Intelligent life is an inevitability (See details, creationists need not attend
The conditions of this debate are as follows:
1) The planet will develop into one similar to earth.
2) Evolution is a genuine occurrence.
3) There is no meddling God.
The premise: Evolution of life will culminate in the emergence of an intelligent species such as ourselves.
Note
This is a scientific debate. Those who do not believe in evolution need not attend herein. In addition, those who post religious arguments will be banned without hesitation and with extreme prejudice.
Yes.
Side Score: 18
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No.
Side Score: 29
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2) Evolution is most certainly an inevitability. The environment that life occupies here on earth is constantly changing and the creatures that inhabit it must adapt to the changes or die. Creationists think they don't believe in evolution but that is just because their time frame is off. If you want to believe the world is 6000 years old then of course evolution plays no major factor in the existance of life, and you obviously aren't a geology major. However, if you choose to believe the science, which shows that the world is over 4 billion years old, yeah, things are not the same as they were a long time ago. Adam and Eve didn't ride dinosaurs around People and monkeys came from a common ancestor, things started off very simple and grew more and more complex over time. If you look length of time Homo Sapiens have been around compared to the earth its like putting a human hair on a yard stick. Its nothing, we are just a blip on the radar. Side: Yes.
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I think Earth can't possibly be the only planet in this universe with intelligent life. Out of the vast amounts of planets and stars, what is the chance that Earth is the only intelligent planet? Some scientists think that the chances of robot aliens existing are as great as 50/50. They would be so far ahead of us technology wise, having replaced their brains with artificial intelligence. Side: Yes.
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I think Earth can't possibly be the only planet in this universe with intelligent life. Out of the vast amounts of planets and stars, what is the chance that Earth is the only intelligent planet? This is not an aliens debate. The question is "Does evolution always produce an intelligent species?". Side: No.
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Let's start from the begining: the big bang. Matter and energy explodes everywhere, interacting in chaotic ways. Now, for any large set of random data, you will find small pockets of ordered data. For example, if you create a 100x100 matrix where each cell is randomly assigned a value of zero or one, you will have several rectangular regions consisting purely of ones or zeroes -- order in the chaos. So with such an incomprehensibly vast array of matter and energy avaiable in the universe, we end up with tons of little pockets of order here and there.
Now, statistically speaking, within some of these pockets must lie the preconditions for intelligence. So it seems inevitable that intelligence would occur at some point in the history of any sufficiently complex universe. To put it another way: in a universe as huge, dense, chaotic, and long lasting as our own, pretty much anything that can occur, will occur. Now, intelligent patterns are extremely entropy resistant due to their ability to manipulate the world around them. So once intelligence gets sown into the fabric of the universe, it seems virtualy certain that it will not be removed. On the contrary, it will tend to spread, eventually converting every atom of stuff in the universe toward it's own ends. Side: Yes.
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Let's start from the begining: the big bang. Matter and energy explodes everywhere, interacting in chaotic ways. Chaos is a misconception. Now, statistically speaking, within some of these pockets must lie the preconditions for intelligence. This is not an aliens debate. The question is "Will evolution on a planet such as this inevitably produce an intelligent life form?". I.e in 100% of cases. I would argue that it would not. Side: No.
Chaos is a well defined state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chaos Not sure how you can call it a "misconception." So this debate is about whether intelligent life on any given earth-like planet is inevitable? Well, that's not a very interesting question. I mean, if a nearby star exploded the planet would be incinerated and life would be extinguished (just to take one failure scenario). In a possibility-space as limited as a single planet, nothing is inevitable. Side: Yes.
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Evolution does not strive towards perfection or any goal really. Sometimes, a species evolves in a negative way (slower, fatter, more prone to predators) because the individuals with those "negative" traits are actually better suited for the environment. Thus, intelligent life doesn't need to happen. Side: No.
Take the aboriginal Australians. Farming is usually regarded as more 'intellegent' than hunting-gathering. But Australia was originally populated by farmers of Southeast Asia; they found that they could get more food by hunting and gathering. Ergo they stayed 'primitive' for 40,000 years. Side: No.
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Depends on what you consider intelligent, if they are adapting to their environment it's never a negative trait. The fact that their environment encourages the growth of those traits would make them positive. Only in a change of environment would those traits be negative. In our environment they are negative but maybe in a different environment a species is slower and fatter because their food supply is irratic and doesn't provide them with sufficient nutrition so they have to creat a lot of fat cells as a safeguard. If they are prone to predators they become extinct. Evolution is a universal truth, you adapt positively or you die. Name one instance of a negative adaption that allowed a species to extend its survival and I'll admit defeat. Side: Yes.
The debate creator is specifically speaking of intelligence (comparable in size and function to our (humans') own). As such a discussion of general positive or negative traits is off topic, as is a discussion of evolution (if we take the debate creator's original presumptions). But the fact remains: intelligence is not always a positive trait because of the accompanying burden, i.e. the size of the brain. A large capacity for humanoid intelligence requires massive amounts of brain tissue and energy. The human brain consumes about 20% of the entire energy of the body. Humanity wouldn't have survived had not our forbears figured out how to use relatively advanced tools/weapons because we wouldn't have been able to support that kind of energy consumption. If we had been able to support that consumption without tools/weapons, we would see similarly intelligent species all over the Earth. Humanoid intelligence is much more apt to be a fluke, as we see that humans are the only (moderately) intelligent species on Earth. Were we to presume that intelligence is beneficial in most cases, highly intelligent species would be at the tops of their respective food chains, or animals would all be generally smarter. Side: No.
I wasn't saying negative meaning detrimental to the survival of a species. I was talking about a trait that we would consider to be a bad trait. A lot of us probably think extreme fatness is a pretty bad trait, but for some species (e.g. walrus, whales, polar bears), it's actually necessary for survival. The reason we think that way is because of the term "survival of the fittest". A lot of people assume the fittest are in the best shape because "physically fit" people are those with strength, agility, and high endurance. However, the true meaning of fitness is an individual's ability to survive in its environment. Therefore, a trait that positively influences a species fitness could actually be a trait that we perceive as negative. Side: No.
If something becomes better suited to an environment, it cannot be a negative evolution, for evolution seeks the end result of being better suited to the environment. Intelligency ought to be inevitable, because it always makes you better suited to the environment (by giving you the capability to change the environment to better suit you). Side: Yes.
Nothing in evolution is inevitable. Human beings are a relatively short-lived species. Just look at the ostrich. It has stayed relatively the same since around the time of dinosaurs, yet it has one of the smallest brain sizes in proportion to its body. That's because they are fast, have lethal kicks, and have great instinct. It would have been entirely possible for an animal like that to be the master species of the planet without being intelligent. As I said before, evolution is random. A fish has 100 babies. 50 or them have better camouflage than the parent and 50 or them are born neon yellow. A shark passes by and eats every single yellow fish but doesn't eat any camouflaged fish; evolution occurs because there is a change in the gene pool. Now, 100% of the individuals carry the (let's say it's dominant) allele for camouflaging oneself as opposed to 50% of the population just moments before. Eventually, the recessive allele for neon yellow fish might become so rare that it dies out entirely. That's evolution. An example of not-evolution: the original fish realizes that camouflage is necessary for survival, so it decides to only create baby fish that can camouflage. Thus, there never is an allele for neon yellow scales. This is wrong, just like intelligence being an inevitability. Our ancestors didn't think, "If we were smarter, we'd be better suited for the environment." And the only other explanation for why something would be inevitable is divine intervention. That means that God helps to influence the direction in which evolution should go. And yes, this would make intelligence inevitable if it were true, but if God influenced evolution, then why would we have such serious physical flaws? For example, we have a mouth and a nose and we have an esophagus and a trachea. Why is it that we have these tubes crossed? This leads to the possibility of choking because food can go in one entrance but go down the wrong tube. Other animals don't have this problem (examples escape my mind right now) because they have an orifice for breathing and an orifice for eating. Therefore, God does not influence evolution and intelligence is not inevitable. Side: No.
In addition, those who post religious arguments will be banned without hesitation and with extreme prejudice. You post saying "there is no meddling God" And then go on to say religious arguments are not aloud. That, my friend, is not the proper way to go about things. Side: No.
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I would disagree with this premise. Viruses, and microbes are some of the most successful organisms ever to have existed (although I guess viruses aren't technically alive so scratch that). Survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily select for intelligence but merely the ability to pass on ones genes to the next generation. Intelligence isn't required for this to happen at all, and in fact, most families of life don't have anything that we'd consider to even resemble intelligence. Plants, which make up a large part of our ecosystem, don't have nervous systems and can't think. In addition, most animal species rely on other means of survival, not intelligence. Even with hominids, intelligence is costly. Our brain requires 20% of our total energy, and when you have to hunt for every calorie your body needs, this can be very difficult to maintain. But considering the number of species that have existed on the earth, and the time-span (about 500 million years of multi-celled organisms I think) the fact that there has only arisen one species of high intelligence shows that it is not at all inevitable.. Side: No.
As fossils of the precambrian towards cambrian radiation demonstrate, many body plans can be evolved, and there's a lot of luck (in terms of environment and disasters) in choosing which out-perform the others. If the body plans favour more exotic forms, and not the generic tetrapod or basic vertebrate body plan, it may be the case that higher brain functions never evolve. The bottom line at this point is, there are many accidents required to lead towards a vertebrate nervous system, and an efficient body plan attached to it. It may be impossible to know if these accidents are commonplace enough that one failure would just be replaced with a more successful system. Side: No.
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Assuming there's no outer influence, evolution would be random. Suppose plants evolved faster than animals, then plants would eventually out number animals, therefore creating more oxygen. More Oxygen would allow for bigger and faster growing animals. In that case evolution would lean toward mutations for bigger animals. Side: No.
I would like to add a revised argument against intelligent life being inevitable. Life is statistically improbable in our universe, it follows that intelligent life is even more improbable. An inevitability implies a certain state. In statistics an improbable event can only certainly have occurred given infinite time, since this is an asymptote where the chance of the event happening approaches one as time approaches infinity. Therefore intelligent life could only be inevitable if time is infinite in this universe. It seems to be the case that our universe exists in a way that would preclude infinitely long existence. Side: No.
If Intelligent life is an inevitability then humans are not the first intelligent species that existed on earth and there is no evidence of that in the long history of earth.we are the only advanced species to emerge.So life doesn't really promote intelligent life forms. Side: No.
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