[aldo_14]

I believe the term is 'back-handed compliment'

[Genryu]

Yup. I wouldn't even have piped up a comment if the 'for once' wasn't there btw.

[Sapphire]

...but then there's my old phililosophy prof who looked at the bigger picture:  He maintains that our massive universe is merely a speck in someone's table leg somewhere's....

[Liberator]

Actually, to a lot of people this is as fringe as it gets because the are in the vast majority of people who don't see past their own lifetimes.  My problem is I can't really keep my thought within my own lifetime.  We have it within our reach to build reliable long-term nearspace stations and vehicles, we lack the will.  We have never at least to my knowledge built anything for space-work that was anything more than a tin can with wings.  We, as a species, need to change the scale with which we think, both spacially and temporally.

[Unknown Target]

In Layman's terms, the problem with our species as-is is that, while we have the technology, we don't have the will to expand, and those that do generally do not have power.
Why? Because those that are concerned with the current human experience are the likes of people who get elected, because people want their lives improved in the now. If the US (still unfalteringly the richest and most powerful single nation the world), got a hold of a future-minded president, then we'd probably get a lot more expansion into space.

In abbreviation:
The human psyche is still in "hunter/gatherer" mode. That mindset is what keeps us grounded. Until that psyche is drastically changed, the majority of humanity will simply "exist," leaving expansion to future-minded business people and citizens.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by aldo_14
THere have been predictions that the evolutionary trend of dinosaurs - the likes of Troodon for example - was being directed towards increasing brain mass and dexterity, and that as such it was likely a dinosaur of human-like intelligence would have eventually emerged.

Whether or not that would / could happen, the extinction prevented that.  IIRC there were no large brain-mass / body mass land animals that survived and evolved from the Cretaceous extinction, the thread likely to lead to the quickest evolution of higher intelligence was cut off  (because neither birds, nor sharks, nor rodentary/mammilian life, lizards, etc had reached that stage of intelligence).  That is what i mean by advanced life.

Hmmm... You're reffering to Dale Russels hominidoid Troodontid, right? Well, there's general support for the idea, but personally I don't buy it. It's true that there had been a general trend towards increased relative brain size, which reached its peak (with the dinosaurs) among the Dromaeosaurs (The group to which Troodon belonged). And yes, Troodon certainly had a pretty powerful brain for a dnosaur (there are impressions of brain folds on the inside of some skulls). But I don't agree that this neccesarily would have led to any kind of sentience.

Birds, which are our best modern comparison for the dromaeosaurs, tend to have large brains for their body size, but this hasn't led to sentience, as far as we can tell, in the 150 million years or so of their evolution. What birds use their brains for is primarily sensory interpretation, and the big eyes on Troodon suggest they had a similar reason for their big brains.

The other problem is the relative rapidity of the development of sentience in Humans. Estimates vary, but we've probably only been on the proper road to sentience for between 4 and 8 million years. As a result, most people consider sentience to be the result more of some kind of genetic accident (in fact I remember reading an article someone posted here about the specific genetic mutation having to do with the weakening of jaw muscles?) than any kind of long, gradual process. In a way though, this supports the theory of rapid development on other planets, because, if a similar mutation had occured to another relatively big brained species in the past, they too could easily have become sentient.

Overall though, I don't think Troodon would have made it mostly because of the type of animal it was. Early grasslands hominids were at a distinct disadvantage to the predators of the day - they weren't hugely fast, they weren't hugely strong, they weren't big enough to ward off attack by sheer bulk. They needed an advantage, and that advantage was intelligence. Dromaeosaurs, however, were quick, smart, little predators with excellent vision and likely a strong social hunting order. They had all the advantages they needed to compete with other predators - the advantage of sentience would have been much smaller compared with other mutations that might have occured.

[Aspa]

Maybe we're already been "contacted" by aliens, we just don't realise because they're so... alien

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


Hmmm... You're reffering to Dale Russels hominidoid Troodontid, right? Well, there's general support for the idea, but personally I don't buy it. It's true that there had been a general trend towards increased relative brain size, which reached its peak (with the dinosaurs) among the Dromaeosaurs (The group to which Troodon belonged). And yes, Troodon certainly had a pretty powerful brain for a dnosaur (there are impressions of brain folds on the inside of some skulls). But I don't agree that this neccesarily would have led to any kind of sentience.

Birds, which are our best modern comparison for the dromaeosaurs, tend to have large brains for their body size, but this hasn't led to sentience, as far as we can tell, in the 150 million years or so of their evolution. What birds use their brains for is primarily sensory interpretation, and the big eyes on Troodon suggest they had a similar reason for their big brains.

The other problem is the relative rapidity of the development of sentience in Humans. Estimates vary, but we've probably only been on the proper road to sentience for between 4 and 8 million years. As a result, most people consider sentience to be the result more of some kind of genetic accident (in fact I remember reading an article someone posted here about the specific genetic mutation having to do with the weakening of jaw muscles?) than any kind of long, gradual process. In a way though, this supports the theory of rapid development on other planets, because, if a similar mutation had occured to another relatively big brained species in the past, they too could easily have become sentient.

Overall though, I don't think Troodon would have made it mostly because of the type of animal it was. Early grasslands hominids were at a distinct disadvantage to the predators of the day - they weren't hugely fast, they weren't hugely strong, they weren't big enough to ward off attack by sheer bulk. They needed an advantage, and that advantage was intelligence. Dromaeosaurs, however, were quick, smart, little predators with excellent vision and likely a strong social hunting order. They had all the advantages they needed to compete with other predators - the advantage of sentience would have been much smaller compared with other mutations that might have occured.

Well, I believe that you'd certainly have seen tool-using / problem solving dinosaurs had there not been the extinction... certainly, IIRC, parrots actually have rudimentary problem solving abilities.  

Troodon I remember in particular being cited as the example of an 'intelligent' (and I think maybe omnivorous) animal which could have developed into an advanced intelligence, but obviously you can't make too many statements about how clever or intelligent it was, because there are so many unknowns (we don't even know all the species of dinosaur, after all....).

But my point is not that they would of, but that they might have developed higher intelligence; and that the evolution of said intelligence would probably, I think, have been sooner (in the history of earth) than the evolution of our sentience, simply because evolution had to restart (to a degree) to fill the niches left by the extinction.

So I think it's possible - plausible even - that in a planet which suffered no mass extinction event, or one slightly earlier than Earth, intelligent life could have arisen more quickly than it has on Earth.  This is obviously assuming that sentience is the 'peak' of the evolutionary ladder (i.e. that sentient beings would survive as humanity did during its evolution), and various other untestable assumptions.

[Liberator]

Originally posted by aldo_14
...parrots actually have rudimentary problem solving abilities.

I've heard about one Gray Parrot that has been training for 20+ years and can communicate it's needs fairly effectly if simply.  The same bird can not only identify different object(though not by speech) but differences between two similar objects such as keys.  That's where I'd like to see genetic engineering go, upgrading existing nearly sentient species(such as the Gray Parrot) in such ways as to allow them to communicate with us in meaningful ways.

Also, on the extinction discussion, when the meteor hit 65 million years ago, it wiped out 99.9% of the existing species.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Liberator
Also, on the extinction discussion, when the meteor hit 65 million years ago, it wiped out 99.9% of the existing species.

Not quite. Closer to 85%

Even the Permian extinction wasn't that bad.

That said 85% is a large number of species.

[Unknown Target]

In reference to the "Troodon":

What makes evolution? Survival of the fittest. That means that things have to die, right?

So if a species that is at the top of it's  game as a predator suddenly gains intelligence, how would that improve its chances of survival? Very minutely. Not enough so that smarter Troodons live longer than the dumber ones, because they're both pretty much equal out on the hunting field. Th ey don't have to improvise, they don't have to think, they just have to attack.

Therefore, there would be no cause for a dumber dinosaur to die, and the smarter one to live and pass on his "smartness gene".

[WeatherOp]

if there is life out there or not, I really don't care.  We will never contact them in my lifetime, so why should I.  But, there might be other life out there, sure is a lot of space. But the question is "Would you really want to meet what that something is"?

[Unknown Target]

So are you saying that as long as it does not immediately affect you, you don't care? What about your children? And your children's children? Why don'y yo utry to speed up the proces, so that you may see it, as well

[Nuke]

Originally posted by Liberator
Nuke, that is exactly[/] possibility 1, that we are the First intelligent life that the Universe has spawned, even now there may be others on a slower path perhaps only having entered the Stone Age or perhaps their development was halted during their  "Greek" Era somehow.  

In order for us to be able to detect them they would need to have been at the same level as us and proceed at a similar or slower rate.  That means that none of the stars within ~14 parsecs(60 lightyear) have advanced life around them or one(or more) of them have life that is more advanced than us, perhaps radiacally so.

There are some few who believe that we were put here by another race in order to develop socially into beings who, while perhaps not craving it like Klingons, are very good at battle and that one day they will return and claim us for use as shock troops in interstellar warfare.  

Others believe that the myth of Atlantis was actually a group of expatriates from somewhere else that came to this world to seek a hiding place and that they commited the a cardinal sin by engineering us and cross-breeding(the Nehpilim).

There's no end to the wild theory's, but the realities, once contemplated seem to put the kibosh on that kind of fanciful thinking.  Even for a nutjob like me.

If you're wondering what brought this on, go read Ring by Steven Baxter, which basically details the death of the universe and the survival of the human race(all 2000+ of us, half of whom are over 500 years old and one is over 1000).  It is really kind of depressing.

the difference between #1 and #3 is that #1 assumes the human race truely posseses the trait of intelegence. where as #3 clearly states that humans are not intelegent and are just a big stupid phuck-up in the universe

youve had too much scifi, i on the other hand am a realist.

[Grey Wolf]

If you look at Earth, there's truly an amazing number of species that could be classified as near-sentient. Theoretically, the same should be true on a large number (but by no means a large percentage) of planets. Of course, this question lacks any sort of pratical application until either Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is proved false, or a way is found to bypass it.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
In reference to the "Troodon":

What makes evolution? Survival of the fittest. That means that things have to die, right?

So if a species that is at the top of it's  game as a predator suddenly gains intelligence, how would that improve its chances of survival? Very minutely. Not enough so that smarter Troodons live longer than the dumber ones, because they're both pretty much equal out on the hunting field. Th ey don't have to improvise, they don't have to think, they just have to attack.

Therefore, there would be no cause for a dumber dinosaur to die, and the smarter one to live and pass on his "smartness gene".

Well, humanity didn't exactly evolve in a safe ecosystem, did it?

An intelligent Troodon (for example) might be able to learn how to more effectively kill, or escape.  Or how to find food in harsh times.  All of which imply longevity.  Of course, the other issue is mating; a more intelligent animal might be able to learn how to more succesfully 'impress' mates, and thus procreate and spread its genes.

'Survival of the fittest' refers to the survival of individual animals, not whole species, after all.
(remember, this is just an allegory; it wouldn't have to Troodon that evolved intelligence, just some form of dinosaur, given the requisite time to do so)