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posted by mrpg on Saturday December 08 2018, @02:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the in-space-things-are-relative dept.

Dr Colombano told Califoria's SETI-backed Decoding Alien Intelligence Workshop back in March that scientists need to broaden their idea of what an extra-terrestrial would like like.

'I simply want to point out the fact that the intelligence we might find and that might choose to find us (if it hasn't already) might not be at all be produced by carbon based organisms like us,' his report read.

He added that scientists must 're-visit even our most cherished assumptions', which has implications for everything from an alien's lifespan to its height.

'The size of the 'explorer' might be that of an extremely tiny super-intelligent entity,' he says.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6457259/NASA-expert-says-alien-life-visited-Earth.html

Also at Tiny aliens may have visited us and we just didn't know: NASA scientist


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Saturday December 08 2018, @03:41PM (16 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Saturday December 08 2018, @03:41PM (#771545) Homepage Journal

    There are physical limits to how much processing power and memory you can pack into a certain space without it overheating, as chip designers know, and the mammalian brain has done a pretty good job at optimizing this such that we can't even yet replicate it. I can see a sort of distributed hive mind could satisfy this narrative but unless that can possess its own distributed consciousness, its hard to see that qualifying as an organism any more than an ant colony, or a group of humans collaborating.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @04:54PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @04:54PM (#771571)

    Keep on cherishing those assumptions.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:25PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:25PM (#771950) Journal
      Assumptions based on pretty solid physics, let us note.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @05:31PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 08 2018, @05:31PM (#771587)

    There are physical limits to how much processing power and memory you terrestrial technology can pack into a certain space without it overheating

    FTFY

    and the mammalian brain has done a pretty good job at optimizing this such that we can't even yet replicate it.

    I guess that matters ... if any aliens are mammalian and have evolved with the same limitations that we have developed. Of course, there is a very slight chance that alien won't be mammalian, but who knows, right?

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday December 08 2018, @05:54PM (4 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Saturday December 08 2018, @05:54PM (#771600) Homepage Journal

      If you or your sibling (permitting the assumption that you're not the same person--see what I did there?) would like to suggest an alternative mechanism for information processing, no matter how far-fetched, then I'm all ears. I love that sort of speculation. My point still stands that there are going to be physical limits on how small anyone can make a computer. It might be that the aliens know about some new physics that we don't (or their environment led their evolution to exploit it) and I don't doubt that the efficiency of our own brains can be improved upon to some degree. I just personally think it's unlikely there would be microscopic organisms with our level of intelligence, based on what I currently know. When new evidence comes available to the contrary, I'll gladly consider it and alter my position.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 08 2018, @08:35PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 08 2018, @08:35PM (#771646) Journal

        based on what I currently know

        I think that's the whole argument, in a nutshell. We don't know enough to make all the assumptions that we make. That is why no one is capable of making believable suggestions for alternative mechanisms.

        The most believable alternative that I've ever heard (or read) involves a hive mind. Individuals within the hive may be dumber than rocks, but the hive mind is extremely intelligent. The bugs in Ender's War are probably the best example. "Communication" between the various Bug bodies is based on something that we might loosely translate into telepathy, although that is not the term that Card used.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:32AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @02:32AM (#771759)

        based on what I currently know

        I think it is a safe assumption, whether it's made by me or my sibling (see what I did there?), that any life form capable of interstellar travel - no matter their size - will know more than you do about all sorts of technology.

        The problem with your position on this is simple: 100 years ago you could make the same claims based on the technology of the day and you would still think you were right.

        I cannot venture a guess as to what knowledge (technical or otherwise) alien civilizations will hold. But if they can travel to Earth it is clear that they know more than we do by orders of magnitude.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:15AM (1 child)

          by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:15AM (#772691)

          >But if they can travel to Earth it is clear that they know more than we do by orders of magnitude.

          Or stumbled upon some quirk of physics that we have completely overlooked.

          Or are just patient and committed to the goal. We could quite likely reach another star using only existing technology, provided we were willing to dedicate at least several percent of global GDP to the endeavor, and were willing to spend a few thousand years making the trip. Spend a double-digit percentage of GDP, and we might be able to make the trip in a single lifetime.

          • (Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday December 13 2018, @10:52PM

            by Virindi (3484) on Thursday December 13 2018, @10:52PM (#774182)

            Spend a double-digit percentage of GDP, and we might be able to make the trip in a single lifetime.

            Maybe if you don't care about slowing down when you get there :D

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday December 08 2018, @11:48PM (4 children)

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 08 2018, @11:48PM (#771703) Homepage Journal

    The human brain is such a hive-mind, consisting of many cooperating neurons.

    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Sunday December 09 2018, @12:43AM (3 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Sunday December 09 2018, @12:43AM (#771717) Homepage Journal

      Yes that's a very good point. As is one hemisphere of a brain. As is a small part of that. Yet I feel that my consciousness is centered on one whole human brain. Not a particular half. Not distributed between two or three communicating brains. My neurons are all connected to other people's neurons via one another's nerves, muscles and senses and various other physical objects including my keyboard and the SoylentNews server. In that sense, everything that exchanges information with a brain is such a hive mind, or a part of one.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:27AM (2 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:27AM (#772698)

        >Yet I feel that my consciousness is centered on one whole human brain.

        We feel a lot of things, a great many of which are provably false.

        We have circumstantial evidence that that "feeling" of one-ness is a situational hallucination. For example, sever your corpus callosum, the bridge between the hemispheres of your brain, and you will still "feel" like a single individual - despite the fact that tests devised to interface with only one hemisphere will clearly show two distinct personalities and intellects.

        • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:52AM (1 child)

          by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:52AM (#772711) Homepage Journal

          you will still "feel" like a single individual

          Will I? I'd be very interested to read any accounts of this. Everything I had read on the subject suggested the opposite: each hemisphere effectively becoming its own individual. I can see how one hemisphere operating on its own could suffer the delusion that it is still an entire brain (I seem to remember reading it can function pretty well in this way) but I think you were suggesting something more profound than that.

          --
          If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:46AM

            by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:46AM (#772730)

            My understanding is that the individual(s?) involved generally have no sense of sharing a body with someone else, and in the course of their day to day life neither they nor people interacting with them are aware of there being two distinct individuals residing within the same body. You need to artificially isolate the your interactions so that you're only interacting with one "hemi-person" for the differences to become apparent.

            I might be mistaken though.

  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:05AM (1 child)

    by deimtee (3272) on Sunday December 09 2018, @04:05AM (#771791) Journal

    An african grey parrot is about as smart as a five year old child, with a much smaller brain. Mammals are nowhere near maximum intelligence per cubic inch.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday December 10 2018, @02:11PM

      by urza9814 (3954) on Monday December 10 2018, @02:11PM (#772364) Journal

      An african grey parrot is about as smart as a five year old child, with a much smaller brain. Mammals are nowhere near maximum intelligence per cubic inch.

      Right...and my brand new core i7 system can run all the same software as my old Commodore 64.

      The five year old brain is well proven to have the ability for further expansion and development. Does the parrot?

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:18AM

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @01:18AM (#772694)

    >There are physical limits to how much processing power and memory you can pack into a certain space without it overheating

    Yes there are, and neither humans and nor our computers are within even several orders of magnitude of those limits. We're hard up up against technological limits, not theoretical ones.