In talk.origins Friar Broccoli <EliasRK@gmail.com> wrote:

On Aug 14, 1:06 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
wrote:

Friar Broccoli wrote:

On Aug 13, 8:38 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
wrote:

K_h wrote:

Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no other intelligent
civilizations within the Milky Way galaxy.  On the other hand, intelligent
life should exist on a substantial fraction of planets with life because
natural selection broadly increases intelligence with time.

.

Does it? News to me. What evidence do you have that this is the case?

.

There has been an increase in the intelligence of a broad range of
species on earth with time.

Has there? What broad range, exactly? And if natural selection
broadly increased intelligence with time, we would expect all
species to be undergoing this push, wouldn't we?

I don't see how this follows at all.  I would expect different
species to adopt widely differing strategies depending on
circumstances.  In plants, intelligence would be a complete
waste of resources.  Others like Starfish and Jellyfish have
used other strategies to ensure they can navigate and persist in
their environments without needing intelligence.

The definition of evolutionary success is reproduction.  Using
that paradigm I conclude that intelligence, however defined,
is totally useless for evolutionary success.

No, I'm not just being cute.  Take a deep breath and look around
at the most successful life forms.

Brains are one method for allowing adaptive behaviour which in
turn allows creatures to harvest an often wide range of
resources, while avoiding a wider range of dangers in an
increasingly complex environment. (Not all species need or use
this strategy, just as not all use hard parts, or get really
big or whatever.)

However, we note that many non-mammels, including plants, have
managed to survive quite nicely without that sort of adaptive
behavior.

And none of this considers other forms of intelligence.

-- 
   --- Paul J. Gans