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Over at Cato Unbound, I respond to Jerome Barkow’s survey of possible influences on the evolution of alien culture and intelligence, as clues to the kinds of aliens we might meet. Alas, Barkow assumes that alien styles are largely determined by the specific biological environments in which particular alien species originally evolved. However:
This might make sense for aliens who are a thousand years more advanced than humans are today. But it makes far less sense for aliens who are a million or a billion years more advanced – far more likely timescales. Given how much adaptation could have taken place over such times, we should expect to see older aliens selected far more by their final environment than their initial environment.
I then offer five predictions about older aliens:
First, … [they] should be very well adapted to their final physical environment. … Advanced aliens are physically similar across the universe, unless significantly different social equilibria are possible and have substantially different physical implications.
Second, … sexual reproduction is quite unlikely to last. … This doesn’t mean signaling will end. …
Third, very old aliens should be accustomed to very low levels of growth and innovation. … We’d [not] have much general information of use to such aliens. …
Fourth, … very advanced aliens should not be either generically friendly or generically hostile to outsiders. Instead they should be very good at making their friendship or hostility appropriately context-dependent. … Such aliens would ask themselves in great and careful detail, what exactly could humans eventually do to help or hurt them?
Fifth, advanced aliens should be well adapted in both means and ends. … Advanced aliens will be very patient, but also very selfish regarding their key units of reproduction, and quite risk averse about key correlated threats to their existence. (more)
What Are Aliens Like?
Well, if it feels too far fetched for you, just imagine what humans will be like in 50000 years if they survive. Or ants. Or whales.
One thing is sure - it will be a story of a million misunderstandings. As new encounters always are.
Personally I wonder if the government is hiding a decapitated alien's rainbow corpse in area 69.
Other than that, I think we all watch too many movies. Movies give us the notion that we can have some useful idea about what aliens look like and what their motivations are.
Have you ever seen dark matter or dark energy? As far as I know no one has. We infer it's existence from other effects but as far as I know, we cannot see it even if a portion of it is sitting next to us.
Let us ignore the truly invisible aliens and those in dimensions that we have no access to. They may well exist but as long as that don't do anything we can detect who cares?
A truly alien intelligence might hate our sun. Not something I can hang with but I have no trouble grasping the concept.
It prefers the low energy cold and dark because maybe it's a super efficient super conducting critter. It knows physics that is a trillion years beyond us. It does not like our sun but it does like our gas giant planets. It turns the sun out and moves into the the neighborhood. All of us just died and the aliens neither knew nor cared.