What do intelligent
ET aliens look like?
Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist

    1.0   Statistics about the possibilities of life are worthless

    Frank Drake formalized a now famous equation that synthesizes the likelihood of intelligence existing within our own galaxy.  
    He includes the following factors:

           The rate of formation of stars where intelligent life may develop.
           The percentage of such stars that have planets.
           The number of planets within a star that have an environment appropriate for life.
           The percentage of planets on which life develops.
           The percentage of planets with life on which intelligent life has developed.

    Drake concludes that there must be at least 10,000 planets teaming with intelligent life.

    Of course, since many of these parameters are speculative, the results depend on individual biases. Other analysts who have
    toyed with the equation come up with different numbers. Hence, we cannot answer the question until we make contact with
    another civilization and compare notes.

    But let’s concede for the sake of argument that there are at least 10,000 planets in the Milky Way with intelligent life. Would
    these beings look like us or would we be shocked with the ability of matter to assume such a variety of forms?

    There will be those that will question the relevance of physical appearance. How would shape relate to traveling aliens?
    Couldn’t they just as well be green, have antennas, or be made of silicon?

    From a rather trivial point of view, if aliens are alleged to look like us, it would be difficult to challenge such a theory. Maybe
    your wife or your next door neighbor is an alien? From a more relevant perspective, I propose that conditions have to be just
    right for intelligence to arise and no other kind of super-intelligent being can develop that is physically unlike man. Whether in
    the Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda Galaxy, or the Milky Way, a planet boasting human-level intelligence has to be a virtual
    twin of the Earth, which means that the animals on the planet must have undergone a similar developmental history. If there is
    intelligent life elsewhere, the aliens look like us.

    At first glance this may sound like a biased, unsubstantiated conclusion. Wouldn’t it be just as likely for space aliens to look
    like sharks or birds?

    I think that this position is much harder to sustain. To begin with, can you imagine intelligent sharks invading us from another
    planet? What events in their evolution would have induced them to develop the sophisticated brain? Wouldn’t the construction
    of a spaceship require dexterous hands and an upright stance?

    Or if intelligent aliens are alleged to be exotic, silicon-based creatures, why didn’t at least one dynasty develop side by side
    with our carbon-based life here in the Solar System? Surely there is more silicon available than carbon! Hence, proponents
    must explain this omission before blurting out wild ideas simply for the sake of devil’s advocacy or to look interesting and
    creative.  

    It could also be argued that a chance interrelation or miscalculation could just as well have stopped intelligence at the level
    of Neanderthal or chopped the branch at Lucy altogether. Yet, in retrospect, T-Rex, the cheetah, and Man each in his own
    way seem to be an inevitable outcome of animals striving towards perfection in their respective lines of expertise. Mother
    Nature was obviously not finished with the hominids, a branch that was necessarily designed to descend from the trees. If
    there is a human level intelligence in another planet it looks like us and not like a  T-Rex or a cheetah. Wasn’t it 'foreseeable'
    in retrospect (explainable) that those competing on the plains would develop swift feet whereas those comparably vulnerable
    tree-dwellers were destined to develop dexterous hands and larger brains?

    Intelligence of the level of man could only come from an animal that resembles man. For example, let’s look at another
    category so as to be unbiased: speed. There are only so many categories of tetrapods: amphibians (no amiote), anapsids
    (no hole behind the eyes in the head), synapsids (1 hole) and diapsids (2 holes). Mammals fall under the synapsids. If we
    traveled to another planet and found a mammal that ran at 60 mph on the plains, what would he look like? Surely, like our
    very own cheetah. The cheetah is probably the fastest animal that ever lived. A cheetah is built for speed. It has
    aerodynamically built ears pointed backwards, streamlined body, etc. The cheetah was painstakingly constructed over
    millions of years. The same goes for the brain as for the legs. Intelligence does not swim in the oceans or gallop on the
    plains. Intelligence descends from the trees.


    2.0   What the mathematicians lament Mother Nature failed to bless them with: Super-intelligence

    While we’re at it, let’s dispose of the notion that there is an unfathomable level of intelligence that dwarfs the human level.
    Here's what the experts have to say:

    “ the laws of physics in our universe allow life forms way more intelligent than us” [1]

    " It is possible that failure of philosophical research to arrive at solid, generally
      accepted answers to many of the traditional big philosophical questions could
      be due to the fact that we are not smart enough to be successful in this kind of
      enquiry." [2]

    " superintelligence would by definition be far more effective than human brains
      in all intellectual endeavors, including strategic thinking, scientific analysis, and
      technological creativity." [3]

    " Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all
      the intellectual activities of any man however clever... an ultraintelligent machine
      could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an
      ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind." [4]

    I cannot vouch for Tegmark and Bostrom. Perhaps they were gypped at birth. But I believe that neither Tegmark nor
    Bostrom have the foggiest clue of what they are talking about! They are simply trying to weasel their way out of a jam
    with a statement of authority.

    The tactic consists in relying on an old cliché to induce gawking, impressionable readers to divert their attention from the
    issue at hand, which is that the presenter can’t answer the last question. Super-intelligence is a myth! One thing is
    knowledge (predicting the results of an experiment) and another is the capability of understanding (explaining a
    consummated event). We may not have knowledge, but for Tegmark and Bostrom to insinuate that we do not have the
    capacity to understand God's ways is absolutely ludicrous. They insinuate that an ET's intelligence would be to Man's
    what Man's is to a cat. Since a cat does not have the natural ability to read or write, no amount of instruction is going to
    help the cat understand our world completely if at all. Now Tegmark and Bostrom extrapolate this reasoning and believe
    that we are in the same relation to extraterrestrials, or to God, or to a hypothetical human yet to appear. This line of reasoning
    comes from religion, where they have always answered the last question by saying that we cannot hope to understand
    God's ways.  

    Reality is something different. If an advanced civilization sent a group of researchers and they reached our shores, we
    possess the necessary intelligence where sooner or later we would learn and understand whatever they try to teach us.
    Unfathomable super-intelligence is a myth perpetuated by those who have no answers to the questions asked at the end
    of the presentation. So they raise the stakes by throwing in that we humans are so stupid and know so little and will never
    get to know everything, and that this explains why the presenter can’t answer your question. And everyone in the audience
    nods and goes: “Yeah, we are but mortals! It is arrogant to think that we can understand God's mysterious ways!” That’s
    what everybody has been trained to believe from kindergarten to college. This enables the presenter to leave the decisive,
    last question open-ended. The establishment also falls back on the super-intelligence myth to support its notion of
    exponential technology. This, in turn, guarantees that the funds keep flowing in.

    In the present context, intelligence is simply the ability to understand concepts, and here there is no doubt. We have reached
    the highest level of intelligence possible in the Universe. Those within the human species at the forefront of intelligence can
    sooner or later understand anything that is explained to them by an uninvited ET or by God Almighty Himself! In the case of
    invading aliens we would merely have to go through a learning curve to understand their technology or advanced scientific
    concepts just like we go through a learning curve to understand Math or Chemistry. If the idiots of the establishment are
    waiting for the fairy godmother to grant them more grey matter, they will be sorely disillusioned. Mother Nature has run out
    of wishes to concede. We are as intelligent as we will ever get. The bozos that are unsatisfied with what they got should take
    the issue up with their parents.


    3.0   The aliens look like us

    Thus, if we cannot say whether there is life on another planet much less can we speculate whether the process results
    in human level intelligence. What we can say is that if we find Man on another planet, he is the product of a stringent
    specification, each step of which has certain critical tolerances. Since anything could have gone wrong at any stage of
    this lengthy process, we have to conclude that Man is indeed a rare product. But then, so is a whale and an elephant and
    an ant. All existing animals are the product not only of the environment, but of interrelations with a specific family of plants
    and of animals. Again, this line of reasoning cannot be used to 'predict' whether there are intelligent beings in another
    planet (i.e., say whether aliens exist). What it means is that if we come across Man in another planet, he is the product of
    following to the letter a set of stringent specifications. And if we come across a being on another planet that has the same
    ability to understand abstract concepts as we do, this being better look more or less like us.

    Determinism has its advantages. If humans are an inevitable outcome of nature, and, assuming further that man occupies
    no privileged place in Mother Nature’s heart and that intelligence at its best looks like us, our analysis simplifies enormously.
    By studying ourselves, we study the highest possible level of 'intelligence' (i.e., understanding) anywhere in the universe.
    And, whatever happens to us, happens to them too.

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    Last modified 05/22/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
Mother Nature was so fed up with
war on our planet, Bill, that she made
syntheses from diverse aspects of
the warring parties. I was lucky. I was
a mathematician. So in addition to
strong legs and a diamond head, I
was blessed with an electric field.