This is why we may not be alone. An Analysis

This article is not about aliens. It's about whether intelligence is something unique to humans or whether it could be something more widespread. Obviously, aliens as discussed in this forum can not exist if intelligence is unique to humans.

Is intelligence prerequisite for fruitful life? Absolutely not, as shown by countless seemingly unintelligent life forms that exist and have existed on Earth. Then why should intelligence evolve on Earth, or anywhere else for that matter? Why not just evolve the most efficient killing machine powerful enough to overpower everything on a planet and be done with it? Look no further than dinosaurs for an answer. Though dinosaurs were built to be capable of perpetuating survival of their species for hundreds of millions of years on Earth, they were utterly hopeless to prevent demise of their gene pool from a large asteroid impact. Those familiar with evolutionary biology probably know already where I’m going with this. If intelligence is as useful for survival as mankind has shown on Earth during its short existence, and if it’s half as useful as it’s likely to be in our endeavor to adapt to the evolutionary/selection pressure as constant and devastating as extinction level asteroid impact, we can reasonably suspect intelligence to have evolved in other extraterrestrial species affected by similar selection pressure. After all, biology as precisely found on Earth is not prerequisite for evolution. Differential propagation of phenotypes based on underlying genetic variability should be all that is needed for evolution to work.

Read on for an interest take on existence and search of extraterrestrial intelligence and feel free to comment.

PINGi14
It's about whether intelligence is something unique to humans or whether it could be something more widespread.
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Intelligence varies tremendously. You could be smart at survival skills making a fire etc, or smart at calculus. You could excel at sports but suck at a seemingly basic subject like art. Perhaps you meant "other worldly intelligence" in general but nevertheless intelligence is not unique to humans. Bears hibernate to conserve energy during the winter, and a ton of other animals know neat tricks to help them survive. Perhaps stars are intelligent in the sense that they go through stages rather than staying the exact same before finally disappearing. Food for thought.

reply to post by MysteriousHusky



I agree with you. The kind of intelligence I was talking about is the type that can take a civilization interstellar. The intelligence that allows a civilization to forge its own destiny in face of constant threat of extinction level asteroid impact.

Humans are thought more intelligent than anything else that has walked on Earth for the fact we even realize such threat exists; and able to possibly prepare for eventuality of extinction level impact.

However, if we were to compare level of adaptation and evolution with existing life on Earth, recognize that we are no more evolved than a simple obligate (100% host-specific/dependent) parasite that has evolved the ability to 'jump' to another similar host when it senses danger to its current host. Currently pretty much every such parasite that exist on Earth can jump host if it becomes necessary. Obviously their rate of evolution is much faster and on a different physical scale but analogy should make sense.

We humans currently can not whatsoever come even close to jumping a host as literal obligate parasites of planets like Earth. We go down if Earth (our only known host) goes down. We are finding there are other hosts (habitable exoplanets) out there is how far we've gotten to solving this existential threat.


In turn, I am basically arguing this is the same problem encountered by extraterrestrial life that may have existed in one of billions of Earth like planets in 13 billion history of our galaxy alone. If they were intelligent, they would have solved this problem, as we are trying to do ourselves. Without any help, I'd say 99.9% of civilizations that ever existed at around our stage of development would have failed to independently come up with a solution to this problem. They even have a name for something like this called 'great filter'.

However, then there is always luck factor, as well as cheating like finding a blueprint to interstellar travel, or some altruistic alien civilization helping us out (dont count on it) but that's another post altogether.