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Re: Apple II: Second Best Tech Product of All Time!
Paul Schlyter wrote (odd numbers of >):
In article <9JOdneqwjrQEzrzbnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote (even numbers of >):
I'm actually referring to a more mechanical version of "life" than
that composed of cells and liquids. Computation and servos instead
of neurons and muscles. One could call these creatures "robots", but
the ones I'm talking about have "personal consciousness" like us--
hence our "heirs".
I think we'll have to include some electronics here though. Purely
mechanical machines are a bit too coarse for the complexity required
for life. Remember Charle's Babbage's failed attempt to build a
purely mechanical computer in the 1800's. And even today's much more
complex computers are quite simple compared to a living organism.
Now, if we include some electronics, something interesting will
happen: these machines will run on electricity - just like biological
creatures!
That was exactly what I meant by "mechanical"--sorry for using it
in a general and inclusive sense. Electronics is just "electron
mechanics", after all.
Then your use of "mechanics" is non-standard. Consider a harddisk,
and compare ot to e.g. flash memory. The latter is often said
to have "no mechanical parts", as opposed to the former. But to you
both are purely mechanical.
I think my meaning was pretty clear. I was referring to a fully
reductionist embodiment of conscious beings, in contrast to the
"wetware" embodiment we are familiar with.
BTW, how do you feel about quantum mechanics? ;-)
OK -- how do you feel about fluid mechanics then? ;-)
The biological "wetware" is just as mechanical as electronics, since
they're both based on quantum mechanics. Right?
OK, Paul--you get what I mean. I'm picked a relatively simple,
and perhaps imprecise, way of saying that "intelligent life" may
have substrates other than biological--that's all.
And biological creatures use electricity, but they actually run
on chemical reactions, which are much slower than transistors.
True, but biology instead uses massive parallellism to gain speed.
One example: let a human look at a photo with many people and there
recognize a specific well-know face. Now, try to let a computer do
the same thing. Or let a computer scan a printed page and OCR the
text. Next, let a human read the same text. Which one has the
biggest error rate?
OK--but massive parallelism, whether realized with chemistry or
electronics is beside the point, and accessible in both domains.
True. And speed is not an issue when one judges whether a process
is mechanical or not. Consider e.g. celestial mechanics, where a
celestial body in the outer solar system may need centuries or more
to complete one revolution in its orbit. Bioligical electricity,
or mechanics if you so like, is much faster than that.
The point here is not "mechanism", but the possiblity of faster
and less massive substrates for intelligence than biology.
It is a reasonable assumption that intelligence requires a critical
number of "neurons", gates, logic functions, or whatever. These
can be realized with what used to be considered great density in
biological systems. But we are now on the threshold of creating
substrates for logic and computation that have many more elements
than brain tissue per unit of weight and power.
There is every reason to believe that we can build things on purpose
that significantly surpass what has evolved biologically--it's just a
small matter of engineering. ;-) We can get it done in a lot less
time, too. ;-)
If it's feasible for machines to have "personal consciousness", then
surely insects can have that too! They too are quite complex
machines, much more complex than anything we can build today.
Certainly. On Earth, we made it to "level 4 intelligence" first,
and will surely regulate the graduation of any other species on
the planet to that level (unless it's *very* sneaky ;-).
What's "level 4"? How many levels are they? Does a bigger number
mean more, or less, intelligence? And who defined these levels?
I was using it somewhat humerously as an indicator that there are
various levels of intelligent synthesis, placing humans at "level 4"
to indicate that there are clearly lesser levels (e.g. birds) and
suggesting that there may be more. (That's why the quotes.)
Still, a context must be known, or else the phrase "level 4" says
absolutely nothing.
Sorry for using literary license... I thought that the "throwaway"
nature of the term would be clear, together with its implication
that intelligence has degrees or differences, of scale and type.
There is already a rudimentary "scale" applied to intelligence,
involving the ability to learn, to respond to complex conditional
stimuli, to use language, to construct a theory of other beings' minds,
to form a continuous sense of "self", etc. I don't know whether this
is a partial or complete ordering. It seems likely that intelligence is
multidimensional, requiring multiple coordinates for specification.
Btw, a fundamental property of "life" is its ability to repair itself
(up to a point, of course - beyond that point, the organism either
dies or remains permanently crippled) and to replicate itself. Each
cell in a living organism contains complete instructions (in its DNA)
of how to build that organism. When we are able to build a computer
(or a "robot" if you so wish), where each circuit contains complete
instructions on how to assemble the entire machine, then we can start
talking about "machine life". Of course, the machine should be able
to repair and replicate itself. Perhaps the machine is a "predator",
which devours other kinds of computers as its energy source?
Storing sufficient information for self-replication is already trivial,
since any such creature would have many copies of similar subassemblies.
Storing sufficient information for *replication* may be trivial. But
to succeed in making the machine actually replicate itself, including
all of its own hardware (of course including its replication unit) is
still beyond our capabilities.
These kinds of issues are always dependent on definitions. For example,
if the "feedstock" is taken to include programmable logic chips, then
the fab used to make them is part of the replication cycle, but is not
a part of each unit. Even human beings cannot replicate alone! ;-)
The amoebae and a number of plants are superior to us in this respect,
that's true. An amoeba is pretty close to immortal: when one amoeba
has split up and become two, you cannot say one of them is the "parent"
and the other is the "child". Of course you can kill amoeba cells,
but you cannot kill them all because you won't be able to find all.
So in a way, the surviving amoebae are many millions of years old.
I find this asexual fascinating--like plants that reproduce
primarily by cloning themselves.
Sexual reproduction has one great advantage: it provides large
variations in the genetic pool without having to trust mutations,
which almost always are more harmful than beneficial. That's why
sexual reproduction has become the norm in living organisms. Some
organisms can switch between sexual and non-sexual reproduction
though. The dandelion (a very common weed) is one of them: when
the environment remains the same, it reproduces non-sexually. But
if there's any significant change in the environment, the dandelion
switches to sexual reproduction in an attempt to deal with the
change.
Exactly. And we don't have any way to *directly* make our experience
available to others, so we evolved/invented language to make it possible
to communicate them indirectly. Imagine the possibilities if a type
of intelligent being arises which can directly share experience with
others of its type. This brings a kind of "sexual" character to
communication which could greatly accelerate learning.
BTW, I have a plant (with many offspring!) called commonly a "pregnant
onion", which reproduces by three different means:
1) Most typically, it forms clone "buds" inside its bulb layers that
show up as bumps on the outside (hence the common name). As the outer
layers die and peel off, the buds fall to the ground, ready to root.
2) Once or twice a year, if it is well fed or if it is very stressed,
it blooms, putting up a several-foot bloom spike filled with tiny
blossoms that take over a month to open progressively. This is its
sexual reproductive mode. The seed pods form at the base of the blooms
and crack open to be scattered in the wind.
3) About every 4-5 years, stimulated by I know not what, the outer layer
will peel off to reveal that the bulb has fissioned into *two* bulbs,
initially pressed tightly together, each shaped like half a bulb, but
each with leaves already sprouted--until this point it was not clear
that some of the straplike leaves belonged to each "bulb". Over the
next couple of months, no longer constrained by the outer layers, the
two bulbs fill out to a full bulb shape, each a separate plant.
Needless to say, I find its reproductive strategies fascinating!
Physical replication is not a theoretical problem, and it can exist
whenever we are willing to make it exist. The first cases will be
expensive, though. ;-)
Willingness isn't enough for this - you also need sufficient skill
and resources.
I think the skill is inevitable, and the resources come down to
"will" to do it. But to create artifical life would be a huge
scientific accomplishment, so the motivation is very great.
I expect to see this happen within a decade--on a small scale, of
course. There will probably be considerable effort to ensure that
the "organism" cannot escape the laboratory. ;-)
I have often mused about whether or not modern humanity is actually
capable of surviving and "replicating" in a world in which various
"feedstocks" have been removed. It seems certain that our culture
is dependent on numerous products of technology whose supply could
be easily disrupted. Human biology might go on, but "life" as we
know it is relatively fragile, and not easily re-bootstrapped.
I think you mean civilization rather than "life" here. Yes, civlizations
may collapse, and that has already happened many times in human history.
But even if our current civilization would collapse, there may emerge
new civilizations in the future.
Yes, that is what I meant. I'm concerned about how future humans
who must start over might bootstrap themselves back to a technological
civilization.
And its clear that I identify with our technological civilization--I
have great hopes for it. ;-)
Making "predator" machines would certainly be possible, but probably
not a good start for creatures we'd like to collaborate with. ;-)
That problem can be handled: just make sure humans aren't on their
"menu".... ;-)
But any conscious machine would have to be pretty adaptable, and that
calls into question any fixed rules--particularly if they come into
conflict with their survival.
Are you thinking of e.g "Blade Runner" here?
One of many.
Asimov's "three laws" are a good start, but how they might be made
immutable, when there are countless valid "exceptions" that must be
allowed, is problematic.
Any truly intelligent machine would eventually become disillusioned with
its creators, as their failings and inconsistencies become manifest.
As in the case with human beings, the best we might hope for is a kind
of gentle tolerance. Of course, mortality makes that easier in our
case. ;-)
Is this your definition of "true intelligence"?
Not exactly--I've addressed this pretty fully in another branch of
this thread. I think that the possibility I stated is a pretty
normal consequence of intelligence.
Is is, of course, possible that the human species will either be
extinguished or will extinguish itself before achieving sufficient
dispersion to survive catastrophies. At this point, the probability
of that seems non-negligible.
But it is also possible that we will transform ourselves--being now
the prime movers of evolution--into creatures more adapted to the
diverse future that we will inhabit.
That would require ethical norms quite different from today, where
e.g. controlled breeding of humans is considered unethical. Also,
although we may be one important mover of evolution, we still don't
understand most of it. Therefore, the result can be very different
from our aim.
All ethical norms are subject to the need for survival.
True, however controlled breeding of ourselves are not at present
necessary for our survival. Instead we currently aim at compensating
for natural deficiencies by using tools of various kinds - and we've been
quite successful at that. Actually a bit too successful.
We are still very young, and have not explored the universe (or even
the planet) very far from "home".
True - the bottoms of the oceans are still pretty unknown for us. Not to
mention the interior of the Earth itself.....
Yes, we have a very superficial familiarity with our planet.
....and it's superficial in a *very* literal sense: we only know the surface
of the Earth fairly well....
;-)
It is very easy to imagine a scenario where an "inorganic" substrate
for intelligent life would require at least one order of magnitude less
mass to be transported from one place to another, and that could easily
be the deal-breaker on shipping ourselves in organic form.
It's very easy to imagine *anything* ---- actually making it happen can
be much much harder.
Your talking with someone who predicted the "levelling off" of Moore's
"Law" and a few of its consequences a decade ago, so I'm pretty aware
of the distinction between possibility and probablilty.
But with, say, five centuries of continued progress in technology (not
an inconsiderable assumption, given recent human behavior), it would be
a very poor bet that inorganic intelligence would not be developed.
In a way, that has already happened. In the 1800's, a machine which
played good chess was considered an intelligent machine. It couldn't
be built back then, but nowadays toy stores sell chess computers which
would beat some 99% of all human chess players. So there you have
your inorganic intelligence - today! But today we require more than
ability to play good chess to consider a machine intelligent. In the
future, machines will probably be built whmch today's people would
consider intelligent -- but will the people of those times also consider
it intelligent, or will they require even more than we require today?
Also addressed in the same "elsewhere"...
And just the realization of atomic-level "transistors"--probably within
50 years--would allow the realization of machines (the general kind
again, like Apple II's ;-) with orders of magnitude more logical and
storage elements than human beings have. So I consider this induction
to a more compact intelligence pretty conservative, as inductions go.
Of course, the consequence of not shipping ourselves would be not
surviving...
That's our long-time fate anyway.... there are limits to our capabilities.
True. It's a good time that it doesn't have to be done by tomorrow!
"Give me immortality or give me death!" (Firesign Theater)
The question is whether those who succeed in travelling to other planets
are us, or if they are some who are descendants to us but still very
different from us - so different that they're no longer humans.
The question of what "human" means is truly interesting.
I suggested much earlier that kinship with us was primarily cultural,
and probably not all parts of our culture. ;-) Our "heirs" may be
hard for one of us to recognize, either in "body" or "thought"--but
then, a proto-human probably would think us unrelated, too.
Of course, we could agree about how nice fresh water is...
With our possible heirs, we might find common ground in music,
or humor in an unforseen logical contradiction. ;-)
"Ha, ha--that's very logical." ;-)
So far, unless there is a physical law that forbids something (and
sometimes even those have exceptions ;-), then I wouldn't rule anything
out. I would presently draw the line at things that have *huge* energy
requirements, but many "impossible" things of a few decades ago have
been accomplished by *reducing* the energy requirements significantly.
This strategy doesn't apply to things like flinging the Moon out of
orbit, but it might allow us to navigate the galaxy--if time were not
measured in human lifetimes.
If we're able to reach near-light speed, a human could travel across the
galaxy within what he perceived as his lifetime. A major problem would
be avoiding collisions though, because at such a speed, even colliding with
a small grain of sand could be fatal.
Not to mention inelastic and energetic!
The fact that we don't yet understand what all the knobs and levers
do doesn't negate the fact that we are now in the cockpit, and we
will certainly learn to fly this thing--or die trying. ;-)
That's probably true, up to a point. But a lot of things do happen
not because of us, but due to extra-human causes.
And one plan is to diversify sufficiently before one of them gets us!
That's a good use for our brains.
Another plan would be to sit here on this little planet and come
to understand exactly why we will not survive.
I vote for trying to execute the first plan. ;-)
I think both plans will be attempted -- there are enough people for
both. For the majority, only your plan 2 will be a realistic
alternative though, since only a small minority of the Earth's
population will ever make it into space, and an even smaller minotiry
(if any at all) will make it to another world and permanently stay
there.
That may be so, but who knows what the future will bring? The same
thing must have been said about using the telephone.
You'll have to consider the energy budget here though. What requires
the most energy? Building a worldwide telephone network? Or transporting
a major fraction of the Earth's population to another planet (which means
another stellar system, since our solar system has no other planets
suitable for human life), along with enough supplies for their journey
there and them setting up a self sustainable habitat on their new world?
Yes, there is a tremendeous difference - and we're already consuming too
much energy for our dailye lives here on Earth. We'll have to fix that
problem first.... ;-)
I would say we are consuming too much energy derived from the wrong
sources, not too much energy. (Of course, improving efficiency by
a goodly factor is long overdue, but in the long run we still need
lots of energy to accomplish things--just from better sources.)
Some of these forms may continue to have biology similar to our current
form, but it seems likely that other forms will also exist.
How much of current knowledge (likely) and culture (less likely)
persists in future ages depends on how much discontinuity occurs,
and along which branches of our future evolution.
One can hope that our future branches would coexist, and perhaps even
cooperate, but that is far from certain, depending on how we deal with
competition.
It didn't happen in the past. Of all the past human like species
(e.g. homo neanderthalis), only homo sapiens survived.
Right. And even within our own species, we have not yet resolved
these competitive tendencies with cooperative benefits. But who
knows what we are capable of?
One thing we know is this: we're capable of a lot of violence,
particularly in stressful and competitive situations. Perhaps we
survived as the only remaining humanoid species because we were
the most agressive of these species?
Precisely. We are all survivors. The one's who weren't like us
didn't survive the conditions of the past.
And that may be why species that achieve technological competence
tend to exterminate themselves unless they learn to control that
passion for competing to the death.
Yep! The very factor which brought us to survival this far is now
the greatest danger for our survival...
This may be the "knothole" for advanced civilizations.
....and perhaps natural selection will enter here: those civilizations
which survive in the long term are those who managed to handle this
problem.
Exactly. This is one reason to predict that "advanced civilizations"
will tend to be benign.
The intelligence of humanity is an activity that can grow and spread
as long as there is a suitable substrate, just as a fire spreads as
long as there is heatable fuel and oxidizer.
Unlike fire, intelligence can alter the basis of its substrate, and so
can spread more widely, given time, motivation, and energy.
And this is valid also for non-human intelligence. One plausible
scenario is that humans kill off themselves by a nuclear war, which
also kills most mammals. The insects will survive though, and could
in time evolve into one or several intelligent insect species which
might shape the world as much as we do today. But would such an
intelligent insect species be "mankinds heirs" ????
Indeed, that is one of the non-negligible probabilities.
Unless they uncovered our accomplishments and incorporated a significant
part of them into their own corpus, then I would not consider them our
"heirs".
Uncovering our accomplishments was reasonable as long as we put our
stuff into easily readable forms (stones, papyrys rolls, books). But
today, we put more and more stuff in machine readable forms, which will
be hard enough to read for future generations, but nearly impossible to
read for archeologists of the very distant future. If they find the
remnants of, say, DVD disks or harddisks, and if they succeed in
decoding parts of the bit streams there - how will they be able to
decode what these bit streams really are? They could be plain ASCII,
some word processor format, some image format, machine code, and a
lot of other stuff....
BTW, what would you do if you encountered a punched paper tape for
the ENIAC? :-)
Child's play. The world will be full of copies of popular stuff in
various forms--lots of Rosetta stones.
Our routine data encodings are cryptographically naive.
The're not cryptological at all -- the purpose wasn't to hide the
information but to store it in some appropriate way. Also: if you
look at it from a cryptoanalyst's perspective, you have to have some
idea of what the corresponding plaintext is supposed to look like, or
else you won't know if and when your cryptoanalysis has succeeded.
To today's people this is easy of course, but to an archaeologist
several thousands of years into the future the situation is more
complex.
Of course the object wasn't to hide data (unless it was a movie ;-),
but to anyone who doesn't know the encoding, the problem is essentially
cryptographic--that was the reason for my allusion.
It will not be difficult to decipher the (possibly fragmentary) digital
remains of our civilization to any technologically advanced observer.
It will require effort, but small breakthroughs will open up vast tracts
of data.
Perhaps that's your definition of "technologically advanced observer"?
If he think it's difficult, then you don't think he's "technologically
advanced".
The cryptographic problem is a different problem though: there you assume
the plaintext is written by someone from your own civilization and therefore
you have a fairly good idea of what it could look like. So your task is
to find out how to transform the ciphertext into this well-known form.
And you'll know at once if and when you've succeeded.
Interpreting messages from other civilizations is not quite that
straightforward.
Agreed. But most of what any civilization records is trivial and
repetitious--like sales receipts.
"But there's lots of paper documentation which explains this!" I hear
you object. Aaah, paper -- today's acid based paper which will
self-disintegrate quite efficiently a few centuries from now. Future
archeologists will probably wonder why mankind stopped printing books
some time in the late 1800's. We didn't do that of course, but around
that time we introduced acid based paper, and since then we've almost
exclusively used such paper. It's probably more economical - but it
also means today's books will disintegrate pretty much by themselves
within a few centuries. Which means that a few millennia from now,
books printed before the late 1800's will have survived much better
than books printed later......
Finally, a paperless society! ;-)
Another false conclusion which may be drawn by future archaeologists
is that our times are very poor times .... why? Because today it's
very rare to put expensive grave gifts in the coffin along with those
who are buried -- centuries ago, that was more common.
Ha! ;-)
And they'll find that we worshipped radioactive materials, since
we buried it so lavishly! ;-)
The archeologists of the future will be all over the mass of data
we strew about--and the vast majority of it will be continually
recopied to newer media in any case.
Here you assume a cultural continuum. Sure, as long as that remains, much
older material will be copied over to newer media. But civilizations do
collapse - it happened to ancient Egypt, as well as to many other old
civilizations, and we're naive if we assume it cannot happen to us.
But *now* we copy and re-copy any surviving remnants of Egyptian
civilization. ;-)
Remember, I was talking about our cultural "heirs", so the context of
at least some cultural continuity was *exactly* the assumption.
True. And we are cultural heirs of the ancient Egyptians.
There are still a number of dead languages today's archaeologists have
failed to understand so far. The Rosetta Stone and the hieroglyphs is
a success story which often is told because it was a success. There are
many other languages where our attempts of understanding have failed so
far.
Right. But we live in a world with far fewer and far more widespread
data languages today than at any time in the past.
Including e.g medieval times, or the stone age? ;-)
Yes. Slow communication and natural isolation has always produced
and maintained hundreds, even thousands, of languages--especially for
commonplace conversation.
Written text on stone or clay tablets (or on paper, if the paper has
survived) is much easier to decode for future archaeologists than
computer data stored on some medium, where the "characters" themselves
may be of microscopic size. True, the data encoding is
"cryptologically naive" as you put it earlier, but future
archaeologists won't even know what the plaintext is supposed to look
like. ASCII? (what's ASCII btw, the future archaeologist would have
a reason to ask, even though he's probably unaware about the word
ASCII) Some of the many varieties of Unicode which exists? Or some
older encoding such as Baudot? Maybe it's not even text but billions
of bits of machine code?
Any representation of an alphanumeric language is relatively easy to
"crack", as long as *any* cross-language examples exist. So, for
example, pictures with captions present an excellent opportunity for
constructing a dictionary.
Then (assuming that pictures in paper form have disintegrated) you'll
have the problem to decode e.g. a jpeg image, without having the slightest
idea of what jpeg is, and with no written documentation about it....
JPEGs are trivial. Even the most superficial analysis will turn
up the raster nature of the 8x8 blocks, and the redundancy of the
blocks, together with boundary continuity, would make discovery of
the DCT coding pretty easy. After all, it's mathematics--and we
all know about several ways to apply that to coding images.
We also have sound recording, where our longest living sound recordings
probably will be those on the two Voyager spacecrafts. They're analogue
recordings - basically a vinyl disk, but made of platinum instead of
vinyl.
Yes, I have a CD copy of that.
The thinking that went into organizing and coding that data is quite
relevant to our discussion. Engraved on the record is a diagram of
how to play the record. Embedded in the recorded data are data streams
with a length equal to the product of two primes--a tipoff that it
encodes a rectangular raster, etc.
If the corpus of documents is extensive, then there will be so many
cross references that everything would become clear quite quickly.
You ARE indeed an optimist!
Most cryptographical challenges are made difficult by the scarcity
of similarly encoded ciphertext. Having "gobs" of ciphertext that
is simply encoded makes this much easier than it might seem. Numbers
usually emerge first, then nouns, then verbs, etc., etc.
It is the continual advancement of knowledge and expression that I
consider to be the flower of humanity, and with which I would identify
"kinship".
I would be surprised if there were not other independent beginnings
of intelligent development, and joining those other threads of
advancement in a creative way would be a wonderful development, but,
of course, there's always the spectre of an uncontrolled competitive
nature (which is almost certainly shared by any other intelligent
beings).
Now we've really entered the realm of speculation.... :-)
Once you start to speculate/extrapolate based on probabilities, the
window is open for many things--which reminds me of your original
statement very early in this thread. You were the one to zoom out
the timescale to billions of years. I'm just continuing it to
quadrillions of stars. ;-)
Just like we almost certainly can conclude that the world billions of
years from now will be quite different from today, we can also conclude
that other worlds will be different from ours. But to survive, mankind
needs a quite narrow range of environmental condition. Basically we
want "another Earth" somewhere. Since the number of stars is so vast,
and since planetary systems appear to not be uncommon, such "other
Earths" probably exist. But where are they? We don't know.
While we cannot yet estimate the probability of other "Earths", we
can forsee ways in which humanity (or its "heirs") is adapted either
extrinsically or intrinsically to living in conditions quite unlike
Earth. (That was actually my much earlier point regarding inorganic
successors.)
Are you thinking about e.g. Sagan's "floaters", "sinkers" and "hunters"
in the Jovian atmosphere?
Not specifically, but they are examples of trying to get "outside the
box".
So far, Earth has been offering up a seemingly limitless variety of
unlikely creatures--of course all related to us by DNA or RNA.
Any of our opinions here will tell more about ourselves than about the
universe. We just don't know. We believe there must be some such
beings somewhere, but how far away are the ones closest to ut? Ten
lightyears? Ten thousand light years? Ten million light years? We
have absolutely no idea. And our possibility to get in contact with
them some time in the future will depend a lot on this distance.
Drake's equation, etc.
However, to assume that Earth is *unique* in having intelligent life
would seem to be, as they say, "a huge waste of space". ;-)
Let's look back at the view a few centuries back, when any celestial
body was thought to be inhabitated. Herschel e.g. believed even the
Sun had inhabitants! Their argument was similar to your "otherwise it
would be a huge waste of space" argument: if these bodies weren't
inhabitated, then they would have no purpose, and surely God wouldn't
create anything without a purpose! (a religious worldview was the
norm back in those days). The great popularizer of astronomy some
100+ years ago, Camille Flammarion, wrote a book in 1862 named "La
pluralite des mondes habites" (The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds),
where he speculates on the nature of the inhabitants of all the major
bodies in the solar system (he did leave out the Sun though).
Today, we know Herschel, Flammarion and many others from those times
were wrong. The only intelligent life in the solar system exist here
on Earth. Probably the only life in the solar system is on Earth,
even though some are still hoping to find life on Jupiter's Europa or
Saturn's Titan. We may think it's "a big waste of space", or that
"these uninhabitated planets serve no purpose", but that's the way it
is - the Universe doesn't care about what we humans think is wasteful
or not.
Likewise, the Universe may be empty of life except here on Earth,
even though it would, from our point of view, be "a huge waste of
space". The Universe doesn't care about waste - it is the way it is,
no matter what we think about it. So we might be alone in the Universe,
or the Universe may have plenty of life we cannot see (except on Earth).
We don't know - all we can do is to speculate. And probability
calculations and arguments like "it would be a huge waste of space"
doesn't matter - they say much more about us than about the Universe.
I agree with your distinctions, but I also note that the probability
of intelligent life arising would have to be truly infinetesimal for
there not to be other instances in the universe.
It may be that infinitesimal. We don't know. But we do see signs
that the prereqisites for life are not rare. And natural selection
works in any sufficiently variable environment, so we should not be
surprised to find that if other life exists, it is being selected
for greater adaptability, and thus intelligence.
The signs indicating that prerequisites for life are not rare say
nothing about the prerequisites for intelligent life. Is intelligent
life just a freak accident, or is it something which inevitably occurs
sooner or later wherever life occurs? We don't know. Here on Earth,
the only example of intelligent life we know about are the humanoids,
and we've been around for only a few million years during the Earth's
5 billion year history. So far, the Earth has had intelligent life
during 0.1% of its life span. Will we be around here for hundreds of
million years, or will we be gone within another million years or two?
We don't know.
Actually, we see many animals that have developed substantial central
nervous systems, and, should the environment demand it, they offer the
possibility of evolving what we usually call intelligence.
The brain probably evolved as a way of coordinating inputs from
more highly developed eyes, and then was put to work on other kinds
of "pattern recognition".
I think of intelligence as a normal, not an extraordinary, tendency
of evolution in a variable enviroment. Changing conditions makes
greater adaptability and learning capability a big survival advantage.
And when multiple organisms began to develop "crafty" adaptability,
then higher-order, reflective and planning intelligence became an
advantage.
None of this seems extraordinary. I would be surprised it it were
not a common tendency of life forced by a changing environment.
Also: for practical purposes, the difference between "the Earth is
unique in having intelligent life" and "there are plenty of other
planets with intelligent life, but the Earth won't have any contact
with them" isn't particularly significant.
Agreed--Drake's equation, etc.
Also: if we ever got in touch with some extraterrestial species, it
might mean a catastrophy to us. Consider e.g. what happened to the
native Americans after the Europeans discovered their continent: to
the native Americans, the Europeans came from another world, with very
different values.
Right--and they came with a fully-developed "instinct" for competition
to the death, and precious little control over it.
Since I was in grade school, I was fascinated by the view of
extraterrestrial intelligence depicted in the movie "The Day the Earth
Stood Still". It portrays an intelligence that has come to terms with
its destructive tendencies and has established a system (not unlike
"mutually assured destruction") to curb them. As a result, it feels a
responsibility to educate young civilizations that are about to venture
beyond their worlds.
An alternative view was of an alien civilization visiting Earth guided
by a book called "To Serve Man"--that turned out to be a cookbook!
I've seen them both!
As a third alternative, we have Clarke's novel "Childhood's End", where
some superior extraterrestial intelligence actively tansforms mankind
into something else, to the despair of those remaining humans which
aren't transformed. The purpose is supposedly good, but humans don't
enjoy it at all....
However, these stories are all human fantasies - they say more about
ourselves than about any real other intelligence out there.
Of course. We are somewhat hampered in generalizing about intelligence
from only one known example. ;-)
However, these fantasies start from the premise that intelligence
is directed, first, toward survival, and, second, toward "improving
the neighborhood", when that does not contradict survival. Frankly,
these both seem like they would be high on the list of *any*
intelligence--but I risk anthopomorphizing. ;-)
We all risk anthopomorphizing in this discussion....
That's our job, in the larger sense. ;-)
We can only hope (who knows what the odds are) that our "neighborhood"
is "civilized".
There is some reason for hope, in the sense that scientists of many
different cultures and political backgrounds experience shared values
and a collaborative spirit. Perhaps as intelligence matures, it comes
to adopt more objective cultural norms similar to those of science.
I think this would be "social progress".
This is a reason for hope of improvement on mankind, true, but it says
absolutely nothing about what other intelligent species may be like.
If we restrict our interest to technologically advanced civilizations,
then I think it is not unreasonable to hope for a flowering of that
objectivity that science relies upon. Admittedly, not a certainty.
Unfortunately, large groups of people as a whole tend to behave more
like the most stupid members of the group rather than as the most
intelligent members of the group. Ethnical conflicts, for instance,
are very stupid even from a purely egotistical view: they create
hatred agsinst your people among those "on the other side", and sooner
or later that may strike back, making your own life more dangerous.
Still, ethnical conflicts happen all the time.... in that respect,
humans appear to be little more than animals.
Social evolution continues. And I note that scientific and technical
advancement tends to bring more objectivity and tolerance to a culture.
This is why scientists and engineers need to play active roles in the
formation of "public values", particularly in education.
The darkness of subjective belief is always seeking ways to propagate
its attitudes and ideas--the light of objective critical thinking should
do no less.
We're in full agreement here.
It seems appropriate to let this thread continue its journey into
"All Time" by itself. Hopefully our conversation hasn't been too
much of a distraction. ;-)
-michael
It's been fun though.
It sure has!
-30-
-michael
NadaNet networking for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
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