'Amazing' New Technology Set To Transform the Search For Alien Life (theguardian.com) 127
Robin McKie writes via The Guardian: Scientists with Breakthrough Listen, the world's largest scientific research program dedicated to finding alien civilizations, say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos. These innovations will be outlined at the group's annual conference, which is to be held in the UK for the first time, in Oxford, this week. Several hundred scientists, from astronomers to zoologists, are expected to attend. "There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI," said astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen. "They are going to transform how we look for alien civilizations."
Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometer Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world's most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world's largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars. Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyze these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilizations, added Croft.
"Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters -- things like that." [...] Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere. I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it's possible."
Among these new instruments are the Square Kilometer Array, made up of hundreds of radio telescopes now being built in South Africa and Australia, and the Vera Rubin Observatory that is being constructed in Chile. The former will become the world's most powerful radio astronomy facility while the latter, the world's largest camera, will be able to image the entire visible sky every three or four nights, and is expected to help discover millions of new galaxies and stars. Both facilities are set to start observations in the next few years and both will provide data for Breakthrough Listen. Using AI to analyze these vast streams of information for subtle patterns that would reveal evidence of intelligent life will give added power to the search for alien civilizations, added Croft.
"Until now, we have been restricted to looking for signals deliberately sent out by aliens to advertise their existence. The new techniques are going to be so sensitive that, for the first time, we will be able to detect unintentional transmissions as opposed to deliberate ones and will be able to spot alien airport radar, or powerful TV transmitters -- things like that." [...] Croft remains optimistic that we will soon succeed in making contact. "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere. I think it would be deeply weird if it turned out we were the only inhabited planet in the galaxy or in the universe. But you know, it's possible."
The conditions for life are everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
Complex multicellular life took over 3 billion years to evolve on Earth and then Earth went through multiple mass extinction events, and that doesn't bode well the emergence of intelligent life everywhere. Couple that with the unique conditions that Earth has enjoyed that increased the rate of evolution and allowed life to exist in the first place (protective magnetic field, large moon, ozone layer, Jupiter as a cosmic shield) and it doesn't sound too far-fetched to claim that intelligent life is extremely unlikely to evolve in this universe.
We want to believe the universe was created for us to exist and live happily but in reality everything in it is actively trying to kill life because it's so fragile against what's happening outside and within planets themselves (e.g. volcanic activity, extreme tectonic activity, oxygen toxicity).
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Yeah, I think the likelihood that highly intelligent life exists NOW on both Earth and another place, is slim. At least, within the Observable Universe.
If you assume the non-observable universe is practically infinite, you can get around that, but then it doesn't matter since you could never even know they exist.
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Yah, that sounds right. Any moment now an overlooked comet or asteroid could hit us, or some new disease could arise naturally and wipe us out. (Although it would have its work cut out to get the job done before our own lab-grown horrors win the race). I suspect that we will be done in by something far more subtle and less dramatic, such as steadily falling levels of intelligence (which have already begun to make themselves felt).
The anthropic principles change your outlook on everything, utterly. Our exist
There are no lab growth horrors (Score:2, Interesting)
The asteroid thing is a problem though. We have the tech to stop them but we're too uncooperative to solve the problem... Also way too much short term greed at the top.
But as for intelligent life, somebody's gotta be first and that might be us. But the way the math actually works even if we're not it's no
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I suspect that we will be done in by something far more subtle and less dramatic, such as steadily falling levels of intelligence
Well, survival of the dumb is made really easy by the rich technological society we live in. From what I see today, intelligence doesn't appear to be an evolutionary advantage anymore; on the contrary, it looks like smarter people will have on average fewer children.
Assuming this trend is real and continues, it may lead to a significant drop in average IQ. If this happens, there is a chance that humanity won't be able to maintain the caring society we live in anymore. The change will probably be catastrophi
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I think that extinction is what is required for the intelligence to develop. Evolution can get stuck into sub-optimal peak. Extinction resets this and allows to search for a higher peak.
Re:The conditions for life are everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this argument fails to allow one to assume "anywhere that CHONP, water, and energy meet, life will form", the common belief of the SETI crowd. Because the universe is awash in ice planets that contain liquid oceans in contact with rock underneath a protective ice crust and with ample sources of internal energy. These are highly stable environments over geologic timescales - much more stable than Earth. Are we to believe that life evolved on these countless bodies, and not one in our celestial neighborhood ultimately led to a spacefaring civilization? That cryovolcanism / fissures / etc never led to surface species on any of them? That no underwater species developed technological civilization that allowed it to explore past its crust, gaze out at the stars, discover that the universe is awash in worlds like theirs, and set out to reach them? That none had portions where land protruded above the ice? That none were on a world that underwent geological change that warmed up their planet?
I just can't buy this argument. IMHO, abiogenesis itself has to be rare. Perhaps abiogenesis isn't as rare, and lots of life that does evolve stays trapped on its planet - but I still think abiogenesis must fundamentally be rare.
Rural galaxy (Score:1)
I'd guestimate the average rate of intelligent life is roughly about 10% per non-trivial galaxy. This would explain both the Fermi paradox on the "rural paradox".
The fact that our local galaxy cluster is small and isolated suggests intelligent but aggressive life usually spreads quickly in larger clusters. We are not in an "average" galactic spot but in a rural area, keeping us safe...for now.
If we were in a typical (bigger) cluster, we wouldn't be around pondering why we are alone, instead conquered or ass
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Complex multicellular life took over 3 billion years to evolve on Earth and then Earth went through multiple mass extinction events, and that doesn't bode well the emergence of intelligent life everywhere. Couple that with the unique conditions that Earth has enjoyed that increased the rate of evolution and allowed life to exist in the first place (protective magnetic field, large moon, ozone layer, Jupiter as a cosmic shield) and it doesn't sound too far-fetched to claim that intelligent life is extremely unlikely to evolve in this universe.
It's hard to grasp the enormity of the universe. The current estimate is that there are 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (two billion trillion) stars in the observable universe. We have no way to estimate how much more universe there is beyond that. So how extremely unlikely? A billion to one? Then there's two trillion intelligent species out there. A trillion to one? Then there's two billion. A hundred trillion to one? Then it's only ten million. There's a least a hundred billion stars in our own galaxy, an
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But playing this numbers game entices you to come up with claiming that a billion to one chance is a small chance. It isn't necessarily. At uni, a professor discussed digital signal transfer within a microprocessor. Clock speed 10 megahertz. (Yeah I know , old story.) How often will there be a problem if there's a ten million to one chance in this
How do they plan on "making contact" ? (Score:1)
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If they find evidence of life several million light-years away, do they still consider making contact "soon" or they may update their expectations to "in a short while" ?
Especially since several million light years away means several million years ago. (Or does it? Now I'm confused. Help me, Professor Jeans!)
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Re:How do they plan on "making contact" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with advanced life being abundant - as per the Drake Equation is:
1) The Drake Equation tends to make people suggest that there are a vast number of spacefaring alien civilizations out there "somewhere".
2) A spacefaring civilization has equal odds of having evolved before vs. after humans, so vast numbers before humans.
3) Since celestial timescales are so long, most would have evolved hundreds of millions or even billions of years before humans.
4) Thus, their technology would be mind-bogglingly advanced.
5) Unless all of them had some motive not to expand, they could be expected to have expanded throughout the universe - with an upper limit on velocity of just under the speed of light.
6) Thus they should have formed bubbles of civilization hundreds of millions or even billions of light years across.
So where are these numerous galactic civilizations? Hence, the Fermi Paradox (and its numerous proposed solutions; the one I favour is simply "life DOESN'T just tend to form wherever there's CHONP, water and energy; it requires rare conditions")
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I prefer the likelihood that highly intelligent life is simply vastly more unlikely to evolve and then not destroy itself immediately than Drake's Equation (or the factors/numbers people tend to insert into it) suggests to some people.
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My issue with that is that once you become significantly spacefaring, it becomes increasingly difficult for you to exterminate yourself. There's a relatively narrow window where the capability is there, but then it steadily diminishes as the species spreads out in space in all directions, assuming (as one should) that the speed of light is a hard, fast limit. How do you, Evil Overlord Bent On Extermination, kill off your species thousands of light years away? You don't even know where they are, have no da
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Carefully engineered viruses could be awful. But again, highly unlikely to get a total kill.
Oh yes, they absolutely are that deadly. COVID? Zombies? Not one of them has anything on what a weaponized smallpox or the cocktail of weaponized bioweapons rouge nations like North Korea could unleash and has reportedly invested heavily in for many decades as an asymmetrical form of warfare.
The Chinese are also believed to be working on genetically targeted weaponized viruses, designed for genocide of non-Chinese ethnicities.
And spreading to other planets probably won't work, either. If we can send hum
Exaggerated claims (Score:3)
"Scientists with Breakthrough Listen... say a host of technological developments are about to transform the search for intelligent life in the cosmos.
So what are these amazing, wonderful "technological developments"?
"There are amazing technologies that are under development, such as the construction of huge new telescopes in Chile, Africa and Australia, as well as developments in AI," said astronomer Steve Croft, a project scientist with Breakthrough Listen.
Ah. I see. Big telescopes and clever software. Stunning, radically innovative technical breakthroughs. Which will no doubt cost a very great deal, some of which may rub off on "Breakthrough Listen".
But where is the "host of technological developments"?
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AWS, duh!
Also, if you upgrade to the new Amazon Prime Alien Search Bundle, they will keep your instances alive two hours longer so that you can finish the data analysis before the overnight cronjob cleans all your tempfiles.
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The fact that you don't understand their significance to the field doesn't change their significance to the field. Yes, they are talking about exponential improvements in abilities.
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The article doesn't back up the claim of new technologies.
New technologies may indeed have been needed to build these new large arrays, but those technologies are not discussed in the article.
Therefore it is only clickbait.
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Where does the energy come from? (Score:2)
Cows are excellent in detecting aliens... (Score:2)
They will recognize them immediately
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You seem to have read a very different article than everyone else.
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Strange details (Score:2)
TFA speaks about airport radar or TV broadcasting. That would mean an advance civilisation at exactly the same technological stage as ours, modulo the time for EM waves to travel from them to us. That would be an extraordinary coincidence as another civilisation can as well be billions of years older than ours and use radically more advanced technology we cannot detect or even imagine.
A big telescope being able to detect the signature of chlorophyll in the spectrum of a not too distant exoplanet is somethin
Wait, what's that sound? (Score:2)
There's no intelligent aliens (Score:2)
At least not in the Milky Way, and possibly not even in the Local Group.
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The proof that life is improbable is on Earth itself. There is no other life except that which is DNA based and traces back to LUCA. All life uses the same DNA to amino acid code, and the same nearly the same ribosome sequence. If life can just emerge easily, we should be seeing other non-DNA based life or at least life based on a different ribosomal code. Instead all bacteria, and all eukaryotes have nearly the same ribosomal code and even genes in the animals don't differ by much. Some say that's because
So much for SETI@home (Score:2)
Too bad, you will miss out on having an extraterrestrial civilisation named after you.
Headline inflation strikes again (Score:2)
Yup, cool new telescopes are being built along with cool new tools to analyze the data
It's good, but not "amazing"
Headline writers seem to be using increasingly exaggerated headlines in a race to attract eyeballs. Minor incremental advances are always labelled "breakthroughs" or "game changers"
An interesting coincidence (Score:2)
Ever notice that within a few days of a major event in the US that makes the administration look bad, there's a UFO-related story?
Simple life is common. Complex is probably not (Score:2)
I'm skeptical they can be detected (Score:2)
Evidence of life - as we know it - would be hard to hide once we achieve the technology to detect earth sized planets directly and measure their atmosphere.
Evidence of intelligent - which is to say, technology using intelligent - life would rely on, at least for the moment, detection of electromagnetic radiation from far, far away. But let's look at how we emit electromagnetic radiation into space.
Bandwidth is limited, and anything powerful enough to be detectable from hundreds or thousands of light years a
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You focus on communication, but there might be other reasons to emit powerful EM radiation. Active radar to hunt objects in the Oort cloud, or laser launching interstellar probes, for example. Those might be detectable at vast distances.
Bigg (Score:2)
People really don't appreciate how big is the visible universe. Or even our galaxy. The odds of finding any kind of signal that is so far down in the noise... It's more likely that the noise will actually create a picture of Alfred E. Neuman.
The search for alien life... (Score:1)
... still assumes that it's not already here and just hiding from us.
Re: Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Statistically, it's almost guaranteed there's other sapient life somewhere.
Astrometrically, the distance between them and us is almost guaranteed to be so huge we might as well be alone.
It's really kind of heartbreaking. We're trapped on this little island in these fleeting, fragile bodies.
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Statistically
You can plug any numbers you like into Drake's Equation, or add and remove factors at will. That makes it pretty much meaningless.
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You can use Bayesian statistics. Given that, from all we can observe about the distribution and size/brightness of stars, the frequency of rocky planets and their orbits around stars, and the distribution of elements in the galaxy, we can see that conditions that allowed for life on Earth are not rare. Actually, conditions for life aren't even rare in our solar system. Three rocky bodies had liquid water on their surface during and after the Late Heavy Bombardment (Venus, Earth, & Mars). In the coming t
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"Life" probably isn't rare. But each higher level of complexity above that requires an order of magnitude higher luck and time (and space). It took 5 billion years to evolve here, with countless things going right, constant competition over limited resources, and an evolutionary loop lasting millions of years to become highly intelligent.
Then, you need seemingly infinite luck to last for any length of time without destroying itself. My guess is some place like North Korea or China (or some lone actor or
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Someone/Something like that may speed up the process, but capitalism and the myth of infinite growth in a finite environment is already doing a great job of wiping us out. Weaponised propaganda to promote both wilful ignorance and non-stop consumption helps a lot too.
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The issue with detection range is actually more a product of quantum mechanics than anything else. While a back of the envelope calculation might imply that we could detect Earth-like radio seepage from thousands of lightyears away, the reality is much harsher than that. Light is quantized, remember; it comes in discrete packets called photons. A signal doesn't actually spread out in a perfect sphere from the source. For a given power level of transmitter, a finite number of photons are generated. As the si
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You seem to believe in the deeply mistaken and horribly antiquated notion of the Great Chain of Being fallacy. "Complexity" is largely a meaningless term and you're definitely using it wrong. The actual measure you're groping for is metabolic rate, not complexity. High metabolic rates have evolved from multiple clades.
Also, the planet is only 4.2 billion years old. Eukaryotic life is only about two billion years old.
I can talk about how absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Instead, I'll point ou
Re: Meh (Score:2)
Different species on earth have the same evolutionary origins. The dolphin may demonstrate behaviors indicating intelligence, but genetically they are similar to humans. For example, compare the bones in the dolphin fin to the bones in a human arm and their shared origins become obvious.
Lifeforms on earth outside the animal kingdom do not display any intelligence. Animals wildly divergent from humans, such as insects and sponges, rarely demonstrate intelligence. The octopus may be the big exception here.
I d
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All life on Earth is related, period. But intelligence is widely distributed over the tree of life wherever a species evolved towards higher metabolisms, sociability, and complex interactions with their environment. Primates, cetaceans, and elephants are all mammals but corvids and parrots are birds. Primates, cetaceans, elephants, corvids, and parrots are all tetrapods, but manta rays are cartilaginous fish. Primates, cetaceans, elephants, corvids, parrots, and manta rays are all vertebrates, but octopuse
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Statistically, it's almost guaranteed there's other sapient life somewhere.
What kind of statistics tells you that? You have a sample size of one so far, and no clue as to the probability of life arising anywhere.
Freeman Dyson wrote, about 50 years ago, that H. sapiens could have become as intelligent as we are only through genetic drift. That means our prized cleverness is a result of pure chance. What were the odds? 1 in 100? 1 in 1 million? 1 in a googol? We'll never know.
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Earth has a sample size of 5 billion years.
Re: Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there is much better evidence than that. Back in Dyson's time other animals on Earth were considered to be little more than automata acting on instinct alone. In modern times the evidence of some pretty impressive intelligence in other species is building up. Rats learning to set traps off with a stick, crows and other birds learning how to access food from containers. The idea that we are even the sole sentient speices on our own planet is looking increasingly to be false.
We are still probably the most intelligent, although that may well depend on who's measuring and exactly what they are measuring. Octopii have shown amazing levels of intelligence, although it's quite different to ours. Dolphins as well. All this data is suggesting that intelligence and sentience may be an innate property of life, especially of more complex life forms.
So it's looking quite likely that if we find any sort of extraterrestrial life it will have at least a level of intelligence and sentience. Circumstances and local conditions may well dictate the level of it but if life exists at all out there it's likely to be sentient.
There is one caveat here. There is a possibility that sentience and intelligence in other Earth animals arose because of human intelligence, with natural selection bringing it out in other animals as a response to having to share a planet with us. If that's the case then sentience and life may not correlate significantly. But I think that's unlikely. Octopii and doplphins seem to have developed their intelligence entirely seperate to us.
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Octopii have shown amazing levels of intelligence, although it's quite different to ours
Heck, I've even seen a recent video of an octopus holding a very sophisticated, yet disturbing, conversation with a human.
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Yes. There's also videos of dogs and cats using 'talking pads' (a mat with selections of words they can press down on to indicate what they want to say) to hold fairly complex conversations with their owners. I haven't seen any actual scientific studies into things like this, but there is growing evidence that other animals are far more intelligent than we have previously given them credit for.
Re: Meh (Score:5, Informative)
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But communicating "like humans" does seem to be necessary to develop high intelligence, at least there are no examples otherwise. Language beyond simple signals is necessary to convey complex thought, and probably, drive the evolutionary development of such brain structures.
Chimps have better short time memory than us, yet none of them seem to have developed higher order intelligence. That seems to require more complex capabilities, actual language (not grunts or beeps), and an evolutionary feedback loop
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But communicating "like humans" does seem to be necessary to develop high intelligence, at least there are no examples otherwise. Language beyond simple signals is necessary to convey complex thought, and probably, drive the evolutionary development of such brain structures.
Again, the problem in the past is humans believed intelligence based on how humans communicate. Octopi have no vocalizations.
Chimps have better short time memory than us, yet none of them seem to have developed higher order intelligence. That seems to require more complex capabilities, actual language (not grunts or beeps), and an evolutionary feedback loop lasting hundreds of thousands of years.
You just proved my point with your assumptions that since chimps only grunts and beeps, they are less intelligent. When taught sign language, chimps can have conversations.
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Again, the problem in the past is humans believed intelligence based on how humans communicate. Octopi have no vocalizations.
Sorry, but being able to solve simple spatial puzzles is not high order intelligence. Octopuses are still very dumb animals.
You just proved my point with your assumptions that since chimps only grunts and beeps, they are less intelligent. When taught sign language, chimps can have conversations.
No chimp has ever been taught sign language. At best, they can be taught a few symbols in order to make simple requests (that's not language), but not one has ever strung together words in a demonstration of syntax.
Show me a chimp solving complex logic problems, or engaging in any activity at all that requires higher reasoning skills. Some chimps can start a fire. Humans can be tau
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Sorry, but being able to solve simple spatial puzzles is not high order intelligence. Octopuses are still very dumb animals.
Since humans and octopi cannot directly communicate, how would you know? You don't know each octopus spends their days composing symphonies and sonnets in their mind. But you're absolutely sure your lack of any knowledge about the matter makes you an expert in octopi intelligence.
No chimp has ever been taught sign language. At best, they can be taught a few symbols in order to make simple requests (that's not language), but not one has ever strung together words in a demonstration of syntax.
Again your ignorance must reality, eh?
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Sorry, but being able to solve simple spatial puzzles is not high order intelligence. Octopuses are still very dumb animals.
Since humans and octopi cannot directly communicate, how would you know? You don't know each octopus spends their days composing symphonies and sonnets in their mind. But you're absolutely sure your lack of any knowledge about the matter makes you an expert in octopi intelligence.
And perhaps they're psychic and can move shit with their mind.
No chimp has ever been taught sign language. At best, they can be taught a few symbols in order to make simple requests (that's not language), but not one has ever strung together words in a demonstration of syntax.
Again your ignorance must reality, eh?
You claimed chimps have been taught language. Show me one.
Heck, show me one animals species that's ever been taught language. One individual.
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And perhaps they're psychic and can move shit with their mind.
Again you seem to be making things up based on your own reality. What we know is that octopi do not communicate the same as humans. They can solve problems. They can recognize different people. They can use tools. Biologically their intelligence stems from a different system than humans or other animals. One traditional method has been to measure brain size relative to body size. Octopi have more than one brain; how does that method work?
You claimed chimps have been taught language. Show me one.
Washoe [wikipedia.org]
Heck, show me one animals species that's ever been taught language. One individual.
Bahahahaha. You know that any sheep farmer with a herding dog
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It is a shame, really, I mean no mind should go to waste, but here we are with someone who is sooooo adamant that there is no level of intelligence that animals have that could be near or approaching, human level, when clearly animals have more going on than we had thought even just a few decades ago.
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An AI on a C64 could probably repeat his points well enough.
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Thanks, got a laugh out of that. Enjoy the weekend!
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OK I just gotta correct you: "octopus" is not Latin. Its plural is octopuses.,
Ok, so you're just factually wrong [merriam-webster.com]: "Octopi is the oldest plural of octopus, coming from the belief that words of Latin origin should have Latin endings. Octopuses was the next plural, giving the word an English ending to match its adoption as an English word."
How is it that you felt so confident yet were so wrong when this information is easy to obtain says a lot about you.
As for your examples (Washoe, sheep, and dogs), not one of them understand language.
You are either the most stubborn or the densest person I have met. There are scientific papers [nih.gov] on the subject.
Language requires understanding syntax, and not one understands syntax. It is not enough to just associate sounds or symbols with things; that's not language because can't communicate complex ideas.,
Logical fallacy: False d [scribbr.com]
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There is no language without syntax. You're an idiot. Learning "words" is not learning language.
Logical Fallacy: false dilemma [logicallyfallacious.com]. Your world is just binary, isn't it? You simply do not understand or refuse to entertain the idea of gray.
None of those papers claim that any animal understand syntax, or language. Not one of them.
When a sheep farmer can yell "Right!" to their dog and the dog understands to drive the sheep to the right to scientists means dogs understand direction. The dog goes take start making scribbles with their paw or fetches a pen and paper. But what do scientists and sheep farmers know? You know so much more than everyone else. By the way, how is your reading of Einstein's
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From your own link: "The word 'octopus' is a Latinized form of the Greek word októpus, which translates to 'eight foot'. . That brings us to the next ending, octopodes, which follows the Greek formation for plurals. This is the least-used ending, even though it may fit the word’s Greek origins best. 'Octopodes stems from the belief that because octopus is originally Greek, it should have a Greek ending,' says Merriam-Webster ”
So either you cannot read your own links or you are just lying.
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However, the final option, octopuses, is the preferred plural when speaking and writing in English.
Bahahahaha. First I see I have to explain this slowly to you. "Octopus" comes from LATIN. You said it it did not: "'octopus' is not Latin. Its plural is octopuses." [slashdot.org] So either you still do not know the roots of the word or you are lying? Wrong or dishonest: Pick one because every source says your are wrong. Second, when you say "octopuses" is the "preferred plural", you are ignoring the "preferred" part of that statement. Your preference is not everyone else's preference.
Merriam-Webster notes that this plural emerged later in the nineteenth century, and has the attached –es ending to follow the English formation of plurals.
Merriam-Webster says the the olde
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No one says they don't have simple symbolism. Obviously they do.
Read the papers before you comment further. Simple symbolism best describes your ideas about language and communication.
But direction is a simple command, used in the specific application of hunting, and assigning a sound to it is not language.
Sounds like you have never seen a herding dog work ever in your life. When "Right!" is yelled, the dog does not simply run right. They drive the sheep to the right which means they might have to switch back and go left first, get behind the sheep, then drive them right. The dog understands context which you do not even when explained to you. Again your lack of knowledge here means everyone
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Counting is a common attribute among mammals and reptiles, yes.
And chimps can do feats of short term memory. But we seem to have lost that capability in the development of higher brain function, so mental capabilities like counting and short term memory are not terribly important to higher level intelligence. Language is, and not one other animal evolved language, even among the Great Apes.
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Without rigorous scientific analysis, none of that is real. Or you end up deluding yourself, like with the whole Koko the Talking Gorilla scam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Comparing human and dolphin intelligence according to "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re: Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
What kind of statistics tells you that? You have a sample size of one so far, and no clue as to the probability of life arising anywhere.
I think you are confusing statistical probability with confirmed results. Known confirmed instances = 1. That is not what he is talking about. If we look at probabilities, there is the possibility of more life out there. The probabilities have changed with more scientific discoveries. For example, before exploring the Marianas trench, life not based on photosynthesis was theoretical. Life in the trench is based on chemosynthesis. This has increased the possibilities that life exists outside the Goldilocks zone where light from a star is weak. It is possible that life exists on Eurpoa for example.
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Statistically, it's almost guaranteed there's other sapient life somewhere.
Astrometrically, the distance between them and us is almost guaranteed to be so huge we might as well be alone.
It's really kind of heartbreaking. We're trapped on this little island in these fleeting, fragile bodies.
Correct on all points, especially the last one. We know with near certainty that (given the sheer scale of the universe) there must be sentient life out there. But that scale also means that our civilizations more than likely are separated by such an enormous distance or time that we will never have evidence of each other's existence. Our only hope is that FTL travel (or an analog of such) is actually possible, and the reason we've not observed evidence of anyone else using it is that some version of sta
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When I tell them the above answer, some just straight up don't believe me, which is fine.
The Wright Brothers are credited with the first human flight in 1903. Do you honestly think that by 1909 and looking at our still-antiquated flying tech, you could have convinced a single human being that our species would fly to the moon and walk on it, within the next 50 years?
It’s not hard to find humans incapable of even imagining our future or our future capabilities, mainly because our own ignorance allows us to suck at it so very badly. We couldn’t even imagine moonwalks in 1909, a mer
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Counter point, without the motivation of the "Disease of Greed" we'd have never left the damn trees.
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We couldn't even imagine moonwalks in 1909, a mere half-century before we actually did.
Most couldn't imagine it, but some could and did, most of them science fiction writers. Verne wrote about going to the center of the Earth in 1864, a feat far more difficult than going to the moon which is why we haven't achieved it yet and likely will not for centuries if ever.
Had our ignorant greedy species NOT pissed away the last thousand years carving up this dying rock into Yours and Mine endlessly warmongering over it for death and profit, we would most likely BE that species cruising at FTL speeds we cannot even imagine, as we sit here stuck and horribly infected with the Disease of Greed.
Assuming FTL is actually possible, I agree.
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Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say necessarily "alone in the universe", but I do believe that the most likely answer to the Fermi paradox is that we're alone within reasonable relativistic distances, and that faster-than-light travel is physically impossible.
The whole universe doesn't need to be empty to explain the Fermi Paradox. Just our particular neighborhood, and just up to this point in time.
I strongly agree with you though that logic like "We know that the conditions for life are everywhere, we know that the ingredients for life are everywhere" is deeply flawed. The particular environment of at least some portion of the early Earth (which was an extremely different place than today's Earth) proved effective at creating life, but that says nothing about that particular unknown environment being common in the universe. You can't just set out a normal cosmic mix of water and CHONP compounds at room temperature and expect it to just turn into bacteria. The path to self-sustaining hypercycles was almost certainly a fraught one - and the earliest stages (pre-RNA-world) probably didn't even resemble anything we know of as life today.
I'm personally a strong believer in the "metabolism first" school of abiogenesis. That LONG before there's anything even remotely resembling genetics, the first stage is just a natural catalyst reacting energy-rich compounds. And that the reactive radicals released from this leads to the creation (and deposition or trapping-in-vesicles) of random varying compounds, some of which happen to increase the reaction rate, improve fluid flow patterns, and/or encourage the creation of other compounds that increase the reaction rate. That early on we're dealing with highly nonspecific reactions and relatively simple molecules or chaotic chains, and that specificity and efficiency are things that developed into the system at a much later date. There's no RNA, probably no proteins, etc - just a requirement that formation rates of "useful" compounds, weighted by their proportional usefulness, happens faster than their loss and the weighted formation rates of detrimental compounds (for every link in the chain... which early on, needs to be a very short chain!). Built atop this very different scaffold, eventually amines come to play a major role in reactions - from there, leading to proteins (of steadily increasing complexity) and glucosamines, leading to early tRNA to aid in protein formation. RNA and proteins then co-evolve to ever-more efficient synthesis mechanisms, ultimately resulting in the early ribosome.
But the key aspect is the environment, not just the feedstocks themselves. You need some highly specific environment to get this scaffolding to progress in a net-forward manner (faster than loss or formation of detrimental compounds happens), not just "water, energy and some random natural CHONP compounds". Clearly, that environment was - somewhere, in some form - on the early Earth. That doesn't mean it's a common environment in the universe. And even if it were a common environment, it could be a transient environment, one that tends to not exist for very long, and Earth's just happened to be efficient enough and lucky enough to spawn stable independent life before it went away.
I'd also add that IMHO the field has also been held back by a focus on liquid chemistry, when the earliest stages were almost undoubtedly surface chemistry, at a rock-water interface in vesicles / pore space. I mean, I get it - liquid chemistry is much easier to study and esp. to model - but it's (again, IMHO) just not the right paradigm.
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I'm personally a strong believer in the "metabolism first" school of abiogenesis....
.... Clearly, that environment was - somewhere, in some form - on the early Earth...
So you believe life happened via mechanisms that you can't reproduce or observe anywhere in nature. Would you call that a scientific position?
It appears you are using "transient" to equal, what 2-4 BILLION years? How is it that an environment that is stable enough to cradle life through its early development could then disappear from earth without a trace of the critical life-imparting mechanisms?
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We can't reproduce or observe abiogenesis in any form in nature. We can only discuss what is the most likely ways it could theoretically occur.
If I'm walking down the road and I see an arch of stacked blocks, I'm not assuming that someone just placed those stones in an arch as-is, because it would have collapsed while being built. I'm assuming that they first built a scaffolding, then stacked the stones alon
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We can't reproduce or observe abiogenesis in any form in nature. We can only discuss what is the most likely ways it could theoretically occur.
A calculation of how long it would take is what led Crick to believe in Panspermia.
Re: Meh (Score:2)
At least it would be nice if we did not feel alone among ourselves. The intelligence in the universe is still to be found.
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Long story short, like a jigsaw puzzle I put alot of separate notions together and came up with what I consider a rational explanation of Life, The Universe, and Everything (wink).... I'm not going into details atm HOWEVER....
In my arguments with people stuck in the here and now, I like proof by induction, I challenge the stick in the mud to rationally explain away 1 cas
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You're still thinking like Star Trek.
It could be a giant blob or intelligent organic matter sucking up sunlight and nutrients all day thinking about the meaning of life.
Answer is 42.
You're welcome, o intelligent overlord of all things blobby.
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You're still thinking like Star Trek.
I think you didn't watch enough Trek: they have episodes where the aliens are some crystals, a cloud of gas or even an energy wave.
Re: Life as we know it (Score:3)
We don't have to care about giant blobs of goo.
Finding any life isn't the point.
Find intelligent life is.
We are unlikely to detect anything of consequence from a species of anything that doesn't invent a radio transceiver. We might detect pollution, but we've found plenty of evidence that hydrocarbons exist throughout the universe that being sure it's actually created by organic life forms is low. Instead the universe is big enough, random enough, that is likely we'll find every imaginable evidence of life
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Can't find the source at the moment, but I think it was Robert Anton Wilson who summarised it nicely: "Cosmic distances do not fit in the human imagination".