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Alien Atmospheres and Life For Scifi


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2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

No, you are still doing it

 

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Douglas Adams nailed it

Certainly, the agodiles and crockagators have been in their niches for millenia, and cognitive ability hasn't been required for their success.

But I wonder if you are looking myopically at this?  Yes, the argument is often phrased the way Adams mocks it, (which results in anthrocentric bias)... But that misses what I'm referring to. 

 Only one species has populated every clime and place of the planet.  A strategy that seems pretty good for survival when niches dry up. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/12/sahara-was-home-to-some-of-largest-sea-creatures-study-finds

So if the purpose of life given to a species is to thrive and reproduce and survive - not being stuck in a given niche or climate or region seems to be a bonus. 

What feature enables this? 

Edited by JoeSchmuckatelli
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2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Alligators are not very impressed with cognition.

These ones?

Spoiler

Genuine-Leather-Mens-Shoes-High-Heels-Al109bf765ff0fd640bb92ade27465aac2.jpg

I bet, they are.
 

And who could imagine just a million years ago that a freaky monkey will be the highest predator making bags out of alligators and hats out of bears?

The same about rhino horns, elephant tusks, leopard skins, and other.

Once a sapient species appears, others are doomed.

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

They have been around a lot longer than us, and may well be around a lot longer than us.

Only if we care about their saving.

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Sure, alligators could never have gotten themselves to the moon or climbed Mount Everest or spread themselves from the North Pole to the South Pole, but so what?

So, no hiding place.

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Do we obsess about the search for extra-terrestrial swamp reptiles? No.

@JoeSchmuckatelli, do you accept an exoreptile steak instead what you'd ordered above?

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

But we do obsess about searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence. And why?

Because it's the only feature, preventing the species from being eaten by us, but making us first talk to it.

2 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

So we think life elsewhere *must* develop it in order to really be successful.

The thing is that a sapient species doesn't care about non-sapient one desires and intentions, and this affects the top-10 of success.

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Being slightly snarky here but... horizontal gene transfer. 

It's the thing that lets bacteria evolve so damn fast - and if there's one order of life on this planet that's adapted to live just about everywhere, it's bacteria.

Edit.  Apologies - snark aside, you do make a very good point about not being stuck in a niche being a good survival tactic. Although I do wonder if humans have kind of gone out of the other side of that strategy with modern civilization being quite so hyper-specialized. We've built, or are building, our own specialist niche and it's becoming increasingly easy to disrupt.

Edited by KSK
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12 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Only one species has populated every clime and place of the planet.  A strategy that seems pretty good for survival when niches dry up. 

You're thinking about the microbes, right? At least that's what that Zogg guy from Betelgeuse would have us believe.

However, if you're thinking about humans, then I'd like to point out that big blue wet thing that covers almost 3/4 of the Earth (by surface area, and arguably a whole lot more than that in volume). Not that very many people out there, and those that do  end up there, usually become a snack (for microbes, ultimately).

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Humans can build floating islands (they call them ships and rafts), survive a flood, spread around every place on the surface, and they are hunting the underwater species (so-called fish).

4 mln years ago they were eating bananas sitting on branches.

No other species could.

And they didn't have changed anatomically very much.

Just shaved and walking by two.

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49 minutes ago, KSK said:

horizontal gene transfer

a fascinating subject in and of itself

46 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

microbes, right?

Both extremely good examples; but without specific knowledge, I'm wondering if there actually is a single species of bacteria or archaea or protozoa (not in human guts, btw) that is actually as ubiquitous across multiple biomes.  From my scant knowledge, it seems that like most mammals, different species of microbe live in different habitats.

Rats and dogs could be said to be similarly ubiquitous to humans - but the truth is their 'habitat' is 'wherever humans live'. 

46 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

that big blue wet thing that covers almost 3/4 of the Earth

I did ponder about this; and it requires asking - why did life leave the water in the first place... and thus we are back to Adams and his dolphins (which when measuring water vs land coverage) are more ubiquitous than us!  (Although, if we really wanted to quibble: dolphins limit themselves to only the top 1,000 feet of their habitat - whereas we have people living from the surface of the sea up to 16,700 feet (5.1 klicks for those so inclined).

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56 minutes ago, KSK said:

We've built, or are building, our own specialist niche and it's becoming increasingly easy to disrupt

I'd still argue that humans are generalists.  Sure we 'specialize' in a variety of cultural tasks, but I can take the most Kardashian adapted human city dweller and in 3 months train them to be physically and mentally tough enough to survive anywhere on the planet.  Well... almost any - there are some who've 'opted out' via dietary choices or who have preexisting conditions that wouldn't allow them to succeed - but generally speaking any modern human should still be capable of running with our hunter-gatherer ancestors in short order.

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3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Only one species has populated every clime and place of the planet.

1) Not true. Every parasite and symbiote of us has done the same. And really we have only populated part of the land. We've just kind of visited underwater and high altitudes.

But more importantly, 2) so what? We have no idea whether this will make us more resilient or not. Ginkgo trees have been around for 170 MILLION years, despite not populating "every clime and place". Humans have not been around for 170 THOUSAND years. Are there going to be 170 million more years of humans? Probably not, but we don't know.

We have proven to be VERY good at ending other species. We have proven to be VERY good at spreading out quickly. We have NO proof that our strategy will result in any serious geological longevity. In fact, the way we tend to despoil the places we live in, we have some indications that we are more like an infection or cancer of the planet than a serious contender for a good long run.

We do believe we are the only species on Earth that has ever actively sent any sign of itself out of the solar system. So from that viewpoint, if we are searching for life in other solar systems it actually is relevant.

Edited by mikegarrison
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57 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

We have proven to be VERY good at ending other species. We have proven to be VERY good at spreading out quickly. We have NO proof that our strategy will result in any serious geological longevity. In fact, the way we tend to despoil the places we live in

Mike - I'm starting to think that we have very different world views. I'm optimistic about the future - having seen the damage you describe but also seen people change behaviors and clean up our act. 

Are you so pessimistic about the future? 

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3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I'd still argue that humans are generalists.  Sure we 'specialize' in a variety of cultural tasks, but I can take the most Kardashian adapted human city dweller and in 3 months train them to be physically and mentally tough enough to survive anywhere on the planet.  Well... almost any - there are some who've 'opted out' via dietary choices or who have preexisting conditions that wouldn't allow them to succeed - but generally speaking any modern human should still be capable of running with our hunter-gatherer ancestors in short order.

True, now this could well be an  unique human condition, but i say if you are smart and capable enough to make tools including clothing and shelter and is an omnivore even less than us like dogs or raccoons you are set. An pure predator like cats would also work but would run into more limits later once you start needing numbers for an civilization. 

One unique  thing about humans is that we started to organize in very large groups once we got agriculture nailed down, groups from many thousands up to millions. 
No other mammals do this, yes you have flocks but not resource sharing. Social insects does but that is not smart but evolved. 
Emerging properties of groups and cultures? Or an great filter, could uplifted dogs create something like ancient Egypt, or would the go by smell only and never get past the tribal stage, after all once you have writing the rest is history :) 

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10 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Mike - I'm starting to think that we have very different world views. I'm optimistic about the future - having seen the damage you describe but also seen people change behaviors and clean up our act. 

Are you so pessimistic about the future? 

Joe, I am saying that the more you study the history of evolution on this planet and "deep time", the more you realize that humans have not proven themselves as successful species yet in evolutionary terms.

We are the ONLY cognitive specialists in the 2 billion year history of life on Earth, and we have been around for only a few hundred thousand years. We look and act nothing like the truly successful species that have been around for many millions of years. It's profoundly human-centric to think that our quirky little special niche that we have zero evidence for the long-term viability of is actually the dominant and most important ecological niche in the universe.

It's not a matter of optimism. It's a matter of using the science to understand where we are being incredibly biased in our view of what evolution is and what it produces.

2 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

No other mammals do this, yes you have flocks but not resource sharing.

This is not true. Other social mammals do resource sharing. Mostly with related individuals, but sometimes with unrelated individuals.

It is known, for instance, that not only do some bats share food, but they remember which individuals have shared food with them and share preferentially with their "food buddies".

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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I am saying that the more you study the history of evolution on this planet and "deep time", the more you realize that humans have not proven themselves as successful species yet in evolutionary terms

From this, I get a 'fragility of the new' vibe.  I constantly read the critique that Humans are but a blip in the evolutionary time line.  Yet that argument often blurs how long other creatures actually lived. 

Take Stegosaurus. 

'the Stegosaurus roamed the Earth during the late Jurassic period, between 156 and 144 million years ago."

So - they enjoyed, what, 12 million years?  Humans have been recognizably human going on 2 million (depending upon whether you are willing to acknowledge the humanity of Denosovans, Neanderthals and other pre-Cro Magnon walking, tool using, decedent burying furless apes) 

Yes -  the ages of the dinosaur dominant period were hundreds of millions of years... But mammals have been here since the Triassic, too and they (our ancestors) survived the comet. 

Individual species don't often survive hundreds of millions of years unchanged - even the crocadilians of today are different from those that ate dinosaurs. 

So if we speculated that 10 million years is a reasonable time for a species to exist... Absent some disaster we should enjoy another 8-10 million years. 

I don't think it should be glossed over that humans are a single species adapted to and populating every continent and every land biome.  That is a phenomenal achievement for any genus or family, much less a species. I call it stacking the deck. 

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

We look and act nothing like the truly successful species that have been around for many millions of years. It's profoundly human-centric to think that our quirky little special niche that we have zero evidence for the long-term viability of is actually the dominant and most important ecological niche in the universe.

We also don't have evidence that it's not viable long term. We are apparently unique in the experiment of Life on this planet.  The cool thing is that we are self aware enough to be concerned about our own impact on the planet - and to spend time arguing about what to do about it. 

It wasn't all that long ago that humors and vapors were inexplicably killing our loved ones.  Average Life expectancy in the 1850s was below 40.  We've demonstrated significant self interest in eradicating the things (and behaviors, c.f. Cholera) that killed us before... 

I see no reason why human self interest won't address the problems we have created with our industry alongside with the advances that have prolonged our lives 

https://teamseas.org/ (example) 

 

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4 hours ago, magnemoe said:

One unique  thing about humans is that we started to organize in very large groups once we got agriculture nailed down, groups from many thousands up to millions. 
No other mammals do this, yes you have flocks but not resource sharing. Social insects does but that is not smart but evolved. 

I object to this distinction. 

Social behaviour in humans is a product of evolution as much as it is the case with ants/bees.

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The cognition is not an end in itself.
Complexity is the key.

But the any stable system evolution evolves in the direction of complexity,
A complex system can react nore quickly, flexibly, cost-effectively on the of condition changes, on the unpredictable events, on the achieved limits of growth.

When humans are out of meat, they start farming. When the plowland gets dry, they start herding. When the herd stick into forests, they start farming, again. When they stick into water, they start fishing. When they get cold, they cut woods. When the wood is over, they start mining coal. When their skin is too thin, they put on another one's fur. And they are the only species able to produce and use metal tools, which allow to do in minutes what another species can do in days.

The human society is uncomparable to the ants and bees, which are totally based on mass suicide and quick reproduction, so are limited with simple expendable units never able to raise the social complexity to anything like a human society and adaptability. The humans live in places where no bees and ants can survive for a year.

***

The simplicity is not the way to wake a stable system. It's a way to make a stable part.
Simple things aren't a thing on their own, they are a thing only when used by a more complex system as a tool.

We can look at a train as an example.

Let's take several cars on primitive wheels without amortization, and weld them to each other with ends.

It should be a perfect train, as it's as simple as possible, so there is nothing to break.

Let's put a railroad from A to B.
We know that the shortest and most effective way is a straight line.

So, let's put the rails straightly.

Now we have the most ideal railroad in the world.
It's simple, reliable, cost-effective, and can't be better.

***

But wait...
There are hills, so we should either dig them, or take those corners and make it winding.

And to make is winding is usually much cheaper than fig away every hill, which are also used themelves for building on top.

The rails get winding. The complexity raises.

But wait...
Our perfect train is strait, while the rails are curly on the corners. 
The train will fly away on the first of them.

We have to split the train into cars and connect them with hinges to add the new degree of freedom.

Now the train is more complicated, but it can follow the curly road.

But wait...
The A and B cities are placed different altitudes.
Our perfect horizontal railroad should bend in vertical directions.
At not once, as there are hills and valleys.

So, the hinges should be able to bend vertically.
We should put the hinges on other hinges.

We add the vertical hinges to add the new degree of freedom.
The train complexity raises again.

But wait...
The local horizontal and vertical angle are different in every plave and quickly change when the train passes.
The joints will jam.

So, we have to add gaps inside the joints, to add two new degrees of freedom.
The train complexity raises again.

But wait...
With gaps the joints get kicked every time when the train turns, starts, or stops.
They will be broken.

We should amortize them by adding springs.
We add springs, and the train complexity raises again.

But wait...
As the train is now flexible, the cars are jumping on every turn or descent, and beat the rails with the wheels.

We should put the wheels on springs, too.
We add the wheel springs, and the train complexity raises again.

But wait...
The train is now perfectly flexible and stick to the rails, but the cars can easily move forwards and backwards and kick eash other on acceleration and deceleration,

We should add strong buffers.

But wait...
The buffers receive the energy and protect the cars, but the shock wave runs along the cars, shaking the passengers and weakening the car itself.
We should put the buffers on springs.
We add the buffer springs, and the train complexity raises again.

Ok, now the train is ideal, even while it's very complicated.

But wait...
All those springs and hinges suffer from friction and get broken.

We should add channels for lubrication, the lubricant oil, and the oiler walking along the train with an oil can.
And the oil barrels on the station. And the oil industry to produce the oil. And grow food to feed the oiler.

And finally the system complexity allows the system to be as effective and reliable as possible.

***

The same with the systems of living species.

More complicated systems have more degrees of freedom, and can react more effectively on any destabilizing factor. They are more stable.

The multicellular species are colonies of symbiotic eucaryotic "bacteries" living inside each other and sticking into large heaps with specialized zones.
Some coloy zone dissolves food and shares ite between others. Some zones move the colony (walk, fly, swim). Some zones receive the information (eyes, ears).
Some zones combine the information and output management commands which allow the colony properly and effectively react,

The cognition is the highest form of the cell colony management. It turns chaotic complexity into managed complexity, so uses the countless degrees of freedom in the most effective way.

This means that a sapient species is the top and the ultimate aim of any biological evolution, as since a sapient species appears, it accelerates the evolution of the whole biosphere by orders of magnitude, and approaches to the limit, when the living species get purposedly rearranged on molecular level, making new species to replace the self-grown ones.

This also means that since the sapient species appears, the biological and the geological evolution of the planet get mixed indistinguishably, and the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and the upper layer of the lythosphere become a united managed system, evolving together into an intereplanetary (and then into interstellar) post-biological civilization.

So, yes, the umans are the top of the Earth evolution, and any evolution not coming to a sapient species is failed.

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15 hours ago, Shpaget said:

I object to this distinction. 

Social behaviour in humans is a product of evolution as much as it is the case with ants/bees.

Agree for tribes and hunter gatherers, we probably live as long after being able to reproduce because grandparents are useful. 
Large scale organization was only an thing the last 7-4000 years so not much evolution. 
But yes at this point culture was more important for humans, but could easy see an alien where smell is more important not being able to go past tribes. 
Not that this has not impacted humans, failed states is an effect but this could simply be bad rulers.

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On 10/30/2021 at 1:09 AM, kerbiloid said:

Do Australians eat koalas and platypuses? They are mammals (both koalas and Australians).

[citation needed]. Australians are mammals? Next you are going to tell me the Welsh are carbon-based!




Jokes aside, I tend to agree with @mikegarrison with regards to being able to predict what is actually the path of least resistance for life. If we put ourselves in the shoes of dinosaurs of the late cretaceous, and one of them said "hey guys, you see those little furry things that eat berries and nuts, and we step on them by accident like 100 times a day? Those little snacks we eat between meals are going to rule the planet" Everyone would call you stupid and laugh you out of the...well dinosaurs didn't build rooms, but you get the idea. The entire reason the hierarchy of life on Earth changes is because something new was introduced. Of course there are long, drawn out changes that last geological time frames, but for the most part, the new dominant species comes out on top due to something out of their control. They just rode the wave they were given. Now the question I guess is "are humans sufficiently advanced to preclude dropping from our dominant position?" Maybe, but something usually goes wrong whenever humans as a group are like "nah, don't worry, we got this!"

Edit: maybe a better way to say this is "Do humans have a complacency factor that other organisms don't due to our cognizance?"

Edited by Meecrob
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16 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

[citation needed]. Australians are mammals?

At least the best half of them.

16 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Next you are going to tell me the Welsh are carbon-based!

I would not be so sure about Welsh, as the Stonehedge hedge stones originate from Wales, so maybe they are silicon-based ones, and the Stonehedge is actually a group of Old Welsh druids standing in circle and waiting for something.

***

20 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

If we put ourselves in the shoes of dinosaurs of the late cretaceous, and one of them said "hey guys, you see those little furry things that eat berries and nuts, and we step on them by accident like 100 times a day? Those little snacks we eat between meals are going to rule the planet"

They would ask: "Do you mean those hairy jerks hunting chickens on sunset, when small and lightweight dinoraptors are cool and sleepy, while the trexes and triceratopses are too big to do something with this at any part of the day? Yes, give this scum several mln decades more, and these dirty rats will rule the planet."

24 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

The entire reason the hierarchy of life on Earth changes is because something new was introduced. Of course there are long, drawn out changes that last geological time frames, but for the most part, the new dominant species comes out on top due to something out of their control. They just rode the wave they were given.

The life evolution on the Earth is the example of straight rising line of growing complexity of the organisms.

Some species degenerate, of course, but as a rule, more complex species either exterminate or push the older ones.

Say, the mammals have much more perfect thermal regulation and cognitive abilities, and where are the reptiles?
No they became the tiny things lurking in grass where the mammals and the birds can't find them.
Of course, there are crolligators and anapythons. Yet. Before the jungles get required for plowland or canola oil plantations.

28 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

Now the question I guess is "are humans sufficiently advanced to preclude dropping from our dominant position?" Maybe, but something usually goes wrong whenever humans as a group are like "nah, don't worry, we got this!"

Currently the things are approaching to the point: "What will new the, human-designed biosphere be, when the old, natural biosphere gets gone due to the humans?"

30 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

"Do humans have a complacency factor that other organisms don't due to our cognizance?"

There is always a way for a group of humans to prevent another group of humans from complacency and make them evolve. Usually, a food limit.

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