Some words on the Fermi Paradox

[SiriusRocketry]

What if the proof that there is intelligent life somewhere, is simply the fact that they have never tried to contact us?

[p1t1o]

4 hours ago, SiriusRocketry said:

What if the proof that there is intelligent life somewhere, is simply the fact that they have never tried to contact us?

I dont think that can logically be called a "proof". And for one thing, they would also have to be otherwise undetectable.

We have made some attempts to contact ETs but even if we hadnt, we'd be just as detectable. Even discounting our electromagnetic (radio, television etc.) emissions, the spectrum of light reflected from Earth shows signs of life (natural spectra distorted by the presence of free oxygen and chlorophyl pigments) which at least shows the presence of life, if not intelligence.

 

[kerbiloid]

There were cultures in the Earth history who didn't presume there are other sapient beings across the ocean.

We should study their experience and make proper conclusions.

[Kernel Kraken]

If bridges are the shape they are on Earth because that works best because of physics, and aliens would be building the same bridge shapes, then wouldn't it make sense that the best aliens would be similar to us and genetically compatible?

[cubinator]

39 minutes ago, Kernel Kraken said:

If bridges are the shape they are on Earth because that works best because of physics, and aliens would be building the same bridge shapes, then wouldn't it make sense that the best aliens would be similar to us and genetically compatible?

Genetically compatible is a big maybe. Apparently there are other chemicals that can work similarly to RNA and DNA, which are made of things like silicon. So I wouldn't bet on it if we're talking about the whole universe. But similarities as far as structure, sure. A creature which is intelligent has a brain of some sort, which should probably be protected somehow. It would probably need structural parts, and appendages to manipulate objects. We have walking legs because we had evolutionary pressures to become nomadic.

Edited August 9, 2018 by cubinator

[MDZhB]

5 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

If bridges are the shape they are on Earth because that works best because of physics, and aliens would be building the same bridge shapes, then wouldn't it make sense that the best aliens would be similar to us and genetically compatible?

I know your post is more along biological lines, but I wonder if intelligence is tied to the particular social life humans have. A lot of our psychology and language has evolved to streamline our social behavior. If intelligence isn't unique to our style of society, then I wonder what a more solitary sentient species would be like. At the very least, their morals and language (if they had either) would be remarkably different.

[cubinator]

8 minutes ago, MDZhB said:

I know your post is more along biological lines, but I wonder if intelligence is tied to the particular social life humans have. A lot of our psychology and language has evolved to streamline our social behavior. If intelligence isn't unique to our style of society, then I wonder what a more solitary sentient species would be like. At the very least, their morals and language (if they had either) would be remarkably different.

A huge amount of our level of technological advancement is due to our ability to retain information over multiple generations: we teach our kids. And, living in a tribe, we can teach other people's kids too. I think that a species with a solitary lifestyle would develop much more slowly even if it had similar brainpower to humans.

[kerbiloid]

Does anybody think without speaking with him/herself in thoughts?

[Kernel Kraken]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Does anybody think without speaking with him/herself in thoughts?

What, do you think in pictures instead of words? Like thinking in heiroglyphics?

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Kernel Kraken said:

What, do you think in pictures instead of words? Like thinking in heiroglyphics?

I mean the internal dialog.

Edited August 11, 2018 by kerbiloid

[cubinator]

I wonder if having an internal dialogue is helped by having two more or less separated halves of a brain.

[kerbiloid]

Not sure about semibrains (though looks unlikely, as insects and worms can have a whole symposium of ganglia but still are... insects and worms).

I mean another thing (though I don't claim this, this is just my personal impression),

Afaik speech centers have appeared/separated/whatever out of fine motor centers.
I.e. out of the ancient parts of monkey brain which were used to dig tasty larvae out of a rotten stump with fingers.

Then it got used for communication (as mimics, gestures,, other applications of fine motorics).
Also while human tools were getting more and more complicated, these parts of brain were forcedly evolving together with crafting.

After a while the fine motorics evolved so highly that allowed to articulate the speech and later — the writing.

And as we can see this has happened more or less simultaneously with human cognitive revolution, when humans got some evolved kind of intellect differing from the usual animal intellect, radically self-aware.

Afaik, human self-awareness appears somewhere at age of 2.
As I can see, cats&dogs have intellect like a nearly 3 years old child, though totally practical one, more poor, like a 3 years old child rejecting further self-development.

And (I may be wrong here) usually humans when thinking have a common habit to speak with a virtual person.
Not necessary visually imagining it or naming, and mostly with themselves.

And even have their lips moving when thinking hard.

So, looks like the self-awareness and the thinking process are a by-product of fine motorics.
And homo sapiens has become sapiens when "his" personality got splitted and "he" received an ability to speak to himself, so discuss with himself, give advices to hinself.
This makes it possible to discuss a problem inside one brain at any moment, to look at a situation from various sides, to argue with himself.  Sometimes they call this reflection.
So, a human information refinery works much faster than animals' one and makes him a very special animal much higher than other ones.

Like intellect is a high ape's light mental disorder,

P.S.
Not sure, how do deaf persons think, what does their internal dialog looks like.
Unlikely they literally speak with virtual lips, but even harder for me to imagine a sign language internal speaking.

P.P.S.
As we can see, clever species have evolved fine motorics.
It's a jackpot that our ancestors loved edible larvae living in rotten stumps.

Edited August 11, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

On 8/9/2018 at 12:32 PM, Kernel Kraken said:

If bridges are the shape they are on Earth because that works best because of physics, and aliens would be building the same bridge shapes, then wouldn't it make sense that the best aliens would be similar to us and genetically compatible?

Bridges would be the same (assuming the same constraints, maybe aliens would be able to naturally fly, and never considered ground vehicles, or maybe the planet always has very high winds) because people can iterate bridge designs quickly, and do math to optimize bridges to a global maxima.

Evolution probably works very similarly everywhere, but for one thing it is mostly random, very slowly optimizing towards local maxima, which is heavily based on the environment around it. There is also no guarantee how far away anything is from the global maxima, and even worse, species affect the environment around them in ways that affect themselves.