Communication, Intelligence's Predecessor

The whole point of understanding evolution is to deduce, somehow, the various steps that lead bit by bit up to the existing attributes or capabilities. Intelligence, defined as the ability to solve problems, depends on some traits already having been evolved, at least to a small amount, first. Perhaps the most critical one, even more important than tool-using, is communication.

Almost all animals on Earth communicate. There are solitary creatures, which communicate to find mates. There are pack, herd, pod, or whatever animals which communicate to warn the others about predators. There are insects which communicate the location of food. Communication can be by audible sounds, gestures, expressions, motions, and probably other means. It is diverse, and that means it has evolved repeatedly in different organisms for different purposes. This little observation has some special implications.

Communication can be used in diverse ways, and therefore it should be capable of shifting from use to use without too much evolutionary delay or impediment. So, as some alien creatures develop communication concerning one area of their lives, it can shift to another. And when there are two or more uses both adding to the fitness competition from one function, that function gets a double dose of selection, and evolves faster.

How might the sequence go? Climbing in a certain environment, a forest or jungle, develops grasping capability for at least upper limbs. Play, in creatures living in groups, develops that capability to tool use, or toy use, which then migrates to tool use, specifically weapons and tools for hunting and food gathering. The known earliest uses are projectiles, meaning found rocks and stones, spears, meaning pointed sticks, and wedged stones in sticks, used as a tomahawk. Once these uses are discovered, evolution will work to make the creature better able to find and use them, and this involves some brain development in different areas than the prior non-tool-using situation did.

Once tool-assisted hunting and gathering gets under way, a whole raft of needs for communication arise. In a group, if the entire group goes out together to look for where game is, or where edible fruits and vegetables, or the alien equivalents, are, that is a very inefficient use of time, and time is important in survival in some situations, scarcity ones rather than abundance ones. Having individuals go out as scouts, and able to communicate findings, such as what animals or birds or fish or fruit or whatever was found, how hard it will be to follow through on the find, how far, and so on, would make the survival of this group much easier.

In humans, communication with this much detail required the evolution of vocal cords to modulate the sound produced during exhalation. Muscles and the nerves to control them are standard equipment all over animals on Earth, so developing the initial musculature there would be only a few mutations. What took many mutations is the development of the brain capacity to utilize them to make more and more complicated sounds. This went simultaneously with improvements in the vocal tract itself. The diversity expressed in our gene pool, even in the gene pool of a small hunting and gathering group, is sufficient to lead to this. The eventual result was a pool of words and finally combinations of words and meanings.

There is a giant change underlying this. It is conceptualization. Conceptualization as used here means the ability to categorize complex scenes and situations into abstract nouns and verbs. An animal might see a mountain, but it does not think the word, 'mountain'. It relies on the visual scene for its decision-making. An alien in a primitive hunter-gatherer group can refer to a mountain as a single word, perhaps a proper noun naming the mountain, or perhaps a more abstract word meaning any mountain. This is the beginning of thinking. Thinking like this is the beginning of intelligence.

Thus it is completely possible to create a list of reasonably simple mutations and resulting physiological changes, each resulting in an improvement in fitness, that leads to intelligence. Perhaps there are multiple paths. But there is not no path. A path can by hypothesized. This means there exists the possibility that, given the correct conditions, intelligence can arise on an alien planet without any extreme requirements.

One requirement, fairly mild, is that there be group living, a clan, of the alien creatures that might eventually develop intelligence. Among Earth primates, there are those whole live solitary lives and those who live in groups. Group living makes sense, from a survival standpoint, if food sources are large and congregated. If food sources are small and dispersed, solitary living allows each creature to seek his/her/its own, and live on that basis. With concentrated food sources, the group can live together feeding off the single source for a time, before moving to the next one. Predator-prey relations can also affect the utility of living in groups. If the predator type which exists can better be defeated by a group of creatures, rather than evaded by an individual, then the group has this survival push as well.

Perhaps something can be discussed further here. It is possible for some improvements by genetic mutation to disappear if there is too much noise in the evolutionary process. One source of noise is the selection of mating preference genes. If mating preferences dominate the evolutionary fitness competition, no intelligence genes can evolve, or at least not fast enough to make any difference. So mating selection has to have either reached its culmination, or must be bypassed in favor of factors that increase survival probability, which may include intelligence and communication. The bypass can happen if there is some finality to a mating selection, for example, by the selection of a dominant individual who mates with multiple companions, where the non-dominant do not. If the dominance lasts for many years in the group, there is time for other evolutionary factors to develop their role and serve as fitness competitors. There may even be a feedback effect here, in that if dominance of this type develops, then the groups which have it, say those in one geographic locale, the most will evolve other aspects faster and then this characteristic will be carried along as the most populous one in the gene pool, not because it is being selected for directly, but because it enables other ones to be selected which actually do promote improvements in fitness competitions.

This idea, that certain fitness characteristics might become more common in gene pools because they enable other genes to express themselves and win the fitness competition, is a general one, and is certainly not restricted to dominance of one individual in a clan. It does imply some linkage, perhaps having genes closely located on a single chromosome, which is again a simple job for evolution to pull off. It may be that a hundred years from now, the location of different genes on chromosomes will be well understood to be groups of enablers acting together.

So the conclusion is, that on a diverse alien planet, with many types of habitats, with different extents, communication should eventually develop in creatures that live in groups and are hunter-gatherers, as long as there is some mechanism to suppress other fitness characteristics which would overwhelm it. To summarize, alien planets might typically evolve intelligent aliens. This isn't the obstacle it might have been thought to have been.

Speed and Direction in Evolution

Evolution is certainly local. The evidence from Earth is overwhelming. Most species have specific locations, likely the ones they evolved in, and they stay there. They evolved characteristics which gave them advantages in that particular locality, and these characteristics imprisoned them as well. If they left that locality, they would be facing better competitors who evolved to match the adjacent locality, and they wouldn't be the fitness champions and would be eliminated. This explains the incredible diversity of species on Earth, as we have hundreds of localities, each with a full range of species adapted to it.

The same should hold on alien planets. There is no reason to think that an alien planet wouldn't have climate differences, tectonic differences, weather differences and so on, all of which affect the fitness competitions. So, an alien planet visited before their species have been affected by the dominant intelligent alien species would be diverse. For one thing, this assists the aliens in making their technology step up in genetics, as there are countless examples of the expression of genetic codes around.

With all these localities, like little mini-worlds, why would intelligence be arising all over the place, with different creatures getting smarter in deserts, on seacosts, near rivers, in wetlands, in forests, in savannahs, in areas with droughts or floodings or monsoons or what-have-you? Why didn't it happen on Earth, with bright species all coming to flower everywhere and maybe even contacting one another?

This has implications for the presence of alien life on origin planets, where life gets started despite all odds, and generates myriad species. The life getting started stuff is what is hard, we think, but once it does, evolution is like a mighty machine that simply will not stop until all the niches where life can survive have been filled.

In each location, for each species, we have mutations and fitness competitions. But the fitness competitions are specific in nature. Consider large animals on Earth: they often compete in mating selection. Large antelope bucks fight with each other, and the winner is the one who mates the most. The ones which survive are those which can outrun the predators in the area, typically felines of some sort. So, evolution is choosing fighting ability and running ability, not intelligence. The variance of traits such as these, which are affected by many genes, is large, and the key point is that lesser traits, for other functions such as intelligence, are lost in the noise. A buck antelope might have a gene which makes it smarter, but what is competed for are fighting attributes, such as horn size and shape, strength, size, aggressiveness, and many other attributes which contribute to a complex skill such as combat for mating preference. These large numbers of genes are all being competed for, and it takes a long time for some improvements to evolve to being common, as there are so many other genes which produce some changes in the metric for fitness, combat ability. A gene which bumps up intelligence doesn't even register, and therefore is lost in the shuffle of those genes which are involved in the few competitive contests that evolution holds. If running ability conflicts with fighting ability, the fitness competition is even more complicated, and it is even less likely that intelligence would be selected for.

Something should be said about what is meant by intelligence here. It is not neural processing. If you look at predators, they have a great deal of processing ability for hunting ability, for example, for carefully examining visual fields for signs of prey. This involves huge numbers of neurons, and could be thought of as intelligence in a field we do not measure. There is no hunting IQ component, nor one which involves noticing something in a high-definition visual field that has certain characteristics. Nor is there a motion-connected IQ component, although efficient chasing and catching of prey certainly involves, in large creatures, a huge amount of processing of muscle commands and recognition of state of the body, as well as recognition of terrain and adaptation to it. So while neurons can evolve and become complicated, what an animal does with them is subject to the fitness competitions, and they simply blur over intelligence of the kind we emphasize, the kind that creates cities, and stress the kind that solves problems of survival and reproduction. Not as much neural processing is needed here, but some certainly is and it certainly is evolved for.

So if we are trying to figure out if evolution on an alien planet would necessarily produce intelligence, of the kind we like to think about, the city-building kind, we cannot rely on the huge diversity of locations on the typical alien planet to invariably produce it somewhere. It is simply not typically selected as an important variable, and may even have side effects which interfere with the important variables that are being selected for. Largely, it would be in the noise of fitness competitions, and not selected for. We need to figure out when it would be.

Down this path, there is another aspect of evolution that makes a large difference in what gets selected. Consider the speed of evolution. If a species has 100 mutations and is competing them for optimal, it will be evolving faster than one which has 20. In other words, evolution is proportional in some vague sense to the number of creatures. A species which occupies a large habitat, and numbers in the millions, will be evolving much faster than one which occupies a smaller habitat, and numbers in the tens of thousands. The speed of evolution will be tremendously greater, meaning that the homogeneity of the alien planet plays a large role in the evolution of intelligence. If intelligence is way down in the noise of fitness competitions, at some period of evolution, but is not overwhelmed by side effects from the important attributes, such as combat or prey-hunting, so that it has a very slow evolutionary rate, it will not evolve in a habitat that is small and doesn't last too many generations. The species will simply migrate or become extinct, meaning that any small gains in intelligence would be lost.

The evolution of intelligence needs a large habitat, so minor changes in unimportant aspects, such as intelligence of the kind we care about, can evolve and stick in the organism when it finally migrates. The large habitat needs to support large numbers of creatures, not simply a sparse collection. So finally, a little glimmer of understanding seems to be peeking out. Homogeneity of a planet is important. That is something a very large telescope might even see.

Food after Asymptotic Technology

Life in an alien civilization that has reached asymptotic technology, that is, one which has essentially finished all the science and engineering that is possible, and has organized it and put it to use, is something of a mystery to us. It is a mystery not only because it is a situation that we have not experienced, but one that we have no guidelines to figure out. In a civilization where anything is possible, anything is possible. What would the typical alien civilization choose?

Food might be an example that can elucidate the problem. What would aliens eat? With abundant resources, in other words, in an alien civilization that was not facing resource scarcity, they could produce anything they wanted. They would be able to produce anything likely in a variety of ways, using robotics or using genetics, using different raw materials for input.

If we think like humans in the twenty-first century on Earth, we might just assume they would have a wide variety of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits and so on. Rather, the alien equivalent of these, as aliens might not divide up their world of food in the same way we do. But this assumption falls apart upon further examination. When we say asymptotic technology, we do not mean just some simple advances on what we on Earth have now. We mean the ultimate in science. They could have things that were digestible foods that come from any source, either grown, or simply fabricated. Think of meat. They could grow any kind of it using some biological tricks, in industrial facilities, without there having to be animals. Or they could make some genetic concoction that produced animals that were simple to raise and were mostly edible meat. Or they could make a different genetic concoction that produced meat from plants. So the opportunities for creation of anything at all cover a wide range. What would they choose?

These questions miss a main point. The aliens themselves would be modified genetically. They could make their lives extremely simple by simply designing their own taste mechanisms to prefer only one type of food, one which was easy to produce. They could arrange so that this one food would make their taste sensors produce great satisfaction, and nothing else would. Then their questions of what to produce and how to produce it are all moot. Every alien likes the same, single food, and they just devote some minimal floorspace in each city to produce it, and delivery is likewise simplified. No alien has to look at a menu and be faced with choices. No one has to worry about whether guests would like what they serve. Restaurants, or whatever serves food publicly, are pretty much identical.

The food chosen would have to meet all the biological requirements of the aliens, but since their digestive systems can be genetically designed as well as their taste sensors, it could all be done at once. The single food could meet every requirement, as its ingredients were matched to what the designer teams put into the alien genetic code for themselves.
There would be no food fads, no chefs, no preparation details, no recipes, no ingredients, nothing at all except some factories or the alien equivalents which make this one substance. Would they want to have a civilization in which a major form of activity, that related to food, was eliminated? Would they opt for simplicity or would they opt for diversity?
The questions raised here about food are the same that might be asked about other aspects of life. And they are not simple questions. In the two alternatives, diversity of foods and simplicity of food, the aliens adjust their genetics so they are very happy with either choice. Happiness is not something that is hard to come by in an alien society. It is built into the genetics, and the training, that each alien has. If the alien civilization figures every alien should be happy, they will be, as the technology will exist to make sure this happens. So one conclusion that can be immediately drawn in that happiness of the aliens is no criteria to use in trying to figure out how they would design life in their civilization.

In place of happiness, what would the decision-makers of the alien civilization use as a criteria, or a methodology, to design their society? One that comes to mind is efficiency, which means that they would make choices that use less resources, less footprint, less energy, less wear and tear, or less whatever. This means they are trying to make their civilization last as long as possible on the home planet, or the home solar system, by running out their resources as slowly as possible. This puts off the decision to leave for another solar system as long as possible, and conserves the resources necessary to make the interstellar transition when the time comes. It does seem somewhat strange that the decision on how to feed the members of the civilization is intimately tied into the meme for star travel, but that is what appears to be the case. Perhaps the entire civilization is affected by the choice of star travel memes, in other words, everything revolves around this fundamental choice made by decision-makers early in the genetic grand transition.

Consider other alternatives. They cannot be looking to design society so that there is more creativity, as that is already a maximum. They have completed science and figured out how to use it, so that cannot be a goal. Exploration of their solar system, if it has economic payoffs, would already have been done or else well within the existing capability of the civilization to do whenever in their history they chose to do it. Art is already expanded to the maximum and as far as novelty goes, none is left to do. Virtually everything that can be done on their home planet has been researched, understood, done, and wrapped up. Other than space travel, there is nothing left to challenge the civilization.

This puts interstellar travel in another perspective: it’s the only thing they haven’t done yet. If and when they do it, if their memes do not have it as a major goal of the civilization, it will become another thing, perhaps the last thing, that the civilization decided to accomplish, and then promptly forgot about it. So, we may need to add to the list of motivations for interstellar travel one thing: another challenge for a civilization that has a meme for accomplishing difficult goals and overcoming obstacles.

Interstellar Convergence

In short, interstellar convergence means that aliens would look like us, and have the same chemistry as well. It might happen, and it might not.

Let’s just talk about the chemistry. There are some basic chemical choices that early cells made on Earth, and these choices have been preserved in all the species that have flowed from these cells. Take glucose for an example. It has multiple uses, including serving as the main staple of the diet of cells of any creature on Earth. Why is glucose there and not something else? Was it just random chance that a single cell specialized in using it, and then everything built up on top of that choice? Or are there intrinsic reasons why glucose is superior to everything else that could have been used in the cellular machinery? One reason might be its physical flexibility and foldability, as it can take many shapes. Another reason may be that it causes less damage to the organic chemicals within a cell. Another could be that energy transfer in the ATP-ADP cycle is more efficient than with other choices. And there may be another dozen possibilities.

In the fitness competition, in the days of primitive cells, where one cell happens to mutate to using glucose and other cells mutate to using other intermediate chemical energy molecules, does the glucose using cell always win, or statistically win often enough to drive out the competition? If this competition does indeed pick the best choice, and the selection can take place in a short enough time, then on all planets where there is some option for this competition, glucose would win and become the only energy molecule used in all organism there. This is the essence of interstellar convergence. It means that there is a competition between options, and the superior one is superior over a wide enough range of conditions that it proves itself superior on multiple planets. It means that random mutation cannot lead to a win in the competition unless the mutation actually produces the best product. Interstellar convergence means that all planets have a severe enough competition on all these molecular choices that the single optimal one wins everywhere and all the aliens have the same chemistry.

If this fitness competition depended strongly on some parameters which differed between planets, then interstellar convergence would not happen. Following our example, if glucose is a champion in oceans between 10 degrees C and 20, but something else is between 20 and 30 and yet another between 30 and 40, we would expect to see this spectrum reflected in the chemistry of alien visitors. Some would have the 10 to 20 degree selection, others the 20 to 30, and so on.

There are some reasons to suspect that basic chemistry choices like this do experience interstellar convergence. Evolution is local, meaning that the physical space that a variety of organisms compete within does not have to be the whole planet, but instead just a specialized part of it. If this energy molecule choice was strongly dependent on temperature, then we might expect to see on Earth some glucose cells in the temperate zones, and something different for organisms which live in the tropics. We do not see this. Instead we see universality of these basic molecular choices down on the cellular level.

It might be true instead that something else, like salinity for example is a sensitive parameter, and planets with much higher salinity would experience a selection of a different energy molecule. Earth doesn’t have a wide variation in salinity in its oceans, as the waters all mix. Another planet might have a different situation, and thus a different environment for its molecular selections. There does not seem to be any indication from the understanding of biochemistry that we have, but some other parameter may do the trick.

Once a very basic choice like an intermediary energy molecule is made, many other choices are affected as everything in a cell works together, so that if some planet has a different choice, they would likely have large differences in the rest of their cellular chemistry. The way to resolve the question of interstellar convergence is to create some primitive cells with different choices, and subject them to some environmental stresses, while monitoring their success is surviving and reproducing. Until that happens, we will not know the extent of interstellar convergence. Here on Earth we should be able to do these experiments within a century more of biochemical research or so.

There is some further discussion possible at this stage, related to the existence of enantiomers. There are a huge number of molecules which have left and right forms, much like the left and right hands. No amount of rotation can make a right hand look like a left hand, and the same goes for molecules. But molecules with these two forms would have the same capability and properties, and should compete equally in any fitness competition.

Molecules in the cell fit together to conduct their chemical transformations. That means, if molecule L-A, the left version of the molecule, works well with molecule L-B, then most likely molecule D-A, the right version of A would work exactly as well with molecule D-B. What this means is that whole families of interacting biochemicals would have choices of enantiomers. The labeling is a bit arbitrary, so that they would not all be what we on Earth label the L form, but there would not be mixing between the families.

This means that if interstellar convergence happens, and the aliens all look like us down to the chemistry, there could still be two separate sets of them, one set of aliens whose world started out with the L-type of some basic chemical and it now uses the enantiomers that work with it, and the other set being aliens who use the opposite enantiomers. They could look alike, but they could not breed together, or possibly even eat the same food.

This has some relevance for seeding planets. If some world, Planet X, has aliens with a stellar travel meme that has them going to other planets and replacing the biome there with things more compatible with them, with an eye toward them settling there, there could be a great mismatch if the seed target has life using the opposite enantiomer, assuming interstellar convergence is universal. It is hard to imagine what might happen, if the new predators could not consume the original creatures of the target planet without dying. How to get rid of everything and start all over with setting back the seeding process for millennia or even more?

Variations on the Genetic Grand Transformation

The genetic grand transformation is the combination of the research on genetics that entirely unravels the genetic code and anything that affects it, together with the development of engineering know-how as to the modification of any existing organism, or the creation of any new organism that is within the realm of possibility. It includes all the supplemental engineering that is needed to bring any new or modified organism into existence, industrially or via some biologically created mechanism for making new life. On an alien world, there might not be the exact same division between plant and animal that obtains on Earth, but there must be some division between those organisms specializing in using stellar photon energy sources and hydrocarbon or other chemical energy sources. It seems likely that the origination mechanism for these two would be distinct, but it is not necessarily so. On Earth, the two kingdoms are separated because of the potential damage that energy transformation media can cause to the organic machinery of the cell, as well as the advantages of making this transformation as efficient as possible. Hence, chloroplasts and mitochondria evolved. The basis for this separation seems to be strong, but possibly some combination not seen on Earth has evolved on some alien planets.

The variations to be considered here in the genetic grand transformation relate to the application of the genetic tools and tricks to the alien species itself. This application can range from virtually zero, in which perhaps only very significant genetic defects are corrected or eliminated, up to speciation and a departure from evolutionary types of gestation, as well as the development of chimeras. The alien civilization has to make this choice, and perhaps a consideration of such variations might be useful.

Recall that memes for star travel are likely to be chosen during the early part of the genetic grand transformation, as that is when intelligence will receive the benefits of genetic engineering and training will be undergoing a somewhat simultaneous transformation, so that both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ will be pushed to their optima. But memes from prior eras will likely be around at this point, and while older memes will not likely relate to genetic transformations, whoever in the alien civilization has the role of interpretation of these memes might decide to apply them in such a way that genetic engineering of the aliens themselves is subject to some controls, and the controls may limit the extent that the alien species is itself affected by the genetic revolution.

Recall also that one of the principal dangers to the alien civilization, insofar as it will not continue to progress and will regress instead, is that of Malthusian idiocracy. The genetic grand transformation as applied to the aliens themselves was seen as the only pathway through this threat. If the genetic grand transformation is affected by the older memes and their interpreters, this same fate may be awaiting the alien civilization in this situation. The key tipping point is the use of genetic knowledge to improve intelligence, as that is what is gradually lost in the process of falling victim to idiocracy. This means that anywhere the limiting line is drawn, if it is before intelligence improvement on a wide scale, the battle is lost and anywhere after that point, the threat is moot as the old memes will give way to the onslaught of new generations able to rethink the memes they want their civilization to utilize and base its decisions on.

Possible stopping points prior to the intelligence bump-up are: no changes to the alien genome, only severe genetic faults corrected in any embryo or for an embryo possessing such faults to be aborted, appearance changes allowed in the genome of a embryo, or health-related faults repaired or health improvements allowed, the same for athletic traits, the same for sensory traits, or the same for expressive or mobility-related traits. Perhaps some other classes of improvements exist, but these categories enumerate what would appear to be most likely.

It is convenient to label such a limit as the intelligence bar in genetic transformations. Larger, later transformations, such as the replacement of the alien species by some improvement on itself, does not seem compatible with an intelligence bar, so the lesser changes listed above might be the whole range of possibilities for alien societies with an intelligence bar.

It might be possible to ask why would an alien civilization adopt an intelligence bar? Before answering that, think through the ways in which an intelligence bar could be implemented. It could be implemented by restricting research into intelligence genes, but that seems to be unlikely to be able to be enforced, once the entire genome is known for all aliens. Simple comparison algorithms should be likely to single out those genes which, working together, produce a capability for high intelligence that can be brought into existence with the proper training.

So the how is likely to be known, but the restrictions of the intelligence bar are applied, and somehow enforced, to some portion or all of the alien new generations. If there were a division of the population into those who would receive these improvements and those who were not, and this was enforced for multiple generations, there would almost be a speciation effect, without the loss of cross-breeding ability. Some group is selected for high intelligence, and the remainder is selected for a gradual descent into idiocracy. This might immediately be ascribed to a choice by those with power in the society to use yet another tool to cement their position. It could be done in many ways, such as high cost for such improvements, government regulation as to the recipients, or the introduction of new memes or the adaptation of older appropriate ones to eliminate the demand by the non-recipients for these improvements. This bifurcation of an alien society might limit its ability to engage in star travel, or possibly not. The question of this star travel limitation is largely concentrated on the Malthusian limits of the non-receiving population. Do they continue to increase in numbers and therefore demand on resources, or does the alien society somehow determine a method to solve this problem, uncoupling Mathusian tendencies from the automatic occurrence of idiocracy. This type of stabilization might happen via the introduction of memes related to reproductive self-limitation. The immediate reaction to this is that idiocracy, once it continues for generations, debilitates the population subject to it from responding to memes or any other policies promoted by the civilization in general.

Cost might be used for reproductive control, but this is a rather brutal method and might not be easily countenanced by the intelligent segment of the bifurcated society. There may be some technological solution to the problem, however, imposed by the intelligent segment on the non-intelligent segment.

The percentage of population in the two segments may be an important factor in determining if the alien world which chooses this bifurcation will advance to the star travel stage. Another factor is the physical separation of the two populations. It seems apparent that a small fraction of intelligent controllers of society might have difficulty in implementing their designs for society, and a wholly intermixed population would make it difficult as well, unless there was some social rules for stratification that were enforceable.

At this point, such a situation does not appear impossible, and does not appear to be an impenetrable barrier to the achievement of space flight. More details need to be thought through to understand just what an alien society can get away with re idiocracy and still be able to visit Earth.

Questions of Evolution

Evolution’s details remain a puzzle as the problem of archeogenetics, the figuring out of the pathway that evolution took from simply chemicals to advanced organism, is extremely complicated. Over the billion years or two or three that it took, there were literally hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of mutations which were compared using a wide variety of fitness tests. Almost all of the losers have disappeared, leaving no trace, no fossils even, as all organic chemicals are decomposed in short periods compared to the length of evolution. To determine what came first, what came second, and what came hundred and sixtieth is a challenge that no one has figured out how to solve. Yet, it may well be that one or more difficult hurdles for life was met and passed on our planet, but for one reason or another, it was failed on most other planets. Without knowing what these hurdles were, it is hard to know if it was planetary conditions that limits the number of aliens visible from Earth, transmitting signals hither and yon, coming to visit us, or leaving monuments here for us to find when we evolve far enough to recognize them. We don’t know if instead it was some evolutionary jump that is just so rare that only we have made it, unknowingly, that allows us to approach so close to star travel, a few centuries perhaps, and the other hundred million planets in the Milky Way to be nowhere near as lucky.

One more aspect of evolution is that it proceeds by small steps. To get from chemicals to roosters, evolution cannot do five or ten mutations to some genetic coding and then we hear the cocks crowing. Each mutation makes a small change in the total picture of a cell or an organism, and it has to be compared, in whatever fitness competition exists for this cell or organism, so that the older original one can be displaced and the new version take over. If the cell is numerous, say quadrillions or quintillions of them exist, and that mutation occurred in one of them, how long is it going to be before all the quadrillions and quintillions are the new version? This of course is a multiple of the generation time, but remember that those original cells were doing just fine, surviving and propagating well enough to produce stupendous numbers of copies, and they are all not going to just up and go extinct because somewhere there is one cell which is better in some way than they are.

Thus there are two key times for each mutation, one is the time it takes for some cosmic ray or chemical mutagen or coding error to get lucky and make this specific change, and the other is the time for the fitness competition to eliminate the old versions in favor of the new. Recall that fitness is chancy, and the first cell might just happen to get eaten before it had a chance to even make its first copy, and evolution would have to wait the same time, all over again, for a second shot at this particular mutation. There are many perils facing any individual cell, and any one of them can do an extinction event on a just mutated version of a cell.

As for the elimination process, in most cases it is not the new version taking on the original version, vanquishing it and eliminating it, and them moving on to the rest of the quadrillion copies. Instead, it is a multiplication rate question coupled with a limitation on total numbers. In a situation where there was bountiful supplies for both the original and the mutated version of the cell, there is no fitness competition, and both just keep merrily producing descendants of their own particular type. Only if there is some limit to the number of them does fitness play a role. In that situation, the rate of multiplication of one has to be just a bit larger than the other. Perhaps this single mutation puts the replication rate of the new version at a tenth of a percent higher than the old version. This is a tremendous advantage. In less than a hundred thousand generations, the old version will disappear. If the cell is in an environment where it can make a copy of itself in a day, this is zero time in the evolutionary time scale. Even if the environment is harsh, and it takes a year, it is still zero time. But if the mutation is not so great at changing the replication rate, so it is only a ten-thousandth of a percent difference, then evolution doesn’t last long enough for the mutation to successfully displace all the old version, at least in more difficult environments.

This means that if we want to make some progress in unraveling the mystery of archeogenetics, we need to think about fitness comparisons and the time taken in the competition, and about mutation rates. Either a very rare mutation or a very slight increase in replication rate could mean that some mutation here doesn’t happen on all other planets where life is trying to evolve.

For mutation rates, mutagens are working all the time, but perhaps on planet X there are not nearly so many cosmic rays, because of some stellar magnetic shielding, or because of the galactic environment. Mutations from this source are needed to penetrate into some nook of the genetic code to make a change worse. So, do we have skyscrapers and hydrofoils here because of our cosmic ray dosage and planets without it do not? For fitness comparisons, is the replication rate closely linked to temperature or salinity or the presence of magnesium ions or something else in the oceans, which just happen to happen here and nowhere else? We get a hundredth of a percent for some critical change and everybody else gets a hundred thousandth of a percent change? Again, those skyscrapers and hydrofoils are only going to be on Earth.

The first thing that has to be done is some overview of evolution, so that a comparison of which mutations are important and which ones are incidental can be made. Then perhaps some insights might be generated on only those important ones, and a bit of progress in the evolution mystery can be obtained. Then, it might be possible to make some good guesses as to whether evolution has any chokepoints for alien worlds, or whether it just works everywhere like a well-oiled machine and doesn’t provide any distinction between Earth and other solo planets.

Why is Mars So Small?

If we are going to be thinking about where to find life, starting with solar systems, we should first think about the sizes of planets. Mars is much smaller than Earth and has lost almost all of its atmosphere. If there was life there, it likely died out with no source of carbon dioxide to get carbon from. Exposure to near vacuum evaporates water, so that essential component is missing. Protection from hard photons is not provided, so life would have difficulty on the surface.

If the life origination theory promulgated here, organic oceans, is correct, there was likely none of that here. Too small a planet means no life. But the question remains, why is the planet so small? Why didn’t it collect enough mass like Venus and Earth to provide the right gravity and therefore the possibility of the right atmosphere, provided temperatures were tolerable. The Liquid Water Zone could have been right around Mars, but it would have been to no avail.

This doesn’t seem to be a ‘why question’ that is commonly asked. Perhaps the basic concept going around is that planets just form with whatever material is around them and some planets are in dense areas and some planets are is sparse areas, and it’s just too bad for some planet that originates in a sparse area. It has no chance for life.

But for a minute, think about the planetary disk and the processes that shape it. Perhaps the why question is ‘why was that part of the planetary disk sparse?’ The answer may not be that it was just random luck. The answer may be that Jupiter is a mass thief, and took mass, not just from Mars, but from the asteroid belt and even a little from Earth.

Consider the opposite hypothesis. The gas cloud that formed the planetary disk was nice and uniform, stretching out from close to where the star will form out to beyond where the major planets form. It was uniform because rare areas collect more gas over time and become more like other areas. When that cloud starts forming a star somewhere near the center, it begins to shrink from the gravitational pull, but that pull is uniform and should not make these sparse areas that are suggested.

As the gas cloud shrinks, rotation keeps it large in the radial direction, perpendicular to the total angular momentum of the cloud, as it shrinks in the other. It becomes an oblate spheroid, and then the center collapses into the star, being closer, while the remaining doughnut gets thinner as it shrinks in radius. It speeds up as it condenses, maintaining its angular momentum. Still nothing has happened to make the region around Mars and Ceres sparse.

Instead, the density of the cloud forms a smooth curve. Faster infall toward the center provides a thinning toward the center, and slower infall at the edges means the gas thins out there. There is some distribution curve of gas density, if it were projected down onto its central plane, that starts smaller in the center near the newborn star, gets larger to reach some peak, and then declines down to almost nothing out at the farthest edge. Still a smooth curve.

Now local gravity begins to dominate, and at the heaviest area, planetary clumps of gas form and begin the infall of dust to make the cores. In our solar system, probably both Jupiter and Saturn, the two heavyweights among planets, get formed and become to look like planets with metallic cores and huge atmospheres, still condensing. They interact with one another in an interplanetary resonance, where they move around two radii with periods in some ratio of small integers. There is wobble around the resonance radii, but the two giants have formed a stable situation. Resonance radii do not depend on the mass of the planets, so this would work in any solar system for giant planets of any ratio of mass between each other.

Other planets try to form at other resonance orbits corralled by the pair of giants. These resonant orbits are stable, but not deeply stable because a large deviation will send a proto-planet out of resonance, drifting toward the radius of the nearest giant planet. The closer the resonance orbit is to the giant planet, the stronger is the perturbing force. The larger the giant planet, the smaller the region of stability. This means that gas and dust from the closest resonance orbit drift into the capture zone for the nearest giant, and there is less mass left to form a planet at that resonance.

In our solar system, Jupiter has eliminated the chance for a planet to form at the asteroid belt. There is simply not enough mass there to collect into a planet. So instead, the small clumps of condensed matter, mostly dust, simply keep flying around as they are perturbed in orbital parameters by the two gas giants. The perturbations are large, which is another problem with forming a planet there, even if most of the mass had not been subtracted.

For the resonant radius where Mars is, this process was weaker, and did not remove enough mass to prevent a planet from forming, but only from forming a large one. Mars is so small because of the vulnerability of planetestimals to having their orbits perturbed enough to leave the resonance and go to being captured by Jupiter, or perhaps going into an unusual orbit elsewhere in the solar system.

Earth is closer to the peak area of the original disk that is Venus, and so it should be larger, and it is, but only slightly. Earth, if it had not been subjected to the perturbation forces from the gas giants, would likely have been larger than it is, which might have been a bad thing for life. Mars would have been bigger than Earth, and the asteroids would have collected into an even larger planet. But Jupiter was there, and we got what we see.

On the other side of the orbits of the two gas giants, distances are much larger and the effects are not so great. The inner planets are the ones which feel the largest effect. Thus, there is no surprise in the mass ratios of the planets. In other solar systems which form two large gas giants, instead of one, something similar might happen, meaning the depletion of mass from gravitational collection by the giants, on the inner side of the giants.

If the Liquid Water Zone is near the orbital radius of the innermost gas giant, there is probably no use in mounting a large search for an Earth-sized planet in the LWZ, and instead it would be good to push onward to a different solar system. In general, finding planets would be facilitated by looking near the resonance radii of the gas giants, so even if the two of them are inside the LWZ, if there is a principal resonance in the LWZ outside the outermost of them, life might start up there and it would be worth looking for the planet and checking its mass.

We haven’t finished the story about the formation of planets, but most everyone knows it. When the star gets going, it starts to blast a solar wind outward, which drives remaining gas, but not so much the dust, into the far reaches of the solar system. Out there, the material which is not scooped up by planets and satellites on its way outward winds up in the Oort Cloud, a region where the solar wind has long since died out and left what has been pushed out there to condense into multiple icy blobs, which can play with each other and possibly merge. However, there is not much point in looking for life out there. It is far beyond the LWZ, and there is simply not much energy for any exotic form of life to use, even if there is some exotic form which can find a niche in an icy region such as this.

Devil's Advocate on Origin of Life Theories

Suppose you were interested in tearing holes in some origin of life theory. Where would the weak points be? Let's attack the Early Origination aka Organic Ocean theory.

The theory supposes a certain condition for life to originate, specifically, that there were two types of oceans on the early earth, immiscible mutually, a water one and a mixed organic one. To have an organic ocean, there has to be lots of organic compounds that are immiscible with water. Is it realistic to assume that these could be produced? There may have been a lot of methane in the gas cloud that condenses, but methane is too volatile to condense in the LWZ (Liquid Water Zone). So is ethane. There is carbon dioxide are in the gas cloud, but what is the mechanism by which large quantities of heavier organics are made?

Lightning is one source, proven in the laboratory. Satellite data on the current Earth show there are about 3 million lighting strokes per day. Over a hundred million years, that is about 10^17 stokes. Each stroke has about 5000 MJ energy in it, which is about as much as 100 kg of gasoline. So if there was a 1% energy conversion of lighting energy into organics in the plasma that is created by the lighting and the surrounding hot gas, plus the shock, there might be 10^17 kilograms made. This is only enough for about 1 cm of ocean, so it would be necessary to assume that the early Earth had 10 or 100 times as much lightning as the current Earth. This is a bit of a stretch, but not a ridiculous amount.

The atmosphere on earth has 5 x 10^18 kilograms in it, and if we assume the early Earth had 100 times as much, that is, five times as much as Venus now has, that would be 5 x 10^20 kilograms. If 0.2% of this was heavier organics, that would be 10^18 kilograms, enough for a meter or so of organic ocean. Not too much of a stretch, but no grounds for the assumption exist.

Volcanoes are another source, and each volcano has enough energy so that 1 every ten days or so is the same as the current energy release of lightning, so there would need to be 1 a day somewhere on the planet for a 1 m deep ocean, or 10 to get a 10 m deep ocean. For the chaotic world of early Earth, not too much of a stretch.

Another cause is planetesimal impact. The energy release in the Chicxulub asteroid impact alone is about equal to the energy of a hundred million years of lighting. That is one asteroid, and over a hundred million years in the early Earth, there would have been a large number. These are visible on the face of the moon, which has preserved the records of some early impacts. If we assume there were a hundred thousand of them, this would be more than enough for a deep early ocean. There are about two hundred thousand craters on the moon over 1 km in size, and the Earth is a larger target than the moon.

One source which is not quantifiable is the proposed impact of Theia, the planetesimal which formed the moon. Because the masses are so much larger, there is no way to scale this. But the proto-Earth would have its crust ripped, and huge gushes of magma would have been released. How long the heating from the mantle or even the core would continue to be released is open to question. But a lot of energy is available here.

To sum up this first probe, it appears quite reasonable that asteroid bombardment would produce the amount of heavier organics needed for an organic ocean of sufficient depth, and lighting, volcanoes, and the formation of the moon would add in more. Not a deal-breaker. And we have not covered the conversion in the ocean of miscible organics into immiscible ones.

Another question is, given the existence of the organic ocean, is whether any ambiphilic compounds would form? Numbers on this are scarce, but the point to note is that the meniscus is the boundary between an ocean full of lipophilic molecules and an ocean full of hydrophilic molecules. Any energy-containing molecule at this interface that expended its excess energy on forming a compound with something from across the boundary would be forming an ambiphilic compound. Compounds with excess energy do not act like time bombs ticking and waiting to go off, but instead go about seeking a suitable partner, which is decided on the basis of polarity and geometry. If there are energy-rich compounds on the organic side which need a polar molecule to trigger their chemical reaction and the only place they might find it is at the meniscus. Similarly for energy-rich compounds on the water side. There seems to be no reason to assume ambiphilic molecules will be scarce in a dual ocean situation, when the processes which made the organics were all high temperature, rapid cooling ones, which could be conducive to producing energy-rich compounds.

The next question might be, given a meniscus with ambiphilic molecules in abundance, are there any that will form membranes? This is not a question of whether ambiphilic molecules would join together with intermolecular forces, in alignment, because we have the example of current biological molecules which do that to make up cells. These are unique molecules, however, and it is necessary to ask if there would be any such molecules that could be made up of the components available in the two oceans. Recall that solubility is dependent on like molecules having a mutual attraction. This is what causes surface tension and what decreases volatility. Any molecule whose pure solution has surface tension would attract itself. Any solution with a low volatility would have molecules which attract each other. This is not a substantial objection.

This question might be better phrased as, given a meniscus with ambiphilic molecules in abundance, are there any that will form membranes solely with identical molecules? This question is a red herring, as it is quite possible to have a mixture of molecules in the ambiphilic membrane, and still have all the subsequent steps of replicator formation follow. Perhaps it would even be easier.

Going any further in this series plunges us into chemistry questions that have not yet been posed or answered. So, it might suffice to say that the obvious devil's advocate questions do know knock out the early Earth, organic ocean hypothesis for the origin of life.

Corruption in Alien Civilizations

Positive feedback loops are often a very bad thing, for the survival of the system in which they are embedded. If there is a limiting threshold, after which some other factors serve to block the induced growth from becoming too large, that's fine as long as the threshold is not so high as to disrupt the functioning of some essential part of the system. If there isn't, the only possible outcome is the quantity having the positive feedback growing so large that the whole system collapses. This is of course a very elementary observation on how systems work, but it doesn't seem to be commonly discussed in dealing with socio-political-economic systems.

One positive feedback loop that has already been discussed in the idiocracy one, or Malthusian idiocracy if you enjoy pleonasms. In a situation where sustenance is provided, idiocracy is when those less likely to reduce population growth continue to expand as a relative fraction of the total population, which serves to further increase the absolute numbers of population. Without any external control or moderation of the growth effect, the numbers must grow until the sustenance limits are reached. Then there is a question of what happens, and how hard the sustenance limits are pressed. Does this pressure result in a lowering of living standards and how pervasive is such a lowering? After a lowering limit is reached and living standards, for whatever reason, cannot be pushed down, does maintenance get cut in lieu of sustenance? Obviously this is the recipe for collapse of the alien civilization.

Another positive feedback loop occurs in the distribution function, measuring how sustenance and other items of production are distributed to the population. The group on the high end of the distribution function can divert some of their income to a corruption of the system, meaning a change of the rules for distribution, so that more goes to the high end recipients. This will provide them with more wherewithal to corrupt the system more, resulting in another change in the same direction, and on and on. Again, if there is no compensatory effect that comes into play at some threshold of distribution shape, perhaps measured by the difference between the mode and the mean, the distribution function will continue to peak toward the high end, until the curve looks like a spike at one end with the rest almost flat. By this point, the characteristics of the civilization have drastically changed, and another possible mechanism for collapse, via positive feedback, exists.

The corruption feedback loop has some interesting aspects that militate against an easy social solution to it. It matters very little what the social limitation is that works to stop the distribution function from increasing its peakedness. Whatever they are, sustenance or income can be used to work against these limitations as well. The feedback loop is so strong, that it bulldozes through social barriers that are set up to control it and to introduce some other feedbacks that limit the rate of growth of the peakedness. Whether it be by government action or political activity on the part of citizens, sufficient application of income to the problem reduces its effect, making more income available to those involved in the corruption loop.

The word corruption, as applied to an alien civilization of undescribed governance and customs, may seem to be inappropriate. What is meant that rules and regulations regarding the distribution function are written by alien citizens, who are also seeking additional income, and who can obtain it corruptly by changing the rules or regulations or covertly violating the customs. It is no matter whether there is one type of governance or another, or whether there are multitudes of laws and regulations or whether everything is done on the basis of customs from long ago. Income is like an acid which dissolves social barriers to tampering with the distribution function.

If the seemingly inevitable result of this positive feedback result is collapse, that means that alien civilizations, or parts of them in the period before they are unified, will be going through cycles of slow growth and rapid collapse, all mediated by a rather simple to understand positive feedback loop of their system of distribution of production. Will the collapse, or collapses in that earlier ununified period, interfere with the development of technology so much that technology will stop at some point and simply freeze or even retrogress? The question seems to revolve around the resiliency of the alien civilization to mitigate or recover from collapse.

In the early ununified period, it may be that collapse is local and confined to one region of the planet. In the later, unified period, the whole civilization may go through the cycle. Is technology abandoned because there is simply no way to continue to divert resources or sustenance to those who maintain it and who develop it further? This would depend on the depth of the collapse. As noted above, it is the infrastructure which suffers and causes the collapse. So the depth of the collapse would be mirrored at the extent of the infrastructure needed to maintain the civilization which ceases functioning. It is likely that different parts in different civilizations might fail first. On one alien civilization, during one collapse, the energy infrastructure might be the first to go. In another alien civilization, during one collapse, the food infrastructure might go first. The reaction of the alien population might depend on which type fails first, and whether it fails slowly or suddenly. Either alternative can be contemplated. Slow failure leads to efforts to evade the consequences, or to reduce them, or to find ways of bypassing them, or other coping mechanisms, on a civilization-wide scale. Fast failure eliminates the possibility of coping mechanisms, and calls for means of ensuring survival on the part of the population. Fast failure may mean a restructuring of the alien civilization, and an involuntary reduction of population. Either one of these modes could mean that technology development goes on hold, and the application of technology is reduced in extent and in magnitude.

If the corruption positive feedback loop were the sole cause of a collapse of an alien civilization, there could be a multi-generation delay in the progress of technology, but technology has its own positive feedback loops, operating on a longer scale perhaps, and so would regenerate. The death of the civilization, in terms of its ability to reach the stars, might happen via both of the two positive feedback loops operating here, either simultaneously or sequentially. The idiocracy effect does eliminate technology progress, and it could be facilitated by the corruption effect causing a partial collapse, and thus a relaxing of the controls on idiocracy.

If alien civilizations naturally have failure modes, and these failure modes grow larger as the effects of technology force a unification of the civilization, thereby eliminating the recovery mode offered by other regions being isolated from the collapse of one region, then one reason for having no aliens here could be written on our imaginary whiteboard: corruption interacting with idiocracy; either one being solvable, but both being too much for the civilization.

Technology Under Pressure

It was mentioned somewhere else that technology determines many features in an alien civilization. You could say that the development of some new technology exerts pressure on a civilization to change and adapt to it. The pressure might come via competition, for example, if one textile-maker in a clan figures out a new dye, members of other clans which trade with this clan might prefer textiles using this dye, and the textile-makers in the other clans would want to be able to get some, and perhaps would engage in some investigation or even some spying to bring the new dye technology over to their villages.

Pressure goes the other way as well. It comes from the Malthusian pressure that all alien societies evolve with, as Malthusian behavior is the behavior that drives evolution. Until late in the technology pathway, when that behavior might be deliberately modified, it exists and provides an impetus to use technology. It prevents the abandonment of technology, making its development a one-way street, with only a few exceptions, occurring perhaps through war or pestilence reducing the population.

The process is straightforward, but it has its own quirks. Someone develops an advance in technology, such as a better slingshot for hunting birds or whatever edible substitute there is that flies around on their planet, and uses it to increase the sustenance level of his/her/its clan. Two things happen. Assume the technology spreads all over the alien world, to all the hunters, over some period, maybe a thousand years. The first thing that happens is that the clans which have the technology have hunters which can support more offspring. The growth rate of the clans' population is jacked up a tiny bit. Of course, there are incredible randomizing effects that go on relative to population, such as weather and climate, predators, migration, floods and volcanoes, battles, personal disputes, and many more. But all in all, after all the random factors are averaged out, the population growth rate is a bit bigger, maybe 0.01% per year as opposed to 0.009% without the new slingshot technology. The clans with it grow in numbers, Malthusian-style, until the saturation effect happens, and there aren't enough birds available to satisfy the successive generations of hunters, and maintain the growth rate bump-up. So the growth rate drops back, but the population is larger because of the technology.

Now they actually need that technology to maintain their numbers. If slingshot-caught birds are not still added to the catch, the higher numbers cannot, on the average, be sustained. Again, there are so many random factors that have to be averaged over that listing them would be distracting, but on the average, they need the technology. They feel the pressure to use it, as without it there would be more hunger. In other words, they depend on the technology, and risk their numbers on its continued existence and availability.

Thus, the response to technology is to use it, and it creates a dependence, and it cannot be easily abandoned. This just keeps going on, but it takes on a new aspect. What happens when the technology begins to lose its productivity? In the slingshot situation, if the type of plant needed for the handle becomes less and less viable, due to some mutation of pests, and there is no substitute, what must happen? There are two choices for the clans facing this problem and one is to slide back to their previous level that existed without this particular technology, but the other one is to force the development of some alternate technology, such as snares. If snare technology is developed and can replace the slingshot productivity, they can maintain their numbers, averaged of course. So it can be said that the use of technology provides not just a pressure to not abandon its use, but to develop other technology, as technology sometimes disappears of its own accord.

When the alien civilization enters the agricultural grand transition, and grows whatever crops grow on their planet, their numbers will also increase. They can't stop farming. They can't stop husbanding domesticated animals. Whatever other parts there are of their agriculture, they can't be abandoned unless the civilization is willing to suffer a population decline.

The same process works when the alien civilization enters and passes through the industrial grand transition. Now they are dependent on whatever their planet affords for technology in this period, most likely the use of metals and other fabricated materials, energy sources such as hydrocarbon fuels, agricultural supplements gained by mining, and so on. Old functions such as transportation and new functions such as communication become completely enabled by some portions of technology, and there is no going back. The civilization now is not just being changed by technology, it is being made totally dependent.

When the genetic grand transition is entered and progressed through by the alien civilization, their dependence on it grows even stronger. In the earlier phases, if some horrendous event occurred, some aliens might fall back on the hunting traditions of their civilization, but after the genetic transformations that the genetics revolution makes possible, that becomes increasingly untenable. Genetic optimization for life in large arcologies, almost but not quite hermetically sealed, with most experiences generated artificially, will not maintain the abilities that the alien species evolved with. Perhaps the alien citizens could struggle to maintain some of these skills, but having a full set and having the training be realistic and stressful enough might not happen, especially in a civilization where work was off-loaded to robots, automation and intellos. Perhaps the civilization's members, being by this time universally more intelligent, would evaluate the risk of technological failure and decide there was too much redundancy for that to happen and that their risk analyses were even better than needed to maintain the current state of affairs.

This conclusion may be utterly true, but the point is that technology does not just change society, it transforms it not only into having ways that use it, but into having ways which depend on its continued existence and continued functioning. By the end of the genetic grand transition, there is no fall-back escape, unless there was some specific choices made. One choice, to ensure the continuity of the species in the event of something completely unexpected and unforeseen, would be the establishment of what has been called the 'left-behinds', alien citizens not taken into the arcologies, not upgraded genetically, not made part of the normal course of events in the civilization, but simply left behind at an early stage of technology. There are likely many ramifications of such a choice, and perhaps we can investigate them later.

Weathery Problems

Alien civilizations who push the knowledge of technology a bit farther that we have eventually reach what we term 'asymptotic technology'. This is the ultimate state, when the alien civilization knows just about all that science can offer, and has the engineering knowledge to boot about how to turn it into useful items for the use of the members of their civilization. It is akin to omniscience, but it has limits, imposed not by the characteristics of the alien civilization, nor by the gaps or errors in their knowledge, but by the very nature of the universe.

Asymptotic technology is universal, meaning that every alien civilization that ever existed will reach the exact same body of knowledge, as it does not depend on any details of the civilization, but upon the details of science and engineering. This also means that exactly the same limits will impact each and every alien civilization, not counting the ones who become extinct early in their progression or who run into problems such as Malthusian idiocracy. Those who are successful get to exactly the same point in technology, and then according to the principle of technological determinism, their societies will conform to the same technology and have a great deal in common with every other alien civilization that gets to the same peak.

The same limits to asymptotic technology hold no matter when the alien civilization encounters them. They are hard limits, and if an alien civilization gets far ahead in one subspecialty of science and hits a limit, it is going to be stuck with that limit until the end of its existence. Asymptotic technology does have an order to it, as some advances require technology from other branches in order to proceed past some thresholds, but these are not so restrictive that they insist that each subspecialty only can arrive in some particular sequence. It is the limits which are universal and there is some flexibility in which ones are bumped into first.

The same technology limits impact our work here, meaning both the work that Earth's scientists do, and also the research we are attempting to pull together on alien civilizations. As an example of the first, we use the old, old example of the weather. No one in touch with modern media doubts that weather forecasters have a very hard problem predicting weather for more than a few days, if that. Some generic climatological averages exist for long term predictions, describing the year and perhaps some correlations between different aspects of a year's climate, but to predict rain thirty days in advance simply is not even attempted. The reason for this is thought to be well-known.

We are nowhere near the asymptotic limits of computational power, as evidenced by what we call Moore's law, which says something to the effect that computational power is growing at an exponential rate, or at least used to be. So if we jump ahead to the future, can we expect that when computational power grows ten or a hundred times as great as it is now, we will be able to predict rain thirty days in advance? Predictive power will certainly improve, but will it be incremental, a few percent improvement in short term forecasts, or an order of magnitude in the accuracy of predictions way out in time from the current time? The former. Because computational power is not the only obstacle to weather calculations. Data is another one. Without a corresponding improvement in data, computational power applied to existing data would accomplish nothing at all. Data means having a compendium of all those variables that affect local weather, meaning temperature, humidity, pressure, velocity, cloud cover, composition, and perhaps others everywhere in the atmosphere from the surface through the exosphere, in three dimensions. With all that data, plus data on solar impact, orbital variables, surface temperatures, and likely oceanic data as well, computational models would have a better starting point. If models became improved as well, so the computational fluid dynamics needed to make the computations were as sound as could be, they might make the best possible effort toward computing rain thirty days out.

There may be a snag, relating to scale. Just exactly how precise in three dimensions does this data have to be? We don't have a clue as to whether a data collection system would have to collect data every kilometer horizontally and every hundred meters vertically, or whether it might need twice or four times that much, or perhaps more? This is the sensitivity problem. Do the predictions work if they are averaged over a kilometer, or only over a hundred meters?

For lack of a better word, let's call a three-dimensional problem with heavy computational requirements and very heavy data requirements a 'weathery' problem, i.e., a problem like the weather. There are several others, and they impact the scientific work that is needed to provide some answers to questions posed by studying alien civilizations. That means that there will be some questions without answers for a very long time.

One such problem relates to the formation of stars from gas clouds. It is certainly possible for scientists to build models of one or two-dimensional star formation, but gas clouds are non-uniform. Even if all the brilliance in the world was focused on the problems of nuclear fusion under immense pressure, and the results were astonishingly promising, there is still the problem of analyzing any particular star, or stars with three-dimensional clouds originating them, which is a weathery problem.

Suppose we understand that the presence of sufficient uranium and thorium resources on a rocky planet are critical to an alien civilization getting to a final level of technology. Determining the separation of uranium ores on the upper crust of some arbitrary planet is a weathery problem, and developing conditions for it to happen is a very difficult assignment. Assessing if fusion is possible, at least in the form we are experimenting with it on the largest experiments so far, is a weathery problem. If it were not, it would be possible to calculate just what would work; but it is and so experiments have to be conducted.

Figuring out how the two disks evolve, the galactic disk and a planetary disk, are weathery problems. Even N-body problems can be called weathery problems, and examples of multi-planetary mutual perturbations and globular clusters are included. Problems in what we call soft sciences, psychology, economics, sociology and even neurology are all computationally difficult, if there were already any computational models, which there are not in most cases. Each of these weathery problems will not easily be solved, not with the next ten years of computer development nor the next ten years of observations or data collection. In each case, some sage speculation is needed. That is the best that is possible, so the study of alien civilizations is not going to look like atomic physics any time soon.

Types of Governance in Alien Civilizations

Governance can be by whom or how. Why would this be important? Because those who govern, at the right time, get to set the policy for the alien civilization, and if they do it right, the policy will last for generations. In particular, with some pretty good luck, these policies might endure in force all the way up to the time when space travel becomes possible, and then, if the policy for star travel promoted it, it could be done. With people governing at this key but early time who disdain star travel, and if they possess an understanding of how to set memes for their civilization that will last for very long periods, there will be none. So, if we are trying to figure out which alien civilizations may set forth on the long, long voyages to other star systems, we might first try to figure out who's likely to be in charge and then what their preferences might be.

Why isn't this direction of inquiry just a speculative nightmare? Wouldn't it be better just to stick to drawing impressive models of star ships? Questions like what kind of engine to use and where to put the radiation shielding seem to be more amenable to analysis.

There is one problem with just drawing models of star ships. Who's going to pay for the large cost of building them? Why wouldn't they spend their money on other things, like habitats on planets in their own solar system, or some more gigantic observatories or improvements in the cities the aliens live in? This kind of decision is part and parcel of any civilization, and without a widespread decision on making this investment, it wouldn't be done. No matter how pretty some alien engineer draws his models of star ships, and even how realistic they might be, if the governing authority of the civilization thinks it's just a stupid idea to go to other stars, or if there is some basic meme that all young aliens learn stating that star travel is not their game, there is going to be nobody interstellar visiting Earth, or leaving behind evidence of their visit, or even giving off signatures of star ships passing nearby.

So, while it might be ever so entertaining to look at someone's visualization of an alien star ship, or even to watch an animation of it, this really isn't the nub of the problem. The only reason someone should look at star ship designs is to see if there are any physical impossibilities that prohibit it. This would override any alien civilization's fervent meme to go star traveling. They would find out, soon enough on they pathway to asymptotic technology, that you just can't do that. Barring that outcome of design, coming up with interesting ways to configure the conn or the power units doesn't have much value toward figuring out if anybody is going to show up here on Earth.

Before actually trying to deduce anything about alien governance in the meme-writing period, perhaps it would be a good idea to come up with some basis for the deductions. Intuition, as we all know, is completely faulty, but a good defense against it is to try and figure out some principles, get those laid out, and then use them to derive something more detailed. So, given we know for certain absolutely nothing about any alien civilization, what could possible be some principles that could be defended?

We do actually know something about alien civilizations in general, so the best way forward might be to try and come up with something generic that might occur most of the time. We understand about how technology determines the structure of a civilization, and there is actually a name for this principle: Technological Determinism. Not too original but it does capture the concept. We understand about the stages that technology might proceed through, as one determines the basis for the next. Alien civilizations which have the potential to reach the peak of technology have to move from their original evolved state through a hunter grand transition, then an agricultural grand transition, then an industrial grand transition which includes both mechanical and electronic/optical portions, then a genetics grand transition closely coupled with a neurological grand transition. Along the way they figure out how to run a civilization, with subjects like economics and sociology, but not anything like what we use these terms for. We understand many of the likely details of these slow, gradual revolutions, and many of the implications of them.

We understand what might be called the most exciting time of their existence, which is the middle part of the genetics grand transition. It is exciting because people are using genetics to become more and more intelligent, and this social upgrading of intelligence on a wide scale puts an end to many of the problems that beset civilizations, such as war and population control, resource usage and behavioral codes. We also expect that policies will be put in place at this time, and the neurological grand transition will provide the technology, the knowledge so to speak, about how to make these policies universally accepted. Yes, it could be screwed up and fail, leaving everyone to figure out their own opinions on policy; with high levels of intelligence, most alien citizens should come up with the same results, with some exceptions.

One exception is the meme for star travel. There is nothing in physics or astronomy or chemistry or communications or neurology or genetics or anywhere else that dictates to an alien civilization what it will do about star travel. This is predicated on the assumption that it is physically and practically possible. So, if there is any widespread agreement on it, it must come via the memes set up by whoever is in charge of such a task.

Here's another principle that might be useful. Some aliens would be altruistic in this exciting time, but most should be still interested in their own welfare and prosperity, or that of certain circles, perhaps small or perhaps large. So, the implication from this is that if we want to understand the choice for star travel in a typical alien civilization, we need to understand who is in charge, and what their personal benefits might amount to. Sounds pretty simple. We understand from technological determinism how an alien society might be divided up into castes, for lack of a better term, and we know their functions in the alien society, so we might get a clue as to what choices they might make for star travel.