Requirements for Intelligent Life

[LarianLeQuella]

As a biologist, I'm perpetually annoyed by the tendency to treat intelligence and consciousness as binary traits that one has or doesn't have, and to place humans above the bar and everything else below to the bar. To mirror and earlier comment, this is a giant stroke of chauvinism that reflects old-school philosophical conceits much more than it reflects modern biology.

And it's not just biologists that are annoyed!

 

[JJM]

Two scientists (Ward and Brownlee) have addressed this topic in a book ("Rare Earth," I believe). They argue that "complex life" is uncommon in the Universe. They were urged-on by an astronomy grad-student (Guillermo Gonzalez), who did not tell them that he was promoting his religious view that god only created life here, on Earth. The three of them conned the editors of Scientific American (IIRC, October 2001) into publishing an article on the rarity of life in the Universe.

As has been observed, above, your list (and theirs) is based on one data-point. So, what they really describe is the likelihood of finding an Earth-like planet in a Solar-like stellar system; as such, it is interesting. "Rare Earth" is really a work of science fiction to the extent that they claim it pertains to life.

Gonzalez got a position at Iowa State U. before coming out as a creationist. He claims he was denied tenure because he is a creationist; but the facts are that he did no original research and had no students or significant grants. He did have a grant to write a creationist book ("Privileged Planet").

Ward and Brownlee went on to write a book about the future of life on Earth, using projections of continental drift in the next several million years. It is more science fiction. They totally ignore the ability of life to adapt to conditions, and the global warming trend.

 

[geni]

The motivation, of course, is to have grandchildren.

Whether you do this by having bigger teeth or faster legs or a bigger oxygen-hungry brain that can make clever plans is not so important. All such methods are expensive.

The problem is that carnivores don't really seem push intelligence beyond a certain point. The great apes are omnivores. Mearly trying to catch prey doesn't appear to drive intelligence close to human levels.

As for the need for oxygen: If the entire ecology is slow (let's say it's a completely different chemistry or just very very cold) then all you have to be is a comparatively faster thinker or mover than the competition. A single coherent thought might take a hundred or a thousand years, but that doesn't matter if everyone else is moving in equally slow motion.

If we ever come across such slow intelligent life, I doubt either side would recognise the other. (So maybe we already have!)

Your problem here is information decay. You've got to build a mechanism that can store information for those thousands of years which since it is going to have to standand up to at least some radation isn't going to be posible for something than can only have one thought every thousand years.

 

[six7s]

Mearly trying to catch prey doesn't appear to drive intelligence close to human levels.

Tell that to the dolphins

 

[The Drain]

The great apes are omnivores.

Gorillas are vegetarian.

But I do see the points you are making.

What I'm trying to get across is the possibility that extra-terrestrial intelligence may manifest itself in so many different ways, that such intelligence is not only difficult to define but would also be difficult for us to even imagine. To the extent that we probably won't recognise each other when 'first contact' is made (I know, that means it won't strictly be a contact). We may already have dismissed each others' inter-stellar signals as irrelevant noise.

Also, intelligence should not be considered on a continuous one-dimensional 'linear' scale (like doing an IQ test with a single number popping out the end). We already see different types of intelligence here on earth; is my dog more intelligent than my cat? And my squid? That indicates the need for a two-dimensional scale for measuring IQ, with linear scales going off in many different directions. How about a three dimensional scale, or more, to cope with ETI?

 

[Scazon]

The problem is that carnivores don't really seem push intelligence beyond a certain point. The great apes are omnivores. Mearly trying to catch prey doesn't appear to drive intelligence close to human levels.

Note - entities don't "push" evolution, it's something that happens to them. Carnivores are often dedicated to a particular range of prey in a particular habitat, and co- evolve with them- the gnu gets be more wary and to run faster, the lion faster and more stealthy. That doesn't mean ALL lion ancestors "had" to take this route- but if they didn't. they "had" to become different species, say by evolving to a size beyond the lion's preferred range (because the energy cost of the hunt has to be worth it)- all the slow proto-gnus of lion dinner size get eaten.

Looking at evolutionary co-dependency in this way, it seems reasonable to assume that intelligence is an advantageous trait in an animal that can't compete with specialised predators and isn't specialised prey, but has to live by adapting to what's there and getting hold of the specialists, like gnu, in a way they aren't evolved to defend against- by running fast. And that is of the right size for predators, but can avoid being eaten by non- specialist behaviour- not running away. A recent BBC documentary showed baboons facing down a leopard- you felt sorry for the poor cat, totally outclassed.

But as the drain points out, this is a way of identifying OUR type of intelligence. We still need to debate what constitutes intelligence in a broader sense.

 

[obscurelines]

I thought the debate on what constitues intelligence was fairly well established.

I'll follow James Flynn's lead and say it is the sum of abilities that facilitate learning. I see nothing humanocentric about this. It is a misunderstanding to think that general intelligence is one quantity even if we view it on a sliding scale rather than as a binary quantity. General intelligence is tricky to measure in humans, harder in non-humans but the capacity to learn is, I hope, a fairly uncontroversial capacity. In some way a creature surveys its environment (through use of taxonomy, maths, making distinctions etc) and allows this surveying to optimise its use of the environment by changing behaviour (if needed). Phenotypic adapability of behaviour has to be the hallmark of intelligence. We miss a step when we locate intelligence as a purely evolutionary adaptation - the Flynn effect is some evidence of this.

And even if we say that the quest for intelligence like us is humanocentric (I'm borrowing the term from the Wookiepeida) who gives a crap? I'd be stoked to find an alien that surveys and adapts to its environment in a capacity I can relate to, less stoked to meet a giant potato creature made of potato-silicon that has one great thought every 150000 years about how tasty a particular mineral is.

 

[Twiler]

Anyone play Starflight?

That game featured crystalline aliens whose existence as intelligent life-forms went unnoticed becuase their activities were in a different time-frame, much slower than anything carbon-based.

 

[The Drain]

Anyone play Starflight?

No. But it sounds interesting. I'm sure I've read about such an entity in an SF story, whose title I can't remember. Maybe they're related, as in game of the book? More info?

It also shows that non-human intelligence would be mind-blowing, and perhaps more so if it was difficult or if it took us a very long time to recognise it as such..

 

[Twiler]

Starflight info:

Well, the aliens in question (referred to as the 'Ancients') construct buildings over quite a large section of the galaxy. Humans and other alien races discover these buildings, but fail to recognise the Ancients as being the 'Endurium' crystals they find, assuming instead that they have died out or gone elsewhere. Unfortunately, Endurium can be used as starship fuel, so the various races that find the buildings end up unwittingly committing mass-murder as a means of achieving space travel.

This goes on for such a long time that the Ancients become aware of the deaths their race is suffering, perceive the faster life-forms as a form of virus, and take action. They construct a gigantic weapon, the Crystal Planet (which is mostly made out of Endurium indicating that they merged together to create it; given that it moves under its own power, perhaps this is how they travelled between worlds before the epidemic?) and send it spiralling outwards from the core of the galaxy emitting some form of energy field that induces nearby stars to release flares. Presumably, they can survive these flares, while the more human-like races can't.

The player's ultimate task in the game is to blow up the Crystal Planet. Just before they achieve this, they find a scientific log from a previous, failed expedition. They made an examination of the Crystal Planet and discovered what was going on. As such, the log reveals the whole story.

As a result of this, in the sequel, Endurium use has been cut to a minimum (except by the more unethical races). However, a new type of fuel has been discovered, and one of your objectives in the game is to secure its source.

 

[Ordover]

...that the life-form spend none of its time arguing about things on the internet...