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:
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.
We would never be like termites to aliens, more like cavemen. You wouldn't just ignore them, if you have halve a brain you'll recognize them for the rare form of life they are and that they can learn to understand our technology.
Keeping existing individuals alive doesn't work: eventually accidents, disease and simple wear and tear will win. Engineering new individuals is possible, though I think it would be wise to maintain the option of sexual reproduction (so a population cannot go extinct when they lose some infrastructure).
There are alternatives to cloning or the random recombination sexual reproduction, such as deliberately engineering new individuals. Or, conceivably, spending resources on enhancing existing individuals rather than creating new ones at all.
You might have taken more interest in those termites if termites were very rare. So, depending on how rare life at our level of development is, we might expect to recieve more attention than that.
Robin: I agree with most of your points except the one about sexual reproduction. Even in a universe populated mainly by machine intelligences you're going to end up with parasites and various predators that will drive evolution and in such an environment, cloned creatures are at a significant disadvantage. So I don't see sexual reproduction dying out anytime soon. Unless I have entirely missed your point....
I'm curious about how efficient their leadership or leadership selection will be. For example people are often scared that one simple gesture or message could be highly offensive to aliens and cause conflict, but if the aliens have wise leadership figures those would understand that we humans can't possibly know what's offensive to them at first contact so they would correctly deduce it must be ab unfortunate coincidence. So Robin, do you think an old species would have learned how to rule itself wisely (perhaps even by AI)?
I read your article and imagined applying it to the Pintupi Nine. They are said to have stepped from a hunt and gather nomadic life to 1984 Australia in a day. How many of your predictions scale down to their experience?
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.
Very interesting... but your first point can be summarized as, "Advanced aliens are physically similar across the universe, unless they're not."
A fast moving plague that wipes out all of the cloned individuals is going to be prevented *how* in your two scenarios?
Speculating about someone's sex life, maybe?
My answer was considering non-biological entities as well, to which neither of those objections necessarily applies.
Like vertebrate fish and free-swimming squid?
We would never be like termites to aliens, more like cavemen. You wouldn't just ignore them, if you have halve a brain you'll recognize them for the rare form of life they are and that they can learn to understand our technology.
Keeping existing individuals alive doesn't work: eventually accidents, disease and simple wear and tear will win. Engineering new individuals is possible, though I think it would be wise to maintain the option of sexual reproduction (so a population cannot go extinct when they lose some infrastructure).
There are alternatives to cloning or the random recombination sexual reproduction, such as deliberately engineering new individuals. Or, conceivably, spending resources on enhancing existing individuals rather than creating new ones at all.
You might have taken more interest in those termites if termites were very rare. So, depending on how rare life at our level of development is, we might expect to recieve more attention than that.
Robin: I agree with most of your points except the one about sexual reproduction. Even in a universe populated mainly by machine intelligences you're going to end up with parasites and various predators that will drive evolution and in such an environment, cloned creatures are at a significant disadvantage. So I don't see sexual reproduction dying out anytime soon. Unless I have entirely missed your point....
It's an idiom. It's like someone who called another person a "complete idiot" were interrogated about the nature of an "incomplete idiot."
Pure vs. informed speculation (i.e. a weak hypothesis).
I'm curious about how efficient their leadership or leadership selection will be. For example people are often scared that one simple gesture or message could be highly offensive to aliens and cause conflict, but if the aliens have wise leadership figures those would understand that we humans can't possibly know what's offensive to them at first contact so they would correctly deduce it must be ab unfortunate coincidence. So Robin, do you think an old species would have learned how to rule itself wisely (perhaps even by AI)?
I read your article and imagined applying it to the Pintupi Nine. They are said to have stepped from a hunt and gather nomadic life to 1984 Australia in a day. How many of your predictions scale down to their experience?
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