Given complex vertebrates what is the likelihood of abstract intelligence
Offline Let's start with a biological system that already has vertebrates. This gives us a very powerful starting point for evolution to work from. We have had complex vertebrates for at least 250 millions or so. If you look at the evolutionary history it is pretty amazing that we are the only intelligent species to arise. This would seem to have implications for the probability of intelligent life forming. The raw material for intelligence has been available for a very, very long time yet we only recently developed abstract thought. Put another way, you can look at the evolutionary record as a sort of sample space or a set of trials. We see no evidence for abstract thought until us. The fact that we have only recently formed intelligent life is additional evidence for how unlikely it is to happen.
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Bwah? How the hell did you get that?
Evolution has a random component. That component is constrained both in available genotype, and in resulting phenotype. This causes this "randomness" to be highly selective. Further, only incremental changes happen. There's no "poof" of magic randomness that completely changes one species into another.
What I'm arguing against is your portrayal of evolution as purely random. Because that's just plain wrong.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Let's role with your example. The characteristics that were already fixed by a prior evolutionary "choice" (because they were beneficial as you pointed out) still had a random component when they were chosen. Each species is based on a previous species. This is one of the reasons why I refer to the end result as a joint probability(a complex one indeed), but still in the end it can be viewed as a random variable.
The only thing evolution guarantees is that it will converge on a species that, at the moment and in the given environment, will be better adapted to survive. This does not guarantee "smarter".
No it doesn't. The concept of a flat Earth still exists.
You need to reference the actual content of the concept and the current status of the concept among biologists to base a serious argument on it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Ok. Excuse me then. If you reread my words I never argued that evolution was purely random. It has a random component that adds uncertainty to the outcome of what species will fill a niche. This allows us to treat species as randomly drawn values.
I'm not talking about general concepts. We are talking about the specific concept of species. I did not stop at just stating the concept exists. I said the fact that it does exist means that biologists have agreed on the concept (The specific concept of species). I can base a serious argument on just the fact that biologists agree the concept exists because the exact demarcation of a species is easily smoothed out in the "sampling". Some fuzzy boundaries are irrelevant - we can go to genus and get the same result if we want let alone some fuzzy boundaries around the definition of species. It is a red herring.
As pointed out above by neptewn Neanderthals beat us by several thousand years. Were it not for the extremely high possibility that our species, being as seriously agressive as we are, annihilated Neanderthal there would actually have been two species of similar or same levels of intelligence. At some point in our history we were where animals such as Bonobos, Chimps, Dolphins, Crows, etc. are at now. These animals even show evidence or have self-awareness, something that for centuries we have used to distinguish ourselves from all other species.
Who knows, in a nother couple million years, assuming we haven't destroyed this planet by then, Chimps might be found in our universities as tenured professors instead of experimental subjects. You cannot dismiss the possibility of this happening anymore than I, a committed atheist, can say with absolute certainty that there is no guiding force or metaphysical being out there somewhere. We just happened to have rolled the dice more favorably than other species.
If you're arguing for archeoligical evidence, there is archeological evidence for many species through the mellenia. Dinos built nests which survived as fossil sites. Great Apes build nesting sites, etc.
"Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." Thomas Jefferson
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I think I know what you mean to say in " the fact that it does exist means that biologists have agreed on the concept", but that statement by itself is still logically invalid as I pointed out. You really need to be more logically coherent here. You perhaps should have used "is generally accepted" rather than "exists", but that would make the statement circular, and still superfluous at best.
And my criticism is still equally valid for specific or general concepts.
It is not a red herring - you should be referring to something like genetic distance if you want to be more precise. There will inevitably be fuzziness in the data, but that does not excuse fuzziness in the logic as you have displayed here.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Communication requires comprehension, too.
Yes, it is. The point , which I stated multiple times, is that species precision was not needed in this case. This discussion was not about phenetics.
I hate coming in late and seeing 50+ responses. *sigh*
Perhaps. There is little to indicate that intelligence requires a backbone, seeing as how we only have one sample that we all agree (mostly) on to work with. There is only information to indicate that life on Earth is more likely to develop intelligence with vertebrae than without. So I can't agree unreservedly.
You are making the assumption that we are the only intelligent species to exist on Earth. We do not know this is true. The evidence suggests otherwise (apes, dolphins, neanderthals, etc).
Due to the nature of entropy and the powerful capability of time to erase much of the past, the one thing about intelligence on Earth that we can say for certain is that humanity is the only race to detonate an atomic/nuclear bomb(which doesn't actually suggest intelligence, other than in the design of the bomb itself). There is the possibility that other life forms acheived a similar level of intellect as humanity, but were wiped out before they could attain our level of technological advancement.
If you look at it from the other point of view, it is simply amazing that we've been on top as long as we have, and that any species on Earth is capable of altering their environment as we are capable of doing.
Here you are presupposing that intelligence is a goal, or a necessity, or desirable, or something along those lines. Evolution doesn't work that way. Intelligence simply exists, it is not the product of a design. Our current intellect and stored knowledge owes to the fact that in order to have a large and successful agriculture, a species needs a way of keeping records and communicating. The day we started farming animals and plants was the day we started on the path to technological advancement such as we see around us. It was evolutionary pressures put on an activity that we decided to be active in that allowed us to get where we are. It didn't just happen one day. It's been a long process lasting somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 years. Only in the last 5000 of those years have we actually begun a path of technological advancement. And it hasn't been a solid progression. There have been long periods of backpeddling.
Editted to clarify a line that could be taken out of context.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Says you!
False.
Chimps can add and subtract integers, represented as numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Moreover, Chimps understand the concept of, and the number ZERO.
Even the ancient Greeks did NOT have a numerical system, nor mathematical system which accounted for, and showed that they understood "0", as a number.
Refer to PBS. Nova Series on Intelligence in Chimps. Soz. I've got no link, and I suspect it would take more than a day to locate that particular show, even if I tried.
You can choose to believe what I say, as to what the episode
demonstrated, or not.
Moreover, behavioral studies of Chimps have demonstrated an understand of certain particulars as to what a person, does NOT know, that they DO know. (Also, the same episode of the Nova show I spoke of).
BTW. The existence of our species, in the scale of things...
when considering the universe, as far as we currently know, is at least 13 billion years old, is about a long as blinking your eyes. (As you said.) That does not attest to anything, except that we are a recent appearance. Concluding that life forms as intelligent as ourselves is rare, as an extrapolation of a single occurance of our own species is NOT a reliable statistic, as your basis for comparison is only a single ocurrance.
Lastly, PLEASE STOP referring to our own species as the only sign of intelligent life. That's not just silly, but flatly untrue. (I don't think a reference is even needed for that claim.)
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitron.
Seriously though, we need a third comment button option - Comment FAIL! in response to previous post.
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
I disagree.
Yep, even by that definition, I disagree. Often where we win in complexity we lose in effectiveness, on balance we're pretty average "smart", I reckon. Sure, we build complex systems, but we're also wont to indulge them to a fault.
Taking effective adaptation to mean an adaptation which possesses some striking influence over the state of our existence. Who says our understanding of the universe is supreme and thus our learning adaptations "effective"?
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I answered this objection multiple times in this thread.
I answered this objection in this thread.
The closeness of the chimp lineage strengthens my point.
Baby, don't be that way!
Okay, kidding aside, we already had this conversation: we're the smartest because we get to define what "smart" means, and it turns out it's based on us. So definitionally, we're the smartest.
See, now you're just changing the definition of "smart" from "monstrously self-indulgent, self-destructive, self-congratulatory and overly-complex" to "effective". Why do you have to challenge centuries of tradition like that? Next you'll be insisting that women should get to vote!
Uh, we do. That's why we're the smartest: we can take any argument and flip it around so it's in our favour. Rabidly rationalizing theologists are, therefore, my evidence for our supreme intelligence.
...
C'mon, don't tell me you didn't like that one. That was revenge for your grammar offenses.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
But you didn't refute it once. So it still stands, and is a gaping hole in your argument.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
There was nothing to refute. As I stated Neanderthals were from the genus Homo, and the difference in degree and kind in the others was drastic and clearly past the cut off I indicated.
Selective arguing based on definitions that only exist to make our understanding of biology easier to comprehend. I'm sure that if neanderthals weren't in the same genus you would have said that they were in the same family or perhaps you'd regress as far as domain if you had to. But guess what? They aren't the same SPECIES, so your argument is irrelevant, and refuted.
And your arguments regarding the others are equally flawed. Those arguments would apply to humanity 10,000 years ago, yet we have not changed enough in the time period to be classified as a new species.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Y'know what's cool?
The Wyatt Earp effect.
They've got names for everything.
No, it is not based on an arbitrary distinction. You should more fully read the thread. The basis was clearly stated. I required archaeological evidence of the intelligence. Neanderthals have left such evidence. No other species has other then the genus Homo.
I suspect you never understood the argument. Can you restate it?
The more closely related a set of species are the more likely they are to have related intelligence levels. We have had strong robust and very long vertebrate lines for 10s of millions of years prior to the genus Homo. None of these blossomed into intelligence even remotely close to our level. The genus Homo did. Once the genus showed this capability it makes perfect sense others in the genus would build on this intelligence. The conditions were set to bolster the conditional probability. The probability argument I'm making is not weakened by closely related species displaying related phenotypes. It is strengthened by the fact that no other vertebrate line has shown any intelligence to the degree we do.
You are unclear. We obviously have archaeological evidence for high intelligence predating 8,000 BC.
Oh that's rich, he blind-sides me with his holy moose voodoo for the grammatical super-pwn, salts it with some mixture of hyperbolic and pretentious conversational French, then comes around with his mint choc-chip ice-cream and his diamond halo and wants to play nice all of a sudden.
Well, yeah, but this particular permutation hadn't gotten any personal attention yet, so it was asking for it.
Now why would I do that? We've changed our minds - a womans prerogative* - we'd much rather be voted for these days, anyway.
* nah.. couldn't bring myself to misspell it, have to draw the line somewhere
Oh... well in that case... as you were.
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Clay, you may wish to read this fine article by Todangst.
Frankly, if our present brains are the best your deity could do, I'm not terribly impressed. If he is responsible for magical conjuring us into being, why opt for biological brains & bodies at all? Why not make us intangible, or perhaps out of some highly elastic substance? Why give us organs to thnk with that can get damaged, contract diseases, wear down over time, etc?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I read it. It is certainly not original.
Starting a strawman, very uncreativly I might add, does not address my claim in this thread. Do you have any comments on my conjecture?
To be quite frank OrdinaryClay, I'm having trouble pinning down what your conjecture actually is other than you think life is unlikely to form in your opinion. You don't really say anything in the original OP to convince me that this is true.
Why is this amazing? Are you suggesting that intelligence - as indicated by your measure of civilisation - is something that should naturally come from a complex vertebrate system, thus its lack of appearance until now is baffling? If so i'd like to know under what evidence you make that claim? What is it about complex vertebrates that requires or implies that "civilized" intelligence should form?
A very, very long time on who's scale? The problem with a lot of this is the perception of chance. 250 million years (if we accept your number) is what my dad would call "a f**king donkey's age" and seems incredibly long to us. That 250 million years is just under 2% the age of the universe. So it didn't really take that long for intelligence to arrive after complex vertebrates in the grand scheme of things.
Which is shockingly poor logic. You've suggested a series of trials, a nice summation, and have suggested that the lack of evidence of "intelligence" coming from these trials proves that it is unlikely. I'm sorry to jump on teh intarwebs!!1 bandwagon, but... Fail!
The fact that we don't have wings isn't because it's unlikely, it's because there was no selective pressure for us to have (and keep) wings during our "trials". The fact that dogs aren't naturally fluorescent isn't because it's unlikely, it's because - you've guessed it - there was no selective pressure during the "trials" for ancestral dogs to have this trait.
Based on your own argument, the fact that your very specific measure of abstract intelligence took 250 million years to develop doesn't indicate that it's unlikely, it simply means that there was no selective pressure for "intelligence" during that period. Chance and probability doesn't even enter into it.
M
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
Give your definition of intelligence.
What is the selective pressure that produces intelligence? Please list your examples of convergent evolution of intelligence?
Are we fighting? This thread just got way better!
I love foreign language pretentiousness. In North America, speaking a foreign language is more of a party trick than an actual skill.
Pretentiousness is also incontrovertible proof of man's superior intelligence. I mean, obviously ... natürlich ... bien sûr ... certo.
The Incontrovertible Evidence
Haha! But seriously, if we're arrogant enough, we're really smart, right? Am I right or am I right?
Wait wait wait ... if we're jerks more, that means we're the most intelligent. Yeah. That's practically a QED right there.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I don't see why I should define intelligence. Other people have tried and you've been very quick to tell them that you're working on an intelligence that leaves evidence such as archaeological remains. However, for the sake of civility, I take intelligence to be the ability to reason, solve problems, use language and, perhaps, develop complex thought (such as a theory of mind).
Convergent evolution? I hope you're using the correct definiton - that of the development of similar traits in populations that are separate from one another. You've already been given enough examples in this thread of intelligent behaviours being displayed by a number of animals. Everything from crows to primates have been shown to use tools. Squirrels, bears, cats, dogs and other animals (check YouTube) have shown enough intelligence to determine how a mechanical apparatus works and how it can be defeated in order to find food.
So we have reason and problem solving.
Chimps and other primates have been shown to display empathy, and press a button to deliver food to others of their species when it serves them no advantage whatsoever. Part of the theory of mind dictates essentially putting ourselves into another object. A key trait of empathy.
So we have the beginnings of what we regard as complex thought.
All of the above have language. Do you agree or disagree that these are intelligent behaviours? Or are you harbouring s "special intelligence" for humans? Such as the ability to form civilizations?
I will, as a good scientist, admit I made a mistake in my flippant use of the phrase "selective pressure". I didn't mean to imply that pressure produces intelligence. When intelligent traits arise, if they are beneficial (and they most certainly are), they will be selected for and thrive in the population.
As discussed above, many, many animals show intelligent characteristics. Some subsequent mutations have given us an advantage in this department. Nigel has already pointed out that good old thumbs allowed us to develop better tools than the other animals. Better tools = higher success = more humans = more people making tools. The HAR sequences, which seem to be associated with neurological development and are present in 'historic' forms in other animals, would also seem to contribute to our success.
So... intelligent behaviour such as reason, problem solving and the beginnings of complex thought, can be seen in animals from all over the world. If these traits allow the animals to survive then they will be advantageous to that animal and selected for and carry on through descendants. Throw in a couple of genetic mutations along the way which "increase" intelligence - which increases benefit over other intelligent species - and you have us. This is not remarkable in a system which starts with complex vertebrates.
I've answered your question. I would appreciate it if you extended me the same courtesy, although I suspect your original statement was based on the assumption an intelligent species is one capable of leaving archaeological evidence.
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
Not now, Dear, we're in company.
So now it's... good?
It's the past time of self-indulgent, overly-complex, self-congratulatory species everywhere; exaggeratedly poor pronunciation is a sure sign of mastery.
... jiu... svakako... han.
Kiwi comedy!- funnier than Ray Comforts banana!
Yeah, that was pretty hilarious and where intellect is the measure of conceit, entertainment value is the only kind of hard evidence.
You must be, you're clearly smart.
So, the probability, given complex vertebrates, and that the raw material for arrogance has been available for a very, very long time yet we only recently developed abstract superciliousness...
Pr(Egoism|Backbone) = {Pr(Backbone|Ego)Pr(Ego)}/Pr(Backbone)
And since pretentious, supercilious foreign language manglers are inherently spineless (see GCH forum): Pr(Egoism|Backbone) = {0xPr(Ego)}/Pr(Backbone) = 0
The OP is right! It's a miracle we're here!
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What? Eloise and Will fighting like a married couple?
Srsly?
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
As an addition to the discussion, here are some monkeys sharing and exhibiting a sense of 'fair play'
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
I'll answer your question, but let's take this in two steps. Let's ignore the definition of intelligence for the moment. Don't worry we will get to this right after we establish the fundamentals.
Do you understand why I'm saying that speciation is equivalent to a random trial? I assume you understand the random underpinnings of evolution, yes I know that selective pressure produces the end result, but as I explained earlier in this thread there is randomness which allows us to treat speciation as a random variable. Do you see what I'm saying here?
I understand what you're saying, but I don't accept your premise because of two things (the second of which ignores the first):
The terms species and the idea of speciation are man-made concepts. Their description and focal area bear absolutely no impact on the mechanism or probabilities of natural selection and evolution. A "mutation" of any kind is just as likely to create a "new" species as it is not.
If we ignore the first statement and assume that recognised species are non-subjective markers we still have a problem. Speciation is not necessarily the result of one event. We didn't become different from chimpanzees because of the change in one DNA sequence. We differ because of a large number of changes that built up over time. The process of mutation may be random but natural selection, as we all know, is the non-random survival of randomly varying individuals. Therefore, speciation is not a random variable.
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
I'm willing to accept that you're just as
pretentioussmart as I am.Uh, I believe you mean conceit is the measure of intellect. The more pretension, conceit and arrogance, the more intelligence. Clearly.
What what what? You know as well as I do that conditional probability would only apply if P(backbone) > 0 regardless! Talk about cheating!
You were looking for a different line of reasoning:
Given that the most arrogant, pretentious, and self-involved creature in existence is a human (me), and given that I am also the smartest, it stands to reason that the more like me you are, the smarter you are. Therefore, it's a miracle that I'm here.
It's practically axiomatic.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Not a smart thing to do...
I held back on editing that error as a test of who's the more
self-absorbedintelligent of us two. Now that I've said that, clearly, I am the one.Only if they are statistically independent of each other but here we have:Pr(Backbone|Egoism) given by [Pr(BackboneANDEgoism)]/Pr(Egoism) where Backbone and Egoism are mutually exclusive.
The fact that I've conflated terms all over the place OTOH ... fair game for anyone who actually thinks I mean to be taken seriously.
I think you mean given that therefore you are the smartest.... Oh wait... did I just fall into my own trap?
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Both already answered. Your arguments are exactly what has already been argued by others in this same thread. At least you could quote my answers and argue against my answers instead of just repeating the arguments.
My argument does not require a hard distinction between species.
You don't understand a random variable. I've explained in my preceding posts.
My bad if I've missed something. I'll read back over this and get back to you...
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
I'm a big enough man to admit when I was wrong, so my apologies for somehow skipping segments of your discussion with Nigel and Bob. At this point I will hold my hand up and say I don't know enough about statistics to make any comment on definitions of "random variables" so I'll humbly step away from this one...
I will make a couple of other comments. You said:
Evolution isn't trying to do anything. The rise of intelligence is as important to the evolutionary process as any other trait. That is, it's not. Just because we think intelligence is special doesn't make it so. With that in mind and given you've made the statement:
could you please answer my question?
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
Sorry I didn't respond earlier, but I poofed out of existence for a minute because I wasn't intelligent. It passed.
Oh yeah? I'm too
self-absorbedintelligent to remember what your question was. I was thinking of myself the whole time. It's the only way I can stay in existence.That's just called "enlightenment".
...
Now I'm off to have ice cream for breakfast because I rule. All y'all is suckas.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I never said intelligence was special except in the number of occurrences. Large apex predators adapt in every niche for example. There are many other examples of convergent evolution.
It's amazing to me because of the obvious adaptive power of intelligence. No species except extremely primitive forms has dominated every environment on the planet. No species has circumvented inter species competition to the extent we have.
Ah OK, I think we're getting somewhere here. So intelligence, as exhibited by Homo Sapiens (or the Homo genus), may be regarded as 'special' because it appears in one species whereas other convergent evolutionary traits have multi-species occurrences e.g. the predatory traits of say canids and felines whom may have last shared a common ancestor 55 million years ago. Is that a fair summation?
I think there could be a couple of reasons why we're the only species to show the level of intelligence we have so far and your above quote may contain one of them.
Both of these are scenarios which could explain our apparent uniqueness without assuming that it's surprising or amazing.
M
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
Yes.
Your first bullet only addresses convergent evolution during our period of development. Very small period. Your second bullet is exactly my point. (I said 250 million years). I find it amazing. Maybe you don't.
What the hell is 'amazing' about the fact that once we developed a high-level intelligence it didn't take long, compared to our existence as a recognizable species, for us to be able to engage in such discussions?
Once our intelligence crossed the threshold where cultural evolution kicked in, accelerated with to the invention of symbolic language and then writing, then it would have been truly amazing if it took another 200,000 years before we got to this level.
EDIT: The development of that intelligence in the first place is subjectively amazing, but technically less so.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I find it amazing, too, that we developed at all. All manner of interesting details were required for homo sapiens to show up on the scene. It's very cool.
But that's not really a point unto itself - finding it amazing, I mean - so do you have a point to make, or are you just wanting to share in that amazement?
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
You missed the point despite having participated in the thread from the beginning and my spelling it out right there in front of you. I actually said once Homo developed intelligence was almost a given.
Oh.
It is part of a bigger picture of the probability of life in the universe. Reread my starting post in this thread, and then read the thread about thermodynamically destined to exist.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Well what other period am I supposed to be discussing when it comes to possible convergent evolution of intelligent?
Subjectively I do find it amazing, as much as any thing of wonder, but like Bob I don't think that equates to it technically being amazing or unlikely.
Forget Jesus, the stars died so that you could be here
- Lawrence Krauss
Your lack of insight into this topic is manifested by the last sentence in your OP:
Which is an utterly false and/or pointless observation. It is explicitly addressed in the quote you selected from my post. The short time from the emergence of the capability for higher intelligence to its current level proves nothing about how likely intelligent life is to emerge in the first place.
And I can find nowhere that you said anything I can easily map to "once Homo developed intelligence was almost a given". Can you point to which of your actual posts addressed this?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
No, my point is and has been the same since the first post. We are first trial to result in intelligent life. I find this amazing. Fit this into the context as I stated, and I find it useful in the total context of the probablity of ETI.