As seen in Readit Magazine.
Extraterrestrial life has returned to the public awareness with full vigor in the last year. Two of the highest grossing and most anticipated films in the past twelve months were District 9 and Avatar, both movies that centered on human interactions with alien life forms. In both cases, humans are regarded as the superior species, and quite irrationally, a human is the savior of both alien races as well.
Regarding this renewed interest in aliens, in one recent article by the Times, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking stated, “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.” Professor Hawking takes on an alarmist tone, but he is not alone in seriously considering the possibility of alien existence.
Beyond the film and the article, recent political and theological discussions of alien life have been as far reaching as the Vatican. So, we can take seriously the idea that something may be out there. It seems that the probability for life to exist elsewhere at any other time is quite high. Some would even say alien life has already been proven to exist.
Life can survive in utterly deplorable conditions, in the hearts of volcanoes, under thousands of pounds of pressure in the sea, and yes, even in the vacuum of space, I argue that life not only exists elsewhere, but that the universe is teeming with it. Life is a part of the universe’s development, not an exceptional phenomenon.
However, complex life is a crap shoot. We’ve only found any evidence of massive multi-cellular beings on our home planet. Earth houses a rich biosphere of millions of complex life forms that have developed over many millions of years, and the vast majority of species that once existed on this planet are now extinct. Humans have undergone 15 million years of evolution as hominids, 100,000 years as homo sapiens, 10,000 years of cultural civilization, and 200 years of technological development and globalization. In comparison, our Earth has been around for 4.54 billion years. Our universe is speculated to be around 13.75 billion years old.
We are so very young. And we are so very naive.
Intelligent life is somewhat ill-defined. As cleverly stated, if you find intelligent life once, it’s a miracle; twice, and it’s a statistic. What do we mean when we say “intelligent life”? If we mean self-conscious beings, then we have already identified multiple species on this planet that show increasing evidence of being self aware. If we whittle the definition further to mean self-conscious beings that can utilize tools and manipulate the environment, we bring the list down even further. Yet, we still have not undeniably ascertained that humans are the only species to clear this definition. Let’s make it abundantly clear that we have broadly categorized only human beings, and intelligent life means self-conscious beings that can make use of the environment and make sense of the environment. That is, we know why things work, not just how. Now we are fairly sure, within a negligible margin of error, that we are a miracle. We’ll use this last definition for the framework of this discussion.
I won’t argue the semantics of this definition, nor will I suggest that the last definition is “proper” or “correct”. In fact, I aim to disprove this definition as inherently anthropomorphic.
Stephen Hawking postulates that life does not necessarily need to form on planets with stable atmospheres. Some astrobiologists have theorized that life forms could be produced or survive in stars, in gas giants like Jupiter, meteors and asteroids, or under ice in moons like Europa. For the most part, our speculations on the development of life on Earth and extraterrestrial life are based off of evidence and data that are highly selective, not by some ulterior motive to mislead but by the inherent design of our experiments. (1) With each passing year, new results and theories change the possibilities and usually broadens the number of ways in which life can appear and survive.
This same principle applies to speculating on what intelligent extraterrestrials would be like, physically or cognitively. If the definition of intelligence must become more refined as life evolves, we can’t be sure that we can be able to converse with any other self-aware being. For all we know, discussion with a space-faring alien race could be like trying to carry on a discussion with dolphins. Unfortunately for us, we could be no different to aliens than microbes are to us. This is exactly why we can’t speculate with absolute assurance as to whether or not we should communicate with intelligent aliens. We don’t know what they could want with us, and we can’t be certain that they would want anything from us. (2)
In order to illustrate the vast differences between possible space-faring civilizations, it helps to understand our current theory of the technological development for intelligent life forms. The simplest method is to analyze civilizations by the Kardashev scale. Explained simply, there may be three types of civilizations: Type I, II, and III. Type I civilizations have the ability to harness the energy available on a single planet. Type II civilizations have the ability to harness the energy available on a single star. For example, we are almost a type I civilization, and if we colonized the solar system and collected the energy from the sun and each of the planets, we would be type II. Likewise, Type III civilizations can harness the energy from an entire galaxy. Civilizations of the last type would see us as no different than we see ants on the highway.
Carl Sagan posits one possible scenario that when any two alien civilizations meet, it is highly probable that one civilization will have a huge technological advantage to the other, so much that the other species would have zero chance at survival in combat, such as a type I to a type II or otherwise similarly analogous. Since it would be fruitless for the technologically lesser species to wage war, they likely will not. As for the technologically superior species, if they are so advanced that they don’t need to steal resources from the lesser, it may instead welcome alliance in lieu of destruction. Yet, this implies that neither species is inherently deleterious or with otherwise harmful intent that would make war inevitable.
For arguments like Dr. Hawking makes, that we ought to fear that aliens could be a threat to our existence for our resources (say, aliens wipe us out to mine our planet) or for habitation, we make the assumptions that the aliens need our resources, that they are malevolent to other species, and that they are a type I or type II civilization. They are not too far removed from where we are now, but still many thousands of years ahead of technological development ahead of us. This sort of conflict is more possible with a Type I or II civilization, since they would be more likely to deal with resources near our scale. A type III civilization could either ignore us, exterminate us cleanly and systematically, or utilize our resources without our knowledge.
For all the concessions made, we assume that these species are space faring, that they developed to utilize resources like we do, and that they may argue logically as we do. It is possible that, for any space faring civilization, they may be content with mining asteroids or other uninhabitable resources, leaving alone other species as soon as they begin to leave their home planet and colonize their galaxy.
Yet, even with these thoughts in mind, we still consider too many anthropological arguments. We must consider the nature of the other species. How do they perceive the world? Do they see the visible spectrum as we do, are they limited to blues and greens, or can they see ultraviolet and infrared? Could we write messages to them or communicate by sign language? Are they perceptive to sound waves, could we even learn to speak to them? Are they bipeds like us? Do they have opposable thumbs, tentacles, or some other means of manipulating their world with tools? Do they have religion? Are they naturally sadistic or benevolent? Is their logic, mathematical, and physical understanding agreeable to our own, with necessary concessions? Do they have a currency, or an economy, or history, or literature? And lastly, how would we know these things once we find them?
Self awareness is but one element of intelligence. Human beings have tried for thousands of years to reach heightened states of awareness, most notably through meditation or drugs. In fact, some astronauts reportedly experience what is known as the Overview Effect. Essentially, several astronauts have reported feeling a euphoric, enlightened state that is coupled with an awareness that all things are connected. Is it not uncanny that simply leaving our home planet brings an abnormally high percentage of astronauts a sense of spiritual enlightenment?
We humans are young, and we are naive. We make assertions based on what little we think we know. Yet, we don’t appreciate how little time 200 years of technological development is. We don’t see how much we’ve progressed from xenophobic hatred of other races to globalization that will only flourish if we start to put aside our differences. And for those who think it is naive to presume that, what other time in history have we so fiercely defended every race as equal, and we continue to fight for the equality of each person? Humans have progressed. As long as we survive, we will continue to socially and psychologically evolve.
What little inferences we can make of our own development and history are ill suited to prepare us for the inevitable meeting with an intelligent being outside of our nature. Whatever intelligence means to them, however inferior we may be when this meeting occurs, the best we can do is to progress. It is our nature as humans, and it may be the nature of other species as natural in this universe. We are not sure yet, for we don’t know. We can only speculate.
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The majority of these ideas and examples were compiled from previous knowledge and sources, and easily referenced back in this thought provoking thread on Reddit.
(1) Some examples include criticisms of how SETI conducts their searches for alien life, or how we searched for alien life on Mars 30 years ago.
(2) If we truly wish to speculate, life may differ greatly from star system to system, or galaxy to galaxy. It is possible that each galaxy has its own flavor of life, an inevitable result from the concentration and constituents of molecules in the galaxy. Some galaxy may favor a more gaseous life form, what would appear to be a sentient cloud, a being able to survive in space. I won’t delve deeply into these thoughts, for these are the realm of science fiction and speculation, and we only have so much direct evidence to glean the possibilities of life.
