There may be many solar systems with habitable planets. Once we are able to colonize another planet, the likelihood for our species survival in the long run will dramatically improve. Once we have set up base on more than one planet, our future no longer depends on the stability of one planet, but rather two, and once we begin to spread, we will always look for new colonization opportunities, for this is our nature. We are merely animal, and this is something must not forget. We are looking through mammal beer goggles.
So, if our future progress seems to be dependant on branching out from the confines of our planet, wouldn't this be the case for other intelligent life constricted to one planet?
Even today, very little is known about what the prerequisites for the creation of life are. In the future, it is likely that the idea of primordial soup will be looked upon as a primitive solution to a much larger question. We may view the notion of primordial soup like the way we view the idea that the Earth was flat in 2009. There are theories that suggest that life may not have originated on Earth but rather brought here by some sort of escort. Either way, if life only sparked on Earth, and we are the only planet that holds life, what makes Earth so special?
It is possible that life originated somewhere else, and travelled to earth. If this was the case, then there must have been life elsewhere at some point. If life existed elsewhere, wouldn't it still follow the same rules of evolution? And isn't the end product of evolution intelligence? As I was editing this post I reread the last sentence and realized that intelligence is not the end of evolution, but rather a blip down its very special road. Maybe this road has an end, maybe not, but is it possible that evolution is just the beginning stage? Writing that gave me the chills.
If I was a mighty god, and I had the ability to plant life somewhere, wouldn't intelligent life eventually sprout up from the primitive archaeobacteria, or what ever else took hold first to the desolate lifeless planet? Isn't it only a matter of time? Life shows extreme resilience in the face of obliteration. Certain life forms have been found to withstand the harsh conditions of outer space, and the radioactive environments found on earth. If this is so, it seems like life isn't a card house.
Within the kingdom of life, intelligent life is a small subset. By intelligent life, I mean human and nothing else. What makes humans the cut off? Many would say that the dolphin or chimpanzee also harbor enough intelligence to make the cut off. Chimps have been known to help types of plants that give them fruit by ripping out other competing plants around them. These may be the early stages of agriculture and this may have been how the human phenomenon all began. It is possible that other life forms are becoming more intelligent as well.
There is a clear difference between the human and every other life from on Earth. It is hard to pin point exactly what it is. It could be fire, or agriculture, or maybe language. It is also hard to identify what it is about the human that gave rise to our intelligence. I have heard argued that the opposable thumb is one of the advantages, or possibly our voice boxes.
We have the ability to make a variety of different sounds and pitches, and this could have given rise to language. The most likely body part that gave rise to our intelligence is the frontal lobes of our brain that constitute the rational decision making behavior. This part of the human brain is so developed that we are capable of thinking on a different level from our mammal peers. There is no doubt that these other characteristics helped. In fact our frontal lobes are very resource demanding. Our brains use a lot of fuel, and the opposable thumb may have helped facilitate this.
Whatever it is that sets us apart, we are different aren't we? The human's genetic sequence shares 98% of its code with a chimp. That 2% discrepancy makes for a very large difference when zoomed out on the scrolly wheel of time. We inhabit all reaches of the planet. The room to expand is getting smaller.
Evolution leads to the intelligent life form eventually. It seems from the human perspective to be evolution's end. If there is life on other planets and should the life continue to exist, out of this will eventually rise intelligent life. Had Earth had an ridiculously long stable period?
We have established that if other life exists on other planets, then it is only a matter of time before an intelligent life form evolves. Life probably did not start here on Earth, but rather was brought here. It is likely that other life exists on other planets, and this means that intelligent life is also likely to exist because intelligent life is a function of evolution and time, and we know that time is not an issue. The cosmos have been in a stable state for a long time.
Humans, with the aid of technology, have been to the moon, and our technology has been to Mars, and much farther still. If we are still in the preliminary stages of the revolution of the computer, then the possibilities for the human's future are still too new to be in our thoughts reach. In other words, our ideas and possibilities are still in their infancy. It isn't ridiculous to think that some day we will be spreading past the confines of our planet.
Now for the million dollar question. Why have we not made contact with a different life form who is further down the path of technological development. In the vastness of space, it seems like there would have developed a life form with the ability and to travel here.
There are several reasons that there has not yet been contact. The first is that there simply is no life elsewhere. The second is that the sheer distance of space has made it impossible to get here. The third is that the other life forms simply aren't interested. The fourth is that they do not want us to know that they have are aware of us, and this is made possible through a much higher understanding of technology. The fifth is, time and time again, an intelligent life form comes into existence, and cannot colonize another planet before their environment is destroyed due to war, resource depletion, or time.
There is a popular argument (and I forget the name) that the human is doomed because we have not yet made contact with other intelligent life. In other words, millions of intelligent life forms have existed, only to eventually perish with the habitability of their planet. There have been so many instances of intelligent life developing, only to be consumed by the dynamic fluctuations of the universe. The thought is that because there have been trillions upon trillions of failures in the past, it makes our situation hopeless. We would be one out of infinite to have actually succeeded in branching out of our planet. This argument is powerful, but it is a very negative one. Firstly, it implies that every situation that intelligent life has been in before us has been the same. This is not true. There are so many other forces at work and too many other variables to say that intelligent life in the past was in the same situation that humans are in now.
One notion to bring out of this argument is the idea that we are in a race against time. We must colonize other planets before ours is no longer habitable.
Let us return to the idea that aliens have been observing us. There are several reasons why they would. The first is that they want to harvest our resources, or maybe us, for their own profit. The second, and more likely reason is that they they are observing us to further their own understanding of intelligent life forms, including themselves.
As isolated intelligent life forms, we understand very little about the nature of our own existence. We know intelligence from researching humans in particular.
In order to make this more clear, I will give an example. When we were in our math golden age, minds like Newton took particular cases, like two billiard balls striking each other, to form a general case. It took many trials and errors to eventually start to see the bigger picture. This gave rise to the idea of the variable. If you have reached a the level of math to know this term, you understand what I mean. We replaced numbers with letters to represent numbers. The variable 'x' came to mean, a value that we do not know yet. In math, you only need a certain number of pieces to complete the puzzle, and by using variables as number placeholders, we increased our spectrum of math problems that we as a species could solve, and this in turn increases our possibilities.
Keep the idea of variables in mind and now apply it to intelligent life forms. It is not only until we understand things in particular that we can come to understand things in general. It is not only until we understand many particular cases of a math equation that we can understand this math equation in general. It is not until we understand many particular cases of intelligent life forms that we can understand intelligent life forms in general.
Right now we understand one intelligent life form in particular; the human. We must understand other cases in which an intelligent life form has come to exist before we understand what makes intelligent life forms exist in general.
Trying to understand this idea from a nobody blogger is nearly impossible. Nobody has told you yet that my work is even worth your time, but I am trying to make this as clear as possible with the hope that this idea will spark in the mind of at least one other human, and from there will spread like wild fire, for the purposes of furthering human intelligence.
Understanding these ideas may seem very boring, but along with their comprehension comes a world of wonders. Questions that need answering. It is with understanding this idea of intelligent life "in general" that comes a cascading effect of human flourishing. It is not until we understand intelligence "in general" that we can truly begin to reach for our potential.
It is in this idea that exists the profession that I should be. And I am upset that I was not alive during the time period in which this job existed. This is the idea of the person who studies intelligent life patterns. What do intelligent life forms do "in general"? Do they all have war? Do they all have industrial revolutions? Do they all enslave each other? Do they all eventually give rise to a mechanized form of slavery? Unfortunately we only have one particular case to work with; the human, and because of this, the intelligent life form pattern identifier is still a useless job.
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