[ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 01:11:35AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
>> ### No, I don't think that is the case, the basic physics does not
>> seem to change at the visible universe scale, at least not in an
>> easily detectable way, so the resulting intelligences should be
>> similar as well.
>
> There are two issues with these assumption: the pioneer
> organisms are specialists, so the expanding wave front
> is different than the volume behind, which will have
> succession colonization waves, and then settle into
> a high-diversity equilibrium.
>
> Regardless of origin, in a mature system the diversity
> is sufficiently high that any random sampling will result
> in very dissimiliar organisms, though there will be
> convergent evolution for specific niches (the most
> important one being the pioneer niche).

### It all depends on what you mean by "similar". I meant that in a
very weak way, implying only having only some basic evolved
adaptations to survival in a given niche, although many details are
likely to be different. Similar niches frequently produce very similar
adaptations (fish, dolphins, ichthyosaurs, squid) in diverse animals.
I agree with you the intelligences in a single niche to be as similar
and as diverse as the above creatures, although given diverse niches
there will be also more fundamental diversity of intelligences.

Rafal