Telescope Reviews: SETI head article

O.K., today all the SETI searchers have agreed to stop searching and will now focus on something else now that they know it's impossible (whew, I'm glad that's over!)

Seriously though, it perplexes me why people invest energy in naysaying. There is no better way to test our mediocrity than by measuring/observing. There is no evidence whatsoever that technological civilizations couldn't or did'nt arise earlier in the Universe. Philosophy alone cannot solve this question, only observation can help us determine whether a technological civilization wants to purposely communicate with us (and even though I advocate for The Search, it's a challenge to imagine many positive reasons why they would want to communicate with us!!!)

Regarding "technological sophistication", I think there is a degree of anthropocentrism relative to defining so-called "intelligence", and the speed of it's arrival.

Although no other species on Earth has developed "technological sophistication", certainly others have developed "intelligence" proportional to surviving in their environment (and perhaps not more than than they need to make it to the next generation, reproductively speaking, again relative to their environment only, both materially and socially?)

We cannot predict that given different environmental conditions on another planet, different/faster selection pressures could accelerate (or slow) the rise to technological sophistication. Perhaps one might argue that "technological sophistication", or our type of intelligence if you will, is just one type of survival function, i.e. a species ability to modify it's environment to survive (architect beavers, bowerbirds, chimps fishing for termites, and of course humans come to mind.) Whose to say that this class/function is as limited elsewhere as it is here?

Perhaps if more frequent mass-extinctions occurred, or more ice-ages occurred, or more inter-tribal/social predation occurred a smarter species might have arisen more quickly due to the need (of some species) to modify their environments to survive? There are many unknown factors timing-wise that caused us to arise when we did.

Defining intelligence is unfortunately an anthropocentric speculative affair, but I don't think one could successfully dispute that there are other intelligences on the Earth.

Even Charles Darwin asserted that some animals have reasoning abilities. Obviously mammals like humans, chimps and dolphins don't have a monopoly on intelligence. One African Grey parrot not only developed a vocabulary of more than 80 English words, could distinguish colors and shapes (and say them), could combine words to convey new meaning, could count up to 6 of anything, including the concept of nothing (or zero if you will.)

Other seemingly intelligent creatures (relative to amoebas that is, which BTW even they have inherited intelligence) include:

Primates (which one might disqualify as other examples of intelligence because of the common lineage with humans?)

Cephalopods like octopuses (is that octopii?) and cuttlefish (which have one of the largest brain-to-body size ratios of all invertebrates.)

Cetaceans (dolphin and whales)

Top predators (like highly social team-hunters such as tigers, lions and wolves, the dog's predecessor)

Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, ants etc.)

Maybe Odonata? (dragonflies?) I know they don't have what we'd traditionally call intelligence (and no doubt many would feel that they are not intelligent), but they present a great example of what I call genetic survival intelligence, one cannot hit one at highway speeds with a car (i.e. they seem immensely smarter survival-wise than a squirrel, probably from ducking out predators?), and they fly behind our heads here in Florida near sunset to eat bugs (gotta love them!) Maybe that big optical processing need (from those humongous eyes) mimics intelligence somehow (that twisting/scanning head sort of resembles a dog's inquisitive look), but how do we distinguish that from other intelligence? They seem smart evolution-wise (but are very ancient), and just try to catch one!

(Digressing for a moment, what about those stupid squirrels, you'd think the smarter ones would have been selected out by now because of cars; I guess fecundity wins out over intelligence

And of course, regarding communicating in general, all animals and even microbes communicate to find food or procreate. Some even use electromagnetic radiation to do it (bioluminescent Myctophidae like flashlight fish, lightning bugs, and light sensitive cuttlefish etc.) or echo-location like cetaceans (singing whales or hunting dolphins) and bats.

Final point being, there are lots of communicating seemingly-intelligent organisms on Earth; all life is inclined to communicating; I don't think it's such a reach that others might be inclined to do so in the galaxy, but I strongly believe that the odds would be against us being the first to arrive on the scene! (it's really really big out there, and I think that if "intelligence" is a class of objects, then will be pervasive enough to cause the Principle of Mediocrity to apply to us.)

Regards, Jason W. Higley