Tag Archives: intelligence

Are We Alone in the Universe and Are We Insignificant?

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Max Tegmark is an MIT Physics professor that speaks both the language of scientists and the language of futurists. Those two camps are certainly overlapping but there is a very distinct (Joe Rogan podcast listening public) who is deep in the futurist camp without much grounding in the basic principles of physics, chemistry, biology, or generally the scientific method. So you have to be careful when considering the discussions on the topic of life elsewhere in the universe, lest you drift into wishful, or worse, irrational speculation.

That said, I find Tegmark’s view on intelligent extraterrestrial life interesting, if for no reason than because it goes against the mainstream speculation of the scientific community that there almost certainly does exist intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The Drake equation is commonly used by scientists, philosophers, and hallucinogenic drug enthusiasts as a way to arrive at this conclusion.

Tegmark argues the contrary view that there very well could be a roadblock that has to be overcome in order for intelligent life to arise. By “roadblock” he means that the set of events, in sum, that lead to the emergence of intelligence could have an exceptionally low probability, so low in fact that our puzzle solving capabilities may be unique in the universe. He grounds this idea in that we have no good understanding of neither how life nor consciousness emerged on Earth. We think we understand some of the fundamental chemical characteristics of both, but don’t have a good grasp on the probability of something coming from nothing.

All this boils down to his view (if he “had to bet money on it”) that:

  • We are alone in the universe.
  • We are exceptional and thus not insignificant.

Of course, this is all, as I said before, wild speculation. When I hear ideas such as this, I grow suspicious. It sounds to me too much like the ancient belief that the sun revolves around the Earth. We wish desperately to be special, to be important in the seemingly infinite space and time of our universe’s existence. Most religions are built on this very wish. So when a man looks up 1026 meters to the edge of the observable universe, and has the mad guts to say he would bet money on the fact that we are alone, I sit back shaking my head, but am secretly in awe of the possibility that I indeed as unique as my mom always tells me.

Time Scale and Spatial Scale Is Important in Defining Life and Intelligence

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Main point: Defining “life” and “intelligence” becomes that much more difficult when you consider the possibility of an organism operating on a different scale of time and space than those “living” on Earth.

In 1995, the first planet (51 Pegasi b) orbiting another sun was discovered. Ever since then, the idea of life (even intelligent life) being a widespread phenomena in the universe became real in the minds of many astrophysicists and scientists in general. The 1961 Drake equation got a little empirical boost, and the imagination of the public was off and running.

Once you open your mind to the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, the next question is: what does it look like? How do we identify an object as “living” when we see it? And once we say it’s a living thing, how do we know if it’s “intelligent”?

As I was walking home yesterday, it occurred to me (as it must’ve occured to a lot of people seeking a definition of life) that when we intuitively think of what is a living thing we think of objects operating on a time scale similar to our own life. So, in defining whether that thing is intelligent, we consider whether it can “reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience” (Gottfredson 1994) on the time scale of a human life.

So here is a question… are plants intelligent? At first the intuitive answer is no. But what if we normalize the changes that “happen” to plants to be on the same time scale as our own, then the gradual adaptations of plants would seem no different than our own physical movements in response to the external environment.

Even more radically, here’s another questions… is a planet a living organism? Let’s again normalize a planet such as Earth in size and time to be similar to the size of human beings and the time scale of our daily life. Could we then classify a planet as a living thing? Under the common biological definition, one of the things missing is the ability to reproduce. But is it really missing? In a certain kind of way, human beings are the cells of this organism. These cells are the carriers of information in the same way that DNA is.   So perhaps a planet can indeed reproduce, luckily without the commitment-laden intimacy of sexual intercourse, by the colonization of other planets.

I don’t like writing long blog posts, because the main point can too easily be drowned in the rambling chaos of poorly formed ideas. In fact, often, a long blog post is an indication that there is no main point. Well, let me just end it by saying that our understanding of life and intelligence is limited by the way our brain has evolved to effectively deal with the environment around it.

Half of the Children Are Below Average

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The title of this post is one of the simple truths that the author of Real Education outlines. Actually, it’s a trivial fact stemming from the definition of “average”. Yet, I bet many people when reading “half of the children are below average” feel a sudden urge to disagree.

Ability varies. That’s a simple reality of education. We have to recognize that. In the classroom, I believe in competition. To me, the way to bring up a failing student is to call him out for being lazy, or as the author suggests: to humiliate him for under-performing. This applies to the F students and the A students alike. In fact, the author particularly emphasizes knocking down the ego of the gifted students. With that idea I especially agree. In my experience, great performance is most often achieved in the long process of overcoming: striving with everything you have for the things that you suspect may be impossibly difficult.

Every student needs to learn that good education is a serious challenge. Hours of listening to lectures, reading textbooks, doing homework. Every day. For years. In order to succeed in that environment, a student has to develop a passion for overcoming their limitations. If they do not, then guess what, college is NOT for them.

Too many proposals addressing the reform of our education system do not acknowledge the elephant in the room, as the author says “some kids are just dumb”. To me, that’s a too harsh a way of putting it. I would perhaps phrase it differently. But ultimately the “value” of a human being does not depend upon his/her intelligence or performance. There are plenty of good men with an IQ below 100, perhaps even more than there are with an IQ above 100. So, I don’t know why we are so ashamed as a society to acknowledge the intellectual abilities of others, in the way that we do for athletic abilities for sports. “All men are created equal” does not literally mean we are all the same. It means we all deserve the same fundamental human rights. School should be based on the latter idea not the former one.

We should care for all students, as teachers, passionately, but also be reasonable objective observers of reality in the classroom. Perhaps, those two goals are tough to balance.

I don’t like how Randian I sound in this post. This is definitely one of the times when I wish I had more time to soften the language and clarify the argument. Oh well, this is just a blog that no one (except sometimes my dad) reads, not a dissertation.

Ridding Your Vapid Soul of Intellectual Curiosity

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When asked why he was doing away with free college in California, Reagan said that the role of state “should not be to subsidize intellectual curiosity”. The source for this comment is Thom Hartmann’s “Rebooting the American Dream”.

Here, like for decades after, the ideal of “intellectual curiosity” is talked about as if its an immoral sexual act that the kids are doing these days and it must be stopped. You can disagree with whether college education should be free or even if public universities should exist. I think you’re wrong, but it’s a legitimate dependable point of view. What is not legitimate is an assault against intellectual curiosity. Such curiosity is what gives birth to great ideas. It allows a political leader to integrate the lessons of history with the new challenges of today. I would even argue that the patience required for learning is the kind of patience that leads to genuine compassion.

Perhaps the reason a president can say something as absurd as the above quote is that most of the people in public life are not scientists. They are lawyers, businessmen, doctors, etc. And while members of all of those professions are certainly intelligent and curious about the way the world works, “intellectual curiosity” is not quite the staple for them that it is for scientists. Science progresses through a mechanism of rigorous skepticism, which requires one to constantly ask “Why?” and seek proof in whatever form possible. So, I think the fact that scientists are for the most part absent from public life in the United States contributes to the simplification of political discourse, and Reagan’s statement is just one of many examples of it.