The folly in using nature to predict the forms of sapient aliens

[-Velocity-]

I was originally going to post this as a response to that "requirements for civilization" thread, but I went off topic enough to warrent a new thread, IMO.

I think most people are in pretty good agreement as to what it would take for a civilization to arise. Indeed, it seems pretty obvious that things like communication, the ability to pass on knowledge, and the manipulation of physical objects are probably requirements. Please see that other thread if you want to discuss that.

Personally, I think it’s more interesting to imagine how civilizations, once established, could evolve. Most science fiction writers and futurists are stuck in an unimaginative mind frame, imagining aliens as essentially unchanged from their naturally-evolved forms. An example is this-

http://www.newsweek.com/aliens-are-enormous-science-suggests-319448

I don't really wish to judge the accuracy of this thinking as applied to biological evolution. Though as a counter-argument to the whole idea that bigger animals are smarter, I’d like to point out that one of the few non-human animals in the world shown to be self-aware (and otherwise very intelligent) is the European Magpie, which, while it has a large brain for its body size, still only weighs at most 0.25 kg. Other birds in the same family (the Corvids) have been observed using and fashioning tools (and are probably also self-aware). All this intellectual capacity is packed into a tiny brain. It is also likely that the majority of that tiny brain is not actually devoted to intellect. In the end, what the intelligent birds show us is that sapient beings need not be large.

Anyway, as the article I linked points out, there are likely natural evolutionary pressures that encourage longer lifespans in larger animals (such as, the larger you are, the less likely you are fall prey to predation, and thus, it makes sense to have a longer reproductive period). I am a bit less sold on the link between intelligence and animal size, but at the least, the longer lifespan encourages the possibility that civilizations will be founded by larger beings.

This is where I think that the imagination of science fiction writers and futurists and all the like fail them. We already possess the tools to deliberately induce changes in our own evolutionary design (and those tools are only getting better and better with each passing year), and our civilization is at an infant stage compared to astronomical time spans. We are no longer subject to natural biological selective pressures (such as predation or limited food resources). In terms of our future evolution, as long as we maintain civilization, it is a folly to draw any conclusions based off of natural evolution. If we desire, we control evolution now, and we can evolve at a rate much greater than that of natural evolution.

So the error of science fiction is to assume that we can predict alien bodies and minds based on the rules of natural Darwinian evolution. When aliens are thousands, millions, or billions of years more advanced than us, they are bound to have deliberately evolved themselves into something else, using artificial rules of their own desire. In fact, they are likely to evolve themselves in many directions.

For example, what if you want to maximize the number of individuals living on a planet? What do you do? As shown right here on Earth by the Corvids, (and perhaps by the "hobbit people", Homo floresiensis, though this needs more study) a sapient being does not have to be large. It might also be possible to be able to improve upon the biological neuron even further, increasing its processing capability and/or decreasing its size. The biological neuron is far from the smallest data processing unit possible. Either way, physics and the real-life example of intelligent birds shows us that we have rather large brains compared to our actual intellectual capacity. Thus, it seems highly possible that we could decrease body size without adversely affecting intellectual capacity. Smaller bodies consume less resources, and we could thus increase the number of people the planet could support by a factor of ten or more!

So- au contraire! Intelligent aliens might not be large at all- they could be tiny!

Despite the physical size of aliens or future human descendants, there will still be the need to manipulate objects. This is where direct, brain-machine interfaces (BMI) could come in useful- controlling a machine by thought alone. So, an intelligent biological being need not even have hands, if there is always a BMI around to serve as a manipulator. (Though one would imagine that hands- or their equivalent- would be retained as a manual backup.)

There is only one example in fiction that I am aware of- the sapient "Neo-dolphins" from David Brin's Uplift universe. They are dolphins that have been "uplifted" by genetic engineering to a level of sapience equaling humans, and manipulate the world and move about on dry land (when necessary) using BMIs. They do not have hands. So science fiction has not entirely failed in this regard.

Anyway, you might be wondering- what about cyborgs and intelligent machines? Well, I have entirely ignored them so far! The point is- just from genetic engineering alone, we have reason to believe that aliens- and any future descendants of ours- would differ greatly from their natural progenitors, and would be subject to artificial, deliberate selective pressures that have nothing or little in common with natural selective pressures. Once you factor in the emerging technologies of merging machine and biology, and the possibility of sapient machines, you have even more reason to believe that it is folly to speculate on the appearance of aliens based on their natural, Darwinian roots. Civilization- by definition of being non-natural- gives Darwin the middle finger, follows its own rules, and has the capability of evolving a species at a rate vastly higher than natural evolution. It seems likely that the only way we observe aliens in their true, Darwinian-evolved forms is if we catch their civilization in an infant stage. This seems unlikely, as even if only 1 in 1000 radio/spaceflight-capable alien civilizations survive for greater than one million years, they will outnumber "infant" civilizations like ours.

In the end, we should be careful when we try to draw conclusions about the forms of aliens from the natural world, because civilization itself is unnatural, and if the aliens have deliberately "adapted" themselves to it (nearly inevitable over thousands, millions, or billions of years), they may only have a passing resemblance to their original, progenitor forms, or even no resemblance at all. Our observations of natural selection are only applicable to predicting the starting forms of aliens. (It also seems possible that alien civilizations will consist of many different intelligent races sharing a common creator species, but that’s another topic.)

Oh and one more thing- even if harmfully conservative civilization maintains a prohibition on self-modification for millions of years, they will still evolve. People with certain traits will still produce more children than others. This leads to selective pressure, and a species will still "naturally" evolve to the unnatural condition of civilization, which has entirely different selective pressures than nature. So even if a species deliberately prohibits genetic engineering of itself, it will still evolve away in a different direction than what normal, natural selection would dictate in the absence of civilization. So no matter what an intelligent race does- short of artificially preserving and maintaining an ancient genome- it will evolve in directions that cannot be predicted by natural Darwinian evolution!

[smjjames]

Won't stop people from trying and it's fun.

There may indeed be some that look vaguely humanoid, upright with at least two pairs of limbs and an identifiable head, but the resemblance ends there. And I mean even more vague than the typical hollywood humanoid alien.

One only has to look to the Cambrian Explosion for the sheer number of body plans that evolution came up with, some of them didn't survive to modern times for any number of reasons, though some of the ones that did go extinct were very successful during their time.

[magnemoe]

Yes, large creatures has some benefits they live long and a large brain is easier to handle.

However they have some problems too, its fewer of them as they need more room, this is even more true for predators, less need to live in groups and this is harder because of food use.

This will hit them then trying to become intelligent and then trying to make an civilization.

Might well have harder with hands, as you want to use all limbs to carry your weight.

More species are smaller and its more individuals, being small make the benefit of staying in groups and being smart more important. In short I agree that smaller is more probable

[WestAir]

Technology and mobility aren't necessarily required to have an amazing society. I imagine a hive mind species in constant sleep where they create a Galaxy spanning civilization in dream state. Since reality is dependent on perspective, one could consider a dreaming/virtual society as real.

[Robotengineer]

Interesting post. I would predict that as a civilization discovers its own DNA/biology, the civ will start to modify its root species to branch off to create specialist species, if pesky bioethicists don't get in the way.

[Rakaydos]

You dont need genetic engineering to change a species beyond reconition. Evolution gave us hands, but inteligent design gave us pockets.

Homo sapiens started as a savana pack hunter that literally chased prey to death, zombie apocalipse style. Our brain developed with the need to track prey we couldnt see, so we could run them down under the hot african sun while avoiding alpha predators.

Now we spend most of our lives sitting at desks excercising something that was, at best, a secondary adaptation. No wonder the US has a weight problem.

[xcorps]

I think a bigger error of science fiction is to almost unanimously assume that any alien life will automatically be more technologically sophisticated and evolved than what we are.

[Nuke]

there is a possibility, however small it is, that we are one of the first intelligent species in the universe. it could be that up to this point the universe has been too active to produce life in abundance. extra radiation for example interfering with the initial development of biochemistry into early life. i read something about most of the galaxy for example being 'too hot' to be inhabitable. life would currently be relegated to the areas of sparse stellar populations, like the fringes of the galaxy or between the spiral arms where we are located, such that the radiation levels are low enough for life to exist. as the universe cools life might sprout up in abundance far beyond current levels. such would open the door to new paths to entropy to make up for all the dying stars.

this is of course limited to life as we know it. perhaps other life chemistry would be better adapted to high radiation locations in the universe. the kind of abuse that space does to our electronics would seem to indicate that even if you had silicon based life it too would be susceptible to radiation and would be limited to evolution in pockets of low radiation, like dense atmosphere super earths. space exploration for such a species in a hotter than usual part of the universe would likely be fatal and so evolution might take a path of high efficiency to conserve the limited available resources for the planetlocked civilization.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Nuke

[Technical Ben]

You dont need genetic engineering to change a species beyond reconition. Evolution gave us hands, but inteligent design gave us pockets.

Homo sapiens started as a savana pack hunter that literally chased prey to death, zombie apocalipse style. Our brain developed with the need to track prey we couldnt see, so we could run them down under the hot african sun while avoiding alpha predators.

Now we spend most of our lives sitting at desks excercising something that was, at best, a secondary adaptation. No wonder the US has a weight problem.

Wait... what does that mean for Kangaroos then?

What Nuke said. To put it into perspective, as follows:

I could suppose countless civilisations existed before mankind on earth. Why? Well, is there not countless time and animals from before we were around? There could have been mole people, there could have been bird people, dinosaur people or fish people...no, you don't think I have a good idea there? Why? Is there not a LOT of time in the past to allow for it? We know earth can support intelligent life, so the past must have been full of it, the same as now?

I would guess most people think that idea is crazy. But the question is why? It's not because it cannot happen, but because we see no evidence for it. There are not fossils of cars/houses/books made by other creatures, other civilisations from before humans. So we conclude "in absence of evidence, there was, never was and could not have been any other civilisations before humans". There is no evidence for it.

Likewise, is it sensible to say "but there is tons of space in space, planets and stars, so much there must be other civilisations other than humans"? In absence of evidence, I'd say no. Just as I don't imagine there are fish people under the sea, moon people on the moon, Mars people on Mars... if I keep going, I can safely conclude there are no aliens elsewhere... until I do see evidence for it.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Technical Ben

[grawl]

Well, you'll never know until you open the box ...

[Nuke]

need more data points. one is not enough. if we find life elsewhere in our solar system that would be a second.

[magnemoe]

Interesting post. I would predict that as a civilization discovers its own DNA/biology, the civ will start to modify its root species to branch off to create specialist species, if pesky bioethicists don't get in the way.

Perhaps/ perhaps not, I guess that human differences will be more style than utility. Yes it will be utility changes but they will be pretty general as they would be general useful.

Theories that human races is mostly beauty based, it the reason was just utility and drift is would be less. This require that beauty ideal keep unchanged for thousands of years and low influx of other people.

With GM this will be far simpler, I will not think about goths

You might very well get uplifted species too.

[-Velocity-]

Wait... what does that mean for Kangaroos then?

What Nuke said. To put it into perspective, as follows:

I could suppose countless civilisations existed before mankind on earth. Why? Well, is there not countless time and animals from before we were around? There could have been mole people, there could have been bird people, dinosaur people or fish people...no, you don't think I have a good idea there? Why? Is there not a LOT of time in the past to allow for it? We know earth can support intelligent life, so the past must have been full of it, the same as now?

I would guess most people think that idea is crazy. But the question is why? It's not because it cannot happen, but because we see no evidence for it. There are not fossils of cars/houses/books made by other creatures, other civilisations from before humans. So we conclude "in absence of evidence, there was, never was and could not have been any other civilisations before humans". There is no evidence for it.

You're wrong in why it's stupid to imagine that there could have been prior civilizations on Earth. It's dumb because there is no evidence for a prior civilization on Earth when a prior civilization would have definitely left abundant evidence documenting its existence. It is in no way analogous to alien civilizations, which could quite easily have existed for billions of years somewhere out there and not left any evidence that we have yet observed here.

Likewise, is it sensible to say "but there is tons of space in space, planets and stars, so much there must be other civilisations other than humans"?

Indeed, this is the only sensible conclusion. And "tons of space" does not do it justice. The current estimate for the number of Earth-sized and super-Earth sized planets in the habitable zones of stars between the mass of the Sun and the mass of a red dwarf in our galaxy is 40,000,000,000 (forty billion). There are around 200-ish billion galaxies in the observable universe. Conservatively estimating that the Milky Way galaxy is an unusually planet-rich galaxy by a factor of four, then we can estimate that there should be on the order of 200,000,000,000 X 40,000,000,000 X 0.25 = 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 potentially habitable planets in the observable universe. That's a 2 with twenty one zeros after it.

In absence of evidence, I'd say no. Just as I don't imagine there are fish people under the sea, moon people on the moon, Mars people on Mars... if I keep going, I can safely conclude there are no aliens elsewhere... until I do see evidence for it.

You're falling into the same folly that the Catholic church did when they prosecuted Galileo. You want to believe our place in the cosmos is special. I just want to believe whatever the truth is.

For centuries now, we've been accumulating fact after fact after fact that shows our place in the cosmos is of no particular significance. First, we found out that we weren't the center of the universe, and that the planets revolved around the Sun. Then we found out that the Sun wasn't the only star. Then we found out that the Sun wasn't in the center of the galaxy, as early star censuses seemed to show. Then we found out that we weren't the only galaxy- there were hundreds of billions more in just the observable universe alone! Then we found out we weren't the only planetary system, that we weren't the only Earth mass planet, and that there are tens of billions of Earth and super-Earth planets orbiting in the habitable zones of yellow to red dwarf stars, just in this galaxy alone.

At this point, not believing that aliens exist somewhere out there in the universe makes about as much sense as believing in magic. Once you understand the sheer numbers involved and the science of it, it truly takes an act of religious faith to not believe in aliens. This is why all astronomers feel very strongly (a "statistical certainty") that aliens exist. I'm serious- an act of God is what it would take to prevent aliens from existing somewhere out there. If aliens don't exist, then God certainly does.

Edited April 9, 2015 by |Velocity|

[KerikBalm]

Yet I am fairly confident that there is no interstellar civilization within our galaxy...

A fusion powered vessel with the mass ratio of the saturn V could attain speeds well above 0.1c

Given the age of the universe, this planet, how long life has been on it, etc...

It seems there has been plenty of time for a spacefaring civilization to rise and colonize the entire galaxy. Its highly unlikely we are in that narrow time frame right now.

I also find it unlikely that they would stop expanding if they could expand.

That isn't to say there haven't been billions of civilizations like our that destroyed their ecosystem/ nuked themselves into oblivion/ used up all the chemical resources and reverted to an agrarian society/etc.

[Kibble]

It seems there has been plenty of time

If intelligent life developed in the first four billion years of Milky Way's existence, they would so far have had 9 billion years to create a method of interstellar expansion. If the civilization expands in a sphere at a constant rate of .1*C, and their interstellar expansion began in their first billion years of intelligence, it would take a trillion years to reach us - they would bee just arriving at the other end of the Galaxy a billion years from now.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Kibble

[Darnok]

You're wrong in why it's stupid to imagine that there could have been prior civilizations on Earth. It's dumb because there is no evidence for a prior civilization on Earth when a prior civilization would have definitely left abundant evidence documenting its existence. It is in no way analogous to alien civilizations, which could quite easily have existed for billions of years somewhere out there and not left any evidence that we have yet observed here.

You want to believe our place in the cosmos is special. I just want to believe whatever the truth is.

Well I want to know the truth and from what I learned truth is not so easy to spot If you rely on artificial values... for example GPS, if you change 0 meridian to different location you can see wonders.

There is something special in our planet And we have ancient Mensa test to solve to learn all the answers.

[WestAir]

With 2 sextillion inhabitable planets in the observable universe, you'd be better off selling ocean-front property on the moon than you would be convincing a rational brain that life only exists here.

[xcorps]

It's dumb because there is no evidence for a prior civilization on Earth when a prior civilization would have definitely left abundant evidence documenting its existence. It is in no way analogous to alien civilizations, which could quite easily have existed for billions of years somewhere out there and not left any evidence that we have yet observed here.

Meh, I don't know about the absolute veracity of that statement. The K-Pg event was pretty violent.

[Bill Phil]

need more data points. one is not enough. if we find life elsewhere in our solar system that would be a second.

Earth would be more like 5 data points or more.

There's a lot of different places on Earth where there's life.

But, one planet is not enough.

[DaMichel]

Humans originated only from one place though. From somewhere in east Afrika i believe.

If we apply the mediocrity principle, we can come to the conclusion that there are many other inhabited planets out there. The recent findings extrasolar planets support this.

But there is one thing that i don't understand. It is basically Fermi's paradox. We should have been visited already. If some civilization developed a couple of 10000 years ahead of us, say in the distance of 1000 light years from here, they should have had enough time to find us and send a probe to earth.

I am assuming of course that they are as interested in finding live on other planets as we are. So they would have build the same telescopes as we do and would have found 10000 years ago by means of spectral analysis of the light from earth that there is biological life here.

Edited April 10, 2015 by DaMichel

[Darnok]

You forget Prime Directive (it is opposite for what is USA doing ), more advanced civilizations will try to hide from us until we get ability to travel between solar systems.

Reason is simple - you don't learn caveman about nukes and you don't give him your address.

[DaMichel]

Could be true

Edited April 10, 2015 by DaMichel
wrong thread ;)

[KerikBalm]

If intelligent life developed in the first four billion years of Milky Way's existence, they would so far have had 9 billion years to create a method of interstellar expansion. If the civilization expands in a sphere at a constant rate of .1*C, and their interstellar expansion began in their first billion years of intelligence, it would take a trillion years to reach us - they would bee just arriving at the other end of the Galaxy a billion years from now.

Ow, the wrongness, it hurts.

The Milky way is 100,000 light years across.

If the civilization expands at a constant rate of 0.1C, then it spreads throughout the galaxy in 100,000/ 0.1 = 1,000,000 years.

One million years is *nothing* on the geologic timescale, let along the galactic/cosmological time scale.

Life on Earth has been here for roughly 4,000 million years.

A civilization with fusion powered spacecraft needs just 1

If such civilizations were common in the galaxy... well, the galaxy would surely be saturated by now.

You can argue that just because they can, doesn't mean they will...

But if there were thousands of them, it strains credibility to believe that not a single one of them expanded for even 0.025% of the time that life has been on earth.

So then we must say that there are very few such civilizations in the galaxy.

Onc we arrive at very few, none is not such a far step.

In the universe on the other hand... it does strain credibility. Intergalactic travel is even more mindbogglingly difficult than interstellar travel.

It could be there are a many galaxies completely colonized from one ur-civilization that originated within that galaxy, and we're just lucky that hasn't happened here (yet) - and even they don't have the technologyto come here.

You forget Prime Directive (it is opposite for what is USA doing ), more advanced civilizations will try to hide from us until we get ability to travel between solar systems.

Reason is simple - you don't learn caveman about nukes and you don't give him your address.

Thats fine if there are very few - but as the number of civilizations goes up, the probability that they all observe that rule goes way way down.

[Kibble]

Oh you're right I did the math assuming .1 percent of C. Haha!

Still, thats 300 km/s - the back of the envelope says it takes a mass ratio of 450 to 1, assuming Isp of 5 000s. With staging, most rockets can only achieve a mass ratio of about 20. To accelerate up to 300 km/s, this means you need an Isp of 10 000! Not impossible, but very difficult. Its unlikely that interstellar expansion can happen much faster than that.

[Darnok]

Thats fine if there are very few - but as the number of civilizations goes up, the probability that they all observe that rule goes way way down.

I disagree. Looking at history of our civilization you can say there were points where some things become obvious.

Gathering and hunting is no longer our main source of food, so we can spend more time on different things - it was one of important points in history of our civilization.

Imagine world full of smartphones, but you have no time to text because you didn't found diner yet

Developing of writings, math and education, so we can communicate and share knowledge. Today those things are obvious, but even 200 years ago?

Why would you teach math a slave that has only one job... picking cotton... I mean picking cotton faster.