have they found anything?

[davefoc]

I have followed the discussion that has mainly been between JTG and amb since I posted here a couple of weeks ago.

With respect to JTG, who I generally find common ground with on most subjects, I do not see amb's ideas as any sort of manifestation of religion or an indication even that the confirmation biases and biases driven by our desire to believe things that make us happy that lie behind most human religious beliefs are driving amb's thoughts on this matter.

This is a subject for which few hard facts are available. It seems that amb has taken the few known facts, swirled them around with his biases and his analytical abilities and come up with an opinion as to the commonality of intelligence equal to or greater than human in the universe.

That seems to be exactly the same procedure that JTG has used.

The fact that amb and JTG have arrived at different opinions on the matter does not necessarily indicate that one or the other has developed his opinions in a non-objective manner.

There are no facts available that can be used to rule out the possibility that JTG or amb is right. In the end this is a gut feel issue where the significance assigned to the few facts available is going to strongly influence one's views on this subject. The only non-objective view possible would be to fail to recognize the fact that one's opinions on this aren't much better than a wild assed guess and that one could easily be massively incorrect with their ideas about the likelihood of human like intelligence.

One thing that seems very likely to be true is that even if amb is wrong and human like intelligence is much more likely in the galaxy than he suspects, it will still be far too rare for us to find out that he was wrong.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

All animals on this Earth at the present time have now been here for more than two million years, including our cousins the chimpanzee.

What a strange statement. You do know that evolution explains the origin of species?

Modern humans (or modern chipmanzees) have not in fact been here for more than two million years, as you claim. Saying all animal species have been present for 2 million years isn't even true of very successful forms, like crocodiles or sharks whose basic form has remained unchanged for a very long time. (That is modern crocodiles and shark species are different than their ancestral species.)

Your understanding of biology and evolution is naive, over-simplistic and smacks of Creationism.

Yes they have a certain amount of intelligence and a whole heap of instincts which we may mistake for intelligence. But if you think that given another two million years this monkey may develop our level of intelligence while we stay still at our present level, or become extinct is naive thinking.

You were the one who introduced the very improbable hypothesis asking what might happen if humans go extinct tomorrow. (I was the one that pointed out that chimpanzees are not likely to survive any cataclysm that could wipe out all humans.) I was merely responding to your hypothetical. Intelligence exists in animals as a continuum.

It's not a matter of either it's a trait that is there or not. If humans were gone, another species would immediately be the most intelligent species on Earth. The trait of intelligence would not disappear. I used the analogy of the giraffes as the tallest mammal. If the tallest giraffe species went extinct tomorrow, ceteris parabus, the trait of "tallness" would not disappear.

If we were to disappear from the face of the planet, animals will remain as they are with some exceptions,

You're wrong there. Evolution happens all the time. While I think punctuated equilibrium is a good theory, it doesn't state that evolution stops ever.

but I doubt a chimp, or other can take the place of man.

If by "take the place of man" you mean "be the most intelligent land animal", you'd be wrong. If you mean that it's impossible that one species could fill the ecological niche vacated by a now extinct species, you're also wrong.

Let's be clear here--no one is claiming that we know that Planet of the Apes scenario would happen. (Indeed, I've pointed out that it's virtually impossible for humans to go extinct without the chimpanzees also going extinct.) You are claiming that it's impossible. You are wrong.

The chimp and man both sprouted from the same ancestor at roughly the same time.
Why did mans brain, or mind develop to a level where he has built a civilazation while the chimp has more or less stayed still.

Again, speciation is caused by evolution through natural selection. No mystery. No magic.

I call this jump a mutation that may only happen once or no more than a dozen times in the whole galaxy. And that's conceding little ground.

You're wrong. The difference between humans and chimps is not a single mutation. So your theory that the differences in two species that share a common ancestor is something that can only happen a limited number of times in the whole galaxy is flat out wrong. You simply have a poor understanding of biology and evolution.

By the way, I noticed you've now gone from talking about a dozen times in the entire universe to a dozen times in the whole galaxy. (Even so, since we don't know the longevity of a galaxy, that's a pretty wild claim.)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I have followed the discussion that has mainly been between JTG and amb since I posted here a couple of weeks ago.

With respect to JTG, who I generally find common ground with on most subjects, I do not see amb's ideas as any sort of manifestation of religion or an indication even that the confirmation biases and biases driven by our desire to believe things that make us happy that lie behind most human religious beliefs are driving amb's thoughts on this matter.

No, I accept his word that he's not a Creationist in disguise, but it is absolutely true that he is repeating arguments made by Creationists. (Most of the arguments in the Rare Earth book came from an astronomer named Guillermo Gonzales who has publicly stated that his science is motivated by Creationism.)

He also has made arguments that derive from the Fine Tuning argument. Several times he arrived at the strange false dichotomy that either the universe is fine tuned for humans, or we are an extremely rare fluke and most likely the only technology-using intelligence in the galaxy. Whether or not we are unique in some way is, in fact, not dependent in any way on whether or not there is any Fine Tuner.

That seems to be exactly the same procedure that JTG has used.

I disagree strongly.

I have clearly stated that my position is best described by the Carl Sagan quote I offered up in this thread early on. We don't know. Since there is nothing unique about the Earth, and the laws of physics, chemistry and evolution are universal, I would be surprised to learn we are unique. (I've also said, since early on, that things are so spread out in space and time that we are not likely ever to encounter another intelligence that uses technology similar to ours. That was my point about saying there's rare, and then there's rare. There could be hundreds or even thousands of such civilizations in our galaxy at this moment and we might still never encounter them or detect them in any way.)

Amb has been arguing several points as certain (or impossible): that there are no more than a dozen intelligences in the galaxy (he used to make that claim of the entire universe), that if humans went extinct, no other animal would ever evolve to be as intelligent as we were, etc.

He's also argued that Fermi's Paradox is proof positive that no other intelligent civilizations exist. (Even though I have pointed out all the false assumptions that that line of thinking entails.)

There are no facts available that can be used to rule out the possibility that JTG or amb is right.

Yes there are. My position is that we don't know. It is factually correct.

Amb claims knowledge that we do not have and has made flawed arguments based on a really poor understanding of, among other things, evolutionary biology.

Just the logic in his argument based on Fermi's Paradox is demonstrably flawed.

I pointed out, for example, that a civilization exactly like our own even just a matter of a hundred light years away could exist and go undetected by us (and vice versa). Therefore, absence of evidence in this case is not evidence of absence. The claim that for intelligence to exist evidence of it must be ubiquitous in the galaxy would rule out our own existence.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Here's the Carl Sagan quote that I offered as the best expression of my position on the subject (back in post number 202 in December 2008):

I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelligence?" I give the standard arguments--there are a lot of places out there, and use the word billions, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course as yet there is no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.

I got this quote from Sagan's introduction to The Outer Edge: Classic Investigations of the Paranormal edited by Joe Nickell.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

And then there are the other factual claims that amb has gotten wrong. He has repeatedly claimed that homo sapiens is the only species in the history of the Earth to have evolved intelligence (and sometimes qualified it by saying the only species to have more intelligence than it needed for survival, which shows a very poor understanding of evolutionary biology and gives the idea of some objective plan or design once again). [ETA: And once or twice he qualified the claim saying that homo sapiens is the only species to have evolved enough intelligence to contemplate the existence of other intelligences, but even that claim isn't known for sure. Someone mentioned the Neanderthals, but we really don't know that any other now extinct hominids didn't have that capability.]

He also claimed that cetaceans have been around a lot longer than primates (so how come they don't have the technological civilization that we do? or how come they're not as intelligent as we are? was the way his argument was to proceed). I did a bit of fact checking and found that the reverse is true. Primates go back a little bit longer than cetaceans.

But mostly I pointed out that the speculations posited in Rare Earth (that he was repeating as true fact) are just speculations, and one could as easily speculate the opposite case. For example, the claim is made that a Jupiter-like planet is necessary for intelligence like ours to arise since it serves to protect our planet from asteroid collisions (or from collisions from Oort Cloud debris--I'm a little unclear on the claim since the asteroid belt is somewhat nearer to us than Jupiter's orbit). I pointed out you could as easily speculate that the a more frequent large collision (the thing that happens roughly every 50 billion years and acts as a sort of ecological "reset" switch) might actually cause intelligence like ours to arise sooner. That is, it could be that the Earth's situation is too "friendly" since traumatic change seems to drive the engine of evolution.

 

[davefoc]

And then there are the other factual claims that amb has gotten wrong. He has repeatedly claimed that homo sapiens is the only species in the history of the Earth to have evolved intelligence (and sometimes qualified it by saying the only species to have more intelligence than it needed for survival, which shows a very poor understanding of evolutionary biology and gives the idea of some objective plan or design once again). [ETA: And once or twice he qualified the claim saying that homo sapiens is the only species to have evolved enough intelligence to contemplate the existence of other intelligences, but even that claim isn't known for sure. Someone mentioned the Neanderthals, but we really don't know that any other now extinct hominids didn't have that capability.]

He also claimed that cetaceans have been around a lot longer than primates (so how come they don't have the technological civilization that we do? or how come they're not as intelligent as we are? was the way his argument was to proceed). I did a bit of fact checking and found that the reverse is true. Primates go back a little bit longer than cetaceans.

But mostly I pointed out that the speculations posited in Rare Earth (that he was repeating as true fact) are just speculations, and one could as easily speculate the opposite case. For example, the claim is made that a Jupiter-like planet is necessary for intelligence like ours to arise since it serves to protect our planet from asteroid collisions (or from collisions from Oort Cloud debris--I'm a little unclear on the claim since the asteroid belt is somewhat nearer to us than Jupiter's orbit). I pointed out you could as easily speculate that the a more frequent large collision (the thing that happens roughly every 50 billion years and acts as a sort of ecological "reset" switch) might actually cause intelligence like ours to arise sooner. That is, it could be that the Earth's situation is too "friendly" since traumatic change seems to drive the engine of evolution.

OK, fair enough. Amb has said some stuff that is not correct or at least not correct based on a reasonable interpretation of what he said. None of these errors involve issues that are probative enough with regard to the basic issue of this thread to prove that his overall conclusion is wrong.

My sense of it is that Amb would also agree with Sagan's statement, although he might add that he believes human style intelligence is rare enough that if it didn't exist in our galaxy it wouldn't surprise him. The basic point here is that Amb would, I suspect, acknowledge that he just doesn't know but that his gut feel is that human like intelligence is very rare in the universe.

Even though some of the exact details of what amb has claimed seem to be incorrect, the basic idea of some of what he is getting at is still true. What we consider human like intelligence has probably been limited to one or a few species that have probably existed at most for about 200,000 years. In addition, the sufficiently organized and stable civilizations that might lead to the kind of technology required for any chance of communication or discovery of other world beings as existed for only about 6,000 years on Earth. Both of those numbers are a tiny fraction of the overall age of the earth. This suggests both that chances of any two sentient civilizations existing at the same time are small and that the chance that sentient organisms will develop at all is small based on the idea that it took so many years for it to happen on the earth.

There is another factor which I speculated about earlier in this thread. It is at least conceivable that as sentient entities develop their technology they always discover the mechanisms for destroying themselves and they always end up using that capability to destroy themselves. If this idea were true then the number of sentient species in the universe would be very limited because once they have developed technologically they always destroy themselves thereby keeping the number of sentient species in the universe at any one time a very low number.

As an aside, I vote for meerkats as a contender for most likely non-primate species to develop human like intelligence.

And as another aside, I tend to agree that given the existence of various great ape species on the planet right now, there is a reasonable possibility that human like intelligence could evolve in some of them if all of a sudden there weren't any humans. A plausible scenario, is that they migrate out of tropical areas or their habitat changes enough that individuals with higher intelligence levels are selected for because the changing conditions favor more ingenious individuals. A problem with this idea is that whatever mechanism that destroys the humans is probably going to destroy the great apes also.

And as a nearly completely unrelated aside: I have been reading a book lately by an entomologist that has specialized on the chemical defenses of insects. In one of the chapters he compares how two different spider species deal with bombardier beetles. One of the species attacks the beetle without consideration for the beetles potent spray weapon. The spider is immediately driven off and the beetle almost always escapes. The other spider species seems to be able to recognize the threat the beetle poses and it has developed a technique for gently wrapping the beetle until it is so bound up that it can not aim its weapon. Once the beetle is safely encased the spider uses its fangs to kill the beetle. The beetle might discharge at this point but the spider is safe because the spray can not be directed at the spider.

I was thinking about the mechanism behind the difference in the response of the two spiders. It seems almost highly unlikely that there is a bombardier beetle image buried in the DNA of the spider that seems to be able to deal with it. My thought, which is based on a complete absence of evidence, is that the spider that can successfully attack the beetle has developed a kind of intelligence that allows it to learn how to attack the beetle while the other spider has not. The vague point here is that the development of intelligence can be driven in different ways and that it is why it seems at least plausible to me that human like intelligence might develop again on Earth again given sufficient time.

 

[Roboramma]

All animals on this Earth at the present time have now been here for more than two million years, including our cousins the chimpanzee. Yes they have a certain amount of intelligence and a whole heap of instincts which we may mistake for intelligence.

Do you have any evidence at all that the intelligence that we see in chimpanzees is not real?
You do understand that with regard to tool use for instance, it varies by culture, right? That means that chimpanzees in one area use one sort of tool, while chimpanzees in another area use a different sort of tool?
How could that possibly be based on instinct?

But if you think that given another two million years this monkey may develop our level of intelligence while we stay still at our present level, or become extinct is naive thinking.

The naive one is the person who doesn't know the difference between a monkey and an ape.

But, once again, what's to stop it? No one is suggesting that in those circumstances chimpanzees would necessarily evolve to become more intelligent, only that they may. You are suggesting that it's near impossible, but haven't given any reasoning. What stops them?

If we were to disappear from the face of the planet, animals will remain as they are with some exceptions, but I doubt a chimp, or other can take the place of man.

Actually, if we disappear from the face of the planet I expect animal evolution would continue much as it has for that last several hundred billion years. And that doesn't mean "remain as they are with a few exceptions."

The chimp and man both sprouted from the same ancestor at roughly the same time.
Why did mans brain, or mind develop to a level where he has built a civilazation while the chimp has more or less stayed still.

What makes you think that the chimp has "stayed still"? It has continued to evolve just as we have.
Has its intelligence increased in comparison with that common ancestor? I don't know, actually no one does, as we know very little about that ancestor.
But to make an argument based on a lack of change that you have no evidence for is...

I call this jump a mutation that may only happen once or no more than a dozen times in the whole galaxy. And that's conceding little ground.

Yet you have no reason to do so. The homo brain increased in size in response to the environment that it found itself it. This happened because those increases in size were selected for. There are plenty of reasons for that. There's very little reason to assume that intelligence is only adaptive in a very narrow range of environments: in fact the opposite can be shown to be true by the obvious increase in intelligence throughout the animal kingdom over geological time.

 

[amb]

That surprised the authors that revelation about the theist astronomer. They claimed they had no idea before the book was published about the pseudo-astronomer, as if they knew, the book would have been slightly changed. But the idea of Rare Earth still stands, and is made reference to in other books by other authors.

The other book I mentioned, Why Aren't They Here page 116, mentions Ward and Brownlea's work.
Anyway, I've said many times, the universe is more than likely teeming with life. But this life is microbial. We have evidence right here on Earth for that. Bacteria has been found in the most extreme places on this planet. It doesn't even need air or sunlight.
In time when the sun becomes a red giant and cooks the Earth to a crisp, this bacteria may still survive.

 

[amb]

OK, fair enough. Amb has said some stuff that is not correct or at least not correct based on a reasonable interpretation of what he said. None of these errors involve issues that are probative enough with regard to the basic issue of this thread to prove that his overall conclusion is wrong.

My sense of it is that Amb would also agree with Sagan's statement, although he might add that he believes human style intelligence is rare enough that if it didn't exist in our galaxy it wouldn't surprise him. The basic point here is that Amb would, I suspect, acknowledge that he just doesn't know but that his gut feel is that human like intelligence is very rare in the universe.

Even though some of the exact details of what amb has claimed seem to be incorrect, the basic idea of some of what he is getting at is still true. What we consider human like intelligence has probably been limited to one or a few species that have probably existed at most for about 200,000 years. In addition, the sufficiently organized and stable civilizations that might lead to the kind of technology required for any chance of communication or discovery of other world beings as existed for only about 6,000 years on Earth. Both of those numbers are a tiny fraction of the overall age of the earth. This suggests both that chances of any two sentient civilizations existing at the same time are small and that the chance that sentient organisms will develop at all is small based on the idea that it took so many years for it to happen on the earth.

There is another factor which I speculated about earlier in this thread. It is at least conceivable that as sentient entities develop their technology they always discover the mechanisms for destroying themselves and they always end up using that capability to destroy themselves. If this idea were true then the number of sentient species in the universe would be very limited because once they have developed technologically they always destroy themselves thereby keeping the number of sentient species in the universe at any one time a very low number.

As an aside, I vote for meerkats as a contender for most likely non-primate species to develop human like intelligence.

And as another aside, I tend to agree that given the existence of various great ape species on the planet right now, there is a reasonable possibility that human like intelligence could evolve in some of them if all of a sudden there weren't any humans. A plausible scenario, is that they migrate out of tropical areas or their habitat changes enough that individuals with higher intelligence levels are selected for because the changing conditions favor more ingenious individuals. A problem with this idea is that whatever mechanism that destroys the humans is probably going to destroy the great apes also.

And as a nearly completely unrelated aside: I have been reading a book lately by an entomologist that has specialized on the chemical defenses of insects. In one of the chapters he compares how two different spider species deal with bombardier beetles. One of the species attacks the beetle without consideration for the beetles potent spray weapon. The spider is immediately driven off and the beetle almost always escapes. The other spider species seems to be able to recognize the threat the beetle poses and it has developed a technique for gently wrapping the beetle until it is so bound up that it can not aim its weapon. Once the beetle is safely encased the spider uses its fangs to kill the beetle. The beetle might discharge at this point but the spider is safe because the spray can not be directed at the spider.

I was thinking about the mechanism behind the difference in the response of the two spiders. It seems almost highly unlikely that there is a bombardier beetle image buried in the DNA of the spider that seems to be able to deal with it. My thought, which is based on a complete absence of evidence, is that the spider that can successfully attack the beetle has developed a kind of intelligence that allows it to learn how to attack the beetle while the other spider has not. The vague point here is that the development of intelligence can be driven in different ways and that it is why it seems at least plausible to me that human like intelligence might develop again on Earth again given sufficient time.

What do you call sufficient time? The chimps have been here as long as us if not longer. Yet in the time passed so far there's no evidence that they have made any progress since they branched off to become the species they are today. This goes for any other animal as well. Sharks have been here for millions of years. There is not a shred of evidence that today's shark is any smarter than its distant ancestor.
My point been that life, even animal life may be possible on many planets, but is intelligence a given? I don't mean animal intelligence, I mean the type that can build a technological civilasation.

 

[Roboramma]

What do you call sufficient time? The chimps have been here as long as us if not longer. Yet in the time passed so far there's no evidence that they have made any progress since they branched off to become the species they are today. This goes for any other animal as well. Sharks have been here for millions of years. There is not a shred of evidence that today's shark is any smarter than its distant ancestor.

Pretty much every mammal alive today is "smarter than its distant ancestor". Take a look at this simple chart, for instance, remembering that distance above the diagonal line is what's important:

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

None of these errors involve issues that are probative enough with regard to the basic issue of this thread to prove that his overall conclusion is wrong.

I guess that depends on what you think his overall conclusion is.

It is false to assert that based on all the available evidence that we know that humans are the only intelligence in the galaxy, or that we know there are no more than a certain number of them.

His argument based on Fermi's paradox is logically flawed. Even if he softens his conclusion to something like "not very likely" he is asserting knowledge that we don't have.

ETA: But worse, as the latest posts show, his understanding of biology in general and evolution in particular is severely flawed. He has been thinking of "intelligence" as a sort of all-or-nothing trait, and now he's making assertions that are flat out untrue Including, among many others, the assertion that he knows that it's impossible for any species other than homo sapiens to ever develop our level of intelligence. (For example, he said, "But if you think that given another two million years this monkey may develop our level of intelligence while we stay still at our present level, or become extinct is naive thinking."

Again, no one is asserting that in two million years a monkey (or rather a non-human ape) will for sure develop our level of intelligence. He is saying that it's impossible. He maintains that there is something so special and unique about humans that no other species can ever develop our level of intelligence (regardless of how near some of those species already are). Again, even though I accept that he's not a theist, his reasoning smacks of Creationist thinking--that humans are different in kind from every species that ever has or ever will live on the Earth.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Further, the Rare Earth "hypothesis" is based on the same sort of backwards thinking as religious arguments disguised as science (such as Creation Science, Intelligent Design and the Fine Tuning Argument) in that it posits that the universe must somehow make conditions fit life rather than the other way around.

At best, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't mean animal intelligence, I mean the type that can build a technological civilasation.

You're making an utterly false distinction unless you are going to introduce some sort of theological argument.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

What do you call sufficient time? The chimps have been here as long as us if not longer. Yet in the time passed so far there's no evidence that they have made any progress since they branched off to become the species they are today. This goes for any other animal as well. Sharks have been here for millions of years. There is not a shred of evidence that today's shark is any smarter than its distant ancestor.

Even if that last statement were true (which it's not), your argument doesn't make sense. No one is asserting that time and time alone necessitates the evolution of human-like intelligence. Rather, you are arguing that no other species can ever possibly evolve human intelligence, and you're wrong.

My point been[sic] that life, even animal life may be possible on many planets, but is intelligence a given?

And nobody is claiming that intelligence is a given--just that it's certainly possible.

Even a low probability event (say 1 in a million or 1 in a billion) will happen with some frequency if you've got enough chances. And there's where Carl Sagan would use the word billions. That's my whole point about saying, there's rare and then there's rare.

Also, evolution is not a random process. Selection is anything but random. That is, life adapts to fit conditions and not the other way around. It's not a coincidence that we see in the wavelength of light that our sun produces. (Nor is any Tuner or Designer needed to explain how this happened.)

And, as Darling speculates, it could be that convergence is relatively common. (For example, the streamline shape of a fish is based on physics. The shape has evolved independently on Earth, so it's a shape we could well expect to evolve elsewhere. Fins, claws, legs, eyes, might be relatively common.)

 

[Roboramma]

Amb's argument is similar to asserting that, because no other vertebrates had taken to the air at the time, after pterosaurs went extinct we would never again see another flying vertebrate.

Of course, the birds are pretty good evidence that this is not the case... (not to mention the bats)

 

[davefoc]

What do you call sufficient time? The chimps have been here as long as us if not longer. Yet in the time passed so far there's no evidence that they have made any progress since they branched off to become the species they are today. This goes for any other animal as well. Sharks have been here for millions of years. There is not a shred of evidence that today's shark is any smarter than its distant ancestor.
My point been that life, even animal life may be possible on many planets, but is intelligence a given? I don't mean animal intelligence, I mean the type that can build a technological civilasation.

A lot of the post of mine that you quoted had to do with what I thought your general views were. I hope that you didn't take offense and I had hoped that you might comment on some of what I said with regard to this. In particular, what is your opinion the Sagan quote?

As to what you said above:
This thread seems to be an opportunity for some wild ass speculation about things which are inheritantly unknowable. In the particular case of the great apes, I was speculating about whether they might achieve human like intelligence under some circumstances. I doubt that they would if humans are still around. The human niche is pretty well filled with humans right now, so the first requirement that I envisioned for one of the great apes to develop human like intelligence was for the humans to disappear from a cause that didn't wipe out the great apes. That seems like a long shot but who knows?

After that, I envisioned some environmental changes that favor creatures with the greatest mental capacity for adaptation in new environments and some environmental changes that favor creatures that need to save up to survive seasonal food shortages and I can image that one of the great apes might gain human like intelligence. You can't? My speculation is partially based on the idea that it happened once and given the right forcing conditions it might happen again.

But as I noted, it seems unlikely to me that anything that wipes out the humans isn't going to take the great apes with it. So instead of 5 to 500 million years it might take to develop a great ape that can use calculus to predict the orbits of the planets, maybe it takes the meerkats (or some other intelligent mammal with some good hand eye coordination) 50 million to 5 billion years to get there.

And anything over the range of a billion years is iffy because the habitability of Earth might have declined substantially by then.

All this is to say, I agree with what, I think, is one of your general claims that human like intelligence might be an uncommon development and might be rare enough that it wouldn't be expected to happen again on Earth again. But I don't find it completely implausible that it wouldn't.

I just reread your post and I wanted to make sure I addressed what you said: Lots of creatures are just not in any position to develop human like intelligence. They have specialized in ways that just is not going to lead to human like intelligence even given very long periods of time. I just don't see jellyfish moving on to integral calculus.

But even beyond that, most environmental niches are well filled right now. Unless the land animals are wiped out, I just don't see a new bunch of amphibian like creatures beginning to populate the Earth. Right now, some coelecant/amphibian type creature that made a stab at moving on to land is just going to get eaten by the animals already here. So your idea that the fact that sharks have been around for a long time and that they haven't developed human like intelligence is evidence that human like intelligence wouldn't evolve again on earth isn't actually probative evidence as to whether human like intelligence might evolve in another organism. Once a niche has been filled the likelihood that a new creature is going to develop to replace the current occupant of the niche is much less than the chances a creature will evolve to fill an empty niche.

So wipe out all the non-shark fish and all the land animals and throw in some number of millions of years and you might end up with a land dwelling tetrapod derived from a shark. Throw in another 500 million years or so and you just might have Isaac Newton's shark derived replacement calculating the orbits of the planets with his new fangled calculus. Or not.

 

[amb]

OK, let me try this.
After about 3.8 billion years of evolution, humans are at its pinnacle. Intelligence has helped them to get there. Intelligence is dificult to define. Dolphins are capable of abstract communication,primates can use simple tools and African Grey parrots can categorise objects, for example, are intelligent in their own ways, but they all lack the most important aspect of human intelligence; its creativity that has resulted in the devolopment of technology.
Is evolution of creative intelligence inevitable? Once life appears on another world, what are the odds of its eventually evolving into creative intelligence?
Ernst Mayer, the renowned evolutionary biologist who died when 100 years old in 2005, was not optimistic about ETI. He notes that out of probably more than a billion species of animals that have arisen on Earth, only one succeeded in producing the kind of intelligence to establish a civilisation. Even this civilasation did not develope the capability of interstellar communication until a few decades ago. He stresses that the assumption that any intelligent extraterrestrial life must have a technology andmode of thinking like us was unbelievably naive.
Humans have been on this planet only for 0.025 % of the total history of life on Earth.
There is no straight line from the origin of life to intelligent humans.
.Mayr, however, does not want to deny categorically the possibility of ETIs. He just wants to claim that from an evolutionary biologist's point of view the probabilities are close to zero.
Source is from Surendra Verma's ''Why Aren't they Here? Icon books 2008.

 

[Roboramma]

OK, let me try this.
After about 3.8 billion years of evolution, humans are at its pinnacle.

Humans are not at the "pinnacle" of evolution. There is no pinnacle.

Intelligence has helped them to get there. Intelligence is dificult to define. Dolphins are capable of abstract communication,primates can use simple tools and African Grey parrots can categorise objects, for example, are intelligent in their own ways, but they all lack the most important aspect of human intelligence; its creativity that has resulted in the devolopment of technology.

This I can agree with: human intelligence is, at least relative to capacity to produce technology, much more advanced than other forms of life on the planet. But this is a difference of degree, not of kind.

Is evolution of creative intelligence inevitable?

Of course not.

Once life appears on another world, what are the odds of its eventually evolving into creative intelligence?

That's the hard question, isn't it?
I think it's not all that unlikely, at least once you get something like animal life. But how likely... hard to say.

Ernst Mayer, the renowned evolutionary biologist who died when 100 years old in 2005, was not optimistic about ETI. He notes that out of probably more than a billion species of animals that have arisen on Earth, only one succeeded in producing the kind of intelligence to establish a civilisation.

That's not a particularly enlightening statistic, however. No one, for instance, would argue that early life on earth might have evolved intelligence and produced a technological civilization, because that level of complexity simply doesn't exist in bacteria.
For the same reason, we wouldn't expect the evolution of the eye at that time either, but no one would suggest that this is evidence that eyes are extremely rare in the cosmos (they may be, if animal-like life is, but that's a different argument).

Even this civilasation did not develope the capability of interstellar communication until a few decades ago. He stresses that the assumption that any intelligent extraterrestrial life must have a technology andmode of thinking like us was unbelievably naive.

On that point I would have to agree with him.

Humans have been on this planet only for 0.025 % of the total history of life on Earth.
There is no straight line from the origin of life to intelligent humans.
.Mayr, however, does not want to deny categorically the possibility of ETIs. He just wants to claim that from an evolutionary biologist's point of view the probabilities are close to zero.
Source is from Surendra Verma's ''Why Aren't they Here? Icon books 2008.

You might do better, however, to say from that particular evolutionary biologist's point of view. Others would disagree. Dawkins, in the ancestor's tale, IIRC, talks about how intelligence tends to increase over time.

 

[davefoc]

amb, thanks for the response.

Roborama's post was more or less along the lines of my thoughts about what you said.

I would have added that one of the themes in your responses seems to be that since only humans have developed human like intelligence so far it is probably very rare for that to happen. And I agree with that to a point, but humans won the race to fill the human niche. The fact that other animals haven't developed human like intelligence might be partially related to the fact that humans did it first.

I think it is plausible that if humans hadn't won the race other primates might be on their way to developing human like intelligence. Imagine vast areas of land devoid of any great apes. That could be a huge driver for evolutionary change that would allow great apes to exploit that land.

As an aside, I also suspect that human like intelligence is rare in the universe, far too rare to make communication with a nearby band of sentient individuals very likely. We might disagree in that I think that there are probably some other places in the galaxy where human like intelligence has developed and you seem to think it probably hasn't.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

OK, let me try this.
After about 3.8 billion years of evolution, humans are at its pinnacle.

As Roboramma said, evolution has no pinnacle. The notion that it does smacks of Creationist thinking or at best a very poor understanding of evolution. Stephen Jay Gould (in Full House) said that rather than thinking of stuff like The Age of Dinosaurs or the Age of Humans, you could make a strong case that it is and always has been The Age of Archaebacteria.*

Intelligence has helped them to get there.

Has intelligence helped the archaebacteria to their place as the "pinnacle" of evolution?

Is evolution of creative intelligence inevitable?

I see you're not reading my posts again. But feel free to engage in your argument with a straw man.

ETA: In post 774, I said, "No one is asserting that time and time alone necessitates the evolution of human-like intelligence. Rather, you are arguing that no other species can ever possibly evolve human intelligence, and you're wrong."

Once life appears on another world, what are the odds of its eventually evolving into creative intelligence?

I don't know and neither do you. Yet you're the one who has asserted knowledge of such odds over and over again on this thread.

ETA: Most recently you asserted knowledge of such odds near the end of post number 759. (Along with the factually wrong assertion that one single mutation separates chimpanzees and humans.)



*ETA: I think Gould's term might have been "the modal bacter" IIRC. That is the mode of life (if you looked at the various clades on a frequency distribution) is and has always been the most primitive bacterium forms. And the argument doesn't stop with mere numbers, but it's also so in biomass, ecological importance, and impact on the environment. (As much as humans have affected the atmosphere by our CO2 emissions, for example, remember it was bacteria that gave rise to the oxygen-rich atmosphere that allowed for aerobic cellular respiration that led to the Cambrian explosion.)