We have a horrible track record in recognizing other intelligence
(first of all, thank you for this great article. It was a nice sunday read. That being said I do have some remarks which hopefully add to the whole discussion).
Like the title states, we have a horrible track record in recognizing the intelligence of others. Everytime the modern Western world came across another culture, we basically destroyed it. The term ‘barbarian’ means stranger but we use it to call other cultures uncivilized or primitive. We can’t even recognize the intelligence of members of our own species.
You mention in your article that alien civilisations may deliberately stay low. But I think it’s more than that. We are only starting to see that intelligence comes in many different forms. Anything different is being not worthy, disposable, barbarian. But just for a time frame, in the sixties Western researchers still used cranial measurements as a marker for intelligence.
Animal Intelligence
Where our track record when it comes to other humans is bad, when it comes to animals it’s even worse. In your article you mention Voltaire. I would like to quote his reaction to Descartes when it comes to the treatment of animals. Descartes argued that animals were natural automata, incapable of thought and feeling. Even when he cut live dogs open, slashed their nerves and skinned them, he argued that the dogs (and any other animal) didn’t feel any pain.
Voltaire reacted to Descartes indirectly saying:
There are some barbarians who will take this dog, that so greatly excels man in capacity for friendship, who will nail him to a table, and dissect him alive, in order to show you his veins and nerves. And what you then discover in him are all the same organs of sensation that you have in yourself. Answer me, mechanist, has Nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal to the end that he might not feel? Has he nerves that he may he incapable of suffering?
- Philosophical Dictionary
Different minds
The last couple of decades (basically after behaviourism), we finally are opening our eyes (minds is perhaps a better term) that animal intelligence exist and comes in lots of forms and gradations. Fruit flies probably dream and rats laugh and are altruistic. We get more and more understanding of hive intelligence (ants, bees and so on). Are we smarter than a bee? Probably. Are we smarter than a swarm of bees? Octopuses developed a mind in a completely different way as our own.
We are just starting to get some understanding of different minds and forms of intelligence. But that’s a gargantuan task. The further we are seperated on the tree of life the more difficult it becomes. When your idea is that alien life is human-like you can work towards that answer. That’s a whole lot easier than when you don’t have that answer. Imagining alien intelligence without a clear picture, is like trying to understand the intelligence of a species from a completely different tree of life. It is like imagining a new color or a new sense.
Like I said, we already have difficulties acknowledging the intelligence of other cultures here on earth. I think we should start close to home. We have a lot to learn.
“No aquatic creature discovered fire […]” Drake said.
