Does Anyone Else Find It Strange? [Archive] - Two Plus Two Newer Archives

06-04-2007, 12:58 PM

So, I am a human, correct?

And it appears humans are the smartest species on the planet, given just about any definition of smartest. I would even say human civilizations are more complex than any other kind of social group any other animals have formed

And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

I doubt many would think this is just a coincidence. I don't (I'm more or less atheist fwiw). I am curious of everyone else's view here

Also, if there is some reason for us being the smartest, could we then say there is probably not a very populated (1 trillion+) race of aliens anywhere else in the Universe? Who disagrees, and why?

Could you also say that we are probably in the most complex time in human history? (either in regards to civilization or average intelligence)

kerowo

06-04-2007, 01:26 PM

I'm not sure what your questions are.

'You' exist now and your satisfaction with that is too subjective to know whether you would have been happier existing at another time. However, you don't get a choice as to when you exist so as a question there isn't much we can tell you.

Our existance as a species has no impact on the existance of other species in different parts of the universe. However, if humans had the means to visit other planets we would be living on different planets. If you accept that intelligent life is probable or even possible there is no reason to think a species would develop the ability to travel between planets and not spread out to enough of them to support very large numbers of them. This can all be intra system and not require FTL travel.

You'll have to define what you mean by complex to answer the last question. We are currently the most technologically advanced that we have ever been but I don't know what you mean by complex.

ShakeZula06

06-04-2007, 01:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
So, I am a human, correct?

And it appears humans are the smartest species on the planet, given just about any definition of smartest. I would even say human civilizations are more complex than any other kind of social group any other animals have formed

And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

I doubt many would think this is just a coincidence. I don't (I'm more or less atheist fwiw). I am curious of everyone else's view here

[/ QUOTE ]
OMG I think about this all the time when high. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Still yet to come to a concrete answer though.

06-04-2007, 01:45 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure what your questions are.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, let's start off with this one and work from there

[ QUOTE ]
Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

[/ QUOTE ]

FortunaMaximus

06-04-2007, 01:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure what your questions are.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, let's start off with this one and work from there

[ QUOTE ]
Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

With regards to a handful of millennia, yeah, it does seem like a quite significant era in history. What you have to consider that other significant eras would give you the same feeling. Being a Florentine in the Renaissance, for instance.

In the context of an eon or several dozen millennia, it might become more of a predictable trend line.

But I agree it's a pretty cool era to live in.

06-04-2007, 02:03 PM

btw for that question I am just referring to the fact we are the smartest species on Earth (I am not a rat), and I'd say most complex. If you count up the number of organisms on Earth, even if you forget single celled organisms, humans are extremely rare

It's my personal opinion the human mind is the most complex thing in the Universe. As in, the neural network that exits inside ones skull

JussiUt

06-04-2007, 03:03 PM

I guess you're lucky to have been born but I don't see how you can compare it to anything else. I mean if you "had been born" as a flower you wouldn't be you. I guess it's a one way of thinking that one considers oneself lucky to have been born as a human and not as a cat but it's....hmm...a confusing thought. We are what we are. If you "were" a flower you would be a flower and you wouldn't know of anything else. We just happened to be born at this particular time. Don't know about "luck".

PairTheBoard

06-04-2007, 03:10 PM

What seems strange to me is the thought that you could be you if you weren't you.

PairTheBoard

Philo

06-04-2007, 03:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think there's anything serendipitous about you being one of the elite. You couldn't have been anything other than a human being, so it's far from serendipitous that you are a human being and not something else.

OTOH, you are of course very fortunate to have been born at all, since that was a hugely improbable empirical outcome (presumably). But, given that you were born, it's a necessary truth that you were born a human being.

06-04-2007, 04:09 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think there's anything serendipitous about you being one of the elite. You couldn't have been anything other than a human being, so it's far from serendipitous that you are a human being and not something else.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not really feeling this

care to elaborate?

JuntMonkey

06-04-2007, 04:25 PM

I love how in July of 1980 (the summer of "Who Shot J.R.?"), I was swimming against billions of other little fishies, and I won. I [censored] won. Plus I avoided being one of the ones who winds up dried up in my dad's tube socks.

kerowo

06-04-2007, 04:26 PM

Things you wouldn't do if you weren't (human)you:
Wonder why you weren't born a human.
Wonder why you weren't born at a different time.
Wonder about other species and how many of them there are on other planets.
Wonder about other planets.

06-04-2007, 05:14 PM

now we are getting somewhere

next question
[ QUOTE ]
could we then say there is probably not a very populated (1 trillion+) race of aliens anywhere else in the Universe?

[/ QUOTE ]

Philo

06-04-2007, 05:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I don't think there's anything serendipitous about you being one of the elite. You couldn't have been anything other than a human being, so it's far from serendipitous that you are a human being and not something else.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not really feeling this

care to elaborate?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure how to elaborate since I'm not sure what you're not feeling. There are two points: (1) You are extremely fortunate to have been born at all, since that was an extremely unlikely event. So in that sense you are lucky. (2) You can't be something other than what you are, i.e., you can't be a different kind of thing than the kind of thing you are (a human being, and one particular human being, numerically distinct from all other human beings). The fact that you are identical to you is a necessary truth. You can't be a rock, for example, or a dog, or a buffalo. You can't be another person, either.

PLOlover

06-04-2007, 05:31 PM

you sound like a buddhist monk lol

Sephus

06-04-2007, 06:01 PM

[ QUOTE ]
now we are getting somewhere

next question
[ QUOTE ]
could we then say there is probably not a very populated (1 trillion+) race of aliens anywhere else in the Universe?

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

we could say that, but we can't base it on anything in this thread.

SamIAm

06-04-2007, 11:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Things you wouldn't do if you weren't (human)you:
Wonder why you weren't born a human.
Wonder why you weren't born at a different time.
Wonder about other species and how many of them there are on other planets.
Wonder about other planets.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree. It's hard to define what "you if you weren't human" means. I guess we're imagining a sort of life-lottery, where your soul is fitted into one of the trillian life-slots uniformly at random. Even so, think of it this way: whoever gets to be a human is gifted with intelligence. At some point, whoever gets the big brain will think "What's the chance I got to be human?"

06-05-2007, 12:51 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure how to elaborate since I'm not sure what you're not feeling. There are two points: (1) You are extremely fortunate to have been born at all, since that was an extremely unlikely event. So in that sense you are lucky. (2) You can't be something other than what you are, i.e., you can't be a different kind of thing than the kind of thing you are (a human being, and one particular human being, numerically distinct from all other human beings). The fact that you are identical to you is a necessary truth. You can't be a rock, for example, or a dog, or a buffalo. You can't be another person, either.

[/ QUOTE ]
okay, but could I have been another human?

06-05-2007, 12:54 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I agree. It's hard to define what "you if you weren't human" means. I guess we're imagining a sort of life-lottery, where your soul is fitted into one of the trillian life-slots uniformly at random. Even so, think of it this way: whoever gets to be a human is gifted with intelligence. At some point, whoever gets the big brain will think "What's the chance I got to be human?"

[/ QUOTE ]
This makes sense I guess

Now I would argue there isn't a race of 1 quadrillion aliens who are capable of asking the same question. If you set up any kind of a priori distribution of the possible different kind of alien races and their populations, I would say considering the fact we are not one of these aliens very much reduces the chances of an alien race with a large population

Beesnuts

06-05-2007, 01:37 AM

[ QUOTE ]
It's my personal opinion the human mind is the most complex thing in the Universe.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dont think I agree with this. Most complex thing in the Universe???? C'mon...really??

FortunaMaximus

06-05-2007, 02:08 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I agree. It's hard to define what "you if you weren't human" means. I guess we're imagining a sort of life-lottery, where your soul is fitted into one of the trillian life-slots uniformly at random. Even so, think of it this way: whoever gets to be a human is gifted with intelligence. At some point, whoever gets the big brain will think "What's the chance I got to be human?"

[/ QUOTE ]
This makes sense I guess

Now I would argue there isn't a race of 1 quadrillion aliens who are capable of asking the same question. If you set up any kind of a priori distribution of the possible different kind of alien races and their populations, I would say considering the fact we are not one of these aliens very much reduces the chances of an alien race with a large population

[/ QUOTE ]

Whoa, no.

A quadrilliion is only a 10^6 of a billion.

Given the blue-sky assumption that h. sap isn't restricted to Terra in its evolutionary expansion, this Solar System can handle many billions. Probably in the low trillions, with as close to 100% efficiency. The specific number is debatable, but it cannot be less than 100 billion.

Extrapolate that across a small inkspot on the Orion arm with thousands of stars, you easily approach quadrillions of individual humans. And that does not even begin to make a dent in the Milky Way.

There is evidence that individual species on our own planet can reach much bigger numbers than we do in smaller spaces.

The question of whether a certain size for an organism induces self-awareness and develops purpose and expands has not been resolved.

So there is not, by any means, any way you can reach a conclusive assumption that those races do not exist elsewhere.

For people unaccustomed with dealing with very large numbers, it is easy to make the conclusion that because it's too big a concept to consider, it must be infeasible.

That is simply not the case. If you recall from another thread, I mentioned that interactions between different elements, if counted, gives you the googol/googolplex number of steps you would need.

Take an example:

You stand up from your computer, walk to the sink, get a glass of water, drink it. How many individual interactions are involved all the way down to the molecular level? Think neurons, muscles, Brownian motion of air in the room, etc. How many are there in a galaxy?

Matter, the right kind, is plentiful. The motivation is there or we wouldn't keep throwing people into space to see what happens. We wouldn't be curious if we didn't at some point want to go there.

And, man, human beings love sex. They adore it. They pop babies out left and right. Will there be significant losses as history unfolds? Hell, yes. A tidal wave hits and thousands are gone.

A sun goes nova, we mourn a solar system with billions of indiviuals.

Now that's strange.

flipdeadshot22

06-05-2007, 03:11 AM

kerowo

06-05-2007, 10:04 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure how to elaborate since I'm not sure what you're not feeling. There are two points: (1) You are extremely fortunate to have been born at all, since that was an extremely unlikely event. So in that sense you are lucky. (2) You can't be something other than what you are, i.e., you can't be a different kind of thing than the kind of thing you are (a human being, and one particular human being, numerically distinct from all other human beings). The fact that you are identical to you is a necessary truth. You can't be a rock, for example, or a dog, or a buffalo. You can't be another person, either.

[/ QUOTE ]
okay, but could I have been another human?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. At least it wouldn't matter if you were or not. If you were someone else, the current you doesn't exist, so asking to be someone else is like shuffling a well shuffled deck one more time, a distinction without a difference.

06-05-2007, 11:45 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Given the blue-sky assumption that h. sap isn't restricted to Terra in its evolutionary expansion, this Solar System can handle many billions. Probably in the low trillions, with as close to 100% efficiency. The specific number is debatable, but it cannot be less than 100 billion.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know what h. sap means, but in any case, change my number to a googleplex if you like, instead of a meager quadrillion. Does your answer change?

06-05-2007, 11:46 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I dont think I agree with this. Most complex thing in the Universe???? C'mon...really??

[/ QUOTE ]
Good sir, one up me at will

06-05-2007, 11:46 AM

[ QUOTE ]
You being who you are (or us being who we are, namely human) has literally zero impact on the probability of the existence of populous alien races. (not sure if i'm reading you correctly here, sorry if i misunderstood your point)

Your premise is a tautology (since I am me), which means you can pretty much follow it up with any inference you wish.

[/ QUOTE ]
yeah, I think you were reading me correctly

My premise is a tautology orly?

06-05-2007, 11:46 AM

[ QUOTE ]
No. At least it wouldn't matter if you were or not. If you were someone else, the current you doesn't exist, so asking to be someone else is like shuffling a well shuffled deck one more time, a distinction without a difference.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't understand this

But you recognize it's a well shuffled deck? Maybe this is where I disagree, as I think being a human is like being dealt a random bridge hand at birth, except you received 13 spades; I would think it's not random if that happened to me, which I think it did

kerowo

06-05-2007, 12:14 PM

I think we are talking past each other. The probability of you being you is 1:1, because you obviously are you. The probability of you being born someone or something else, is unknowable and insignificant. You are you. You can consider yourself lucky to be alive, but again since we don't know what the options are, or if there are any other options trying to determine just how lucky you are is best saved for late night talk when the part has inevitably moved into the kitchen.

kerowo

06-05-2007, 12:18 PM

Philo

06-05-2007, 01:37 PM

[ QUOTE ]

okay, but could I have been another human?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

Philo

06-05-2007, 01:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I think we are talking past each other. The probability of you being you is 1:1, because you obviously are you. The probability of you being born someone or something else, is unknowable and insignificant.

[/ QUOTE ]

The probability of anyone being born someone else is 0.

m_the0ry

06-05-2007, 01:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
could we then say there is probably not a very populated (1 trillion+) race of aliens anywhere else in the Universe?

[/ QUOTE ]

Humans are a nascent intelligent race. We've existed for just a matter of a few hundred thousand years. Our search for life in the Milky way has been long under way and we have spotted a few possible planets... and we have covered less than one fraction of a percent of the Milky Way. One thing the human mind has inherent problems with understanding is extreme scales of magnitude. Say hello to the Abell galaxy cluster:

http://www.astrographics.com/GalleryPrints/Display/GP0074.jpg

Each dot you see there is not a star; each dot is a galaxy. Many of which dwarf the Milky Way in size and mass. Hubble estimates there are 10^11 galaxies in the universe, and an average of 10^12 stars per galaxy. If we estimate there are 100 possibly habitable planets in the Milky Way (A very conservative estimate) that leaves 10^13 habitable planets in the universe. Which means the probability of intelligent life occurring over 15 billion years on earthlike planets must make that massive number look insignificant if we are to assume we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

To answer your question more directly, humans are such a recent development it is no wonder that we have no competitors. We are much the same species we were 20,000 years ago, which is 10% the existent span of humanity, and less than .0001 percent of the time life has existed on the planet. Still, we have never manifested ourselves by means of large numbers only. Ants reproduce ad absurdum because that is how they survive. Humans would kill themselves and be incapable of raising their young if they behaved the same way. Abstract thought leads to increasingly social behavior, which allows for introspective sexual selection. The species itself picks what it wants in the next generation. This is an incredibly powerful ability but it is limited by reasonable random mutations. Dolphins are incredibly smart but they are sea creatures and have fins to manipulate their environment. They can think abstractly and selectively breed, but they could never build an empire because they have no hands and their environment would destroy them.

We're special in that we got very lucky. And when we talk about huge probability samples like the number of habitable planets, its apparent to me at least that there are many other species that will/have been just as lucky.

FortunaMaximus

06-05-2007, 02:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Given the blue-sky assumption that h. sap isn't restricted to Terra in its evolutionary expansion, this Solar System can handle many billions. Probably in the low trillions, with as close to 100% efficiency. The specific number is debatable, but it cannot be less than 100 billion.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't know what h. sap means, but in any case, change my number to a googleplex if you like, instead of a meager quadrillion. Does your answer change?

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh, definitely.

Thanks for the clarification, kerowo. Indeed, h. sapiens. Doesn't quite dodge the profanity filter around here, so yeah.

I tend to think anything approaching a googolplex would have to be spread out over a galactic supercluster, and there are relatively few of them.

With regards to individuality: That's a pretty interesting question. You wouldn't be who you are if the other interactions weren't who/what they were.

I have more or less focused on alternative expressions of time as a function, giving it dimensionality as a thought experiment. Basically, though, it doesn't matter when or where you emerge. Once you attain self-awareness, you are you.

If you emerge as something else or someone different, you are still you. Self-awareness, IMHO, is as unique an identity to the individual as is DNA.

Along the same lines, you would have to realize, perhaps, that different DNA results in different organisms. You cannot clone yourself and replicate your life to 100% certainty. It seems to be prohibited on the quantum level.

This is merely speculation though.

Edit: Just saw your post after I posted, m. Yeah.

06-05-2007, 06:53 PM

All, allow me another crack at this if you will. Suppose I changed the wording:

---------------------
So, I am a human, correct?

And it appears humans are the smartest species on the planet, given just about any definition of smartest. I would even say human civilizations are more complex than any other kind of social group any other animals have formed

And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange all other species I know of happen to be less complex, and less intelligent than our own? Is this a huge coincidence?
---------------------

perhaps this renders unimportant all this talk of the chances of me being myself? Now we are focused on the chances of other species being lesser species

PairTheBoard

06-05-2007, 07:44 PM

[ QUOTE ]
All, allow me another crack at this if you will. Suppose I changed the wording:

---------------------
So, I am a human, correct?

And it appears humans are the smartest species on the planet, given just about any definition of smartest. I would even say human civilizations are more complex than any other kind of social group any other animals have formed

And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange all other species I know of happen to be less complex, and less intelligent than our own? Is this a huge coincidence?
---------------------

perhaps this renders unimportant all this talk of the chances of me being myself? Now we are focused on the chances of other species being lesser species

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that takes the strangeness out of it. I don't find anything strange about insects being more numerous than humans. I would think it strange if they weren't.

PairTheBoard

Sephus

06-05-2007, 07:44 PM

[ QUOTE ]
And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange all other species I know of happen to be less complex, and less intelligent than our own?

[/ QUOTE ]

no.

[ QUOTE ]
Is this a huge coincidence?

[/ QUOTE ]

no.

[ QUOTE ]
Now we are focused on the chances of other species being lesser species

[/ QUOTE ]

what are the chances of one species being the "greatest"?

Metric

06-05-2007, 07:45 PM

A variation on this theme: Ever wonder why you experience life as "you" and not your own white blood cell # 1,234,567 preparing to attack an invading organism?

06-05-2007, 07:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I think that takes the strangeness out of it. I don't find anything strange about insects being more numerous than humans. I would think it strange if they weren't.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]
I am now moreso talking about the fact there are thousands (millions? billions? whatever) of other species, and none are 'greater' than us. Not so much how many organisms to a species

edit: yeah I really shoulda cut out the 'quadrillions of insects' part

06-05-2007, 08:00 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange all other species I know of happen to be less complex, and less intelligent than our own?

[/ QUOTE ]

no.

[/ QUOTE ]
I see. I would say "yes."

06-05-2007, 08:01 PM

[ QUOTE ]
A variation on this theme: Ever wonder why you experience life as "you" and not your own white blood cell # 1,234,567 preparing to attack an invading organism?

[/ QUOTE ]
interesting indeed!

Sephus

06-05-2007, 08:13 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange all other species I know of happen to be less complex, and less intelligent than our own?

[/ QUOTE ]

no.

[/ QUOTE ]
I see. I would say "yes."

[/ QUOTE ]

what are the odds that one species is the most intelligent?

06-05-2007, 08:16 PM

1 of course (well, forget about ties or whatever, I'm sure you don't care either)

Sephus

06-05-2007, 08:36 PM

so there's nothing strange about your existence, given that the earth exists.

06-05-2007, 08:44 PM

[ QUOTE ]
so there's nothing strange about your existence, given that the earth exists.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not following

The way you see it, if we pick another random species (pretending for the moment you had no knowledge of other species, only that they exist), wouldn't you think the species would be just as likely to be greater or lesser than us?

thylacine

06-05-2007, 08:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
So, I am a human, correct?

And it appears humans are the smartest species on the planet, given just about any definition of smartest. I would even say human civilizations are more complex than any other kind of social group any other animals have formed

And I am a human. There's been about 100 billion humans to ever exist. But right now there are what, quadrillions of insects? Should I feel strange I 'happen' to be one of the very rare elite? Lucky? Is this a huge coincidence?

I doubt many would think this is just a coincidence. I don't (I'm more or less atheist fwiw). I am curious of everyone else's view here

Also, if there is some reason for us being the smartest, could we then say there is probably not a very populated (1 trillion+) race of aliens anywhere else in the Universe? Who disagrees, and why?

Could you also say that we are probably in the most complex time in human history? (either in regards to civilization or average intelligence)

[/ QUOTE ]

Consider that you could have just been a cubic meter of space a billion light years away.

kerowo

06-05-2007, 08:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
so there's nothing strange about your existence, given that the earth exists.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm not following

The way you see it, if we pick another random species (pretending for the moment you had no knowledge of other species, only that they exist), wouldn't you think the species would be just as likely to be greater or lesser than us?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your question doesn't make a lot of sense. The species are different so no, one is not 'just as likely' to be ahead of another. The qualities you are using to rank 'us' as top are due to specific capabilities not shared by other species or not to the extent that humans possess them.

06-05-2007, 08:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Consider that you could have just been a cubic meter of space a billion light years away.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would argue a cubic meter of space could not possible be as complex as a human

however another organism could

LeadbellyDan

06-19-2007, 01:47 AM

No one seems to have picked up on the anthropic principle. There is only one species on Earth that is smart enough to wonder why it is the smartest species. Given that you are wondering this you must be part of this one smart species. If you weren't then you would never wonder about it.

As far as the thing about aliens goes thats an interesting idea - im not sure whether it works or not. I think the question is better rephrased like this though:

"Given that this discussion is taking place here on Earth, does that make it unlikely that there are massively large alien civilisations where this discussion goes on frequently elsewhere in the universe?"

I think this is sort of what u were getting at. If you say it in terms of personal identity your going to run into all sorts of problems.