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[Neruz]

, though, as we still don't know what exactly happened to the only other intelligent species we had and could communicate with on this planet.

sure we do, we know they became extinct

Oh oh oh and they had funeral customs. Don't forget that.

Didn't they go for ritual cannibalism or flesh-stripping of the dead too?

[Askot Bokbondeler]

no, they buried people with flowers!

[Neruz]

Nah, that was the Hippys.

[Starver]

Nah, that was the Hippys.

No, they bury people in flowers.  (Also Hawaiians.)



Mitochondrial Eve And Y-Chromosome Adam have the same importance as the proof that (IIRC) 95% of the men in Mongolia have had the same ancestor at the same time as Ghengiz Kahn, or whatever it is supposed to be.  There were other men breeding at that time (and, for Eve, other women) but through chance as much as through any actual patrinilineal/matrinlineal lineage enforcement, those lines may well have continued down to our time but had just female (or male) offspring at various times, thus making the direct male(/female) line extinct in favour of the famous single-sex parts of the lineage that we're talking about.

i.e. that it's an interesting fact, but it could just as easily have been an opportunistic court jester/lad-about-town that spread his genes around enough to end up as "grandfather of everyone" through chance lineage in the future as the dominant male.  It is such possibilities that intrigue me so much.  Which is why I was such a fan of the Darwinian Poetry project, which I followed so closely at one point that I probably still have (somewhere on an old disk or disk image) my own record of all the lineages, with some personal analyses showing that some otherwise uninteresting memes managed to dominate various generations of the poems.

[Vester]

, though, as we still don't know what exactly happened to the only other intelligent species we had and could communicate with on this planet.

sure we do, we know they became extinct

Oh oh oh and they had funeral customs. Don't forget that.

Didn't they go for ritual cannibalism or flesh-stripping of the dead too?

Yep. Hence, funeral customs. Although are we sure that it was ritualistic?

[Siquo]

It was found that they could probably talk (or at least had the biological build to do so), a flute was found, and some other higher-cultural stuff. They were almost equal to the cro-magnon at the time in terms of cultural history, and probably weren't as dumb as we now popularly believe them to be.

My personal belief is they were more like hippies, and the more aggressive variant (us) took advantage of that and 'won'. But genocide on such a scale in more recent history was more by disease than actual killing, so it might be that they were killed by diseases that we were already immune to, like what happened with most native north/south americans. In any case, it's all speculative. I personally think it's really too bad that we're alone, and that having a second, equally intelligent species we can communicate with would change our selfish attitudes.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

we have equally intelligent ethnies, should work the same way

[Neruz]

, though, as we still don't know what exactly happened to the only other intelligent species we had and could communicate with on this planet.

sure we do, we know they became extinct

Oh oh oh and they had funeral customs. Don't forget that.

Didn't they go for ritual cannibalism or flesh-stripping of the dead too?

Yep. Hence, funeral customs. Although are we sure that it was ritualistic?

I don't think it's known; many Neanderthal corpses certainly appear to have their flesh stripped from them before burial, but we don't know if it was ritualistic or just plain cannibalism.



There's many theories as to exactly why Cro Magnon extincted the Neanderthals, odds are it's probably a mixture of Cro Magnon outbreeding the Neanderthals, being better at surviving than them, developing more advanced tools and waging war upon them.

There is, for example, reasonable evidence that Cro Magnon was developing more advanced weapons and tools while the Neanderthals technology appears to have been largely static, the Neanderthals were also mostly carniverous, wheras the Cro Magnon were omniverous, which gave them a notable advantage.


Of course, it's extremely difficult to say anything for sure in these circumstances, but it seems most likely Cro Magnon extincted the Neanderthals by basically being better at being Human.

[Neruz]

Addendum to Previous:

Also, it's probably likely that the Neanderthals were not 'stupid humans', odds are good that they were of a similar intelligence level to Cro Magnon, odds are also good that they did not think the same way that Cro Magnon did and that modern humans would probably consider their way of thinking 'alien'.

[Siquo]

Yeah, that last part is what makes it so sad. Having 'alien' intelligences around us now could teach us a lot about how intelligence works and can work.

[Neruz]

I could probably make a reasonable case for Computers being an alien intelligence.

[Starver]

Yeah, that last part is what makes it so sad. Having 'alien' intelligences around us now could teach us a lot about how intelligence works and can work.

Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's book "Heaven" covers this (in a way) with Neanderthal space explorers.  But then there's a lot of "alienness" of thought in that.  That's part of the point.  This duo together specialise in the creation of credible xenobiology, for both purely fictional and proper academic purposes, up to and including xenosocieties and how they interact.

Hey, go the whole hog, check out their book "Wheelers" as well (no explicit Neanderthals, but, there's something that's very similar at one point).  And for non-fiction, they've got loads of other books from the Science Of Discworld series (non-fiction discussions interspacing with Terry Pratchett's fictional sections) to ones fully in the non-fiction (if still in part speculative) area of the bookshelves.  (Can you tell that I like these guys?

I could probably make a reasonable case for Computers being an alien intelligence.

I think there's a few places where I could wedge a crowbar into your terminology and crack it apart, but I think I know what you mean, there.  "Developed intelligence"  Naw...  (apart from the fact that it probably isn't, yet)  Not "Independent intelligence" either.  The fact that computers could not develop (and still need to develop) without our own intelligence having created them[1] means that such baggage needs to be accounted for.  Though I'm still waiting for some more of the events in David Brin's "Earth" to come true (having read this prior to the WWW stepping into the world, and had TBL not got there before me I might well have been in a position to use the inspiration of this book to do something similar[2]), and if that includes... Well, a certain type of intelligence, then it could be 'interesting'.

[1] Which is not to say that something could not have developed on its own.

[2] In my dreams!

[Neruz]

It pretty much depends entirely on how you define 'Intelligence', we already have computers that can pass Turing tests and can seem more 'real' than real people in conversations. I'm not sure it would be airtight, but i think a reasonable case could be made for Computers already being Intelligent, it's just a different kind of Intelligence to what we're used to, so we have difficulty accepting it as such.


If you think about it, that's not really surprising. Computers 'think' by using a series of binary switches; how the switches relate to each other at a given point in time defines the 'thoughts'. Humans, on the other hand, think by using an interlinked matrix of neurones firing electrical pulses at each other while bathing in various chemicals; a vastly more complicated (at it's 'core') process and a much more organic one.

So computers need us to survive, so what? The bacteria in my stomach need Humans to survive. Humans need livestock to survive. Life is built upon dependancies and relationships, whether symbiotic or parasitic.



It's probably not a perfect argument, but it's an interesting point to consider alongside things like the Ant 'Mind'.

[Siquo]

We don't have computers that pass Turing tests, we've got programs that pass Turing tests. Programs use logic, and the computer is merely a frame on which they operate. You could simulate the entire program by doing all the calculations with on paper.

The programs were created by man and can be analysed in a way we wouldn't be able to with biological intelligences, making them far less "alien" than them. Until we can create programs that can create programs in a sensible way (we're getting there! Singularity here we come!) they're still not what I'd call intelligent.

[Neruz]

We don't have computers that pass Turing tests, we've got programs that pass Turing tests. Programs use logic, and the computer is merely a frame on which they operate. You could simulate the entire program by doing all the calculations with on paper.

The programs were created by man and can be analysed in a way we wouldn't be able to with biological intelligences, making them far less "alien" than them. Until we can create programs that can create programs in a sensible way (we're getting there! Singularity here we come!) they're still not what I'd call intelligent.

The MEART Brain (among others) begs to differ. Well it would, if it could beg, but it can't, so it's just wiggling it's robotic arm at you in fury.



Also:

We don't have brains that pass Turing tests, we've got personalities that pass Turing tests. Personalities use logic, and the brain is merely a frame on which they operate. You could simulate the entire personality by doing all the calculations with on paper.