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Why is that? What makes you think that intelligent life would "prevent" additional intelligent life from appearing? Certainly, that goes against the grain of current humanist thinking.
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Because the speed of evolutionary 'progress' isn't fast on the size of beings large enough to become alive. At the same time, the speed of intelligent design is alot faster.
I'd expect any intelligence that appears after the first would be designed by the first. At best, the new intelligence would evolve in the cracks and crannies. Look at humanity -- we are spread over basically the entire planet, and we just got started a few thousand years ago.
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I also disagree that it is (equally) likely that human life is the "first" to appear. If the circumstances for its appearance are agreed, then statistically it should have appeared already. It's not as if 14 billion years have needed to pass before these environmental factors came about. This is not a smooth, incremental process that takes that long throughout the galaxy. It just so happens that life arose on Earth 3.8 billion years ago. There's no reason why it could not have arose before that somewhere else.
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First of all, you do need a population 3 star with relatively few stellar neighbours (ie, no supernovas too near, etc), and a solar system pretty free of trash, and a wet, rocky planet in the biosphere.
It took life on earth 3.8 billion years to develop intelligence. As far as we can tell, we are the first technological civilization on the planet earth. This means, we don't know how common technological civilizations are -- they could be far rarer.
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Unless we believe, as I suspect, that life is so statistically uncommon as to be almost impossible; but for ourselves. In other words, as Gould suggested, there is absolutely no gurantee that is if we "reran" the historical clock that life would appear again. It was a statistical anomaly in the first place and highly unusual. The fact that we haven't come across it anywhere else supports that hypothesis.
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It isn't life I'm talking about. It is technological civilizations. Life is neat and all, but it doesn't pay the bills.
A technological civilization like ours either burns out quickly, or swallows the galaxy (possibly both). There are good signs that no technological civilizations have swallowed the galaxy before us (we'd expect them to leave
some litter, be it E-M or physical, around here).
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Hmmm... I don't think that's likely or really useful apart from as a "thougth experiment".
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Machines that can build themselves and build other things are not all that far fetched. Every life form on the planet Earth is such a machine, a biological one.
I just want to add an antenna, a CPU, and teach it to eat asteroids.
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We can't create a single self-replicating construct at all, let alone "life". Now you suggest that we simply build a "human making machine"?!
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We have built the DNA for a single celled organism using non-life. A fertilized egg is a human-building machine (it does need a womb to help itself out). So, you start with an artificial womb and a carefully thawed human egg.
These aren't easy problems, but they don't seem impossible.
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I doubt that's possible. And even if it is possible, the technology is so far away that we won't last long enough to develop it. Most of your hyptotheses seem to be based upon an unwritten (and in my mind, unsafe) supposition. That is, that human life will last long enough to develop said technology that will ensure its perpuity. I think we will become extinct long before that happens. And I'm not even sure if it's possible in the first place.
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Yes, these are long-term strategies. If humanity wipes itself out shortly, they won't work.
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Yes, but I find the weak anthropomorphic principle kind of useless also. It's akin to saying "You exist because I see you".
It's kinda stating the obvious. We exist because if we didn't, we wouldn't be here. Erm... so what? What does that prove?
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We look at the galaxy, and notice that most of the stars aren't fit for human life. The WAP explains this. We look at the galaxy, and notice there isn't any sign of other intelligent life. If a galaxtic civilization actually takes up resources that prevents other intelligent life from existing in some quiet corner, the WAP also explains this.
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I could easily, and equally, say that "It's shocking that in the vast emptiness of the universe that something as beautiful as Mozart's Requiem came into existence. Therefore the universe must have been created for that to happen." Rather silly if you ask me.
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Yes, that is silly. You are attributing motivation.
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We're here. We exist. That doesn't mean the universe was created for our existence. Was the universe created for the existence of pretty clouds? Nope. They just happen. Same way that life on Earth "just happened".
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Um, so, why do you think this is contradicting anything I'm saying?
I'm not talking about anthropomorphism. I'm talking about the 'weak anthropomorphic principle' (WAP). You seem to be hung up on the 'strong anthropomorphic principle', which claims that the universe's
purpose is us (well, that is one view of the SAP). The WAP makes no such claim. It doesn't explain why.
A WAP-based reason why there isn't intelligent life that we can see is that intelligent life spreads nearly as quickly as light, and once it arrives other intelligent life doesn't independantly evolve.
A WAP-based reason why our star is stable, and we are at the right distance, is that if our star wasn't stable or we where too close/far we wouldn't have managed to evolve.
Same arguement. The 'universe is quiet' one is weaker, because it is concievable that intelligent life would play 'caretaker' and hide from new life... But that assumes a more benevolent life form than any humanity has ever seen.
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You think the only reason we have "better school buses" is because of NASA? LOL
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No, I'm saying that NASA spin-off technology was used directly in improving school bus design.
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Well, first I was being satirical; at least in part. But your contention that improved technology will only occur if NASA is funded is simply incorrect. That is supposing that technological advances only happen
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This is not my contention. I was simply explaining that the money put into NASA generates not only future, long-term benefits, but also short-term spinoffs. The fact that, much like the video game industry, very capable people are willing to put forth effort at below market rates, because they want to work at NASA/on a video game, gives it another advantage.
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Originally Posted by yakk
Now, it could be that the galaxy-occupying intelligence allows intelligent life to develop within fallow areas for whatever reason. But it would be a matter of doing it on purpose.
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Sounds too much like "space opera" science fiction to me. This kind of suggestion lies with 1950's style Hollywood movies (or Star Trek).
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Agreed. But, a galaxy-wide intelligence would have to do this, effectively on purpose, for humanity to evolve at all like we did. Can you imagine an intelligence evolving on Earth
right now, and it barely noticing humanity -- it's only evidence of humanity being legends, and the occasional anal probe?
We'd have to hide ourselves on purpose.
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This is the stuff that needs to be continued in the space program. This telescope has been a great tool in scientific discovery. Also, no replacement is schedualed for the telescope for some time.
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I was under the impression that extremely large ground-based telescope technology was a sufficient replacement for Hubble? Not a strong impression, just something I heard.
What I want to see is using multiple orbting telescopes as one large telescope (go go QM!). We could create telescopes with the resolving power to see a planet the size of Earth as a real disk. (now, getting a large enough apature to gather the light, that's another problem! Long exposure times would make taking pictures of rapidly moving things like planets hellish)