Are Humans Intelligent? – The Kardashev Scale

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This is Earth.

Earth is located among the cluster of planets and other objects that orbit around the Sun, a bright star at the center of the solar system. It is by far the most important source of energy on earth. This solar system is located in the Milky Way galaxy and it is estimated that there are about 100 billion such galaxies in this universe.

Wait? But who’s estimating these numbers?

Meet humans, a life form on the planet earth.

Humans describe themselves as an intelligent species. They are conscious of their existence, they constantly ask questions, they use their two legs to walk and two hands to pick things up and turn them into other things.

It all began with Lucy.

Lucy, also known as AL 288-1 was a female hominid. For a reference, humans and chimpanzees also belong to Hominini. Lucy is dated to about 3.2 million years ago and she was discovered in Africa in 1974 near a village called Hadar. We only have 40% of Lucy’s skeleton arrangements.

But, why is she so important?

Because her skeleton presents a small skull, similar to that of apes. It also provides us with evidence of standing and walking upright. Walking upright is called bipedalism. Lucy’s skull proves that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size. She is one of humanity’s early ancestors, one of the first species to walk upright, meaning she used her legs to walk and used her pair of hands to pick things up and defend herself.

There, the early human was born!

Humans to this day, use tools around them, build things, live comfortably and even answer their existential questions through these tools. Humans are now evolved to even use energy from the sun, wind, force of water and coal. That’s how they power their incredible cities and vehicles.

So, all things considered, do you regard human beings as intelligent?

What is intelligence in the first place?

Intelligence is described “as the ability or inclination to perceive or deduce information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.”

If that’s what intelligence is, even plants could be classified as intelligent. In a 2015 book Brilliant Green, scientist Stefano Mancuso explains how plants process information, sleep, remember, and signal to one another — showing that, far from passive machines, plants are intelligent and aware. When you look at the ant colonies, it is evident that they possess remarkable intelligence and have the ability to learn from recent experience. In fact all animals display complex and intelligent behaviors. They navigate over long distances, find food, avoid predators, communicate, display courtship and care for their young. So, if all species are intelligent in their own right, the next question that comes to mind is, how do you classify intelligence?

One way humans differ from their fellow earth dwellers is through the process of creativity. Ever since human beings escaped the food chain, their reality expanded to areas other than mere survival. When a person who has all their basic survival needs met, starts paying closer look at their environment. They begin to notice how their society makes them feel and get involved in the process of creation. They start connecting with people around them, create works that expresses how they feel, write books, draw and sing and constantly look for room for improvement. This is a key factor for their development.

When you are just barely surviving, the fact that walking from San Francisco to New York City takes about 1000 hours or 41 days doesn’t bother you. But when you have all your needs met, you are thinking of how to improve the travel time between the cities using the tools around you, paving way for new technologies. It is the human condition to always seek for this room for improvement.

Developing new technologies to live comfortably and answering existential questions through those technologies has always set us apart. So then, can intelligence be classified through our use of technology? We are the only beings in our planet that creates and constantly updates and redefines their technology. There is nothing to compare our advancements against, to measure our intelligence. Since in the last article we talked about the Fermi Paradox, and looked to the stars in search for the technology obsessed extraterrestrial civilizations, today we are going to compare ourselves against those hypothetical civilizations to measure our own intelligence.

In 1964, a Soviet Astronomer called Nikolai Kardashev, created something called Kardashev Scale. It is a method to classify different intelligent civilizations and their technological advancements based on the amount of energy, a civilization is able to use for communication. This scale has three categories.

Type I civilization, Type II civilization and Type III civilization.

Type I is any civilization that can use and store all the energy, which reaches its planet from the planet’s star. It uses all of its planet’s energy, completely. For example, we use sun light, water, wind and earth based minerals to derive electricity. But we don’t even use the solar energy completely; let alone using all the energy resources available to us. But history suggests that humanity is always in the midst of a technological revolution, be it the industrial revolution of the past or the Artificial Intelligence of the present and the future.

Humanity is currently undergoing the transformation process from being a type 0 civilization to type 1 civilization, according to this scale. But any civilization which is undergoing this transformation, also carries a significant risk of self-destruction, and humanity is facing it right now. Excessive energy usage without the adequate disposal of the resulting heat could make the planet unsuitable for any biological life forms, and leave their food sources depleted. But we also have to take into account that any civilization, which is reaching Type 1, could also hold the resources to colonize other planets.

Type II is any civilization that can harness the energy radiated by its own star. Not just the energy that falls on the planet from the star, that’s Type I, but harnessing the energy directly from its home star. At this point in time, we can only dream of what this civilization might look like. This is where concepts like Dyson sphere comes into play, a hypothetical structure that completely surrounds a star and captures most of or all of its power output.

Type III civilization also called galactic civilization, can control energy on the scale of its entire galaxy. Not just the planet, not just the home star, not just the solar system, but also the whole galaxy with millions of stars and planets. We cannot even begin to imagine what this type of civilization would look like. They would appear to be God like in comparison to our species. They would have absolute mastery over all types of energy resources within the galaxy. They could even tap into energy released from supermassive black holes that are believed to be in the center of most galaxies. From a human’s perspective, for this to happen, thousands of years of biological and mechanical evolution should pave way for a civilization like this. That being said, the result of the evolution would make this civilization extremely different in comparison to our present state.

At this point, if you are wondering about what the state of humans in this scale is, astronomer Carl Sagan got you covered. Based on our energy use in 1973, Carl Sagan estimated that earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization. In 2015, we were at 0.7239 in the Kardashev Scale. Using this as a reference, we can build a Karashev model starting from the lowest civilization type, Type 0.1. Based on this, Futurism also published a fascinating article called ‘Why Earth is a Zero Level Civilization.’

As a Type 0.1 civilization, you would use sticks and other tools you find to hunt and gather your food.

From Type 0.2 civilization, you would have learned to manipulate fire, and use it to be warm and cook and wear clothes to protect you from the harsh environment. You use smoke signals to communicate with distant tribes, and evolve from just using the resources available to you to manipulating them. You will begin using metals instead of stones, and navigate through copper, bronze and iron ages. Now you begin to build large structures to harness water and wind power. You slowly become an advanced civilization.

From Type 0.4 civilization, you will meet with something called Industrial Revolution and soon you’d meet up with steam and electricity. Once electricity comes into picture, you will evolve at an incredible rate.

The nuclear energy follows, which allows you to power your incredible cities and technologies. But with a click of a button, you also now possess the power to destroy one another. It’s a test. Would you be one as a family and proceed towards becoming a Type 1 civilization or would you … ?

Even though Kardashev scale of intelligence is hypothetical, and it was created to demonstrate the potential of human civilization, one thing remains to be certain. Violence in any shape doesn’t belong anywhere in this model.

If we aspire to advance and expand into this universe and understand it further, we should take care of this pale blue dot first. In order to protect our home, wars and violence among us should be the first thing to be extinguished.

Pale Blue Dot – Photo of Earth from the outer space

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