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We are effectively alone in the universe

#11
C C Offline
(Aug 18, 2021 08:35 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: ''A female bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops sp. ) carries a sponge, which it uses as a tool to dig up prey from the seafloor. The only dolphins known to use sponges as tools this way are the female members of a small group that live in Shark Bay, Australia. They pass the skill onto their daughters, but not their sons."--- https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-m...eir%20sons.

Mammals, though, descended from creatures once on land, with brains potentially retaining terrestrial inclinations.

Here's a BBC video called "The fish that uses tools". But for me, it claims: "Video unavailable. The uploader has not made this video available in your country." Maybe it'll work for someone who'll report back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnOYpuKV4H4

EDIT: Ah, here it is: "The clam-cracking tuskfish isn't the first fish to be observed using tools."

https://www.livescience.com/16296-tool-f...video.html
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#12
Leigha Offline
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

I'm not sure if both are equally terrifying, or terrifying at all. If we're alone, we will be free to colonize the universe now, whenever possible. Maybe not knowing is better than finding out with certainty, one way or the other?

Would you prefer to be alone?
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#13
Syne Offline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A9FNua0Q_M

Wait, so now anything that smashes it's food on rocks is "using a tool?"
Birds dropping nuts or shellfish on hard surfaces?

That doesn't seem comparable to chimps using twigs to fish ants out of their mounds or crows bending wires into hooks to retrieve food.

(Aug 18, 2021 09:35 PM)Leigha Wrote: "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

Maybe equally non-terrifying. But then, I see no reason to believe there is other life out there. And even if there is, there's zero chance of it ever reaching us.
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#14
Leigha Offline
(Aug 18, 2021 09:36 PM)Syne Wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A9FNua0Q_M

Wait, so now anything that smashes it's food on rocks is "using a tool?"
Birds dropping nuts or shellfish on hard surfaces?

That doesn't seem comparable to chimps using twigs to fish ants out of their mounds or crows bending wires into hooks to retrieve food.

(Aug 18, 2021 09:35 PM)Leigha Wrote: "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

Maybe equally non-terrifying. But then, I see no reason to believe there is other life out there. And even if there is, there's zero chance of it ever reaching us.

Agreed. It doesn't need to be a daunting concept at all, the notion that we're alone. But, the only thing I wonder about ...if we're alone, that would mean we (humans) would be responsible for our own annihilation. No one else, from anywhere else.

Okay, that's mildly terrifying.
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#15
Yazata Offline
(Aug 18, 2021 12:28 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Life could still evolve easily, intelligence not so much.

Yes. There seems to have been life on Earth for something like 3.5 to 4 billion years. Recognizable multicellular life appeared maybe 600 million years ago. Prior to that it was basically just microorganisms. The first homnins were just a few million years ago. The first anatomically modern humans only a few hundred thousand years ago. And technological civilization is ony about 250 years old.

So not only would an alien planet have to have given birth to life (perhaps a small likelihood), it would have had to have produced something like our animals (bacteria wouldn't suffice) and they would have be intelligent and will need to have used that intelligence to produce some kind of very advanced science and technology.

My guess is that technologically advanced alien civilizations are probably very few and far between.

Quote:The only reason we may have it is because our species was too weak physically to survive. Intelligence was a freak of nature/evolution. An adaptation that may have been lucky enough, by the slimmest of margins, to actually take hold.

I think that our unique adaptation wasn't speed, strength or big teeth, it was adaptability. Humans are the general purpose animals of the animal kingdom, not naturally best at anything, but reasonably good at everything. 

And not only that, we have very flexible behavior, able to adjust in real time to changing conditions, without having to wait hundreds of generations for evolution to do it. So humans left tropical Africa and soon were found up on the subarctic tundra hunting wooly mammoths.

Our not-so-secret weapon was language (it's impossible to get humans to shut up) and the ability to coordinate complex behavior in groups and pass along what had been learned to everyone else.

Quote:Even if we are alone, there’s no timetable that I know of that schedules the arrival of intelligent beings. For all we know, we could be the first. 15-18 bn yrs to get to this point could be the gestation period for intelligence in this universe.. There’s a long way to go..

There may only be a few species like us in this galaxy, one per every billion stars or something.

Or alternatively, intelligent life with science and technology may be all over the place. We just don't know.

Quote:Why do we assume any or all intelligences would look to conquer interstellar space?

If many alien lifeforms live in oceans covered by shells of ice, like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, they may have no knowledge at all of the wider universe. Their known universe has a roof over it and to them that's all there is. They might just have their little ocean floor huts and the dramas of their own lives. They might not only have no interest in interstellar space, they might be unable to even conceive of what it is.
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#16
C C Offline
(Aug 18, 2021 09:35 PM)Leigha Wrote: "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

I'm not sure if both are equally terrifying, or terrifying at all. If we're alone, we will be free to colonize the universe now, whenever possible. Maybe not knowing is better than finding out with certainty, one way or the other?

Would you prefer to be alone?


The idea of our being alone is "terrifying" from the perspective of the revered mediocrity principle and its disciples, wherein Earth and its life are not supposed to be special, not an isolated occurrence (a refined or tweaked version of it can focus on intelligence primarily).

Ironically, Isaac Asimov wrote novels and stories that usually featured humans being the only intelligent life in the Milky Way galaxy. Despite -- surely, his personal conviction that we probably weren't unique.

It doesn't bother me one bit if we are the sole technological intelligence, especially when confined to just the Milky Way. Just considering the wandering string of adventitious circumstances that contributed to our being here and reaching this level.
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