Don’t Speak Too Soon
An Australian astronomer has decreed that there is probably no life in outer space with intelligence matching that of humans. From the article, Dr. Lineweaver was quoted as saying:
“If human-like intelligence were so useful, we should see many independent examples of it in biology and we could cite many creatures who had involved on independent continents to inhabit the intelligence niche.”
“But we can’t. Human-like intelligence seems to be what its name implies – species specific.”
The crucial point is that he is arguing the rarity of “human-like” intelligence. I can agree that the evolutionary processes that resulted in the human brain here on Earth might not be common in the universe. However, the comment seems short-sighted, especially coming from a society who only just recently found proof of other Earth-like planets, and who is still coming to terms with not being the center of the universe.
That said, it is true that we haven’t yet found any other life-form on our own planet with a brain like our own. If structure does indeed belie function, is there any other animal that looks at the world in the same way as humans? The mammalian brain shares many commonalities across species. Indeed, individual differences have led to the diversity of vocations and viewpoints found in societies around the world.
What is it that has made humans what we are? And, will it be found outside of our own solar system? Or, will we be learning to speak alien tongues, and to observe alien cultural traditions at some point in the future?
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6 Responses to “Don’t Speak Too Soon”
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I think that to say that human-like intelligence doesn’t exist beyond our own atmosphere is pretty short sighted of Dr. Lineweaver. Granted the conditions that developed our own intelligence may be unlikely elsewhere, there isn’t necessarily a rule that says only a + b + c = intelligence. Maybe an alien life-form reaches intelligence by f + a + x.
Well there were other species with brains like ours. The Neanderthals, and other offshoots of the family tree like Homo floresiensis – but the are gone now. Could any new species evolve this kind of intelligence independently, when there’s already a dominant intelligent species in existence?
I think you had Geerat Vermeij on your show – he argues that you would expect to see multiple instances of similar traits evolving independently. But when you have one whose trait can prevent others from succeeding, you won’t see them succeeding.
If life can exist in the sulfuric boiling water in hot springs and in the freezing ice of Antarctica, than life can exist anywhere. I don’t see how life could not exist in at least some of the star systems in the universe.
I don’t know how many solar systems we have found to date, millions? It seems every day we find a new one. It is hard to believe that only Earth meets whatever the criteria for life to exist is.
We have only scratched the surface of Mars. No one has a clue what lies beneath the soil or the in the polar ice caps.
It seems to me it is very arrogant to think that Earth, among the billions of plants in the Universe, is so unique as to be the only one with life.
The study of the Universe outside our little planet is still in it’s infancy. Our knowledge is increasing exponentially each year. The only question to me is will a life form on some distant planet find us before we find it.
Great post, though I think Lineweaver is way off base on this. First, I think human intellect is highly overrated – probably because we are the ones rating it. We tend to confuse the amount of “intelligence” we have with technological advances. I’d sugges that our innate intellectual abilities differ more in quantity than quality from species like Mountain Gorillas or chimps. So why do we get the big techno niche? Because we took it! Evolution probably would not acommodate two very different species in the same global/techno/information niche we occupy, so the evolutionary pressure over time moved away from multiple species in that niche.
If we assume as some have suggested, and extremely conservatively, that there are only about 3 intelligent civilizations per galaxy (my view is that this number will soon be shown to be absurdly low) and also assume fairly conservatively that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe, this leads us to a rather spectacular number of some three hundred billion civilizations in the universe. Unfortunately we’ve only found one of them.
299,999,999,999 intelligent civilizations to go.
Like the other commenters, I don’t buy this dude’s argument (at least, not from the summary). Maybe human-like intelligence hasn’t evolved more than once on our one tiny planet. But neither has dog-like intelligence or gorilla-like intelligence. Each brain evolves in a slightly different way, so no two (even within a species!) are going to be identical. They’re all still intelligence, though, and we can and do learn a lot from communicating with different kinds of intelligence. If another planet is at all similar to Earth, I imagine that any intelligence that pops up there will at least be comprehensible to us. We’re not gonna stumble across aliens that look like blue humans and speak English, but that doesn’t mean they won’t “match” us in intelligence at some level.
Personally, I have always been of three opinions when discussing the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe: Firstly, the universe is too damn big to think that we are the only (somewhat) intelligent critters in it; Secondly, assuming there is other intelligent life in the universe, I really hope it is more intelligent than us, (which I know, may not be that difficult); Thirdly, if we are the only intelligent beings in the whole of the universe, then someone really screwed up somewhere.