Do you think intelligent life exists?

We are not intelligent life yet, we are still animals until we achieve Type I status. That is, a civilization with complete control of death, sickness, weather, the ecosystem, and without destructive conflict (war) - essentially a species that has mastered 100% of earth's resources.

This is a Type I Civilization, a Type I is able to begin true space exploration - by this estimation they would eventually become a Type II and then a Type III.

Now because of the nature of a Type III, our telescopes would be aware of such a civilization if one existed because it would control an entire galaxy worth of resources and we can see many galaxies in our observable portion of the universe.

So then it has been questioned whether or not even a Type I civilization is possible beyond mere conjecture, as there are no signs of such in the cosmos...did every Type 0 civilization like ours destroy themselves with chemical, nuclear, biological, or electronic warfare? This is a very likely possibility.

Any arguments for or against the notion that humans can be nothing more than any of the primitive decaying biological species in the universe? Is intelligent life real?

There are some possible explanations as to why and how we cannot see a Type III even if one is out there. We can only see a small portion of the galaxies before we are looking around 13 billion year-old photographs of other galactic systems, therefore there is no way even planets could have been formed yet, much less intelligent life.

Another possible explanation, and one I favor, is the Transcendence Hypothesis. The Transcendence Hypothesis states that instead of expanding territory and continuing to consume greater amounts of resources, a Type I Civilization will instead opt to expand consciousness and further evolve intelligence past the mundane 3 dimensional parameters of space and time. They will have so much computing power in so little space that it will collapse space time, and they will emerge somewhere else - possibly a 4th dimension, giving them the ability to manipulate matter and energy through collapsing complex wave functions through their presence within a quantum superposition such as a 4th dimension type, should they manifest back in the 3 dimensional realm. Realistically they'd never come back to play God here, they'd more likely opt to continue their conscious evolution in higher planes of existence at an exponential rate, never to be seen or heard from again.

Did you borrow your philosophy of civilization levels from Transmetropolitan? I've never seen anyone else use Type I to refer to involve social progress as well as technological progress.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Did you borrow your philosophy of civilization levels from Transmetropolitan? I've never seen anyone else use Type I to refer to involve social progress as well as technological progress.

And space exploration as well.

Kardeshev merely labeled it as resource management. The new wave of scientists claim it more likely a Utopia.

From Michio Kaku claiming a Type I is one nation without war and with unlimited renewable energy, to Carl Sagan stating space exploration isn't even possible before this point, many other scientists stating self-sustaining Utopian complexes like superstructures, round domes, super pyramids spread all across the globe, even covering large oceanic territories, with absolutely zero pollution or damage to the environment what-so-ever, with the now intelligent members of this civilization able to roam freely about a 'Garden of Eden' esque superstructure, to Ray Kurzweil stating that humans will be immortal and integrated into advanced AI with the entire interconnected social world and all information on this world-wide super-web up-loadable from a mere thought. Years worth of education in the blink of an eye if you want to know how to do this this or this, or know something about that so you can figure out how another thing works. Furthermore complete control over storms and the condition of the whether, as well as consensual thought transfer and unlimited range of consensual telepathy through the global web installed into every mind. Even self-cleaning, self-sustaining, self-expanding, self-repairing technologies and cities - making manual labor irrelevant.

One cannot be accomplished without the other. It is a total miracle of society brought about the technological paradigms almost unimaginable to us now.

Originally posted by Dolos
Michio Kaku claiming a Type I is one nation without war and with unlimited renewable energy

I really couldn't care less about Kaku.

Originally posted by Dolos
to Carl Sagan stating space exploration isn't even possible before this point

I think its fairly obvious how ridiculous that claim is given that we're exploring space right now. Even if you demand some grander definition of "exploration" I'd point out the whole history of exploration by humanity never once required the end of war.

Originally posted by Dolos
Ray Kurzweil stating

Wait I changed my mind about Kaku, I care less about what Kurzweil has to say than what Kaku has to say.

Originally posted by Dolos
One cannot be accomplished without the other. It is a total miracle of society brought about the technological paradigms almost unimaginable to us now.

We've accomplished lots of things in the past without having equivalent social advancement (see: everything ever) I can't see any argument for why we need social advancement for any other new technologies.

You're so much more qualified than all of those well-renowned geniuses obviously.

We have sent stupid crappy little probes, not one has reached another system to this day. We haven't put a man on anything but the moon.

The real world doesn't work like sci fi novels where space colonies battle each other for teh uber.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
We've accomplished lots of things in the past without having equivalent social advancement (see: everything ever) .

That is SUCH bologna!!! 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

I can't see any argument for why we need social advancement for any other new technologies

That's because we're not even a true civilization, you're a chimp thinking he knows better than scientists who've studied, mastered, and come to understand a vast wealth of scientific fact and theory that neither you nor me will ever probably even hear about.

Each of these people's theories are well respected among the scientific community, most of them have tv shows. Where's your tv show? Just because you'd rather live in World War Technodystopia doesn't mean that's going to be a realistic scientific endeavor...unless of course you believe it's human nature to make war and we're not intelligent or powerful life, but rather destructive energy consuming, insignificant terrestrial-dwelling, planet killing animals.

Technological achievements don't dictate a species' acknowledgement into whether they are intelligent or not.

Animals have access to basic processes that give them access to awareness that boggle the minds of scientists.

In the end this thread is pretty narrow and it's bed time for me so I'm not in the mood to argue levels of civilizations. Type I or III and such based on perception.

Originally posted by the ninjak
Technological achievements don't dictate a species' acknowledgement into whether they are intelligent or not.

😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆

You are both on crack, yes? 😂

Real intelligent of you.
Intelligence means the capacity to learn, reason and understand.

Originally posted by the ninjak
Real intelligent of you.
Intelligence means the capacity to learn, reason and understand.

Without reason, we're just going to keep doing the same old things. We won't be using the right technology for the right reasons, and we will never achieve the necessary level of cooperation for the kinds of LIBERATING technologies in a Type I Civilization. But with Passionate Intelligence and Altruistic Technological Advancement free of Personal Gain for Big Oil Hustlers, we'll achieve far more.

With a selfish intention, technology is just plain stagnant at this point in time, despite our more what OCCURRED in our more primitive societies of YESTERYEAR.

So your argument is...."Is the collective human species entering a state of De-evolution due to manipulators conspiring to keep us in a vegetative and destructive state?"

Not "Do you think intelligent life exists?"

Originally posted by the ninjak
So your argument is...."Is the collective human species entering a state of De-evolution due to manipulators conspiring to keep us in a vegetative and destructive state?"

Not "Do you think intelligent life exists?"

If we can't deal with some of the problems we face now, then we can't go elsewhere, and we will continue to deplete the earth's resources and damage the environment. How long do you think it will take for over-population and resource depletion and urban pollution make the earth uninhabitable? A thousand years?

My point is we are acting like a virus to the ecosystem, not an intelligent civilization at all. If we don't become "social" as you would describe it, or civilized as it should actually correctly be described in this sense, we will not only cause our destruction and throw ourselves into an environment that makes the Dark Ages look like a cake walk, but we will also prove we're not cut out to be intelligent.

My main question isn't about just us though, it's about ideology, do you believe there could ever be a such thing as a 'Type I and up' Civilization as described in this thread. Or are we just useless organic matter?

We will be stagnant without a "technological and social revolution", not just because of a lack of technological progress in and of itself, that's a given, but because of how out of whack the economy is, that's the reason for cut R&D funding as well as the canning of the NASA Space Program - our 'pseudo-civilization' isn't set up right, it's not a civilization, it can't work until we become what I had described in my second post in this thread, my original response to Symmetric Chaos. It's set to destruct, not to prevail, because no order has really been set, at least not beyond 20th century understanding.

Originally posted by Dolos
do you believe there could ever be a such thing as a 'Type I and up' Civilization as described in this thread. Or are we just useless organic matter?

I think anyone who insists on framing their philosophy like that should be treated as useless organic matter.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I think anyone who insists on framing their philosophy like that should be treated as useless organic matter.

This is the philosophy forum, how about instead of slandering me you go back to arguing about the philosophical implications, even if they don't answer that question? I was and still am very willing to indulge an argumentative perspective for the purpose of progressing the topic of discussion.

Dolos, you need to get over this sci-fi based interpretation of reality.

I'll give you a useful and biologically meaningful operational definition of intelligence: the capacity to adapt one's behavior towards the fulfillment of a goal. all extant lifeforms can be said to be intelligent as per this definition.

we are and will continue to be animals. primitive decaying biological species? wtf are you even on about?

unidirectional timeflow would be the "4th dimension". everything you post about quantum expansion of conscience reads like sci-fi gibberish.

Originally posted by 753
we are and will continue to be animals.

You don't think it possible for our consciousness to be adjusted to something more than an aging biological body through technological transformations in human nature? Nanotechnology could be embedded in and therefore transform our human biology into something quite superior in every way.

What ethical concerns, if any, do you have with such a notion? I'm curious.

I don't understand why you're so offensive about this particular topic 753.

You don't usually go off like that and then ignore my responses.

Originally posted by Dolos
You don't think it possible for our consciousness to be adjusted to something more than an aging biological body through technological transformations in human nature? Nanotechnology could be embedded in and therefore transform our human biology into something quite superior in every way.

What ethical concerns, if any, do you have with such a notion? I'm curious.

ethically I'm concerned about the impact of new surveilance technologies on freedom and privacy; inequality in access to technology and the agravation and stiffening of social stratification; direct interference in an individual's volition by external meddling with brain function; military use of all this tech; and, above all, it worries me that anything that expands (even indirectly) civilization's physical power of the natural environment entails its destruction.

Im generally quite pessimisitic about technological progress and dont think it is required to actually solve our social problems, which are in place because of sociopolitical determinants.

Originally posted by 753
I'm quite skeptical of mind 'uploading' as you know. technogical enhancement of sensorial perception and memory, wireless integration of the functions of multiple brains into a collective CNS, etc. are much more feasible and shouldnt take that long to become a reality, but I remain skeptical of means to circumvent aging both at the genetic (accumulation of deleterious mutations) and systemic (damages to organs, including oxidation "overcooking"😉 levels.

ethically I'm concerned about the impact of new surveilance technologies on freedom and privacy; inequality in access to technology and the agravation and stiffening of social stratification; direct interference in an individual's volition by external meddling with brain function; military use of all this tech; and, above all, it worries me that anything that expands (even indirectly) civilization's physical power of the natural environment entails its destruction.

Im generally quite pessimisitic about technological progress and dont think it is required to actually solve our social problems, which are in place because of sociopolitical determinants.

Very interesting points...you're absolutely right that responsibility comes before invention. We need the right technologies for the right reasons. Perhaps I am overly optimistic, entirely polar to your positions on a 'first glance' level.

That's interesting about aging. I didn't know exactly what it was, you said that the body packing on excess "deleterious mutations" are what makes us grow old and our organs fail when we die of natural causes?