Alien intelligence and civilizations

[Aethon]

Aliens are real, and I have the grapefruits to prove it.

I'll send a .... what??? Back atcha.

[Seret]

Visiting Roswell however will give no such assurance about the existence of extraterrestrials.

Ah, that'll be because of the conspiracy.

*TV infomercial mode*

Got no proof of your crackpot idea? Just invent a conspiracy and the need for proof vanishes like magic! And as a bonus, if anything comes up that actually disproves your beliefs, just expand the conspiracy to include the source of the information!

[WinkAllKerb'']

you can 'fake' 1000 person one time, you can't 'fake' 1 person a thousand time.

*thumbs*

[ThinkOutsideTheHangar]

Ummm, I more concerned with his sanity than the question. And his ability to speak in coherent sentences.

[KSK]

Ah hum

In any case let's not stifle curiosity here guys. The questions are mal formed and, well, silly but there is still a conversation to be had here. Personally I'm quite interested in how a creature with out thumbs could interact with its environment as well as we do, would it have tentacles, claws, ect.

Pfff - a sink plunger will do at a pinch...

I kid. Tentacles would be my bet in the absence of opposing digits.

Edited June 10, 2014 by KSK

[KSK]

lots of people speculate on the intelligence of whales and dolphins. if these species had the intelligence of man, you would never know it. they would be unlikely to develop some of the technologies we would be able to make. lets see them develop electronics in their electrically conductive atmosphere. being predatory, they would never get around to developing agriculture. my brain struggles to imagine what kind of civilization such creatures could build if they had human intelligence.

Depends how you define civilization. To quote the late, great Douglas Adams:

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so muchâ€â€the wheel, New York, wars and so onâ€â€whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than manâ€â€for precisely the same reasons.â€Â

[PrivateFlip]

In any case let's not stifle curiosity here guys. The questions are mal formed and, well, silly but there is still a conversation to be had here. Personally I'm quite interested in how a creature with out thumbs could interact with its environment as well as we do, would it have tentacles, claws, ect.

It's tempting to compare them to us. To measure how one ability of them scales to one of us. Imagine the ability "interacting with the envirnment". We clearly have a certain ability in this area.

However our ability does not include melting rock (it's true). For a species which could do this, it might seem unimaginable a species laking it, to be able be able to advance. Especially if this is something which set it apart from other species on its planet or played a crucial part in its first uplifting phases of development. We of course know, we were able to overcome this 'disability' by creating forges.

For sub millimeter precision work, which we're also unable to do, we in time made high precision machines. So before asking how well a trunk compares with a pair of hands we might first ask how well do you really need to interact with the environment. There's no doubt a minimum, but for a patient and inventive species this level might lie way lower than where we think it is.

lots of people speculate on the intelligence of whales and dolphins. if these species had the intelligence of man, you would never know it. they would be unlikely to develop some of the technologies we would be able to make. lets see them develop electronics in their electrically conductive atmosphere. being predatory, they would never get around to developing agriculture. my brain struggles to imagine what kind of civilization such creatures could build if they had human intelligence.

Dolphins have not made technology or adopted agriculture. At least not yet. Does that mean they never will?

For tens of millions of years there have been monkeys. They for all that time did not invent technology, nor did they ever gravitate towards agriculture. Until we did not so long ago, but the majority of monkeys still don't.

From that perspective it doesn't seem completely unlikely a dolphin descendant would at some point take a weird turn to prefer a seaweed like diet. It's not unheard of for a species to make a switch.

From all those seaweed eating dolphins which evolve from this one dolphin species it's not completely implausible one group somehow learned the places were they spit out seaweed seed had new seaweed growing there at a later point. Over time this understanding can deepen, just as it likely did for us, and agriculture can emerge.

Technology seems impossible for dolphins because they can't manipulate object with the same dexterity like us. We can of course wonder what dexterity you really need instead of comparing it to us, but it's hard to imagine a dolphin really building something themselves. So unless they domesticate crabs or octopuses to a point where these creatures can build stuff under instruction, evolve as some consequence of their new lifestyle, learn the evolutionary theory and breed themselves to a point where they can do just well enough, ...

And if they do, they can ask themselves, "How can a stupid fruit eating mammal create a complex and hyper-intelligent society, fueled by an abundance of agriculture, advanced enough to steer their own evolution to a point where they can build machines?"

Edited June 10, 2014 by PrivateFlip

[Dodgey]

Or maybe they're only opposable thumbs. Imagine that!

Um, excuse me.

Personally I find the prospect of there being another species, like dolphins, being about as intelligent as us, and forming a society utterly terrifying.

[Lukaszenko]

I don't think you can have 1000x our intelligence without being able to manipulate the environment, or at least be able to put the intelligence to VERY good use.

There must have been an evolutionary feedback look between the dexterity of our hands/ our language/ our technology and intelligence. Otherwise intelligence, at least for humans, is way too expensive energetically to just go off on its own.

One recent theory I heard, for example, is that humans would never be able to evolve our level of intelligence without first being able to cook food. There is just not enough freed-up calories in uncooked food to support our brains.

[magnemoe]

Depends how you define civilization. To quote the late, great Douglas Adams:

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so muchâ€â€the wheel, New York, wars and so onâ€â€whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than manâ€â€for precisely the same reasons.â€Â

In this case the dolphins was smart as they has no other options.

First issue is to do anything without arms. Second is to get past stone age in water.

Note that the seti discussion separates intelligence and civilization, we have had intelligence hundreds of times longer than civilization.

And yes the standard definition of ancient civilization is writing, not farming who is far older.

Mandartory first contact image : http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/177/5/4/first_contact_5_by_olsen1a-d54w8yu.jpg

And yes landing is the only way to spot anybody who don't have civilization, you might get an civilization from orbit even flyby.

[magnemoe]

I don't think you can have 1000x our intelligence without being able to manipulate the environment, or at least be able to put the intelligence to VERY good use.

There must have been an evolutionary feedback look between the dexterity of our hands/ our language/ our technology and intelligence. Otherwise intelligence, at least for humans, is way too expensive energetically to just go off on its own.

One recent theory I heard, for example, is that humans would never be able to evolve our level of intelligence without first being able to cook food. There is just not enough freed-up calories in uncooked food to support our brains.

We got intelligent dealing with each others, technology 500k year ago was so primitive that putting an bone or stone edge on a spear would be sci-fi.

One plausible alien would be an intelligent predator with no manipulator organ, this would also be a trap.

They would hunt in packs, size depending on prey, they would need to reduce their numbers to avoid crashes.

Now the problem here is that they would hunt everything from mammoths to mice, pretty hard for another intelligent species to evolve.