A fascinatingly disturbing thought

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Last days of the Rise & Fall of Civilizations month, and here's this vid that I watched.

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Everybody knows who Neil deGrasse Tyson is. So straight to the point. Here he shares a "fascinatingly disturbing" thought about this coveted encounter with an alien intelligence...

So let's make a comparison. See, our DNA differs by just 1-2% from that of chimps, who are the closest species to ourselves in terms of intellect and physiology. And yet we're immensely more intelligent than chimps. The whole difference is contained in those 1-2%. We're so intellectually superior that we're even able to ask ourselves questions (and even find some answers!) about the way the Universe is made and how it works. For instance you probably could train an adult chimp to use a couple of signs as something like a language, and that's as far as their cognitive and communication capabilities are stretching. Meanwhile, a 2 year old kid already knows more words and has a grasp of more concepts than the most intelligent specimen of "chimphood". This is just how we've evolved, we're genetically inclined to learning fast, and learning many things.

And now let's imagine one day we're visited by aliens from another advanced civilization, far superior to ours. Let's assume they differ from us just by 1-2% in their DNA, but in a direction opposite to the chimps. The question is, how much more intelligent would they be, then? Wouldn't we look like primitive brainless chimps in their eyes? For their 2 year old kids, working with fundamental concepts of cosmology and using sophisticated scientific techniques would be like a kid's game, quite literally. Whereas these things are still posing a huge challenge even to our most brilliant geniuses. For them we'd be just a mere part of the background, part of the local wildlife of this place and little beyond that. OK fine, we could build some big structures and we can certainly exploit our environment to a point where we can actively affect it, often to our own detriment. But elephants can, too. And herbivorous herds! Also otters. Even the tiny termites, etc. So that's all you got, humans? You're not even Type I civilization, what's so interesting to see here? That's what they'd think of us.

But that's not the disturbing part. That's actually the funny part. Let's now recall how human explorers have dealt with the local wildlife in a new place. And I'm not talking about the scientists who first stepped into uncharted territories, but the colonizers who stepped in after them. They'd either ignore the local wildlife if they deem it harmless and useless to them... or they'd rather take whatever precautions they deem appropriate in order to avoid putting themselves at risk of attack from said wildlife. Or they'd exploit it for their practical purposes if it seems useful for them. But in neither case they'd care much about what it thinks, wants or needs. And certainly they wouldn't attempt a thorough communication with it. (Of course I'm aware that I might be looking at this from a too human-centered POV and underestimating the possibility of a vast diversity of mentality and approaches to foreign life systems that may or may not exist throughout the Universe).

That said, one of the geniuses of our time, Stephen Hawking could be right. Maybe it's not very recommendable to announce our presence in this corner of the cosmos so "loudly", by sending messages in a "bottle" like the Voyager with phonograph records in it. Because the probability that we'd be detected and visited by advanced aliens who are not-so-friendly, is logically many times higher than the chance that they'd turn out to be "saviors" and "teachers" with purely philanthropic intentions. No, they'd most probably be conquerors. It's not that we lack precious resources that they'd covet, starting with water and going through all the rare metals we've got. And they'd surely want to use those - at our expense. Even the very planet we live on could be a precious rarity throughout space, and they might want it for themselves. We could be more of an obstacle rather than subject of curiosity for them. Let's remember what happened to the Aztec when Cortes realized that they had gold. Or the Inca, after Pizarro's visit.

So let's be more cautious before we hasten to rejoice from he thought of a potential interplanetary visit. We never know where it'd lead us...

(courtesy: telemann)

As far as communicating with those visitors... It's too naive to believe that such a thing is even possible. I mean, when we meet with a chimp and we try to hold a conversation, what usually happens?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The irony is we know now that chimps aren't all that brainless. They use stone tools (to crack nuts), they have wars (which invariably involve annihilation of one band by the other in the most literal, gruesome, NSFW sense), they even have some groups of chimps using spears. However an alien would not differ from us in that sense, an alien would be more alien from humans than this particular prehistoric critter is from humans:



So we'd be treated less like humans and chimps (when humans use chimps for AIDs research, eat them, chimps eat human babies and have established patterns of violence against each other and humans that rival axe-crazy humans for sheer thuggery) and more like humans and dolphins.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In fact were I to be supremely cynical, I would say that the encounter would be more akin to humans and Pleistocene Megafauna, in that we'd be very numerous with bizarre traits that depending on the alien might make us seen either as civilized or as a hive-mind that infests the planet and thus Earth needs a cosmic can of Raid to handle. The aliens might drive us extinct but not be malicious at all in the process, they might see extinction as something the human species benefits from. Aliens would be just that: alien, and we'd be just as alien to them as they are to us.

Chimpanzees and bonobos look and act very like humans, and we're pretty much in the process of driving them extinct now. Aliens that see us the way we see dolphins would have equal scruples to harming us as we do to dolphins.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

an alien would be more alien from humans than this particular prehistoric critter is from humans

You can't know that.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Aww look at how cute it is!

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I think I'd dissent, mildly, from Dr. DeGrasse.

While we are forever blinded by "what we don't know we don't know," I think that if the aliens are thinking, reasoning beings then, ceteris parabus, they will be much more like us than we are like chimps. They will see in us what we don't see in chimpanzees. The difference between us will be quantitative, not qualitative.

I don't think this gives us any reason to look forward to the day when the aliens arrive, or show themselves, or whatever. Just that I see Uncle Martin as more of a Cortes to our Aztec Empire rather than a Jane Goodall to our chimpanzee band.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I see it as more a fishing trawler to our dolphin pod, with the same malice toward humans that a trawler has to dolphins caught in a fishing net.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

I see that as mostly accurate.

Intelligence as we generally express it in terms of intellect is fairly abstract.

For all we know the most successful form of interstellar life is a mindless string of biological bits and pieces that has the intellect of a termite yet the technical capability on par with gods.

For all we know, our first contact will look like an outbreak and less like War of the Worlds.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Considering the fact that our solar system is on the fringe of the Milky Way galaxy, I suspect that aliens would just as soon pass it up. I know that I - given a choice - would rather visit Orlando, FL than Barstow, CA, and I'm just a stupid earthling.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I doubt any aliens, especially if they're super-duper-intelligent ones, would prefer the central areas of our galaxy, where such nice phenomena like high radiation, weird gravitational effects and all sorts of turbulence (including an increased frequency of interplanetary impacts) is enormously higher than around here, due to the considerably denser stellar population.

In fewer words: you wouldn't want to live there.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Life can't exist in the center of the Milky Way. Too hot. Any life will be on the edges. And who is to say where or what the center of the galactic civilization is? We might be it!

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be reasonable to assume someone know where inhabited planets are in the first place (we certainly don't).

It's be more like... being dropped in the middle of the most remote section of... *throws a dart at a map* oh lets say the Central African Republic, and be tasked with finding it's capital, as well as figuring out the name of the capital, and you do not have access to Google lol.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

There's a paradox of trust in most of humanity seen both in a macro and a micro scale.

Humanity trusts to a degree in the benevolence of strangers. Yet those they're familiar with they don't seem to place blind trust in. Logically you would trust those you know and neither trust or distrust those you don't know. Yet so often we see people optimistically believe that strangers will be good while believing their neighbor will screw them over in a heartbeat.

It shouldn't be intriguing to think that alien invaders will be hostile any more than it would be intriguing to see them as benevolent. All creatures act towards an interest. That is the only thing we can be certain of in regards to alien intelligence. They may be as evil as Satan from our perspective and yet in their own logic their actions are not morally relevant.

If there is intelligent alien life it would be extremely foolish for it to reach out to any one person or organization. Hidden observation so as to better understand human pathos would be most likely. And despite what many argue, there isn't much of a variety in human pathos. If there was, propaganda wouldn't work.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I can't understand all the pain they'd have to put in order to observe us. If you're Columbus and you arrive on an island inhabited by primitive tribes, would you hide around the bush to observe them for a time in order to understand them, or you'd just step ashore and reveal yourself in your full glory, and command them to kneel before you?

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I don't really like the "we are 1-2 % different in DNA from Chimps, what would would some other being 1-2% different from us in the same direction be like." It seems to contain the old Evolutionary "ladder" trope which is a mistake in thinking. There is no 'direction' to evolution. But one could hypothesize radically more intelligent aliens... and one could also posit that intelligence cannot increase forever, but within any finite system it must reach a plateau. Who knows? We need more data.

But we don't really need that mis-thought to think about the same idea. Carl Sagan said something similar... Say we meet/communicate with some E.T. intelligence (we can presume the same level of 'innate' intelligence). It would be an enormous coincidence for us to encounter them at the same technological level as ourselves.

Surely they would be at the least a few thousand years behind us or ahead of us. Well, a few thousand years behind, and they wouldn't be technological in the least. A few thousand years past... well, look where we've gone in a few thousand years? That's why the idea of a "Star Wars" scenario is so vanishingly unlikely.


As for Fearing Aliens... one of the possible answers to the Fermi Paradox is that there are wolves out there, in the dark, and it is best not to attract their attention.

My own feeling is that any alien human interaction, if it ever happens, will be inherently cultural and informational. The Speed of Light isolates our physicality so efficiently, that wars of conquest for resources seem very unlikely.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

There are many possible directions in evolution, like branches. Let's not confuse the use of the term "direction" with "just one axis of evolution".

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that even with that 2% difference the common chimpanzee and the human are the only apes to engage in something smacking of wars, to use stone as a basis for tools, to have invented spears, to have invented the graphic, nightmarish deliberately-targeted murder, to have invented the lie, to have invented use of tools as weapons of attack.....so that raises a question of how much the gap between humans and chimpanzees is one of humans existing in bigger groups with more sophisticated cultures as opposed to one of kind between two very different categories of mind......and which at the same time says nothing about aliens. They might be Mr. Spock, or they might be the Elder Things.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

What if the alien was so alien that it's sense of self worth, position in being more or less evolved, or even it's method of problem solving is based on something other then intelligence?

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

the probability that we'd be detected and visited by advanced aliens who are not-so-friendly, is logically many times higher than the chance that they'd turn out to be "saviors" and "teachers" with purely philanthropic intentions.

This is a strange assumption. Why would unfriendly aliens be more probable than friendly ones? We can't know either way. Having never met extraterrestrial life, we have no basis for comparison or judgement.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Because of the evolutionary processes that produced increases in intelligence here on Earth: predation, higher intelligent beings being at the top of the food chain, the need for sheer energy in brain-power requires a lot of "energy." Yadda, yadda, yadda. The processes on other similar planets where intelligent life could develop wouldn't be radically different than here on Earth according to astrobiologists.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I think that we communicate with animals all the time.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Also with aliens!

[omnot.livejournal.com]

Who is that person it is assumed everyone knows of? Where is he famous, and why?

[omnot.livejournal.com]

Oh, and anyone who suggests that I should Google is actually proving my point...

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

By the way, Tyson's "science" is way off here. His assertion about the elements is pretty wacky. And he seems not to understand what DNA is or does.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Could you elaborate?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

One element that could be a big big help in bridging distances would something we already do now, except literally on a galactic level. Variations in the orbits of planets can sometimes bring them very close to Earth, and our scientists use that for some of our exploratory non-maned missions now. That variance of distance between objects also happens with star systems as they orbit and move through the Milky Way galaxy. For example, Gliese 710 will pass within a single light year of Earth in a few millions of years. That's a lot closer than 4 light years from Proxima Centauri (currently the nearest star), and every bit you can shave off distance wise - it's a big help. And I'd don't think it's over the top to think advanced intelligent aliens would be using this same technique in leap-frogging through the galaxy.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

This has beena refreshing discussion.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that any speculation on what a contact between humans and advanced aliens would be like hinges on how much biological evolution forms the basis for their behavior. In order to put their behavior in a context that we understand the default answer seems to be "a lot", but it's not clear to me how this interaction would proceed if they have moved beyond the stage we remain in. At that point things get so alien that it's worth wondering whether we would even be fully aware of what had just happened, or whether they would even care.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm not even sure biological evolution as we understand it has any relevance here -- because there is no basis upon which to ground the belief that evolution elsewhere would follow a path that is at all similar to the terrestrial one. In fact, it is unclear that there is any basis upon which to even be discussing DNA here -- as if every life-form everywhere must of necessity utilize protein sequence replication in propagation.

Just as odd is the idea that Species A will relate to Species B as Species B relates to Species C simply on the basis of a similar delta in protein sequences. Who is to say that a species capable of interplanetary travel doesn't have an entirely different understanding of the relationship between the individual and the cosmos -- the cosmos, of course, including "lower" species" such as ourselves. Heck, even human beings with near-identical DNA have entirely different views of how to relate to other life-forms. See Francis of Assisi vs. the Trump boys.

No, our friend Neil is fully and absolutely out of his depth here.