Re: [GZG] Bovine rebuttal

My $.02:

First, I'm a rare-earther by temperment. So what I see is the vast
majority of systems being uninhabitable by any standards, with lots of
asteroid/planetoid bases. By far the most common habitable world would
be the Europa model: huge subsurface ocean heated by tidal stress.
"Earthlike" worlds would mostly be larger than earth (with attendant
higher gravity), have MUCH higher air pressure and be outside what we
normally think of as the Habitable Zone for its star (our moon is
unusually large; it stabilizes our rotation and stripped away most of
our atmosphere; more atmosphere = more greenhouse effect so the real
habitable zone is further out). Obviously, your mileage may vary. I
think life can take hold in lots of situations but that our world will
probably turn out to be atypical.

On most worlds, life takes the form of a prokaryotic soup. Which is
fine by us: without it, the world would be uninhabitable and need to
be terraformed. But such simple life is easily supplanted by more
advanced (and probably genetically tailored) Earth life. It means
settlers can move right in. Eukaryotic worlds have life that is
well-adapted for local conditions; very hard to replace, likely to put
up an evolutionary fight against us, and complicated enough that it
would take some major planning and preparation to move in safely.

OK so now to intelligence.

I read a fascinating article in the New York Times recently about the
development of higher intelligence. Our body pays 20% of its metabolic
energy as a "sentience tax". Of course, it's too soon to be certain
but so far it seems to be working out for us. But long before you get
to language, tool use and tax-deferred municipal bonds, there's this
period when you're as savvy as a wolf or lion. Intelligence, this
research is showing, has all kinds of hidden costs in metabolic
energy, development time, helplessness during development, physical
attributes like strength, etc etc. So how does each incremental gain
in intellect keep paying off without having the animal hit some local
maximum where they're smart enough for their ecological niche? It
seems like, for the vast majority of animals, it doesn't. Of course,
you only need a brain-replete animal to appear ONCE. (Four times, if
you count the Kra'Vak, Sa'Vasku, and Phalons). The Sa'Vasku are
surprised to see so many sentient races appear at once; that seems to
support all this in the Tuffleyverse.

(ok going from rampant speculation to irresponsible rambling here) I
think that the the vast majority of habitable worlds are "slimeballs":
worlds filled with organic soup and little else. Europas are more
common than Earths by an order of magnitude, but complex life on
Europas almost never leads to advanced (technological) intelligence.
The Sa'Vaskus are a possible exception, though they could have evolved
on an earth-like world I kind of prefer that they didn't. Normally,
Europan creatures wouldn't develop technology, but the Sa'Vasku
clearly have had a long slow drive from animal husbandry to genetic
engineering to chemistry to physics (whereas we're kind of going in
the reverse direction). Unlike most of the crabs, lobsters,
cephalopods and starfish that gain rudimentary sentience to little
long-term gain, the Sa'Vasku are the rare exceptions who made it work.
The others followed a similar path to us.

OK so how do you get a feedback loop, one where a species is
constantly driven to be smarter, but is never quite smart enough? The
predator/prey relationship is one idea; besides the hunting models
we've talked about Mary Doria Russell's _The Sparrow_ presents a cool
idea: predatory mimicry. Though it also raises a logical point: if
intellect is growing due to competition, then you have a good chance
of having TWO species co-evolve. Then either the predator is
exterminated, the prey is enslaved, or you get a weird interdependence
of predator and prey (as in The Sparrow). Could make for some VERY
weird psychologies.

Another possibility is sexual competition (though note that it's
relatively rare that mates are attracted by intellect alone vs
physical attributes even among humans). Could you imagine the Kra'Vak
evolving on a world of super-predators, some highly intelligent
THEMSELVES? Not smart enough for technology, but pretty sharp. Or
perhaps even intelligent but not technological.

-- 
Robert Mayberry

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