…and this is a 
The wisdom of the cephalopod
Category: Cephalopods • Evolution • Organisms
Posted on: June 23, 2008 9:15 AM, by PZ Myers
That smart guy, Carl Zimmer, has written an article on those smart molluscs, the octopus. I like that his conclusion is that we can't really judge their intelligence, because it is different than our own.
That's the same answer I give to questions about the existence of intelligent life in the universe. I suspect that it's there (but rarer than most astronomers seem to think — intelligence is an extremely uncommon adaptive strategy here on Earth, as is probably likewise elsewhere), but that it will be radically different in intent and action than our own, as different as we are from a squid, or a dolphin, or an elephant, to name a few forms that have evolved large brains. Often, the question of alien intelligence is more like, "Are there people like us out there?", and I think the answer to that one is clearly no, almost certainly not. There are too many alternative pathways.
Brain & Behavior
Comments
Why have you left the white mice out of the list of intelligent inhabitants of this planet? They won't be happy.
Posted by: Bob O'H | June 23, 2008 9:21 AM
Since there are so many cases of convergent evolution, some evolutionists think there might actually be a decent chance an intelligent biped could evolve again if evolution was re-set from the beginning. They wouldn't be homo sapiens, of course, but something like us might be possible. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the possibility. It might be unlikely, but not necessarily near-zero.
Posted by: Luke | June 23, 2008 9:37 AM
I certainly agree that the likelihood of finding "people like us" is remote. And I further agree that abstract intelligence of the sort found in homo sapiens is unlikely to appear even in rich biospheres. However, to my mind, the overwhelming argument against the likelihood of 'people like us' is the Fermi Paradox: since we're not already knee-deep in little green men, there must not be any. The basic idea is that the universe is so old and so big, that, if a species capable of interstellar travel had ever evolved in our galaxy, they would have done so thousands or millions of years ago. It would have taken them only hundreds to thousands of years to populate the galaxy the way that kudzu populates a forest, or pigeons populate a city, or Europeans populate a continent. So, we should have played the role of Indians to the interstellar Pilgrims -- but we're still here! Therefore, there must not by any Pilgrims!
Posted by: chris Crawford | June 23, 2008 9:38 AM
Interesting piece. Makes you think more about how human intelligence itself is really a number of different "intelligences," valued differently depending on the environment and cultural context.
Posted by: SC | June 23, 2008 9:48 AM
Yes, but these exist because of environmental constraints. What constraints could there be on the shape of sapient life?
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 23, 2008 9:49 AM
Actually, when you think about it, tool use is more common than we typically think on Earth. From elaborate nest building in birds to termite-fishing and the use of sticks and bones among primates in displays/attacks, you see tool use expressed throughout the birds and mammals, as you also see communication. The distinguishing characteristic of human tool use and communication is their creativity and the level of conceptualization involved. Its a difference in degree.
Obviously, its a rare thing for all the disparate factors that drove human evolution to be present and active on a single family of species as it was on our ancestors, but giving the numbers involved, the rigorous competition that all life is constantly involved in, and the great benefit that environment-manipulating tool use grants, ruling out the possibility of it developing among other havens of life, even if it comes out of a different developmental history than our own, isn't something I'd be willing to rule out.
Posted by: Julian | June 23, 2008 9:52 AM
Stephen Colbert's segment on the jar-opening video:
http://cephalopodcenterfold.blogspot.com/2007/06/steven-colbert-official-cephalopod.html
Posted by: SC | June 23, 2008 9:52 AM
Facinating article. Octopi never cease to amaze me. Then again, neither does the rest of biology. I'm reading Microcosm - great stuff. It's reaferming my decision to go back to school next year for biology.
What is intelligence? Comuter scientist haven't come up with a good definition either. Everytime we settle on one, someone builds a computer/program to meet it, and we lift the bar (i.e. beating a human at chess).
Most of our conceptions have been shaped in a human-centric theistic environment. As I learn more about biology, philosophy and metaphysical materialism, I am forced to rethink a great deal of concepts like what it means to be intelligent, conscious, or good.
Posted by: Jackal | June 23, 2008 9:59 AM
Its a shame, but if you think about
it, there was thousands m.a for sapience
to arise, but as far as we know we are the
only ones until now with this ability.
I always thought than this little brain
of us, its unpractical at last. Without
the culture phenomena ill be dead in a night
in a hostile enviroment.
Posted by: Lord Zero | June 23, 2008 10:00 AM
that it will be radically different in intent and action than our own, as different as we are from a squid, or a dolphin, or an elephant,
Probably far more different than that. Squid, dolphins, elephants, and people are all animals, with a common DNA and protein structure. Any aliens out there would almost certainly have different genteic information storage and phenotypic effector systems, as well as radically different brains (or equivalent). Elephants and dolphins are also mammals, so really very, very similar to humans.
Posted by: Dianne | June 23, 2008 10:09 AM
Intelligent life is probably out there. But intelligence alone isn't enough. Octopi and such will never develop any technology, because that's difficult to do in an aquatic environment. Birds are intelligent too, but they're limited to using their beaks and such. They won't be building any radio transmitters. Developing a technology is one of the factors in the Green Bank formula, and we're probably quite rare for having done that. Actually, for most of our existence we didn't have technology beyond what's needed to build the Pyramids -- and even that could be regarded as a fluke. We may have the galaxy all to ourselves.
Posted by: PatrickHenry | June 23, 2008 10:18 AM
I personally think a more interesting way of framing the question is, "Are there any other beings out there that have produced science and technology?"
Posted by: Jason Dick | June 23, 2008 10:27 AM
I never bought off on that. I think the nature of the universe makes it extremely unlikely that such a possibility is even remotely likely.
First we have the dearth of habitable planets. Second we have the hazards of space. Third we have these massive travel times that grandchildren of the first explorers would be adults when they reached Alpha Centauri with the most sophisticated of the generation ships proposed.
Then, assuming AC has habitable planets with edible life, and no dangerous diseases that'd kill them right off, it would take many, many generations to build a population large enough to support an industrial base to launch the next ship. Even if they wanted to launch another ship.
Posted by: Moses | June 23, 2008 10:29 AM
If your answer is probably "no," how do you square that with evolutionary convergence? I happen to agree that intelligent life in the universe even on planets with life is probably very rare, if we mean intelligences that make sense to ours. By that measure, currently there's one form of "intelligence" on earth out of 5 million species.
That said, it also seems that convergence might play a role - if intelligence exists out there, it may remind us a lot of human intelligence or octopus intelligence or bird intelligence.
Posted by: the puzzled ibex | June 23, 2008 10:29 AM
"From elaborate nest building in birds to termite-fishing and the use of sticks and bones among primates in displays/attacks, you see tool use expressed throughout the birds and mammals, as you also see communication."
A few years ago I managed to get a short video of some chimps at the zoo using sticks to snag a few precious nuts. It's one thing to hear about animals using tools, it's quite another to have it happening in such a mundane environment, right before one's eyes.
One thing that always struck me about the possible diversity of intelligent life is the variety of additional senses out there. From a bat's echolocation to shark's ampullae of Lorenzini, a variety of animals experience the world in such different ways it is hard to imagine that they would have an intellect structured remotely similar to our own.
Posted by: gg | June 23, 2008 10:30 AM
I'm sure few people here keep up with such things or have time for silly stuff like this, but in a recently released game called Metal Gear Solid, the main character has a suit made of something called "Octo-Camo" that takes on the colors and patterns of whatever he is surrounded by. Just thought some people here might find that neat.
Here's a video of it in action!
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=JRIUbOwnDEg
Posted by: OctoberMermaid | June 23, 2008 10:31 AM
This reminds me of the problems with detecting life at all on elsewhere in space. How do we know what to look for?
The only thing I can think of, just like the evolution of intelligent life, is there there is only a finite number of solutions/strategies to making something. Yes, there will always be really strange things to find out there (Archaea being a prime example), but there are only a few ways to make life work.
Posted by: katie | June 23, 2008 10:31 AM
I'm reminded of the words of Monty Python's "Galaxy Song", from the movie "The Meaning of Life":
Posted by: David Harper | June 23, 2008 10:32 AM
Intelligence is an uncommon strategy, but could life evolve to be intelligent enough to use technology?
If so then they must be considered a threat. As any civilization with the ability to use technology will inevitably develop to a point that relativistic transport is developed. Something with the mass of the space shuttle moving at relativistic velocity has enough energy to kill all life on earth. Because they think we might attack them, they preemptively strike us.
Posted by: T-1000 | June 23, 2008 10:33 AM
It seems to me kind of a pointless debate triggered by all the science fiction people watch. It's such an unimaginable scale and every new discovery about life, physics, and astronomy alters the probabilities. You have an unimaginable number of galaxies with an unimaginable number of stars and we just don't know the distribution of worlds that could support life.
Even if you take the drake equation, for instance...all we have are guesses, approximations and conjecture to the inputs of it, but we all know GIGO.
Going past that you'd then have to determine the probability that a civilization would develop in a way that would be comprehensible to us (not like dolphins or whatever)...does anyone have the slightest idea how to accomplish that?
Posted by: Chris Nowak | June 23, 2008 10:40 AM
The thing I find really interesting about cephalopod cognition is that it occurs in a nonsocial species. The abilities of the various types of apes and monkeys are impressive(though with some odd gaps); but there is something fascinating about getting to look at an apparently intelligent organism whose environment and adaptations are vastly unlike ours.
Posted by: phisrow | June 23, 2008 10:40 AM
it seems to me that intelligence evolves out of the need for problem solving abilities--many brains can work out problems that do not arise naturally in their environments. intelligence has a certain flexibility, we appear to have more problem solving ability (in the cognitive sense) than most animals, i cannot really think of a reason to assume that this level of cognition cannot evolve in alien life. even if the circumstances that make intelligence adaptive on other planets are radically different from our own (although why should that be so? it'll probably still come down to resource gathering) as long as there is a certain amount of surplus computing power, abstract intelligence similar to our own is possible. At least i hope so, because the thought is really cool
Posted by: anton | June 23, 2008 10:42 AM
Other life in the universe that does science? Probably. Converging in time and disatance with us to the point we can know about it. Almost certainly not.
Posted by: sailor | June 23, 2008 10:43 AM
Chris #3
re aliens and the Fermi paradox, I found this a fascinating discussion:
http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Aliens-Everybody-Solutions-Extraterrestrial/dp/0387955011
He marshals the arguments very systematically, but doesn't come down strongly in any direction. That gives you a game that pretty much anyone can play.
Webb's "conclusions" were pretty much like PZ's, although very tentative: there may well be life out there, but most of it won't have progressed much beyond the microbial state.
The more I read about the intricacies of the eukaryotic cell, the more it seems to be that its development was almost as big a step as biogenesis in the first place.
Posted by: peter | June 23, 2008 10:45 AM
Supposing that there could be tree-like organisms producing fruit-like food on some alien, the evolution of an "intelligence" like our own ought not to be thought to be too unlikely.
Anyway, I don't actually think octopus intellignece is altogether unlike our own. In fact, we call it intelligence because it has aspects akin to our own capabilities, including leaps to rational solutions for, say, getting food out of cracks, crevices, and enclosed containers.
Of course it's hard to compare octopus and human intelligence, but it's not that easy comparing human and human intelligence.
What makes comparing human and cephalopod intelligence harder to compare than human and human intelligence is not so much what we call "intelligence", as it is what interface their intelligence has with their evolutionary possibilities. They want different things than we do.
But yes, there are basic similarities to anything that we can call intelligence. An octopus "reasons", or in any case, it utilizes what we call "reason". They can articulate knowledge into rational steps to doing certain things, just as primates do--again, that is why we call them intelligent. To bring up a familiar refrain, what we see in evolution is without the planning, forethought, and rationality that humans and cephalopods utilize, which is why we are pretty sure that nothing we'd call "intelligence" has been involved in evolution (save some intelligence in mate selection, and our selective breeding of other species).
Compared with evolutionary results, octopus intelligence is "like ours". Compared with chimp thinking, octopus intelligence is "unlike ours". I believe that there is intelligence "like ours" in the sense that octopus intelligence is like our own, yet I rather suspect that similar evolution has probably produced intelligence much closer to our own than even octopus intelligence is, out there on some planet.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 23, 2008 10:46 AM
I think that life is far rarer than most science enthusiasts assume. I know the numbers are big and there most certainly are many planets with water and the proper temperatures in this enormous universe. But the actual conditions that are required for replication to begin is in my guess very, very rare. However, once replication does begin convergence seems highly probable. Heads with sight, sound and smell detectors are going to be vital in any environment. Legs for locomotion and arms with hands are essential for environment manipulation. We're so close in abstract terms to all the vertebrate mammals. Nearly identical when you use relativity as a judgment.
I also believe in an infinitely cycling universe because of the conservation of energy. Therefor, I think that life emerging from non life is inevitable when limited time isn't a consideration. So even though I'm an atheist and don't give any credence to personal reincarnation, I believe that there are indeed "people like us" out there, a "divine" natural design. The real question is when.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 10:49 AM
Should have been--
I wanted to add, too, that not only to cephalopods want different things than we do, manipulating tentacles is significantly differently than manipulating arms and legs. Making comparison difficult for that reason, as well.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | June 23, 2008 10:53 AM
Why would a head be vital to the gas giant airbags of zebulon-B, whose senses operate at radio wavelengths and whose intellect is dispersed among the swarm? Or to the megaclams of Gwflhrx, whose perimeter is studded with a thousand eyes and whose nerve ganglia are safely protected deep within their mighty shells?
Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 23, 2008 11:01 AM
Sometimes not all *that* different. Dolphins *do* have jobs.
Hey, they jump through a hoop and get a fish. That describes 99% of the jobs humans have.
Posted by: Quiet Desperation | June 23, 2008 11:02 AM
but could life evolve to be intelligent enough to use technology?
Data point: My dad is still trying to master the television remote control.
Posted by: Quiet Desperation | June 23, 2008 11:08 AM
""Are there people like us out there?", and I think the answer to that one is clearly no, almost certainly not."
So how do you explain those aliens living amongst us, who look almost like us.
The ones who stole my tin foil hat!
Posted by: CosmicTeapot | June 23, 2008 11:10 AM
On the other hand, some traits of human life which are special on Earth (e.g. language) might conceivably have evolved many times in the observable Universe. Maybe they're what Dan Dennett calls "Good Tricks", which are prone to being converged upon independently.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 11:14 AM
If the MWI-interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, there might be countless numbers of planets with human-like creatures!
But of course it might still be correct, that intelligence is unlikely to appear, even on planets with complex life forms.
If this is the case, any kind of contact with other civilizations could be impossible.
Posted by: mogmich | June 23, 2008 11:14 AM
Even within the swarm there are individuals and the head is a most efficient way to give the body the ability to navigate. I'll have to give the megaclams of Gwfhrx more thought but I don't know how far they would get manipulating their environment. Environment manipulation, I think, is a fair way to judge intelligence. Too much manipulation by the highly intelligent might be a good sign of idiocity.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 11:16 AM
If the MWI-interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, there might be countless numbers of planets with human-like creatures!
Yes, and we don't even need the MWI; other parallel universe models will also do the job. However, this isn't very interesting, as we can't ever actually enter and communicate with the denizens of any of these universes.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 11:17 AM
First we have the dearth of habitable planets. Second we have the hazards of space. Third we have these massive travel times that grandchildren of the first explorers would be adults when they reached Alpha Centauri with the most sophisticated of the generation ships proposed.
All those points assume an evolved intelligence would send members of its own species rather than artificial life, in the form of von Neumann probes (machines which can build copies of themselves out of planetary/asteroidal material). I'd hazard that the necessary technology is decades away, if we don't manage to screw things up first (which is only too likely).
Posted by: Nick Gotts | June 23, 2008 11:18 AM
Nobody subscribes to that notion of extraterrestrial life.
I do.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 11:19 AM
If that's the case, then how do you morally justify eating them - or other animals?
Scientists seem to be continually upwardly revising their notions of what animals think and feel.
And how does that gauge of intelligence correlate with this one, "Are there any other beings out there who seem to be unable to refrain from relentlessly bent on destroying on their ecosystem?"
Intelligence - a slippery concept all around.
Posted by: Hillary Rettig / The Lifelong Activist | June 23, 2008 11:34 AM
I do.
Only a lunatic would insist that extraterrestrial intelligence has to be two-eyed, bipedal, etc.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 11:37 AM
I didn't insist it had to be. I said that I think their is a high probability. Less is more most times. Two eyes are all that's required for stereoscopic vision. And I would be pleasantly surprised to discover the evolutionary path of a one legged land animal. Hoppidy hop hop.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 11:44 AM
The question: "Are there people like us out there?" to me is more "is there intelligence like us out there?" I have few ways to answer that question beyond very rough probabilities and time. Does out there mean right now, in the past, or in the future?
If we think in terms of a broader out there, it seems reasonable that intelligence like ours is emergent and (will, does or did) exist out there.
What seems much less likely is that we will find a means to interact with like intelligence out there - for one thing that restricts the out there intelligent beings emergence to co-incident time with us - beyond the problem of finding a needle in the haystack so to speak.
Posted by: George | June 23, 2008 11:44 AM
Oh, so many possibilities! I rather hope that the answer to the question "Are there people like us out there?" is "no". Here we are on the verge of space exploration and all our money is going into warring with each other.
It's seems probable that we live in a predatory universe, but honestly, I hope there aren't many other intelligent species out there "like us" or all that smartness will end up blowing up the damn galaxy in the rush to enslave and dominate.
My guess is that the Galactic Federation has quarantined us because the other worlds have no desire to be subjected to french fries and Jesus.
There is something fascinating, though, about the fact that in our little corner of a big, impersonal universe, we have the capacity to imagine other kinds of intelligence. Weird.
OctoberMermaid,
That's the reason we don't see other intelligent life in the universe. Once they get to a certain point in technology, they spend all their time in a virtual world!
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 23, 2008 11:49 AM
Perhaps the ultimate demise of every highly intelligent species isn't war but their united world particle physics research gone horribly wrong.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 11:56 AM
Luke @ 2
I have to agree. Although I'm no expert, I have heard it more than once that other beings would be totally different. I don't understand that. Sure, there are many pathways, but the physics and chemistry that are required for human (or like and kind) level of development are very fine filters. In my view, it almost forces convergence. Now I'm not saying that primates are the only functions capable of intelligence. Nature's first try on Earth were dinosaurs. That experiment ended prematurely. Furthermore, Earth offers a huge assortment of environments. Just about every extreme imaginable. We're just now able to contemplate similar environs on other worlds - mostly moons around the Jovians. And yet with all that diversity we only find creatures like us to support intelligence. Bipedalism is not random, nor is 5 point symmetry. Sure there are other types of symmetry, but symmetry is still significant and apparently necessary for many things.
I guess I haven't come across a convincing argument as to how or why intelligent life would look so much different than what we already experience. And I don't mean to argue from ignorance. I am open to all information. If anyone can offer information other than just anecdotal assumptions that life must look so different I would appreciate it. I find it fascinating.
Posted by: Alex | June 23, 2008 11:59 AM
"Man is a successful animal, that's all"
Remy de Gourmont
Posted by: Holbach | June 23, 2008 12:05 PM
Let me present a REALLY weird line of thinking:
Assume that there exists a species with enough intelligence to create technology. It will then create technology to alter its environment in such a manner as to improve its living conditions (on earth, for example, homo sapiens came up with agriculture as a means of altering its environment to improve its living conditions.) Each improvement in its living conditions will increase the population of that species, which will in turn permit greater specialization of effort. That greater specialization of effort will permit faster development of new technologies that further improve the environment. Therefore, you get a virtuous circle in which the population grows at an accelerating rate, creating technology that expands at an accelerating rate. However, as its environment-altering technologies expand in scope and complexity, the second-order consequences of these environment-altering technologies must increase in complexity even faster than the technology itself changes (because the technologies are getting bigger in scope AND interacting with each other). The rate of change of the second-order is therefore greater than the rate of change of the population. Accordingly, at some point the species will find itself altering its environment at a rate faster than it can adapt to the changes. After only a short period of this situation, the species must find itself in a situation in which it is no longer adapted to its environment -- and we all know what happens to a species whose environment changes in such a way that it is no longer adapted to that environment.
To put it another way, let's think in terms of evolutionary time scales. Do you really think that earth 10 million years from now will still have homo sapiens?
Posted by: Chris Crawford | June 23, 2008 12:16 PM
It truly would be ironic if the condom is what brings salvation to humankind.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 12:21 PM
Do you really think that earth 10 million years from now will still have homo sapiens?
No. With our advances in bio-genetics and such, we will eventually be able to control our own evolution and adopt whatever suit of flesh strikes our fancy. Primate bipedalism will be so blasé.
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 23, 2008 12:29 PM
Chris @ 46
I find Kurzweilai.net interesting. Certainly organic biology is too frail to withstand the test of time. But AI does not require organic structures. IMO Human kind is not the pinnacle of intelligence or creation. I think there are very compelling arguments that show that AI is. Just how it gets integrated into humanity is the question. Perhaps we'll be able to re-grow organs and limbs pretty much at will. Perhaps some of us will prefer more robust non-biological structures as a substitute. It's hard to see up that curve.
Posted by: Alex | June 23, 2008 12:36 PM
Except for the appendix, I think we're perfect. Blazé Bourgeoisie.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 12:41 PM
Not buying it.
Intelligent tool using is so powerfully adaptive that any species that gains this ability should dominate their planet. There are many fierce and large carnivores that were all around. The survivors are scarce and mostly frightened out of their wits by us.
As to how many technological civilizations there are in the galaxy, we don't know. There are 200 billion to a trillion stars in our galaxy and we have looked at a tiny fraction of these. All we can say is that there are no aliens broadcasting sitcoms within a few dozen light years of us.
As to the Fermi paradox, that is a crucial question. No one knows. It could be that technological tool users routinely see their technological ability to destroy themselves outrun their ability to not do so. Or that deep space flight is too difficult with no quick payoff and no one ever gets around to going anywhere. Just guesses, could be anything.
The corrolary is exciting though. If we ever get our act together, we could colonize the whole huge galaxy and own it all. Or sit at home, watching sitcoms while pretending that the earth is 6,000 years old and using up 300 million years of fossil fuels.
Posted by: raven | June 23, 2008 12:54 PM
With Kepler, we're soon to have a much better grip on the frequency of habitable-zone terrestrial-size planets in the galaxy. And the galaxy is vast. (Somebody above asked what you would look for to find life. The answer is atmospheric disequiliribrium.)
As for the Fermi question, and the von neumann machine colonization idea, the barrier may simply be the extravagent energy resources necessary to even begin to bootstrap any form of interstellar travel. Presumably ETI passes through a phase of its planetary existence much like the one we now inhabit: technology and population pressure start to overwhelm planetary systems (oceans, atmosphere). And you either come through that okay, or after a few centuries population is drastically reduced, as is the baseline tech level, and the long slow climb to planet-altering technologies begins again. One can imagine a species locked in a cycle like this, with many iterations spanning tens or hundreds of thousands of years each.
For the species that come through environmental degradation okay, the question becomes, what then is the impetus for bootstrapping planetary-scale technology into galactic-scale tech? It's been suggested that it would only take one expansionist civilization in the entire history of the galaxy for us to see them everwhere, and that seems right, so maybe there really hasn't been one. Personally, I think ETI exists (or has existed) but is rare and thinly distributed in space and time. If the lifetime of a technological civilization on average is only several hundred years, there is almost no chance we'll ever make contact with 'someone like us.' And there's a good chance that an outlier, who have solved their planetary-scale problems, would want nothing at all to do with us.
Posted by: CJO | June 23, 2008 1:00 PM
I didn't insist it had to be. I said that I think their is a high probability. Less is more most times. Two eyes are all that's required for stereoscopic vision. And I would be pleasantly surprised to discover the evolutionary path of a one legged land animal. Hoppidy hop hop.
And do you think there's also "high probability" that they would have anything resembling a penis and vagina? There's no reason you should be so confident. As best, it's an interesting guess.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 1:46 PM
Yes there is a reason I think that a penis and vagina is likely. When a species reproduces sexually the goal is to get a seed into an internal egg. The penis is really nothing more than a stick prob. And the vagina is a glorified hole. I can even intelligently guess at reasons why the the nuts and clitoris are highly probable in completely separate evolutionary chains.
I have no doubts about the validity of evolution. The molecular evidence and witnessed micro evolution and mutation is quite sufficient. There's no god planting junk DNA or burying the fossils to deceive us. But seeing as though radio carbon dating is only functional up to 60K years and the fact that only a tiny fraction of all the life that has existed on earth will be found in a fossil form means that the history of our evolution will always have a certain level of speculation involved. But from what I've read about the subject, a great deal of the "facts" of evolutionary history is already intelligent guessing.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 2:06 PM
@ #42
"Once they get to a certain point in technology, they spend all their time in a virtual world!"
If I had a cool suit like that, I wouldn't need that virtual world! Oh, the fun that could be had.
Posted by: OctoberMermaid | June 23, 2008 2:08 PM
very interesting indeed but isn't it almost completely speculation with very little real hard data.
that intelligence is variable with life on earth is a given and our understanding of it is as in most things very egocentric at the least. Intelligence like us given the range in our own species (ie the fundies?) is rather staggering the galaxy song came to my mind also.
If we look for some one like us I would say that we should look for "someone" who is the most destructive species in their environment as the main criteria to characterize "people like us".
we seem to have as one our main abilities the ability and desire to make major and continuous change and unlike animals like beavers our changes do not increase the complexity of the ecosphere but to narrow it starting with farming. that some other animal might have evolved to high intelligence along different lines that we have not considered nor could identify seems likely. it is just recently that we have even begun to consider what intelligence is and how it functions as a survival tool. many of the things we once considered to be ours alone are no longer seen that way.
still we seem to be the absolute messiest one here hands down. We invented the pigsty.
Posted by: uncle frogy | June 23, 2008 2:13 PM
See also Peter Watts' Blindsight, wherein he posits aliens who aren't actually conscious (smart as hell, but not conscious as we know it).
The "Vampires" link there provides some hilarious back-story to the super-autistic vampires that are in the book. The biology is a bit woo-woo but the presentation is chillingly realistic (politically speaking).
Posted by: JD | June 23, 2008 2:26 PM
That's why God invented lutetium-hafnium dating, potassium-argon dating, rhenium-osmium dating, rubidium-strontium dating, samarium-neodymium dating, uranium-lead dating, uranium-protactinium dating, uranium-thorium dating, paleomagnetic dating, fission track dating, and thermoluminescence, among other techniques.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | June 23, 2008 2:40 PM
Many fish and plants use external fertilization (e.g., female salmon lay eggs, then male salmon swim over them secreting sperm). And even in species where that is "the goal", you don't always get penises (the males of some species, such as spiders, insert their sperm via manipulators that are separate from the sperm producing organ). It's also the case that even when eggs may be held internally for development, they are not held internally via a vagina (think of all the animals that brood their young in pouches, or where the males brood the young in their mouths).
And all this presumes that alien life will involve "sexual reproduction", at least in a manner that we know it. (There may be other mechanisms used to promote genetic shuffling, for example -- bacteria don't have sex, yet readily incorporate foreign genetic material.)
Posted by: Tulse | June 23, 2008 2:47 PM
Yes there is a reason I think that a penis and vagina is likely. When a species reproduces sexually the goal is to get a seed into an internal egg. The penis is really nothing more than a stick prob. And the vagina is a glorified hole. I can even intelligently guess at reasons why the the nuts and clitoris are highly probable in completely separate evolutionary chains.
Reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes novel. You're indulging in pure speculation and asserting unwarranted confidence in your conclusions.
I could easily contest your notion that a "stick probe" is a Good Trick. Maybe, for instance, genetic information is on Planet X fired over moderate distances. (I accept that there are fairly good reasons for supposing they'd be sexually reproducing.)
Try as you might, you can't prove using this a posteriori method that various physical properties of humans were inevitable. I have no problem with your taking an interesting, informed guess. But it's absurd to say, "Two eyes, two legs, and a penis or vagina are all highly probable features in any intelligent organism."
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 2:47 PM
Many fish and plants use external fertilization (e.g., female salmon lay eggs, then male salmon swim over them secreting sperm).
Yes, exactly. And bear in mind that evolution on Earth has been subject to all sorts of constraints which mightn't be in place on an alien planet. There could be all sorts of novel, effective, non-Earthly ways of transmitting genetic information.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 2:52 PM
I think some kind of stereoscopic sense organ(s), some organ for manipulating the environment, and some means of communicating with others of its kind, would be highly likely in any intelligent and technologically capable lifeform.
How similar/analogous these things on an alien would be to our human equivalents (eyes, hands, language, etc) is an open question. It's difficult to make meaningful hypotheses when you have a sample set of one.
Posted by: amphiox | June 23, 2008 3:07 PM
Primate bipedalism will be so blasé.
No, they will be retro, and hugely popular once a century or so.
Posted by: Quiet Desperation | June 23, 2008 3:19 PM
I think that people are unnecessarily confining themselves to narrowly terrestrial standards of visualizing living systems. Remember the fundamentals, which have nothing whatsoever to do with water or carbon or any particular temperature or atmosphere. The fundamental driving force for living systems is negentropy. Where you have large amounts of negentropy, you have a better chance of getting living systems. Yes, you also need some physical characteristics that permit complex structures -- but there are lots of these things. Several layers inside a star, for example, have negentropy transport rates that are many orders of magnitude higher than what we have here on earth, and magnetohydrodynamics makes organic chemistry look like pulleys and levers in terms of complexity. So, how about plasma creatures* inside stars? Or how about living systems on the surfaces of planets so close to their parent stars that there's liquid metal?
*Oops, I used the word "creatures" when I meant "living systems". Does that make me a creationist? Horrors!!!
Posted by: Chris Crawford | June 23, 2008 3:29 PM
The fundamental driving force for living systems is negentropy. Where you have large amounts of negentropy, you have a better chance of getting living systems.
Negentropy is an effect of living systems. It's one indicator by which we might recognize a living system very different from terrestrial examples, but I think you need to explain more how it's "the driving force," which I take to mean "the cause," of living systems.
I would think that where you already have nonliving systems producing negentropy, living systems would be less likely to arise, not more.
Posted by: CJO | June 23, 2008 4:26 PM
I'd say that while intelligent life may be very different from us, there would likely be some similarities between us and an intelligent organism capable of developing technology:
"Breathing" gases: A liquid environment is not amenable to fire. Fire is necessary for pretty much all of our technology, and it's difficult to imagine a case where technology could arise without it.
The "5 senses": It seems that the ability to develop technology would rely on the ability to perceive the environment. Most of these would seem to be the minimum necessary to do this, though taste/smell would be the most variable, and other means to do this, such as say electromagnetic communication instead of hearing, would seem unlikely.
At least 2 "hands": The ability to manipulate objects would seem to be necessary for developing technology.
Without those, it would seem that developing advanced intelligence on par with humans would not provide an evolutionary advantage. Of course, I am subject to my biases, but I see no reason that natural selection would work differently anywhere else.
Posted by: Egaeus | June 23, 2008 4:55 PM
If our mind is a construct of memes and if you buy into memetics...why not? Couldnt other species have the ability to imitate like us and have ideas? And the brain is the environment for memes! I think yes!!
Posted by: andrew | June 23, 2008 5:15 PM
Reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes novel. You're indulging in pure speculation and asserting unwarranted confidence in your conclusions.
That sounds to me like what a lot of evolution history is. Without being able to compare the genome of ancient animals aren't we left with a lot of unwarranted confidence in many conclusions?
I obviously don't completely grasp the method of dating fossils. And I did know that there were other radioactive decay methods but I assumed that carbon was the only one that's used to date animals because that's the end of the carbon 14 and 12 equilibrium exchange ratio.
At any rate, I'm kind of shocked at the almost hostile response I've received from speculating that the human form is one of great natural and eternal significance. What if rephrased it so as to say that we follow a significant template? Would that be better;)? You people make me feel like a fundie. A radical Naturalist, that's cool.
I also think aborting post 7 week fetuses is murder and I even have reasons for that. I better put on my blogbulletproof vest.
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 5:40 PM
OctoberMermaid 55#
By jove! That's why we don't "see" alien species visiting us!
Posted by: RamblinDude | June 23, 2008 5:44 PM
See "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids", George Gaylord Simpson, Science 144: 769-775. Reprinted as Chapter 13 in "This View of Life."
As I understand it, it took several sequental stellar life cycles to produce the elements necessary for life as we know it. So maybe we are the first technological civilization in the universe. So far as taking over the universe, we cannot do so with physics as we know it. However, we have had fully scientific physics only since Newton. One wonders what a species who has had physics for, say, 10,000 years might be able to do.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | June 23, 2008 6:05 PM
maybe we are the first technological civilization in the universe.
One of the things that makes this such a fascinating subject is that this answer would be just as humbling and awe-inspiring as the alternative.
Posted by: CJO | June 23, 2008 6:16 PM
[Pure speculation] sounds to me like what a lot of evolution history is. Without being able to compare the genome of ancient animals aren't we left with a lot of unwarranted confidence in many conclusions?
Much less speculatory than what you're doing, for plenty of reasons. The genetic machinery of life on other planets may very well be entirely different from what we have on Earth. And while it seems a good bet, it's nowhere near certain that intelligent life has to be sexually reproducing.
Your educated guesses are intriguing and were fun to read, but I think calling them "very probable" is definitely going to far.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 6:27 PM
I obviously don't completely grasp the method of dating fossils. And I did know that there were other radioactive decay methods but I assumed that carbon was the only one that's used to date animals because that's the end of the carbon 14 and 12 equilibrium exchange ratio.
The carbon clock can take us up to about 60,000 back. I think fossils older than that tend to be dated by more geological clocks, e.g. potassium-argon.
Anyway, perhaps I'm missing something, but how is this relevant?
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 6:33 PM
"60,000 years", that's supposed to be.
The number 60,000 sure seems to be cropping up a lot of late.
Posted by: J | June 23, 2008 6:37 PM
Much less speculatory than what you're doing, for plenty of reasons.
I'm well aware of that. All of my "evidence" is purely metaphysical. At least evolution has fossils and DNA.
Anyway, perhaps I'm missing something, but how is this relevant?
I know I'm missing something. I don't know how a rock can be dated. The elements that make the rock can, but doesn't that only date when the elements that composed the rock were made?
Posted by: Imperadør Hasemörder | June 23, 2008 6:38 PM
How we date rocks,
From the USGS:
That's just a short explanation. Follow that link for specifics, with examples.
Posted by: CJO | June 23, 2008 6:51 PM