How Similar Would an Alien Intelligence be to Ours?

[Guitar's Cry]

Yes, I agree that we are all animals

But I don't live in nature

I live inside a man-made building

And I hope you do too

Is a squirrel living inside its squirrel-made nest living in nature?

 

[PureX]

I think they would have to be more or less as stupid as we are for us to recognize them as "intelligent".

 

[Guitar's Cry]

I think that it's very possible that while an extraterrestrial intelligence may understand some of the same physical patterns we do (mathematics, physics) this understanding may be very different to the point of being unrecognizable. For instance, their senses may be wildly different or processed differently, so showing them something numerical in visual form may be baffling or even incomprehensible. And vice-versa.

Their emotional intelligence--since how we respond chemically to our environment affects how we interact with it--may be completely different as well and is likely tied to their physical structure. Say they interact using something like tentacles that use chemical senses in order to move or get around. How they respond to something is going to be very different than us with tactile sensations.

 

[Valjean]

I believe that God created humankind in his image, as it says so in the bible

Perhaps beings from other planets are also created in his image?

In which case they would be very similar to us?

But then perhaps not

Maybe humans are God's chosen species, out of many that exist in the universe? Maybe he has a special relationship with humankind??? Maybe we are the only species made in his image???

How does this relate to intelligence? I think that if both humans and aliens were made in Gods image and to have a certain relationship with God then perhaps their capacities would be similar? But that's a big "if"

We can only speculate but I'm going to say "similar" although on average they may be either brighter or more stupid than we are!

Also, to make technology and do science you need to be dexterous and have hands - look at dolphins and whales - very intelligent but they cannot interact with their environment

So if aliens are to become advanced they'd need hands and fingers, and muscles to do hard work (e.g. mining ore to turn into metals) - so to be advanced they'd need to be dexterous too. A species of super-intelligent octopuses would never achieve as much as a species of averagely intelligent humanoids

Your speculations rest on a number of presumptions, some of which are unevidenced or appear to be based on human folklore.

 

[Heyo]

But these aren't really alien. They are, in fact, biological relatives; variations of ourselves, with the same biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, senses, &c.

Given how far removed we are from cephalopoda , they are pretty alien. Protostomia and deuterostomia split about 600 mya. Time enough to develop completely different paths to intelligence.

 

[Valjean]

Given how far removed we are from cephalopoda , they are pretty alien. Protostomia and deuterostomia split about 600 mya. Time enough to develop completely different paths to intelligence.

True -- as discrete, Carbon based, DNA based organisms go, cephalopods are, indeed, fascinatingly "alien."

 

[Heyo]

True -- as discrete, Carbon based, DNA based organisms go, cephalopods are, indeed, fascinatingly "alien."

And smart enough to open a jar. A thing it has never seen with a mechanism unknown. I think that is a clear sign of convergent evolution of intelligence.

 

[wizanda]

How similar would an alien intelligence* be to our intelligence?

My understanding is the Elohim are advanced sky beings; most humans have not realized what the books are about, as they spend more time hitting each other over who has the right understanding about what is in their books, yet none have hardly understood or even read them.

Thus the books show that humanity isn't very intelligent, and that advanced beings do exist to have created such amazing systems to educate mankind from within, so they can't fight that as well.

Personally find it sometimes like being on a prison planet for the criminally insane, where everyone thinks they're normal, as they're not smart enough to see the bars on the windows.

In my opinion.

 

[Terese]

Ok, so intelligence is such a broad subject. Genetic factors can influence them so let us see how environments can influence them in turn.

Imagine a planet with abundant food and little to no predators. With so many resources an intelligent species evolving on this planet could be very optimistic and friendly. They might not be predators like us but non-aggressive. If their intelligence is on par with modern Homo Sapiens they might not even develop any tools or even warfare. They'd have the good life They'd have no need to form a tribal society and eventually complex societal systems. So no propensity to form groups with their fellow kin, as well as no drive to propel them forward to figure out complex problems. Something else would have to make these aliens become intelligent naturally. (your definition of intelligent) They could very well be like the Eloi from H.G. Welles' The Time Machine, except no Morlocks

So to fully answer your question, an alien intelligence is shaped by its genes and environment it evolved in. An aliens' intelligence could be similar to Humans if their genes and environment were similar. (eg, Humans need to live near a water source, have many predators that can kill them, are territorial and natural hunters, and live in groups forming societies).

The brilliant Wayne Barlow's book Expedition (and docufiction Alien Planet) explores an alien planet filled with predators. One species is encountered by expedition robots, the Eosapiens which have the intelligence of early Humans.

Most curious of the Eosapiens' planet is its inability to produce fire.

"They [Eosapiens] lack any form of fire, because the temperature is relatively constant on Darwin IV, eliminating the need for heat. the atmosphere is very dense with oxygen, thus making the possibility of fire on Darwin IV impossible anyway. Most species on the planet use sound to perceive the world around them."

 

[crossfire]

If they are sapient beings such as ourselves, possessing a subjective mind whereby abstract thought can be considered, then they would also likely have the same psychological hang-ups that we do that come with having a subjective mind.

 

[Polymath257]

The most obvious difference would likely be the senses. Even if they are able to detect 'light', the range of frequencies humans can detect is very small (corresponding to about an octave). There are some reasons to expect any range for an alien species to be in *roughly* the same region of the spectrum (these frequencies give a lot of information because they interact strongly with matter), there is no reason they should have the exact same range. So being able to see infrared or ultraviolet may just be how they are (many species on Earth do this).

Also, polarization of light is an aspect that humans don't detect (unless you are wearing polarized glasses) but can carry a lot of information. So aliens could very easily detect polarization of light.

Now, that could mean their *art* is quite different than ours. They may be able to make distinctions in colors we cannot and use pigments we don't detect in the same way. In particular, we may not be able to appreciate their art nor they ours because of biological limitations.

Hearing is another thing. We have a fairly large range of frequencies that we hear, but ultrasound or infrasound are still beyond us and many species use them. Since vibrations of matter carry a lot of information, it isn't too unreasonable to think that some sort of hearing would be likely. If it is a different range, though, their music might be undetectable to us or vice versa.

Next, temperature range. This partly depends on whether the aliens are water based or perhaps ammonia based ( I am assuming chemical based life as opposed to the nuclear life depicted in 'Dragon's Egg'). Water based life is limited to a fairly small temperature, but that range can be extended some with pressure. This is one strike against silicon based life: no obvious solute for the basic chemistry to work in.

Unlike the scifi stories, I don't expect to see DNA in alien species. There are just too many other ways to produce information carrying chemicals, including other nucleic acids bases. Their proteins may well consist of a different range of amino acids. Or their biochemistry may not be dependent on proteins at all. This would likely mean neither species could eat the other and get nutritional benefit (nor could we use other creatures from their biosystem, or they ours).

I'm betting a technological species would have to have been social in its past simply to collect and transmit the information required to produce technology. Whether it remained so is another question. This would likely mean they have means to teach their children and value such teaching, at least to some extent.

The basics of physics and chemistry would be the same. We could, for example, understand their physics (after perhaps conducting the appropriate experiments) and they ours. So, the basics of their technology will be based on the same underlying rules and regulations. However, they may have very different structures, leading to very different ergonomic constraints. What is easy for an ape with opposable thumbs to manipulate may not be so easy for an octopoid or vice versa.

Anyway, those are some thoughts off the top of my head.

 

[Revoltingest]

Well, I suppose in some ways it would be necessary for it to be identical to ours. Such as, mathematics and the laws of physics will not have any significant differences. Their machines would still need energy and would not be perpetual, they would still have to overcome many of the same challenges we do, and though their solutions may and likely will vary we do know in some ways their intelligence and technology can't be any or much different from our own, while in some areas it will by necessity be different from our own in unforeseeable ways.

Alien intelligence has already been extensively imagined in sci fi, particularly
Star Trek. We see great variety.....more dog-eat-dog (nothing personal there,
@sun rise)....hive like....peaceful....smarter....dumber....symbiotic....& others.
The one universal thing is that that they all speak English.

 

[Terry Sampson]

Intrigued by something inadequately described by a previous poster, I herewith attach an article of much interest to me from which I have taken the following Abstract and Commentary.


The Case for Chimpanzee Religion, James B. Harrod,

Abstract
Do chimpanzees engage in religious behaviors? To date this question remains unanswered. I use methods from religious studies and anthropology
of religion that demonstrate an answer in the affirmative. A comprehensive review of primatology reports reveals that chimpanzees do
perform ritualized patterns of behavior in response to birth, death, consortship, and elemental natural phenomena. A structuralist analysis of
these patterns shows that chimpanzees deploy similar formulaic action schemas involving recombination of syntagmatic and paradigmatic
behaviors across all four of these life-situations. In the course of these performances, chimpanzees decontextualize and convert everyday
communicative signals to express non-ordinary emotions of wonder and awe. The patterning of chimpanzee ritual behaviors evidences all the
components of a prototypical trans-species definition of religion. These findings support hypotheses that propose religious behaviors for other
species, including hominins prior to Homo sapiens sapiens.

Conclusion
Based on a comprehensive review of primatological reports of chimpanzee behaviors and application of multiple heuristic procedures,
including a non-anthropocentric, prototypical trans-species definition of religion, it may be concluded that:

1. Chimpanzees engage in complex ritualized patterns of behavior in response to death, birth, elemental phenomena of nature (wind,water, fire, earth), and consortship.
2. These patterns display recombinatory and permutable sets of formulaic behaviors and calls, which appear to be deployed in pairs of opposed emotional valence.
3. In each ritual type, everyday communicative behaviors, such as charging displays, alarm calls, and pant-hoots, appear to be decontextualized and recontextualized in ways that modify and convert them into non-ordinary mimetic transferences expressing novel meanings and experiences of awe-dread and wonder.
4. These behaviors appear to be examples of the biological ritualization of instincts.
5. The formulaic behaviors are shared across ritual practices—death, birth, response to elemental natural phenomena, and consortship. This cross-ritual matrix of syntagmatic and paradigmatic behaviors organized by binary valences and reversals appears to be evidence for an underlying algorithmic generative competence that structures the various ritualizations.
6. Chimpanzee ritual behaviors in response to death, birth, consortship, and elemental natural phenomena correspond to and thus meet the full criteria for a prototypical trans-species definition of religion (Harrod 2011).

With this I have responded to Goodall’s initial question affirmatively: yes, there appears to be chimpanzee religion. I contend that this finding
contradicts the assertions by Howell (2003) that Goodall’s observations are far from sufficient evidence for chimpanzee religion and Bekoff
(2007a) that there is no detailed data to support or refute chimpanzee religious behavior. The results contained herein would seem to provide a
strong case for chimpanzee religion as defined.

 

[Polymath257]

And, if the species uses sound like we use light (similar to bats), they may not even be aware there is an 'outer space'. How would they detect it? This would push the hearing range upwards simply to be able to have detection of small features (need a small wavelength). And, again, such a species might well have *very* different art or music than we do.

 

[Revoltingest]

And, if the species uses sound like we use light (similar to bats), they may not even be aware there is an 'outer space'. How would they detect it? This would push the hearing range upwards simply to be able to have detection of small features (need a small wavelength). And, again, such a species might well have *very* different art or music than we do.

Looking at the great variety we have,
I'd expect much intersection in art.

 

[Vinayaka]

I've always figured that alien life is remarkably different than ours. Just as I figure it is a mistake to anthropomorphise God, I see the tendency to anthropomorphise alien life as a mistake. Unable to see outside that human box, we make huge false assumptions. The diversity of species on this planet alone, one in millions with life, is amazing. All you have to do is imagine any of the species here with intelligence, as you defined it.

I am expecting the unexpected.

 

[Eddi]

Is a squirrel living inside its squirrel-made nest living in nature?

Yes

 

[Salvador]

The extraterrestrial intelligence, who embedded the message of 037 in life's genetic code, utilizes base ten math for conveying the message of 037 to anybody else like us Earth-bound humans who'd also comprehend a base ten math system.

Reference:
The "Wow! signal" of the terrestrial genetic code shCherbak, Vladimir I.; Makukov, Maxim A. Icarus, Volume 224, Issue 1, p. 228-242. May 2013
http://earth-chronicles.ru/Publications_12/35/64182102-1-s2.0-s0019103513000791-main.pdf

 

[Thief]

How similar would an alien intelligence* be to our intelligence?

I suspect
aliens would need the ability to transform between
light
and
substance

that would include a frame of mind quite different than ours

angelic


that's right

God and heaven are ...E T....

 

[Fool]

How similar would an alien intelligence* be to our intelligence?

PLEASE NOTE: Answers along the lines of "we cannot know" etc are of course true. They are also -- as any reasonably intelligent alien would presumably know -- dull, boorish, obvious, and unimaginative. Please do not pollute this thread with such boring answers.



......
My own thoughts on this are that we would have more in common with an alien who evolved in an environment similar to ours than we would have in common with an alien who evolved in a dissimilar environment to ours.

For instance, I think anything approaching a sensible answer to the question would necessarily begin by first taking into account the life-form's external environment. For instance, did it evolve to live in social groups? Did it evolve to live as a surface creature like us? Did it evolve on a rocky world like us? e.g. we are a social species whose brain grew (relatively) huge primarily in order to deal with our living in larger and larger social groups.

Second, I think a sensible answer would take into account the natural means that the life-form has at its disposal with which to manipulate its environment. e.g. we have opposable thumbs, among other means of manipulating our environment. Our form of intelligence is most likely to some extent shaped by that fact -- by the fact we use our opposable thumbs to manipulate our environment.

And then of course, there would be other factors worth taking into account....


______________________________
*For the purposes of this thread, "intelligence" can be defined as "the effectiveness with which a life-form is able to interact with its external environment in order to realize its goals".

_____________________________
And now...

they would either be service to self, selfishness, or service to all as self, law of reciprocity, golden rule.

the form follows function.