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Originally Posted by GreyWolf
As for the rest of his argument regarding intelligence... it falls simply into the philosophical. Again he makes sweeping assumptions of intelligence that cannot be refuted because they fall outside any possibility of experiential confirmation. Is there an evolutionary imperative to intelligence? Of course not. Evolution has no imperatives. It is random. Where there is an evolutionary advantage to intelligence it will occur. Could that be in a mole-like creature? No one can say. Could it be in a non-carbon-based life form? No one can say. It is an inherently moot philosophical question. I can argue just as well as he that there is an absolute bias for intelligent technological life, and that the Universe must teem with it.
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I feel you are mindlessly regurgitating the Richard Dawkins mantras. I understand his book was very popular when it came out. A gene-centric view of biology is fine, but its not all that is out there.
Is there some aspect of the Drake equation you completely disagree with? Rescher appears to be far more conservative than Sagan was with the same variables.
When you say "random" it is almost as if you mean to say anything and everything is possible with evolution. To answer this you will need to be more specific about what you mean by the word "
random", when you say evolution is random. There may be upper bounds on it, that even Dawkins is unaware of. It seems to be that a single upper bound on evolution No matter how small, insignificant it may seem to us -- that will cause the process to no longer be random (in any sense of the word random).
An example of what an "upper bound" means would be, for example, something to do with the range of temperatures in which water is liquid, for instance. This could later come to have unforseen effects on the distances planets can be from stars and then put limits on the energy available to ecosystems, and so on. Then we get small bounds on "what is possible". In turn, arguments for "randomness" look weaker.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyWolf
Finally, he simply fails to understand the enormity of time and the basic concept of time-binding (the passing on of learned knowledge). His comparisons of human civilisation are of necessity incredibly limited in that aspect. An intelligent organism capable of time-binding will eventually form a society of some sort. If that develops into a civilisation, the mere fact of time-binding WILL lead to technological change and advancement. It is the existence of the civilisation that will form the technological imperative, not simply the intelligence (one of his points). However, the rest of the his argument simply relies on too much assumption to be anything more than speculative.
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Time-binding. (Time measuring?) What are you saying here?