Parallels Between Terrestrial Intelligence and Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Part One

The existence, behaviour, motives, abilities of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), given ETI is behind the UFO and ancient astronaut phenomena, is way more convincing if there are parallels with our own (TI) existence, behaviour, motives and abilities.

Humans (and other higher animals) love to explore – what’s over the next hill? Food or sex or enemies or greener grass or gold or buried treasure – we’ve got to know. It’s in our very nature; our genes and probably a trait vital for survival. I strongly suspect the same will be true for any extraterrestrial (ETI).

Part of that survival is knowing about your neighbours (friend or foe) so we seek out new life forms and new civilizations, be they across the valley, across the pond, or across the gulf of space. That should also apply to ETI.

Traditional SETI (the Search for ETI) is handicapped in that it can only detect a small subset of new extraterrestrial life forms and new civilizations. SETI can’t detect non-intelligent life or intelligences that don’t have a high enough or suitable technology. That would also apply to ETI. Their SETI program wouldn’t have detected human civilization even as recently as say 200 years ago.

To find the rest, that is most life throughout the cosmos, we need to Boldly Go and travel to the stars. Ditto ETI.

There are no natural physical laws, relationships or principles that would prevent this, and that applies to ETI as well.

We’ve only just begun to Boldly Go, taking our first few baby steps into our own shallow waters that ultimately lead to the great depths of the cosmic ocean. ETI (in general) has had potentially vastly more time in which to sail the cosmic ocean and way more time to become more advanced technologically – as in interstellar spaceflight capability. We’ve only had roughly 4.5 billion years to get to where we are today; our cosmic (Milky Way Galaxy) neighbours have had potentially an additional 5.5 billion years on top of that since our galaxy is roughly ten billion years old.

More technologically advanced Europeans discovered Australia, Japan, the Americas, etc. not the other way around. By analogy, ETI will discover us before we discover them. In fact, translated, ETI has discovered us. We are the modern equivalents of the Aztecs, Maya, Incas, North American Indians, Australian Aborigines, the Japanese. But that’s getting slightly ahead of the game. In actual fact, ETI discovered Planet Earth probably way before humans were thought of in anyone’s philosophy – especially theirs (but that’s getting ahead of the game again).

We’d be excited to discover the biosphere of another planet – microbes on Mars would be exciting to astrobiologists. Biospheres are relatively rare in the cosmos compared to other real estate abodes. The Moon is cosmic real estate, but it’s not very exciting real estate. ETI would presumably be more interested in real estate with a biosphere – like our biosphere – because again biospheres are rare real estate.

Of course ET may not have actually discovered Earth and Earth’s biosphere by actually exploring our inner solar system. ET could have detected spectroscopically our biosphere remotely, at a vast distance, by finding biomarkers that’s unique to life like chlorophyll or oxygen, or otherwise suggestive of an environment that’s bio-friendly, like water vapour or methane. The parallel there is that we human’s are detecting via remote sensing, extra-solar planets at a rapid rate of knots. Determining the general chemical makeup of such bodies is plausible, and in fact has been accomplished for several extra-solar planets already. It probably won’t be too much longer before we detect an alien biosphere, or at least a potential one.

If humans discover something new and important, and assuming it doesn’t have sensitive military or diplomatic connotations, that information tends to get disseminated as quickly as the technology of the times allows for. In like fashion the first discovery of our biosphere could be common knowledge throughout all of our galaxy’s ETI civilizations within a maximum of 100,000 years at light speed (or less) since the diameter of our galaxy is only 100,000 light years.  Probably every space faring ET would want to come and have a look. The terrestrial parallels are obvious. Once we discovered Antarctica it quickly became common knowledge. We (collectively) went back, again, and again and again, finally setting up near permanent quarters despite the obvious costs and hardships, all in the name of science. We’ll go back to the Moon too one day – maybe not anytime real soon, but eventually. Your great grandkids will see lunar settlements or outposts like we today see in Antarctica.

Of course it would prove to be an extraordinary stroke of luck if, after 4.5 billion years of Planet Earth’s existence, that an ETI just happened to stumble across our humble abode at the very era in time that our generation (1947+) was in existence. Therefore, let’s postulate that ETI happened upon Planet Earth – oh, let’s bisect the timeline – say 2.25 billion years ago.

Like the Americas or Australia was to the Europeans – prime real estate, so too our Planet Earth was prime real estate to ET all those billions of years ago. That’s because even back then, Planet Earth had a biosphere, albeit one full of microbes – no humans, just lots of microbes. That’s okay since that still puts our home planet in the higher echelons of valuable and prime real estate.

Fast forward several billion years to just before the dawn of the human. As far as intelligence goes just before the dawn, dolphins and kin, and primates rule the IQ roost – along with the crows and their kin (like magpies).

As noted, way back then, ET couldn’t interact with humans – we hadn’t yet evolved from the primordial scum - yet – but that was to change. If a superior nation happens upon an inferior nation (superior and inferior referring mainly to technology), the usual outcome is, based on our terrestrial history, fairly obvious. So, ETI couldn’t do much with microbes, but they could bide their time until something more suitable and promising came along – the primates.

Enter the realm of mythology, a subject I take as factual until proven otherwise, especially when it comes to universals shared between all races, cultures, and geographical regions. So hence forth the mythological gods are actually an ETI that’s come to pay their respects to and investigate our biosphere. 

Universal Mythology Number One:  The ET ‘gods’ created humans. Why humans should have imagined they had ever been created in the first place is a total mystery unless someone (the ‘gods’) told them that was the case. Now unless the ‘gods’ are super-duper organic and biochemists, I’m sure they didn’t literally create humans out of mud and dust and all manner of other stuff. Rather humans were ‘created’ as a product of artificial selection and genetic (or bio) engineering from primate stock (as dolphins and crows weren’t quite as suitable as experimental subjects). 

Okay, haven’t humans ‘created’ all manner of breeds of organisms (cats, dogs, horses, cattle, roses, wheat, rice, etc.) via just such genetic (and bio) engineering and artificial selection? Genetically modified organisms are a big biotech industry. And isn’t such artificial breeding and genetic manipulation all done with ultimately us in mind, either for practical or cosmetic reasons?

Fast forward to the dawn of human civilization, that transition from hunter-gather to settlements and domestic bliss.

To be continued...