Knowledge is our destiny: Intelligence on Earth and beyond

From the archive: an excerpt from a chapter of Carl Sagan's book Dragons of Eden, Reshefim Publishing, 1979

Well, in the end, I'm back to one of the questions I opened with: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Although the idea that the interplanetary connection will be made telepathically is sometimes heard, it seems to me nothing but an amusing idea. In any case, there is no proof of this: and no sufficient evidence has yet been found for the existence of a convincing telepathic connection on the earth itself. We are not yet able to easily reach from planet to planet, although it is possible that other civilizations, more advanced, are already capable of this. However, despite the talk of unidentified objects in the sky and ancient astronauts, we have no serious evidence of the fact that we were visited in the past, or that we are being visited in the present. This leaves us with only the machines.

Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence may require the electromagnetic spectrum, or the radio waves in the spectrum or gravitational waves, neutrinos or tachyons (if these do exist), or some aspect of physics that has not yet been discovered. However, whatever the way, it is certain that it will need machines, and if his experience in radio astronomy may serve as an example, then it will need machines operated by computers, whose skills will approach what we call intelligence. We cannot check data collected over many days at 1008 different frequencies, especially when the information changes every few seconds, by glancing through all the data pages. We must use internal correlation methods and large electronic computers. And this situation, created by the observations that Frank Drake of Cornell University and I recently conducted at the Arecibo Observatory, may become even more complex - that is, more dependent on computers - if the listening devices of the future are put into use. We can build very complex transmission and reception programs.

And if we are lucky, we will be able to operate with the help of smart and elegant tricks. However, we cannot avoid using the wonderful ability of machine intelligence, if we want to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. The number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy today depends on many factors, starting with the number of planets in each star and ending with the likelihood of a source of life. But since life began in a relatively favorable environment, and had billions of years of evolutionary time at its disposal, many of us would expect intelligent beings to evolve in that place. The evolutionary path will, of course, be different from the one on Earth. The exact order of events that happened here - including the extinction of the dinosaurs and the disappearance of the Paleocene and Pleistocene forests - did not necessarily happen in the same way in all other places in the universe. But surely there are many ways to the same final goal. The entire history of evolution as a whole, and especially the one told by the fossil skull reliefs, points to a trend of progress towards intelligence. There is no mystery in this: intelligent organisms stay alive and give birth to more offspring than stupid organisms. The details do depend on the circumstances, like, for example, if our ancestors chose to destroy intelligent monkeys that had their own language and leave alive stupider monkeys that did not pose a danger.

However, the general trend is clear and probably corresponds to the evolution of intelligence everywhere else. Once intelligent beings reach technology and means of self-destruction, the supremacy of intelligence in the process of natural selection is called into question. And what if we get a transmitter? Is there any reason to think that the transmitting creatures - having evolved over billions of years of geological time in an environment very different from ours - will be similar to us to such an extent that we will be able to understand their transmitter? I think the answer to that must be positive. A civilization that transmits radio transmissions must at least know what radio is. The frequency, time variable, transmission bandwidth of the transmitter, etc. must be common to the transmitting and receiving civilizations. This is similar to the situation of amateur wireless users. Except for emergencies, it seems that all their conversations revolve around their devices: it is the only aspect of their lives in common. Nevertheless, I think there is room for more hope. We know that the laws of nature - or unfortunately many of them - are the same everywhere. We can identify with the spectroscope the same chemical elements, the same simple particles in other planets, stars and galaxies; And the fact that everywhere there is an identical spectrum proves that everywhere there are also the same means that cause atoms and particles to absorb and emit radiation. We can see how distant galaxies move slowly around each other, subject to the same laws of gravity that determine the movement of the smallest artificial satellite around our pale earth.

Gravity, quantum mechanics and most of physics and chemistry are the same everywhere in the universe. Intelligent organisms that have evolved on other worlds may differ from us biochemically. They will have to develop enzymes and even other organ systems to deal with the different circumstances of their world. But they have to deal with the same laws of nature as we do. The laws of falling bodies seem simple to us. At a constant acceleration, determined by the earth's gravity, the speed of falling objects will increase in proportion to the time of the fall; The distance of the fall will correspond to the square of the time. These are completely basic relationships. And so it was understood by many, at least since the days of Galileo.

Nevertheless, we can imagine a world where the laws of nature are many times more complicated. But we do not live in that world. why? The reason for this can be rooted in the fact that organisms that saw their world as the most complicated have long since become extinct. Those of our ancestors, the tree walkers, who had difficulty planning their route in Dalgam from tree to tree, did not leave behind many descendants.

Natural selection served as a generous intellectual sieve, which left minds and intelligences that were better able to deal with the laws of nature. This match, which results from the process of natural selection, between our minds and the universe, may illuminate a problem presented by Einstein: the most incomprehensible feature of the universe is that it is so comprehensible. If indeed this is the case, it is reasonable to assume that the same evolutionary sifting also took place in other worlds, in which intelligent beings developed. These extraterrestrial beings, who did not have arboreal ancestors like us, may not share our passion for space flight. But all the atmospheres of the planets are relatively transparent, at least in the visible parts or in the radio wave part of the spectrum, because of the quantum mechanics of the most common atoms and particles in the cosmos. Therefore, the organisms in the universe must be, therefore, very sensitive to optical radiation or radio wave radiation.

It can be assumed that after physics is perfected, electromagnetic radiation for the purpose of interstellar communication will become a normal phenomenon in the cosmos - an idea that will simultaneously develop independently in countless worlds in the galaxy, following the local development of basic astronomy. If we are lucky and manage to make contact with some of these other beings, I think we will find that their biology, sociology, psychology and politics will seem very exotic and mysterious to us, but we will have no difficulty understanding them in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry and maybe even mathematics. I don't expect, of course, that their brains will resemble ours anatomically, or physiologically, or even chemically. Their brains will have different evolutionary histories - in each and every environment.

It is enough for us if we look at the animals on earth, which have different organ systems, in order to understand how many possible variations there are in the physiology of the brain. In Africa there is a fish called Mormeirid, which is originally a freshwater fish, but it often lives in murky waters to better hide from predators. The mormirid fish has developed a special organ that creates an electric field around it and activates this field every time when some living creature crosses it. The fish's cerebrum covers the back of its brain in a manner reminiscent of the cerebral cortex of mammals. Murmyrids have distinctly different brains than others, but in basic biology they are still closer to us than any extraterrestrial.

The minds of the extraterrestrial beings will, almost certainly, be built from a few components that have been slowly added by way of evolution. There may still be tension between the various components, as with us, although the hallmark of a successful and old civilization will be the ability to maintain constant peace between the various components of the brain. It is almost certain that these beings expanded their intelligence extracorporeally, by using intelligent machines. However, I think that there is a high degree of probability for the assumption that our minds and their minds, our machines and theirs, will understand each other well.

The practical utility and philosophical insight that may result from receiving a long transmission from an advanced civilization are enormous. However, the scope of the benefit and the speed with which we will succeed in adopting it depend on the details of the content of the transmitter - details that we cannot guess at this time. Nevertheless, it seems that one outcome is certain: receiving a transmitter from an advanced civilization will prove that advanced civilizations do exist, and that there are ways to avoid the self-destruction that threatens us in our technological maturation stage. Therefore, receiving an interstellar transmitter will bring with it a very practical benefit, known in descriptive mathematics as existence - in our case we will receive a demonstration that companies with developed technology can exist and flourish.

Knowing that there is a solution to the problem helps a lot to solve it. This is one of the strange connections between the presence of intelligent life elsewhere and the presence of intelligent life on Earth. Although it is clear beyond any doubt that more knowledge and more intelligence will rescue humanity from its current hardships and open a window to a better future (or any future), this opinion does not dominate the practical life. Governments often do not see the difference between short-term benefit and long-term benefit.
The most practical benefit comes from the strangest and seemingly most impractical scientific developments. Today's radio is not only the main means by which we try to find contact with intelligence outside the green field, but also a means of responding to emergencies, broadcasting news, transferring phone calls and providing entertainment over the airwaves. However, the radio was born because a Scottish physicist, named James Clerk Maxwell, invented a concept, which he called "copy current", within a system of partial differential equations known as Maxwell's equations. He invented the copy current, because the equations looked better with it than without it. The universe is both complicated and elegant. We decipher its secrets in the strangest ways.

The companies will, of course, strive to leave in their hands the careful decision of which technologies to develop and which to neglect. However, without funding for basic research, without support for the acquisition of knowledge per se, the possibilities before us will be reduced. It only takes one physicist, who happens to discover something similar to the copy current, in order for the investment in a thousand others to be worthwhile for the company. Without vigorous, far-sighted, and constant encouragement of basic scientific research, we will be in a situation where we will make a living from our grain seeds: even if we manage to keep hunger at bay this winter, we will lose the remaining hope of continuing to exist next winter. In a period, which in some respects was similar to ours, Augustine of Hippi retired from the world of the senses and thought, after years of maturity full of lust and fertile intellectual thinking, and advised others to follow him: "There is another form of temptation, which is even more dangerous. This is the epidemic of curiosity... it is what pushes us to try to discover the secrets of nature, these secrets that are beyond our understanding, that give us nothing and humans are not allowed to want to teach them... In this vast forest, full of pitfalls and dangers, I retreated and pulled myself away from these entanglements. In the center of all these things, floating around me in my daily life, I am never surprised and I am not seized with a real desire to explore them... I no longer dream of the stars."

The death of Augustine, in 430 AD, marks the beginning of the Middle Ages. In the last chapter of "The Rise of Man" by Jacob Brunovsky, the author confesses that "I was prepared to find myself in the West suddenly surrounded by a sense of loss of courage, a retreat from knowledge". He spoke, thoughtfully, about the limited understanding and little appreciation of science and technology - which shape our lives and our culture - in public and political communities; But he also talked about the rise in popularity of magicians and pseudoscientific mysticism.
Today, in the West (but not in the East) a renewed interest has arisen in vague, one-sided and sometimes even clearly mistaken doctrines, which if proven correct will make the world a more interesting place, but if they are mistaken, this will imply intellectual negligence, a kind of mental softness and wasting energy on ways that will not help us in the war of existence. These doctrines include astrology (the belief that a certain star, rising a hundred trillion miles away at the exact moment of my birth inside a closed building, profoundly influences my destiny); The Bermuda Triangle "mystery" (which claims in many ways that unidentified flying objects live in the ocean near Bermuda and eat planes and ships); flying saucers in general; the belief in ancient astronauts; ghost photography; pyramidology (including the opinion that razors stay sharper if placed in a pyramid-shaped cardboard box than in a square cardboard box); science; Teleportation and Kirlian photography; the emotional life and musical preferences of geranium flowers; surgeries through the mind; flat and hollow lands; modern prophecy; bending forks from a distance; falling stars; Velikovsky style disaster forecast; Atlantis and Who; spiritualism; And the Torah that claims that God or the gods created man in a special way, despite our close proximity, biochemically and in terms of the physiology of the brain, to other animals. There may be a kernel of truth in some of these teachings, but their widespread acceptance indicates intellectual degeneration, the lack of skepticism and the need to convert experiments into passions. These doctrines are borderline and stem from the right half of the brain and are a natural and human response to the complexity of the environment in which we live. But these doctrines are also mystical and secret, structured in a way that makes it difficult to prove their incorrectness, or any other logical argument.

On the other hand, there is a brighter window to the future with full functioning of the cerebral cortex - logic mixed with intuition and the elements of the border system and the reptilian structure, but first and foremost logic: leveling a brave way in the world, as it really is. On the last day of the cosmic calendar, considerable intellectual skills were developed on Earth. The tool that nature gave us for our existence is the coordinated functioning of the two halves of the brain. We will never be able to exist unless we use our human intelligence to the fullest. "We are a scientific civilization," declared Jacob Bronowski. "This means that we are a civilization, in which knowledge and its full application are essential. Science is just another word for knowledge... Knowledge is our destiny."

Well, in the end, I'm back to one of the questions I opened with: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Although the idea that the interplanetary connection will be made telepathically is sometimes heard, it seems to me nothing but an amusing idea. In any case, there is no proof of this: and there has not yet been sufficient evidence for the existence of a convincing telepathic connection on the earth itself. We are not yet able to easily reach from planet to planet, although it is possible that other civilizations, more advanced, are already capable of this. However, despite the talk of unidentified objects in the sky and ancient astronauts, we have no serious evidence of the fact that we were visited in the past, or that we are being visited in the present.
This leaves us with only the machines. The communication with the intelligence outside the Hertz ball may need the electromagnetic spectrum, or the radio waves in the spectrum or the gravitational waves, neutrinos or tachyons (if these do exist), or some aspect of physics that has not yet been discovered.

However, whatever the way, it is certain that it will need machines, and if his experience in radio astronomy may serve as an example, then it will need machines operated by computers, whose skills will approach what we call intelligence. We cannot check data collected over many days at 1008 different frequencies, especially when the information changes every few seconds, by glancing through all the data pages. We must use internal correlation methods and large electronic computers. And this situation, created by the observations that Frank Drake of Cornell University and I recently conducted at the Arecibo Observatory, may become even more complex - that is, more dependent on computers - if the listening devices of the future are put into use. We can build very complex transmission and reception programs.

And if we are lucky, we will be able to operate with the help of smart and elegant tricks. However, we cannot avoid using the wonderful ability of machine intelligence, if we want to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. The number of advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy today depends on many factors, starting with the number of planets in each star and ending with the likelihood of a source of life. But since life began in a relatively favorable environment, and had billions of years of evolutionary time at its disposal, many of us would expect intelligent beings to evolve in that place.

The evolutionary path will, of course, be different from the one on Earth. The exact order of events that happened here - including the extinction of the dinosaurs and the disappearance of the Paleocene and Pleistocene forests - did not necessarily happen in the same way in all other places in the universe. But surely there are many ways to the same final goal.

The parable of human evolution - the introduction to the book Dragons of Paradise