Quote:
Originally Posted by Lestat
I won't quibble with this even though it shows an astounding lack of trying to understand evolution on your part. The fact is, you're right about one thing: It IS odd that our level of intelligence has happened exactly once and only once out of the billions of species to have ever existed. Although, intelligence itself is seen in many many species. Just not to our level. Then again, some species has to be the biggest, quickest, smartest.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you're wrong about our being the youngest species on the planet. It also matters how you define species and sub-species, and so on. Apes have been around for a while.
I wasn't pretending to give a technical dissertation on evolution. I have read the Blind Watchmaker and understood it, 2 books by Behe, several by RTBers and I listen to them all the time. I think I grasp the basics.
The point I was making which is what I think Marcy was making and with which you seem to agree is that advanced intelligence like ours is rare, maybe extremely rare. Another question would be why is it so rare, but that's another can of worms. Marcy was just making the observation and joining that to what he knows about astronomy. I've been thinking about that a little, and I've seen it elsewhere, I think there's some books on it, and that is how much should we have expected to make contact with ETs by now? That we haven't seems significant to Marcy and others - the evolution thing was part of the explanation for why we havent, because high intelligence doesn't evolve easily.
I don't think I said "youngest" but one of the youngest - and I'm talking about modern humans which I don't think has been shown older than 50k years. But even including hominids it would only go back about 5 million.