[extropy-chat] [wta-talk] When did intelligence first emerge in the universe?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 04:57:52PM -0400, George Dvorsky wrote:

> For the sake of this discussion, let’s set aside Ward and Brownlee’s 
> Rare Earth hypothesis and invoke the self-sampling assumption about our 
> conditions here on Earth. We can heretofore assume that the 
> circumstances on Earth are extremely typical in regards to how life 
> emerges and evolves.

Whoa there. Anthropic principle says that you can't extract any other knowledge
from observing yourself and others causally entangled in the local
emergence event other than you exist. Only by observing others, causally
unentangled instances elsewhere can you obtain valid data.
 
> According to cosmologist Charles Lineweaver's estimates, planets started 
> forming 9.1 billion years ago. Obviously, radio-communicating or 

Gas giants are useless, you need adequate metallicity for major planet
population (outliers are there, but they're very rare so don't
figure in). I don't have any data when this became possible.

> pre-Singularity intelligences didn't emerge overnight. So, how long does 
> that take? Using the Earth as an example we can come up with a rough idea.

Again, you can't use any data from Earth for anything other than 
'cogito ergo sum'. That's also data, but it's not very interesting data.
 
> Life on Earth first emerged about 600 million years after its formation 
> (that’s awfully quick – a strike against the Rare Earth hypothesis, I 

Rare Earth doesn't mean that life emergence is rare, once you've
got a sweet spot.

> would say). Consequently, given similar conditions in other parts of the 
> universe, I’d say that life could not have arisen any earlier than 
> 8.5Gyr ago. What I’d be interested to know is, in what way, if any, were 
> planets and solar systems different 8.5Gyr ago as compared to those 
> which formed 4.57Gyr ago (which is when the Earth formed)? Would any of 
> those differences negate or retard the processes of life?

You would have less heavy elements and more hot isotopes. Background
might be extremely violent (giant luminosity bursts in the galaxy).
Early universe was really rough.
 
> The next factor to look at is the complexification of life. On Earth, it 
> took RNA/DNA about 3.7Gyr to get to the point where it was able to 
> express complex land dwelling organisms. This is the time when, about 
> 220 million years ago, that dinosaurs emerged. It’s conceivable that 
> hominid-type creatures and their attendant civilizations could have 
> emerged around this time instead of super-predator dinosaurs. Let's work 

Or they wouldn't have emerged at all, and Earth would be wiped by a giant
impactor, or cooked only a short while later (this planet is toast in
less than a GYear, probably half that). Let's work with this assumption.

> with this assumption.
> 
> Now, I suppose we should account for the mass extinction events that 
> characterized the early phases of Earth. Given the short period of time 
> in which it’s taken Homo sapiens to emerge from beast to virtual cyborg 
> (less than 2 million years), it’s safe to say that the high frequency of 
> mass extinctions wouldn’t have been a factor.

It takes a great deal longer than 2 MYr to recover from a major
extinction event. After a sterilizing event (impactor which
created Luna is huge on this scale, few 100 km would do), 
you'd have to start from scratch. (Allright, if there are several 
life spots in the planetar vicinity you can reseed).
 
> That said, NEO impacts and other mass extinction events have been the 
> cause of drastic evolutionary re-starts, but have decreased in frequency 
> over the course of our solar system’s history. The solar system is 
> stabilizing. A fair question to ask is, were mass extinction events 
> necessary for the emergence of intelligence life, and if so, why?

No idea. Nobody has any idea, as long as we don't get a second sample.
 
> Given the length of time required to go from the ignition of life 
> through to complex life, the earliest that civilizations could have 
> emerged on Earth is 220 million years ago. I'm going to conclude that 

We already know that there were no smart critters on Earth 220 MYrs ago.
We also know that Earth data is invalid to extrapolate.

> natural selection requires 3.7Gyr before it can express creatures that 
> are morphologically sophisticated enough to resemble humans. As an 
> interesting aside, that doesn’t necessarily suggest that organisms could 
> have evolved the cognitive capacity of humans at that time. For all we 
> know, the mammalian brain requires the 200 million years of evolution 
> and accumulated/refined DNA data to get to the sophistication it has 
> today. I’ll admit, however, that that’s a stretch; time-to-evolve is 
> not a fixed rate and is largely dictated by the severity of environmental 
> stressors.

Time to evolve a smart enough critter to observe itself might be an 
arbitrarily improbable event. 
 
> Using the 3.7Gyr metric, the earliest that complex humanoid life could 
> have emerged in our universe is 4.72Gyr ago. That figure does not negate 

Probability density decreases as you go backwards due to chemical composition.

> the Fermi Paradox. Given the potential emergence of intelligent life in 
> our galaxy around that time, and given Fermi’s estimate that an ETI 
> could colonize the galaxy within 10 million years, our galaxy could have 
> been colonized nearly 500 times over by now.

If you use Hubble to look back your 4 GYears into the past you see
no aliens either. In fact, relativistic-expansion aliens are damn
difficult to observe, period, especially if they're observer-estinguishing/
prevent emergence of obserservers. Anthropic principle, again.
There are many reasons why Fermi's paradoxon is deceptively
simple.
 
> Let’s try to whittle the figure down even further. Assuming that an 
> advanced civ could have emerged on earth 220 million years ago, what 
> would they have used to fuel their industrial revolution? Working under 
> the assumption that fossil fuels are a necessary prerequisite for an 
> industrial revolution to occur, how many years of accumulated biomass is 

You don't need fossil fuels for anything. It's just a convenience/kinetics
thing. In terms of our history, fossil is just a passing phase, a fleeting
moment.

> required? By the same token, how much biomass is required to get to the 
> Singularity?

None. Solar output and secondary (hydro/aeolean) sources are more
than enough.
 
> Today, considering the threat of peak oil, we don’t know the answer to 
> that question ourselves. We know that human civilization had enough to 
> get to an industrialized phase of existence, but we don't actually know 
> if we have enough energy to get to the Singularity (although I'm 
> inclined to believe that we do).
> 
> Let’s assume here, however, that we have enough energy to make it. Vast 
> forests of clubmosses (lycopods), horsetails, and tree ferns started to 
> cover the land 300 million years ago – biomass that decayed and 
> eventually formed coal and oil. Let’s use that as our metric for the 
> time required to establish energy needs. That knocks our figure of 
> 3.7Gyr down to 3.4Gyr – barely a dent.
> 
> I’m making an assumption, here – that the presence of oil and coal are 
> a necessary condition for the emerge of radio-capable and pre-Singularity 
> intelligences. I remember getting into a discussion with Eliezer 
> Yudkowsky about this a number of years ago who begged to differ. He 
> essentially claimed that 'where there’s a will there’s a way,' 
> particular given long enough time frames (I think he used the example of 
> solar power).

Eliezer is absolutely accurate in that.
 
> I’m still unconvinced and would argue that fossil fuels are absolutely 
> necessary. I'm going to use that in our calculation to push back the 
> emergence of complex civs in the universe from 4.72Gyr ago to 4.42Gyr ago.

I don't see why you're using numbers pulled out of a hat at
three decimal precision.
 
> There are undoubtedly a plethora of factors I’m either omitting or 
> exaggerating. The exact conditions required for the emergence of 
> human-like intelligences may be more complex than it appears, and the 
> universe may only be intelliphillic at this unique time (a violation of 
> the Copernican Principle, I know, but one that should be considered; is 
> the universe entering a phase transition?).
> 
> Formalizing my argument about when intelligences could first emerge in 
> the universe, I'm going to use this as a starting equation:
> 
> [y.a. planets formed (P)] – [years it takes for life to emerge (L)] – 
> [years it takes for DNA to become hominid-expressible (H)] – [years it 
> takes to accumulate required biomass for energy (E)] = [y.a. 
> radio-capable civs first emerged in the galaxy (A)]
> 
> P – L – H – E = A
> 
> Using my figures (in Gigayears):
> 9.1 – 0.6 – 3.78 – 0.3 = 4.42Gyr
> 
> So, it’s conceivable that Singularities and outward galactic expansions 
> could have happened as long as 4.42 billion years ago. This is still an 
> immense amount of time, keeping the Fermi problem deeply relevant.

Fermi's is not a paradoxon.
 
> So, where is everybody?

Not there. Color us lucky, very lucky. Let's try to not push our
luck further, and get lot more careful.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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