“Perhaps we look them in the face and cannot find out. The problem is that we are looking for someone very similar to us, believing that they have about the same math and technology."
An intriguing remark was made by Lord Martin Rees, a leading cosmologist and astrophysicist who is also president of the British Royal Society and astronomer for the Queen of England. Reese believes that the existence of extraterrestrial life may be beyond human comprehension.
“I suspect that life and intelligence may be there, but in forms that we cannot imagine. Just as chimpanzees cannot understand quantum theory, there may be aspects of reality that our brains cannot handle,”Reese notes.
An alien can have four limbs, just like us humans. Or there may be seventeen tentacles, depending on evolutionary pressures. We can observe, count and describe such things. But can we describe how the consciousness of an alien works?
The new work, published in Acta Astronautica, offers preliminary exercises for assessing someone else's intelligence outside of our box. The exercise is called COMPLEX (short for Complexity Markers of Life Profiling in Exobiology). The project compares various non-human intelligences - including animals, microbes, and machines - with each other (not with humans) and identifies several categories in behavior and mental potential.
“The goal of COMPLEX is to prepare us to evaluate other species if we encounter life in space,” says Denise Herzing, author and biologist at Florida Atlantic University.
The study could be critical to astrobiology, which relies heavily on Earthlings' understanding of what might be encountered on other planets. Because of the Earth's biosphere teeming with varieties, it is extremely difficult to define what “intelligence” is. Historically, we often define the intelligence (mind, consciousness - choose what you want) of other creatures only on the basis of how much it resembles our own. We collect the sound patterns that whales emit, they can be regarded as language, we grab onto the rudimentary rudiments of raven instruments and admire the complex society of elephants.
Studying these inhuman manifestations of intelligence through a human lens, however, can be biased. In addition, when applied to life outside of Earth, our bias towards comparison with human intelligence can generally misfire.
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Herzing background prepared her well for such astrobiological conclusions. She is the Academic Supervisor and Founder of the Dolphin Project Wild, an organization that has studied dolphins for nearly thirty years to learn all about animal behavior, social structure and more. Dolphins are considered by many scientists to be among the smartest creatures on Earth, possibly on par with primates.
Battle of the minds
For the most part, the study of dolphin intelligence goes hand in hand with the standard methods we use to assess the intelligence of other species. We focus on physical characteristics like brain size in relation to body weight. We are also used to assessing the level of intelligence by the level of understanding of gestures, solving puzzles and acoustic language.
“We usually use two methods for assessing intelligence,” says Herzing. “The first is a physical assessment of the body's infrastructure - a large brain, a complex nervous system, and so on. The second is cognitive assessment, typically requiring experimentation and testing, designed by humans and based on what we consider to be 'high' skills."
The third type of intelligence measurement in its complex signaling and communicative connection has only recently found ground. Thanks to breakthroughs in image recognition using computers and other software, we have the tools to collect and parse the data needed to assess this aspect. One example is composing large segments of dolphin vocalizations and listening to them for repetitive elements and obvious syntactic patterns in clicks, whistles and squeaks.
Through these studies, we have uncovered profound examples of human-like expressions of intelligence that have to some extent thrown us off high pedestals.
“People are being forced to give up some of their uniqueness as animals began to show their true abilities,” says Herzing.
Human blinders
Despite these beneficial acquisitions, we still largely judge animals by ourselves, so to speak.
“Of course, each species is intelligent enough for the environment in which it has to survive,” says Herzing. “But other species can have an intelligence based on their structure and physical environment, and yet compete with humans in complexity without even being like us. For example, creatures without complex arms probably won't create things the way humans do.”
Undoubtedly, our ability to repurpose the contents of the physical world, to make pyramids from stones and processors from silicon, is an amazing phenomenon not inherent in any other earthly organism. But the engineering marvels in termite mounds - internal temperature control, ventilation, mushroom cultivation - are striking in many ways. By themselves, termites do not differ in special intelligence, but their "collective intelligence" is capable of feats.
“I think one day we will see ourselves as one of many species that have developed several specialties, like vocal language and manipulation of things, instead of seeing ourselves as the only sapient species that is sentient just because it has language.
To give due consideration to other aspects of intelligence, Herzing developed COMPLEX. A small number of scientists, astrobiologists, and programmers weigh five possible sides of intelligence in non-human beings.
These sides are: "encephalization factor" (an assessment of neural complexity), "communication signals" (the complexity of the signaling code), "individual complexity" (the presence of individuals, in fact), "social complexity" (living in a group and apart) and "interspecies interaction "(The nature of external relations). Each of these categories is broken down into more detailed attributes. For example, neural specialization, natural repertoire, role flexibility, alliances / cooperation, and cross-species altruism, respectively.
"Since most of the criteria for assessing human intelligence include language, consciousness and computational ability, this exercise exploits other aspects of information processing," Herzing wrote in her paper.
The experts assessed five sources of possible intelligence. This includes dolphins, octopuses, bees, microbes and machines. Each of these species successfully copes and uses their environment in the struggle for survival in different ways (in the case of machines, they function according to the program). Examples of attributes include complex communication in dolphins, associative learning in octopuses, bees 'dancing' to guide their relatives to food, group behavior of microbes in colonies, and computing power in machines.
Overall, COMPLEX showed how the five non-human intelligences relate to each other. Each showed areas of high and low potential with some interesting similarities and differences. Both bees and machines scored high on both signaling and complex social factors. Dolphins, octopuses, and machines scored high on encephalization (neural complexity) scores. Microbes, which people mistakenly consider antisocial, scored high in interspecies interactions.
The results suggest that we often cannot identify the subtle presence of intelligence as we look at ourselves.
“COMPLEX is a starting exercise that points the way to identifying and comparing types of intelligence without looking at purely human characteristics,” says Herzing.
A natural continuation of these preliminary conclusions will be the creation of additional criteria and the connection of other intelligent beings.
“It would be great to have hundreds of species measured by experts for comparison,” says Herzing. - "Five examples were chosen from a great many."
Future versions of COMPLEX can also be directed towards parsing a simple image of a creature type that is too broad in scope. For example, "microbes" is a generic term for plankton, fungi, bacteria, archaea and beyond, covering an area of behavior and activity. But not all microbes appreciate this approach.
Our own internal biases can become a problem for COMPLEX, as well as other attempts to assess the intelligence of others. How can we judge not by human standards, looking with human eyes and thinking with a human head?
“One of the interesting takeaways from this work was how difficult it is for experts to compare mammalian brains and insect organs,” says Herzing. "Can you compare the functions of these structures and their contribution to intelligence, leaving human bias out of the way?"
An example of machines in this regard is excellent - after all, they were built by us and for us.
“Since computers and machine intelligence are made by humans, how can we measure their abilities?” Herzing asks.
And the last question in the COMPLEX approach is the need for new experts competent to study species. Well-studied non-human intelligence on Earth could open up new conceptual windows. But this also will not provide one hundred percent definition of an extraterrestrial species of an intelligent creature, especially if this very species passes through the prism of the lens of a probe or satellite.
“We need data to draw conclusions,” emphasizes Herzing. "On other planets it will be very difficult to do this quickly, but ultimately we can adapt our computers to quickly identify samples if need be."
Every drop of insight will prove useful in our preparation - and for our desire - to meet an alien intelligence like ours or different from it. After all, we can't even define intelligence under our noses.
“We still have a good job of defining other intelligent life among human and non-human cultures on our own planet,” says Herzing. "If we ask ourselves the question of getting out of our comfort zone, I think one day we will have a brilliant opportunity to look around the corner."