In his new book The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens–and Ourselves, Cambridge zoologist Arik Kershenbaum purports to tell us what intelligent aliens will be like when we meet them:
Fascinating topic! Assuming intelligent extraterrestrial life is like us is a very anthropocentric viewpoint. I imagine the author may be correct that in order for aliens to evolve brains that reach a certain threshold of intelligence that allow them to reach a technologically advanced stage, they may have had similarities to us and our history i.e.were large social,hunter-gatherers which led to the evolution of language and cooperation, the ability to manipulate tools in some way, competition among tribes and even competition within groups for status, access to mates. All things that spawn the evolution of big brains.Their morphology is likely to be different. They could be aquatic like octopuses. They could have 8 limbs instead of four. They could fly. And that’s just from natural selection. After a billion years of genetic engineering and merging with machines, they could be utterly unrecognizable as any life form we know of. They may be cyborgs that have eliminated death, they may have completely uploaded their consciousness to machines, or they could be wisps of pure energy. Any technology sufficiently advanced will appear as magic, so who knows what aliens a billion years more advanced than us will be like.
The same technology that allows the consumption of a system's resources, such as a Dyson swarm, also gives it the power to unleash a quite destructive force in the form of a Nicoll-Dyson beam.
Assuming relativity holds and there's no FTL communication, this means that further colonization will face a Byzantine Generals Problem. This appears to highly favor a uniformity of motive required before expansion can safely take place.
I only mention this narrative as a counter-example because I believe that even alternative paths of alien evolution and societal progression prevent the scenario where human-like sociological traits survive. I agree with your criticisms.
Yeah, it's not just fiction that weirdly assumes that alien civilizations will be at the same technological level as ours, plus or minus a thousand years. In a galaxy that's billions of years old that would be a miracle. But I think that many natural selection mechanisms are substrate-independent and apply also to post-biological intelligence. One example: when there's unoccupied habitat, the fastest colonizers are strongly selected for.
In the end I think that Robin has the right story about how to reconcile all this - that the alien expansion wave is heading for us but hasn't yet reached out lightcone. The reasoning behind the claim is right and I'm sure it feels obvious to him now, but speaking for myself, it took me a while to digest the argument and work out how it would respond to objections. I hope that more people make the effort, but it doesn't exactly make for a very rich scifi setting - or am I wrong? I don't expect a quick uptake of these ideas in popular discussion. But then again, if you write a book speculating about aliens, it might at this point be professionally irresponsible to ignore the grabby aliens article.
Hey, digital watches are a really neat idea! Or as James White makes one of his characters say, "We are caterpillars trying to think like butterflies." Someone else can toss in the inevitable quotes from Haldane and Shaw.
But to give the answer I think RH is fishing for, there's a **** of a lot of bias to overcome. Happy Saturday, everyone.
Fascinating topic! Assuming intelligent extraterrestrial life is like us is a very anthropocentric viewpoint. I imagine the author may be correct that in order for aliens to evolve brains that reach a certain threshold of intelligence that allow them to reach a technologically advanced stage, they may have had similarities to us and our history i.e.were large social,hunter-gatherers which led to the evolution of language and cooperation, the ability to manipulate tools in some way, competition among tribes and even competition within groups for status, access to mates. All things that spawn the evolution of big brains.Their morphology is likely to be different. They could be aquatic like octopuses. They could have 8 limbs instead of four. They could fly. And that’s just from natural selection. After a billion years of genetic engineering and merging with machines, they could be utterly unrecognizable as any life form we know of. They may be cyborgs that have eliminated death, they may have completely uploaded their consciousness to machines, or they could be wisps of pure energy. Any technology sufficiently advanced will appear as magic, so who knows what aliens a billion years more advanced than us will be like.
The same technology that allows the consumption of a system's resources, such as a Dyson swarm, also gives it the power to unleash a quite destructive force in the form of a Nicoll-Dyson beam.
Assuming relativity holds and there's no FTL communication, this means that further colonization will face a Byzantine Generals Problem. This appears to highly favor a uniformity of motive required before expansion can safely take place.
I only mention this narrative as a counter-example because I believe that even alternative paths of alien evolution and societal progression prevent the scenario where human-like sociological traits survive. I agree with your criticisms.
Yeah, it's not just fiction that weirdly assumes that alien civilizations will be at the same technological level as ours, plus or minus a thousand years. In a galaxy that's billions of years old that would be a miracle. But I think that many natural selection mechanisms are substrate-independent and apply also to post-biological intelligence. One example: when there's unoccupied habitat, the fastest colonizers are strongly selected for.
In the end I think that Robin has the right story about how to reconcile all this - that the alien expansion wave is heading for us but hasn't yet reached out lightcone. The reasoning behind the claim is right and I'm sure it feels obvious to him now, but speaking for myself, it took me a while to digest the argument and work out how it would respond to objections. I hope that more people make the effort, but it doesn't exactly make for a very rich scifi setting - or am I wrong? I don't expect a quick uptake of these ideas in popular discussion. But then again, if you write a book speculating about aliens, it might at this point be professionally irresponsible to ignore the grabby aliens article.
Hey, digital watches are a really neat idea! Or as James White makes one of his characters say, "We are caterpillars trying to think like butterflies." Someone else can toss in the inevitable quotes from Haldane and Shaw.
But to give the answer I think RH is fishing for, there's a **** of a lot of bias to overcome. Happy Saturday, everyone.