Underwater intelligence, evolution and technology.

[CasualKilla]

How would a organism with a equivalent intellect to human develop technology underwater. For example, on a planet with no land.

 

Would they be able to achieve human like technological advancement, or will they be limited by having to work underwater? I imagine an octopus like creature with very good object manipulation ability may stand the best chance, but underwater computers wtf?!?

 

Another question, imagine a species was 50% smarter than human on average, with the ability to communicate and collaborate the same or better than humans, but it had the body of say a dolphin, could they ever even develop computing or eventually leave their planet?

 

Sorry, wasn't sure which section to post this, but it seems biologist could give some good opinions about the ability and environment of these hypothetical creatures.

 

Edited April 1, 2015 by CasualKilla

[Acme]

I'd say that without fire there would be no 'human-like' technology, at least not along the development line that humans have followed. One might imagine the development of mechanical computers like the tinkertoy computer but even then it would have to be massive to match our current computers. They might have crabs in their programs rather than bugs.

[sunshaker]

With an higher enough intelligence i do not see to much of a problem, I expect there would be many underwater caverns with "dry land", these could be enlarged and perhaps even farmed, Seaweeds could be dried as a fuel source for fire. So as long as these species could move on land they could realistically do anything we could in time and even leave their world.

 

[Acme]

With an higher enough intelligence i do not see to much of a problem, I expect there would be many underwater caverns with "dry land", these could be enlarged and perhaps even farmed, Seaweeds could be dried as a fuel source for fire. So as long as these species could move on land they could realistically do anything we could in time and even leave their world.

Except that a fire in an underwater 'dry' cavern would in short order consume the oxygen and fill it with toxic exhaust gasses. Moreover, if the creatures could move on land than they would no longer be underwater creatures, and the OP specifies a water-world with no land. Edited April 1, 2015 by Acme

[sunshaker]

Except that a fire in an underwater 'dry' cavern would in short order consume the oxygen and fill it with toxic exhaust gasses. Moreover, if the creatures could move on land than they would no longer be underwater creatures, and the OP specifies a water-world with no land.

I expect with their high intelligence they would create chimneys and vents to solve this problem.

 

If there is a water world there will be "land" underwater(seabed), So an intelligent species would understand how to us this either by digging or natural caverns.

We are not an underwater species but we exploit the oceans, Does that mean we are no longer ground dwellers?

 

Intelligence allows you to adapt and use what is around you.

[CasualKilla]

With an higher enough intelligence i do not see to much of a problem, I expect there would be many underwater caverns with "dry land", these could be enlarged and perhaps even farmed, Seaweeds could be dried as a fuel source for fire. So as long as these species could move on land they could realistically do anything we could in time and even leave their world.

beautiful_underwater_caves_23.jpg

 

No, there is no dry land, that is the whole point

[Delta1212]

I expect with their high intelligence they would create chimneys and vents to solve this problem.

 

If there is a water world there will be "land" underwater(seabed), So an intelligent species would understand how to us this either by digging or natural caverns.

We are not an underwater species but we exploit the oceans, Does that mean we are no longer ground dwellers?

 

Intelligence allows you to adapt and use what is around you.

Chimneys... out of an underwater cave...

 

Do you perhaps see a flaw in this plan?

[Acme]

I expect with their high intelligence they would create chimneys and vents to solve this problem.

 

...

To have an 'air' filled underwater chamber, the air would have to be at a high enough pressure to keep the water out. Were you to vent an 'air' filled underwater chamber to the surface it would immediately flood. In the early days of diving suits there was no valve in the air hose and when the hose would break at or near the surface the water pressure at the divers depth would literally squoosh the diver into the helmet.*

 

A Brief History of Diving

...In extreme cases, the negative pressure caused by a severed air hose could actually suck flesh and soft tissues up into the pipe and much of the divers body into the helmet. Stories abound, in fact, among old-time commercial divers, where so much of a diver was sucked into his helmet that it was buried in place of a coffin. (And you thought an ear squeeze was painful.) ...

[sunshaker]

No, there is no dry land, that is the whole point

So it would not then be a planet,

 

So you must mean something like fluidic space species 8472, one of my favourite species http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_8472

 

using telepathy and bioships.

[swansont]

So it would not then be a planet,

 

 

Um, what? Why wouldn't it be a planet?

As to the OP, intelligence is probably a necessary but not sufficient condition. Part of humans' success is due to opposable thumbs and our manual dexterity. Our success may also be due to living in the right time. An intelligent dinosaur that was able to develop technology may have been stymied by the relative lack of coal and oil.

[Delta1212]

 

Um, what? Why wouldn't it be a planet?

As to the OP, intelligence is probably a necessary but not sufficient condition. Part of humans' success is due to opposable thumbs and our manual dexterity. Our success may also be due to living in the right time. An intelligent dinosaur that was able to develop technology may have been stymied by the relative lack of coal and oil.

 

Some level of fine motor control seems like it would be necessary, but fossil fuels probably simply make things easier rather than being strictly necessary. There are other possible sources of fuel that would work in a pinch, they just either aren't quite as easy to obtain, or they aren't as efficient to use.

[sunshaker]

 

Um, what? Why wouldn't it be a planet?

Because if there is a seabed an "intelligent species could create dry land, I know i could. unless the "planet" was formed just by ice and there is no "solid ground/seabed" a complete waterworld.

[Acme]

Because if there is a seabed an "intelligent species could create dry land, I know i could. unless the "planet" was formed just by ice and there is no "solid ground/seabed" a complete waterworld.

Just saying 'I know I could' does not satisfy the reasoned scientific explanation implied in the OP. Moreover, if there were such a thing as a planet composed of nothing but water, then if the core were solid ice so too would the outer 'layers'. Then too, there is no evidence or mechanism I have seen that posits a planet made entirely of water, but by all means enlighten us if you have such evidence.

[Delta1212]

Because if there is a seabed an "intelligent species could create dry land, I know i could. unless the "planet" was formed just by ice and there is no "solid ground/seabed" a complete waterworld.

 

How would you create dry land in the middle of the ocean, exactly?

 

And if you'd evolved to survive solely in the water (there being no dry land when you evolved for you to have adapted to), why would you want to build dry land?

[sunshaker]

Just saying 'I know I could' does not satisfy the reasoned scientific explanation implied in the OP. Moreover, if there were such a thing as a planet composed of nothing but water, then if the core were solid ice so too would the outer 'layers'. Then too, there is no evidence or mechanism I have seen that posits a planet made entirely of water, but by all means enlighten us if you have such evidence.

I have no "evidence", but if we put a block of "ice" in orbit around the sun it would become a globule of water, I don't know the physics but if there is enough ice "planet size" in a near enough orbit of a sun where all the ice melts becoming a planet size "globule of water",

[Acme]

Some level of fine motor control seems like it would be necessary, but fossil fuels probably simply make things easier rather than being strictly necessary. There are other possible sources of fuel that would work in a pinch, they just either aren't quite as easy to obtain, or they aren't as efficient to use.

Not just fine motor control, but digits I think. Arguably dolphins have fine motor control, but it's hard to imagine building any machines using flippers or even using tools held in the mouth.

 

Fire, again, just has a lot of problems. One might argue I suppose that fire could be developed at the surface on floating mats, but it would take a rather large area to support and dry enough fuel for even a small fire. We have a thread here on the topic of how humans came to control and make fire that may cast some insight into the problems water worldians would face. >>Early use of fire by hominds

[sunshaker]

 

How would you create dry land in the middle of the ocean, exactly?

 

And if you'd evolved to survive solely in the water (there being no dry land when you evolved for you to have adapted to), why would you want to build dry land?

tunneling (my plumbing skills), then filling tunnels with air.

 

why do we build on/in the ocean? Intelligent beings will find a use for everything around them

[Delta1212]

tunneling (my plumbing skills), then filling tunnels with air.

 

why do we build on/in the ocean? Intelligent beings will find a use for everything around them

 

Ok, but flipping things around, an aquatic species building dry land on a water world makes about as much sense as humans who have never seen ice deciding to build a glacier to live on. I suppose theoretically we could. And a species that lives solely on glaciers would probably think it a good idea, and be able to come up with a whole list of things that would be much harder or impossible to do if you weren't on a glacier.

 

But, never having seen a glacier before, being entirely unaware of any advantages that a glacier might provide in doing certain activities and being wholly unsuited to living on a glacier in any case, why would we build ourselves a glacier to inhabit? We could make far better use of the things around us doing other things than using them to build a glacier we don't see any particular need for.

[Danijel Gorupec]

I guess... if a creature doesn't have 'hands', it cannot build complex machines. And this is not (only) because it has no hands...

 

IMO, a creature can be smart in various, not necesarily connected ways. Say, it can be good at communications and/or it can be good at technical stuff. But in any case, evolution must constantly have almost immediate feedback as it creates a complex brain. To successfully make a techical brain, evolution must develop hands in parallel. There is no much chance that evolution will remain on the technical-brain course if no positive feedback (benefit to that creature) was seen for one million years.

 

So... my guess is that our dolphins will never be very good at working on a lathe.

[Acme]

I have no "evidence", but if we put a block of "ice" in orbit around the sun it would become a globule of water, I don't know the physics but if there is enough ice "planet size" in a near enough orbit of a sun where all the ice melts becoming a planet size "globule of water",

Knowing the physics is necessary. You posited a solid core of ice for your globule and the physics discounts that.

I guess... if a creature doesn't have 'hands', it cannot build complex machines. And this is not (only) because it has no hands...

 

IMO, a creature can be smart in various, not necesarily connected ways. Say, it can be good at communications and/or it can be good at technical stuff. But in any case, evolution must constantly have almost immediate feedback as it creates a complex brain. To successfully make a techical brain, evolution must develop hands in parallel. There is no much chance that evolution will remain on the technical-brain course if no positive feedback (benefit to that creature) was seen for one million years.

 

So... my guess is that our dolphins will never be very good at working on a lathe.

I more or less agree, however we might imagine highly intelligent octopi and so hands per se aren't necessary, let alone bones.

[swansont]

 

Some level of fine motor control seems like it would be necessary, but fossil fuels probably simply make things easier rather than being strictly necessary. There are other possible sources of fuel that would work in a pinch, they just either aren't quite as easy to obtain, or they aren't as efficient to use.

 

Do we have the industrial revolution without coal?

[Delta1212]

 

Do we have the industrial revolution without coal?

I thought about that. I think the answer is: maybe.

 

A lot of early industrialization used water power. The drawback there is that it limits the location of your machinery quite a bit. The advantage of coal is that it's (relatively) easily accessible, pretty efficient from an energy perspective and it doesn't tie you down to a being on a river.

 

That said, there are other things we can burn besides coal, they'd just be more expensive in one way or another. And we were already monkeying around with radioactivity not long after the Industrial Revolution was kicking into high gear. Nuclear power maybe have been seen as a more viable source of power sooner.

 

Ultimately, I think a lack of fossil fuels would result in a different course of development, possibly slower, and it would depend on the economics. It may not have happened in our world precisely when it did, and certainly not the way it did, without that cheap source of power, but that doesn't render it impossible given the right circumstances.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Delta1212

[swansont]

I thought about that. I think the answer is: maybe.

 

A lot of early industrialization used water power. The drawback there is that it limits the location of your machinery quite a bit. The advantage of coal is that it's (relatively) easily accessible, pretty efficient from an energy perspective and it doesn't tie you down to a being on a river.

We had that for hundreds of years beforehand, though. No real breakthrough without coal and later, oil. Portable high energy density fuel.

 

 

That said, there are other things we can burn besides coal, they'd just be more expensive in one way or another. And we were already monkeying around with radioactivity not long after the Industrial Revolution was kicking into high gear. Nuclear power maybe have been seen as a more viable source of power sooner.

Which means slower pace of advance, at best. We heavily deforested places even with coal, and would have hit the point past which growth was impossible because there would not be enough sustainable resources. Would trains travel have been viable without coal? And the "tinkering" with radioactivity was well into the revolution, and even then it was decades more before we generated power from it. All of that would have been slower without fossil fuels, since we would not have had as much collective time to devote to science — more people laboring means fewer people following other pursuits.

 

 

Ultimately, I think a lack of fossil fuels would result in a different course of development, possibly slower, and it would depend on the economics. It may not have happened in our world precisely when it did, and certainly not the way it did, without that cheap source of power, but that doesn't render it impossible given the right circumstances.

 

The real question, I think, is would solar and wind have come along fast enough to support the population growth had medicine advanced the way it did, or would we have collapsed.

[Delta1212]

I'm not saying it wouldn't have been slower. I'm quite sure that fossil fuels allowed things to happen much faster than they would have otherwise. There's just a difference between slower and impossible.

[CasualKilla]

Lets setup a solid backstory for these creatures. They are about 3m long and resemble dolphins (call them space dolphins), but they do not breath air. They also have very good communication adaption, but mainly use sight to hunt. They do not have much is the way of disposable thumbs, and are only really able to manipulate objects with their mouths. But, these creatures are highly, highly intelligent, perhaps 2 to 3 times the IQ of a human. This was the result of million of years of evolution hunting a life-form resembling shrimp, but able to move with extreme speeds and change direction rapidly. These shrimp travel in packs and when disturbed start move as a group. The movement of the group often resembles beautiful patterns. The space dolphins study the patterns and using there massive intellects are able to predict the movement of the shrimp to a certain degree of accuracy. naturally, the space dolphins who could better predict these movements fared much better, and the shrimp who could move with increasing complex patterns survived longer. Hence the cycle continued until the space dolphins intellect raised to a level where they essential perceive the world as numbers, vectors and calculations. Not only can they peer into the future like humans, they intellectually place probabilities on future events and act accordingly. Like humans, they are fiercely protective and loving of their young and their own communities, this is because space dolphins working together are much better at hunting. Their huge intellect makes them very inquisitive of the universe, but due to their tendency to place probabilities on all events, they never develop any religious ideas. They become aware they they have become much more effective at hunting their prey than their prey is at escaping, and thus restrict hunting in certain areas as needed by developing a government. They also actively work to enhance the environment of their prey so they can breed faster sparking scientific study. They reach a state where they no longer have to compete for survival, and there inherent intellectual makeup leads them to endlessly study the world to satisfy their unquenchable curiosity.

 

Will these poor space dolphins will forever be trapped in there useless bodies and watery prisons. Will they overcome the seeming necessity for opposable appendages and make due with their mouths? Will there technology reach saturation due to the limiting environment of watery world? Or will their amazing intelligence and immunity from human vices of superstition lead them into the cosmos where they will save earth by destroying the cancer that is the human race #nohippie?

Edited April 2, 2015 by CasualKilla