Jul 29 2011
Is Intelligence Inevitable?
I received the following question in my inbox this morning, and thought it would be a great topic for my blog today:
The dinosaurs were wiped out, along with much of the species of the Earth at some point. The few species that managed to survive eventually evolved and branched until something made it all the way to the modern human.
My question is – if humans were wiped off of the earth, would whatever primitive animal or insect that survives after our demise have no other choice than to evolve into something more intelligent than we are today? Or, is our human intellect the result of a very specific evolutionary path.
It makes sense to me that acquiring intelligence, at some point in the long, long process of evolution, would be one of the very few ways to get a leg up on your competition. The clever roaches live, ensure survival, pass along those smart genes. The next generation has an even higher bar, so only the most clever of those roaches survives, and so on.
Assume the only surviving species is a left undisturbed by the universe, and is coerced by its environment to compete and adapt until the end of time. Would intelligence be unavoidable?
This is a great question. Is the evolution of intelligence inevitable given the clear survival advantages of being smarter. This question is relevant to the Drake equation – on planets with life, how often will a technological intelligence arise?
From one perspective, we have one data point on this- Earth. We do not yet have any data on life on other worlds. Once we send our machines around exploring the galaxy (or however we do it) we may find countless worlds inhabited by the equivalent of bacteria or algae, but little multi-cellular life. Or we may find most planets with life occupied by one or more technological civilizations. Both extremes are compatible with the tiny amount of data we have (just Earth).
Perhaps, however, we can make some reasonable inferences from the history of life on Earth. Life arose very quickly after conditions on Earth allowed for it – a few hundred million years after the surface cooled. This suggest that life will tend to arise wherever conditions allow. However, physicists recently argued that this fact is still compatible with life being arbitrarily rare. True – but I think it does make it more likely that life is common.
This is the overarching question, however. How much can we infer from the history of life on Earth? Is Earth typical, or quirky? I will proceed based upon the reasonable assumption (but recognizing that it’s an assumption) that Earth is statistically typical, and does not represent a rare quirky example of how life develops and evolves.
Based on that assumption, life would seem to be common in the universe. However, it took over 3 billion years for life to develop multi-cellular forms. Multi-cellular life is about 550 million years old. Perhaps it will survive for another 500 million to 1 billion years. Therefore, if Earth is typical, life-bearing planets will have simple life for most of their history, and multi-cellular life for the final third or so. Perhaps many planets will not have stable enough conditions for life for long enough to develop complex multi-cellular life.
But now we are getting close to the e-mailer’s question – on worlds with multi-cellular life, how inevitable is intelligence, and as a subset of intelligence, how likely is a technological civilization? Following the logic above – not very.
Most of the evolutionary lineages on earth have not led to complex central nervous systems. All the invertebrates – insects, worms, jellies, sea stars, mollusks – have found adaptive strategies for survival that have not placed them on a course to technological intelligence. Given another billion years will the descendants of octupi evolve greater intelligence? Perhaps.
If we look at the first creatures to appear in the Cambrian explosion, basic body plans developed by chance. Only one of the 30 plus basic body plans (phyla) led to vertebrates and eventually developed complex central nervous systems. Perhaps on many worlds even with multi-cellular life there are no phyla that really have the potential to develop a technological intelligence.
Even among vertebrates, only in one tiny branch of one Family within one Order did technological intelligence arise. If this is any indication, then we can infer that the development of such intelligence is far from inevitable, but is extremely rare.
Whales and dolphins are fairly intelligent, but living in the ocean makes it unlikely they will develop advanced technology. This indicates that there are many different types of intelligence, and not all of them lead inevitably to technology.
A separate but related question, however, which the e-mailer mentions – is there a general tendency to evolve greater intelligence? Is intelligence a chance epiphenomenon, or can we expect a general trend toward greater intelligence over time? I think both views have merit. As I stated above, many multi-cellular lines do not seem to demonstrate a tendency for greater intelligence over time.
However, in those lines that have the basic anatomy and physiology (brains) that provide the potential for intelligence, there does appear to be a general trend over time for greater intelligence, at least in some of the lineages. I am not sure if the ungulates of today are smarter than the ungulates of 10 million years ago, but they may be.
Evolution does not follow a linear path toward greater intelligence (or any other quality). Adaptive radiation leads in many directions, and very few involve a significant increase in intelligence, and only some of those have the potential to lead to technology. The history of life on Earth would suggest that, while life itself may be common, complex life is less so, and technological intelligence is quite rare.
But that is where we run into the limits of our data – the fact that we have one data point makes it impossible to come to any firm conclusions. Technological intelligence may be rare in terms of lineages on Earth, but perhaps many planets with multicellular life, given that evolution will explore many body plans and adaptive strategies, will have one or more lineages that head in that direction.
I certainly would love to know the answer to these many questions. We are not going to figure it out on our own anytime soon, however. The best we can hope to do with our own exploration in my lifetime is to explore the solar system for life, such as in the oceans beneath the surface of Europa. We are nowhere close to exploring other stellar systems, however. Our only real hope there is SETI, or if another civilization contacts us directly.
42 Responses to “Is Intelligence Inevitable?”
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Regarding evolving intelligence – you just gotta be smart enough to hump.
A lot of the things intelligence helps with are ancillary quality-of-life issues, or even length-of-life issues, but as long as you live long enough to reproduce, there’s not a huge advantage to being smarter.
@amysrevenge –
I think there is an advantage to being smarter – in that you are more likely to develop methods to ensure your offspring live long enough to reproduce.
But its also interesting that we have such a long childhood. I wonder if long childhood and intelligence is correlated. I need to be smart to make sure I ensure the survival of myself and offspring. But did the length of the childhood push intelligence to its limit, or did the development of intelligence require a longer childhood? Or neither?
“Even among vertebrates, only one tiny branch of one Family within one Order did technological intelligence arise”
I wonder whether this is a valid statement. It certainly makes sense intuitively, but I’m drawn to the question, “What if we are only the first?”
Imagine a world with many intelligent life forms that evolved independently. They obviously would not ask themselves question, “Is intelligence unique to us?” or even “Is intelligence rare?” I believe they’d come to the conclusion that intelligence is likely to evolve wherever there is life. The first of those life forms, however, would probably be in the same boat us as — asking themselves whether their intelligence is a unique or extremely rare occurrence.
So is it valid to use the apparent uniqueness of an event to infer that it is a rare event, or is that a fallacy? I don’t know, myself.
That was a fun read, thanks. I’d like to chew the fat on a whole slew of questions. I’ll restrain myself though, and just extract one small thing to flesh out.
You mentioned that whales and dolphins would be unlikely to develop technology, since they are pretty much locked into the whole water thing. But, at some point, an ancestor of ours made it successfully from water to land. Shoot, whales and dolphins already breathe air – all they need now is a pair of legs. That’s gotta be the easy, compared to lungs.
This is a thought experiment, so bear with me. Consider an infinite timeline in a water environment that is forever very slowly edging upwards in difficulty. The dolphins are forced to move to riskier areas seeking new or scarce food sources, thinning of the gene pool occurs due to predators or weakness, and only the strong and clever are able to pass along their genes.
At some point, over billions of years and billions of generations, the dolphins would get close to rocks, either to feed or escape predation. Then closer, then closer, then they would evolve the ability wiggle up a little more, then onto the sand to get the crabs on the beach, and so on. Eventually, they’ll be swinging in trees.
This scenario is of course taking a lot of unfair swings to make my scenario work, but it’s not impossible. It may have even happened. Something made it from water to land.
I didn’t get into this – but this is the R-selected vs K-selected variable. Some species produce lots of offspring so that some will survive. Others produce very few offspring but then invest massively in them.
Intelligence seems more compatible with having few offspring with large investment. But this is not the only way to go.
Another way to look at this is that having a big brain has many downsides in terms of investment in energy and resources, perhaps prolonging childhood,etc. The investment needs to be worth it. So even if intelligence is always an advantage, it may not be enough of advantage in many lineages to be worth the cost.
Brain – you are correct, and that is why we are ultimately limited by the fact that we only have Earth as an example. That is the essence of the debate with using Earth to infer what is typical. We may just be the first of many. There is another 500 million years at least for other species to evolve technology.
Jackson – it is certainly not out of the question the dolphins or whales could adapt back to land and eventually develop technological intelligence. My point, rather, is that they have increased their intelligence without moving in the direction of technology. So not all intelligence is necessarily compatible with technology. And this is not just about living in water.
In other words – we should not equate “intelligence” with human intelligence, or even primate intelligence.
Fair enough.
Great post, keep em’ coming.
Steve said: In other words – we should not equate “intelligence” with human intelligence, or even primate intelligence.
Well, human intelligence seems a reasonable starting point, before we start extending the category to other species or our artifacts (let alone beyond the domains of biology and AI, as some of your more crackpot commentators are wont to do).
Yeah. Queueing degeneration of thread into whether bacteria are intelligent in three, two, …
I think given enough time, any stable life system would evolve technological intelligence. But, there will always be an exception to the rule, a place where multicellularity never evolves, or an analogous structure to the brain doesn’t evolve, etc.
There is a short story I just read about an alien race that evolved technological intelligence, but weren’t necessarily what we could call intelligent, or self aware. Of course it was written by a biologist to see if he could try to redefine intelligence. Good read though, I’ll have to find it again after this post.
Another issue with developing intelligence is, the issue of incremental steps. Every generation has to have an advantage from a bigger brain, else evolution can’t work. There’s a theory that the large brains of mammals developed during the reign of the dinosaurs, as the hardware for using a very good nose to hunt in the dark.
A bigger nose is more likely to be an advantage in every generation. And once the dinosaurs where gone, and mammals could hunt in daylight, the brain got rewired for thinking ahead.
My pet theory is that the rise and sudden decent of dinosaur predators is one of the key unlikely events that makes intelligent rare in the universe.
Another matter that favors mammals in the brains arms race is the fact that we have warm blood. That means that our bodies need huge amounts of energy just to function, so a large brain is not so much of a percental increase. That makes the evolutionary pathway towards a large brain less steep.
It is a good thought, but I think the US Congress is proving as time goes on, that this isn’t the case.
I’m less sold on the argument that we only have one data point so can’t extrapolate. If we were talking about flight we wouldn’t say we had one data point, we would point to the many times flight evolved independently. The same thing with sight and many other features. We have a lot of data, what we don’t have are many other examples of intelligence.
If a trait has only appeared once, I think it does tell us something. At the very least it should be saying that these things aren’t inevitable.
There’s also the case of our cousins the Australopithecus. They had larger brains yet they went extinct. Even our own line spent a long time with populations as low as 10k and averaged only 20k. Even with our intelligence, homo sapiens had an uncertain existence through much of our history, implying the advantages of intelligence must be slight compared to the cost, at least until some critical discoveries were made (eg: fire, stone weapons).
Which ties in with SARA’s comment – the question isn’t really if there are advantages to intelligence, it is whether the advantages outweigh the costs. The brain is a very expensive organ to maintain which explains why brains are as big as necessary but no larger. That may also explain why so few animals develop outsized brains and why all of our big-brained cousins are extinct.
Jumping ahead to assumption of animal-like life forms with a central nervous system:
One idea that I wonder about: Would a lack of strong natural weaponry be a prerequisite for tool use? I suspect a predator would have relatively little incentive to make weapons if it had built-in ones and the strength to use them.
Of course, a counter-example that comes to mind are non-weapon tools. A smart predator who gets an extra notch worth of intelligence might see benefit to making a bag or sling for carrying extra bits of food, for example.
I think you missed the boat on this one. First, for the rest of us, you should have pointed out that genes aren’t “smart” or “stupid”. Roaches aren’t “clever”. You can’t really even use the category “intelligence” until you get to central nervous systems – brains – however you define it.
On Earth that is. And that’s the point that the questioner will think you missed the boat on. Earth isn’t a data point in his question, it is the boundary condition.
I think you correctly highlight that intelligence isn’t a teleological end of evolution, but skip discussing why or why not human-like or greater intelligence would be likely to develop from life on Earth today that survives the human extinction. Factors that would be topics for answering the question: the biological cost of bigger (and more complex?) brains; social mammals and their neo-cortex size; bird intelligence as an example of convergent evolution; and last but probably first in importance, language.
“Every generation has to have an advantage from a bigger brain, else evolution can’t work.”
That statment taken literally is not true. Unless you mean “generation” in a different sense than I do. This strikes me as an error of thinking that evolution as progressive and optimizing process. There can be periods in which a trait is not advantageous (meaning net benefit), but as circumstances change become advantageous again. Actually this is likely to be the norm, and not the exception. As someone implied above, only relatively recently did humans flourish. There were likely times throughout our history that our intelligence (due to everything that went along with it) were a survival disadvantage, but this period did not last long enough for it to be detrimental to the trait and our survival as a species.
“This strikes me as an error of thinking that evolution as progressive and optimizing process”
I don’t think it’s completely wrong to think of evolution as an optimizing process, though evolution can obviously have effects that are suboptimal.
Given that, I think it’s more correct to think of evolution as the candidate producer of an optimization function L(x), where L(x) is survivability in a given environment.
What you’re getting at, I think, is that L(x) keeps changing on us!
If you play the computer game, “Spore,” you’ll find that evolution toward intelligence, technology, and civilization is inevitable. Unless of course you design a body plan that can’t get past the 3rd level.
“Every generation has to have an advantage from a bigger brain, else evolution can’t work.” — Maybe the thought isn’t conveyed to written words properly, but it reads as though you might be committing Lamarck’s error.
Tyro,
You’ve just had one of my seniors’ moments (and I want it back immediately) when you wrote that Australopithecus had a larger brain. You meant of course Neanderthalis (I won’t try to get the species/genus terminology right).
“What you’re getting at, I think, is that L(x) keeps changing on us!”
Its not just that the environment changes (although that is important), but evolution is limited by what is possible given the genetic/biological/developmental limitations of an organism at a given time. If evolution where an optimization process, intelligent design proponents would ‘appear’ to have a better case. An often referenced example is the inferior laryngeal nerve of the giraffe. Instead of taking a more direct path (“optimized”), it travels from near the base of the brain all the way down the neck of the giraffe (or other mammal), wraps around the aorta and back up the larynx. An optimized process would likely avoid such a long path (the nerve would take a more direct route), but there were historical developmental constraints that made this design the one we see today.
Great food for thought, Steve. I’m inclined to think that if something like a nervous system with a brain there would be an evolutionary push toward increasing CNS complexity. This would not guarantee that intelligence would evolve but I’m inclined to believe that, depending on the environment, reaching this step would certainly increase the odds quite a bit (just a hunch, no data to support this).
My former research advisor, Rodolfo Llinas, believes that the purpose of a brain is to predict–to forecast what is likely to occur. Depending on the evolutionary milieu, organisms that are better able to predict events in their environment and react in a coordinated (centralized) fashion would have an advantage over those that could not.
Of course this is also predicated on the assumption that the substrate upon which the CNS was built would lend itself to subsequent augmentation through random variation.
I guess the bottom line for me is that there may be a critical neural density and organization after which the development of intelligence is far more likely. Maybe I’d like to think so just because I’m fascinated by the idea that we’re not alone. Can we estimate the intelligence of extinct species or are we limited to the extant alone? I would be interested if evolution ever led to a decrease in intelligence over time along any given evolutionary line (Congress excepted).
There is a related hypothesis that is fairly straightforward to test: have brain sizes and intelligence increased generally in mammals, or in specific groups of mammals over a given time period? I remember reading a book by Gould that addressed this question (as well as the related issues of the power law relationship between brain size and body size). Certainly the average brain size and intelligence of mammals has increased greatly since divergence from reptiles. I also recall reading that the brain sizes and intelligence of several large predatory mammals have generally increased over the last several million years, as part of an arms race involving prey and other predators.
I’d like to apologize in advance if I have mangled Gould’s discussion (I don’t have the book currently), and of course this doesn’t address the larger issue of whether a technological civilization is inevitable. I also realize that there is a lot of bad information in this area related to discredited old ideas about “evolutionary progression”, so one needs to tread carefully.
More than just intelligence, when we talk about body-plans the main thing I think of is “would it eventually lead to something capable of creating a technological civilization?” And that entails a physical ability to manipulate our environment enough. Can they grab things, swing things, to they have the manual dexterity for fine detail work etc.
Probably the biggest initial hurdle I can think of is being able to smelt and shape metal. There dolphins lose out two-fold, watery environment seems less friendly to metallurgy, and those flippers don’t let them hold or swing anything. Perhaps they could with their beaks, but could they really achieve the necessary force required?
Octopi that made it onto land might work though, but anyone know how hard they can strike? Even then, could they be capable of making a hard hammer-like device for themselves? Or does that require something like our fingers?
Along with this we might need to think about if the body-plan allows it to brace itself sufficiently to impart energy with such a blow. Can it…dig in it’s heels, so to speak?
There could be other physical necessities, but this post is long enough. What can you think of?
@Daws, you’re quite right, but the issue goes further than that:
Dolphins may be able to wield hammers with their beaks if they crawled on land and ignited dried seaweed to heat up iron, but what smooth path would get them there?
Dolphins couldn’t develop a brain of the size one would need to preform such a complex action, if there wasn’t a smooth evolutionary path in that direction.
With Humans I would guess that the smooth path consisted of three things:
1. Methods for storage of food
2. Ever more sophisticated tools
3. (last but not least) Poetry, music, jokes, etc. as a form of sexual selection
I took a class called “Life in the Universe” which was basically a class in how to best estimate the variables of the Drake equation given what we know about so far.
One of the things the professor explained is that all else being equal, the ability to store and manipulate more information is more adaptive than the ability to store and manipulate less. He described this trend as why DNA evolved from the most basic self-replicating chains to the more complicated genomes. However, every additional piece of information comes at a trade-off.
As we reach the apex point for how much information can be stored in genes, we started developing the ability to store information between cells, thus brains. Then the trend became to get larger brains where possible. Once you’ve reached the practical limit there, the trend should be to develop a means of storing and manipulating data between organisms, i.e. language. Once you’ve got that, technology is bound to occur.
On Earth, the first species with communication rapidly outpaced its competitors, effectively limiting them to other niches. That makes sense theoretically too, so it seems most likely to me that planets stable enough to support a varied ecosystem will likely develop exactly one intelligent, technological species eventually.
The apparent infrequency of earth-moon planetary systems in the universe may be the factor that tips the balance in favour of the Rare Earth hypothesis. The moon provides a seemingly crucial stabilizing effect but the conditions necessary to its formation are extremely unlikely and fortuitous.
http://www.space.com/12464-earth-moon-unique-solar-system-universe.html
I think there is a big problem being overlooked here.
We know that life will flow into whichever niche proves viable.
I don’t see why “technological intelligence” wouldn’t be a niche that is easily monopolized by a single species (currently us), thus nipping any independent arrivals in the bud early on, leaving no evidence for us to even speculate on what might have been.
Other than humans, we have few examples of even rudimentary technological ability, except (mostly) some of our evolutionary cousins.
I think it’s quite reasonable to assume that our entire evolutionary branch simply suffocated any later, independent ventures into a similar niche due to a head start and better competitiveness – life simply found better contemporary odds with primary qualities other than ours.
We could push the evolution of another creature. Then we wouldn’t be alone in the universe. Dogs perhaps.
I would say society is the big thing. With the intelligence and shape of the individual being secondary. All the “intelligent” animals are usually societal.
@bachfiend – thanks for the correction. Not the first time that I’ve swapped two names, won’t be the last. But I do appreciate being caught & fixed.
@Riki Tiki Tavi
First, was it really a smooth path? Humans and our cousins did expand but there were several extinctions (and, for humans, near extinctions) and stable periods. Taking fire and cooking as an example – it would have enabled dramatically different lifestyles and food since it would give us a lot more calories a lot faster than previously and so would disrupt previous selection pressures. However, cooking requires more intelligence than other apes have so what got us to that point?
Second, all these vague areas would benefit a lot of other animals yet they haven’t gone down this path. That says that the advantages really aren’t that great (at least relative to the cost), or that a larger intelligence is necessary to start gaining some of these perks.
If I was to bet, I’d put money down on a multi-staged process sort of like flight in insects, where slightly larger brains arose through one process and the results were then co-opted by another.
eiskrystal – but not monkeys or sharks – those two movies annoyed the crap out of me.
I’m not sure I agree with the entire thesis that intelligence has been selected for in the human line. Certainly cleverness has but it seems to be accompanied insanity and by a pecular type of blindness (can I mention intelligent design here???) Perhaps our inability to understand certain things might indicate that intelligence is an artifact rather than a target. Maybe there just an equivalent downside to the upside.
“On Earth, the first species with communication rapidly outpaced its competitors, effectively limiting them to other niches. That makes sense theoretically too, so it seems most likely to me that planets stable enough to support a varied ecosystem will likely develop exactly one intelligent, technological species eventually.”
I don’t know about that, niches are primarily dietary and geographical. I suspect you might be using the term wrong, thinking a niche consists of abilities, wherein similarly the development of say flight by birds would keep out the possibility of all other flying creatures? But of course we have bats who fly just fine, however they tend to inhabit very different ecological niches (ie different diets and areas, like caves).
@ Riki My only qualm with #1 is that food issues only affect population size not necessarily intelligence. In fact shortages of food might increase demand for smarts to make up for them. Storing food itself seems to be a sort of technology.
As one concession though, higher populations could increase the rate of development of technology, more individuals = more chances one will get a new idea leading to new technology.
If the human race died as a result of atomic warfare, other life forms would die alongside it. If the human race dies as a result of AIDS, I would assume some negative impact on other forms of life.
I guess I would place a bet on the smartest chimpanzees or gorillas to inherit the wind.
One thing to keep in mind about brain size however, is that it can be made up for with greater complexity ie the wrinkly-ness of brains which serves to increase surface area, and may be more a determinant of intelligence than volume. But I’m sure Steven could clarify this with more certainty …
@ Daws Good point regarding niches.
Ah, I see banyan mentioned my point a couple of posts above mine, using the term niche as well! Awesome.
@Daws, I think you’re discounting the massive power of intelligence by simply comparing it to winged creatures evolving separately. Also, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be considered a niche.
I think intelligence combined with social cooperation was a massive revolution in biological terms, a singularity of sorts, which took the world by storm. Homo sapiens (and our ancestors) can be found on all continents, in all climates – effectively drowning out any other sign of intelligence as soon as it emerges, directly or indirectly.
Now, there’s not a creature we consider even a hint of a threat to mankind. Camouflage, size, speed, fangs or claws don’t phase us anymore. The only possibility of humans as a species being threatened by an animal, would be if one was discovered with sufficient intelligence.
A hawk can predate voles by flying. Does that mean the vole evolution will favor development of wings to out-fly the hawk? No, it will favor other mechanisms, like burrowing, to negate the massive advantage the hawk has in flying.
@Nikola, well it’s just that niche in environmental science and biology always refers to diet and geography as far as I know, ability is secondary at best. I’m just being a stickler on terms here.
I do get what you’re saying though, that perhaps once one intelligent species on the level of humans pops up, perhaps it would beat down any others that attempted to rise. Maybe as a sort of social interaction rather than ecological interaction. But I just don’t think it would necessarily happen. If we weren’t in competition with another intelligent species, if we lived in very different areas or conditions, if we ate entirely different things, we could conceivably go on our separate ways.
However, the concession I will make is that in the development of technology we begin to enter into competition not for food but for resources, much the same way nations go to war rarely for food but often for resources. But it is a big world out there and two technological species could have co-evolved without even meeting for awhile. Especially on different continents. But even then, upon meeting, trade is always an option vs. war.
It’s basically the same as we’d imagine first contact with extraterrestrials. We don’t automatically think we’d go to war with them just because our technologies share resource needs.
I agree. It’s perfectly possible if we assume geographic isolation.
We don’t? I’m not so sure. There’s also the general xenophobia of such an encounter. Our entire recent developmental history has been that of subjugation. Even within our species, it’s been subdue or be subdued.
I don’t see why an alien encounter would be different, at least from our perspective.
I think there are several relatively unappreciated details about how human intelligence becomes a survival factor that can be positively selected for.
First, “intelligence” is not one thing. The idea that there is a specific type of computational ability that can be called “intelligence” and more of that computational ability is what “intelligent” individuals exhibit is simply wrong. There are different cognitive styles that can lead to correct reasoning, and different reasoning styles may be more appropriate to different problems. The ability that is important in “intelligence” is the ability to take new information and incorporate it into your already existing schema so make a new schema that contains that new information and remains consistent and compatible with reality.
I see intelligence as part of the cognitive path that leads from good data to an accurate model of reality, but that final understanding of reality is path-independent. If is like the saying in Buddhism, “there are many paths up the mountain, but there is only one mountain.”
In the context of the evolution of social beings, communication also requires “intelligence”, but there the goal is not to reach accurate models of reality, but rather to convey accurate representations of mental concepts. The goal is accurate communication. This is much more difficult than constructing models about reality, because the substrate that must be used is another person’s brain. In the Buddhism analogy, there isn’t just one mountain, every mountain is different and there is no map.
A brain can only think a thought if there is neural hardware that can instantiate that thought. If a particular brain lacks the neuroanatomy to instantiate a mental concept, that mental concept cannot be thought about. It is extremely difficult to appreciate mental concepts that you are incapable of thinking about.
A well known example is how Galileo incorporated the data he got from astronomical observations into his schema compared to how the religious authorities incorporated the same data. Galileo changed his geocentric world view into a heliocentric world view. The religious authorities hypothesized that the Devil had generated illusions that tricked Galileo. The religious authorities were not going to allow themselves to have such an open mind that the Devil could gain access to it. This mindset is typical for those in power; the mindset that nothing that threatens the power of those in power can be tolerated.
The environment that Galileo was in, was not one where intelligence regarding astronomical observations had survival and/or reproductive value. The environment favored the political power of the religious authorities, not intelligence. In many revolutions, one of the first steps is to kill the intelligentsia so there are no potential rivals to those running the revolution.
In thinking about the evolution of intelligence and how much of a survival factor it is, I am reminded of a quote about what it takes to be a good football coach.
“Being in politics is like coaching football. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important.” —Eugene J McCarthy on Football
In the world of football, the intelligentsia of football don’t appreciate the intelligentsia of quantum mechanics. Just as the intelligentsia of theology didn’t appreciate the intelligentsia of astronomy. The group that allows one style of intelligence to dominate others other than through facts and logic will be a group that ends up lacking any new intelligent developments. This is why top-down power structures are inherently unstable and ultimately will fail unless they stifle all competing ways of thinking. Then they will fail through stagnation.
The US is in such a moment right now, with the Tea Partiers, global warming denialsism, CAM, New Age nonsense and theocratic power grabs. Time will tell if we skeptics can successfully beat back the darkness they want to impose on all of us.
My first instinct is to say yes for some of the reasons that have been cited above – the huge selection advantage plus the “drunken walk” tendency toward greater complexity would seem to suggest inevitability given sufficient iterations.
But aren’t there infinite strategies requiring complexity that could confer great advantage? What makes technological intelligence any more likely than any other strategy, let alone inevitable?
@Nikola Well maybe I’m just optimistic, it’s just that I would hope by now war wouldn’t be our first knee jerk reaction. Maybe helping the situation is the fact that if it happened anytime soon it would likely be them visiting us… otherwise yeah I could maybe see an Avatar movie type situation if they couldn’t go toe-to-toe with us. Maybe it depends on the party in power
Maybe…