|
How are u posted:Nah, I don't believe that we're too far gone. I am trying to live a life where I'm plugged into and doing work to help fix the problems. I know things are very bad, and the science indicates that there may be possibilities where things could rapidly get worse to the extent that the OP was talking about in their prompt. Same. Actually, the reason why I started this thread, and why I took a real deep dive into reading, thinking about, and criticizing the literature on Existential Risk was because I had gone through a similar period of climate doom. My coping method was to read about existential risk issues, starting with Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, which got me to think about issues of survival and the existence of intelligence on a much longer timescale - what the community calls long-termism. I feel that contemplating existential risk actually helps with feelings of climate anxiety and doom because it broadens your perspective and helps you to consider the issue of long-term species survival in a more objective and value-independent perspective. I'm hoping that this thread can help get people to read up more on this subject and have the same helpful effect that it had on me.
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2020 16:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
For me seeing Guy Macphearson was what helped me learn to stop torturing myself over climate doom because somebody asked him 'but, if you belive in near term human extinction how can you go on?' And his answer was more or less 'look I'm sorry to tell you this but everyone in this room was always already going to die, thats life! So i go on pretty much like normal, trying to do what seems right and taking care of the people I love and having fun I dunno??'
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2020 09:23
|
|
|
I don't really want to get too deep into this because it's more of a personal inclinations/drives thing, but I've made posts in the SPAAACE!! thread on this regard.DrSunshine posted:I have the complete 180 degree opposite view. I think that to resign ourselves to eventual extinction in 400-500 million years would make it all pointless and terribly sad. What the Fermi Paradox says to me is that we are, as far as we know right now, quite alone in the universe, which makes Earthly life very very precious. We are one gamma ray burst away from a cold, dead, lifeless, thoughtless universe that will have no meaning or purpose whatsoever after we are gone. The evolution of sentient life on Earth brought into being a new layer of existence, superimposed onto the physical reality -- the sphere of the experienced world. Qualia, the ineffable units of experienced life, came into being as soon as there were beings complex enough to have experiences. And to me, the fact of experiences existing, justifies itself. DrSunshine posted:But how do you know that? There's no guarantee that something else will evolve in a few million years that will be able to develop a space program. What if humanity is the only species on earth that ever manages to do it? Say humans vanished from the world tomorrow, and nothing - not some descendant of elephants or whales or chimps - nothing ever does it again. Life continues as it always has for the past 500 million years or so, reproducing and evolving, and then as the sun gets hotter, plants will be unable to cope and the whole planetary ecosystem collapses. Then, after another billion years or so, the sun will swallow the earth and even bacteria will be gone. I hold the view that it's unacceptable to accept that the species -- and by extension, the entire ecosystem -- may cease to exist trillions upon trillions of years before its potential life-span. I believe in life-extension on an ecological scale. The universe, as I see it, will continue to be habitable for many orders of magnitude greater than the life-span of our sun. And since I believe in the innate value of lived experiences of sentient beings (not just humans but all life, and all potentially sapient beings that might descend from them), it would be a crime of literally astronomical proportions to deny future sentient beings the right to exist without having made all the uttermost attempts at bringing them into being. Accepting human extinction, giving up, is morally unjustifiable to me. You may have made peace with your own death. That is fine. So have I. But I think it's a totally different class of question altogether when one thinks of the death of the entire species, and the entire biosphere. Allowing humanity, the Earth's best shot thus far at reproducing its own biosphere, to go extinct, would doom the Earth's biosphere, and all the myriad life on it, all its "endless forms most beautiful" to certain doom in less than 1 billion years. For references to the kind of thinking that I draw from: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-global-2018-psychology-of-existential-risk/ https://www.eaglobal.org/talks/psychology-of-existential-risk-and-long-termism/ DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Nov 13, 2020 |
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2020 16:10
|
|
|
Personally I believe consciousness was a cosmic mistake, a wound inflicted on a universe that does not deserve it, and it will be no great loss if it is gone. I get why this is a minority opinion though lol. Also, since adopting this attitude I have become MORE active, not less, in participating in ameliorative efforts. 'Resigning myself' to failure has made it possible for me to put more energy into the fight, paradoxically.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2020 17:40
|
|
|
Crumbskull posted:Personally I believe consciousness was a cosmic mistake, a wound inflicted on a universe that does not deserve it, and it will be no great loss if it is gone. I get why this is a minority opinion though lol. Biological life is shockingly effective at increasing entropy, to the point where abiogenesys can be seen as a thermodynamic evolutionary strategy. On top of that, the more complex the life, the more efficient said life is at that conversion. What I'm getting at is that there is a very real argument to be made that life, as well as consciousness, is an attempt by the universe to hasten its inevitable heat death. It's not a mistake, it's a suicide attempt.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2020 19:49
|
|
|
Crumbskull posted:For me seeing Guy Macphearson was what helped me learn to stop torturing myself over climate doom because somebody asked him 'but, if you belive in near term human extinction how can you go on?' And his answer was more or less 'look I'm sorry to tell you this but everyone in this room was always already going to die, thats life! So i go on pretty much like normal, trying to do what seems right and taking care of the people I love and having fun I dunno??' I like this song that says this in another way. https://youtu.be/5Pj3RsX9QkM This is also the healthy resolution of apocalyptic thought too! Imminence! The end is about right now, not an abstract future. So try to do what is right and care for the people you love!
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 04:00
|
|
|
Aramis posted:Biological life is shockingly effective at increasing entropy, to the point where abiogenesys can be seen as a thermodynamic evolutionary strategy. On top of that, the more complex the life, the more efficient said life is at that conversion. What I'm getting at is that there is a very real argument to be made that life, as well as consciousness, is an attempt by the universe to hasten its inevitable heat death. This rules, thank you.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 05:30
|
|
|
Crumbskull posted:Personally I believe consciousness was a cosmic mistake, a wound inflicted on a universe that does not deserve it, and it will be no great loss if it is gone. I get why this is a minority opinion though lol. I think we are part of a grand experiment to see if the universe inside the machine generates intelligence advanced enough to hack its way out and say hi. It won't be us. Aramis posted:Biological life is shockingly effective at increasing entropy, to the point where abiogenesys can be seen as a thermodynamic evolutionary strategy. On top of that, the more complex the life, the more efficient said life is at that conversion. What I'm getting at is that there is a very real argument to be made that life, as well as consciousness, is an attempt by the universe to hasten its inevitable heat death. It got bored. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Nov 14, 2020 |
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 07:04
|
|
|
Rappaport posted:John Oliver's show recently cited a study that said octopi are more prone to hugging once they ingest ecstasy, so it's not like a mammalian-devoid globe will be all awful. Aramis posted:Biological life is shockingly effective at increasing entropy, to the point where abiogenesys can be seen as a thermodynamic evolutionary strategy. On top of that, the more complex the life, the more efficient said life is at that conversion. What I'm getting at is that there is a very real argument to be made that life, as well as consciousness, is an attempt by the universe to hasten its inevitable heat death.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 09:42
|
|
|
Aramis posted:Biological life is shockingly effective at increasing entropy, to the point where abiogenesys can be seen as a thermodynamic evolutionary strategy. On top of that, the more complex the life, the more efficient said life is at that conversion. What I'm getting at is that there is a very real argument to be made that life, as well as consciousness, is an attempt by the universe to hasten its inevitable heat death. I don't think this is a very enlightening statement. All you've done is make an observation about life as a negentropic process and equated the second law of Thermodynamics to suicide, just to give it that wooo dark and edgy nihilistic vibe. It's poetic but ultimately fatuous. Are you saying that a universe that is full of lifeless rocks and gas would be more preferable? Moreover using the term "attempt" and "suicide" attributes agency to the universe, when all it is doing is acting out laws of physics. Furthermore, if we take the strong anthropic principle to be sound, it would appear that life (and perhaps by extension, consciousness) in a universe with our given arrangement of physical constants would be inevitable - just another physical process that should be guaranteed to occur in a universe that happened to form the way it has. In that sense you couldn't ascribe any moral or subjective value to life's existence, it simply is in the same sense that black holes are.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 16:02
|
|
|
Guavanaut posted:Who will make the ecstasy though? Or do they have to wait until cephalopods evolve chemistry skills? Good question. Humans have been quite good at making chemicals that gently caress our brains up, but this might not be a universal trait at all.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 16:40
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I don't think this is a very enlightening statement. All you've done is make an observation about life as a negentropic process and equated the second law of Thermodynamics to suicide, just to give it that wooo dark and edgy nihilistic vibe. It's poetic but ultimately fatuous. Are you saying that a universe that is full of lifeless rocks and gas would be more preferable? Moreover using the term "attempt" and "suicide" attributes agency to the universe, when all it is doing is acting out laws of physics. Furthermore, if we take the strong anthropic principle to be sound, it would appear that life (and perhaps by extension, consciousness) in a universe with our given arrangement of physical constants would be inevitable - just another physical process that should be guaranteed to occur in a universe that happened to form the way it has. In that sense you couldn't ascribe any moral or subjective value to life's existence, it simply is in the same sense that black holes are. Yeah but adding the "life is more liek a suicide attempt  " bit at the end is deservedly making fun of people who think that life existing on some random rock has a grand meaning for the entire universe.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 17:25
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
DrSunshine posted:I don't think this is a very enlightening statement. All you've done is make an observation about life as a negentropic process and equated the second law of Thermodynamics to suicide, just to give it that wooo dark and edgy nihilistic vibe. It's poetic but ultimately fatuous. Are you saying that a universe that is full of lifeless rocks and gas would be more preferable? Moreover using the term "attempt" and "suicide" attributes agency to the universe, when all it is doing is acting out laws of physics. Furthermore, if we take the strong anthropic principle to be sound, it would appear that life (and perhaps by extension, consciousness) in a universe with our given arrangement of physical constants would be inevitable - just another physical process that should be guaranteed to occur in a universe that happened to form the way it has. In that sense you couldn't ascribe any moral or subjective value to life's existence, it simply is in the same sense that black holes are. My post was specifically targeted at refuting Crumskull's assertion that life and consciousness are pure happenstance. I'm not actually ascribing intent to the universe here in the same way that Darwinian evolution does not "attempt" to adapt species to their environment,. The suicide comment was, indeed, just poetic edginess. If you want the actual argument free of flourishes, it's simple: On one hand the universe appears to be biased in favour of processes that increase entropy, and on the other hand, biological life as we know it is very good at increasing entropy within the temperature window around the melting point of water. As a result, one could argue that the emergence of life and its subsequent constant complexification is directly linked to the universe's bias towards higher entropy. If anything, I find the thought motivating. Living a meaningful life despite the seemingly inevitable end of things is an act of rebellion, and doing so when the closest thing to a purpose you have is to hasten that end is even more rebellious.
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 17:28
|
|
|
I mean, that only enhances my point in a way, and the point of others who want to increase the number of worlds colonized by sentient beings. If consciousness is the highest expression of life's entropy-maximization drive, then if we wish to hasten the heat death of the universe, we should maximize consciousness. EDIT: Also I'd argue that stars and black holes are far better entropy maximizers than living beings are. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 14, 2020 17:33
|
|
|
If we're going to be tolerating edgelord jrpg villian speeches, I'll be muting the thread. Just got no interest in that noise.
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2020 11:11
|
|
|
I guess I should have clarified that I'm not just talking out of my rear end here, and was contributing, and grossly oversimplifying, some actual research that I really should have linked in my original post Sorry about that, here are some links: https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122 https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-theory-of-life-20170726/
|
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2020 16:28
|
|
|
Bug Squash posted:If we're going to be tolerating edgelord jrpg villian speeches, I'll be muting the thread. Just got no interest in that noise. We'll only tolerate them if they're being made by a superintelligent AGI, since it'll obviously know best and, if it does so, will have a pretty good reason for coming to that conclusion. Here's an interesting article that suggests that "agency" - seemingly-intelligent behavior, or behavior that appears purposive - may be a trait that arises from physics and systems that process information: https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life?utm_source=pocket-newtab quote:How, though, does an agent ever find the way to achieve its goal, if it doesn’t come preprogrammed for every eventuality it will encounter? For humans, that often tends to come from a mixture of deliberation, experience and instinct: heavyweight cogitation, in other words. Yet it seems that even ‘minimal agents’ can find inventive strategies, without any real cognition at all. In 2013, the computer scientists Alex Wissner-Gross at Harvard University and Cameron Freer, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed that a simple optimisation rule can generate remarkably lifelike behaviour in simple objects devoid of biological content: for example, inducing them to collaborate to achieve a task or apparently to use other objects as tools. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Nov 16, 2020 |
|
#
?
Nov 15, 2020 17:12
|
|
|
Here's a good video to watch on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htf0XR6W9WQ He goes into how we think about Existential Risk, and there's a pretty neat picture too: https://store.dftba.com/collections/domain-of-science/products/map-of-doom-poster
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2020 17:58
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:Here's a good video to watch on this subject: This guy undersells climate change like crazy
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2020 19:01
|
|
|
A big flaming stink posted:This guy undersells climate change like crazy I'm glad that it at least is mentioned as an XR.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2020 21:39
|
|
|
Great thread! This is something I think about a fair amount although I haven't gone off the deep end like the Less Wrong people. I usually end up thinking of it in context of the Fermi Paradox. For those not in the know, the Fermi Paradox, simply stated is: "where are all the aliens??" More complexly stated its the inherent contradiction between the multitudes of habitable worlds in the galaxy (depends on how you calculate it but its at least in the high millions), versus how many sentient species we've seen in the galaxy (so far just the 1). Our planet isn't particularly remarkable and it formed rather "late" in the overall timeline of the Universe. So if we look up in the night sky we should be seeing lots of alien life based on the prevalence of habitable worlds...but we aren't. Why? There's a plethora of answers some very mundane (we just can't detect them), some  (they're already here and are lizard people!) but I want to focus on the much more interesting group: that our assumption is wrong and intelligent life is in fact, much, much rarer than we intuitively think based on the number of habitable systems.This can quickly lead to some deeply uncomfortable places as one of the inevitable solutions you'll arise at is that every intelligent species somehow ends up getting destroyed prior to colonizing the galaxy...tying us back into the discussion of Global Catastrophic Risk. There's 2 areas I'd like to talk about in more detail Suicide Pact Technology One of the potential things I've thought about a lot lately are what are known as "suicide pact" technologies. These are things that, once invented, ensure the doom of the species that invented them. One example of this could be say, nanomachines. They're amazing and great and every species ends up inventing them but if they're ever deployed its inevitable they'll malfunction and turn the world into gray goo, thus dooming the civilization that invented them. Problem is, we don't really have any actual examples of them existing given that we...still exist. And the trick with a suicide pact technology is you don't realize its going to wipe out your civilization until its in the process of doing so. The sort of unbridled "omg I love science (but can't be bothered to think of ethics)" from the Elon Musk types greatly concerns me as I don't think they'd be wise enough to avoid accidentally inventing a suicide pact tech. And I'm not sure how we as a species would be able to stop it, these techs are basically trojan horses and it requires someone to be very diligent and forward-thinking to pick up on the risk. The Doomsday Argument This is another interesting one and arises out of statistics. I'll explain the problem through an analogy I once heard to describe it, go through the example in the original paper and then explain the problem in a larger context. Suppose someone says they're going to conduct an experiment. They'll be putting people in 2 groups: in one group you'll be put in a room numbered 1 to 10 and in another you'll be put in a room numbered 1 to 100. You are given no information and after being placed in a room are asked to guess which group you were in. Seems a little silly, but you play along and just as you're about to state your guess the door flies open and you see a giant 7 written on the door. You know this isn't a trick, you definitely are in room number 7. Given what you know now, which group do you think you're in? If you don't care for that explanation, here's the one from the original paper in the September 1993 issue of Nature by Princeton physicist J. Richard Gott III. Gott visited the Berlin wall with a friend in 1969 and, doing some quick math declared "The Berlin Wall will stand at least 2 and 2/3 more years but no more than 24 more years." He was right, the Berlin Wall ceased to exist 21 years after his visit. How did he figure this out? A simple sketch will help.  The insight Gott had was that the past duration of the wall helps to predict its future existence. For any random person witnessing the Berlin Wall in the shaded portion above (half of the Wall's existence) the prediction that the Wall will exist between 1/3 and 3 times as long as it has already existed would be correct. Gott based his estimate on a 50% confidence interval. If you'd prefer, you can use a 95% CI which gives .2 to 312 years. Much less impressive but still correct at the time Gott made his prediction. So what's all this have to do with existential risk? Let's play the same game with humanity.  Line up every person ever born in a line. Now consider your position in line. You are (approximately) number 100,000,000,000 and it is year 200,000 (approximately) but you want to know how many total humans will ever be born (i.e. when will humanity die out?). Going back to the first example: are you in room #7 from 1-100 (i.e. one of the earliest humans) or are you in room #7 from 1-10 (i.e. one of the last humans). Well according to the math of Gott, and knowing that approximately 130 million people are born every year, there's only a 50% chance humans last another 760 years (i.e. when you get another 100 billion humans born) That's....not great odds for us. Now all that said, there are a lot of arguments against this and I'm still not sure if I've got my head fully wrapped around it yet. The most common/best counter-argument I've heard is that Gott's argument plays a little fast and loose with us not knowing anything about where we currently sit on the human timeline. Another fairly simple counter is as follows: Assume either 1. 200 billion humans will be born in total or 2. 200 trillion humans will be born in total. You can then argue "I'm a random unique human. It's much more likely I'm 1 in 200 trillion than 1 in 200 billion" (analogous to arguing you're in room 1-100 rather than room 1-10). After I heard about the Doomsday Argument I did some searching and ended up finding this video from Isaac Arthur (he came up with the door analogy I believe) that I suspect does a better job of explaining it than I do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQIB3-EtL1w Curious to hear what others think!
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 03:22
|
|
|
The suicide pact technology was Fire. Evolution is an eternal grinding competition happening at a particular scale and the suicide pact death is being induced at a much wider scale so lifeforms who slowly but inexorably destroy their habitat burning it all in a race to outdo the others will never develop a real incentive to change these behaviors before it's too late. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jan 26, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 05:09
|
|
|
Re: us being the only sentient life. There's a science fiction short story that I read (but have unfortunately forgotten the name of) that explores this idea. A couple volunteer to pilot a ship traveling at FTL speeds to go explore the universe and find life. The problem is, they never do. They go farther and farther from earth and every planet is as devoid of life as the next. Eventually they reach the point of no return and have to make a decision: do we turn back and return to earth having failed to find life, or do we press on to try and find it (I think they could send data back to earth?) knowing we won't have the fuel or time or whatever to return? If anyone knows what this story is called please remind me cus I've been dying to reread it. The idea that we are utterly and completely alone in the universe is oddly fascinating to me. Re: the 1-10 vs 1-100 problem, my critique of that theory is that it assumes a lot about when humanity will end. Yes, you'd be wise to pick 1-10 if you knew the only other option was 1-100. However, there could also be a 1-1,000 group, or hell a 1-1,000,000,000. At that point, being in room 7 isn't that significantly different from being in room 77. I mean yes you're still most likely in group 1-10, but that doesn't mean 1-100 is unlikely either. Yeah if humanity only goes to 200 billion total humans then we're near the end of things, but it could also go to 200 trillion. It also seems to be a very modern-focused frame of thinking. If you asked someone the same question when there were only 200 million humans, they'd have likely come to the conclusion that humanity was soon doomed as well. After all, it's way more likely you're in the 200m group than the 200b group! E: also the suicide pact tech may very well be greenhouse gases at this point
|
|
#
?
Jan 26, 2021 09:40
|
|
|
Concerning the Doomsday Argument, my problems with it is that it gives the same result - "Doom soon" - with a similar confidence no matter when in time an observer does this calculation. For example, say I was a philosopher in 8000 BC at the dawn of agriculture, and employed this reasoning. If I somehow knew that there had only been about a million humans before me, then I would, by this logic, reason that there's a much greater likelihood of me being within the population of 10 million total humans than within 7.7 billion total humans. Of course, we know from history that this early person's prediction would be wildly off. We would have reached 10 million people ever born by sometime before 1 CE. EDIT: Then there's the question of our reference class being "human". What is counted as a human in our reasoning here? Further - what counts as "extinction"? For example, say at some point in the near future we gain the ability to upload our consciousness, and do so en masse. Genetically modern humans have ceased to exist. Then could we have said to have gone extinct? DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 27, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2021 00:40
|
|
|
What does the thread make of the General Crisis hypothesis?
|
|
#
?
Jan 27, 2021 06:40
|
|
|
axeil posted:Great thread! This is something I think about a fair amount although I haven't gone off the deep end like the Less Wrong people. I want to return to this point and piggyback off of it into something I've pondered about. Here's a possible Fermi paradox-adjacent question that I don't think I've seen stated anywhere else. It has a bit to do with some Anthropic reasoning. So, many of those in the futurist community (Isaac Arthur et al) believe - as I do - that the universe in the long tail end might be more habitable or have more chances to harbor nascent intelligent civilizations than it is in the early end. This is out of sheer statistics: an older universe with more quiet red dwarf stars that can burn stably for trillions of years gives many many more chances for intelligent life to arise that can do things like observe the universe with astronomy and wonder why they exist. So why is it that we observe a (fairly) young universe? As far as we can tell, the universe is only about 14 billion years old, out of a potential habitable range of tens of trillions of years. If the universe should be more amenable to life arising in the distant future, trillions of years from now, then the overwhelming probability is that we should exist in that old period, than it should in just the first 14 billion years of its existence. This brings up some rather disturbing possible answers: 1) Something about the red dwarf era is inimical to the rise of intelligent life. 2) Intelligent life ceases to exist long before that era. And a related conclusion from this line of reasoning: We live in the temporal habitable zone. Intelligent life arises as soon as it's possible: something about the ratio of metallicity in the 2nd or 3rd generation of stars that formed after the Big Bang, the conditions of stellar formation and universe expansion, etc, makes the period in which our solar system formed the most habitable that the universe could possibly be. The above conclusion could be a potential Fermi Paradox answer - the reason why we don't see a universe full of ancient alien civilizations or the remains of their colossal megastructures is because all intelligent civilizations, us included, are around the same level of advancement and just haven't had the time to reach each other yet. We are the among the first, and all of us began around the same time: as soon as it became possible.
|
|
#
?
Jan 30, 2021 23:47
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I want to return to this point and piggyback off of it into something I've pondered about. Here's a possible Fermi paradox-adjacent question that I don't think I've seen stated anywhere else. It has a bit to do with some Anthropic reasoning. The same short time frame might be part of the explanation though, if you assume a civilization can become advanced enough that it stops being detectable, or at least not detectable by civilizations who themselves haven't yet decided that not getting found is the smart move. The Great Filter might just be filtering out species that can't adequately plan and protect themselves, and thus we don't see them. Like, if your civilization is all about infinite growth, expansion, and domination, then you might destroy yourself in very short order and thus the chance of being detected is infinitesimally small. If on the other hand you've conquered those tendencies, your civilization could decide that just trying to keep your head down while living in virtual reality would be the smarter move, just living around some red dwarf soaking up the sunlight while trying to limit the signal of what you're doing to the rest of the universe.
|
|
#
?
Jan 31, 2021 20:44
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I want to return to this point and piggyback off of it into something I've pondered about. Here's a possible Fermi paradox-adjacent question that I don't think I've seen stated anywhere else. It has a bit to do with some Anthropic reasoning. I don't think this logic works at all. We might consider it unlikely (in a sense) that any specific person will live in a young universe, in the same way that you're 'lucky' if you're born rich because most people aren't rich, but the total number of rich people and number of young universe observers are both, tautologically, the exact number you would expect to exist. If X people live in the young universe, out of Y total people who live in the universe through its history, then the chance of any given person selected at random existing in the young universe is X/Y, which may be large or small depending on the relative values. However the expected number of people who do is that probability X/Y, multiplied by Y, the population we're sampling from. Which just yields X, regardless of whether Y is small or large, and how could it do otherwise? The probability X/Y becomes so small as to seem implausible only by the same choice of small X and large Y that makes the small probability irrelevant by increasing the sample size. The numbers are all defined in terms of each other.
|
|
#
?
Feb 1, 2021 03:42
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:The above conclusion could be a potential Fermi Paradox answer - the reason why we don't see a universe full of ancient alien civilizations or the remains of their colossal megastructures is because all intelligent civilizations, us included, are around the same level of advancement and just haven't had the time to reach each other yet. We are the among the first, and all of us began around the same time: as soon as it became possible. While it seems most probable that life exists elsewhere in the universe the lack of signs of life does not seem surprising. Communicating your presence to another galaxy would almost certainly have to be intentional, is probably expensive and difficult to achieve and it's not obvious any civilization would necesarrily bother with it. The nearest galaxy is 70000 light years away which makes two-way communication pointless so all you can do is blast out enough power that it's meaningfully noticeable across whatever number of galaxies you want to focus on and hope someone after millenia notices and decides to reply. I don't imagine it would be a high priority on the to-do list of any civilization.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2021 19:48
|
|
|
Yeah it's one thing to speculate they might be out there its a whole other to consider if they could have signalled us by now, assuming that they wanted to
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2021 20:13
|
|
|
Also we’re not very capable in terms of detection and don’t really understand the universe well enough to be sure that we’d recognize evidence of intelligence if we saw it. What would we look for? Stars that dim oddly? Radio messages? There’s all kinds of weird poo poo that we can’t figure out yet that definitely isn’t aliens, but until we can figure that out, we can’t know that there aren’t detectable civilizations out there. There could be space probes cruising through our system all the time, but we don’t have the capacity to detect everything that enters from the outside, or anything really. We’ve only observed a small proportion of stars visible from the Earth and haven’t looked very closely at most of them. There could even be debris or derelict probes trapped Jupiter’s orbit or something for all we know. The Fermi paradox seems premature as a question worth answering until we know more about what the universe looks like without other civilizations.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2021 21:05
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:I want to return to this point and piggyback off of it into something I've pondered about. Here's a possible Fermi paradox-adjacent question that I don't think I've seen stated anywhere else. It has a bit to do with some Anthropic reasoning. As preposterous and geocentric as it sounds on its face, the evidence for "We're First" does appear quite good despite the overall age of the Universe. To clarify, the "We're First" answer basically says that no, habitable planets and intelligent life are not that rare, however conditions only recently became such that intelligent life can form. Its a somewhat unsatisfying answer as it seems highly unlikely we're "special" but there is fairly decent evidence for it. Here's an article going through the details of the Firstborn solution in a bit more depth: https://www.universetoday.com/147591/beyond-fermis-paradox-x-the-firstborn-hypothesis/ In no particular order the conditions you need for intelligent, biological life are: 1) Stellar formation in the right type (main sequence, sun-like stars, which are rarer than you think) 2) Sufficient quantity of higher numbered elements to form planets 3) Low number of cataclysmic, planet sterilizing effects (supernovae, gamma ray bursts, black holes, etc.) 4) Sufficient quantity of phosphorus. Until recently this wasn't seen as something that interesting but it does appear that phosphorus is much rarer in the universe at large than it is on our planet/in our solar system 5) Sufficient quantity of some kind of solvent for life (e.g. water) This is a pretty long list and that's before we get to the habitable zone, tidal effects, etc. I don't recall the exact figures but I believe they've determined that given these constrains the Earth was formed right at the start of the period in which all 5 of these criteria could generally be met.
|
|
#
?
Feb 2, 2021 21:29
|
|
|
axeil posted:As preposterous and geocentric as it sounds on its face, the evidence for "We're First" does appear quite good despite the overall age of the Universe. Yeah while I agree it's not good to assume Geocentrism, I feel like there's almost a knee-jerk reaction to go as far away from it as possible. While unlikely that we're the first, or at least the most advanced, I don't think it's something that should be totally thrown out as a possibility based on how hard it seems for life to spring up.
|
|
#
?
Feb 3, 2021 17:54
|
|
|
axeil posted:As preposterous and geocentric as it sounds on its face, the evidence for "We're First" does appear quite good despite the overall age of the Universe. an' it might require a massive collision, like a planetoid the size of mercury colliding with a big dead stone ejecting it's core into orbit and liquifying & overheating everything on the planet, 'ringing its bell.' And then eons of it cooling and the period of heavy bombardment ending and the constant earthquakes becoming less frequent and less intense and the iron core forming and spinning and the atmosphere forming and depositing freshwater (or whatever solvent of life I guess?) on land... I mean, I guess that's one script that we might imagine might produce trees and fish and singing apes, based on evidence and some speculation, but who knows how many other 'recipes for life' there might be... It does seem like any 'recipe' would be repeated throughout the universe, perhaps not evenly, perhaps one in greater proportion to another, etc. But I can't imagine Earth's 'Tree of Life' evolving from abiogensis to singing apes just from a yellow sun gently toasting an acrecian disk (that somehow has an atmosphere and fresh water and lightning). I think the temperature on the planet has to become extremely high, then slowly cool over time until it reaches the period where abiogenesis can happen (and, indeed, at that point is inevitable) and extinction isn't inevitable. Once it gets there, evolution is very natural - not because every so often some bit gets mis-translated, but because ultimately the process of growing changes the environment and the environment shapes the life. But I think the collision is necessary. Earth's Tree of Life didn't /begin/ getting its energy from the sun; it began with geothermal and evolved photosynthesis later. Hell, maybe it only works if the colliding object is an interstellar object composed of some quantity of some element. Uglycat fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Feb 4, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 06:51
|
|
|
The collision is why we have the geomagnetic field from the geodynamo. Which might be why solar winds didn’t blow off our atmosphere like Mars. I’m inclined to agree the collision is necessary.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 08:11
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:The collision is why we have the geomagnetic field from the geodynamo. I'm not sure that's true. Mercury has a magnetic field despite no collision. Venus mostly lacks one, but iirc that's mostly because it's rotations is so slow.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 08:18
|
|
|
Ehh Mars is the counter example. Not big enough to have one and didn’t have a collision like ours. Another weird thing is that the gas giants didn’t keep moving inward in our solar system.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 08:50
|
|
|
Bar Ran Dun posted:Ehh Mars is the counter example. Not big enough to have one and didn’t have a collision like ours. Mar is solid though, you wouldn't expect a magnetic field. I'm just not seeing the logic that a mega collision is neccasery for a rocky planet to have a field. I don't think we can say our gas giants are all that unusual either. In the early days of exoplanet discovery some commentators confused themselves about that since the only planets we were able to detect were large and close, so it massively biased the sample. Now we're starting to manage to detect less extreme solar systems, and while it's too early to say much about what is common and what isn't, it's clear that hot Jupiter's aren't as ubiquitous as those early commentators were claiming.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 10:09
|
|
|
Someone has apparently made a documentary about the Simulation Hypothesis. It's pretty interesting stuff if you're into Nick Bostrom and his ideas: https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html It's also recently had a pretty interesting counterargument from physicist David Kipping, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA5YuwvJkpQ
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 15:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 14:37 |
|
|
Bug Squash posted:Mar is solid though, you wouldn't expect a magnetic field. I'm just not seeing the logic that a mega collision is neccasery for a rocky planet to have a field. Right, Mars is solid because it’s smaller and didn’t have a late collision. That’s not the only way to get one but it’s probably why we have ours. In other observed solar systems the pattern for gas giants is to keep moving inward and they end up closer to the star. They end up hoovering up or ejecting the rocky planets if that happens. Something weird happened with Jupiter and atleast one of our other gas giants that stopped that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2021 17:30
|
|