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Originally Posted by Yakk
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 don't really understand your contention here. I still don't see why intelligent life evolving once precludes its evolution 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.
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Only if you want "Earth-like" life. As we don't understand the Universe enough, what's there to say that life could not evolve in gas giants, in interplanetary dust, in comets?
Of course, I personally don't think it can, or is likely to have evolved
anywhere, but as long as we're postulating...
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It took life on earth 3.8 billion years to develop intelligence.
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I disagree. Life
arose on Earth 3.8 billion years ago. Quite different.
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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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Far rarer than what? Rarer than one?
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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).
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How do you know? You state the two possibilities as if they were verified and verifiable fact.
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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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Agreed 100%. Hence the reason I believe there
is no other life out there. And that life on Earth was (for want of any other term) an "aberration".
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Machines that can build themselves and build other things are not all that far fetched.
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Oh, but I think they are.
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Every life form on the planet Earth is such a machine, a biological one.
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And we haven't even begun to understand the most simple manifestations of 'self replicating' biological objects (ie, virii); let alone complex cellular or multi-cellular life.
Like I said, "people making machines" are a way off. Off with the fairies in my mind...
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We have built the DNA for a single celled organism using non-life.
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We have? Where and when?
I should have expected to have heard more about such a momentous scientific advance. Artificially created DNA?
It should be noted, by the way, that despite all the media frenzy over genetics and DNA sequencing and the Human Genome Project etc, we
still don't properly understand the fundamentals of life. The role or RNA, for example, is still not properly understood (see latest New Scientist magazine for an interesting article on this).
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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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OK, I still don't get this.
So what does the WAP provide other than useful cyclical reasoning? I'm at a loss as to what value it brings to any discussion or analysis. So much so that I can't understand why it was even formulated and given a name. Until now, I never heard or any "Weak" Anthropomorphic Principle (vis a vis the "Strong").
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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.
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Please explain further or provide references to reading material. I simply can't get my head around this. WAP can reason that intelligent life spreads at nearly the speed of life? Huh?
Great discussion.
Mr Mephisto