Where is our sibling race?

It's too bad there isn't another intelligent species on Earth. And by "intelligent", I mean a species at least as intelligent as humans.

Imagine what we could learn from them. It would be like the competition between Apple and Microsoft -- something that makes each company better. As long as it doesn't kill or maim, competition can motivate and teach.

But there is no sibling race with which humans can compare themselves. We had a shot with the Neanderthals but they didn't make it. That's probably a terrible setback for our species. We missed out.

Sure we'd wage war with the other species in our primitive years but at some point we'd reach detente -- if we didn't wipe each other out. And perhaps a sharing of values would take place in the period after that. It's possible, anyway. It would work best if the other race was both smarter and less warlike, compared to humans. Sort of a race of super-intelligent bonobos.

Alas, we have only ourselves for reference. There's little possibility of humans ever meeting another intelligent alien race. They're just too far away -- if they're there at all (which I believe they are, and in abundance).

Even if mankind lasts for a few million years, it's doubtful we'd be able to traverse the tremendous distances between Earth and the nearest intelligent aliens. It seems we're not destined to meet these creatures.

Kids with siblings are healthier and more emotionally balanced than children from single-child families. Poor humans, we're living in isolation -- and paying a high price for it. It really is a pity.

From dolphins to aliens

The other day I posted about similarities between human and dolphin speech. It was in reference to an article at physorg called Dolphins, Aliens and the Search for Intelligent life. Ah, you didn't know about that last bit, did you? I figured I'd save it for another post -- this one.

In the article, Laurance Doyle, a scientist at the SETI Institute in California, speaks about what the language of aliens who are more intelligent than us might be like:

To explain, Doyle highlights the example of Koko, a captive gorilla that has learned sign language and can understand concepts like “tomorrow” or “yesterday”. But combine time tenses, and Koko doesn’t understand.

 “If you say to her, ‘by this time tomorrow I’ll have finished eating’, Koko doesn’t understand the two time jumps, that at some point in the future there will be a point in the past,” says Doyle. “Now imagine an alien comes with more complex abilities. They may say, ‘I will have to be have been there’. Now there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but humans can’t handle three time jumps or more. An alien could just think in a more complex way.” So instead of double entendres, they might have triple or quadruple entendres.

Isn't that cool? I'm 100% sure there are aliens out there who are vastly more intelligent than we are. It makes perfect sense given the size of the universe and life's propensity for existing in any possible niche. In fact, it's insane to think there aren't aliens who are more intelligent than us. Dog, I'd like to meet them (even if they think I'm a fly). Go read the entire article. It's major fun.