Intelligent life.

Castiel said:
I was sitting about the office today and thinking about the usual weird stuff when I began to wonder why, when the Earth has this abundance of life, counted in the billions of different species current and extinct, are we the only ones that has ever shown sapience or intelligent thought as we define it.

Why in amongst those millions of other branches of life have we become the only one?

It just doesn't seem plausible that in the millions of years that evolution has been ongoing that the Human Being is the only form of life on this planet that can think and reason, show judgement and so on.

Anyone have the relevant skills to shed some light on this?
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I think the thing is when you say as we define it, intellignece will take many forms and will be outsdie of our frame of reference. You are falling into the trap of thinking that thinking is intelligence.
 
Castiel said:
I see what you mean. I'll have a look at the book as well.

I can see why Asimov maintained that Humanity was likely to be the only intelligent life in our Galaxy.
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I think, personally, there has to be life out there.

Given there are 10^11 galaxies, each with 10^7 to 10^14 stars, it is almost a mathematical inevitability.
 
Castiel said:
So basically then, if you are a vegetarian you are on an evolutionary one way street to extinction, or at least losing what sapience they have left after eating lentils for several thousand generations.;)
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...Or is becoming a vegetarian a follow on from reaching a conscious state? (As well as a by-product of other evolutionary developments :p)


Could dinousaurs converse with language? Did they ever record their history? Did they have ... Society? I say dinousaurs, but we could take X species, even ones that we have never seen or could even think of.

Is there a trigger which puts a species on the path to forming conscious minds? Can a species form such a mind, and be 'unable' to use it? Because, for all we know... the dolphins may be plotting against us.

Who knows... But I think the real question at hand here is this:

Given an infinite amount of time, can a species evolve to the point where it has firstly planetary dominance, secondly the ability to communicate, and finally a means of progressively learning throughout time. Or are we a fluke? (..I do hope not. If we landed on an alien world to find the place full of rodents how annoying would that be?)

We use so little of our brains. It disheartens me greatly that we cannot even engage them to their true potential. ... Yet ...

...Free can opener with every question attempted. Apologies for the lack of coherence in this post to whomever may read it. I tried to proof read but my eyes lulled and contorted...
 
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Castiel said:
Do all Galaxies rotate in the same direction?
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Probably not (I'm sure somebody else can answer that for me). Perhaps in those ones the planets spin around their stars in the opposite direction. In which case it'd fall in the category of not seen/found yet, being that we can barely look at things more than a few light years away.
 
batsy said:
I have no answer to the question in the op, i get on with daily life but sometimes i look around and think wtf, we are here on a planet in an unimaginably vast universe this is mental lol.
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LAy off the weed that will help with these kind of thoughts, unless you like them in which case i recommend something stronger.
 
Castiel said:
I understand evolution, food chains, predator/prey dynamics and so on, however why have not another similar niche species evolves intellect or sapience like our own.

Someone mentioned Dolphins, but even if they are potentially intelligent, why not more, surely the Earth should be teeming with life that is able to communicate and have civilisations etc....
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Maybe intelligence isn't necessarily a useful evolutionary trait?

Besides, we aren't the only ones we would classify as sentient anyway, are we?Neanderthals? And isn't there a theory that some people from around Asia are from a different evolutionary branch altogether?
 
meghatronic said:
I think, personally, there has to be life out there.

Given there are 10^11 galaxies, each with 10^7 to 10^14 stars, it is almost a mathematical inevitability.
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Which is why I wondered on a planetary scale. If the Universe is teeming with intelligent life, why not have at least more than one on a Planet with such a diverse biosphere.
 
Superewza said:
Maybe intelligence isn't necessarily a useful evolutionary trait?

Besides, we aren't the only ones we would classify as sentient anyway, are we?Neanderthals? And isn't there a theory that some people from around Asia are from a different evolutionary branch altogether?
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But is intelligence an eventuality in a species which continues to evolve? (Which it should... Surely?)

I think that theory may have been disproved. But my memory is not to be trusted so I hope somebody else answers!
 
Superewza said:
Maybe intelligence isn't necessarily a useful evolutionary trait?

Besides, we aren't the only ones we would classify as sentient anyway, are we?Neanderthals? And isn't there a theory that some people from around Asia are from a different evolutionary branch altogether?
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The "chinese are not human" theory was debunked. I watched the documentary a little while ago.
 
Castiel said:
Which is why I wondered on a planetary scale. If the Universe is teeming with intelligent life, why not have at least more than one on a Planet with such a diverse biosphere.
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In our own solar system? It's to do with 'just right' conditions. I.e., it's impossible for the Earth to be just warm enough, have an atmosphere and have liquid water. Yet it happened (various theories). But given the habitable zone (~1AU), it can only be Earth. Maybe mars one time as it is close to one of the boundaries, depending on how you define the zone. Similar restrictions would apply elsewhere.

Misread your question. Doh. But it's largely to do with peaks and troths in dominant species? Perhaps...
 
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Castiel said:
Which is why I wondered on a planetary scale. If the Universe is teeming with intelligent life, why not have at least more than one on a Planet with such a diverse biosphere.
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It could have something to do with timescale. Or the fact that we are here. Somebody mentioned earlier that our existence may stop such things happening. Would two intelligent species even be able to co-exist?

The lizards remain underground, so I think that based on the evidence (and a dash of troll logic) at hand, we can assume that intelligent species are one at a time :p


Castiel said:
The "chinese are not human" theory was debunked. I watched the documentary a little while ago.
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Maybe the memory is not too bad!
 
Cr0fty said:
But is intelligence an eventuality in a species which continues to evolve? (Which it should... Surely?)
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not really certain viruses and the have stayed viruses longer than mammals have existed.

and they outnumber us by an incredible number of zero's :p
 
Tefal said:
not really certain viruses and the have stayed viruses longer than mammals have existed.

and they outnumber us by an incredible number of zero's :p
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They're not alive though.

Retroviruses, or at least their ancestors, have been around for a very long time, longer than our lineage.
 
Tefal said:
not really certain viruses and the have stayed viruses longer than mammals have existed.

and they outnumber us by an incredible number of zero's :p
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Care to give us a list of these "certain" viruses and their life span?
 
Tefal said:
not really certain viruses and the have stayed viruses longer than mammals have existed.

and they outnumber us by an incredible number of zero's :p
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Many lols at the signature.

A virus is a very different type of being altogether though. (I don't think it can even be called a being but there you are. (Virus is the only word I could think of for Virus))

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this...

:p
 
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This thread has given me so many questions to pose that I can't think of any when I come to type them.

If the human race was to continue for long enough, would it develop subspecies and different breeds as a result? Evolutionary branches I believe the term is.

One of those species, given our track record, would surely attain some even higher form of conciousness which we cannot even see today.

I'm going to find a video which illustrates my point :p
 
Cr0fty said:
This thread has given me so many questions to pose that I can't think of any when I come to type them.

If the human race was to continue for long enough, would it develop subspecies and different breeds as a result? Evolutionary branches I believe the term is.
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it might do if we were separated long enough (think a colony planet with no contact with normal for thousands/millions of years).
 
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