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I do not believe it's reasonable to be insisting everyone is going to be dead in 100 years, esp since it's not a given at all. e: Edited slightly. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 02:26
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It's the thread to talk about whether or not the existence of life forms that leave their solar system in any meaningful way is even possible, and all available evidence indicates pretty strongly that it may not be. Basing our beliefs off some stuff that some nerds wrote in science fiction books rather than actual data and evidence isn't exactly scientific.
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Aug 6, 2020 02:32
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Classon Ave. Robot posted:It's the thread to talk about whether or not the existence of life forms that leave their solar system in any meaningful way is even possible, and all available evidence indicates pretty strongly that it may not be. Basing our beliefs off some stuff that some nerds wrote in science fiction books rather than actual data and evidence isn't exactly scientific. None of this is true. There is actually no evidence that it is not the case, I'm not really aware of who is basing anything off of science fiction alone in this thread, you seem to be arguing with a strawman there; sometimes science fiction stuff comes up because its neat to talk about and presents understandable common ground for people to discuss thought experiments; but assuming 7 billion humans are just going to die as a given is not scientific either. We've already had multipage long discussions about the lack of evidence and the lack of evidence isn't evidence of its lack. This actually is the thread to discuss "nerd stuff" as long as people are reasonable about it; rolling in with nihilistic hot takes though isn't being reasonable. We are currently discussing things like whether aliens exist, and some have wondered if our assumptions are valid based off of mainly our own experiences, that's not an invitation to go all doomer and insist alien life can't exist because climate change because it's exersizing a sort of heckler's veto on the conversation.
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Aug 6, 2020 02:40
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I have problems with the climate-change-as-universal-Great-Filter theory in that it's, essentially, akin to almost all the other "sociological" hypotheses -- it has the same problem of "Why would this be the case for every civilization?" It could be the great filter for humans, but what makes it necessarily the case for every possible technological civilization in the universe? Why would every civilization make the same choices? Isn't it possible that a civilization could leapfrog from waterwheels straight to electricity, and never even develop fossil fuel power? All you need is magnets, metal, and some spinning things. Maybe some other civilizations could have arisen on planets where, for whatever reason, conditions just do not allow fossil fuels to form, or perhaps only extremely rarely. EDIT: In other words, it's analogous to the explanations like "Perhaps they are all hiding" or "Maybe they all choose not to explore space". They're vulnerable to the same issue where it only takes one civilization to choose not to do those things. Sociological answers that rely on everyone, no matter how different, to make the same choices, are flimsy. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 03:05
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DrSunshine posted:I have problems with the climate-change-as-universal-Great-Filter theory in that it's, essentially, akin to almost all the other "sociological" hypotheses -- it has the same problem of "Why would this be the case for every civilization?" It could be the great filter for humans, but what makes it necessarily the case for every possible technological civilization in the universe? Why would every civilization make the same choices? Isn't it possible that a civilization could leapfrog from waterwheels straight to electricity, and never even develop fossil fuel power? All you need is magnets, metal, and some spinning things. Maybe some other civilizations could have arisen on planets where, for whatever reason, conditions just do not allow fossil fuels to form, or perhaps only extremely rarely. Species that reproduce rapidly and don’t stick to a single niche tend to disrupt the conditions that allow for their own survival, at least on Earth. There’s no reason to think that we’re any different from the other 97% of species that went extinct.
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Aug 6, 2020 03:08
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Species that reproduce rapidly and don’t stick to a single niche tend to disrupt the conditions that allow for their own survival, at least on Earth. There’s no reason to think that we’re any different from the other 97% of species that went extinct. You're talking in the past tense, as if we're already extinct. As far as I checked, we're not.
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Aug 6, 2020 03:17
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DrSunshine posted:You're talking in the past tense, as if we're already extinct. As far as I checked, we're not. Additionally as far as I know invasive ant species don't really result in destroying the environment. So this isn't true even for every invasive species on Earth.
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Aug 6, 2020 03:36
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Raenir Salazar posted:Additionally as far as I know invasive ant species don't really result in destroying the environment. So this isn't true even for every invasive species on Earth. 
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Aug 6, 2020 03:42
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Ants aren't mammals!  they are Insecta! 
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Aug 6, 2020 04:13
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mediaphage posted:to be honest i found the bits about the cultural revolution more interesting than the sci-fi, which to me says i should do some history reading. parts of it feel very Party line which is chafing. i'm really struggling to get through the second book. I slogged my way through the Three Body Problem. Like you I found the Scifi less interesting than the history bits. It certainly gave me no desire to read the second in the series. I've read worse Scifi, but I'm not sure why it's so highly rated.
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Aug 6, 2020 05:23
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The second and third got kinda weird. They had some neat ideas, but it got hella sexist too.
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Aug 6, 2020 06:18
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DrSunshine posted:I have problems with the climate-change-as-universal-Great-Filter theory in that it's, essentially, akin to almost all the other "sociological" hypotheses -- it has the same problem of "Why would this be the case for every civilization?" It could be the great filter for humans, but what makes it necessarily the case for every possible technological civilization in the universe? Why would every civilization make the same choices? Isn't it possible that a civilization could leapfrog from waterwheels straight to electricity, and never even develop fossil fuel power? All you need is magnets, metal, and some spinning things. Maybe some other civilizations could have arisen on planets where, for whatever reason, conditions just do not allow fossil fuels to form, or perhaps only extremely rarely. It's basically a generalization of Ohm's law, humanity chose to burn fossil fuels because it's just easier than making giant dams and waterwheels everywhere. Of course it's short-sighted (since we're running out of the stuff, and we've hosed up our whole ecosystem!), but it's easier in the moment, and here we are. But you're right in that this doesn't in any way necessarily generalize to alien species, maybe the poor bastards who learned to pick up a stone evolved on a world without massive fossil fuel reserves? But there's still that Lemian problem: For us to ever interact with, let alone understand, an alien species, we need some similarity, and quite frankly the endless greed that drives humanity probably has to be one of them. If the alien intelligence is so alien that it doesn't have a drive to expand outwards, we never hear from them, and that's still the end of it from the Fermi POV, even if those alien intelligences didn't suicide themselves as a technical civilization like we're doing at the moment. I suppose there could be a water-wheel civilization that also, for whatever their reasons, chose to also start sending messages into deep space, and we could hear about them then? It's a massive endeavor still, and a "conservational" alien culture might consider it a waste to begin with, but then they might not, because they're friggin' aliens and no one knows what their motivations may be, as a civilization.
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Aug 6, 2020 10:37
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I'm not sure why you need fermis thing at all. I was looking at the elements of the Drake equation and it seems like you have to make some absolutely insane assumptions, iirc 3 elements are Chance at Life, Chance of Intelligence life, Chance of intelligent life creating radio etc. Some estimates argue that all 3 of those are 100% which is... Extremely dubious. Drakes original estimates seem to be 100, 100, 20 which... Again. 100% chance of human intelligence per habitable planet? Based on a sample size of 1. Even with those silly assumptions you only end up with 20 civilisations in the milky way. The milky way is big as poo poo we would still likely never see them.
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Aug 6, 2020 11:49
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Communist Thoughts posted:I'm not sure why you need fermis thing at all. I just did a quick test of this myself and your figures seem a bit out, I got 60 with the below numbers, essentially assuming 90% of planets will fail at each stage. Drake Equation N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L The number of stars that are born in the Milky Way each year. R =100 The percentage of these stars that have solar systems of planets. fp = 0.60 The average number of "Earthlike" planets (potentially suitable for life) in the typical solar system. ne = 0.1 The percentage of those planets on which life actually forms fl = 0.1 he percentage of life-bearing planets where intelligence evolves fi = 0.1 he percentage of intelligent species that produce interstellar radio communications. fc = 0.1 The average lifetime of a communicating civilisation in years. L = 10000 Then N (The number of civilisations we might be able to communicate with.) = 60
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Aug 6, 2020 17:05
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StarBegotten posted:I just did a quick test of this myself and your figures seem a bit out, I got 60 with the below numbers, essentially assuming 90% of planets will fail at each stage. I once tried reversing the Drake equation in order to attempt to determine the minimum required probability of the unknown terms to at least account for our own existence. That is, assume N ≥ 1 - i.e. that we at least count as one communicable civilization. Then, given the most known factors - R and fp (being 1.06 and 1 respectively), and L = 100 (the amount of time we've been communicable), the resulting factor, N / (R x fp x L ) ≥ P where P = ( ne x fl x fi x fc ) must be at least 0.0106.
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Aug 6, 2020 17:48
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StarBegotten posted:I just did a quick test of this myself and your figures seem a bit out, I got 60 with the below numbers, essentially assuming 90% of planets will fail at each stage. This is some real hand-wavy maths now but if you take the volume of the milky way to be about 8 trillion cubic light years (google) an even sphere packing of that volume gives about 7 kpc (24k light years) between each of your 60 civilizations. Thats also assuming symmetric volume but gently caress modelling it any more accurately you get the picture. There's no reason why they couldn't be less evenly spread but that's the mean. If you also chuck in an assumption about similar lines of evolution converging in time any human-like civilization that is out there is too far away to see unless we won (or lost depending on you pov) the galactic lottery. Rustybear fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 18:46
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Rustybear posted:This is some real hand-wavy maths now but if you take the volume of the milky way to be about 8 trillion cubic light years (google) an even sphere packing of that volume gives about 24 kpc between each of your 60 civilization. Thats also assuming an even volume but gently caress modelling it any more accurately you get the picture. True but that's cubic 24Kpc which is about 28.84 parsecs on a side (94 light years) - so that that far compared to the galaxy as a whole. The obvious issue with all of this, of course, is that we have NO IDEA of most of the figures in the Drake equation anyway. Its best just to think of the Drake equation as in interesting thought exercise 
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Aug 6, 2020 18:54
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The point was you;d have to juice the drake numbers to get 1000s/10000s of civilizations before you started to see numbers for the average distance between civilizations which are manageable for communication as we understand it currently. edit: sorry misunderstood your post, no that figure is the radius (x2) for the size of the sphere evenly packed into that space. Rustybear fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 6, 2020 18:59
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I didn't know the first variable in the Drake equation is for stars born in the galaxy. That makes no sense. This tells us an old galaxy with no new stars born in a year would have always zero civilizations, completely separated from all the stars that were born in the past. A galaxy could have thousands of civs and the Drake equation would claim there are zero if the galaxy in question doesn't make new stars anymore. What's the reason for that?
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Aug 6, 2020 20:45
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Libluini posted:I didn't know the first variable in the Drake equation is for stars born in the galaxy. That makes no sense. This tells us an old galaxy with no new stars born in a year would have always zero civilizations, completely separated from all the stars that were born in the past. The concept is that stars have life cycles and generally old stars , well at least old non dwarf stars (red dwarfs are pretty stable over exceptionally long ages) tend to be pretty terrible places for life and eventually turn to either neutron stars or black holes ,both no gos for life as we know it. Red Dwarfs are the one exception and I suspect are the best bet for finding advanced life, because they can support habitable zone planets and are usually incredibly stable and less likely to fart out accidental gamma ray death flares like suns such our own do. But if we assume you need stars like ours, its absolutely valid to claim that without new star production, life is implausible.
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Aug 6, 2020 21:00
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duck monster posted:The concept is that stars have life cycles and generally old stars , well at least old non dwarf stars (red dwarfs are pretty stable over exceptionally long ages) tend to be pretty terrible places for life and eventually turn to either neutron stars or black holes ,both no gos for life as we know it. I know all of this, that is not my problem. My problem is the equation as it is, doesn't make a difference about star production right now and star production in the past. A star that has existed for 4,5 billion years could have a civilization right now, but the Drake equation as explained above would just no-sell it if the galaxy in question hasn't been producing no new stars in a while. Do you understand why this makes the equation worthless?
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Aug 6, 2020 21:37
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Are there galaxies that aren't producing new stars? Is that even a thing?
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Aug 6, 2020 22:21
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Captain Monkey posted:Are there galaxies that aren't producing new stars? Is that even a thing? No. Galaxy's are star factories, its a major function of what they are.
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Aug 7, 2020 10:53
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Libluini posted:I know all of this, that is not my problem. Dead galaxies are often metal poor (the two may be causally linked but its an unsolved problem); there's good reason to think that dead or dying galaxies are inhospitable to (what we might recognise as) civilisations. The central problem with the drake equation is that it just looks at humans and reads across to the whole galaxy/universe with no justification for doing so; but what else do you want them to do. It's just an intuition pump to get you thinking about these things. edit: there's also potentially good reason to think that the only aliens worth looking for need to be 'human-like' anyway. Something that lives inside a star or is the size of a microbe and lives in hard vacuum would potentially lack the shared frame of reference necessary for meaningful communication. Rustybear fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Aug 7, 2020 |
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Aug 7, 2020 11:20
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StarBegotten posted:No. Galaxy's are star factories, its a major function of what they are. I wouldn’t say this is accurate. There are galaxies that do not produce stars very well at all. Elliptical galaxies typically have lower rates of star formation than spiral galaxies. But this isn’t strictly true. There are spiral galaxies which have poor star formation as well. Gas that is critical for star formation can be stripped away from a galaxy through interactions with other galaxies. I wouldn’t say having star formation is a defining trait of galaxies. Galaxies are merely huge collections of stars. star formation just helps keep them active with short lived stars. So in the greater context of what we’re talking about, if we assume civilizations need sun like stars, your galaxy better have had some star formation in the last 5 billion years. You shouldn't assume that though. Again, sample size of 1 here. If a self-aware boltzmann brain spontaneously formed out in the void of space, what would it assume the odds are that other life forms are out there? It'd make it's own equation about the chance of such an accident occurring again, rather than other possibilities of the genesis of life (such as through abiogenesis and evolution on some sizable rock around a sun-like star  ).
Zesty fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Aug 7, 2020 |
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Aug 7, 2020 13:47
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But that just circles back to the Fermi point, the Niven Outsider Boltzmann brain wouldn't conceptualize star-circling rocks as good havens for intelligent life, and wouldn't try to aim whatever contact they might be interested in at said rocks, and we would never hear about them, and... If a sapient life-form can't process the same concepts that we consider elementary, like radio and laser, life in the "goldilocks zone", etc. then it's pretty drat hard to conceive them ever trying to contact us, rather than something more like them, as you say. This isn't an answer to the Fermi problem, but it limits the parameter space, if you will.
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Aug 7, 2020 15:37
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Rappaport posted:But that just circles back to the Fermi point, the Niven Outsider Boltzmann brain wouldn't conceptualize star-circling rocks as good havens for intelligent life, and wouldn't try to aim whatever contact they might be interested in at said rocks, and we would never hear about them, and... If a sapient life-form can't process the same concepts that we consider elementary, like radio and laser, life in the "goldilocks zone", etc. then it's pretty drat hard to conceive them ever trying to contact us, rather than something more like them, as you say. This isn't an answer to the Fermi problem, but it limits the parameter space, if you will. ps. a boltzmann brain isn't a brain that lives in space. It's the really very horrifying idea that random motion and quantum effects can randomly make objects at very very low probabilities. So there is some quadrillion zeros and a then a 1 percent chance a brain or a part of a brain enough to think whatever you are thinking right now could just appear out in space. And since even in the heat death of the universe there is no date they will turn off quantum mechanics or anything then at some unimaginably huge number of years from now dead frozen brains who had that thought will outnumber real you having that thought, meaning you are more likely to be them than supposed real you. Fake brains having a single moment of thought will eventually outnumber real people infinity to one
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Aug 8, 2020 12:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:ps. a boltzmann brain isn't a brain that lives in space. It's the really very horrifying idea that random motion and quantum effects can randomly make objects at very very low probabilities. So there is some quadrillion zeros and a then a 1 percent chance a brain or a part of a brain enough to think whatever you are thinking right now could just appear out in space. And since even in the heat death of the universe there is no date they will turn off quantum mechanics or anything then at some unimaginably huge number of years from now dead frozen brains who had that thought will outnumber real you having that thought, meaning you are more likely to be them than supposed real you. Fake brains having a single moment of thought will eventually outnumber real people infinity to one this seems... unlikely
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Aug 8, 2020 13:27
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DrSunshine posted:Turns out (of course!) John Michael Godier did an event horizon episode on climate change as a great filter candidate. I think it's relevant to this thread's last couple pages. I am suspicious of the idea that The Great Filter is the thing we’re living through right now. Historically speaking, humans always believe their problems and triumphs are the greatest the world will ever see, but that is rarely the case. I absolutely believe global warming is a real and serious problem, but I also have faith that future humans will be fighting some other monster of our own creation that is much worse. Raenir Salazar posted:There are real specific reasons why a civilization must go into space and eventually expand to other stars. It comes down to breeding and reproduction first on a biological level and then on a societal level. But human societies are dropping below the population replacement fertility rate of 2.1 as they advance technologically: Germany: 1.6 USA: 1.7 Brazil: 1.7 Japan: 1.4 South Korea: 1.0 Here’s an article showing that in 1950 the global rate was 4.7 but in 2017 was 2.4, and projections show that by 2100 it’ll be at 1.7 and the global population will be falling instead of rising. The idea that we’re gonna keep breeding and fill the solar system with humans just isn’t playing out, because most women who have access to contraceptives are happy to have zero, one, or two children.
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Aug 8, 2020 14:02
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Communist Thoughts posted:this seems... unlikely I mean, that is the point. You can do the math and figure out a brain appearing randomly would be so unlikely it’d take a trillion times a trillion times the age of the universe to even happen once, but like, so what? They aren’t going to stop making years at any point.
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Aug 8, 2020 14:17
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Communist Thoughts posted:this seems... unlikely It is completely bizarre because if you consider it in the extreme, then you're forced by the law of probability and large numbers to conclude that it's more likely that we're in a simulation that exists within the mind of a Boltzmann brain than actually existing reality. A GIANT PARSNIP posted:I am suspicious of the idea that The Great Filter is the thing we’re living through right now. Historically speaking, humans always believe their problems and triumphs are the greatest the world will ever see, but that is rarely the case. I absolutely believe global warming is a real and serious problem, but I also have faith that future humans will be fighting some other monster of our own creation that is much worse. But what about all the people who came in from the climate change thread who apparently know the future with absolute certainty, and told us that no, we're definitely going extinct in 100 years?? DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Aug 8, 2020 |
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Aug 8, 2020 14:28
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DrSunshine posted:It is completely bizarre because if you consider it in the extreme, then you're forced by the law of probability and large numbers to conclude that it's more likely that we're in a simulation that exists within the mind of a Boltzmann brain than actually existing reality. It's the sort of thing where it feels like it can't possibly be true but there is absolutely no reason it wouldn't be. Like quantum mechanics need to just stop working at some point in the future solely because it seems so abhorrent for that to not happen.
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Aug 8, 2020 14:38
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:But human societies are dropping below the population replacement fertility rate of 2.1 as they advance technologically: I think you misinterpreted what I was saying. I wasn't saying population growth is going to be endless. I was saying that our biological imperative will in time transform into a sociological imperative. Because we are still reproducing even as population growth drops, that is something we continue to do. At some point we must just as we did biologically, reproduce as a civilization, passing down everything we've learned, our history, languages, and culture to a "child" civilization on other worlds and in other solar systems because our star will eventually die and humanity with it unless we leave and send colony ships to other worlds. Going back to population growth, most estimates have the peak human population as 12 billion people, some other estimates have it higher, up to 14 billion iirc, that assuming the massive increase in standard of living for millions if not billions of people; we'll be consuming vastly more energy and more resources; which will at some point incentivize asteroid mining, particularly for rare earths and outsourcing our industry to other parts of the solar system in order to mitigate the effects of industry on the climate. The more we dwell on it the more space is completely necessary for us to maintain our current standard of living.
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Aug 8, 2020 15:22
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Communist Thoughts posted:this seems... unlikely Yeah but that's entirely baked into the thought experiment. It's what could happen when you make the variables extend so far that unlikely is just a bad word to describe the event. When a goon posts about something weird like a boltzmann brain, it's not something they invented, there's plenty of sources you could learn about this from. I feel like sometimes an interesting discussion comes up in this thread and it gets shut down and the thread goes quiet for a while. Brendan Rodgers fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Aug 8, 2020 |
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Aug 8, 2020 16:48
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Brendan Rodgers posted:Yeah but that's entirely baked into the thought experiment. It's what could happen when you make the variables extend so far that unlikely is just a bad word to describe the event. its not the first time i've heard of it, it just seems like a thought experiment thats already arguing something to absurdity, and then itself being stretched further to absurdity like "mathematically we are all boltzmann brains!" but it gets discussed because its a fun idea the universe isn't even necessarily infinite so assuming infinite probability and time to work with is a stretch. the history of the universe so far would be absolutely nowhere near enough time
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Aug 8, 2020 17:31
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Communist Thoughts posted:its not the first time i've heard of it, it just seems like a thought experiment thats already arguing something to absurdity, and then itself being stretched further to absurdity like "mathematically we are all boltzmann brains!" but it gets discussed because its a fun idea One of the leading theories is that the quantum fields are the only thing that exists and this whole universe thing is just a time a random fluctuation got big enough to briefly make a big burst of energy that cooled for very small amount of time into all this 13 billion years of stuff that will eventually smooth back out in heat death back to nothing in a really low chance thing that happens because there is infinity time for it to happen.
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Aug 8, 2020 18:31
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Communist Thoughts posted:its not the first time i've heard of it, it just seems like a thought experiment thats already arguing something to absurdity, and then itself being stretched further to absurdity like "mathematically we are all boltzmann brains!" but it gets discussed because its a fun idea Sometimes the purpose of a thought experiment is to encourage counterarguments, though. But it's always worth keeping in mind that the universe as it exists is not some likely and reasonable thing. It's totally unlikely and unreasonable and weird as gently caress, except for the fact that we evolved in it so it seems perfectly natural to us. The universe not being infinite poses situations that are no less weird than Boltzmann brains.
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Aug 8, 2020 19:18
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Is there any sort of actual mechanism where the universe would just stop existing after a certain number of years? Heat death is when all matter disperses and reaches perfect equilibrium but the idea quantum processes just stop eventually is really not a thing at all and would majorly violate everything we know. The only apparent argument against Boltzmann brains is pretty much “I don’t like that”
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Aug 8, 2020 19:32
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is there any sort of actual mechanism where the universe would just stop existing after a certain number of years? Heat death is when all matter disperses and reaches perfect equilibrium but the idea quantum processes just stop eventually is really not a thing at all and would majorly violate everything we know. The only apparent argument against Boltzmann brains is pretty much “I don’t like that” I mean, an experimentalist's response would be that it's just an expression of the idea that in an infinite universe everything happens an infinite amount of times, which is not a particularly interesting proposition, as it's one infinite event among an infinite number of infinite events.
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Aug 8, 2020 19:36
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The only counter argument as to whether we live in a simulation is also "I don't like that" as well, and so on. A lot of interesting thought experiments also aren't falsifiable with current methods.
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Aug 8, 2020 19:37
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