The case for globalism

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The case for globalism

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

jiggerypokery posted:

The problem with the fermi paradox and the drake equation etc is that our definition of intelligent is woefully inadequate. We assume it to mean homosapien-like. Of course we do. The problem with that definition is that we totally overstate our own intelligence. Genetically there is less difference between us and chimpanzees than there is between rats and mice, but a human toddler can perform times tables and a human adult can seriously question the nature of intelligence as I am here. The difference between us and alien life in terms of intelligence could be unfathomable. Particularly if genetics turns out to be fairly unique to earth.

Intelligent life could be everywhere, just completely imperceptible to us as we haven't even considered its effect measurable yet. Consider we only discovered radioactivity recently. What if consciousness were 'measurable' on a device like some form of Geiger counter also? Simply because we haven't discovered some means to measure it yet. It could be everywhere. DNA based 'life' could be very very unique indeed. Consciousness on the other hand could be ubiquitous.

Eh, once you start talking about stuff like this you may as well be talking about magic/the supernatural. The universe isn't that mysterious; we know that, for instance, all matter is made of the same atoms. No matter where you go in the universe, the same known elements (which would be building blocks for life) exist. The same goes for those same building blocks composing the environments alien life would evolve within. So it stands to reason that life would be something that we recognize as life.

While you can't disprove the idea of some invisible life made out of ether or something, that's no different than discussing the existence of a God or any other supernatural thing.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 08:15

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 01:21

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

A Buttery Pastry posted:

You're ignoring something kinda big; fossil fuels. What is the basis for another industrial revolution, when you already stripped the most easily accessibly/usable fuels the first/second/third time around? You're not going to be creating a nuke-making civilization on wood alone. Seems more likely that society would just end up stuck on the cusp of industrialization, a really really long 18th century.

There's also the fact that even if it took a long time to physically build civilization back up, the information would probably still exist, vastly cutting the amount of time necessary to redevelop. People probably wouldn't have to reinvent how to build a nuclear power plant, for example.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2016 22:40

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Ignoring that the original idea was "a drunken walk between the 17th and 21st century", which to me implies erasing the progress of those centuries at the end of each cycle, there are still some issues you have to deal with in a scenario where 21st century civilization survives the initial catastrophe in spots:

Surviving power plants:
- You need specialized knowledge to run and maintain a power plant, as well a supply chain.
- You need motivation to run that power plant.
- You need an educational system that can maintain the knowledge required to keep the plant running.

Recreating nuclear/solar/large scale water power
- Modern manufacturing is the result of a long process of continuing improvements in metallurgy, chemistry, and so on, building on previous knowledge. What happens if parts of large chunks of that knowledge gets taken out?
- Similarly, you need the right machine tools to manufacture other machine tools to manufacture other machine tools to manufacture the specialized equipment/components you need.
- You, once again, need an educational system to maintain the knowledge required to recreate these technologies.

The educational system here is of course reliant on a generally stable, prosperous and populous society, able to produce enough food that people can devote year after year to preserve the knowledge required to maintain what remains and hopefully rebuild. A system that could be very vulnerable to random catastrophes, or people forgetting why something was important because the dude who used to do it just did it without comment for years until he went and got run over by a truck, leading to more and more systems coming offline, diverting attention away from rebuilding into basic questions of survival. Should basic stuff like sanitation come off line, you'd suddenly be faced with recurrent epidemics which encourage people to spread out (or it just thins them out), which would basically be a death blow to any effort to maintain civilization.

The scenario where the world reverts to the 17th century is the same, except no knowledge is maintained except that which exists in books, which will be preserved to varying degrees, or digital media, which could become unreadable very quickly.

It only seems that way because that's what happened historically. If there were no fossil fuels to fuel the industrial revolution, the 19th century is stillborn. That doesn't mean the civilization can't still develop, but it could be at a much slower pace, and go in a very different direction.

I'm not saying it would be instantaneous; just that it would definitely be way faster than it originally took. Something like electricity, for example, can be leveraged pretty easily, and instantly giving people basic knowledge of how it works would greatly accelerate the development of a society starting in a 17th century-ish situation. You'd basically be saying a lot of the time that would otherwise be spent doing research and could reallocate a bunch of manpower towards figuring out how the "future" technology works (which I think would happen easier than you're assuming; if you get a bunch of people together and give them access to a bunch of documentation for a power plant, they'd figure it out sooner or later). The fact that most modern technology requires knowledge of a bunch of other technology would slow things down, but it would still be drastically faster than if people were trying to do it from scratch.

Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 25, 2016

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 17:14

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

Actually, now that I think of it, such a scenario might be worse than the 17th century in many ways. In the 17th century we still had very large, advanced societies. If you gave people in the actual 17th century access to all modern knowledge, it would vastly jumpstart things (because you had pretty sophisticated industries/supply chains to supply raw materials and at least some sort of scientific community). But in the case of some sort of apocalypse, you might end up with a bunch of disconnected villages and far less manpower, which would make implementing the fruits of future knowledge far more difficult.

So I don't really think it can be compared to any point in time, because you wouldn't have any civilization to speak of (which is like going back literally thousands of years) but the people who exist are likely to be far more educated/literate.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 17:22

Ytlaya: Nov 13, 2005

doverhog posted:

In most of science fiction, including Star Wars and Star Trek, spaceships travel with some kind of warp system. They don't actually travel at the speed of light in normal space, because that would be too slow for the speed of plot.

Related to this, but it's actually funny how slow the ships seem to travel (out of warp) in Star Wars. I think in the old Star Wars flight sim games (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, etc) the ships never went much faster than like 100km/hr. Even a generous estimate wouldn't place the speed of Star Wars fighters at anything remotely near jet planes.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 20:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The case for globalism