Underwater intelligence, evolution and technology.

[Acme]

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. ...

I think you mean opposable thumbs, not disposable.

Anyway, sharks have had millions of years to evolve and they hunt pretty much as your space dolphins do, and yet today they are not even close to human intelligence. In terms of judging/comparing human intelligence with any other animal, we have no peers when it comes to technology and yet many animals have been around longer than we. Exactly why humans evolved high intelligence is a complex affair and still a topic of much debate. It may be that there is no imperative to high intelligence and we are simply flukes of the Universe.

.

Space dolphinado?

[CasualKilla]

I think you mean opposable thumbs, not disposable.

Anyway, sharks have had millions of years to evolve and they hunt pretty much as your space dolphins do, and yet today they are not even close to human intelligence. In terms of judging/comparing human intelligence with any other animal, we have no peers when it comes to technology and yet many animals have been around longer than we. Exactly why humans evolved high intelligence is a complex affair and still a topic of much debate. It may be that there is no imperative to high intelligence and we are simply flukes of the Universe.

.

Space dolphinado?

The space shrimp move in seemingly random pattern, but the patterns actually represent complex vector functions, this is what drove the space dolphins to develop such amazing intellect (2 to 3 times human IQ levels) to predict space shrimp movement patterns.

Edited April 2, 2015 by CasualKilla

[Acme]

The space shrimp move in seemingly random pattern, but the patterns actually represent complex vector functions, this is what drove the space dolphins to develop such amazing intellect (2 to 3 times human IQ levels) to predict space shrimp movement patterns.

OK, but how is that movement any different than our shark's prey? Or let's take whales as an example as some species hunt krill and whales are closely related to dolphins. Some of these whales recognize the random patterns of schools of krill and working together the whales make curtains of bubbles to herd the krill while other individuals swim upward through the corralled mass and eat them. This exhibits intelligence and cooperation, and yet whales do not build machines or write books.

 

I suppose if you are just writing a sci-fi story you can make it be anything you want.

[swansont]

Lets setup a solid backstory for these creatures. They are about 3m long and resemble dolphins (call them space dolphins)

 

Why are we in space all of the sudden, and why would they not use sonar?

[Delta1212]

The space shrimp move in seemingly random pattern, but the patterns actually represent complex vector functions, this is what drove the space dolphins to develop such amazing intellect (2 to 3 times human IQ levels) to predict space shrimp movement patterns.

I think you may be underestimating the types of circumstances that make intelligence really worth it.

 

You don't need generalized intelligence to perform one specific complex task. A squirrel doesn't need to be able to understand calculus to judge the parabolic arcs involved in jumping between tree branches.

 

You need generalized intelligence when life consistently involves a variety of complex tasks that may not be entirely consistent from one generation to the next. You won't evolve the ability to do complex problem-solving unless complex-problem solving is a survival trait.

 

If the problem is very specific and never changes, you can develop and instinct for the solution and pass down the hard wired solution. You don't need to evolve the ability to keep working out the same answer anew every generation. Even teaching the answer is wasteful if you can just hardcore the behavior, which is entirely possible if the same type of behavior is always going to be successful.

 

You need a changing environment with various potential food sources that require very different, and non-trivial, behaviors to obtain and with unpredictable access to any specific source of food at any given time.

 

Then you might start seeing more generalized intelligence show up.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Delta1212

[StringJunky]

...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.

I think the population growth was a consequence of increasing urbanisation (concentration of populations) brought on by the demands and benfits of steam-powered industry.

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.

Yes, I think it was necessary. Show me an agriculturally-based populous city

Edited April 2, 2015 by StringJunky

[Delta1212]

I think the population growth was a consequence of increasing urbanisation (concentration of populations) brought on by the demands and benfits of steam-powered industry.

 

Yes, I think it was necessary. Show me an agriculturally-based populous city

That seems like a bit of a non-sequitur, since we were talking about whether industrialization was possible without coal, rather than whether urbanization was possible without industrialization.

[swansont]

I think the population growth was a consequence of increasing urbanisation (concentration of populations) brought on by the demands and benfits of steam-powered industry.

 

Initially, absolutely. Fewer people needed to work the farms while agricultural output increased allowed for that. I think that would have happened to some extent with wood as a fuel source. I was thinking of the more recent inflection point in the last century and a half. If someone had discovered penicillin and a few other drugs, along with germ theory, I suspect the resulting increase in potential longevity would have resulted in mass starvation and all of the problems that would engender.

 

Also, even if wood had gotten us to the point where we had electricity, how far could we go on hydro, which is ~15% of our current electrical generation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Production

That seems like a bit of a non-sequitur, since we were talking about whether industrialization was possible without coal, rather than whether urbanization was possible without industrialization.

 

But urbanization allows for more rapid technology advances. Not much basic research is done while everybody is farming.

[Delta1212]

 

Initially, absolutely. Fewer people needed to work the farms while agricultural output increased allowed for that. I think that would have happened to some extent with wood as a fuel source. I was thinking of the more recent inflection point in the last century and a half. If someone had discovered penicillin and a few other drugs, along with germ theory, I suspect the resulting increase in potential longevity would have resulted in mass starvation and all of the problems that would engender.

 

Also, even if wood had gotten us to the point where we had electricity, how far could we go on hydro, which is ~15% of our current electrical generation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation#Production

 

 

But urbanization allows for more rapid technology advances. Not much basic research is done while everybody is farming.

Which I don't disagree with. Industrialization allows for more efficient, centralized production, which fuels urbanization, which further fuels industrialization, and so forth. The question is whether that is possible to kick off without fossil fuels to feed the fire, though. Not whether an agrarian society is compatible with industrialization or a large urban population in the absence of industrialization.

[StringJunky]

I just Googled 'the importance of coal to the industrial revolution' and it would seem that problems of mining coal, i.e. flooding, urgently necessitated a mechanical solution to the problem and the Newcomen engine was born with the Watt version following after. It could be said that, without coal in England, the industrial revolution could have been much later and also somewhere else that did have coal. The commercial steam engine was developed out of the desire to solve a particular problem, which was to help extract a fuel with a high energy-density. A classic case of necessity being the mother of invention. Whilst we were still burning wood the need, or commercial incentive, for steam engines wasn't there.

Edited April 3, 2015 by StringJunky

[Moontanman]

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",

 

Sunshaker, you do realize a planet could lack dry land and still not be a "globule" of water.. right? If you add enough water to the earth all dry land would be covered and we would still have our planet under the water.

 

 

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.

 

 

I'm not sure i understand, coal and oil were both created long before there were dinosaurs.

I see no way an underwater species, like an octopus, could acquire technology beyond the stone age, without fire I think it would be a no go situation...

 

Metals like native gold or silver might occur and maybe even batteries made up of them but using electricity underwater would seem to be self defeating at best.

 

Possibly there are other routes to technology I cannot think of but generating electricity might be the first step in that direction...

[CasualKilla]

I am appalled at the lack of imagination in this forum, just because they cannot progress the same way humans did, does not mean they cannot progress. With 2 to 3 times human intelligence and no religious shackles, they should atleast make some form of progress every say 100 to 1000 years, surly they will be able to space faring technology eventually. There is no time limit here wtf,

[imatfaal]

I am appalled at the lack of imagination in this forum, just because they cannot progress the same way humans did, does not mean they cannot progress. With 2 to 3 times human intelligence and no religious shackles, they should atleast make some form of progress every say 100 to 1000 years, surly they will be able to space faring technology eventually. There is no time limit here wtf,

 

The lack of imagination is yours. When extrapolating from a data set of one any outcome is possible - yet you seem determined that the progress of alien cultures must mimic our own.

 

When we have no comparison we perforce guess -

 

Maybe we as humanity are at the tiniest point on the spectrum of acquisitive/inquisitive/extrovert <---> self-sufficient/accepting/introvert that allows for the technology of space travel without self-immolation through nuclear war; remember we were a whisker away from it when the other guy just blinked.

 

Maybe there is a war-like elder species out there that exterminates every race twenty seconds after they step foot on another plant.

 

Maybe - by some fluke of multi-body dynamics with out nice outer gas giants and stupidly big moon - we alone are safe from bombardment by dust/meteors/comets and nowhere else has got beyond single cells before being wiped clean - autoclaved by heavenly fire.

 

Maybe, maybe, maybe... it is hubris to assume we know anything at present about the biology, culture, imagination, wants, desires etc of a non-earthbound species.

[swansont]

I'm not sure i understand, coal and oil were both created long before there were dinosaurs.

 

It's somewhat of a metaphor. There wouldn't be as much of it for an animal who developed intelligence earlier in our history. So, to be more accurate, substitute an intelligent hypothetical paleozoic creature.

I am appalled at the lack of imagination in this forum

 

Balance that with blissful ignorance of the issues that matter.

[sunshaker]

 

Sunshaker, you do realize a planet could lack dry land and still not be a "globule" of water.. right? If you add enough water to the earth all dry land would be covered and we would still have our planet under the water.

 

 

It is what i said, but there would still be "land" under the ocean, which would allow a species to mine, also most likely underwater volcanoes/hot vents.

which in time would allow them to do almost anything we could.

 

I know with earth our land feeds the ocean with minerals for life, how would this relate to a planet with no land to feed the ocean these life giving minerals?

 

even with a seabed an intelligent species would then with a little skill of plumbing could create fish farms to feed themselves allowing more time to be spent working on other projects.

 

Perhaps they would see the odd meteorite strike their ocean, which would lead them along the lines that you need these solids to leave their watery world.

 

So unless they do go down a very different evolutionary route telepathy/esp or some advanced bio engineering of technology, mining would be the way to go(seabed).

 

But i expect a seaworld to have flying lifeforms which in time would speed more time in the air than the water, perhaps feeding straight from the sun,

So this intelligent species would understand flight/solar energy/ and the advantages of leaving the ocean.(first steps towards space travel)

[Delta1212]

I just Googled 'the importance of coal to the industrial revolution' and it would seem that problems of mining coal, i.e. flooding, urgently necessitated a mechanical solution to the problem and the Newcomen engine was born with the Watt version following after. It could be said that, without coal in England, the industrial revolution could have been much later and also somewhere else that did have coal. The commercial steam engine was developed out of the desire to solve a particular problem, which was to help extract a fuel with a high energy-density. A classic case of necessity being the mother of invention. Whilst we were still burning wood the need, or commercial incentive, for steam engines wasn't there.

Well, it's not exactly the mother of invention in this particular case. I can't tell whether this helps my point or hurts it, but the steam engine was invented well before it was applied to mining operations. It just wasn't really used for anything other than saying "Oh, look what I can do with steam! Isn't that interesting?" until it found a commercial use in pumping mines, which is when it really became popular.

 

So the steam engine would certainly have been invented without coal. It was, several times. It's just a matter of whether someone would have found a useful enough application for it that people would become familiarized with what it could do and look for other uses if there wasn't a massive coal mining operation that could use an automatic pump like that underway.

 

I can certainly think of other uses, but the fact that the steam engine had been known for quite a long time before being applied to that particular problem and taking off as a commercial product, well again, I'm not sure whether that helps my case that we could have had industrialization without coal (steam power would definitely have been invented anyway), or hurts it (but nobody thought to do anything with it prior to having those mining operations).

 

Although I suppose anyplace with major mining operations and a relatively high water table probably could have used something like that, regardless of what was being mined.

[CasualKilla]

 

The lack of imagination is yours. When extrapolating from a data set of one any outcome is possible - yet you seem determined that the progress of alien cultures must mimic our own.

 

 

That is completely untrue. Everything i said is contrary to that. Perhaps try reading my posts in full if you want to comment on my intentions.

[Moontanman]

 

It's somewhat of a metaphor. There wouldn't be as much of it for an animal who developed intelligence earlier in our history. So, to be more accurate, substitute an intelligent hypothetical paleozoic creature.

 

Since coal was formed 300 million years ago I think the metaphor is somewhat strained...

 

http://www.fe.doe.gov/education/energylessons/coal/gen_howformed.html

[swansont]

 

Since coal was formed 300 million years ago I think the metaphor is somewhat strained...

 

http://www.fe.doe.gov/education/energylessons/coal/gen_howformed.html

 

Yes, well that's what happens when you take them literally.

[CharonY]

Just wondering, wouldn't this be better suited for the speculations forum?

[overtone]

Sea creatures on Earth have a ready source of high temperature energy, and complex chemistry, in the vast networks of hydrothermal vents. These are generally more approachable and potentially useful than volcanic eruptions on earth.