| Personal background |
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| 2nd Year Phd Student at Manchester University. Maths. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I reckon life is pretty much inevitable on `earth-like' planets. Certain results from the studies of complex systems make this quite convincing (for me at least).
`Intelligence' is a word used so frequently in our parlence, to capture so many different concepts, that it has been rendered almost vacuous. It requires much more definition than seems necessary for such an innocent intuition.
Pedantics aside, I guess we can only search for other technologically capable beings, a feature which might presume intelligence. It would certainly be easier to recognise the former. Their existence, however, I think is unlikely. A brain capable of technology requires a very particular sort of intelligence, an intelligence that is the result of particular selection pressures, to which it is just one of many solutions. If life exists elsewhere, I reckon there'll be very few instances with ancestors subject to the particular pressures of evolution AND with which those same ancestors struck upon responses leading them to sufficient technology. Take the known species on this planet as one (admittedly unrepresentative) reference class, many of which may be regarded as intelligent, most of which have no need for interplanetary communication.
Why bother looking then? |
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