Do you think we are alone in the Milky Way?

[Scotius]

All we know currently is: Amount of civilisations in Milky Way Galaxy 0<1... Upper limit remains undetermined. But considering the sheer number of stars in the galaxy it really should be higher than 1. Rest is Wild Mass Guessing.

[mikegarrison]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

A sapient species changes the medium, non-sapient are changing themselves. The latter has its limits. The former has them much wider.

The question is not in signals. The question is just in their crocodile shoes and bags. Can they become at least savages.

You miss my point entirely. Why is "sapience" something to be expected from evolution? The Drake equation requires it, but in all the billions of years of Earth evolution it has happened exactly one time. It's not even clear if it is an evolutionary advantage. Ants don't have it, and they outnumber us. Algae doesn't have it, and algae have been around for billions of years while we haven't even made it one million.

It might not even be a viable path to the stars. Almost certainly it's not the only viable path, but we think of it as such because it's the only one available to us. But that's just because it's OUR accident of evolution. There is no reason to expect it will be anyone else's accident of evolution.

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Why is "sapience" something to be expected from evolution?

1. Nothing is expected from evolution at all. It just runs.
2. As it was told above, there can be as many planets with microbes as one wishes, but usually in "we and X" the "X" is somebody, not something, So, at least comparable to us. 

16 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

in all the billions of years of Earth evolution it has happened exactly one time

A cone has exactly one vertex. It's just a point. The cone has infinite number of points. Why consider the vertex as something special?

Maybe because the sapient human has appeared not "just once", but "at last", after billions years of increasing complexity?
And is the only species able to change the planetary landscape entirely, and the only species able to store and reproduce the absent members' experience, making the complexity grow exponentially?
And the only species able to change the genome on desire and create other species? (Well, not right already, but in the very close future.)

Edited March 2, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Yeah, who knows what the brain is good for. But attributing usefulness to a structure is close to seeing a plan.

Evolution does not plan, but it can freely experiment through variation, discard through selection, etc. The relatively big brain happened in mammals at some time, and rapidly developed further in primates. Arguing "it is good for something" is misusing our standing today, as we have occupied many niches and eliminated most of the competition and reduced other occupants or completely replaced them.

Other humans before had even bigger brains, but did not have as much influence. For an archaeologist it is easy to imagine humanoids with super big brains occupying a landscape for 200.000 years without leaving much of a trace, not talking about electromagnetic signals to the stellar environment. All that probability arguing does not help.

We.need.data.

:-)

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

7 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

who knows what the brain is good for.

120 kcal / 100 g

 

[Nightside]

22 hours ago, caballerodiez said:

So.. recent estimations for the Drake Equation (Maccone, 2012) suggest that there could be around 4,600 civilizations in our galaxy

Is “civilization “ synonymous with “species” in this case?

 

[Cassel]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

1. Nothing is expected from evolution at all. It just runs.

It seems to me that you do not understand how evolution works, it do not act randomly or chaotically. The fact that there are dolphins shows that mammals can live underwater, but they will become similar to fish. Fish may also live on land, but they will evolve be similar to land animals, just with different internal organs.
I forgot what they are called, but there are two species of animals completely unrelated to each other, in the evolutionary tree they are further away from each other than man and elephant, but both species look almost the same, it's because they live in the almost same environment.

Living organisms adapt best as they can to the environment, and even non-related creatures adapt to the given environment in the same way, because only one way is optimal. If aliens came to Earth, after a few generations they would look almost like us, although their internal organs, color of blood or skin color could be completely different.

[Green Baron]

Part of the variation processes (mutation) can actually be described as random, the selection part of evolution is not. Selection gives a better probability for procreation to those who are a little more "fit" under given conditions. Evolution has a lot of mass to play with, it can afford the fact that most of its experiments (mutations) go wrong, some even are unable to survive.

Similar structures (convergence or analogies, for your dolphin it is homology, its bones, lungs, brain, etc. are all those of a mammal, not of a fish. A dolphin is not fish-like, rather elephant-like !) are not necessarily a sign of selection. Structures can be interdependent, the one does not come without the other, only one of them actually being the selective criterion, not the other, for example because the material demands so or the rest of the organism cannot function properly without it. Nothing is best adapted, that would actually be the end of an evolutionary branch. No more selection. Only "good enough" with a little variation in individuals or part of a population, enough that the experiments carry on. That is what makes it so successful.

Yeah, it is a vast field. Look up homology and analogy in convergent evolution for the details :-)

Edited March 2, 2019 by Green Baron

[Nightside]

2 hours ago, Cassel said:

Living organisms adapt best as they can to the environment, and even non-related creatures adapt to the given environment in the same way, because only one way is optimal. If aliens came to Earth, after a few generations they would look almost like us, although their internal organs, color of blood or skin color could be completely different.

This idea assumes that the aliens have previously evolved to fill a similar ecological niche to humans in the first place, but there is no reason they would have to have any similarity besides a carbon base and some process of gaining energy from their environment. 

They could be more like sponges or shrimp than any sort of human-like lifeform.

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

You miss my point entirely. Why is "sapience" something to be expected from evolution? The Drake equation requires it, but in all the billions of years of Earth evolution it has happened exactly one time. It's not even clear if it is an evolutionary advantage. Ants don't have it, and they outnumber us. Algae doesn't have it, and algae have been around for billions of years while we haven't even made it one million.

It might not even be a viable path to the stars. Almost certainly it's not the only viable path, but we think of it as such because it's the only one available to us. But that's just because it's OUR accident of evolution. There is no reason to expect it will be anyone else's accident of evolution.

Yes sapience has few benefits early on. It probably happened with humans because we are social and the social interactions created an pressure for more intelligence. Other humanoids was the most complex things they interacted with.
However even trough Homo erectus did pretty well this did not really pay off for full until we started spreading out all over the world 
As time went on things went a bit exponential then we discovered agriculture. 

However before erectus we could very easy gone extinct and we might not become much smarter than erectus either. 
And as you point out, it just happened once. 
Now you might say that mammals and birds are pretty smart and has an decent chance of creating another sapient species over deep time but we don't know and its an obvious great filter. 

Brings up an pet theory of mine, humans are very good at large scale organisation. Civilizations started popping up pretty fast after agriculture and all over the world. 
This was not something who evolved and it could not evolve easy, it was just an build in feature of humans. 
 

[Rakaydos]

A Drake equation "Great Filter" is  something that needs a lot of coincidences in a relatively short period to go right to make the next leap.

I am of the opinion that humanity is about 2/3 of the way through a Great Filter, and so far so good but we can still fail it.

Industrial revolution started the clock on my great filter in a couple different ways. Global Average Warming is the one we havnt beat yet, but the industrial revolution happened as the earth was beginning a slide back into an ice age, giving us a few critical extra degrees to make up before we wipe ourselves out. Here's hoping. But the industrial revolution also brought with it global warfare and atomic weaponry. How lucky are we as a species, that Wold War 1 happened before we had atomic weapons? What would have happened if atomic weapons were developed in peacetime and added to military arsonals to be used the way carpet bombing was, and not thought about until the next major war casually ignites MAD? With the recent global backslide to athoritarian leaders, what would have happened if pedant Germany had developed the atomic bomb?

And this problem isnt going away, though we stagnated to a steady state once the USSR collaped. The only way to escape this filter is to become genuinely multiplanetary, self sufficently independant from our home planet, at a minimum safe distance to avoid the latest technological terrors. That's our safe zone. But liquid fuel rocket technoligy was basically ignored until the pedants were V-2 bombarding london, and the space race was built on the backs of America's German Rocket Scientists vs the Soviet's German Rocket Engineers. The Cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, all that was a nessesary backdrop to develop the beginnings of an interplanatry capability. How many civilizations could have survived their own cold war? And that's assuming they got as far as the cold war, and not an oops-we-destroyed-the-planet scenerio as above. We didnt stay at the moon, but we developed the technoligy that is now, maybe, in the next few decades, going to lead to our first major colony on another world. Can you imagine if we didnt have a moon for those first awe inspiring steps? No earthrise photo or apollo 11 or apollo 13 to bring the world together during the height of the cold war, let alone the launch infrastructure for interplanetary rockets?

We've gotten miracle after miracle to get as far as we have, but Global Average Warming is the ticking timebomb that would have killed us decades ago if it wasnt for that ice age. Global Average Warming has two major effects- Regional Climate Change, where the enviroment we built our infrastructure to take advantage of changes on us. Good farmland goes dry, or washes into the sea from excessive rain, while permafrost melts and releases centuries of decay products. And Extreme Weather Events, where the higher energy available to weather in general leads to stronger hurricanes, wandering jet streams pulling polar air south (while heating the poles) and record heatwaves.

[Cassel]

13 hours ago, Nightside said:

This idea assumes that the aliens have previously evolved to fill a similar ecological niche to humans in the first place, but there is no reason they would have to have any similarity besides a carbon base and some process of gaining energy from their environment. 

They could be more like sponges or shrimp than any sort of human-like lifeform.

Who told you such stupid things?
After all, to deal with an intelligent being, its brain must have similar capabilities to ours.
It forces certain elements in the construction of the body, the body must provide such a large brain with energy. This forces the construction of the digestive system, the amount and type of food taken.

This creature must have eyesight capable of distinguishing colors and seeing the stars in the night sky, must have hearing and must be able to communicate with other individuals of its species. Otherwise, there is no chance to develop the community. Without the ability to see stars, aliens would not be able to conclude that there are other worlds beyond their planet.

Aliens must have the ability to move and manipulate their surroundings, this forces them to have limbs that allow them to do so. It is impossible to build technology with horse hooves, they must have precise fingers, although they do not necessarily have to have 5 fingers. Evolution strives to simplify and save energy, so such a creature will have a minimum of limbs that are required to meet all these requirements.

When it comes to social structure and ideologies, there are also some rules. Aliens must have economics, social structure, governments and different views on the same issues. In a developed community, this is a critical point, the ability to reconcile different, sometimes mutually exclusive views, and at the same time to exist on one planet. These differences are needed in order for the community to come up with solutions for every global problem and to be able to choose the one that gives the best results. If a species becomes one-view only, it will disappear as soon as there is a problem that it will not be able to solve.

Probably their nervous system will have, like ours or any other animals we know, coded fear of alien and different-looking creatures. By this conditioning they will be careful and will not send around radio waves so that someone who is stronger than them will not notice them.
I do not know yet how it would look from the point of view of technologically developed weapons, but our history shows that in past days one could fight for one city and end the war after victory. Since the Second World War, when war begins, the end is only when the entire nation is defeated. In inter-planetary wars it will probably be like that, when two species discover their existence, they will fight until one is completely defeated.

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Cassel

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

This creature must have eyesight capable of distinguishing colors

Why?

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

and seeing the stars in the night sky,

Unless it's always covered with clouds, or their eyes have some multispectral vision + light polarization sensitivity which turn the star sky into a mess of rays, points, and auroras.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Otherwise, there is no chance to develop the community.

It may hear, sniff, and taste much better than humans do, and need lower (or none) visual capabilities.

It may interact with other specimens of its species as a dense colony like a hive, and have better information exchange channels.

So, all colony would know everything what a hundred of them have "seen".

It may have specialized kinds of species. Say, soldiers with eyes, nerds with brains, workers with taste. And some of them can be underdeveloped and expendable. It's usual for the terrestrial  insects.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Aliens must have the ability to move and manipulate their surroundings, this forces them to have limbs that allow them to do so.

Or a bunch of primitive expendable underdeveloped zergs as working arms.
Or some kind of sticky slime.

Movement is not a requirement at all. Only workers and soldiers need it. A queen and nerds can sit and play surf web procrastinate do thei job _{(a nerds' dream)}.

At last they can be amorphous neural or pheromone parasites enslaving an absolutely stupid but handy species. And not necessary the only one.

They may have a gender dimorphism when one gender is brainless and expendable but handy, while another one vice versa.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Aliens must have economics, social structure, governments

Or have naturally its since they were a colony of zergs, and no need all of this.
Or be lonely squids meeting just from time to time for talking and reproduction, and having the main rule: don't get close to others except of Meeting Days, that's the only politics.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

different views on the same issues. In a developed community, this is a critical point, the ability to reconcile different, sometimes mutually exclusive views, and at the same time to exist on one planet.

Only when you are not a tenmillenium-aged squid knowing more than any of your terrestrial counterparts can say wise.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

If a species becomes one-view only

Most part of the human history this was so. Sceneries were changing.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Probably their nervous system will have, like ours or any other animals we know, coded fear of alien and different-looking creatures.

Or they are neural or pheromone parasites who instinctively get excited seeing an unusual potential slave.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Since the Second World War, when war begins, the end is only when the entire nation is defeated.

An enormously rare case probably never succeeded in history.
Or if as "defeated" you mean a capitulation, just a rare case, and almost always it was a war between the unions of the most developed countries.

Edited March 3, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

14 hours ago, Nightside said:

This idea assumes that the aliens have previously evolved to fill a similar ecological niche to humans in the first place, but there is no reason they would have to have any similarity besides a carbon base and some process of gaining energy from their environment. 

They could be more like sponges or shrimp than any sort of human-like lifeform.

This idea has been thematised for example by Stanislaw Lem in his scifi novel "Fiasko", a book that combines a criticism of communication difficulties as well as of the madness of war in space.

I would principally agree with that, there is no guarantee that another evolution takes a similar path, but i would also say that a sedentary organism (of which we had and have quite a few on earth) lacks part of the pressure to develop manipulation organs and planning abilities. But that is only a thought.

And i still say: same material + similar processes ~= similar outcome. Wow, an equation

What i want to say as well that many people actually assume the existence of ET & consorts a priory, and there is the problem that creates the paradox. The whole "problem" becomes non-existent if we all lean back and wait until a real world positive. IRL, there is no paradox, it only exists through our stomping feet that there must be whoever.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, Nightside said:

This idea assumes that the aliens have previously evolved to fill a similar ecological niche to humans in the first place, but there is no reason they would have to have any similarity besides a carbon base and some process of gaining energy from their environment. 

They could be more like sponges or shrimp than any sort of human-like lifeform.

You need an reason to be intelligent first of all, having that big brain is expensive. Being an social species is probably an requirement, its required for civilization anyway.
You need some sort of manipulators like hands for any type of civilization. 

Now humans was pretty lucky with out setup as we are very flexible, we colonized pretty much all of earth during the stone age. 
We can eat a lot of different foods. 

Still we need pretty high energy rich food. Now you could easy get an alien who is far more restricted in its diet, this will limit living area and population. 
An pure predator like an cat would also have an much lower population. 
An huge animal like an elephant could be intelligent and live of lower energy density food but are again limited in numbers because of size. 
 

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Why?

Without a colorful vision you will not see many threats, you will not distinguish between many useful resources and the development of technology will be slower. Talk to someone who can not see the colors and ask how his life would look if he had to remove all the laws and regulations that makes his life easier.

Quote

Unless it's always covered with clouds, or their eyes have some multispectral vision + light polarization sensitivity which turn the star sky into a mess of rays, points, and auroras.

And what's the conclusion? Such a species will not be able to do many things that we can do?

Quote

It may hear, sniff, and taste much better than humans do, and need lower (or none) visual capabilities.

If you did not notice, we in the evolutionary process sacrificed other senses in favor of sight and intellect. The development of these two gave us an advantage over other animals that have better sense of smell and hearing, and even better see in the dark.
If you had better hearing then your brain would have to analyze more signals all the time, and that would limit other abilities.

Quote

It may interact with other specimens of its species as a dense colony like a hive, and have better information exchange channels.

So, all colony would know everything what a hundred of them have "seen".

It may have specialized kinds of species. Say, soldiers with eyes, nerds with brains, workers with taste. And some of them can be underdeveloped and expendable. It's usual for the terrestrial  insects.

Or a bunch of primitive expendable underdeveloped zergs as working arms.
Or some kind of sticky slime.

Movement is not a requirement at all. Only workers and soldiers need it. A queen and nerds can sit and play surf web procrastinate do thei job _{(a nerds' dream)}.

At last they can be amorphous neural or pheromone parasites enslaving an absolutely stupid but handy species. And not necessary the only one.

They may have a gender dimorphism when one gender is brainless and expendable but handy, while another one vice versa.

Or have naturally its since they were a colony of zergs, and no need all of this.
Or be lonely squids meeting just from time to time for talking and reproduction, and having the main rule: don't get close to others except of Meeting Days, that's the only politics.

With a zerg-hive-colony, this is a sci-fi idea, in fact such a species would not have a chance with more autonomous opponents.

How would the colony evolve? Soldiers who can not reproduce will not be able to pass on their individual, better traits to the next generation, which means that soldiers from a more autonomous species will gain an advantage over time, because they will pass on their characteristics to children. Same with workers.

Such a fat, immobile head of a colony would be an easy target. What would happen to the colony if its leader were killed? If the remaining members of the colony can not replace the leader, the whole colony dies with the death of the leader, and from the point of view of evolution, waste of resource and the way to extinction of whole species.

How would leaders evolve? After all, their evolution would be very slow and each time one colony would win against another, it would come to a lot of waste of resources and many soldiers and workers would die. With more autonomous individuals, the species evolves faster.

What if the workers fail and do not get enough food? Then the entire colony with all its technological achievements is lost?

The fact that on Earth the hives stopped at the level of insects shows how this idea is not effective.

Quote

Only when you are not a tenmillenium-aged squid knowing more than any of your terrestrial counterparts can say wise.

What?

Quote

Most part of the human history this was so. Sceneries were changing.

No, we've been all the time and we are divided. Only today, the West has created such an illusion that all views other than the Western ones do not exist or are wrong. There have always been many ideologies in our history that competed with each other and were treated as equal. Thanks to this we owe the development.

Quote

Or they are neural or pheromone parasites who instinctively get excited seeing an unusual potential slave.

This is not possible for the species you see for the first time.

Quote

An enormously rare case probably never succeeded in history.
Or if as "defeated" you mean a capitulation, just a rare case, and almost always it was a war between the unions of the most developed countries.

Cold war is another rare case? If you have a weapon that can destroy a nation on the other side of the planet, you will not fight for one city, you must conquer the entire nation and take away its counterattack ability. Only so you can be victorious, same it will be with interplanetary wars.

Edited March 3, 2019 by Cassel

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Without a colorful vision you will not see many threats, you will not distinguish between many useful resources and the development of technology will be slower.

Unless you are an alchemist the color vision doesn't play big role.
There are other senses to study which exactly ore is under that hill or what is this plant.
Once someone have studied this, others just follow his instructions.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

And what's the conclusion? Such a species will not be able to do many things that we can do?

They either don't know about stars at all, or just use them. 

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

If you did not notice, we in the evolutionary process sacrificed other senses in favor of sight and intellect.

Because our prototype was a species living in the places where the vision gave more advantages.
It was more significant to see a larve or a banana on another tree, or a cat hiding there.
Say, cats and dogs believe more in the nose than in the eyes, as they follow the traces.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

With a zerg-hive-colony, this is a sci-fi idea

This is bees and ants, fishes, and in some degree colonies of small mammals.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

How would the colony evolve?

How have they done that?

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Soldiers who can not reproduce will not be able to pass on their individual, better traits to the next generation, which means that soldiers from a more autonomous species will gain an advantage over time, because they will pass on their characteristics to children. Same with workers.

This doesn't stop the ants and bees from the evolution.
The low-level underdeveloped and specialized expendable specimens do not take part in the reproduction. Only several high-rank ones compete, and even then most of them are still expendables, only a queen is not.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

How would leaders evolve?

Competition between the drones. Deposition within the queen.
Pre-installing reduced firmware into the regular specimens, letting them follow just some branch of the whole program available for the queen and the drones.
A queen pheromones suppressing the development of other females in the hive. Using overgrown retarded specialized sterile female bees/ants as expendable zergs.
If a queen dies, the chemical suppression stops, and one of the newborn females grows completely, unlocks the full premium version of its firmware, and starts suppressing the development of others, becoming the new queen.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

After all, their evolution would be very slow and each time one colony would win against another, it would come to a lot of waste of resources and many soldiers and workers would die.

No problem, they are not full-grown, there will be more. And this happens daily between ants and bees.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

What if the workers fail and do not get enough food?

Some newborn species will be workers, some of them will be drones.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Then the entire colony with all its technological achievements is lost?

The newborn species have full version of firmware.
If they are sapient, the queen will keep the knowledge.
If there will be a lot of knowledge, some kind of specialized monks/nerds will appear. (Naturally celibated, lol, like any other ant or bee except the queen and the drones).

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

The fact that on Earth the hives stopped at the level of insects shows how this idea is not effective.

Tell about this to the XIX century factory workers, or to Henry Ford, lol.

Also, insects and molluscs are another branch of the dual tree of the terrestrial life. Insects and squids are the tops of that branch, like we, the monkeys, of this one.
We have separated after polypes into two big branches: worms (they) and echynoderms (we).

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

What?

What if you are a professor between one year old children? Is that communication such important? Isn't it enough for you to discuss some rare important questions with equals, once per century?

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

No, we've been all the time and we are divided.

If you are a tenmillenium-old squid, you don't need to divide. You just have to remember all possible opinions you have to consider, compare, and once per century discuss with your neighbor.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Only today, the West has created such an illusion that all views other than the Western ones do not exist or are wrong. There have always been many ideologies in our history that competed with each other and were treated as equal.

Very rarely the difference was in something significant. Mostly, in colors of sceneries and names of actors.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Thanks to this we owe the development.

We owe the development because of limited resources and growing population.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

This is not possible for the species you see for the first time.

That's why people have hunted a lot of species exotic for them, just for collection.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

Cold war is another rare case?

It was a war? I thought, it was a peace.

1 hour ago, Cassel said:

If you have a weapon that can destroy a nation on the other side of the planet, you will not fight for one city, you must conquer the entire nation and take away its counterattack ability.

That's why the total annihilation strategy got obsolete as soon as the progress of electronics allowed to hit a target smaller than a city, being replaced with limited strategies and development of tactical nukes and 100 kt strategical warheads. And then with total reduction of the nuke arsenals for ten times. And now with the stylish low-yield strategical nukes.

Edited March 3, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Cassel]

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Unless you are an alchemist the color vision doesn't play big role.
There are other senses to study which exactly ore is under that hill or what is this plant.
Once someone have studied this, others just follow his instructions.

Ok, I can see the development of a species that viruses or bacteria examine with the help of smell or taste.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Because our prototype was a species living in the places where the vision gave more advantages.
It was more significant to see a larve or a banana on another tree, or a cat hiding there.
Say, cats and dogs believe more in the nose than in the eyes, as they follow the traces.

And why did this species develop more than others? Maybe because such features gave him the advantage?

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

This is bees and ants, fishes, and in some degree colonies of small mammals.

So simple organisms that are unable to compete with more autonomous species.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

How have they done that?

what?

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

This doesn't stop the ants and bees from the evolution.
The low-level underdeveloped and specialized expendable specimens do not take part in the reproduction. Only several high-rank ones compete, and even then most of them are still expendables, only a queen is not.

Competition between the drones. Deposition within the queen.
Pre-installing reduced firmware into the regular specimens, letting them follow just some branch of the whole program available for the queen and the drones.
A queen pheromones suppressing the development of other females in the hive. Using overgrown retarded specialized sterile female bees/ants as expendable zergs.
If a queen dies, the chemical suppression stops, and one of the newborn females grows completely, unlocks the full premium version of its firmware, and starts suppressing the development of others, becoming the new queen.

No sense, after the war in which the leader dies, he has no immediate change of power, this is the end for such a community.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

No problem, they are not full-grown, there will be more. And this happens daily between ants and bees.

So between small organisms for which the Earth is huge and full of resources? Imagine such a war between swarms of people in every 100 million individuals. Several such wars would destroy the entire planet.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Some newborn species will be workers, some of them will be drones.

Only that wars do not go all the time, so you do not always need soldiers. And when war begins, it's good to recruit and send workers to the front. The swarm does not have this option, so it needs more resources to match soldier number of more autonomous species.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The newborn species have full version of firmware.
If they are sapient, the queen will keep the knowledge.
If there will be a lot of knowledge, some kind of specialized monks/nerds will appear. (Naturally celibated, lol, like any other ant or bee except the queen and the drones).

If they are aware, why is a laborer or soldier to sacrifice?

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Tell about this to the XIX century factory workers, or to Henry Ford, lol.

What biological blockade forbids a regular worker to become an entrepreneur and open up competition for Ford?

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

What if you are a professor between one year old children? Is that communication such important? Isn't it enough for you to discuss some rare important questions with equals, once per century?

Speaking of the war on clubs and spears, in fact some individuals may be stupid and untrained, but with modern technologies you need trained soldiers, and nobody is born with the ability to drive a tank.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If you are a tenmillenium-old squid, you don't need to divide. You just have to remember all possible opinions you have to consider, compare, and once per century discuss with your neighbor.

If you can understand many views and perceive reality using many definitions of the same word. The mere fact of learning something by heart does not guarantee it.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Very rarely the difference was in something significant. Mostly, in colors of sceneries and names of actors.

Here you prove that you have no idea about different ideologies. See the map, which I've pasted a few posts earlier. Even today on Earth there are many ideologies that perceive the world completely differently. For example one protects the lives of women and children, while others can send a child with a bomb in a backpack to gain something. This is a matter of fundamental differences on which completely different views and social structures are built. Of course I do not want to judge which one is right and which is not, because I would have to measure both using my ethical standards, so it's clear that the good would be consistent with my standards, and the bad one that behaves differently.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

We owe the development because of limited resources and growing population.

Progress only occurs where different views are allowed, wherever only one view is permitted, stagnation occurs.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That's why people have hunted a lot of species exotic for them, just for collection.

You wrote about something other than hunting.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It was a war? I thought, it was a peace.

Read about it, if you do not know the history and how many armed conflicts there were with hundreds of thousands of victims, we probably have nothing to talk about.

41 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That's why the total annihilation strategy got obsolete as soon as the progress of electronics allowed to hit a target smaller than a city, being replaced with limited strategies and development of tactical nukes and 100 kt strategical warheads. And then with total reduction of the nuke arsenals for ten times. And now with the stylish low-yield strategical nukes.

Precise strikes have not become fashionable because knocking out the opponent does not pay off, but because the ability to destroy enemy equipment is easier than protecting it.
If one side of the conflict comes up with a way to protect large groups of combat vehicles, then the concept of great battles and, consequently, hundreds of thousands of victims will come back.

[Kerbal7]

I have no doubt there is lots of life in the Milky Way beside us. With numbers of suns and planets out there it seems silly to think life only evolved on Earth.  

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Ok, I can see the development of a species that viruses or bacteria examine with the help of smell or taste.

You've forgotten cat, dogs, flies, and butterflies.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

And why did this species develop more than others? Maybe because such features gave him the advantage?

Becausse in that particular case the color vision randomly appeared to help that population of monkeys.
If they were dead, maybe cats would become Kilrathi. With not so colored vision.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

So simple organisms that are unable to compete with more autonomous species.

Rodents, insectivorous. And humans from time to time most of time.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

what?

Evolved.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

No sense, after the war in which the leader dies, he has no immediate change of power, this is the end for such a community.

Tell the ants and bees this interesting story. All they need to restore their population - the initialized eggs. Without an existing queen, several specimens become queens, and one of them begins supressing others.
The queen is not a leader, it doesn't command. Mostly.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Imagine such a war between swarms of people in every 100 million individuals.

Why do they need this? Hundreds-thousands humans look enough, They need less food per mass than the insects.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

If they are aware, why is a laborer or soldier to sacrifice?

It doesn't sacrifice. It doesn''t care much about its life.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

What biological blockade forbids a regular worker to become an entrepreneur and open up competition for Ford?

???
What at all does this question relate to?

About undervdeveloped specimens as soldiers and labourers,
Look at some African countries with armies consisting of 5..14 old children. Or Cambodia in early 1970s.
And recall the factories of XIX century with workers of same age.

But these human children are/were just not educated, while an ET species can have this just as a biological normality. This would shock us, yes.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Speaking of the war on clubs and spears, in fact some individuals may be stupid and untrained, but with modern technologies you need trained soldiers, and nobody is born with the ability to drive a tank.

Watch the WWI chronicles. It was just a century ago. Zerg rush and cannons.
Also, this is an additional motivation for them to develop remote controls, to allow one officer command a company of total morons at once.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

If you can understand many views and perceive reality using many definitions of the same word. The mere fact of learning something by heart does not guarantee it.

If you have a century to think about a set of problems, and do not need to spend your times in academic battles for grants and degrees, you will friendly discuss your own results and conclusions with your well-educated neighbor once per century.

People just have to hurry.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Here you prove that you have no idea about different ideologies.

You are right, I don't... _{Yes, this is a joke. Believe me, I do.}

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

See the map, which I've pasted a few posts earlier. Even today on Earth there are many ideologies that perceive the world completely differently.

I'm afraid I can draw such map myself in historical dynamics, lol.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

For example one protects the lives of women and children, while others can send a child with a bomb in a backpack to gain something

But they don't discuss: to send, or not to send. They either do it, or not. Sometimes they change their strategy, but not due to a discussion result, but due to changed circumstances.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Progress only occurs where different views are allowed, wherever only one view is permitted, stagnation occurs.

Unless your confession prohibits diesel engines, but blesses petrol ones, this is not different views, this is just alternative ways to make an engine.
The possibility of the invention usage decides.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

You wrote about something other than hunting.

Why? Humans like a tiger skin in a cabinet. An ET brainworm likes a whole human there.
Unlikely Cortez told to his soldiers aiming a jaguar: "Wait! Don't shoot! It's something new, maybe we can become friends! Hey, kitty-kitty-kitty!..."

(For better understanding you can watch last two episodes of The Legend of Seeker, season 1,the moment when the witch gets into the lord vampire cave. He possesses her before starting a talk, then starts talking interrogating.)

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

Read about it, if you do not know the history and how many armed conflicts there were with hundreds of thousands of victims, we probably have nothing to talk about.

Read about what? I'm from the USSR of Cold War times, and living in Russia.
Please, tell me moar about the Cold War, its conflicts, and different ideologies.

3 hours ago, Cassel said:

hundreds of thousands of victims will come back.

From a billion total population of the involved countries?

Edited March 3, 2019 by kerbiloid