Are we alone in the universe?

[Sunshine]

We are most certainly not alone, the truth is out there.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Sunshine

[ollypenrice]

9 hours ago, andrew s said:

Of course it already exists with symbiosis being common including the bacteria in our guts. Extinction is a consequence of evolution with the great oxygenation being a prime example.

I think the difficulty is how evolution could select against predation especially in primitive organisms. 

Regards Andrew 

 

9 hours ago, saac said:

Cooperative relationship exist here on Earth in certain forms of symbiotic relationships such as commensalism and more closely in mutualism. With commensalism one species benefits while the other neither benefits nor  is harmed. Commensalism relationships more closely match a model of mutual benefit and are sub divided into obligate mutualism (the interacting species are wholly dependant on each other) and facultative mutualism (the relationship provides benefit but is not dependant upon either for survival).   These types of relationships are generally restricted to small relatively simple animals (insects, molluscs, jellies, some forms of fish). It does not support more complex life, which requires the progressive  accumulation of energy density provided by predative food chains. Advanced locomotion, self regulation of temperature (both adopted by mammals) is energy intensive.  

Jim 

Indeed. So might we conclude that, on Earth, predation arises from the short cut it offers into higher energy densities and that intelligence is driven by predation's introduction of the need to attack and defend? If so this poses at least two questions.

1) What would happen to life on a planet in which energy was abundant and transferable? Stellar energy, perhaps, like an extremely efficient form of photosynthesis.  If this removed the need for predation it would, we might argue, remove the need to develop intelligence. But...

2) What would happen if this life form were threatened by, say, a inorganic threat like an unstable environment. The drive to find ways around this instability might be a driver for intelligence?

Olly

[Alien 13]

30 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

1) What would happen to life on a planet in which energy was abundant and transferable? Stellar energy, perhaps, like an extremely efficient form of photosynthesis.  If this removed the need for predation it would, we might argue, remove the need to develop intelligence. But...

2) What would happen if this life form were threatened by, say, a inorganic threat like an unstable environment. The drive to find ways around this instability might be a driver for intelligence?

Olly

Not sure how a life form would exist without other nutrients and water so the little beggars would still be fighting over these 😃 

Having said that it could be a system without predation between species and the fight for the tasty rocks etc could push intelligence. 

Alan

Edited October 1, 2022 by Alien 13

[andrew s]

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

 

Indeed. So might we conclude that, on Earth, predation arises from the short cut it offers into higher energy densities and that intelligence is driven by predation's introduction of the need to attack and defend? If so this poses at least two questions.

1) What would happen to life on a planet in which energy was abundant and transferable? Stellar energy, perhaps, like an extremely efficient form of photosynthesis.  If this removed the need for predation it would, we might argue, remove the need to develop intelligence. But...

2) What would happen if this life form were threatened by, say, a inorganic threat like an unstable environment. The drive to find ways around this instability might be a driver for intelligence?

Olly

It's not just energy density it is what form it is in. You need low entropy.  Complex structures well away from local equilibrium this is what organisms build and what can be most simply obtained by eating others. 

Regards Andrew 

PS we say the Sun is our source of energy, which is true, but give or take some global warming we lose an equivalent amount to the rest of the Universe.  

What is different is the incoming light is at a high frequency (fewer photons) than the outgoing infrared ( more photons). The incoming light has a lower entropy than the outgoing . By increasing the entropy of the Universe we can reduce it locally and build complex creatures. 

Edited October 1, 2022 by andrew s

[Ouroboros]

20 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

In considering possible alien life I always reflect upon the Earth's being home to predation.  Predation is not nice and goes squarely against most of our professed ethics about killing and inflicting suffering - but it is natural here. I can imagine an alien talking to me, though, and saying 'You eat what???'   It would certainly be a shame to introduce predation where none existed before and there is no reason to assume that it will be universal.

Olly

You’re touching on something that is not often discussed when thinking about being visited by aliens or us visiting alien planets where life exists. What might be the potential consequences when two entirely alien bio systems mix?  On earth we have seen the disastrous consequences on life and human health when explorers and colonists come into contact with regions previously isolated from one another.  Presumably aliens (like humans) carry with them a microbiome of microbes. I just hope that if aliens come visiting they’ve got some form of impervious ‘force field’ that keeps their bugs to themselves.  

[PeterC65]

On 01/10/2022 at 07:22, ollypenrice said:

Indeed. So might we conclude that, on Earth, predation arises from the short cut it offers into higher energy densities and that intelligence is driven by predation's introduction of the need to attack and defend? If so this poses at least two questions.

1) What would happen to life on a planet in which energy was abundant and transferable? Stellar energy, perhaps, like an extremely efficient form of photosynthesis.  If this removed the need for predation it would, we might argue, remove the need to develop intelligence. But...

2) What would happen if this life form were threatened by, say, a inorganic threat like an unstable environment. The drive to find ways around this instability might be a driver for intelligence?

Olly

I think competition is an essential feature of evolution and evolution is an essential feature of life anywhere. So even if every was abundant energy resources there would still be competition and that would lead to the evolution of intelligence.

To address the point made by @saac, this is the dilemma I think, how is it that as a species we can build and deploy the JWST and then have a situation where one psychopath can threaten our very existence, where we burn fossil fuels that are destroying the world we need to survive? I struggle to reconcile these two opposites with the notion that humans are intelligent. We are both highly intelligent and spectacularly stupid at the same time. Perhaps it is these extremes that make us unique amongst life on Earth. Other species instead following a middle ground, not so intelligent but at the same time, not so stupid?

[ollypenrice]

6 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

I think competition is an essential feature of evolution and evolution is an essential feature of life anywhere. So even if every was abundant energy resources there would still be competition and that would lead to the evolution of intelligence.

To address the point made by @saac, this is the dilemma I think, how is it that as a species we can build and deploy the JWST and then have a situation where one psychopath can threaten our very existence, where large numbers of us still believe in Fairies (religion), where we burn fossil fuels that are destroying the world we need to survive? I struggle to reconcile these two opposites with the notion that humans are intelligent. We are both highly intelligent and spectacularly stupid at the same time. Perhaps it is these extremes that make us unique amongst life on Earth. Other species instead following a middle ground, not so intelligent but at the same time, not so stupid?

Just with regard to your first point, I think the importance of competition on Earth should not blind us to the idea that it might take a different form elsewhere. In the hypothetical example I gave earlier, it might be competition with a changing environment. This might require intelligence and co-operation for survival.

Another assumption we may not be entitled to make is that evolution into multiple species is inevitable. What would happen if there were only one species, or a kind of highly evolved 'compound species?'

Might there not even be a highly evolved single entitiy? The notion of evolution into multiple individuals is nothing more than an assumption and can only be defended as inevitable with reference to terrestrial examples - which is hardly satisfactory.

In considering possible alien life the challenge is to make ourselves aware of all our unconscious and Earth-derived assumptions and to dispense with them.

Olly

[cajen2]

And just as a note for the "we'll all be eaten or infected" opinions, the more biologically different an alien species is, the less likely it is to happen. Body chemistries being different means they couldn't process our bodies (or vice versa!) and pathogens would probably not be transferable.

Still all and any of this is hypothetical, since we have no experience of alien life (yet?). 😉

[ollypenrice]

To launch another kite, the term 'intelligence' has at least two meanings in English, as demonstrated by the way we like to laugh at an irony we detect in the term 'military intelligence.'  This branch of the armed forces is concerned with information gathering and uses 'intelligence' to mean 'awareness of.'  The word's other meaning refers to intellectual capacity, the ability to solve problems, etc.

The curious thing is that living things can and do solve problems and detect information without involving 'awareness' in the sense we apply the term to ourselves. So when we discuss the possibility of intelligent alien life are we setting off on the wrong foot already? Should we not say that we are discussing the likelihood of non-automatic problem solvers evolving elsewhere?

Olly

[PeterC65]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Just with regard to your first point, I think the importance of competition on Earth should not blind us to the idea that it might take a different form elsewhere. In the hypothetical example I gave earlier, it might be competition with a changing environment. This might require intelligence and co-operation for survival.

Another assumption we may not be entitled to make is that evolution into multiple species is inevitable. What would happen if there were only one species, or a kind of highly evolved 'compound species?'

Might there not even be a highly evolved single entitiy? The notion of evolution into multiple individuals is nothing more than an assumption and can only be defended as inevitable with reference to terrestrial examples - which is hardly satisfactory.

In considering possible alien life the challenge is to make ourselves aware of all our unconscious and Earth-derived assumptions and to dispense with them.

Olly

I think that diversity of life is an inevitable consequence of evolution and so I would expect any world where there is even modestly developed life to be populated by many diverse forms, what we choose to call species. If that is the case then there will always be competition between these species, even if there is also competition between all species and the environment. That's the situation here on Earth.

All of our theories about life are inevitably based on terrestrial examples since we know of no life elsewhere. What I find useful when considering these things is the notion of a 'free floating rationale' (from Daniel Dennett) which is an idea that exists independently of human thought. Evolution, predation and the Laws of Physics are examples of this, a Limited Company, human rights and religion are not. We can assume that free floating rationales are true for other life whereas the other are not.

 

[PeterC65]

Following on from my earlier comment about the huge range of human intelligence (in the intellectual capacity sense), I think we are much more progressed in some areas than in others. We are well progressed in the area of telescope design (all of the associated technologies), less so in medicine (we still have no cure for the Common Cold and Cancer is still a major blight). Least developed of all I think is progress in philosophy, dealing with psychopaths and overpopulation.

Bringing the discussion back to alien life, it is in the area of philosophical thinking that I'd expect the greatest difference between Humans and Aliens. I say this because I think that significant progress in philosophical thinking is needed in order for a lifeform to survive the consequences of progress in other areas.

[saac]

9 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

 

Indeed. So might we conclude that, on Earth, predation arises from the short cut it offers into higher energy densities and that intelligence is driven by predation's introduction of the need to attack and defend? If so this poses at least two questions.

Olly

Indeed, predation is exactly that, it allows an organism to "outsource" the concentration of energy - why do it yourself when you can use the efforts of others.  I rather think that intelligence though arose as a result of organisms being able to tap into a surfeit of energy. What else to do once you have enough energy to move, grow, metabolise, but build a capacity to do it better. In terms of human brain development, at some time in our past we tapped into an surfeit of energy through our diet that allowed our brains to grow disproportionately. The happy accident is thought to be of all things related to heating (cooking) of our food which meant we were able to extract more energy during digestion.  

I think intelligence would be a high stake gamble for nature to take in response to a species level threat.  On Earth we have seen in evolution where an organism faces such a threat, over predation for example, survival tends to emerge through advantageous adaptations. The dominant colour of the peppered moth arising as a favourable adaptation.  Intelligence could I guess be a favourable adaptation but I think nature would first try less complex and timely changes.  

 

Jim 

Edited October 1, 2022 by saac

[Alien 13]

8 hours ago, saac said:

I think intelligence would be a high stake gamble for nature to take in response to a species level threat.  On Earth we have seen in evolution where an organism faces such a threat, over predation for example, survival tends to emerge through advantageous adaptations. The dominant colour of the peppered moth arising as a favourable adaptation.  Intelligence could I guess be a favourable adaptation but I think nature would first try less complex and timely changes.  

 

Jim 

Agreed but this has happened with a few diverse species, the Octopus, Corvids have the intelligence of a 6 year old human and who knows regarding the insect hive mind or even the huge plant/fungus networks that operate on a differing timescale to us.

Alan

[andrew s]

Nature does not gamble or make any intentional actions. Variation is a random process and if a variation is, or an accumulation of variations are, advantageous or not depends on the current environment and how it changes.

What advanced intelligence confers is an ability to adapt to a changing environment without biological changes.  We can make and put on a coat if it's cold so we don't  need a mutation to be more hairy. 

Regards Andrew s

Edited October 1, 2022 by andrew s

[Astro_Dad]

Very interesting episode of Inside Science (BBC Radio 4) this week featuring some of the topics discussed on this thread. Includes an interview with Henry Gee, author of A Very Short History of Life on Earth, a book shortlisted  for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science book prize. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001cpxk

The author considers current time and status of biology, and then extrapolates and projects a further billion years ahead - considering “super organisms” based on evolution of current social organisms (like insects) and to the next level where different groups are dependent each other to the extent that they form gigantic organisms where for example plants, fungi and others become almost one unified organism. 

I made a comment earlier about cooperation between organisms and considered some examples, in the context of competition and Darwinian evolution, but this provides a new take and an interesting perspective on future biological states. Relates well to considerations of evolution of life beyond Earth. Well worth a listen to the episode, and I’ll look forward to reading the book in due course too. 
 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by Astro_Dad

[ollypenrice]

[McQ]

There might be life all over the universe but I suspect most or all of it (excluding us) is unicellular. The jump to multicellular on Earth was never a given and if it hadn't been for the ancestor of mitochondria becoming cozy with our ancestor, none of us would be here. The last 1.5 billion years of animal evolution was only possible because one eukaryote ate another eukaryote and didn't digest it. 

[900SL]

Going back to the questions first posed in the OP, I've always been partial to the late Bill Hicks account of an enlightened news reporter commenting on a positive acid trip story:

'Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Now over to Tom with the weather'

 

There have been times when I have stood on the edge of a comprehensive understanding of the magnificence of this Universe, its evolution from hydrogen to organisms of a complexity sufficient to engage in conscious thought and reason, and it has been akin to vertigo. It's truly mind-blowing if you really think about it. The scale, the evolution, the governing equations.

Our objective reality is a creation of our senses, our understanding of same is flawed accordingly, the big questions, the 'why's' rather than the 'how's' are verging on the metaphysical

The Universe, and by association life's purpose, appears to be to reproduce and evolve.

Unless, of course, it is all truly a stage created by consciousness somehow, to fool around in.    

[Astro_Dad]

2 hours ago, 900SL said:

Unless, of course, it is all truly a stage created by consciousness somehow, to fool around in.  

A little off topic but I read your comment here @900SL  just shortly before seeing this article pop up  in my Paper.li feed. There’s a link of sorts when considering the philosophical aspects of consciousness etc. but if too tangential feel free to ignore! 

https://www.iflscience.com/if-we-re-living-in-a-simulation-a-computer-scientist-has-a-plan-to-escape-66235

 

[Alien 13]

After playing many many computer games there is no doubt in mind that we are in one or some type of simulation run by a collective intelligence. I firmly believe that the universe would not even exist without intelligent participants.

Alan

[Paul M]

27 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

After playing many many computer games there is no doubt in mind that we are in one or some type of simulation run by a collective intelligence.

Just extending the theme...

I'm certain that our own take on intelligence will not only fail to prevent our self destruction, it is actually the primary cause! 

And if we are no more than a sim being run by higher beings, perhaps they see their own destiny and are modelling a way to avoid it!

Well, they can hit the escape key on this one...

 

[900SL]

The simulation hypothesis does just kick the can down the road though..

 

It's all turtles, all the way down!

[900SL]

The reason why we haven't had a definitive close encounter is because of the beacons outside the Oort cloud, which loudly broadcast "Avoid! Moron Infested Planet!"

https://newsthump.com/2022/04/05/asteroid-survives-near-miss-with-moron-infested-planet/

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by 900SL

[ollypenrice]

15 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

After playing many many computer games there is no doubt in mind that we are in one or some type of simulation run by a collective intelligence. I firmly believe that the universe would not even exist without intelligent participants.

Alan

But... since computer games are made by humans, for humans, are they not bound to recreate worlds which humans can understand? In which case our world is bound to resemble the computer game world. We wouldn't be able to play a computer game located in a world of physics entirely different from our own. It takes only a small step to move from the view that there is our world and the game world to our world is a game world. Small as it may be, I consider this a step too far.

Olly

[kirkster501]

The bottom line is we simply don't know.

I think if they were indeed out there we would have heard from them. We haven't so they probably do not exist or do not exist in the timeframes of speed of light versus their distance from us for us to hear them now.