What Are the Odds of Finding Intelligent Life in Our Galaxy?

[Blood Brain Barrier]

ODDS: SLim to None

Why? Because when they say 'Intelligent Life' what they mean is 'Life Displaying Human-Like Intelligence'

Which if you think about it, is very limiting. We hold ourselves as the example o intelligent life so we only consider life intelligent if we observe behaviour similar to our own. Intelligence that falls into our narrow definition of intelligence.

Not really, it's just the higher level reasoning that includes knowledge of self and subjectivity. I'm not sure what kind of problem you could have with that qualification.

Well consider it this way. You define food as being peanut butter and then walk into a supermarket looking for food. Sure after a bit of searching you'll find peanut butter but there's lots of other food and edibles you've missed because you were just looking for peanut butter. Consider awareness of self.. is that really pivotal to intelligence? Does a being have to recognize itself as an individual .. what if the being sees itself merely as an extension of others and vice-versa?

"You are Me, I am You, There is No Me."

I mean you wouldn't consider a tree intelligent but studies have shown that plants are probably a little more sentient than we believe, the ability to say communicate, the fact that some plants actually respond in specific ways to specific circumstances which indicate constant environmental evaluation.

Again it boils down to. We define intelligence as 'Us' so we're looking for ourselves. If it's not 'Us' we can't comprehend it's intelligence.

We look/test for intelligence in animals and objects around us all the time. What makes you think we'd suddenly stop looking for it or that we have ever defined it as only us? We have only made the claim that out of all the creatures we have observed that we are the only known species to operate at such a high degree of intelligence and sentience. In fact, what makes you claim at all that we're only looking for intelligence like ourselves? Trees having more "intelligence" than we thought doesn't mean they're like dolphins or even necessarily even as smart as ants. It doesn't mean that some new kind of intelligence exists either. Only that there may be a method to their actions which is more than we'd have thought. What's more is that you just said that "studies have shown that plants are probably a little more sentient than we believe". You basically just made the claim that humans don't look for a-typical sentience and then cited a study in which people were looking for a-typical sentience, thereby disproving your own claim by presenting evidence.

It may turn out that recognizing a non-existent "self" is the ultimate sign of un-intelligence. Is there a self, really? We became aware of one, as the story goes, but that doesn't establish its existence. Science hasn't established its existence either: in fact just the opposite - that every part of us and every mechanism depends on some other part outside of ourselves. The line between inside and outside hasn't been drawn anywhere else than in our imagination, so the animals may very well be smarter in failing to believe that there is such a line.

 

[Lightknight]

It may turn out that recognizing a non-existent "self" is the ultimate sign of un-intelligence. Is there a self, really? We became aware of one, as the story goes, but that doesn't establish its existence. Science hasn't established its existence either: in fact just the opposite - that every part of us and every mechanism depends on some other part outside of ourselves. The line between inside and outside hasn't been drawn anywhere else than in our imagination, so the animals may very well be smarter in failing to believe that there is such a line.

While the notion that animals are secretly smarter and that distinguishing self is bad may be relevant in philosophical, PETA and some religious (primarily Buddhist) circles, it really isn't all that functionally applicable anywhere else. Just as most people would appreciate religion be kept out of science, so too should we desire a barrier between philosophy in any kind of formative sense. Until such a day as someone actually develops any kind of evidence for such a nonsensical statement (nonsensical scientifically, not inherently like in some of the circles I mentioned) I will continue to believe that the beings capable of even postulating the notion that maybe they're wrong about in-depth philosophical questions of self are the more intelligent species. Let me also point out that any beings like animals that have failed to recognize a non-existent self would also prove worthless for all of our intents and purposes unless it's some crazy intelligent but otherwise incapable of self analysis creature.

We really just want beings that we can communicate with. That have a culture and a high enough level of understanding that they can actively teach us things and perhaps even learn from us. Finding a six-legged alien tiger on a distant planet that doesn't understand self anymore than a four-legged tiger here would be interesting but functionally no different than finding the exact same creature here on earth.

FYI, if you're coming at this from the Buddhist tradition then they make no claim that animals don't also fall prey to the "illusion of self". You're also incredibly wrong that science hasn't distinguished between self and outside entities. Almost every area of science routinely observes that things which impact one body regularly do not impact another except when some causal link is present. The Dalai Lama's ethics for a new millennium states that we are all subsets of a set and then makes the claim that since we are all members of the same set we are hurt when the set is hurt (aka, another subset is damaged/removed). But this is a fundamental flaw in logic to support a religious concept. If I have a bag of marbles and remove a yellow one and smash it, the blue ones are not somehow now damaged or really impacted in any way. The set is impacted but not all of its individual components. I should mention here that I specialized in Tibetan and Himalayan religions. So you may feel free to respond with any traditional rebuttals or anything like that. But I apologize if you weren't trying to approach it from this route. It's just highly unlikely that you'd have come to this method of looking at it in the absence of Buddhist religion and philosophy.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

It may turn out that recognizing a non-existent "self" is the ultimate sign of un-intelligence. Is there a self, really? We became aware of one, as the story goes, but that doesn't establish its existence. Science hasn't established its existence either: in fact just the opposite - that every part of us and every mechanism depends on some other part outside of ourselves. The line between inside and outside hasn't been drawn anywhere else than in our imagination, so the animals may very well be smarter in failing to believe that there is such a line.

While the notion that animals are secretly smarter and that distinguishing self is bad may be relevant in philosophical, PETA and some religious (primarily Buddhist) circles, it really isn't all that functionally applicable anywhere else. Just as most people would appreciate religion be kept out of science, so too should we desire a barrier between philosophy in any kind of formative sense. Until such a day as someone actually develops any kind of evidence for such a nonsensical statement (nonsensical scientifically, not inherently like in some of the circles I mentioned) I will continue to believe that the beings capable of even postulating the notion that maybe they're wrong about in-depth philosophical questions of self are the more intelligent species. Let me also point out that any beings like animals that have failed to recognize a non-existent self would also prove worthless for all of our intents and purposes unless it's some crazy intelligent but otherwise incapable of self analysis creature.

We really just want beings that we can communicate with. That have a culture and a high enough level of understanding that they can actively teach us things and perhaps even learn from us. Finding a six-legged alien tiger on a distant planet that doesn't understand self anymore than a four-legged tiger here would be interesting but functionally no different than finding the exact same creature here on earth.

FYI, if you're coming at this from the Buddhist tradition then they make no claim that animals don't also fall prey to the "illusion of self". You're also incredibly wrong that science hasn't distinguished between self and outside entities. Almost every area of science routinely observes that things which impact one body regularly do not impact another except when some causal link is present. The Dalai Lama's ethics for a new millennium states that we are all subsets of a set and then makes the claim that since we are all members of the same set we are hurt when the set is hurt (aka, another subset is damaged/removed). But this is a fundamental flaw in logic to support a religious concept. If I have a bag of marbles and remove a yellow one and smash it, the blue ones are not somehow now damaged or really impacted in any way. The set is impacted but not all of its individual components. I should mention here that I specialized in Tibetan and Himalayan religions. So you may feel free to respond with any traditional rebuttals or anything like that. But I apologize if you weren't trying to approach it from this route. It's just highly unlikely that you'd have come to this method of looking at it in the absence of Buddhist religion and philosophy.

Forget about the Buddhist stuff, the Dalai Lama pisses me off too. The problem, as I see it, is that the self is a concept which existed before the scientific method. I don't know how it began, but it wasn't by science or any rational process. And it's really a metaphysical concept, so science really doesn't have anything to say about it, except about whatever physical aspects it brings to it. So it can talk about the biology of lifeforms, but the where is the border there? There is no human life without breathing, do we include air in the equation? The food we need to eat? All this is well before getting into philosophy and the limitations of our perceiving through an apparatus bound by time & space.

I don't quite understand what you say about impacts, or the relevance of the marble scenario so I can't comment, sorry.
Edit: Or maybe I do. In a physical sense, you CAN say the self exists, obviously. But isn't that a very limited sort of existence? Not in an airy-fairy 'spiritual' kind of way, but just that physics is, well, physics. It doesn't really say anything about existence - the objects it talks about are ones it has already decided exist. Newton didn't have to establish the existence of an apple before he started wondering about his laws of motion.

 

[WarpZone]

Well, these questions lead to the Fermi paradox, and that's a topic for another week.

Or, y'know, we could just go re-watch the episode Extra Credits did on this like a year ago.

 

[the December King]

And remember, that even if all of those criteria are met, it still has to pass the Bechdel Test or it's just, like, indicative of prevailing sexist attitudes in our universe.

Ahem.

On a more serious note, I get that the spark that generates life to some extent is still the biggest variable missing from the equation, as we only have our own planet as a guide. Which got intelligent life, 100% (give or take), in about 3.6 billion years. But even Creationists are right when they say that the likelihood of life starting (or the strained thought of life beginning without a Bearded baby-Jesus Sky Daddy) seems to be a true miracle, in the sense that it must have been a set of very specific circumstances and chance occurances. Right?

Or can common materials in the universe actually settle into self-replicating parameters if given the right, and rather common, conditions?

 

[Lightknight]

Forget about the Buddhist stuff, the Dalai Lama pisses me off too. The problem, as I see it, is that the self is a concept which existed before the scientific method. I don't know how it began, but it wasn't by science or any rational process. And it's really a metaphysical concept, so science really doesn't have anything to say about it, except about whatever physical aspects it brings to it. So it can talk about the biology of lifeforms, but the where is the border there? There is no human life without breathing, do we include air in the equation? The food we need to eat? All this is well before getting into philosophy and the limitations of our perceiving through an apparatus bound by time & space.

I don't quite understand what you say about impacts, or the relevance of the marble scenario so I can't comment, sorry.
Edit: Or maybe I do. In a physical sense, you CAN say the self exists, obviously. But isn't that a very limited sort of existence? Not in an airy-fairy 'spiritual' kind of way, but just that physics is, well, physics. It doesn't really say anything about existence - the objects it talks about are ones it has already decided exist. Newton didn't have to establish the existence of an apple before he started wondering about his laws of motion.

Oh, so you're arguing against the concept of self but without the philosophical constructs laid out by Buddhism? That's interesting and more than a little surprising.

The notion of self is axiomatically born out of the ability to distinguish one object from another. If two objects may be distinct then each has a separate self.

Physics is hell bent on defining the properties of various forces and their interactions with one another. In defining the various components of a system you are distinguishing the components from one another. A yellow marble in a bag is not a blue marble in a bag. They may both be parts of a larger system but wholly distinct. Science is nothing but defining and distinguishing various things. It is an massive field that performs the role of a label gun. This force/vector does this. This chemical reaction is caused by that. This rock is comprised of this and that rock is comprised of that.

The notion that the self cannot be distinguished from other entities or that it is somehow irrational is instead itself irrational in that it is contrary to all observable interactions in the world. That some invisible thread binds us all together can never be anything more than the "airy-fairy spiritual" perspective that you disdain. Whether or not you find that to be limiting has no bearing on reality. You are not connected by some unseen thread to other things, no matter how more meaningful it would make life feel to you if it were true. You are just you, the sum total of your DNA and environmental factors that all led up to who you are. I personally consider the notion of individuality to be far less limiting then the absence of self. That it is difficult to easily define all the elements that make up the sum total of a distinct being doesn't negate the being's existence or distinctness. It merely makes life complex.