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Author Topic:   What type of biological life will more than likely be found on other planets?
onifre
Member (Idle past 2950 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 42 of 178 (670612)
08-16-2012 2:01 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by NoNukes
08-16-2012 1:49 PM


Re: Are those measures of intelligence or technology?
Not that I am agreeing with jar on this, but no technology means no guitar, and certainly no electric guitar.
Right, but a technology due to intelligence. We had the ability to make music before we came up with the instruments.
- Oni

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 Message 40 by NoNukes, posted 08-16-2012 1:49 PM NoNukes has replied

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onifre
Member (Idle past 2950 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 139 of 178 (671105)
08-22-2012 10:44 AM
Reply to: Message 137 by jar
08-22-2012 9:11 AM


Re: Rare sapience
Been away for a while but I've been following the thread closely from the emails of all your responses.
Are humans more intelligent than elephants or cephalopods. Or do we simply have more knowledge?
Collectively, we are more intelligent than all other species on this planet. We also have more knowledge than them because our intelligence manifested a complex enough language to increase it.
What is your point though Jar?
We do not have a good way of measuring intelligence. We can test knowledge, skills and learning, problem solving but how do you test intelligence?
Knowledge, skills learned, problem solving, all that collectively, is what we call intelligence.
- Oni

This message is a reply to:
 Message 137 by jar, posted 08-22-2012 9:11 AM jar has seen this message but not replied

  
onifre
Member (Idle past 2950 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


Message 140 of 178 (671109)
08-22-2012 10:55 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by Taq
08-16-2012 3:42 PM


Re: Hands are Handy
Indeed. I was thinking about this a little bit more, and there are other parameters. First, you need a planet about the size of ours. If gravity is too high then flying is just too ineffecient. If the planet is too small then it eventually cools, loses its magnetic field, and then loses its atmosphere. This is what happened to Mars.
This is what I think about also. How likely is another Earth-type planet so far as having ALL the same attributes that you mention?
Without such a planet, the likelyhood that species, such as the one's found here on Earth, won't emerge. That's not to say something else won't, but not in the way of land animals or much less flight.
I think that the evolution of intelligence is like the example above. You can't select for more intelligence unless there is a way for that intelligence to be used, a way to transfer that horsepower to the track.
Agreed. So what is truly neccessary is land, a good portion of it. And water, a good potion of it.
Our hands are definitely a good example of this. They are extremely flexible and allow us to make any tool we want (within reason). We can even see how the wrist and hand morphology changed during human evolution to allow for more flexibility and better manipulation of tools. For example, we can touch the tip of our thumb with the tip of our little finger. Other apes can't do that. This allows us to hold a stick parallel with our forearm, something else that a chimp can not do. It would seem to me that tool use and tool making are very important for evolving an intelligence like ours.
It's also the last in a line of appendages that have evolved for millions of years. They seem to be the most highly functional of all.
- Oni

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 Message 43 by Taq, posted 08-16-2012 3:42 PM Taq has not replied

  
onifre
Member (Idle past 2950 days)
Posts: 4854
From: Dark Side of the Moon
Joined: 02-20-2008


(2)
Message 142 of 178 (671114)
08-22-2012 11:09 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by Stile
08-16-2012 9:06 AM


Re: I like to guess
Agreed. I must admit that in my list of dominant traits intelligence is the baby of the group.
I agree. Not that it makes it less likely to survive, my point is only that we don't know what such a highly evolved intelligence will lead us to.
Sometimes I think our intelligence is a kind of runaway function that developed too much for this environment. As Blue Jay has pointed out, we have taken over the planet. Spread out to every corner of Earth, and with that, we have needed to use the resources of those areas that we inhabit.
No other species has done this, but MAYBE that's because no species should actual be able to do this. The planet has limited resources, obviously. A species that uses up all of it will fuck itself out of them, eventually.
I suppose "we'll see?" Or, more likely, we probably won't 'cause you and I will likely be long gone before any of this is figured out.
To steal the idea from Michio Kaku, I think we eventually will need to work as one single unified race of human beings to expand our existence to not just Earth, due to it's limited resources and our inevitable use of all of it.
But for that we would need to shed so many ideologies from race issues, to religious beliefs, to politcal positions and nationalism.
Ah... No, I don't mind the thought of being alone either. If there is other intelligence out there, and they're anything like us (currently)... it would certainly be safer for us to be alone, anyway... :]
That's a very good point that I hadn't even considered. They may be just as big of assholes as we are.
- Oni

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 Message 22 by Stile, posted 08-16-2012 9:06 AM Stile has replied

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