Alone in the universe?

[Mytical]

I think a better question is.. "Is there intelligent life on earth?" . Watching some people you have to wonder. Like going 65 mph on ice, and trying to pick up a power cable that is down with bare hands (yes it happened today). So it could be possible that if there is an alien life watching us, they don't consider us intelligent .. yet

[Jolly Joker]

Said to say so, but evolution cannot have developed intelligence for survival (at least not as main aim) because evolution has solved that one pretty well with the insects. Most of them are a lot older than even the dinosaurs, there are even state-building ones (and warfaring ones). The oldest true spiders are about 400 millions years old and among the first living things that went on land.

[Ethric]

No. If so, there'd probably have been some civilized race on earth before us.

Perhaps there have been

Kinda like Occam's Razor.

Nope, not at all.

Said to say so, but evolution cannot have developed intelligence for survival (at least not as main aim) because evolution has solved that one pretty well with the insects.

It could have been developed as one option for increased survival. Insects are doing well for themselves and rule the earth, sure, but that doesn't mean that theirs is the only way to survive. Evolution is all about making it up as you go along, and countless things are tried. Most don't work, but some do.

[Jolly Joker]

Not really. It looks like intelligence (or what's taken for it, anyway) is massively endangering the continued survival of all species including its own. Which seems to be the problem here.
While intelligence could easily be evolution's anti-desaster program, developed and formed after the meteor-kollision that killed the dinosaurs, intelligence is struggling hard to be its own desaster. Which would be ironic.

[Ethric]

Well that remains to be seen. But if intelligence is indeed a bad idea for survival, then intelligent beings will simply be yet another of evolutions mistakes which didn't make it. Evolution isn't only something that have happened you know, it's still going on

[Jolly Joker]

Well, I didn't want to go that far. I just meant to say, that evolution's "forward planning" might massively backfire - has in fact massively backfired already because the intelligent species on this planet has already ended the existence of quite a lot of other species.

[Ethric]

But is there any forward planning? My knowledge of the this is pretty bare-bones, but isn't evolution merely an issue of continuous mutations, where the advantageous ones make the mutated individual successful and able to get offspring to carry on the mutation, whilst the unsuccessful mutations result in the "mutants" death?

[Jolly Joker]

That's the question.
You could say that evolution is merely "toying around", enabling mutations that get a chance to "prove themselves" on the battleground of the earth, by conquering themselves a living ground, a niche to survive and all that. Random spreading with try and error. Then the question would be after the why or whatfor and whether all that was for a purpose or not. In other words: is evolution aiming for a specific result or is it a random process without any purpose?

[Panda Tar]

Evolution could be just adaptation. Just making things adapted to the new environment, not making anything smarter - it would look like intelligence improvement, though. If the world started changing drastically, many beings would adapt themselves for a while, assuring their survival.

So, I think the point for evolution is survival.

[asandir]

that question JJ, is as diificult the answer as the one we are discussing!

[Gaidal Cain]

While intelligence could easily be evolution's anti-desaster program, developed and formed after the meteor-kollision that killed the dinosaurs, intelligence is struggling hard to be its own desaster. Which would be ironic.

If evolution has a program, it has hidden it very well. And 63 million years is a pretty long response time...

[Pol]

What do you mean with response time? - this is only first testing ping of fours. After that it will became remote installation of OS. Someone has plenty of time - that's why is relative.

[Jolly Joker]

While intelligence could easily be evolution's anti-desaster program, developed and formed after the meteor-kollision that killed the dinosaurs, intelligence is struggling hard to be its own desaster. Which would be ironic.

If evolution has a program, it has hidden it very well. And 63 million years is a pretty long response time...

Not in evolution time. Anyway, it could prove just timely enough to successfully master this possible desaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2829075%29_1950_DA

[Corribus]

Said to say so, but evolution cannot have developed intelligence for survival (at least not as main aim) because evolution has solved that one pretty well with the insects. Most of them are a lot older than even the dinosaurs, there are even state-building ones (and warfaring ones). The oldest true spiders are about 400 millions years old and among the first living things that went on land.

That argument doesn't work. Evolution does not make conscious decisions. It doesn't say, "Well guys, we found a model that works. Our job is done." Not to mention, you are ignoring the greater ecosystem. Insects may have survived for millions of years, but they did not do so in a vacuum. Other living creatures contributed to their survival, whether it is plants or other animals that nourished them, or predators that killed competitors. If evolution had stopped at insects, the world may have ultimately died, and the insects with it.

[Jolly Joker]

Said to say so, but evolution cannot have developed intelligence for survival (at least not as main aim) because evolution has solved that one pretty well with the insects. Most of them are a lot older than even the dinosaurs, there are even state-building ones (and warfaring ones). The oldest true spiders are about 400 millions years old and among the first living things that went on land.

That argument doesn't work. Evolution does not make conscious decisions. It doesn't say, "Well guys, we found a model that works. Our job is done." Not to mention, you are ignoring the greater ecosystem. Insects may have survived for millions of years, but they did not do so in a vacuum. Other living creatures contributed to their survival, whether it is plants or other animals that nourished them, or predators that killed competitors. If evolution had stopped at insects, the world may have ultimately died, and the insects with it.

If my point would invole something like a conscious decision (which it doesn't) your argument would implicate a conscious decision as well, saying, hell, while we do have some creatures that have survived a couple hundred million years we must make sure that the world isn't dying and further experiment - on other paths (that obviously bear the risk of destroying the world as well).

[Gaidal Cain]

If evolution has a program, it has hidden it very well. And 63 million years is a pretty long response time...

Not in evolution time.

Yes, in evolution time as well. New species are created over a span of a few millions of years. Coupling the appearance of humans with the disappearance of dinosaurs is silly. The earth has changed too much since their disappearance for it to have anything to do with what individual species exists today.

[Jolly Joker]

Actually I'm not arguing against that, since this is Ethrics point that I phrased a bit different. There have been more extinction events than the Dinosaurs, anyway.
Theories are at this time, that earth has been struck 60 times in the last 600 Million years by an object at least 5 kilometers in diameter, with the meteor being assumed to lead to the extinction of the Dinosaurs NOT being the biggest catastrophe (which happened 250 million years ago).
Look here, for example, if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event
I'm not in the least implying that evolution tries a desaster-avoiding strategy here or something like that.

[Wildbear]

If my point would invole something like a conscious decision (which it doesn't) your argument would implicate a conscious decision as well, saying, hell, while we do have some creatures that have survived a couple hundred million years we must make sure that the world isn't dying and further experiment - on other paths (that obviously bear the risk of destroying the world as well).

There's nothing conscious there, the ones evolving such a way they can survive will, and the others won't. If a specie can't evolve enough in a short length of time, it will disappear if its environment suddenly changes. But if a few specimens of that specie have what they need to survive (bigger mouth, better eyes, more/less fur, etc) they will, and as they reproduce their characteristics will be inherited by the next generation. It isn't conscious and there's no decision, they just survive the way they can.

[Mytical]

Ok, evolution is being discussed already. This I thought was about the possibility of other intelligent beings in the universe. Regardless of evolution, intelligent design, or whatever is there a possibility of other life out there. Could it reach us, could we even recognize it if it did, would it be hostile or peaceful. Would it consider us intelligent (sometimes even i have my doubts about mankinds collective intelligence ), and if so intelligent enough to be a threat or communicate with them? This is becoming another evolution debate, when there already exsist such.

As for other life there are a couple of things to consider. Hostile creatures would have less chance of long distance space travel for a few reasons. More things to worry about (wars and the things that come with them like plagues, famine, ect. Now true such things are not exclusive to war but they do seem to worsen when wars are transpiring.) While this may cause them to build bigger/stronger ships and maybe even more manuverible they would not neccessarily have to be faster. Competition, however can also spur creativity, so this is also a consideration.

As for peaceful races, they may have less need to reach space. Cooperating with each other would probably solve any population problems, food problems, medical, and allow different perspectives to help with each problem. There might be less competitiveness, however, and this can actually slow down advances in some cases.

Personally I think the peaceful races would be more apt to do exploring of space, and survive long enough to actually progress to space travel. So the odds of a hostile lifeform finding us is less. If we are ever visited we probably could expect beings more like vulcans then like klingons. And I suspect they would be the ones to supply us with the means of communicating with them, not vice versa.

Now it may be that we find another race before one finds us. We are agressive but can cooperate when neccessary. Well for small periods of time at least. So we have the competition to spur our creativity, and the potential to last long enough to gain long distance space travel. In fact we may actually stumble on beings more like us then we might anticipate. Sure they may look different, but the basic personality traits might be similar. This might be a bad thing, however, for mankind has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

[Corribus]

Ok, evolution is being discussed already. This I thought was about the possibility of other intelligent beings in the universe. Regardless of evolution, intelligent design, or whatever is there a possibility of other life out there. Could it reach us, could we even recognize it if it did, would it be hostile or peaceful. Would it consider us intelligent (sometimes even i have my doubts about mankinds collective intelligence ), and if so intelligent enough to be a threat or communicate with them? This is becoming another evolution debate, when there already exsist such.

Evolution of intelligent life is very relevant to the current discussion.

(And it's not being discussed in the religion thread any longer because everyone who doesn't believe in it ran away due to the whole "based on logic" thing. )