Misanthropic Scott says:

#37 – KD Martin,

Scott, let me know when any of the animals you name can vastly change their environment,

beavers.

invent weapons,

Chimps.

perform science,

OK, but keep in mind, the scientific method dates to just a few hundred years. Ancient Greeks did a fair job of it without the method, but even counting them, you’re talking about something we humans have been doing for less than 1% of our own time on this planet.

explore the Universe,

I assume you mean observe the universe rather than explore. We haven’t gotten past our own orbit yet. Our probes have only explored the solar system, certainly we haven’t. And, as Dr. Tyson pointed out a couple of nights ago at SciCafe, the first building taller than the Egyptian pyramids was built in the late 1800s, the Eiffel Tower. So, it is possible to lose our capabilities and not repeat them for thousands of years. Let’s hope that the fact that we haven’t been past LEO in several decades does not point to us not doing it again for a couple of thousand years.

So, as for exploring the universe, we can talk about that when we, in our meat containers, get past our local galaxy. Even then, our galactic supercluster could still be considered local. The universe is big, we’ve explored an infinitesimally small portion of it. Though, even observing it (WMAP, Hubble Deep Field, etc., is impressive). I just wouldn’t overstate it as if we had explored any significant part of our solar system let alone our universe.

develop (Uggh) religion,

That’s not a sign of intelligence. Whose point are you making here?

benefit from agriculture,

beavers again and add leaf cutter ants

are able to read and write thus storing information for future beings,

Good one. Point conceded.

or learn to communicate meaningfully with humans.

Why is this a prereq for intelligence? We can’t communicate with dolphins. Does that mean anything about us? Perhaps, since we’ve tried. Why should other species try?

Can a beaver comprehend Shakespeare?

I think you were better off sticking with science. Why is Shakespeare a sign of anything? It’s fiction, and fiction aimed at entertainment of humans specifically.

Intelligence may be tough to accurately measure, but there’s not an animal alive today that can begin to compete with a human being. As Dr. Tyson points out, even a two year old human is vastly more intelligent than a 15 year old chimp or dolphin.

I’ll agree regarding chimps who have very similar brains to our own, though admittedly less complex. We don’t yet know enough about dolphins to make that comparison. And, the definition of intelligence is highly human biased in the first place.

My point is that intelligence is not a binary switch. It varies in degree. We probably are the smartest species on the planet, which may well prove to be an anti-survival adaptation. But, there are a great many other sentiences with whom we share the planet and whom we should not ignore.

Like you, I enjoy Dr. Tyson’s lectures and contributions to science. Even if he isn’t as prestigious as Dr. Sagan, he still is a superb theoretician and scientist. I’d like very much to meet him.

Perhaps I just don’t know enough about Sagan. In what way was he more prestigious than Tyson?

As for Tyson, his email address is publicly available, though I won’t post it here.

Improbus says:

I think an advanced alien race would want to save Earth from the parasitic apes despoiling it’s biosphere. I wouldn’t blame them. Our race is a continual disappointment no matter how clever some of us are.

BTW, I like Neil but he is no Carl Sagan. Carl was a scientist with the heart of a poet. Go to Netflix and re-watch Cosmos and you will see what I mean. I really miss that guy.

cgp says:

I’ll add as a counter idea this.

Aliens who come across mankind will marvel at the human brain. This is because the evolution of brains is not rare it is practically impossible. As on our planets 500 million years advanced species history tells we are a fluke. Aliens will come and harvest us for our grey matter – a mobile sized intelligent brain on two legs.

So how can intelligence develop without large brains? Interlinked clusters of neurons in large masses of goo. Such intelligence would require large contained bodies.

Don’t you see that our bodies and brains could be envied by big bad blobbys out there!!!

Misanthropic Scott says:

#47 – KD Martin,

In case you hadn’t noticed, I mostly agreed with you. Here are two points you miss.

1) Humans are different in magnitude, not in kind on nearly every point. Again, it’s just not a binary switch. Recognizing who we are and are not is crucial to understanding our own place in the cosmos.

2) Observing != Going. One can photograph a mountain peak from a valley and learn a tremendous amount about it. Is that mountain climbing? No. One can send probes there and learn about the air quality (and quantity) at the summit. Is that mountain climbing? No.

We have observed a great deal about our universe. As I said, this is an impressive accomplishment.

Send me a postcard from somewhere in Andromeda. Then we’ll talk about whether the short trip there is worthy of being called exploration of our universe. Probably, yes, that would be like sending someone a postcard from about Greenwich Village to Wall St and claiming that one was exploring New York State. Technically yes, but one would not have gotten far. We have sent postcards from the apartment next door. We haven’t even made it to the lobby entrance yet.

Step inside the total perspective vortex and have a look at the universe and how far humanity and our hubris have actually gone.

So, perhaps we are impressive by the standards of Earth. But, from the point of view of an alien species that could travel here from truly far away, we might be to them as leaf-cutter ants are to us.

cgp says:

Mis scott says
An intelligent alien, as hypothesized in the case of one who could invent space travel, would, of necessity, have far greater capabilities of thought than we do.

No No necessity at all. We can do it with our current brains, its just we choose not to. Our potential to innovate is impressive, its just we are limited by the banker monsters currently destroying our civilisation, just as if large spaceships were blasting with their energy beams all means of production.

cgp says:

Miss Scott,

man you go some mucked up idea of what intelligence is, and its expression.

Who gives a shet aboat spelling.

Given horizontal takeoff to orbit (banker et al pref the vertical rip off mode), build massive sunshine collectors kilometres in dimension, far from earth, concentrate sunlight into a tiny space causing a good generator of anti-matter, which is the probable starter technology for large vehicle to star.

Blaa blaa blaa

If only we could gather the sort of collective human effort like what the ancients could, say a manhattan x 10, there would be the experts like the chemical engineers that made 4%U235 possible etc.

However we live in a monster banker world, THEY wont have it, THEY want to kill the ration human.

Misanthropic Scott says:

#53 cgp,

I’m sorry cgp. Let me pretend to take your post seriously for a minute or two.

So, you have a significant amount of antimatter. You have presumably made a container out of antimatter to keep it in.

You have an equal amount of matter in an ordinary matter container. Exactly how are you going to put these two things together in the same ship and combine them in a controlled way?

Good. Now that your extreme intelligence has allowed you to answer the easy part, let’s assume you’ve done it. You have now created a ship capable of accelerating a human to a speed of about … let’s be generous … half the speed of light.

Since our radio and television broadcasts have not yet produced a response, we can assume that any intelligent life that can use such communication and bothers to continue to do so despite presumably more advanced technology, is not within a sphere of (being conservative) 50 light years (time for our signal to travel out and theirs to travel back to us).

So, the trip you want to take is more than 50 light years in distance. At half the speed of light, you should make it there and back in about 200 years. Let me know how that goes when you get back.

Now, my example was Betelgeuse, an arbitrarily picked star sufficiently far away that we can’t yet know whether there is intelligent life around it. Perhaps you’d have preferred a sun more similar to our own. Well, since cosmology and physics interests me more than astronomy (personal preference), I can’t name one. Feel free to pick one of your choosing a sufficient distance away. I’ll stay with Betelgeuse, my original challenge to you, for the time being.

So, for Betelgeuse, your trip will take you 1,200 years each way. I think you’ve failed your assignment. Care to try again?

I’d suggest looking into traversable worm holes. They’re allowed by our current knowledge of the laws of physics. However, please provide details on how you plan to build one as well as what power source you will use to generate the requisite 400,000 times the output of our power generators today. The power will probably be the easy part. I look forward to seeing your engineering diagrams for the worm hole machine or any other faster than light travel means you have up your sleeve.

Remember, there are also environmental and social crises you must solve or at least keep at bay during the time of your engineering of this feat.

Good luck.

Misanthropic Scott says:

#56 – GetSmart,

Excellent point about slower than light travel. We’ll have to go faster. And, we don’t know of any engineering technique to do so at present. Wormholes look to be the best. But, that’s so far off that even thinking of them is purely in the realm of science fiction at this point.

Slower than light won’t get us where we want to go anyway. There is, for example no way to get even just a few tens of light years away. And, if you do, when you come home, it will be many hundreds of years later (at least) due to the time dilation of high speed travel. (Even Planet of the Apes got that point right.)

It’s just not practical for getting out of our solar system. It’s a pain in the butt even for getting to the outer planets Neptune or Pluto. We can’t ignore the fact that the latter has been demoted, at least not on this thread.

Misanthropic Scott says:

#58 – cgp,

Thanks for making my case.

All such beliefs as you have are so far in the future as to be fantasy. And, there’s no guarantee that our current biology can allow us to come up with the science and engineering to actually do it.

So, may I take it that you have now totally given up on making your case?

And, running Firefox is really not so hard. It comes with built-in spell checking. It’s funny for you to be talking about what great brains humans have while demonstrating a total lack of concern for clear and concise expression of yourself or even for the most basic aspects of spelling and punctuation. I can’t imagine that you’d be any better at expressing yourself on an engineering diagram than you are here. And, yes, when debating such subjects, it does show a certain disdain for the exactness of the subjects being discussed and does not further your case to fill a post with multiple spelling and grammatical errors.