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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Wouldn't life on Mars that is seperate in origin from earth be a really bad data point on the general idea that life is uncommon, therefore the great filter is very likely in front of us? Not if it's microbial. We know life on Earth started immediately in hostile conditions, but it didn't become multicellular for billions of years after that while living under better conditions. Also we don't really know enough about the nature of life and civilization to say that it is self-evidently rare: it's a solution to a problem we're not informed enough to detect yet.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:03
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microbial would still be a little concerning because the best possible case is if the filter is between dead matter arranging itself into proteins. It being after the next step increases the amount of collar tugging.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:08
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Not if it's microbial. We know life on Earth started immediately in hostile conditions, but it didn't become multicellular for billions of years after that while living under better conditions. Also we don't really know enough about the nature of life and civilization to say that it is self-evidently rare: it's a solution to a problem we're not informed enough to detect yet. Wouldn't even microbial life in the same solar system be a pretty big data point, given our current data points are one? That doubles the data points. That seems like a big deal. Especially in a single solar system.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:09
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Wouldn't microbial life with the same dna structure indicate it was from a common ancestor to the life on earth? That's way less worrying than something completely unique. Even it is roughly unicellular, it means life is basically everywhere. If it's multicellular it means complex life is everywhere.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:13
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downout posted:Wouldn't even microbial life in the same solar system be a pretty big data point, given our current data points are one? That doubles the data points. That seems like a big deal. Especially in a single solar system. It just suggests there are microbes everywhere like there are organic molecules everywhere. What if we also found microbes on Enceladus and Europa and Ceres? It would mean there there is probably simple life everywhere, but that wouldn't tell us anything about the typicality of the evolutionary processes of the Earth.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:14
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:It just suggests there are microbes everywhere like there are organic molecules everywhere. What if we also found microbes on Enceladus and Europa and Ceres? It would mean there there is probably simple life everywhere, but that wouldn't tell us anything about the typicality of the evolutionary processes of the Earth. I'd think that gives higher chances of intelligent life in other systems. We literally make tons of suppositions about life based on our own existence; proven life on another world would blow that out of the water unless I'm missing something.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:51
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Mars went lovely waaayyy before we got complex life on Earth.
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Aug 15, 2020 06:24
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DrSunshine posted:Take asteroid mining for instance. You'd think it's a great free market venture, but it's an example of a self-defeating resource acquisition. The moment someone captures and mines an asteroid is the moment that the prices for whatever they exploit collapse because of massive oversupply. To be profitable, they would need to trickle the asteroid resources back to collect rent, but then... why even justify the cost of inventing the space infrastructure to capture it when you could've done the exact same thing here on Earth? Let's start with the premise that you are in control of enough capital to capture an asteroid for mining. Let's say it has platinum on it, or maybe cobalt. Some kind of rare Earth mineral. Like you say, if you bring it back you'll destroy the price floor by being able to flood the market. But under a capitalist system this isn't a bad thing, this is actually a very good thing. Like you mentioned, the owner of this asteroid would have to trickle things down to keep things profitable. To answer why you'd want to do that over just mining it on Earth, the answer is monopoly. You can bankrupt every terrestrial operation over night by having that asteroid under control, making you the sole source on the planet for an in demand resource. You will have incredible leeway to shape the market to whatever you want for however much profit you want basically whenever you want. You can flood the market as needed to destroy any nascent competition and then go back to extracting whatever profit you want. Short of government intervention you'd have generations of global dominance on this one resource. I absolutely do not think this is a good idea or would be a net positive for humanity in any fashion. I can just easily see a capitalist motivation for carrying it out.
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Aug 15, 2020 06:35
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Kind of hard to imagine anyone doing any kind of asteroid mining if their long-term goal isn't to start constructing a ton of space-based infrastructure with all the heavy materials that they can now easily access. Just dragging an asteroid back and dumping materials down to Earth isn't going to provide the kind of competitive advantage you'd need to actually maintain a monopoly. Asteroid mining only makes sense if you have a plan for effectively infinite raw resources that isn't just "sell them."
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Aug 15, 2020 07:04
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DrSunshine posted:Yeah... I dunno: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/im-convinced-we-found-evidence-of-life-on-mars-in-the-1970s/ From the article you linked: quote:Ghost-like moving lights, resembling will-O’-the-wisps on Earth that are formed by spontaneous ignition of methane, have been video-recorded on the Martian surface; I'd be interested to learn more about these. Does anyone know of any articles analyzing these claims and the features in question? I've got to admit that the "worm" claim is really setting off my BS alarms.
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Aug 15, 2020 11:24
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SerialKilldeer posted:From the article you linked: I'd like to hear about that "statistical analysis" on the purported stromatolites, because that sounds stupid as all hell, speaking as a statistician that goddamn loves stromatolites. VvVv thanks buddy Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Aug 15, 2020 14:41
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Bug Squash posted:I'd like to hear about that "statistical analysis" on the purported stromatolites, because that sounds stupid as all hell, speaking as a statistician that goddamn loves stromatolites. This seems to be what they're referring to: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/15/stromatolites-on-mars/ The paper cited mentions not only stromatolites, but algae and fungus! One of the authors, Rhawn Joseph, has made a bunch of claims about rock forms on Mars that kinda sorta look like Earth life: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/01/30/funny-looking-rock-found-on-mars/ So I definitely wouldn't put too much trust in their "statistics."
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Aug 15, 2020 20:42
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The great filter doesn’t exist, and life is as common as ants at a picnic.
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Aug 16, 2020 01:47
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PawParole posted:The great filter doesn’t exist, and life is as common as ants at a picnic. You have my attention.
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Aug 16, 2020 04:56
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PawParole posted:The great filter doesn’t exist, and life is as common as ants at a picnic. Ants at a picnic isn't going that common if insect numbers keep declining as fast as they are currently.
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Aug 16, 2020 05:02
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Raenir Salazar posted:You have my attention. I mean how would we know if they weren’t common? there could be an earth clone at the nearest star w/ the same level technology as us and we wouldn’t know. Classon Ave. Robot posted:Ants at a picnic isn't going that common if insect numbers keep declining as fast as they are currently. ants are the one insect that you shouldn’t worry about.
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Aug 16, 2020 10:05
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Here's an interesting article about how large lava tubes on the Moon or Mars could be good sites for a settlement.
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Aug 16, 2020 14:39
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To the point of the great filter doesn't exist Agreed What does exist is a series of micro barriers that stop species at many many points. The 1918 Spanish flu could have wiped out a different civilization to the point of fizzling out, we have had at least a dozen nuclear neat misses that would have wiped society out. Maybe the filter isn't so physical and more broad. The second world war could have ended in total societal collapse with different conditions at play. When society and religion were the same set of rules, wars were both racial and religious in origin and eradicating one was the same as eradicating the other. Why would this not be similar in any other society? The great filter is not so much a physical barrier as much as a set of scenarios which the wrong answer to either stunts your society or collapses it. The wrong answer to climate change will filter is out. The wrong answer to protecting us from asteroids could fizzle us out aswell. gently caress the seeds are being down now for future questions were just starting to really get robot killing machines to work out, we have remote nuclear submarines which will launch a Nuke destroy millions of people and there is no one on that ship to stop it.
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Aug 16, 2020 19:58
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Ants are something crazy like 20% of all the biomass on Earth. Also new Kursgesagt video on noted thread topic of asteroid mining!
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Aug 16, 2020 21:30
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Raenir Salazar posted:Ants are something crazy like 20% of all the biomass on Earth. all animal biomass maybe, but i don't see any way ants out mass plants and probably bacteria as well
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Aug 16, 2020 22:05
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:all animal biomass maybe, but i don't see any way ants out mass plants and probably bacteria as well Probably animal biomass yes, but I wouldn't be surprised if you've looked at army ant bivouacs.
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Aug 17, 2020 03:19
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That sounds like the telephone game version of the original claim in a BBC doc that all the ants added up together would actually weigh as much as all of the humans. The claim wasn't even substantiated by their own napkin math, and it's highly unlikely that ants make up more biomass than humans. According to The Smithsonian, humans only account for 0.01% of Earth's biomass, so.... Edit: There's a Gizmodo listicle that cites an entomologist's article in 2000 stating that ants “monopolize 15—20% of the terrestrial animal biomass, and in tropical regions where ants are especially abundant, they monopolize 25% or more.” That wording is super weird to me. WTF is "monopolizing biomass"? Even if he does straight up mean 15-20% of terrestrial animal biomass is ants, I am extremely skeptical. Doom Rooster fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Aug 17, 2020 |
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Aug 17, 2020 03:37
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You have absolutely zero idea just how many ants there are. I’ve seen several sources claim it’s something like 20% of terrestrial biomass. They’re loving everywhere and there’s always a fuckton if them.
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Aug 17, 2020 06:12
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You're MADE of ants. Everything is. It's just ants, everywhere.
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Aug 17, 2020 07:59
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Cake cutting video but the cake is ants
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Aug 17, 2020 10:10
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SerialKilldeer posted:Cake cutting video but the cake is ants Ant cutting video but the ants are ants.
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Aug 17, 2020 13:37
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Dameius posted:Ant cutting video but the ants are ants. I see you've had the traditional picnic experience.
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Aug 17, 2020 13:40
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debtae & Discussion > Space, the Final Frontier: Discuss Ants and poo poo ITT
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Aug 17, 2020 14:02
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Just to get back to boltzman brains, can I ask what might be a stupid question... If, in an infinite universe, a "thought" like that will exist, eventually, surely it's just as likely a universe will IE - 5 minutes ago nothing existed, but everything sprung into existence 4 minutes ago, including all my knowledge, memories, etc. And everyone else's Is this just another type of solipsism? If it is, then why can't those brains be dismissed him a similar fashion?
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Aug 17, 2020 23:38
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You've stumbled onto last Tuesdayism, although that particular 'thought experiment' was meant for a very different thing. This is more akin to the basilisk freakshow, or paranoia about living in the Matrix, or what have you, in that there's really not much we can say about it either way unless we see the fine structure constant changing over cosmological distances, or the Voyager probes hitting the sky box of the simulation. The quantum brain thing is slightly more obtuse in that the argument insists that since, insofar as we know, time will keep on chugging and space will continue to be infinite in all directions, planets full of unicorns and quantum brains must at some point emerge because, well, that's how infinities work now innit? It's still a wholly unfalsifiable hypothesis in and of itself, even if we can observe the various quantum interactions etc. that the postulation starts out with, until we meet said quantum brain, or the unicorn planet. As a thought experiment the brain, or last Tuesdayism, are fine in that they may provoke some conversation, but they're not scientific theories in the sense of 'did dinosaurs exist' or whatever the crazy parallel we had a little while ago suggested.
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Aug 18, 2020 00:05
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That’s not actually how infinities work though. As someone upthread explained ‘All Odd Numbers’ is an infinite set, but it doesn’t contain ‘2’. Nothing necessitates Boltzmann Brains any more than it necessitates Rokko’s Basilisk. Because, using the same argument, with infinite time a Basilisk will be invented and because it’s infinite it will find a way to torture you/a simulacrum of you/ whatever.
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Aug 18, 2020 02:31
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Captain Monkey posted:That’s not actually how infinities work though. As someone upthread explained ‘All Odd Numbers’ is an infinite set, but it doesn’t contain ‘2’. 
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Aug 18, 2020 02:34
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Aug 18, 2020 02:46
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 e: I like this thread's atmosphere of being able to josh around and revert back to sci-fi references every now and then! Rappaport fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 02:56
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Captain Monkey posted:That’s not actually how infinities work though. As someone upthread explained ‘All Odd Numbers’ is an infinite set, but it doesn’t contain ‘2’. Nobody has established that a boltzmann brain is a "2 in a set of odd numbers" kind of thing. The arguement is totally invalid, since it's obviously a fact that brains can exist in the universe.
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Aug 18, 2020 06:49
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Bug Squash posted:Nobody has established that a boltzmann brain is a "2 in a set of odd numbers" kind of thing. The arguement is totally invalid, since it's obviously a fact that brains can exist in the universe. But its not an established fact that they can just pop into existence in vacuum and then live out fake lives or whatever is meant to happen
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Aug 18, 2020 09:18
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Communist Thoughts posted:But its not an established fact that they can just pop into existence in vacuum and then live out fake lives or whatever is meant to happen Yah, you don't have many trains traveling at the speed of light either, but they still get discussed. It's called a "thought experiment". Nothing in physics as we know it prevents an object forming spontaneously, it's just extremely unlikely. What are the implications if the universe goes on infinitely long? That sounds like it might be interesting to think about. Edit: ruling them out definitively would be interesting as well. Is there a limit to what can be expected by chance that breaks our current understanding? Is there a finite length to the universe? Are the number of conscious moments from longer lived "normal" brains just more numerous than boltzmann brains? Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 09:30
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Bug Squash posted:Yah, you don't have many trains traveling at the speed of light either, but they still get discussed. It's called a "thought experiment". Yeah but a thought experiment is not a fact was my point, some people seem to think in an infinite universe a boltzmann brain is a certainty which isn't a given. And as others have said I think, it's a thought experiment that ultimately is interesting but doesn't mean anything for us and isn't falsifiable so there's not much discussion to be had unless you wanna go down the unprovable rokos hole of "we could all be boltzmann brains!!" I suppose arguably the possibility or not of FTL travel doesn't mean much for us right now either to be fair, but it does mean a lot for us potentially. I like your av
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Aug 18, 2020 11:22
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I think the biggest issue for Boltzmann brains is the issue of consciousness. Can a collection of particles that suddenly pops into existence for a Planck second, wobbles in a certain way, and then vanishes out of existence, be really considered to have performed "a thought"? The premise falls apart because we don't have a good definition for what counts as a "thought".Rappaport posted:
I do too! I like that we don't necessarily have to take everything so seriously 100% of the time. Not everything should be gloom and doom, we're not committing some grave sin against progressivism by not being self-flagellating humorless monks at every waking moment. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 18, 2020 |
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Aug 18, 2020 14:30
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Bug Squash posted:Yah, you don't have many trains traveling at the speed of light either, but they still get discussed. It's called a "thought experiment". But then nothing prevents a Basilisk or a chocolate pudding planet, computers exist, pudding exists. Boltzmann Brian’s are fine for thought experiments but they are intensely unlikely to ever be an actual thing even within an infinite universe. We just have dumb ape brains that are bad at things like infinity and statistics.
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Aug 18, 2020 14:38
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