Categories of intelligent life worth pondering...

There has been an extraordinary amount of research and research dollars being poured into the identification of UFOs. However, UFOs should not be confused with extraterrestrial life. UFOs are simply “unidentified flying objects.” There is a not-so-subtle difference between “extraterrestrial life” and unidentified objects flying in ranges common for drones and airplanes (including military aircraft) that are not immediately recognizable on our radar screens. The question of extraterrestrial life itself might be broken into several components of how we categorize life in the first place. For instance, we might think of intelligence on a gradient of intelligence relative to life forms that we humans recognize:

1. Non-intelligent/ low-intelligence life: Acknowledging the subjectivity of these categories, as well as the limitless number of possible subdivisions of intelligence, this category of life form might be akin to single-cell organisms like bacteria, viruses, and plants and vegetation such as trees with some limited ability to communicate with their species, as well as the capability to take over other host organisms or environments. It’s been argued that plants and trees in particular have the ability to send messages to fellow trees and other life forms within their ecosystems through chemical signals. For instance, when there are fires in a region (or other air pollutants), some trees emit chemical signals notifying trees hundreds of miles away of the imminent danger. These signals are recognized by trees and some plants which can then modify their behavior to some degree by releasing protective chemicals or modifying their intake and consumption of air and even altering their own photosynthesis processes. If you haven’t read The Overstory by Richard Powers, it comes highly recommended. Beyond our own planet, and touching a bit on the origin of life here on Earth, see the point below on the large amounts of frozen ice already identified on Mars that might have been liquid water previously. Life might have already existed and gone extinct already on Mars given the billions of years of time that have elapsed already in our solar system (Earth is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old). The Curiosity rover, for instance, has even uncovered the remains of a freshwater lake that existed only a few million years ago on Mars. Perhaps Martian bacteria even seeded bacterial life here on Earth, carried here asteroids billions of years ago?
2. Semi-intelligent life: This category might be akin to animals here on Earth; for instance, pigs are surprisingly some of the most social animals on planet Earth. Most animals here on Earth are able to communicate with their own kind to some degree. Whales sing to one another thousands of miles away and are thought to even tell stories with these “songs.” Various insects trade messages through their antennae. Dogs bark. Cats meow. Are there messages being transferred among them outside our wavelength of understanding? Perhaps.
3. Intelligent life: Human capabilities to communicate with one another has enabled our kind to take over the world (for better and for worse). Our complex communication patterns enabled Homo Sapiens to defeat (and inbreed with) the Neanderthals millions of years ago. Our communication and creativity have engendered a slew of religions all over the world, ranging from imaginative to fantastical to everything in-between. This author doesn’t venture to argue which religion might be right, but simply wishes to point out that there are many religions and the human mind is responsible for creating (many of) them. Aside from religion, think about “creative concepts” like art, money, credit, sports/football teams, and nations. We’ve been painting in caves for millions of years, trading goods and services for money for thousands of years, and creating and altering territorial boundaries of nations for just as many. Concepts like money and credit facilitate the global communication of humans through commerce and help fuel growth and technological advances. Art facilitates global human expression through symbolism and other beautiful patterns envisioned by the artist. Sports and football teams help unify a people of a particular region. Nations help bring together people of a common culture and/or language. These concepts require a high degree of intelligence which has separated humans from other forms of life here on Earth and allowed our kind to dominate the planet like no other life form to date. Henry Gindt highly recommends the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari if interested in exploring these concepts that make us uniquely human.
4. Super intelligent life: “Super-intelligent” life might constitute life form(s) out there that are slightly more intelligent than human beings. These life forms might physically look like blue dominos or orange bubbles for all we know, but their civilizations might be thought of as either being “millions of years advanced” from our modern-day civilizations or might simply be more highly developed with more complex communication systems. For instance, perhaps all of their particular species might be able to seamlessly communicate with one another through mind signals or other sorts of chemical signals akin to trees here on earth, with a richness that exceeds human language many fold. This category of “super-intelligent” life forms likely inhabit their own planet or perhaps solar system but have not yet ventured out of their solar systems as they might not have developed a way to extend their biological lives or travel at the speed of light or faster which would be required for interplanetary travel.
5. Super-duper intelligent life: Another category of possible life exceeding human intelligence, which we’ll call “super-duper intelligent life,” would likely have an ability to communicate with species beyond their own kind, both on their host planet(s) as well as with life forms on nearby and not so nearby planets like ours. These “super-duper intelligent” life forms, the only category relevant to The Fermi Paradox, will have developed the ability to either extend their biological lives by millions of years or have achieved space flight at a speed equal to or greater than that of the speed of light. The lack of life forms falling into this intelligence category only in our nearby cosmic neighborhood might be the simple explanation for The Fermi Paradox, which is the paradox that if there is intelligent life out there, why hasn’t this intelligent life already reached out to us humans here on Earth. Another explanation is that life may have already existed at different points in time in the past across our universe and may exist in the future long after humans are gone.

Submitted January 28, 2021 at 09:17PM by henry_gindt https://ift.tt/3ot7Hhs