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Hawking warns Aliens will colonize earth


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1 hour ago, Drfeelgood11 said:

LMAO at post #66 Frank Merton...you speak of sentience??? You actually think and/or believe dinosaur's think subjectively? You must me mistaken. There is no rebuttal that would justify your last post

Sentience is the ability to experience the outside world as it comes in through our senses, as well as the interior world of internal sensations (needs, desires, emotions) and is distinguished from automata who do not experience but only measure and detect and respond either instinctively (if wired by means of natural selection) or progamatically (if in response to provided programming).

We do not "know" that animals are sentient, but they show every evidence of it and I think the burden of proving they are not is not likely to be achieved.  For that matter we do not "know" that other people than ourselves are sentient.

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7 minutes ago, Habitat said:

By those definitions dinosaurs would seem to qualify OK.

So would a cockroach for that matter. Sentient is often misused in science fiction as meaning an intelligent species like ourselves.

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4 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

So would a cockroach for that matter. Sentient is often misused in science fiction as meaning an intelligent species like ourselves.

Maybe confused with "sapient"

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Just now, Hammerclaw said:

So would a cockroach for that matter. Sentient is often misused in science fiction as meaning an intelligent species like ourselves.

The issue of whether or not a cockroach is sentient might be debatable.  As I understand modern work, sentience appears to be associated with the chemicals associated with our emotions, such as serotonin, and appears to have evolved along with mental pathways for these chemicals.  

Since these are found pretty much exclusively in mammals and birds, we presume it is limited to them, as well as probably the animals they are descended from (dinosaurs and "mammal-like" reptiles).

Other organisms (not that sentient organisms don't have instincts too, but they become more like drives and desires rather than wired behaviors) respond the way perhaps an automatic door responds to the environment, in entirely pre-wired ways, allowing for much less flexibility and no learning.

 

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1 hour ago, StarMountainKid said:

If consciousness and sentience is impossible in a synthetic or AI mind, I suppose this would be the result. A mind programmed to some task, no matter how complex that task may be, given sufficient intelligence. These kinds of creatures could be constructed to be sent to Earth to ready it for the arrival of the actual sentient species.

 

 

The selective advantage of sentience is pretty obvious -- the organism can learn and make adjustments to its behavior without waiting for natural selection to deal with it.  That it would require a certain level of brain complexity seems reasonable.

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Do some computers re-program themselves according to data acquired from sensors, but without any human intervention ?

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If aliens are as I envision them, mobile civilizations, Our system would make a poor target. It's in an out-of-the-way location and has no redeeming features  There are younger and perhaps older, even inhabited systems with much more raw materials to harvest. Unless they have invented the Double-Talk FTL drive of science fiction notoriety, they'll be moving at sub-light speeds and be visible for centuries on approach. Mobility gives them the ability to avoid or prepare for any natural disaster which being anchored, perpetually, to a star could cause their extinction.

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On 9/23/2016 at 1:13 AM, Habitat said:

Given there is no sign of any rampaging aliens here in the past, I would not be losing any sleep over these ideas.

No sign? How would there be we can't even agree definitively on where the dinosaurs went.

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28 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

The issue of whether or not a cockroach is sentient might be debatable.  As I understand modern work, sentience appears to be associated with the chemicals associated with our emotions, such as serotonin, and appears to have evolved along with mental pathways for these chemicals.  

Since these are found pretty much exclusively in mammals and birds, we presume it is limited to them, as well as probably the animals they are descended from (dinosaurs and "mammal-like" reptiles).

Other organisms (not that sentient organisms don't have instincts too, but they become more like drives and desires rather than wired behaviors) respond the way perhaps an automatic door responds to the environment, in entirely pre-wired ways, allowing for much less flexibility and no learning.

 

On observation, swatting at a cockroach and watching it dodge and weave, frantically, to avoid the blow leads me to believe it has rudimentary self-awareness or "sentience". In any case, it certainly seems aware of me!

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Let's hope they only come around on  65 million year intervals then.

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55 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

--he's a "Harvard man".

Provided the quotations to make things more accurate.  Because, being a "Harvard Man" does not mean any sort of intellectual superiority.

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1 minute ago, Thorvir Hrothgaard said:

Provided the quotations to make things more accurate.  Because, being a "Harvard Man" does not mean any sort of intellectual superiority.

Actually, it does. Harvard is quite discriminating when it comes to enrollment. It's not like your average State Agy or State Normal where they let you spend your first year taking remedial courses on stuff you should have learned in high school or prep school. It's really quite a feather in his cap that he was accepted.

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4 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Actually, it does. Harvard is quite discriminating when it comes to enrollment. It's not like your average State Agy or State Normal where they let you spend your first year taking remedial courses on stuff you should have learned in high school or prep school. It's really quite a feather in his cap that he was accepted.

Thanks...I needed the laugh.  It's been a LONG day...

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16 minutes ago, Nnicolette said:

No sign? How would there be we can't even agree definitively on where the dinosaurs went.

Volcanoes weakened a diminishing population, and there is a pretty big hole just south of Murica that sees to coincide with geological layers fairly accurately, and the last Dino fossils. After the big hole was made, no more Dinosaurs in the geological layers.

Seems legit. 

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1 minute ago, Thorvir Hrothgaard said:

Thanks...I needed the laugh.  It's been a LONG day...

Hopefully you were laughing at yourself. I disagree with Frank on a great many things--but still respect his intelligence.

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4 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Hopefully you were laughing at yourself. I disagree with Frank on a great many things--but still respect his intelligence.

I have to stand by you on that one, brilliant guy, very insightful, and as you say, not just anyone gets into Harvard, which also means he takes his study very seriously. 

These guys make the cut for a reason. And there is a reason places like Harvard and Caltech are World Renowned. They consistently produce some of the best minds we see today. 

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16 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Actually, it does. Harvard is quite discriminating when it comes to enrollment. It's not like your average State Agy or State Normal where they let you spend your first year taking remedial courses on stuff you should have learned in high school or prep school. It's really quite a feather in his cap that he was accepted.

Unfortunately I was not able to get a degree because I had to return home when the American (Vietnam) war got really going.  I don't think Harvard is any better than any of several dozen similar institutions around the world, but it is pretty good.

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14 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Volcanoes weakened a diminishing population, and there is a pretty big hole just south of Murica that sees to coincide with geological layers fairly accurately, and the last Dino fossils. After the big hole was made, no more Dinosaurs in the geological layers.

Seems legit. 

I'm among those who wholly buy the idea that a meteor did in the dinosaurs.  The diminishing population claim is disputed, and seems, I am told, to be an illusion brought on by selective effects caused by sudden disappearance.  Mammals did about as poorly, with about 95% of species biting the dust, opening a twenty-million or so year window for birds to prosper first.  

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10 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

I'm among those who wholly buy the idea that a meteor did in the dinosaurs.  The diminishing population claim is disputed, and seems, I am told, to be an illusion brought on by selective effects caused by sudden disappearance.  Mammals did about as poorly, with about 95% of species biting the dust, opening a twenty-million or so year window for birds to prosper first.  

I would say it "Finished them off" rather then suddenly sent them extinct. I agree on the birds, they had their reign on the earth too. But I do not know about anything affecting them other than the Deccan Traps sending them into decline, do you have any further information on that? I do not fully buy into shrinking habitats as they did adapt fairly well, Hadrosaurs lived for another Hundred Thousand years it has been claimed. 

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15 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

I would say it "Finished them off" rather then suddenly sent them extinct. I agree on the birds, they had their reign on the earth too. But I do not know about anything affecting them other than the Deccan Traps sending them into decline, do you have any further information on that? I do not fully buy into shrinking habitats as they did adapt fairly well, Hadrosaurs lived for another Hundred Thousand years it has been claimed. 

I have no idea and just assumed mammals came to dominate slowly, without some defined boundary.  The only thing I know about the Deccan eruptions is that they sped up India's movement toward Asia -- I no of no other effects, but this is way out of my expertise.

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The K-T Boundary is a layer of sediment found world-wide containing high levels of iridium, rare on Earth but common in asteroids. Below the layer are dinosaurs, above it they are absent from the fossil record. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction is an extreme example of what is call Punctuated Equilibrium in evolution.

Edited by Hammerclaw
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42 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

I have no idea and just assumed mammals came to dominate slowly, without some defined boundary.  The only thing I know about the Deccan eruptions is that they sped up India's movement toward Asia -- I no of no other effects, but this is way out of my expertise.

I was lucky to go aver all this as my son grew up, gave me a second look at Dinosaurs. The Deccan Traps seem to have had the populations already in decline, when the continents clashed, we got the volcanoes and rapidly changing environments, which had the Dinosaur population quite on the decline when the Meteor hit, finishing them off. 

Not sure what actually killed Hadrosaurs off. Evidence says they lived possibly up to 700,00 years after the impact. 

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5 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

If aliens are as I envision them, mobile civilizations, Our system would make a poor target. It's in an out-of-the-way location and has no redeeming features  There are younger and perhaps older, even inhabited systems with much more raw materials to harvest. Unless they have invented the Double-Talk FTL drive of science fiction notoriety, they'll be moving at sub-light speeds and be visible for centuries on approach. Mobility gives them the ability to avoid or prepare for any natural disaster which being anchored, perpetually, to a star could cause their extinction.

If you really want to put a sci-fi spin on it. Who's to say that they travel distance? What if they travel time? Where they can jump from one point in space to another in seconds. 

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1 hour ago, XenoFish said:

If you really want to put a sci-fi spin on it. Who's to say that they travel distance? What if they travel time? Where they can jump from one point in space to another in seconds. 

That's the Double-Talk Drive.  it makes no sense, just conveniently reduces the Universe to a manageable  human time scale.

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Quote

I find your analogy unconvincing.  There are too many differences.

I bet the Australian Aborigines and the North American Red Indians and the Africans all thought that if there are far more advanced human societies out there somewhere then they wouldn't be interested in landing on their shores - in their vast, hi-tech ships and with hi-tech weaponry and other technology far more advanced than anything they themselves have - because they wouldn't care about and not want to bother communicating with such a primitive people.

But then the British and the French and other empire-building Europeans DID turn up...

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