The Cortical Column

I’ve always wondered about the properties of intelligence of extraterrestrial life (ET). The question is similar to Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat? (Google),” except perhaps more extreme. The Drake Equation tells us there are likely to be roughly 3 other civilizations in our galaxy alone (Edge Foundation). In our search for ET we typically look for Earth-like planets, based on their spectroscopic profile containing what we believe are the basic building blocks for life. Famous American exobiologist Carl Sagan (Carl Sagan Portal) once wrote a book on this very subject, titled “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence” (Google Books). In his book, Sagan argues that the environmental constraints that lead to intelligence are likely to be consistent throughout the universe. The laws of physics are constant, after all, so just how different could intelligence based on known evolutionary processes be from environment to environment?

Another interesting question is whether simulated artificial intelligence could be very different from our own. By simulated I am specifically referring to a computational agent, and not the sort of artificial life (Venter Institute) that Craig Venter is after, although that is interesting as well. David Deutsch makes the argument that, based on insights from formulating quantum computation, from which quantum mechanics follow, mathematics also follow physics more generally. Does this rule out creating a simulated environment with constraints that are hospitable for the emergence of intelligence and yet, so different from our own that we wouldn’t recognize it? Computer science, physics and mathematics are so intertwined that is difficult to impossible to draw a distinct line between them. Thus, it would seem that any simulated intelligent agent would have to have properties of intelligence similar, in principle, to our own. The contents of consciousness may be different, and it may be impossible to know “what it is like” to be them, but the computations they perform would be, in a literal sense, fundamentally the same. And does this similarity go back up the simulation chain (Cortical Column)? If we are simulated, does it imply that the intelligent agents running the simulation are performing computations that are fundamentally similar to our own, since ours derive from theirs?

That’s an awful lot of hand-waving and shots in the dark, but some of these questions have legitimate answers. Further, they may be answered within my generation’s lifetime, a generation who may undergo engineered negligible senescence (Wikipedia), so it’s interesting to speculate on what we’ll see. And I am always on the lookout for information that sheds light on what we know about the nature of intelligence. Enter my next question:

What is it like to be a Tardigrade?

Tardigrades, or water bears, are not intelligent by most yardsticks. But they are alive, they are considered animals in the tree of life, and they are the most extreme form of life that I have ever heard of (so called “extremophiles”). They evolved under incredibly inhospitable circumstances that, at the least, make me question whether all intelligence throughout the universe must be intelligence as we know it. It seems that, if you can show an incredibly counterintuitive form of life, it should also be evidence for the possibility of counterintuitive forms of intelligence.

Now, if you want to know what it’s like to be a Tardigrade, you’re going to have to be willing to get very, very cold, because the Tardigrade can handle temperatures just above absolute zero (–459.67 °F). But you’re also going to have to get very hot, because they can further survive temperatures as high as 303°F. If getting that hot doesn’t completely dry you out, that’s good, because next up is vacuum desiccation (Nature). This is a process whereby all of the water will be removed from your body and you will enter a state of anhydrobiosis, which the Tardigrade, but not the Ferengi (Memory Alpha wiki), can survive. The MythBusters are presently doing an experiment to determine if cockroaches could really survive nuclear fallout (Tri-City Herald). They must not have heard about Tardigrades, which can withstand 570,000 rads (Journal of Radiation Biology) of radiation. Humans? 2000 rads. Perhaps the most interesting part is the findings of the linked study:

Conclusion: Our study suggests that radiation tolerance in tardigrades is not due to biochemical protectants connected with the desiccated state. Rather, cryptobiotic tardigrades may rely on efficient mechanisms of DNA repair, the nature of which is currently unknown.

Is it possible for an extremophile such as the Tardigrade, on some other planet in some other galaxy far far away, to evolve into an intelligent agent with properties completely dissimilar from our own? Maybe, but perhaps the computations they evolve to perform, assuming Darwinian evolution is at work, must conform to the known laws of physics, which dictate computability, meaning they won’t be so dissimilar. Humans are, after all, Turing complete (Nature article, pdf). If they can compute it, given enough time, we can too.

Compliments to Wikipedia for many interesting referenced facts and the photo, which is licensed under the Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.5 license.)