h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How about "designed by man" then? Humans have no input into the design process... well, maybe "input" was the wrong word to use here..

I wouldn't say the bots in SST were sentient. Their emotions had nothing to do with personal reactions. You could tell Marcinta she was a kneebiter once and get a tongue lashing, then go fiddle with her emotional controls, say the same thing, and she'd flash her light bulb at you and tell you what a sweet person you are. Titania may have had her own emotions, but even these were pre-programmed.

Nope. "Designed by man" doesn't do it either. By that token, the genetically determined children of the future will be artificial. And while you might get away with that one, you certainly can't call the robots that descend on our planet to colonize it "natural."

We have no idea how much our own emotions are determined by things outside our control. I know that my moods can be drastically changed by the reduction in sunlight caused by the seasons, the amount of sleep I've gotten, what I eat, and whether I've fallen in love recently. There is enough evidence to suspect that there are chemical processes behind all of these. Does that make me any less sentient?

John the Gardener and I were once discussing the notion that, should some star-travelling race eventually come across the Earth, and see the remnants of our civilizations thereupon, that they might simply think 'interesting fossil record' or otherwise admire the ruins the way we admire the beauty of a coral reef. I'm not sure if anyone sees any correlation to our discussion here, but to me it seems sort of clear that we are very much off-base to think of ourselves and our awareness of ourselves as in any way unnatural, supranatural, or otherwise apart from natural process. The universe proceeds to organize bits of itself into nodes capable of sentient reflection. It can do this by a gradual process of recombining amino acids in a primordial soup, or by a rather less lengthy and chaotic process of designing a circuit board or algorithm (although it would seem that one approach of necessity preceeds the other). Still, if you lose the 'them and us' notion of seeing humans as somehow 'special' and apart from their creations, and instead simply accept that all of our works are on some level processes by which matter and energy reshapes itself, the whole question of whether 'artificial' intelligence could exhibit true 'sentience' becomes rather redundant; there is no true sentience, and no artificial intelligence; just degrees of complexity by which matter is organized, and the functions deriving therefrom.

That's quite an interesting theory, Twophlag Gargleblap!

It reminds me of another theory of mine. My other theory is that SETI (as noble as it is) will never work -- at least, not in anything like its current form. Neither will our deep-space probes trasmitting prime numbers and the like.

I think we commit awful hubris once again when we assume that intelligent beings would necessarily use radio waves or something similar. First, why even assume they can hear? And second, chances are that if they can travel between the stars, they have also developed methods of communication that would put our pitiful transmissions to shame.

They probably wouldn't bother listening to the spectrums we communicate on, because to them transmission on those spectrums would totally fail to indicate any sort of intelligent being. And besides -- they'd have to filter out all the space noise. Why bother, when they can send faster-than-light transmissions that get their messages to the recipient yesterday?

Yup. I actually wrote a piece about SETI that wound up in editorial limbo somehow after being hacked apart by some sub-ed, but it said pretty much the same thing (do alien beings also go down to radio shack to buy batteries for their walkmans? sheesh) You could make an argument that an alien race on its way to becoming space-faring might have at one point in their history made radiowave broadcasts which would then travel through space for eons, but whatever; I think what's lacking from the SETI program is any real sense of perspective on just how mind-bogglingly big (in terms of both 'space' and 'time') the universe really is. Carl Sagan had a vinyl recording of the word 'hello' translated into seventy-some human languages sent out on one of the Voyageur space probes, and I haven't been able to take a f**ing thing the guy has said or done since then even remotely seriously.

I don't think the SETI is too far off base with what they are doing. I participate in the SETI@home project and enjoy it. I'm not too optimistic about finding a radio signal, but hey, lets survey the sky and at least eliminate the possibility.

I don't assume the other civilizations out there are advanced beyond imagining. Hell, there might be a burgeoning civilization out there that is behind us technologicly. It is a big universe out there.

Radio is a fair bet for interstellar communication. The laws of physics are the same pretty much where ever you may find yourself in this universe and radio works. Its cheap (energy wise) too. There is a piece of the spectrum known as the "Water Hole" where they expect would be ideal for interstellar communication. It has to do with the frequency of hydrogen or some such.

I understand that the odds are astronomicly long towards ever getting a signal. I also find that the "assumptions" that Sagan and those like him make as to *how* an alien culture would communicate (mathmatical constants and the like) a bit ego-centric. (I figure he sat back one day and said to himself "If I wanted to make contact how would *I* do it? and decided his solution was the 'obvious' solution to any civilization) But what the hell. It would be a shame if we were the only minds this universe ever knew.

Perhaps that is the reason why we pursue the creation of an artificial intelligence. Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke is correct in saying that the mind is the most precious thing this universe possesses. The creation of another kind of mind may be a noble thing.

When I said that Emotions could be an indicator of sentience, I did not mean a SOLE indicator or just emotions in and of themselves. I think I was going more towards appropiate emotional response. Its not something to weigh as a yes/no option, just a quality towards weighing in on the sentient side. I don't think there can be any single characteristic that demonstrates intelligence or sentience (except ofcours intelligence or sentience -- but we have not catagorized those yet, have we?)

I can assume me fellow human beings are sentient because I am human and sentient, and other humans seem to share the qualities I have that convince myself that I am sentient. Of course these things can be simulated. You could create the entire universe as an illusion and would never know it. You could be the star of your own "Truman Show". Not only does a tree falling in an empty wood make no sound, if you don't percieve it, it simply ain't there.

I guess we won't know when we encounter an intelligent machine. It could very well be intelligent, but never intelligent enough to convince us we aren't fooling ourselves.

It's a good point that other civilisations might have advanced in quite different ways and learned to communicate in quite different ways than we did. Perhaps they don't hear, or perhaps they don't see...perhaps they live in a universe of smell and touch. I read a book once in which there existed a race of people who's main sense was hearing and they didn't even understand sight. I am digressing here...

Anyway, those are all good points. However, all we know is what we know. We can't send out signals in some strange, alien way because we aren't strange aliens. The best we can do is try to make contact the only ways we know how. We're curious creatures, so just giving up on trying is probably not something that would stick.

There are some people who argue that since human beings are "natural," i.e. we occur in nature, then everything we do is by definition also "natural." This would lead to the conclusion that oil refineries and plastic and rollerblades are all "natural" since they were produced by a product of nature. If you take that argument, then there is no such thing as an artificial life form, and never could be unless it came from something other than nature. What would that be? One could reasonably argue that the entire cosmos is a part of "nature" since we're all made from the same stuff.

It's not a good argument, IMO, but it's one I heard in a Physical Geography class, used by the professor in an attempt to prove that human beings aren't the cause of any serious harm to the planet. A friend of Fragilis' he was, I think.

I've made the claim elsewhere that environmentalism is born more from human hubris than out of any tangible effect man has been able to make on his ecology. I got shouted at quite a bit for it, too, but that's nothing new for me...

The idea for SETI is that our development technologically was retarded by the domination of religions and emperors, so, theoretically, any intelligent life out there should be 1300 years or so ahead of us. In their pursuit of technology (and what intelligent being would not pursue technology) they would have learned to harness radio frequencies. Therefore, any intelligent race as advanced as we are or more would be broadcasting signals carrying intelligence, as defined in the RF world. Intelligence on a RF wave consists of the pattern that, when unmodulated, becomes video, audio, data, or whatever. This pattern is ordered, and that ordered pattern can be detected mathematically. Math, after all, is the one universal language (aside from music, which is itself mathematical in nature), so they look for mathematical progressions on any received signal, especially any that are of higher power than the ambient signal noise. Since intelligence can be determined through ordered patterns, we attempt to communicate with other beings by transmitting ordered patterns... hence, the prime number sequence.

There is a basic fallacy in all this, though. We could be missing millions of planets with life, and intelligent life at that, because it assumes that humans evolved as fast as it is possible to evolve. However, humans have long been in competition with each other. Competition promotes evolvement. The very radio technology we use to contact other species was developed for purely militaristic applications, as is the medium we are communicating through just now. A species with a more symbiotic relationship with its neighbors has no need to push themselves to evolve.

Another event that speeded our development was the global catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs. It was out of the vacuum left by them that ape-like forms began their ascendancy. With a pack of T-Rex's to avoid, man may not have survived long enough to evolve, and the pattern would have continued to develop larger, faster, meaner, and stupider reptiles. The current theory holds that evolution occurs in fits and spurts, and does so when there is a vacuum in the natural order. The ascendancy of man, it is claimed, has been effectively holding a lid on evolution for the past 10,000 years or so. When we manage to die off, perhaps the next form to ascend to primacy will be a ferocious pinniped. The history books will read "They all scoffed at the sea otter, and laughed as they taught it to perform menial tricks, but never did they realize..." Of course, it will say this in an otter script unreadable by humans, and no humans will remain to read it anyway.

So, after yet another long and rambling post, my premise remains that evolution occurs at its own speed, in its own ways. We may have advanced so quickly that no other system has time to catch up, or we may have evolved so slowly (remember, the dinosaurs held a lid on evolution for millions of years) that nobody is monitoring or broadcasting radio waves anymore, as it is too passe, a remnant of a bygone era. The odds of SETI turning up anything useful are abysmally small. But still, at this level of advancement, it is basically the only tool we have to search for other life, and I think it is a search worth undertaking.

Yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. We can't really know what to expect about the development of technological civilizations on other planets, because we only know of one example of it to draw conclusions from. Just to put this in perspective; the universe is at least 15 billion years old, our own planet is about 4.5 billion years old, humans are two million years old (still a young species in comparison to Earth's past rulers), civilization is about ten thousand years old, and radios are a little over a hundred years old. In another five hundred years I expect we will be extinct, pardon my pessimism (maybe not). But what are the odds (well, we can't know, but imagine) that not only did sentient technological civilization arise on a system within listening distance, but that it did so at even approximately the same time ours did (and note that I am talking about time in terms of its conventional psychological meaning, not in terms of its relativistic context, which would have to be taken into account when discussing interstellar matters). Probably the species we are listening for evolved on the other side of the galaxy, built radios, beamed out messages across space, and then blew itself up with nuclear weapons about three million years in our past. All record of its activities passed beyond us into the void of the universe at large some 2 900 000 years ago. Oh well. Sorry Carl.

Just because something is unlikley to happen is no reasone not to attempt it. This is the same as for looking for non-human minds outside of our world, or discovering one in our own technology. As our racial knowledge base increases and grows we often succumb to the fallacy that we know all that there is to know. There will always be discovery. Hell just last week humans found another moon orbiting Jupiter. Its like the US patent office wanting to close up shop after the first year, because afterall "any thing that can be invented surely has been!"

There are two possibilites for us: Creation & Discovery, or Stagnation & Extinction. Like the old Dylan song, "You're either busy being born, or your busy dying."

I just wanted to agree with the sentiment that SETI is valuable no matter how ridiculous the odds of its success are. I think it is part of human nature to seek others. Exploring and communicating are both very much a part of who we are. Perhaps a hundred years from now, SETI will be much more technologically advanced and perhaps it will have a better chance for success. I like to think that our ancestors will marvel at our ideas, even though they may laugh at our methods.

Actually, I would disagree. I agree taht a spirit of exploration is vital to our progress as a species, but I can think of worthwhile endeavours far more likely to yield fruit that could be undertaken right here at home. Why undertake a project doomed to failure? If I had the resources and inclination to help mankind place his own existence into context, I would probably focus on our history and past for starters. Like, why are there Sumerian ziggurats in Mexico with the same astronomical calibrations? Why are there statues all over the damn world (and myths) about Elohim? Serious mysteries like these get dismissed as fodder for Time-Life books and infomercials, but I think a serious archaeological, historical study of such things would be far more likely to yield worthwhile results about the mystery of ourselves and our place here than is a search across the empty skies on the off-chance that someone out there is beaming prime numbers at us.

Then again, I'm reknowned to be a bit of a luddite.

Why would one pursuit negate the other? I'm happy looking for ET. Until there is a distributed processing project to deterrmine the origin of astronomicly alligned structures, I'll keep running the SETI @ Home screensaver. Its not like the SETI project is taking away resources that could research your ziggurats. Because you think something is worthwhile does not imply that anything else isn't.

Well, they aren't my ziggurats, but there is truth to what you say; I'm sure there are resources to go around for various projects. I think my point was that SETI, while being a well-intentioned effort to help humankind place its existence into context, is almost certainly a staggeringly hopeless cause. I think there are other areas of study that could offer the same value, with a greater chance of producing viable data, and I think fair examples of such a notion are the various archaelogical mysteries right here at home.

I do not think I said that my convictions that such a project might be worthwhile in any way implied that other pursuits were not worthwhile, and I'm not sure how you inferred that. I conclude that SETI is worthless solely on the basis of its own merits, being that the Universe is at least 30 billion light years in diameter, and our listening radius right now is less than 100 light years (given that we've not been listening for very long). I hope you see the difference.

I certainly would not want to condemn you for donating your cpu's spare cycles to crunching data, which you almost seem to have inferred. But the tremendous amount of energy, time, money, equipment, interest amongst the intelligentsia, and funding given over to the SETI project up to this point (I've actually been following SETI since about '85) could likely have easily yielded all sorts of interesting results had it been oriented towards a slightly different task like, say, finding a cure for AIDS. Not that this is what should have been done... there is no 'should'. There are futile pursuits, and worthwhile ones. For my money I'd take on something that might yield results.