organized warfare and organized
pillage suggests that war is not something that is unique to humans.
Ants and termites live in societies, just like we do. And guess what,
they make war on their own kind, just like we do. They enslave their
captives, just like we used to do.
They don't sit around and take a vote whether to go to war. This is
instinctive behavior, built into their genes.
And if ants had ever evolved into an intelligent tool-using
civilization, they would be at least as savage and cold-blooded warriors
as we are. They would, in fact, resemble the "Borg" of Star Trek.
Humanoid ants.
Mike Dworetsky
There are archaeologists who specialise in just this area--the best way to
make assorted flint tools with materials at hand (other stones, deer
antlers, etc).
Matt
> Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> ...
> > >Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
> > >undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
> > >don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
> > >changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
> > >that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
> > >intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
> > >as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>
> > Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
> > techniques we've not yet invented.
>
> Or techniques we have abandoned? Semaphores?
They keep chucking large rocks at us, but their aim isn't very good.
Matt
The Enigmatic One
jharshman....@pacbell.net says...
>In conclusion? You have just denied the entire rest of your post. First
>you claim that life is rare but intelligence is inevitable given life.
>And to conclude you claim that life is common but intelligence is rare.
>What exactly are you smoking?
Not true. He stated that there is lots of life, but that it is extremeky
rare, 1 in 10^75 planets puts an awful lot of space between worlds.
Note that I really don't mean to disagree with your well-reasoned
conclusions. The post you responded to really was a mess. I just wanted to
point out your own substantial error in understanding the post.
-Tim
Steven L.
> In talk.origins Friar Broccoli <Eli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 14, 1:06 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
>> wrote:
>>> Friar Broccoli wrote:
>>>> On Aug 13, 8:38 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> K_h wrote:
>>>>>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>>>>>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
>>>>>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>>>>>> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>
>> .
>
>>>>> Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?
>
>> .
>
>>>> There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
>>>> species on earth with time.
>
>>> Has there? What broad range, exactly? And if natural selection
>>> broadly increased intelligence with time, we would expect all
>>> species to be undergoing this push, wouldn't we?
>
>> I don't see how this follows at all. I would expect different
>> species to adopt widely differing strategies depending on
>> circumstances. In plants, intelligence would be a complete
>> waste of resources. Others like Starfish and Jellyfish have
>> used other strategies to ensure they can navigate and persist in
>> their environments without needing intelligence.
>
Not sufficient; the definition of evolutionary success is occupying and
dominating an ecological niche. A species can reproduce and yet become
extinct if it is preyed on by another species.
Those Galapagos finches Darwin studied were successful NOT because they
reproduced; that's the mechanism, not the goal. Their success was that
they *radiated* into all the available ecological niches on those islands.
> Using
> that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
> is totally useless for evolutionary success.
The value of intelligence is it gives the species the ability to quickly
occupy new ecological niches without needing to evolve genetically.
Humans became the top predator on Earth without taking millions more
years to evolve bigger fangs and larger size and faster legs than
saber-toothed cats and other existing predators. We did it by
outsmarting the saber-tooths and any other species vying for the top
predator niche.
What intelligence did for humans was NOT to produce more offspring than
beetles. It enabled humans to become farmers (herbivores); hunters
(carnivores); SCUBA divers (deep-sea swimmers); fliers; and most
recently, outer space explorers. We did all that without needing to
wait millions of years to evolve wings, gills, carapaces, etc. Thus
humans colonized the entire planet, including the oceans and the air and
soon outer space. All ecological niches. All by the same genetic humans.
The Enigmatic One
jharshman....@pacbell.net says...
I could think of a descriptive phrase or two, but they wouldn't actually
answer your questions, merely describe the obvious.
-Tim
Steven L.
> On Aug 14, 12:41 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>> Paul J Gans wrote:
>>>> K_h wrote:
>>>>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>>>>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand, intelligent
>>>>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>>>>> natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.
>>> kind of intelligence. Many living (and non-living) things respond
>>> to stimuli. At what point does that become intelligence?
>>> Does the definition of intelligence require that television be
>>> invented?
>> I believe that the operational definition of intelligence as used in the
>> Drake equation does require this, or at least an intelligence capable of
>> inventing interstellar communication and/or travel.
>>
>>>>> That is, in the Drake equation, f_L should be far
>>>>> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
>>>>> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
>>>>> reasons.
>>> electromagnetic waves at a furious rate. *We* started doing
>>> that only in around 1920 or so and already we are doing less
>>> and less of it. By 2120 we could easily be using wired or
>>> directed sources and no indiscriminate electromagnetic radiation
>>> at all.
>> undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
>> don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
>> changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
>> that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
>> intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
>> as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>
I agree with you that it's unlikely that humans will utilize a
significant fraction of the power of the Sun just to send messages into
a Galaxy they believe is probably lifeless anyway.
For such a thing to occur, we're going to need to already detect another
extraterrestrial civilization beaming messages to us (proving that they
do exist). Or at least have made enough progress on the first 4 or 5
terms of the Drake Equation: That is, find some extrasolar planet where
there are *some* forms of life, even if not yet technologically advanced.
Right now, we don't even know if *life* is a fluke unique to the Earth,
let alone intelligence. So let's stop jumping the gun here. The first
order of business is to detect *life* in the Universe. That would be a
"strong stimulus" that intelligence might also exist out there.
Steven L.
> Kermit wrote:
>>> Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
>>> civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy. On the other hand,
>>> intelligent
>>> life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
>>> Earth, for example, numerous mammals have a high degree of
>>> intelligence and
>>> many of them could reach human intelligence with a few more million
>>> years of
>>> evolution.
>>>
>>> This contradiction can be resolved if the origin of life is far
>>> harder than
>>> smaller than most people think it is. Even on planets that are life
>>> friendly the formation of life should be extremely rare for the below
>>> reasons.
>>>
>>>
>>> k
>>
>> It seems like once multicelled life evolves, intelligence would be
>> almost inevitable given sufficient time.
>
> Sure, with the important bit being "sufficient time".
>
>> progressive trend, it's just that it's an attribute which would be a
>> possible path for a species, given the right variables. Just as larger
>> animals are inevitable, given that we started very small. Not that
>> larger is the trend so much as a common direction taken with a random
>> walk. Look at how many times camouflage, poison, flying, snaring
>> appendages, armor, and the like evolved. If a plague wiped out humans
>> this year, there would likely be intelligent tool makers within 20
>> million years: apes, otters, cephalopods, elephants, cetaceans,
>> monkeys, parrots all have species comparable to our recent ancestors
>> in intelligence. (To the degree that the term means *anything in such
>> disparate species).
>
> I would be interested to know how you figured out that 20 million years
> species by now, since cephalopods etc. have been around for quite a bit
> longer than 20 million years.
No, humanity would have to go extinct first.
We're suppressing the competition, much as the dinosaurs suppressed the
mammals before they went extinct. With our intelligence and inner
drive, we won't abandon any ecological niche to another species. We've
got deep-sea submersibles and jetliners and ballistic missiles, we can
go anywhere. For the dolphin to evolve legs and take over, or for the
octopus to evolve strong legs and take over, humanity has to go extinct
first. Or abandon the planet.
On Earth, such mass extinctions occur relatively infrequently, maybe
every 30 or 40 million years on the average.
Forcing functions, like bolide impacts, radiation flux from nearby
supernovae, continental drift, etc., may be driving these mass
extinctions. Without any such forcing functions causing such mass
extinctions--say on a geologically dead planet far from any other
asteroids, meteorites or stars--life might never evolve beyond the
bacterial stage, if at all.
If a meteorite 10 kilometers wide had hit the Earth 10,000 years ago in
the Paleolithic period, there would have been a mass extinction wiping
out humanity, and then the dolphins or parrots or octopi might have a
shot, if we wait another 20-30 million years. They won't have to fight
off human predators any longer.
On a very active planet (like the moon Io with daily volcanoes, or one
inside a globular cluster with hundreds of nearby supernovae), evolution
has no time to adapt to new conditions and again life won't evolve
beyond the bacterial stage.
So maybe a rate of mass extinctions every 30 million years is the key.
It keeps the ecosystem pot simmering gently to drive major evolutionary
paradigm shifts, without totally wiping out the biosphere.
John Harshman
It would help me understand much better if you wouldn't snip the
statements we're talking about here. But looking back, I see that you
are right about this. He's talking about 1 in 10^90 stars supporting
life, which means there's very unlikely to be another instance in our
galaxy. Silly claim, but not the silly claim I was attacking there.
John Harshman
> On Aug 14, 12:26 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>> Kermit wrote:
>>> On Aug 13, 5:12 pm, "K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> It seems like once multicelled life evolves, intelligence would be
>>> almost inevitable given sufficient time.
>> Sure, with the important bit being "sufficient time".
>
> This may turn out to be the limiting factor. I can easily imagine
> planets where there aren'*t 4 billion years of stability to allow the
> development of intelligence. We may turn out to be outliers in that
> respect, which may be the mundane (and ultimately disappointing)
> explanation for why we have seen so few visitors (i.e. none).
That would be a potential explanation if indeed there were some
predictable mean time to intelligence under conditions of stability. I
see no reason why that should be true.
> We are on the edge of the galaxy.
About 2/3 of the way to the edge, actually.
> Could it be that this is conducive
> to fewer disruptive events than planets on stars with nearby
> neighbors? Do they have higher rates of radiation - which would be a
> problem I would think for complex molecules equivalent to DNA, or more
> asteroid strikes?
Hardly more asteroid strikes, since they all come from within the
system. Perhaps more nearby supernovae, which might disrupt things. Or
might not.
>>> It's not that NS has any
>>> progressive trend, it's just that it's an attribute which would be a
>>> possible path for a species, given the right variables. Just as larger
>>> animals are inevitable, given that we started very small. Not that
>>> larger is the trend so much as a common direction taken with a random
>>> walk. Look at how many times camouflage, poison, flying, snaring
>>> appendages, armor, and the like evolved. If a plague wiped out humans
>>> this year, there would likely be intelligent tool makers within 20
>>> million years: apes, otters, cephalopods, elephants, cetaceans,
>>> monkeys, parrots all have species comparable to our recent ancestors
>>> in intelligence. (To the degree that the term means *anything in such
>>> disparate species).
>> I would be interested to know how you figured out that 20 million years
>> would be "sufficient time".
>
> There are several species who seem to be at the level of intelligence
> of our 20 MYA-ancestors (ignoring for the moment what this means for
> mollusks and cetaceans), and plenty at the level of our ancestors 100
> million years ago.
Yes, but most of these are also at the level of intelligence of *their*
20-mya ancestors, or 100-mya ancestors. Lineages are not, as a rule,
increasing in intelligence over time. Ours did, but ours is unusual.
Mere addition of time does not make an intelligent species. Most
descendants of our 20-mya ancestor are not any smarter than that
ancestor. Most descendants of our 100-mya ancestor are a bit smarter
than that ancestor, because there was an Oligocene arms race within
placental mammals. But after that, things mostly settled down. You are
extrapolating where extrapolation doesn't work.
> It's not surprising, after all, that our "recent"
> ancestors were considerably smarter than our more distant ancestors.
> The common ancestor of us all were undoubtedly not very bright... our
> line had to pass thru monkey intelligence to get to us. Surely, if
> conditions favored it, another line of critters that is comparable to
> those ancestors could achieve the same level as we are now, in the
> same length of time?
Yes. If conditions favored it. It appears, based on the evolutionary
record, that conditions rarely favor it, and in fact have favored it
only once in all of earth history.
>> That's where you lose me. It seems to me
>> that if that were the case, we would have seen additional intelligent
>> species by now, since cephalopods etc. have been around for quite a bit
>> longer than 20 million years. That would suggest that "sufficient time"
>> is quite a bit longer too.
>
> Why? We are simply the first to reach human levels of intelligence (as
> far as the evidence shows). But there are many that are as smart as
> Cetaceous mammals. I can argue that some cetaceans, apes, and the
> elephants are as smart as our 20 MYA-ancestors. Maybe if we don't
> interfere, there will be others as smart as we are now in 20 MY or
> less.
Cetaceous mammals? Whales? Or was that "Cretaceous"? Why would you
expect that? We're smarter than our 20-mya ancestors, but cetaceans,
apes, and elephants are not smarter than their 20-mya ancestors. As you
said, human-level intelligence happens when conditions favor it, and
it's apparent that conditions rarely favor it. Almost never, in fact.
What you say could happen, but the evidence suggests it probably won't.
>> As many others have pointed out, the other
>> adaptations you mention have happened convergently many times (except
>> flight, which has only been achieved 4 times that we know of). Yet
>> there's only one intelligent species, a quite recent one, and the
>> absolute minimum necessary for anyone to be there to count.
>
> At one point, there was a first flying species. The first tool-using,
> high tech species may interfere, wittingly or unwittingly, with the
> development of others - witness the environmental effect we are having
> on the planet. I should point out that there was at least one other
> intelligent species - neanderthal - who used tools and might have
> flown spaceships by now, if we (or something) hadn't somehow wiped
> them out.
I suspect not; they don't seem to have had it in them. But you raise the
point of incumbency, that our existence precludes the evolution of
another intelligent species. Perhaps, but the evidence suggests that
such an explanation is unnecessary. If we're all that's holding them
back, why are there no American intelligences before 15,000 years ago?
Why no Australian ones before 40,000 years ago? Why no Eurasian ones
before 50-80,000 years ago? It's only quite recently that this
incumbency objection even became possible.
> I don't think you would consider unreasonable the suggestion that if
> some virus wiped out bats and birds overnight, that in 20 million
> years there might be numerous species of mammals with true flight.
Maybe, and here incumbency might be a real force preventing evolution in
that direction. But maybe not. Flight evolved only once in mammals, only
twice in archosaurs. On the scale of likelihood it's ahead of
intelligence, but way behind, for example, herbivory.
>> And it took
>> 4 billion years to get that one. By contrast (though only, apparently,
>> by contrast), multicellularity is easy; it happened at least 5 times
>> (animals, plants, fungi, red algae, brown algae), more if you're generous.
>
> Any potentially intelligent tools users out there wouldn't have to
> start from scratch. Tsk. Sounds almost like something Pitman would
> say; but I'm sure I'm just reading you wrong. It is not 4 billion
> years from an otter brain to the equivalent of a human brain. Yeast
> doesn't pick up rocks to open lunch with, nor use mud slides just to
> have fun with.
Agreed. I was talking there about the probability, given only that life
has arisen. Obviously the probability is greater if you start with
fairly smart life. But then to answer the original question you have to
find the probability of fairly smart life and multiply them together.
Judging by the record (a poor judge, but all we have), the two biggest
bottlenecks are eukaryotic genomes (not sure what exactly about them,
perhaps complex gene regulation, but something that seems required for
multicellularity) and human-level intelligence itself. Both have
happened only once in history. Even things that happened four or five
times in history should be considered bottlenecks.
Chris L Peterson
<jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Hardly more asteroid strikes, since they all come from within the
>system.
Asteroids and comets come from within the system, but their dynamics may
be influenced by what is outside the system. There is some evidence in
the case of the Solar System that our regular passage through the
galactic plane causes an increase in comets entering the inner system
due to perturbations in the Oort cloud. It is entirely possible that the
behavior of planetary systems in denser regions of galaxies is much more
chaotic.
_________________________________________________
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
Chris.B
> Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
> socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
> order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
> intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
> persuasive. Or perhaps not.
>
> Kermit
Nice try! :-)))
Another monkey (froggy?) making wood(en) comparisons.
My god is much bigger than your god!
We are all doomed!
The monkeys fiddle... while Rome fiddles with innocent children.
I blame Usenet, off-topic, kookey cross-posters for all the confusion.
Post in astronomy. Get hit with monkey sticks in talk.origins.
Question the value of SETI and get a full frontal lobotomy c/of
myopic, planetary ignoramuses.
IQs abound but specialisation is a hamstring injury.
Understanding is absent. We talk quite another language.
Why do dolphins and whales get such bad press from Mensa?
Do you do urdu? Greek? Hebrew? Grønlandsk?
Sign language? .... Oh... dear.
Maintain radio silence!
It's the least we can do to maintain the status quo.
The failure to utilise the world's full potential intelligence is
surely a crime against humanity?
40 million working poor in the USA. Country of opportunity. Rewards
only the corrupt.
946 billionaires exist in the known universe.
Taxation is:a) A farce b) Unfair. c) Duh... Don't know.
Hungry? Let them eat clay cake.
Silverbacks rule! Wayhay! Now there's progress!
Burma? Darfur? UN Resolution 999999999999999999999 vetoed by Chinese
arms factory bosses.
Pandas extinct in the wild! Whoops! Sorry about that!
Liverpool 1 Manchester United 3. Hooray!
Olympics (cough cough) called off due to local EPO pollution.
Iraq RIP. (Al Jazeera)
Georgia (a late kick-off)
No, not that Georgia!
Britney shows camel toe! Paris trailing in silicone popularity
stakes!
WW3!
Incoming!!
Brown note!
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
:-))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I love Usenet. Opinions are two a penny and worth every red cent.
Auto-dumning down to *our* level. The BBC would be proud!
Every keyboard has an inflated ego.
Delusions of grandeur.
Masters of none.
Sticks and stones...
Love
MIiss Piggy
(N.B. Not another monkey!)
References:
Kubrik, Stanley, Clark.Arthur.C, 2001 A Space Oddysey, 1968
Blackalicious, Obelisks 'R Us, , 2008
IMDB?
HAL?
AI?
Nah.
Only me! ;-)
Tiny Bulcher
I thought it was the commercial break in /Coronation Street/ that was
the main offender?
Tiny Bulcher
Nearly all extinct, which shows you shouldn't go trying to rise above
your station.
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
> a proper stone age tool?
(raises hand) I do!! I do!!!
I was taught how to chip arrowheads as a little kid in the early 70's,
by the grandfather of a friend of mine who lived on the Pine Ridge
Reservation in South Dakota.
The old-style glass insulators for power lines, make the best
arrowheads.
The thick glass at the bottom of beer bottles works pretty well, too
(though you have to chip the curve out).
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedAndBlackPublishers.com
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:03:19 -0400, "Robert J. Kolker"
> <bobkol...@comcast.net> wrote in talk.origins:
>
> >'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank wrote:
>
> >> How many bacteria are there on earth . . . . . . . . . .. ?
>
> >I think mass would be a better measure than number. Still, the insects
> >outweigh the mammalian population and are better adapted to Earth, as it
> >is, than mammals.
>
> >The first forms of line on this planet were one celled thingies. I
> >suspect such like organisms will be the last forms of life on this planet.
>
> Don't bacteria outweigh insects?
I think they outweight ALL multicellular life.
Indeed, the deep-earth extremophiles, by themselves, might outweight
all multicellular life.
Life on earth is, always has been and probably always will be,
dominated by bacteria. We multicellulars are just a flash in the pan.
John Harshman
> On Aug 15, 5:29 pm, Kermit unrestrained [moi?] wrote:
>
>> Whereas in his posts in this thread he seems to be blaming Swedish
>> socialists for bribing Osama bin Ladin to bomb the twin towers in
>> order to protect global corporate interests, which I find counter-
>> intuitive. Perhaps if he offered cites and reasoning I'd find him more
>> persuasive. Or perhaps not.
>>
>> Kermit
I dove in and pulled out these two nuggets:
> I blame Usenet, off-topic, kookey cross-posters for all the confusion.
> Understanding is absent. We talk quite another language.
And apparently he posted in sci.astro.amateur. Is he a regular loon
there, or just passing through?
David Williams
-> electric generator than to start over with stone age
-> technology.
-> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
-> a proper stone age tool? But lots of us know the fundamentals of
-> building a generator.
-> --
-> --- Paul J. Gans
But to make the generator, you'd need magnets and copper wire. So, if
you have to start from scratch, you'd have to mine ores, smelt them to
get the metals, and so on. To do the mining, you'd need tools, and they
may have to be stone ones. So you'd have to know how to make stone
tools.
dow
AC
I am the Sub-adjutant to the Fifth Plural of Epsilon Bootes. Since the
impisonment of the Fifth Plural, the Ninth General Assembly of Episilon
Bootes has held many millions of the Fifth Plura's tender discs. I desire
to free these tender discs to permit greater flow of my economic fortunes,
and ask your assistance in this venture. Please forward your banking
information, so that I may transfer the value of these tender discs
offworld, thus opening new economic fortunes free of the Ninth General
Assembly's involvement. In return, I shall leave with you a generous
economic bonus for your assistance in this manner.
If you could also fax information on various missile installations, nuclear
submarines, airforce installations and a plain of sufficient area for
several dozen Qag-class Ultakiller Cruisers, please do so, as we are looking
for a nice place to camp and consume.
--
Aaron Clausen mightym...@gmail.com
Kermit
Hmmm...
A complex and inspired intelligence too subtle and quick for this poor
amphibian to follow? Or someone simply too lazy or disinterested to
make an attempt to actually communicate?
The data set is still too small to tell.
There *are annoying restrictions to language conventions, but without
them there is no language at all, only grunts.
Kermit, the *Other Frog
AC
Chris.B <chr...@mail.dk> wrote:
> On Aug 15, 1:18 am, John Harshman mumbled:
>>
>> That was Chris. B's second bizarre, stream-of-consciousness post in this
>> thread. What newsgroup does he/she usually live in, and is he/she always
>> like that?
>
> race is an optimised intelligence.
Who exactly is accepting that? Short of Creationists, I doubt there's a
single person here who thinks that humans possess optimized intelligence.
Even more telling, I doubt anyone here would even know what the f-ck
optimized intelligence is.
I'm snipping the rest of your post because, being a sane, well-adjusted
individual, I require paragraphs for the sake of comprehension and mental
health.
<snip>
--
Aaron Clausen mightym...@gmail.com
Free Lunch
<lfl...@yahoo.com> wrote in talk.origins:
>On Aug 15, 12:52 pm, Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>
>> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
>> a proper stone age tool?
>
>
>(raises hand) I do!! I do!!!
>
>I was taught how to chip arrowheads as a little kid in the early 70's,
>by the grandfather of a friend of mine who lived on the Pine Ridge
>Reservation in South Dakota.
>
>The old-style glass insulators for power lines, make the best
>arrowheads.
>
>The thick glass at the bottom of beer bottles works pretty well, too
>(though you have to chip the curve out).
Way better than the way I do it. I forget that I have some flint
arrowheads in a box and bounce it around. The arrowheads chip very
easily.
Paul J Gans
Sure, but more of us can spin a copper loop in a magnetic field.
Paul J Gans
Bingo!
I nominate that as the best example of interstellar contact
proposed yet!
Paul J Gans
But it is sufficient. Without it you are extinct. With it you
aren't.
>Those Galapagos finches Darwin studied were successful NOT because they
>reproduced; that's the mechanism, not the goal. Their success was that
>they *radiated* into all the available ecological niches on those islands.
That's how they survived in order to reproduce.
>> Using
>> that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
>> is totally useless for evolutionary success.
>The value of intelligence is it gives the species the ability to quickly
>occupy new ecological niches without needing to evolve genetically.
>Humans became the top predator on Earth without taking millions more
>years to evolve bigger fangs and larger size and faster legs than
>saber-toothed cats and other existing predators. We did it by
>outsmarting the saber-tooths and any other species vying for the top
>predator niche.
Intelligence has value in our world, no doubt about it. It is
just the simple observation that by any criteria, numbers, mass,
length of existance, whatever, we are not all that successful,
intelligent or not.
>What intelligence did for humans was NOT to produce more offspring than
>beetles. It enabled humans to become farmers (herbivores); hunters
>(carnivores); SCUBA divers (deep-sea swimmers); fliers; and most
>recently, outer space explorers. We did all that without needing to
>wait millions of years to evolve wings, gills, carapaces, etc. Thus
>humans colonized the entire planet, including the oceans and the air and
>soon outer space. All ecological niches. All by the same genetic humans.
Producing many offspring is one way to keep reproducing. Producing
them selectively is another. So is changing their gender and the
time to sexual maturity. All these exist.
And we don't occupy all ecological niches. In fact, we spread by
destroying niches and converting them to the kind of niche we
like. This is not intelligent behavior.
If we were truly intelligent, we'd be far better able to judge
risk and to understand contingencies.
Paul J Gans
>On Aug 15, 12:52 pm, Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
>> a proper stone age tool?
>(raises hand) I do!! I do!!!
>I was taught how to chip arrowheads as a little kid in the early 70's,
>by the grandfather of a friend of mine who lived on the Pine Ridge
>Reservation in South Dakota.
>The old-style glass insulators for power lines, make the best
>arrowheads.
>The thick glass at the bottom of beer bottles works pretty well, too
>(though you have to chip the curve out).
All right! When you finish the YouTube video so we can all
learn it, you can go to work on making a bow.
Paul J Gans
SPAM.
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
Well actually I can make a bow too . . . it involves some seasoned
wood, some stone scrapers, some animal fat and a fire, followed by
lots of sinew.
And for the string, either some sinew or, in a pinch, a bunch of
milkweed plants.
;)
Paul J Gans
>On Aug 15, 7:23 pm, Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>> In talk.origins 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank <lfl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Aug 15, 12:52 pm, Paul J Gans <g...@panix.com> wrote:
>> >> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
>> >> a proper stone age tool?
>> >(raises hand) I do!! I do!!!
>> >I was taught how to chip arrowheads as a little kid in the early 70's,
>> >by the grandfather of a friend of mine who lived on the Pine Ridge
>> >Reservation in South Dakota.
>> >The old-style glass insulators for power lines, make the best
>> >arrowheads.
>> >The thick glass at the bottom of beer bottles works pretty well, too
>> >(though you have to chip the curve out).
>>
>> All right! When you finish the YouTube video so we can all
>> learn it, you can go to work on making a bow.
>Well actually I can make a bow too . . . it involves some seasoned
>wood, some stone scrapers, some animal fat and a fire, followed by
>lots of sinew.
>And for the string, either some sinew or, in a pinch, a bunch of
>milkweed plants.
>;)
ok, there you go. We'll all follow you!
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
Together, we can drive the woolly mammoth to extinction.
Michael Siemon
<5b465560-e593-452b...@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com>,...
>
> Together, we can drive the woolly mammoth to extinction.
>
> ;)
Is this the spot for the "been there, done that" comment?
Free Lunch
wrote in talk.origins:
Were you on the expedition with Harter?
Golden California Girls
> "Paul J Gans" <ga...@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:g84av5$76p$1...@reader1.panix.com...
>> In talk.origins John Wilkins <j.wil...@uq.edu.au> wrote:
>>> Paul J Gans <ga...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>> In talk.origins John Harshman <jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>> ...
>>>>> Yes, one solution would be for all civilizations to render themselves
>>>>> undetectable very soon after becoming detectable. This assumes they
>>>>> don't go in for travel or communication, and never make noticeable
>>>>> changes to their habitat (like Dyson spheres and such). It seems to me
>>>>> that this assumption would require humans to be a very unusual sort of
>>>>> intelligence, because we're going to go in for communication and travel
>>>>> as soon as we figure out how, if we don't collapse first.
>>>> Other civilizations might well be signalling us like mad using
>>>> techniques we've not yet invented.
>>> Or techniques we have abandoned? Semaphores?
>> Or obviously artificial signals such as the ones that begin:
>>
>> "I am Mr. Harson Gumbaw, nephew of the reigning oligarch
>> of Obway. I would like you to join me in a business venture
>> that will make us both rich..."
>>
>> --- Paul J. Gans
>>
>
>
ROTFLMAO
Golden California Girls
Where to get the copper?
John Wilkins
> In talk.origins tgde...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> [massive deletions]
>
> >Once again, the distinction between correlation and causality must be
> >explained.
>
> >The human population has increased in correlation with technological
> >innovation. That *does not* mean that if there is a small population,
> >technology will vanish. Indeed, if the population were to start
> >dropping tomorrow, it would likely *stimulate* the development of
> >technology to replace labor.
>
> >First-world high-tech high-consumption living standards are perfectly
> >'sustainable' as long as there are few enough people.
>
> I agree. I suspect it would be far easier to create an
> electric generator than to start over with stone age
> technology.
>
> After all, how many of us know how to chip stones so as to form
> a proper stone age tool? But lots of us know the fundamentals of
> building a generator.
Which is great until the reserves of copper wire start to run out... you
can (in the right region) always find chertz. Thought occurs: will
post-apocalytic society be a mix of stone aged and electrical age
technologies? "I will trade all these flints for that electric razor"...
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."