The Rare Earth Hypothesis: Part Two

If the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a viable experiment and not a waste of time; if UFOs and ancient astronauts are facets that help document the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, then the very existence of an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence with technology has to be plausible in the first place. Unfortunately, it’s a long hard road to get from inorganic chemistry through to E.T. and there are many possible bottleneck hurdles that have to be overcome before the one evolves into the other. Goldilocks factors – not too this, not too that, but just right – have to be with you every step of the way. IMHO the major bottlenecks are the transition from unicellular to multicellular life and the evolutionary development and use of technology.

It’s been pointed out by others, and based on my readings I tend to have to agree, that astronomers (physical scientists) tend to be much more optimistic and supportive of the notion that advanced life forms in the Universe (extraterrestrial intelligence) are a dime-a-dozen relative to biologists (life scientists), who hedge their bets and who it must be said are presumably better qualified to pass judgments. So, taking things from a more biological perspective, what’s what?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

There are apparently just too many planetary Goldilocks factors at play to grant the probability that complex, multicellular, animal, life is common throughout the cosmos. You need to be in a quiet part of the galaxy – no nearby supernovas, black holes to suck you in, gamma ray bursters, etc. You need a long lived stable single star. You need a gravitationally stable solar system so that planets are not gravitationally disturbed out of their orbit and either plunged into the parent star or cast out of the parent system altogether. You should have a good Jupiter(s) to absorb and/or gravitational deflect comets and asteroids that would otherwise slam into your otherwise environmentally-friendly planet causing havoc to established life forms. You need a planet that’s in a pretty circular orbit, one that doesn’t stray too close or too far from the habitable zone surrounding the parent star. The planet must have a fairly stable temperature range over geologic time periods, and so you must have an atmosphere, and thus has to be massive enough to retain an atmosphere, without being so massive that you end up with a brown dwarf - a quasi-stellar body. The axis can’t have an extreme tilt, and it would greatly assist if the planet had a large moon around it to assist its long term stability. You need some sort of plate tectonics to ensure land building and the recycling of materials. If it’s intelligence, with technology you seek, the planet can’t be a water world. The planet must have formed in a region abundant in the heavier chemical elements (oxygen, sulphur, carbon, silicon, nitrogen, various metals, etc.). When you take all those factors (and more) into account, the number of suitable abodes where simple life can slowly evolve into complex life decreases rather quickly. And there’s no guarantee that there is really any directed purpose to evolution in that evolution doesn’t require simple life to become complex life. Survival and leaving offspring is what it’s all about, and if single cell critters do that what more is needed?

One note about planetary disasters or catastrophes is that these cut both ways. They can’t be frequent enough and/or large enough to wipe out the entire biosphere in total, especially the biosphere comprised of complex life forms, but on the other hand, infrequent small disasters can spur on evolutionary change by opening up environmental niches, but depending on who or what you are, when you are, and where you are, a disaster can be a double edged sword. I mean if you’re a T-Rex sixty five million years ago, its bad news. On the other hand, without the bad news for T-Rex, we wouldn’t be here, so for us, an asteroid impact 65 million years ago turned out to be good news!

It’s also difficult to naturally transport complex life around the galaxy, unlike microbial life. If a meteor hit Earth and blasted a chunk of terra firma off towards Mars, pity the poor cockroach going along for the ride. Cockroaches are tough, but not that tough. And even if a cockroach did make it alive to the surface of, say Mars, it wouldn’t survive long.

Anyway, once you have multicellular critters that have survived and thrived in a reasonably stable part of the Universe over many generations, will they evolve intelligence? I mean finding an extraterrestrial equivalent of a trilobite is all well and good, but we want to find beings more like ourselves.

IMHO, intelligence, the ability to figure things out, has evolutionary survival value and will tend to be selected for, and thus over time, there will tend to have evolved life forms with ever higher IQ’s. Here on Earth, just about all mammals and birds, and some exceptional invertebrates (the cephalopods like squid and the octopus), have reasonable IQ’s at least when compared to bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc. Of course just as some kinds of organisms are faster than others, or have keener senses of sight or smell or hearing, not all advanced organisms are going to end up equal in the IQ stakes. But, the fact remains, the ability to think, to figure things out, can only increase your odds of survival and leaving behind more offspring.

Finally, for SETI to succeed, for UFOs to be alien spaceships, one needs our intelligent species to develop technology, and here’s where I see bottleneck number two. The evolution of technology isn’t inevitable and has a lot of just-so factors attached.

Firstly, your home planet has got to come equipped with the right sorts of materials like oxygen and metal ores and other objects than can be turned into useful tools, and of course a suitable supply of various energy sources. That’s not a given.

Water worlds are out of the running since it’s difficult to discover and utilise fire in that sort of environment.

You can’t have all your required locomotive appendages in contact with the ground – some have to be free to manipulate objects in your environment. Birds have wings that are off the ground, but since wings aren’t good at making tools, that seems to rule out wings and birds of a feather pretty much as well

So, we’ve already ruled out dolphins and whales and the cephalopods being water based creatures, and the birds with their useless wings as far as building things is concerned, and all the four-footed walking mammals.

It might be conceivable that you can build up a technology using your mouth parts and/or using a tail to manipulate and build things, but we don’t have obvious terrestrial case studies, although you might argue that bees and wasps and termites and ants and birds can build elaborate structures using just their mouths.

It’s not all that obvious that technology actually adds all that much value towards ultimate long-term survival. Lots of technological advancements do, like controlling fire, developing agriculture, the rise of modern medicine and food technologies. But then lots of modern technological wonders, the automobile, CDs, sofas, microwave ovens, and thousands of other consumer products don’t really contribute to our overall survival – certainly cars don’t when considering the road toll! Then that brings up the fact that things technological can sometimes work in the opposite direction. Toxic this, pollutant that, nuclear the next thing; then throw in a bit of global warming; the rise of urban city living with overcrowding and in general overpopulation; chemical, biological and radiological warfare/terrorism; instruments of warfare in general, like guns; the overuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic resistant germs; exposure to electromagnetic fields – well, the list of horrors or potential horrors goes on and on.

It makes for an interesting question: would mankind ultimately survive longer had technology never entered the equation, or not? It’s an unanswerable question in that 1) we can’t run the contrary as a controlled experiment, and 2) that the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there’s probably no turning back now.

So, overall, SETI might not be able to detect our technological and communicating kin out there, and UFOs might not be alien spaceships right here, because it’s 1) hard to evolve multicellular organisms, and 2) technology isn’t inevitable and might even be counterproductive. Thus, Earth, with its multicellular critters and humanity with its technology, is quite the rare planet within the Universe – according to some.   

The main proponents of what is now called the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’ are the scientists Brownlee and Ward (see below), and they have certainly stirred up an astrobiological hornet’s nest with the idea. That’s good for science in the long term. The belief in an unproved but accepted scientific proposition, in this case that that there are lots of complex alien critters out there, needs to be challenged if fields of inquiry aren’t going to stagnate. However, make no mistake, it is the ‘Rare Earth Hypothesis’, not the ‘Unique Earth Hypothesis’, so religious fundamentalists who have taken this hypothesis to their hearts; who still need Planet Earth, and human beings, as some sort of religious special creation, should really not take comfort from these ideas.  The Copernicus Revolution is still alive and well.

Further reading:

Brownlee, Donald & Ward, Peter D.; Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe; Copernicus Books, New York; 2000:

Burger, William C.; Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York; 2003:

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2003:

Are We the Proverbial “It”? Part Two

Every one and their great grandmother has apparently had a go at, and calculated a value for the Drake Equation (named after radio astronomer and SETI scientist Frank D. Drake). The Drake Equation estimates (guesstimates is actually more accurate) the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could in theory say “Hi” to us and receive our “Hello” in return by examining all the factors that are part and parcel of that scenario. Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species has been around for only some 200,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial “It”? Here’s my two cents worth.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Lastly, there’s the issue of longevity. If your neighbours move in, but then move out again in less than 24 hours, that doesn’t allow much time to meet them and chat over afternoon tea - blink, and they’re gone. But if you’re both on the block for twenty years, that allows lots of time for afternoon teas, philosophical chats and bridge games, etc. So, how long do technological civilizations last?  

Well, the pessimist will look around and cite global warming, probably antibiotic resistant germs giving rise to pandemics, chemical, biological and radiological warfare and/or terrorism, the extinction of species, rampant pollution, and in general an overall quality of life heading rapidly down the gurgler, right down to the point that the human race will to extinct – by our own hand. But if you’re an optimist, then the sky’s the limit.

Longevity – It’s hard to imaging what human civilization, what humans themselves, will be like 1000 years from now, but if you could come back 1000 years hence, would you indeed find a human civilization, indeed find recognizable ‘humans’ at all? Once you have evolved to the stage of being a multicellular critter with intelligence and technology, then physics and chemistry and plain everyday evolutionary biology are no longer in control of your evolution. You are now in control! You are in control not only over the future evolution of other species (artificial selection instead of natural selection) but of your own evolution. The age of the designer baby is already upon us, albeit still in its infancy (pun intended). What will another several more decades bring to this now embryonic field but obviously an ever ongoing and continuing maturity! 

Humans will probably go kaput within 1000 years, not because of a global nuclear war, or pandemic, or asteroid strike, but because they have by their own hand evolved into something else, and the process has already started. In fact, it’s possible that in 1000 years there could be two humanoid species on Earth. One will be an amalgamation of flesh and blood plus ‘iron and silicon’; the other pure ‘iron and silicon’ (robots).

The first is not too difficult a swallow. Just replace or augment flesh and blood bits with ‘iron and silicon’ bits (or wood bits, or ceramic bits, or plastic bits, etc.). Look at most pirate films and you’ll see those beloved peg-legs and hook-hands. Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? What about a hearing aid? Perhaps you have an artificial joint(s) or a heart pacemaker. You surely have a dental filling (or two), maybe even dentures. Then there’s artificial skin and all manner of other internal or external types of technology that have replaced your failed flesh and blood – like kidney dialysis. There’s now serious talk about the development of a bionic eye within a few years (to go with the bionic ear). What further artificial bio-bits will be available in another 20 years, another 50 years, or another 200 years? The era of the “RoboCop” or an actual “Six-Million Dollar Man” (and “Woman”) is nearly upon us.

Within 200 years or so, I can envision that one will be able to download the contents of a human mind into an ‘iron and silicon’ equivalent.  Why? Well, does the word ‘immortality’ (or as close to immortality as makes no odds) suggest a possible reason? You don’t think anything of endlessly replacing worn automobile parts for new parts to extend the useful lifetime of your car. Why not endlessly replace your worn parts. Your mind (brain) won’t last forever. Replace it - transfer it to a more durable technology Do it again, and again and again as is necessary. In fact, one might create a mega-mind or super-mind by merging into an ‘iron and silicon’ body a lot of minds. By merging the minds of say a cosmologist, general relativist, quantum physicist and mathematician, one might speed up the development of the Holy Grail of physics, the Theory of Everything (TOE) – which is a theory of quantum gravity. 

Once your mind is contained in an ‘iron and silicon’ ‘head’, just attach that to an all ‘iron and silicon’ ‘body’. Immortality indeed!

All of which leads to a future Earth inhabited by a humanoid robot species, artificially evolved from today’s human species. That process too has already started. Robotic appliances, even artificial ‘iron and silicon’ ‘pets’ are on the market. Research into artificial intelligence is ever ongoing. Watch that final minute of the final episode of the TV revision of “Battlestar Galactica’! How about those sci-fi “Transformers” or “Terminators”, or Data (from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”)? Then there’s “Doctor Who’s” Cybermen or Daleks (though they’re part machine; part organism). Think of those robots from “Westworld” or “Futureworld” where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong… Then there’s “The Stepford Wives”, “Cherry 2000”, the original “Battlestar Galactica” Cylons, and many more. It might be just science fiction today – could it be science fact tomorrow? There doesn’t seem to be any violation of physics involved. Everything not forbidden is compulsory! However, some of those sci-fi scenarios suggest that perhaps ultimately there might be a conflict between the (part) machines we become, and the (artificially) intelligent machines that we create!

Of course we’re in control, so a robotic future isn’t of necessity compulsory. But I suspect it will happen. Why? There are rational reasons for humans deliberately abandoning their flesh and blood existence and evolving themselves, if not 100% into ‘iron and silicon’ then at least into something part flesh and blood coupled with part ‘iron and silicon’ – sort of like we have today (recall those dentures and peg-legs). 

Quite apart from immortality arguments, it’s nice having more indestructible bodies and bodies that can be more easily repaired. Death won’t go totally away of course – accidents still happen. Presumably, your mind will be able to absorb 10, 100, 1000 times the amount of experiences and memories and knowledge, etc. than is currently the case. You might be able to explore environments now closed to you, like taking a stroll across the sea bottom – kilometres down – in your robotic ‘birthday’ suit. All of which then opens up the entire ‘boldly going’ experience. What’s the hardest part of going to Mars? – it’s the flesh and blood frailty of the human body – the need for gravity and oxygen and organic food and water, and space suits, and how you can’t carry spare flesh and blood parts along too, etc.  Extrapolate to our exploration of the entire solar system, then our stellar neighbourhood, eventually the galaxy. Even if you don’t want to go yourself, well, there’s artificial intelligence housed in perhaps nanotechnology bodies, spreading throughout the cosmos like so much cancer.  

The ultimate point of all of this is that if eventually us (humans), why not them (extraterrestrials) now? Translated, after a relative short period of biological development, a civilization can obtain longevity that evolutionary development into ‘iron and silicon’ provides, coupled with far easier expansion into the realm of outer space.

This level of technology can also partly undo the bottleneck created by the relative improbability of multicellular evolution. There maybe relatively few multicellular infested planets, but once technology of the ‘iron and silicon’ kind happens on them, then boldly going, being fruitful and mechanically multiplying and colonizing the cosmos rapidly fill that gap.

All of which doesn’t mean that we are, in the here and now, the proverbial “It’. However, there are enough ‘probability one’ or certainty factors that suggest this is rather unlikely. The proof of the pudding will be to find them; or for them to find us.

Are We the Proverbial “It”? Part One

Every one and their great grandmother has apparently had a go at, and calculated a value for the Drake Equation (named after radio astronomer and SETI scientist Frank D. Drake). The Drake Equation estimates (guesstimates is actually more accurate) the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy that could in theory say “Hi” to us and receive our “Hello” in return by examining all the factors that are part and parcel of that scenario. Seeing as how the Universe is some 13.7 billion years old, and seeing as how the current human species has been around for only some 200,000 years (give or take), then I have to ask, is it logical to assume that we’re the proverbial “It”? Here’s my two cents worth.

Are we alone in the Universe? That’s a question that’s been asked by millions over the eons, without, to date resolution. Of course the word ‘alone’ implies alone in the sense of whether or not there exists elsewhere our rough equals, more likely as not betters. We want to get to know our neighbours across the street, not their pets, or their plants. The standard gut-feeling answer to the question usually revolves around how vast the Universe is, and surely, given the billions of stars in our galaxy and the existence of billions of galaxies each with billions of stars, etc. and the vastness of time, surely we can’t be the proverbial “It”. There’s unfortunately one slight flaw in that statistical approach. There’s a rather long chain of events that have to happen, hurdles to be jumped, in order to get from the elements of star-stuff to biological cosmic neighbours. Depending on whom you talk to, that chain can be extremely long indeed. The point is, if any one factor in that chain of causality has a very low probability of coming to pass, it matters not one jot whether or not all the other factors are extremely probable, the overall result is going to be low. If any one factor is as close to zero as makes no odds, then the overall answer will also be a close to zero as makes no odds. Certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by zero multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty multiplied by certainty ultimately equals zero!

Rather than give an exhaustive list of all those factors required to give us cosmic neighbours, I’ll focus on six essentials.

Firstly, one has to have the right kinds of matter and energy that can produce beings like us, and a solid surface to stand on. That’s no problem. The Universe has lots of kinds of energy on tap; stars can manufacture and disperse the required kinds of matter, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, etc. There’s lots of solid bodies (planets) out there. That’s one vote for certainty. 

Secondly, one has to have a solid planetary body turn into a habitable world; a suitable environment for physics, chemistry, biochemistry and biology to do their evolutionary thing. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a lot of real estate out there and it comes in all sizes and flavours. While there’s only ever going to be one Planet Earth (I’ll avoid discussions of the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, the notion of parallel worlds, and the Multiverse here which could argue the contrary), there has been, is, and will be, lots and lots of earth-like abodes, just letter perfect for life-as-we-know-it to survive, even thrive. If one wants to throw in life-not-as-we-know-it, there will be lots of worlds suitable for those possibilities as well. So, that’s another vote for certainty.

Thirdly, physics has to become chemistry, and chemistry has to become biology. We need biology to have had origins, or an origin, an origin(s) of life that’s an inevitable outcome of the everyday ordinary interactions between physics and chemistry. Well, many will argue that the origin of life is as nearly predictable as death and taxes, given a suitable habitat. Many will also argue that the origin of life is a fluke! In my point of view, the origin of life need only happen once, and that clearly has been a certainty – we exist and we are life. Once there’s one origin of life, the rest is just distribution. Panspermia provides the ways and means of distributing (microbial) life throughout the cosmos. So, I’ll have to cast another vote for certainty again!

Fourthly – well, now we hit the proverbial brick wall.  You and your neighbours aren’t microbes – you’re a colony of microbes. In short, you’re a multicellular life form. We seek, in the cosmos, other multicellular life forms, on the grounds that the odds that a microbe or unicellular life form isn’t going to prove to be much of a companion or drinking buddy is a near given. So, we need to get from unicellular to multicellular, and therein lays the rub. And it’s here that we have to rely for guidance on a sample of one – Earth. Note: It’s dangerous to extrapolate from a sample of one, but what choice do we have? 

There’s no ecological niche on Earth occupied by multicellular critters that’s not also occupied by unicellular critters (microbes). The reverse isn’t true. You may think the world is totally dominated by multicellular critters – you, your partner, your family, your pets, your garden, your food, all the life you see around you is multicellular. There’s millions of species of insects – all multicellular. What’s more common than bugs? Yet, if you did a biological census, even in your home and your garden, you’d find that apparently common multicellular life forms are out-common-ed, vastly outnumbered, by unicellular life forms by a ratio of trillions to one. What you don’t see does matter!

So, are multicellular critters an evolutionary certainty? Is there anything a ‘colony’ of 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 cells can accomplish or fill a previously unfilled ecological niche that one cell can’t? And by the way, that 2 or 20 or 200 or 2000 stage has got to be selected for before one can get to the two million and two billion colony stage. Well, clearly the transition happened here, albeit it took some three billion years to seriously kick-start the process, so it’s hardly some inevitable ‘law of nature’. I mean taking some three billion years to get to a colony of cells from a single cell doesn’t inspire confidence that the process is easy, necessary or inevitable. Anyway, it did happen here, so it’s obviously possible. I just don’t see it as a super-evolutionary development that confers immediate survival-of-the-fittest advantage. Of course a colony of two cells might be harder to eat than one cell, but at that level, ‘food’ tends to be absorbed at the molecular level. In any event, microbes can easily attack and ‘eat’ multicellular critters, causing sickness, death and decay. We’re ultimately food for the microbes and the proof of that pudding is how we spend small fortunes keeping them at bay. But, eventually, though you might win the battles against the microbes, you’ll lose the last one, and thus the war.

Another factor that argues against multicellular organisms being a universally common feature of the Universe is that it is also a lot harder to transport around the Universe by natural means – that concept of panspermia – multicellular critters. I mean getting a microbe from Earth to Mars is one thing. Getting a cockroach there is a whole different scenario.   

Multicellular development; its probability, can’t be zero since we’re multicellular, but, on balance, I can’t assign a high probability to the transition between unicellular and multicellular life on every habitable planet, every time. This one is nearing zero!

Fifthly, as noted earlier, you don’t want to interact with your neighbour’s multicellular pets or multicellular garden plants, but your neighbours. What do you have in common with your neighbours that you don’t have in common with your neighbour’s pet or garden plants? Intelligence (even if you probably think your neighbours are a few cents short of a dollar!).

The issue now is whether, having evolved to a multicellular stage, will one develop some higher brain function? Is there any further evolutionary advantage towards increasing one’s intelligence? By going back to our sample of one, if Earth is any guide, the answer is roughly ‘not likely’. There are millions of multicellular species that have existed, and do exist, on Planet Earth. There are apparently only a very few species that have evolved something beyond the minimum level of brain power required for their day-to-day survival. That doesn’t inspire confidence that intelligence has inevitable value as a means of survival.

By far and away, most multicellular critters just operate on pure instinct and don’t (can’t) stop to figure things out (far less stop to smell and appreciate the roses) - but, there are an admittedly few exceptions.  Many wild birds would put our everyday companion animals to shame in the IQ department. I mean I love my cats, but little Einstein’s they’re not. Whales and dolphins have also been credited with being in the higher IQ bracket; ditto our close primate cousins. In the invertebrate kingdom, the octopus is pretty smart – by invertebrate standards (and then some if one is honest). However, on balance, most multicellular critters put their evolutionary strategies into something other than higher brain function. Take my cats. Is it to their survival advantage to ‘figure things out’ or to be just a bit faster afoot, hear just a bit better, see ever more clearly? Nearly all organisms put their survival abilities into something other than pure brain-power. Clearly brain-power has survival-of-the-fittest attributes. But, it’s not the only game in town, and therefore doesn’t have what I’d call evolutionary ‘certainty’.  However, it would be illogical to say that developing intelligence, the ability to figure things out, isn’t valuable and doesn’t have survival value, it’s just that if you were to list all the multicellular animal species on Planet Earth, very few would have an IQ of even one (the human average is 100). So, let’s say intelligence is somewhere between certainty and highly improbable.

Next, let’s assume your intelligent neighbours are fairly far away and the usual means of keeping in touch is by phone (or email). That introduces one additional complication; it’s not enough to just be intelligent. You need to have technology. Then, and only then, will the ‘are we alone?’ question be answered to our absolute satisfaction. We need technology if we are to find extraterrestrial intelligence(s); and/or extraterrestrial intelligence(s) will need technology to find us. One or both of us has to have invented engineering to a somewhat sophisticated level - maybe rocket ships, maybe radio telescopes, but something technological is required. There’s also a hidden assumption here – you actually want to seek out new civilizations. It matters not if you have all the required technology but care not to use it for the purpose of answering that question – ‘are you alone in the Universe?’ I’ll assume here that if you have intelligence, and it’s been able to construct technology, then part of your intelligence is devoted to be a curious critter who wants to know and find out things – so that’s a certainty of one. But what’s the level of certainty of developing technology in the first place? Rather poor judging from those terrestrial species that have some reasonable smarts to their credit. There’s the human species of course, and though while we’re not quite a sample of one, it’s pretty close. There are documentary observations of some animals (primates mainly) not so much making, but making use of existing ‘tools’ to assist in their survival. Alas, most intelligent species lack the anatomy and/or the right environment to manipulate objects. In the case of dolphins and whales, their ocean environment stymies any way and means of constructing things and making use of fire, for example. So, developing technology has to be rated, judging from our terrestrial sampling, as rather low. 

Technology is also a double-edged sword. The use of technology has had obvious survival value for the human species. You wouldn’t be hard-pressed to come up with dozens of technological inventions that have enabled us to survive longer and thrive better. But, out technological genie is out of the bottle, and unless you’re a hermit, you will have noted by now that technology can also reduce our quality of life, and no doubt you wouldn’t be equally hard-pressed to cite dozens of examples. Which leads nicely into the last consideration. 

To be continued…

Our Post Biological Evolution

A well worn staple of science fiction is travel to the stars – ‘boldly going’ to borrow the tag phrase from one well known science fiction staple, “Star Trek”. Unfortunately, what’s easy to do in the pages of sci-fi literature, or show on the small or big screen isn’t anywhere as simple in reality. But, just because something isn’t simple doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Most solutions focus on new cheaper, better, faster rocket propulsion technology. I got a better idea!

A well known SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientist recently made the following statement.

“The real question to me isn’t why ET isn’t everywhere, but why ET’s machines aren’t everywhere.”*

The standard thinking, that basic point being made is that it’s dangerous and costly to boldly go anywhere out there in person relative to staying at home. But sending out unmanned probes instead, probes which might be sophisticated enough to not only explore but reproduce themselves using resources discovered while exploring would like a cancer spread out more and more until they have covered every cubic mile of space. Maybe there’s just one ET; zillions of ET’s machines.

Perhaps ET and ET’s machines are one and the same. Even if there is but one ET race or civilization, there could be an abundance of ET’s machines (that’s standard thinking noted above), but all containing not just ET but lots of ET (that’s not standard thinking). Translated, if you want to ‘boldly go’ (i.e. interstellar travel), it may make more sense to be an actual part of the spaceship instead of just being a passenger. Better rocket propulsion might prove to be fairly irrelevant.

Premise: Exploring is in our very makeup. Humans do not want surrogates to do their exploring for them. It may be necessary, but it’s never enough. A photograph of Paris isn’t good enough – I want to see the Eiffel Tower for myself.

While a robotic probe discovered the location and wreck of the RMS Titanic, humans had to go to the time and trouble and cost to see and explore the shipwreck in person.

We don’t send an unmanned robotic rover to climb Mount Everest; we do it ourselves, even though it’s a very dangerous activity to life and limb.

I’m sure the scientists who guide the unmanned rovers on Mars are happy little campers; they would be even happier if they were on Mars in person.

Sending Pioneer 10 & 11; Voyager 1 & 2 out into interstellar space is all fine, well and good but wouldn’t you want to travel to, say the star Tau Ceti, in person? An unmanned probe (a descendent of Pioneer or Voyager) exploring Tau Ceti and sending you back data doesn’t generate quite the same thrill as being there up close and personal.

However, it’s difficult to get you to Tau Ceti. Your life span isn’t long enough to last the trip at projected interstellar velocities achievable in the foreseeable future, and in any event, you’d need massive life support infrastructure which adds lots of additional mass requiring lots of extra energy and thus cost to your journey. All up, too much mass, too much energy, and too much cost.

But, what part of you really needs to get to Tau Ceti? Does your big toe need to go? Does your liver need to get up close and personal with Tau Ceti? No. The only part of you that really needs to encounter Tau Ceti is your ‘inner you’, your mind, not the physical body part of you apart from that which houses the mind – your brain thingy. Alas, even your mind, your wetware, is part of your physical body (your brain) and it won’t last the distance from Earth to Tau Ceti.

Now let’s pause to consider the following interlude. Somewhere around the time of humanity’s transition from a hunter-gather lifestyle to a life of domestic settlement and leisure, even if not always domestic bliss, there was a remarkable but hardly remarked upon revolution. There was a slow but sure transition from Darwinian natural selection and evolution to artificial selection and evolution.

So how does artificial selection come into play? What useful role is it? Well, we now augment enough of our natural abilities with some sort of non-biological technology to allow us ultimately to produce offspring that otherwise would not have been produced. Reproduction is ultimately the name of the game; no reproduction, no selection, no evolution, natural or otherwise.

That transition to a post biological humanity probably all started when the first human used a long stick as a prop; as a cane to help him support himself and walk easier, instead of lying helplessly on the ground as prey for a saber-tooth cat! That stick could further serve as a prosthetic and be used to fend off the cat or hit it and drive it away. We are now in control, or at least better control over our fate. Clearly, like the stick-cane, we’ll continue to use artificial means – technology – to better our existence and defy the odds Mother Nature throws our way.  That path has already been well and truly started down. Since the stick-cane we’ve added eyeglasses and hearing aids and dentures and artificial joints and drugs** to help us with our sex lives and to breed and we’re talking about using nanotechnology nanobots to circulate through our blood stream seeking out nasty cancer cells from the inside and destroy them while unclogging our arteries, plus various prosthetics that increase our strength, etc.

There are in addition to non-biological technology those other sorts of means to achieve artificial selection, as in genetic engineering techniques for improving the human lot, like DNA splicing and manipulating the structure of our genes, etc., but I want to stick with biological plus non-biological integrations (bioengineering), like human-computer interfaces often used to immerse yourself in virtual reality simulations or games. 

We’ve come a long way in applying artificial selection technologies since those hunter-gather days. Now where does it all end? And how might artificial (as in technology) selection help us, and by analogy ET, boldly go?

Fast forward say 500 years. Might it not be possible to transfer the ‘inner you’ contained in your wetware, the brain thingy of yours, and transfer it into software and hardware made of more durable non-organic stuff like silicon and steel? If so, you’re now onboard, but as part of the electronics, the computer, that’s onboard. You and the ship have merged.

Of course your wetware, once downloaded or transferred into a software package, could be transferred again and again into many different computers, sort of like an endless  ‘copy and paste’ operation, each copy of you on a ship headed to some other interstellar destinations. In fact, everyone could explore anywhere and everywhere they wanted. If a lot of ‘people’ (could we still call ourselves ‘people’?) wanted to go to Tau Ceti, that’s as easy as if just one wanted to go since presumably there’s room on the ship for many ‘brains in the electronic vat’. Maybe everyone is headed everywhere. Eventually everyone experiences everything, but not quite at the same time of course.

I mean You #1 goes to Tau Ceti, while You #2 heads off to say the star Sirius. However, You #1 and You #2 don’t share your separate experiences even if you both communicate them to each other. Each is a surrogate to the other. But of course You #1 could go to Tau Ceti and then go on to Sirius; You #2 goes to Sirius and then on to Tau Ceti. Both ‘copy and paste clones’ get both experiences.

Regardless of those variations on the theme, your lifespan has increased by orders of magnitude. There’s little if any real ‘life’ support needed. There might even be a ‘sleep’ switch to turn you off while the light years slowly tick by. [That alone, by the way, takes care of the ‘they (aliens) can’t get to here from there’ argument, often used as a debating point against the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis.] And, when you reach Tau Ceti, there will be mechanical devices, rovers or robots on board you can download into and thus explore the Tau Ceti environment – in person!

Post-biological development or bioengineering is our ticket to the stars, even if the big toe has to stay at home! So, I wouldn’t be surprised if each and every one of ET’s machines didn’t actually contain ET or ET’s entire population for that matter!

Of course some real extraterrestrials might not have to resort to the ‘brain in the electronic vat’ to get from there to here, but it’s one way of doing it.

And as to why we don’t see ET or at least ET’s machines, since they (the machines) are supposed to be everywhere, well perhaps our scientist hasn’t heard of UFOs, or perhaps taken the time to study the subject. If s/he did, well perhaps s/he wouldn’t have raised the issue in the first place since ‘everywhere’ obviously includes here.

There is some interest in the morals or ethics of wetware to software transfer and cloning of that resultant software. From an ethical or moral point of view, the ‘inner you’ transfer from wetware to software would probably happen just prior to your natural death. The body would be buried or cremated in the normal way. Or, you might sign a consent form authorizing the transfer at any time after you reach the legal age. The body would still be treated as if it had died since it obviously must do so if there’s no longer any wetware running it. Oh, since this is a copy-and-paste arrangement, there could be one copy of the ‘inner you’ as software; two copies of you; 20 copies of you; 200 copies, etc. Think of a video game with a character in the game. Now recall that there are thousands of copies of the game in existence, therefore thousands of copies or clones of the character - Same distinction.

Each version of the ‘inner you’ would probably regard itself as the real ‘me’ but it makes no sense to distinguish between them as an outsider. Each version wouldn’t really care about the other versions. Even though you no longer have a flesh-and-blood body, your consciousness will be where it always has been – part and parcel of your wetware. Only now it’s cloned and exists as software not wetware – one copy per how many copies of the software you now are part and parcel of. But from the point of cloning onwards, those clones of your consciousness diverge depending on the various career paths taken by the various software versions of you.

*Impey, Chris (Editor); Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2010; page 325.

**In fact all your pharmaceutical drugs and over-the-counter medicines are technological fixes designed to help you beat the odds.

Humans Have the Intelligence; Animals Have the Smarts: Part Two

There’s no question that of all species on Planet Earth, modern humans, Homo sapiens, are top of the pops when it comes to intelligence (IQ). All other species, however close they might be in evolutionary terms to modern humans, pale in comparison. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, animals are way smarter, which raises questions about our actual relationship to them. Here I give numerous examples where animals are top of the pops when it comes to pure smarts.

Humans have the highest IQ; but animals have vastly more commonsense. How so? Let’s consider various settings, starting with one we all share – time and space.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

PHYSICAL ACTIONS

Good vs. Evil: Animals are neither good nor evil – those are human inventions or concepts. There are no animal equivalents of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There’s no point in saying “good doggie” or “bad pussy cat” since they have no concept of “good” or “bad”. They may have learned what is and is not acceptable behaviour (what does and does not piss you off) but they do not understand why. While not every human transforms from good to evil and back again, and again, every human, unlike an animal, is theoretically capable of having a dual good/evil personality. Individuals’ aside, when looking at any large sample of humans, the dual nature becomes obvious.

Revenge & Justice: No animal deliberately plots and executes revengeful actions or has hidden agendas. What you see is what you get. Animals don’t fly planes into skyscrapers. Animals couldn’t even conceive of such a scenario in their wildest dreams. Humans on the other hand – need I say more?

Law & Order: All animal societies have some sort of internal regulation system which almost seems to be ingrained or hardwired. Such regulation usually doesn’t go much beyond the parents keeping the cubs in line and ensuring they don’t put themselves in harms way. Humans on the other hand have formalized their regulation of themselves to such an extreme degree that comparing the regulation of human society to say self-regulation of massive ant, termite or bee colony societies (which does just fine without cops and lawyers), is comparing not so much apples and oranges as the simplicity of a single electron with the complexity of the global weather system. How is it that an animal society can regulate itself without the need for a massive judicial infrastructure and requirement for highly specialized legal eagles and law enforcers?

Killing #1: Animals kill only as necessary for their own survival, both in defence as well as obtaining food for themselves and perhaps offspring. Humans kill out of sheer sadistic pleasure, for so-called ‘sport’, often just because they can. My cats, if they wanted to, kill garden snails – the weight of one paw would do it. However, snails are not food and pose no threat to them, so it’s live and let live. That’s unlike many humans who if they see a snail, a snail doing no harm to them or anything else, just delight in stomping on them – an 80 kg human vs. an 8 gm snail is no contest. Now that’s if the snail is lucky. All too often the sadistic human will just step on the animal lightly enough to crack the shell, leaving the snail helpless to either dry out in the sun or be at the mercy of the ants. It’s a very sad state of affairs that such examples can be expanded on by many orders of magnitude over a very wide range of species. 

Killing #2: If an animal wants to kill a human it has to get up close and personal. The reverse isn’t of necessity true. I wonder how brave our so-called ‘sportsmen’ hunters would be if the animals they hunted could shoot back. The concept of ‘sport’ is about equal contests and the same rules for all. Hunting animals therefore is not sport and it is high time the glorification of sport was divorced from hunting, which is anything but a glorious activity. The exception might be if the hunter is putting food on the table, but again, that’s not a ‘sport’.

Creativity & Technology #1: Some animals can be creative and ‘manufacture’ and use ‘technology’ like animals that pull off twigs and fashion them to stick into termite mounds in order to pull out a termite snack, or making use of materials to build a nest. But that ‘technology’ never backfires and bites them on the bum. Humans invent cars, but we have a road toll. We have electricity and accidents happen. We construct nuclear plants then have to worry about terrorism. We have created computers, and thus evolved the inevitable computer hacker and the computer virus. We manufacture all sorts of synthetic chemicals then wonder what to do with the toxic waste (actually we don’t wonder at all what to do with it – we dump it in the sea or the air since the solution to pollution is dilution).  

Creativity & Technology #2: Animals get along quite nicely thank you very much without Facebook, Twitter, iPads, email, mobile phones, Internet message boards, text-messaging, etc. Any human being, especially under the age of 40, and really, really especially under the age of 20, deprived of such technology becomes a basket case in nanoseconds! Attention to all those who feel the need to SMS 24/7: freedom is not being tied to your mobile phone; in contact with the rest of the world 24/7! Once upon a time, not all that long ago, human civilization (including teenagers therein) survived and thrived via communications that depended on smoke signals, semaphore flags and the pony express. If you really needed fast, there was the overland telegraph! It’s gotten to the point, maybe way beyond it already, that technology controls us; we are slaves to our own creations.

Domination: Humans Rule, OK? Left to itself, Mother Nature finds its own non-static, ever changing balance, in good times and bad times. Animals clearly affect that balance and in turn are affected by it. However, no animal species seeks to call the shots and exert ultimate control over that balance – no species except one of course, and no prizes for guessing what that species is. Humans decide, via some sort of divine right the fate and makeup of Earth’s ecosystems; what lives, what dies, in what ratios, what the landscape will be like, ever manipulating to find that balance that best suits us, which is going to be as far removed from a natural balance as it is possible to get. Take any human dominated environmental landscape. Remove the human element. Will that environmental landscape or ecosystem remain as is, as humans made it, or undergo a radical shift back to Mother Nature’s balance? Look no further than the typical backyard ecosystem/garden. It wouldn’t take long before natural change would render it unrecognizable if neglected by the garden’s occupants. If humans went poof, Earth would soon (in relatively minor geological time frames) become equally as unrecognizable as that household garden, or rather as recognizable as it was before humans came along with delusions of grandeur.

To be continued…

Humans Enslaved: Part Two

Humans can be enslaved in all manner of ways. By force by others is the usual image, but there is conscription and of course the bowing and scraping that’s part and parcel of being a law-abiding citizen. You probably feel a slave at work, but at least its voluntary and you do get paid for it. What I’m on about here is self-enslavement and how you willingly dance to the many tunes of the numerous pied pipers.

By “humans enslaved” I mean not so much physical ownership and physical slavery imposed on you by others, the form of slavery that has been and often still is practiced in the world, but often self imposed mental slavery. You are a slave and what is enslaving you is in fact you. But if you want a scapegoat, you can pin the blame on society for brainwashing you in the first place since none of what follows is hardwired or innately carved into your little grey cells.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

TRADITIONS & HABITS: More likely as not, you’re a slave to various traditions and personal habits. You might say something like “that’s the way my parents did it; that’s the way their parents did it and their parents before them and as far back as you care to go – it’s tradition and we observe tradition and no correspondence will be entered into on the matter!” Or, it’s such-and-such a time; such-and-such a day or date, therefore such-and-such will be done or observed. Sound slightly familiar? We’re often creatures of, slaves to, tradition and habits without ever stopping to question “why”?

CHRISTMAS: Christmas just has to be singled out especially from the rest of the book of days because it’s at the extreme end of our numerous traditions and habits. By any way you care to measure things, Xmas can be the best of times but it’s usually the worst of times (conveniently forgotten one year on). The Xmas propaganda (i.e. – the Xmas Season) starts months before the appointed date and is relentless in its build-up and intensity. It extends several weeks past the use-by date when the Xmas wrapping paper and Xmas cards are now 50% off, and those post Xmas sales where you’re tempted to by next years Xmas gifts now. And then the Xmas bills arrive just to remind you about all those fun times you had over the past several months.

Do you do Xmas because you want to, or because society has so shoved this concept down your throat ever since you were knee high to a cockroach that you now just go through the motions by rote because you have got to appease that great deity called “Shop Till You Drop”? Translated, do you do Xmas just because it’s expected of you? The latter you admit? I thought so. I mean what sane person voluntarily desires to max out their credit cards for gifts for others who probably don’t need or want them and will just shove them towards the back of their closet? What sane person voluntarily spends hours in crowded stores just for the pleasure or satisfaction of maxing out their credit cards on behalf of others? There’s hardly a store you can shop in that isn’t loaded to the rafters with Xmas trimmings. What sane person would voluntarily, laughing all the way (Ho, Ho, Ho), spend hours writing and addressing Xmas cards to persons they really don’t give a damn about? And isn’t it just jolly good fun wrapping up all those gifts? Do you honestly look forward to hearing all those Xmas songs for the millionth time?  There’s hardly a shop in town (not to mention buskers) that doesn’t bombard you with endless repetitions of Xmas music. How the staff can stand it is quite beyond me.

I’m sure you just love being exposed to Xmas spin multi-thousands of times per Xmas Season and not just the repetitious music and endlessly reading the word “Christmas” or “Merry Christmas” but those endlessly repeating Xmas images and Xmas colours. It hardly qualifies as subtle or subliminal – you’re clobbered over the head and you love it – “pay attention stupid, it’s time to do your Xmas bit or else there’s no Santa for you!” Now this isn’t some national emergency as in “Uncle Sam Needs You!”, rather the Chief Executive Officers of the retail sector need you, especially if they are to get their Xmas bonuses!

And what about slaving over the kitchen stove preparing that special Xmas meal for all those relatives you’d really rather poison? Speaking of Xmas dinner, why not try something different for a change, like pizza, spaghetti, macaroni & cheese, chicken pot pie or even sirloin steak. Fish & chips would make a nice change too! No? It has to be ham or turkey and plum pudding / mince pies / Xmas fruit cake according to someone’s (whose long since dead) tradition. Actually it’s not your fault. That’s the Xmas dinner fare that the supermarket catalogues and store displays feature, in LARGE PRINT, that twist your arm and in a manner of speaking end up shoving this must-have-because-it’s-traditional Xmas fare down your throat; this time literally! Boring! Same old fare! No imagination! So, being an independent minded SOB, its fish & chips for Xmas dinner for me (and no leftovers either).

So why do you do it, year after year after year? Because society says it’s that time of year to test your ‘right stuff’, to see if your heart (and sanity) can stand the pressure one more year. Society says you snap to attention at Xmas and you reply, via your wallet, “Yes sir! I will sir. Thank you sir”! Society says you will run the annual Xmas obstacle course, and run it you do, and aren’t you proud of yourself, huffing & puffing, when you cross the finish line. So, if you do Xmas for any reason other than because you want to, you really honestly and truly want to, then you’re enslaved, hook, line and Xmas sinker.

Quite apart from the commercial aspects, you’re enslaved to Xmas if you do Xmas for religious reasons because you’re still being led up the garden path by the nose. Why? It’s because you’re celebrating Xmas for the wrong ‘religious’ reason. Xmas is all about a natural rebirth, not about a supernatural birth. The latter, the alleged birth of a Christ, was superimposed by the Christian church over the real pagan reason for celebration around the late December period. That original celebration centred on the return of lengthening daylight after the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter solstice. Therefore, celebrating Xmas as the birth of Christ is not only incorrect, but irrational in that the date of Christ’s birth isn’t know by anyone. And celebrating Xmas for any reason in the Southern Hemisphere is ludicrous for either of the above possibilities. You’ve all been suckered yet again. 

TECHNOLOGY: We’re enslaved to our technology fixes, and to those repairmen and their extravagant bills who fix our fixes when those fixes need fixing. I mean when the TV goes on the blink; when the hard drive crashes, the fridge conks out, even when there’s a power failure, well we may not panic, but we get a tad close to it. We’ve all seen those quasi end-of-the-world movies where the few survivors have to rebuild civilization from scratch without all those modern technological conveniences like gasoline and electricity, and it’s not easy. Could you survive without supermarkets and clothing stores or modern hardware shops? How many drivers are now totally dependent on GPS? Would you like the task of separating a teenager from her Twitter or Facebook? Video game addiction is well known. The commuter who has to, shock horror, take the bus because the car broke down is NOT a happy camper. So what bits of technology are you enslaved to, and who forced you to adopt those bits in the first place?

AUTHORITY: I haven’t received my bill – I’m not at fault yet if I don’t do something the powers-that-be are sure to cut off my (fill in the blank) for non-payment. Do you ever find yourself in that sort of situation? The onus is always on you to rectify things even when you’re totally innocent of any wrongdoing. I’ve found myself, usually several times a year, having to chase up items which could result, if I fail to do so, in some bureaucratic authority figure come crashing down on me even though I’m not at fault of any wrongdoing. That’s enslavement. We’re enslaved to another deity – the great god of bureaucracy. We’ve all had experiences akin to banging our heads against a bureaucratic stone wall. It’s always the ordinary person who has to prove, out of fear of some authority, that it was the system at fault, and since when does any authority figure admit that the bureaucratic system to which they are a part of is flawed? The ordinary person is guilty till proven innocent; it’s never the fault of the system.

POWER: Power may not always corrupt and absolute power may not always corrupt absolutely, but we tend to seek power; we’re all slaves to seeking power and all slaves to keeping what power we have. It may be very local like the husband who beats the wife who in turn screams at the eldest kid, to the older brother who was screamed at now in turn bullying his younger sibling, to that brat kicking the dog, who then chases the cat. I guess it stops with the cat. Of course it might be power at the office – always seeking promotion so that you have more people under your command/supervision. It might be seeking political power, from local mayor to prime minister. But we all feel good having someone, or something, we have power over.

LEAVING YOUR MARK – LEGACY & POSTERITY:  You don’t have to leave any physical record of yourself behind, not even a carved tombstone, but you’re a slave to whatever inner drive compels you to do so. People tend to be obsessed (a form of mental slavery) with being noticed, even after death and even if only anonymously. There’s architecture, from the pyramids to Stonehenge to modern skyscrapers and houses. There’s graffiti (not a modern phenomenon). There’s artistic works from hieroglyphs and cave art and petroglyphs to all the various arts and crafts we have today as well as those that form part of our cultural legacy. The upshot is that in the long term, while most try, few succeed. How many of those hundreds of thousands of Ancient Greeks are remembered today, yet probably nearly all sought some sort of long-term legacy.

HOBBIES: Hobbies are any dedicated activity not normally related to day-to-day survival, usually, but not always involving collecting things. If you started to list now the various hobbies engaged in by peoples around the world, past and present, you’d probably still be jotting them all down this time next year! The critical point is that all too often the hobby controls you and not the other way around. Much of your entire existence and purpose revolves around your personal hobby obsession. It’s that transition from fan to fanatic that marks you as enslaved.  

RECREATIONAL DRUGS: Pills, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, magic mushrooms and other ‘good’ stuff, etc. Do you control them or do they control you?

CONCLUSION: Not all of the above will apply to everybody all the time, but something(s) will apply to most people at least some of the time. If any of the above is relevant, if the shoe fits, well, wear it and admit that you have to some degree or other enslaved yourself.