What Is Needed To Make An Intelligent Species?

[Gold Barz]

Yes we should be nominated for the evolutionary oscars...but I think there would be more advanced civilizations more than us...but we are up there

 

[Morlock]

To the fellow who's stated that we only use 10% of our brain power, you've fallen for a myth. We use 100% of our brain power, there is no "untapped" part of the human brain. Well, at least in my opinion - parts of my brain regulating my body functions aren't what I consider "unused."

To those extrapolating a galactic formula for emergent intelligence from Earth's evolutionary record: huh? What does one have to do with the other? Earth's biosphere is a seething cauldron of competing species and any given "M-class" planet will evolve life, if any, in practically complete isolation from the rest. This method is so problematic as to be useless. Sorry if that's a strawman but it seemed like that's what some were stating.

If we hold our own intelligence up as the yardstick by which all other creatures will be judged as "intelligent" or brute animals, we have lost sight of how intelligence develops in a continuum.

Yeah, but the point of most "intelligent species" discussions like this one, at least ultimately, is to guess at how many "this is my boom stick" species there are, not how many truly sentient species there are. Technology creation and organizational capacity are basically the yardstick here, but it's easier to say "intelligence."

Personally, I think that as a biosphere progresses the chances of it developing intelligence approach 1:1. (I think intelligence is the ultimate Darwinian survival tool, and that its uses - transhuman boot-strapping for example - are only beginning to be felt). That still leaves a hell of a lot of room for variation since evolutionary time isn't exactly short. It took life on Earth between 2.8 and 3.5 billion years to go from prokaryotes to modern humans. The Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, the Milky Way is about 13.5 billion years old, and the universe isn't much older than that:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/17milkyway/

My (extremely uneducated) guess is that there aren't many rival space-faring or would-be space-faring species in the Milky Way, but there's a lot of room for variance. It took quite a few evolutionary waves to produce an intelligent, tool-using, social species on Earth after all, maybe it took far less time in some instances and far more in others? My less uneducated guess is that biological life is probably much more common.

2) The equation assumes intelligenent civilizations must possesses radio. I don't even need to talk about the flaw in this one.

Yeah, you do. Radio is one of the most basic ways to send communications in many directions at light speed. Even if a species found a better way to broadcast communications, it would be stupid to stop broadcasting in radio IF a species wants to be found.

In a stagnant environment, such as that found in a race existing in deep space, intelligence might well be harmful. However, anywhere there is competition or a rapidly changing environment, intelligence will be a help to a certain point. Once that limit has been reached, new strains will be necessary to enhance intelligence.

I'm not following you here. Intelligence is like a gun in this sense: it's infinitely better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

The problem with this is that intelligence has yet to show a long term track record as a trait for survival.

It's shown enough to reasonably extrapolate.

No way! Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for hundreds of millions of years. Hundreds of millions. Many kinds of bacteria have been on Earth, essentially changed for billions of years.

Imagine if we found a whole branch of creatures that we could (implausibly) find the first development of it, and the last signs of it befiore it died out, and that its whole history was only a few hundred thousand years.

Dinosaurs ruled for hundreds of millions of years, but if the test of Darwinism is survival, then they failed. It matters not a whit how long they ruled. Ironically, "unproven" human intelligence provides one of the few hopes that dinosaurs may live again.

At no point in their history did dinosaurs exhibit the potential to populate an entire galaxy in 100k years or so, humans are within a century of starting such an endeavor. We're within a century (an evolutionary eye-blink) of trumping any measly meteorite impact as an ELE.

 

[Gold Barz]

I think Chronos, guevaramartyr and turbo-1 proved my point, intelligence is not as rare as people make it out to be. In a complex environment, given time, there is a good chance that life will evolve into intelligent life.

 

[Chronos]

I like what morlock had to say. He also made the case for evolution driven by environmental factors.

 

[Gold Barz]

Hey Chronos, check your inbox I asked you a question

Thanks.

 

[guevaramartyr]

morlock
you say that radio is a necessary step in the growth of a civilization. i don't entirely agree. there could likely be alternatives that we have not thought of, or an alien civilization could not NEED radio. maybe they can't comprehend the concept of other planets, as we couldn't for hundreds of years, and so they have never even thought of sending radio signals into space or building SETI-like arrays. also, the point i was making about the Drak equation is that if we are talking about the total number of alien intelligent species in the galaxy, the Drake equation does not apply. it is used to determine the likelihood of CONTACTING another civilization. if every star in the universe more than a hundred light years away had a high level civilization broadcasting on radio channels in our direction, we still wouldn't know. also you said intelligence is better to have and not need than need and not have. sorry to tell you, but life doesn't go this way. you don't see rats spontaneously evolving wings "just in case" there is a flood in the sewers. evolution occurs out of need, e.g. no need, no evolution.

 

[Chronos]

Well, if you eat rats, and rats get smarter while you get dumber.. guess who winds up on the food end of that evolutionary fork?

 

[Gold Barz]

The opposition of the rats are screwed.

 

[Chessguy]

confused

... if every star in the universe more than a hundred light years away had a high level civilization broadcasting on radio channels in our direction, we still wouldn't know...

I'm not sure I understand your assumptions. Are you saying that all these high level civilizations stopped broadcasting as soon as we had the technology to here them? Or are you saying that all of these advanced civilizations developped radio technology at the exact same time that we did?

 

[Gold Barz]

I don't know, maybe because radio signals get weaker over time/distance.

 

[guevaramartyr]

i'm saying that if every star past that range started broadcasting radio signals a hundred years ago, we still would not have received them. a hundred lys is not an important figure. if alpha centuari had a budding civilization that started broadcasting 3 years ago, we wouldn't know. also, it is important to remember that it is unlikely that any two civilizations with radio (IMO, fairly likely) within a couple hundred lys of each other (less likely) exist in the same span of those couple hundred lys.

 

[Gold Barz]

Yeah, the chances of two different civilizations communicating are slim, very slim.

 

[Mean-Hippy]

Do any of the radio signal we emit towards space travel over 100 ly ? Whats the "maximum distance" we can hope to send a signal to and when did we emit the first signals powerfull enough to reach any significant astronomical distances ?

 

[guevaramartyr]

our radio signals will continue past the 100 ly mark, its not a barrier. its just that since we have begun broadcasting, the signals cannot have traveled more than 80 lys or sumthin.

 

[Chronos]

The odds of anyone hearing us are very low... and the odds of them PMing back by now are only half that, at best. The odds of us hearing from them first are much better - but there is a good chance the technological window of opportunity is less than 1000 years. So what are the odds we are within that 1000 year EM window of any other technological civilization that has arisen in the history of this galaxy?

 

[Chessguy]

why 1000 year window?

... but there is a good chance the technological window of opportunity is less than 1000 years...

I was following you until here.

Are you saying that radio becomes obsolete after 1000 years? If so wouldn't some alien races still try to say hi using radio? Especially if they new we were here? Aren't we within 100 years or so of being able to see other Earths in detail?

Or are you saying that races 1000 years ahead of us will be so far advanced that they have no interest in communicating with us dumb humans? Again why wouldn't the odd alien want to study us as pet-like beings at the very least?

Or are you saying that after another 1000 years of technilogical advancement we will learn to achieve some kind of higher state of being? We will have no more use for these silly bodies or this cold universe and will therefore just take off?

 

[nipwoni]

I think intelligence was inevitable in a lineage like the animals, but not in most lineages. Once you start having creatures with nervous systems and eventually brains, at least one of them is almost definitely going to take that trait to the extreme and evolve a HUGE brain like ours. Also, for any social life form, intelligence is an advantage, for communication, choosing mating partners, developing relationships with each other, "politics", etc. A social lifestyle in turn pushes species to become more intelligent, since the smartest ones will be best at these things and will reproduce more. The two reinforce each other, leading to ever greater intelligence, as has happened among the primates. And social lifestyles have evolved many times in the animal kingdom.

On the other hand, I don't think it's inevitable at all that organisms would have nervous systems in the first place. Animals are unique in that respect, and it would have been quite possible for animals to never evolve on Earth. There are so many other lineages of protists and bacteria besides the one that led to animals. And then there are fungi and plants. Can you imagine any of these groups evolving intelligence? It's not inevitable at all. Even multicellularity wasn't inevitable. Even eukaryotes weren't inevitable.

 

[nipwoni]

I want to respond to a post by Morlock a page ago. He said that dinosaurs failed because they eventually died out after living for millions of years. People usually forget about this, but dinosaurs actually did leave descendents. They're called birds.

Besides this, I don't think a group is a failure if they don't leave direct descendents. The VAST majority of all the lineages that have ever existed have no descendants today. In my opinion there will eventually come a time when humans won't either. But, a group can still preserve some of its genes if a SIMILAR group still survives- a group that's more like its cousin than its child. For the dinosaurs, crocodiles are still around. They are very similar to the direct ancestors of the dinosaurs. Even we are descended from an earlier form of reptile.

 

[Gold Barz]

I think in a similar environment/planet, some single-cell organisms would eventually evolve into multi-cell organisms and if you have multi-cell organisms I think you would only need time to see complex life like animals emerge

 

[Chronos]

I was following you until here.

Are you saying that radio becomes obsolete after 1000 years? If so wouldn't some alien races still try to say hi using radio? Especially if they new we were here? Aren't we within 100 years or so of being able to see other Earths in detail?

Or are you saying that races 1000 years ahead of us will be so far advanced that they have no interest in communicating with us dumb humans? Again why wouldn't the odd alien want to study us as pet-like beings at the very least?

Or are you saying that after another 1000 years of technilogical advancement we will learn to achieve some kind of higher state of being? We will have no more use for these silly bodies or this cold universe and will therefore just take off?

Yes. After trying to contact 'us' for more than 1000 years without success, they would probably lose their grants. The war they are having with their neighbors gets funded instead.

 

[Gold Barz]

Does complexity increase over time?

 

[guevaramartyr]

I don't believe it necessarily does. Biological complexity, like intelligence, is a response to an environmental pressure. If an organism has no need to grow in complexity, it simply does not. After all, we still have bacteria and viruses today, the simplest forms of life known.

 

[Gold Barz]

But we also have organisms that are more complex than bacteria, you could view it from both sides. Yeah the simplest forms of life still exist but complex life does too, so I guess another question is will complex life emerge from simple life?, not all simple life evolve to complex life.