Submitted via IRC for Bytram
A University of Arkansas mathematician argues that species, such as ours, go extinct soon after attaining high levels of technology.
"I taught astronomy for 37 years," said Whitmire. "I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years."
Recently, however, he's changed his mind. By applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity – the idea that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves typical, rather than atypical – Whitmire has concluded that instead of lagging behind, our species may be average. That's not good news.
[...] The argument is based on two observations: We are the first technological species to evolve on Earth, and we are early in our technological development.
[...] By Whitmire's definition we became "technological" after the industrial revolution and the invention of radio, or roughly 100 years ago. According to the principle of mediocrity, a bell curve of the ages of all extant technological civilizations in the universe would put us in the middle 95 percent. In other words, technological civilizations that last millions of years, or longer, would be highly atypical. Since we are first, other typical technological civilizations should also be first. The principle of mediocrity allows no second acts. The implication is that once species become technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them.
Source: The Implications of Cosmic Silence
For background, see: Fermi's Paradox and the Drake equation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:33PM (21 children)
Yet again we attempt to do statistics on a sample size of one and draw conclusions.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:41PM (17 children)
Indeed.
The thinking here (I'm being generous) is flawed.
If two vehicles go the average speed down a highway for a four hour trip, and one leaves ten hours earlier, the latter will get to the goal first, and before the former even starts. They might both proceed at the same rate, but one got out the door first - and so is both further along while traveling, and arrives at any set goals first. IOW, they're ahead.
So even given the exact same developmental path for two species, if one starts earlier, the other will be behind.
If the author thinks - even for a moment - that there is any reason to imagine that all species started out at the same time, even given the (incredibly) dubious assertion that all develop at the same rate, I would sure like to learn why. If only so I can have a hearty laugh at said author's expense.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Monday August 14 2017, @12:09AM (12 children)
Without sounding racist, cultures develop at different rates for different reasons.
At the time Islam dominated the Middle East, Europe was a backward place: no science to speak of, no development. In fact, many works of the ancient Greeks are known only because Islamic wise men had them copied.
A few years later, it is the Renaissance in Europe and Islam has gone full retard; Europe continued developing culturally, technically and socially while Islam took several steps backward and stayed there.
Even when every human being has the same potential as any other, the concept of zero as a number was invented (or discovered) only in India and the Yucatan, as far as I know.
Take America (the continent): in México there were two advanced cultures, the Aztecs and the Maya. Both had writing, calendars and a complex social structure. The Maya even developed the concept of zero and astronomy.
In the north, the tribes and nations that populated what is now the U.S. and Canada, were still basically in the Stone Age. Further south, you get the Inca, which is between the Maya and the First Nations in terms of technical development.
Assuming that indeed the first peoples in America crossed the Bering Strait and walked south, it would stand to reason that the people in the northern part of the continent would be more advanced that those in the southern portion, because they settled first.
If societies of the same species are so different and their development is so uneven, I don’t think that you can argue that development is linear and the one that starts earlier wins the race.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 14 2017, @12:43AM (3 children)
On a universal time scale, the last 20,000 years of human history is basically nothing, and the last 1000, even more nothing. If you take a finite planet, it takes only a blink of universal time for someone to explore the whole thing and once that is done, technology on that planet distributes. Even Afghanistan has radio.
I get what you are saying, that on a planetary scale some may advance more quickly than others, but what kind of time frame are we talking about? If it is millions of years, that would give radio signals the time necessary to travel vast differences and we should hear echoes of other civilizations -- unless they were just short lived and the signal has already passed us by. On the other hand, if technology was springing up around the galaxy in the same time frame from planet to planet, we shouldn't be looking more than 100 years away because the signals will not have had enough time to travel sufficient distances.
Anyway, there are lots of possibilities including that we are first, but also that we have missed it because it passed us when we couldn't hear or weren't listening, or that sentient life is too new and not enough time has passed for their noise to reach us, or any number of other possibilities. It is all conjecture though in the end.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jelizondo on Monday August 14 2017, @01:42AM
Thank you for your reply. What I mean is more in line with what happened to Islam at around the year 1600, it simply imploded and has never recovered its inlfuence over the civilized world.
They brought numbers (i.e. [0..9]) from India and gunpowder from China, basically giving Europe two of its most potent weapons to conquer almost every other nation and begin the so-called Age of Discovery.
About two-thirds of named stars have an Arabic name.
The zealots and fundamentalists we see today don’t hold a candle to their ancestors, neither scientifically nor militarily. So, what happened to the Islamic Civilization?
You see, a single man was influential enough to get the entire Islamic world to turn their backs on science, education and technology.
We see evidence today in the U.S. of such a stance, from ‘Creationism’ being taught along side Evolution to Flat Earthers to people denying the landing on the Moon to Mennonites. If such people held power, where would the U.S. be in 20 or 50 years? I’ll tell you, it would stop being a super-power and be more like Afghanistan or Tajikistan.
Imagine if the Muslims hadn't been defeated by Charles Martel [wikipedia.org] and had taken over the entire European continent: when they imploded they would have taken the entire Western world with them. There would not have been a Reinasancce and neither an 'Age of Discovery'. Would the Chinese have conquered the world instead? Your take is as good as mine but we can be sure the world would be less developed and quite different from what we know today.
A long read [thenewatlantis.com], but worth it. All quotes from article linked.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 14 2017, @05:52AM (1 child)
Uhhh doesn't the heliopause trash most signals so unless they are dedicating time to send a boosted signal (like we did with the Arecibo message) we won't be getting squat? Or they may have simply went with different technology (imagine if we invented the telegraph and then just stayed on that line with phones, cable, fiber and so on and never bothered with wireless) that doesn't blast signals into space...hell there are a bazillion possibilities that would still leave tons of intelligent life out there so trying to base everything on ourselves? Is just DUMB, heck we don't even know if we are the only life in our own system as we haven't explored the oceans of Europa or under the Martian poles, yet we think we can answer the question of how life is gonna evolve live and die in other systems tens or thousands of light years away? Yeah right.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:12PM
Fuck you hairy-nigger. Wash your filthy black ass-feet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Monday August 14 2017, @03:01AM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Monday August 14 2017, @03:55AM (1 child)
Thank you for reply.
Thinking linearly is a mistake. Yes, Mayan and Aztec societies did not know how to work copper, bronze and much less steel, but that point of view is derived from European development, not an absolute yardstick.
As I mentioned, the Mayan developed on their own, the concept of zero and their observations of Venus and Mars allowed them to develop a calendar much more accurate than Europeans had at the time. Of course a good calendar does not allow you to murder your neighbors easily, so the Europeans won.
Also, the Mayans had extensive trade routes with the Caribs [wikipedia.org] (after whom the Caribbean Sea is named) from Cuba and as far south as present-day Colombia.
And while the Aztec were blood-thirsty and savage, their capital city, Tenochtitlan now Mexico City, was compared favorably with Seville or Cordoba by Cortés [livescience.com] before he destroyed the magnificent city.
It has been argued that the greater technological development of the Spaniards allowed them to conquer America, but the truth is that disease (for example, smallpox [wikipedia.org] played a more significant role) so the linearity of the story as told, I believe, is wrong.
In modern times, the defeat of the U.S. Army at the hands of the Sioux [ted.com] is an example of technological disparity that did not benefit the more technologically advanced. (Of course, in the end the Sioux were defeated and confined to a reservation; but the defeat still stands.)
A similar example is the fall of Rome to barbarians. Nomadic people defeating and sacking the capital of the largest empire the world had known is something to make you pause and reflect: are all the marbles on the hands of the civilized?
Again, development is not a linear affair, it wanders and meanders like a river; depending upon particular circumstances an inferior people can defeat a more advanced culture. Yes, the odds are with the more advanced, but what is important and what is not? Even though China invented gunpowder it was invaded repeatedly and defeated by Japan and Russia, simply because China did not use gunpowder to power cannons but for festive crackers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday August 14 2017, @11:17AM
Sure, but to be fair, the Aztecs were no slouches at murder. Their obsidian knives were easily as sharp as anything the Spanish had, the only drawback being that they were so easily damages, and these guys not only conducted human sacrifices, they did it in bulk. I honestly think you're underestimating the Aztecs if you think the Spanish were any better at murder. The Spanish beat them by a combination of incredibly good timing/luck, astute politics in playing the Mayans and others to their favor, and last but not least the effect of the pox should not be discounted.
The US defeat at little big horn can be laid quite solidly on the head of the commander involved, a man about whom nothing good may be said in earnest.
"A similar example is the fall of Rome to barbarians. Nomadic people defeating and sacking the capital of the largest empire the world had known is something to make you pause and reflect: are all the marbles on the hands of the civilized?"
Rome fell due to internal decay, not external pressure. But yes, 'civilization' has never been half as cool as it imagines itself to be. When it becomes decadent and fails to perform its core duties it receives an Alaric.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday August 14 2017, @06:22AM (1 child)
The issue was species on different planets, solar systems, etc. Not cultures of the same species on the same planet, as with humans, although those, too, make my point.
There are many assumptions - all without merit - being made to bolster the absurd claim being made.
The author is a loon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:55AM
Well, he is working with Arkansas as a basis for comparison. Runaway could tell us much about that! In fact, he already has!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:29AM
People in the south came from Polynesia, they likely mixed at some point, but they don't have the same origin.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)
In the north, the tribes and nations that populated what is now the U.S. and Canada, were still basically in the Stone Age.
The Cahokia Indians had agriculture and a walled city. They died out about 400AD (I was raised in Cahokia, Il, close to where the Cahokia Mounds and museum are). Not sure about other tribes and nations.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Monday August 14 2017, @07:18PM
The classification is not mine, even Aztecs and Maya are considered to be ‘Stone Age’ cultures because they did not know how to smelt, but that leaves out so many other factors that IMHO it is useless classification.
As I have argued in this thread, development is not linear; meaning it does not follow from A to B to C. Some cultures, like the Inca, established large empires but never got around learning to write.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 14 2017, @12:32AM (2 children)
You know you never use a car analogy right? They always suck! ;-)
So the destination in your example is like the end of the world because for example, 20,000 nukes go off and it really fucks things up. So the guy who left ten hours early got to that destination first, and then stops emitting signs of travel (no exhaust, waste heat, no Beach Boys or DJWhatever blasting at 11, etc.). Or in the civilization example, no radio emissions. Then the next guy goes doing the some thing till he gets to the end of it all, and everything shuts down - no more emanations because the trip is over and done with.
Lastly, in the age of the universe, 100 years or 50,000 years is rounding error. Obviously we will never know one way or the other in our lifetimes which is correct without a visitation from aliens -- It is all conjecture, both the idea that civilizations burn out and the idea that they don't and we're just first or something like that, so it seems unwarranted to be quite so dismissive.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:50PM (1 child)
It's possible, maybe likely, that life is rare in the universe. Maybe only one in fifty galaxies have a planet that has produced life. If that was the case we would never have proof of their existence.
It's also possible that we're the first.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday August 14 2017, @03:10PM
They're all possible -- and we'll likely never know.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 14 2017, @12:35PM
Good start, I'll keep the analogy going. The only way the two cars can communicate is if they're both in the same technological fast food parking lot at the same time and the only way to see evidence of their existing is to see another car distantly in the parking lot. Oh wait, one already crossed the finish line before the other crossed the starting line? Well I'm sure theres thousands of cars. Oh you say they're spaced out over time such that they never overlap...
Both drivers think they're god's gift to the driving world, but they really have very little control over a very weak technological artifact, despite science fiction. Sure on Star Trek they have a trillion watt headlight but the real world car has maybe 100 watts of headlight power and the nearest car is not past the start line or already past the finish line.
Meanwhile we think our technology is greatest and thing get better but nothing changes. The reality is we're trying to drive our cars to meet in the McDonalds parking lots with species that genetically engineered efficient photosynthesis into their skins so they don't do drive-thrus and instead of industrial era cars they go cross country in genetically engineered dragons (or dolphins) or use teleporters or whatever. A classic example is broadcast radio that's astronomical compatible is dying as an industry and all that power is either not going to be used or will be used for remotely undetectable services like data centers and fiber optic power supplies. Meanwhile we've built hundreds of nuclear reactors in earth orbit producing a weird neutrino flux pattern that we can theorize and very poorly detect under the assumption no one else can detect it, but some space alien is probably earning a PHD right now off the weird neutrino emission at an earth's orbit distance from the star Sol. Observationally the "broadcast high frequency radio with simple modulation schemes" was unable to survive economically to a century, bye bye NTSC analog TV. We're not going to have the gear, tech, and most importantly the creativity to think to listen for it, relatively soon on a civilizational lifespan scale. A good car analogy is we're trying to detect automobile culture by tracking the prevalence in the archeological record of ignition points and carburetors.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Monday August 14 2017, @07:40AM
Indeed.
It's not an exact parallel, but I can't help thinking of this... [xkcd.com]
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 14 2017, @09:43PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday August 14 2017, @10:17PM
Indeed. What I posted was the tl;dr version.
In truth, there's a good bit more information out there than I said. And it's gotten massively better in the last few years.
If you take the Drake Equation, we've certainly put some limits both above and below on the term dealing with number of planets since we launched Kepler and some of the other recent observatories.
Also, we have one positive data point of intelligent life arising, but we also have several negative data points (at least obviously so to the level of our remote sensing) for the other planets in our own solar system. So, the odds of intelligent life on a random planet are certainly greater than zero, but also certainly less than one.
We only seem to see one surviving lineage of life here on Earth (maybe there is a dark biosphere, but we've not detected it) based on the universality of the genetic code and the similarities of all life observed thus far. (I'd love to have that upended, as would lots of biologists. ;) )
Maybe there were more but they died out. Or maybe it only happened once. It's very unclear.
Where this really gets into trouble is when you start trying to distribute out the observed information into probabilities for the various terms of the Drake Equation, saying this term or that is the one that is the limiting factor that you get in trouble very quickly. It's Voodoo at best and more likely pure fantasy at this point.
(Sorry for the subject line, but what can I say. I'm a Zippy fan.)
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:42PM (3 children)
I mean, we are one and done. If it turns out we are two and half done, ok. 4 and a quarter done, you can start drawing conclusions.
But drawing conclusions from a complete lack of data, or ignoring the data? That's the Democrats way to the White house 2020.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:39AM (1 child)
No, the past is the data. One can make statistical inferences about the future based on the past. To use a simple example, even though the ancients didn't understand the mechanics of astronomy, they figured the sun came up every morning for at least hundreds of years, so that it's also likely to come up tomorrow morning again.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 14 2017, @06:15AM
That's sort of the opposite of the situation proposed in TFS.
The ancients had data.
We have only the absence of data.
Its a lot easier to make a prediction with data than it is to make a prediction without data.
The former is defined as history. The later is defined as fiction.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:59AM
The lack of data is, in this case, data itself.
We're already creating a substantial body of evidence of our existence when we hadn't even put a satellite in orbit until 1957, 60 years ago. Kind of insane sounding. It's not unreasonable to imagine we'll have self replicating robots exploring the universe within a century. That's very sci fi sounding but it's not all that complex. It's simply robust 3D printers capable of printing more 3D printers/propulsive systems from raw mineral input. Land on an asteroid or rocky body. Replicate itself 10 times over. And repeat ad infinitum. After just 10 generations you'd have 26 billion bots out exploring the universe in different directions. After 100 generations you'd 10^104 bots. Even with an extremely high loss ratio, you're talking about an absolutely enormous presence. Even in terms of squishy bodies, we will be imminently putting humans on Mars and ideally for indefinite periods of time. And that will be the first bounce of outward colonization which may well proceed on a similarly exponentially rate once habitating the formerly uninhabitable is mastered.
Imagine asking a human 1000 years ago to try to predict today - and technology is now accelerating vastly faster than it was then. Now image 10,000 years. All of these are just barely recognizable blips of time on the scales we're talking about. The fact that we see absolutely nothing is very relevant evidence. And I haven't even gotten into the relative lack of electromagnetic data as well. There are a variety of possible explanations for this, including the possibility that whatever is out there is intentionally disguising itself. However, I think the fact that we have not landed on and discovered an extinct civilization is itself not terribly relevant.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, and in this particular case can be rather the opposite!
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:50PM (4 children)
Sample size might one and conclusions statistically irrelevant but common sense supports the idea that after a civilization garners enough technology, it destroy itself.
In evolutionary terms, our competitive and aggressive drives are healthy but mix in nuclear bombs, scarce resources and population growth and those same drives mean trouble. Mix ideology and religion and we are doomed.
A couple of examples are the dick-size contest with North Korea and the pissing contest with Iran; one is irrational and would rather go in flames, the other is acting rationally but we keep pissing in their tea.
Sooner or later, nukes will be launched and then everyone gets involved: U.S., China, Russia, U.K. and Israel. I wish we had John F. Kennedy handling this; the world could have ended in 1962 but he kept his cool and won us a few years more.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday August 14 2017, @01:18AM (2 children)
This is replying to the parent more than to the article, but it actually replies to both:
High tech war is one of a few plausible reasons for "the great silence". Another is introversion. One way this has been suggested to work is that after a certain point nobody is willing to put up with a long lag time in communicating. Another is finding virtual reality more interesting than external reality. (Of course, those aren't contradictory.) Then there's lousing up the development of AI. AI is incredibly dangerous...the only thing more dangerous is having evolved politicians in charge of high tech weapons.
Additionally, it may turn out that most evolved life isn't capable of surviving in space even with good tech support. This isn't implausible, and many extant life forms have a hard time surviving even 200 miles from where they are native. Most species aren't invasive.
My hoped for answer is that once you spend a few centuries as high tech wanderers, the idea of devoting effort to living on a planet seems appallingly unpleasant. Certainly most planets that support life will develop atmospheres quite different from a uninhabited planet, and inhabited planets (similar to Earth) will tend to have proteins endemic which are quite different in structure than ours...probably sufficiently so to set off violent allergy attacks. So planets won't be very interesting. This doesn't mean they won't communicate with each other, but none of the communications will be directed at us. And I suspect that the ultimate strength of materials puts a limit on the size of structures that it's reasonable to build. IOW no RingWorld, no traditional Dyson Sphere, etc. (Dyson's original idea seems to really have involved lots of independent things in various orbits inclined to each other. This has lots of engineering problems, but could be done. I'm not sure if it would be reasonable, but you could approach it with a variation on Topopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topopolis [wikipedia.org] . There are lots of variations plausible on Topopolis, and it actually seems like the most reasonable advanced form of space habitat. You could even build part(s) of it into a magnetic catapult designed to send capsules to other stars at any reasonable speed, using electricity from areas closer to the sun to power a 1 G acceleration for as long as you cared to build out.
N.B.: A topopolis would be a space CITY. the only open spaces would be intentional parks, and calling them "open spaces" would merely mean that they had "natural appearing lighting" and high ceilings. And artificial weather. But each local piece would be relatively separate from the others. A global catastrophe would be essentially impossible short of a nova. For lesser disturbances it would have a magnetic atmosphere designed to take power from solar winds and coronal ejections. (Hopefully enough power to support the magnetic atmosphere, but even if not, it would be needed to prevent untoward radiation. Still, magnetic atmospheres should take quite little power to maintain. The natural ones seem to run on quite small amounts of power, if any.)
Now any life living in a Topopolis would be quite introverted. You'd need to make an effort to look outside. So they'd be unlikely to go looking even for their restless kin that were shot off towards the nearby stars. There'd be a few experts who would know, even with well automated maintenance (hmmm--a new failure mode), but they'd have only a quite small chunk of the budget.
If a Topopolis based civilization is headed this way, we'd probably never hear about them before they arrived...and they might well just decide to give us a pass as too much bother for no real gain.
But while the home system of space-based races would probably evolve into some variant of Topopolis, the more mobile parts would likely form generation ships that never intend to land. Why should they? All they need to do is keep moving slightly faster than the local drift and glom onto any useful matter they overtake. When they encounter something rich, then they build a second ship and split the colony, heading off in slightly different directions. Again, these folk would probably talk to each other, and to the folks back home, but after the first or second encounter with an alien species they'd probably give the rest a skip as "boring, and too much bother".
So again, you get a great silence.
As a further consideration, generation one stars probably can't support life on any planets as they are too poor in a variety of elements. The same MAY be true of generation two stars. If so, our generation of star may be the first that can support life. That's a bit speculative, but not totally silly.
So there are lots of possibilities besides technological civilizations all killing themselves off. I'd be quite surprised if they all did.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:30AM (1 child)
I think you're giving insufficient consideration to the fact that curiosity is arguably one of the most important drives in bringing us to what and where we are. Renaissance aristocracy, which includes all the scientists we now know from that era, had in most cases everything they could ever possibly want. Instead of sitting around indulging themselves to no end, they sought to dedicate their lives to exploration and research into the unknown. The same would have likely happened during the feudal era once political stability emerged, but the centuries spent killing each other occupied most of society. Fortunately today warfare is something that need only occupy a minuscule fraction of society.
A life sitting around in a so-called utopia sounds like hell to me. Discovery, creation, and the exploration of what we do not know is what makes life worth living.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:47PM
How many people become anthropologists? Yeah, there are a few, but not many, and they don't have much budget. And the Topopolis civilization folk studying primitives won't even be able to claim they's studying relatives. Besides, after 10 years of "I Love Lucy" how interesting would you think earth-folk would be? "Victory at Sea", etc. would just make giving this place a skip even more attractive. Receiving signals is relatively cheap, and is safe, why bother getting closer? Now they probably would make contact with a couple of groups of aliens, but after that the novelty is largely gone.
And THAT's assuming they are even in the neighborhood. If they came by a couple of centuries ago nobody would know, unless they left mining scars on some of the asteroids or minor moons...and even then we wouldn't know yet.
As for curiosity, I imagine they would be great astronomers, and have an extremely well developed skill at celestial navigation (possibly using plusars as signposts). They could probably do an accurate animation of the expansion of the universe to as much detail as they felt like. (They'd be able to synchronize their observations sufficiently to have a radiotelescope, and possibly even an optical one, light years in diameter, and with 3-d resolution. Yes, they'd have curiosity, and considerably developed science, but they wouldn't necessarily expend that curiosity in a way that would suit you. If they were interested in people at all they'd probably be satisfied with a couple of samples to sequence, and possibly a couple of monkeys and a couple of lizards, some fish, and a bunch of bacteria. Remember, we aren't *their* ecosystem. And they'd have biology to an extent that we can't imagine. That wouldn't be enough to let them reconstruct how we developed, but why would they care? We're just a passing encounter...and one unpleasant to most of the citizenry. Most *HUMANS* aren't even aware that over 90% of human genetic variation resides in Africa. Many of the ones that hear it find the news unpleasant enough that they just deny it. Curiosity isn't that major a drive.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday August 14 2017, @03:07AM
If we assume our civilization is somewhere near the middle of the bell curve, then we expect to see tons of radio wave evidence from civilizations that were at our level of development earlier.
We do not see such evidence.
There are several possible explanations.
1. We're not actually near the middle of the bell curve, we're way up front. Unlikely, but without evidence who knows?
2. Civilizations like ours inevitably destroy themselves with nukes or whatever shortly after they start transmitting.
3. Civilizations like ours inevitably discover something much better and stop using radio waves for communication shortly after they start transmitting. (For bonus points, maybe they don't normally transmit RF at all, even for a short time, but for some strange reason this better alternative everyone else goes to isn't so easy for us to find.)
Obviously there are lots of slightly different possiblities but most if not all seem to fall into one of those categories.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Monday August 14 2017, @12:00AM
I don't think that all of that EM mixing(and re-mixing) that's being blasted out by millions(or billions) of sources, at all hours of the day and night, is something I would call 'silent'.
His whole argument seems like speculation based on speculation. Or, my 'Space Alien Dispelling Rock' is working as advertised.(I keep it right beside my 'Tiger Dispelling Rock', which I KNOW works, as I have NEVER seen a tiger in my house.)
Yeah, not much conversation happens in a boot camp mess hall, but it is anything but silent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday August 14 2017, @12:01AM (4 children)
We haven't met E.T., we don't pick up alien TV and we don't see megastructures. Conclusion: Armageddon. Somebody seems to have jumped a few steps somewhere.
We don't know if alien civilizations hit the singularity and transcend our comprehension.
We don't know if alien civilizations simply stay home because E=MC^2 can't be worked around and space travel is pointless.
We don't know if space is filled with alien transmission that we don't yet have the tech to look for.
We don't know if we aren't currently a "preserve" to protect our developing civilization from contamination and death from culture shock.
We don't know if the universe is a lot more dangerous than we assume and life is thus a lot more rare, maybe it averages less than one per galaxy, maybe a LOT less. It is doubtful we could see an alien civilization near is, good luck seeing one in a neighboring galaxy until we are building instruments on a entirely different scale.
Those are the known unknowns, now imagine the unknown unknowns. But you can't because if you can imagine them they become known unknowns.
We don't know what we don't know. Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns are a thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:16AM
They probably read your comments and concluded that it was the logical thing to do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 14 2017, @01:26AM (1 child)
There's even more problems with the "Why aren't E.T.'s transmitting stuff at us?", like:
- We don't know whether E.T.'s that know how to send out EM waves choose to do so. Consider that us humans are in the process of reducing how much EM is leaving our atmosphere as we switch to more communications based on sending bits down wires and fiber cables, and when we do EM transmission it's more likely to be straight lines near the surface (from cell towers to phones).
- We do know that any E.T. EM waves would be ridiculously hard for us to pick up. Only recently were we able to gather enough detail to pick out planets using EM waves, and even then we've only found 22. The reason is that most of them have any and all EM waves they might produce completely drowned out by their stars.
Some people are making the mistaken assumption that the number of known species with substantial interstellar communications capabilities is 1, when it's actually 0.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:02AM
Also according to compression theory. The more you compress something the more it looks like noise and becomes uncompressable. If you want to maximize your data channel it will look like white noise. Now decode it. Plus data becomes wildly artifacted as you approach a sun. Those things give off huge amounts of radiation across the whole spectrum. Our magnetosphere buffers it so we have fairly clear channels here. But fling it across the void and you will get very different results.
EM transmission it's more likely to be straight lines near the surface (from cell towers to phones).
Cell towers do not work that way. Power is limited to create the 'cell'. So the radio waves do not go much further than the cell. It is how we can scale the network across a city like new york. You can in theory have 1 cell tower that services new york city. Just do not expect too many people to be able to use it. They are usually over provisioned 200 to 1 as not everyone uses their phone at the same time. Also we have OFDM and CDMA and TDMA to slice it down. But it is still limited space. A small city will only have 2-3 towers. While some place like new york city will have thousands. They usually do not directional beam. Think of it more like a doughnut or a piece of pie shape.
Also to the article
technological civilizations that last millions of years, or longer, would be highly atypical
There is 0 evidence either way for that conclusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:58AM
jmorris, covering up the whole lizard people thing, again. Suspicious? Maybe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @12:10AM
It's linked in the Fermi article, but worth pointing alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [wikipedia.org]
Humankind's Great Filter must be ahead. We dream of terraforming Mars when we can't even keep Earth running after it was already "started" for us. Looking how humans have poor prediction capabilities (or stubborness to ditch Universe facts, and obsession with inventing all kind stupid short term explanations to replace them) we probably know what will be for us.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Monday August 14 2017, @12:19AM
Good ol' arrogance at its best here.
Let's judge ALL by our own standards, as if we were the epitome of life, let's not imagine that other possible (probable) civilizations will probably be wildly different from us both intellectually and physically. In fact, isn't it already supposed that some alien life will take form so different from us that we might not even recognize it as such? Any really hyper advanced technological civilization would probably not even have the need for physical bodies anymore.
Just look at our closest cousins: chimps & bonobos. Both are very different in behaviour. We are much closer to chimps. Now, imagine how different humans would be if they had a behaviour similar to bonobos (who are much more peaceful). It's not difficult to imagine that some alien civilizations could be much less aggressive that humans are, and probably wise enough not to fuck up their own biosphere. You cannot judge with a sample of one. Plus, even if we have some real problems, we are not -yet- on a dead planet as the professor seems to imply!
Then there is the question of the limits of technological development. See all the advances in the last century, it's almost unfathomable what humans could learn in thousands, let alone millions -or billions- years of development, if it's at all possible, because there is the possiblity that we'll reach the limits of our human brains (too many facts to deal with), leading to a probable merger with computers. (Plus, on such timescale humans will biologically evolve, maybe a lot.) So, is there a limit to technology? What about moving suns (a frequent theme in SF novels), whole galaxies, or universes? What more could be achieved?
Even if we are typical, it's almost certain that some other civilizations would have started before us, and others have not started yet. Given the timescales considered, a couple thousand years is nothing, and a hundred is so small it's does not even count...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 14 2017, @02:30AM (9 children)
We are the first technological species to evolve on Earth
Are we sure about that? There's an Arthur C. Clarke & Steven Baxter book called "Light of Other Days", which, at the end (*spoilers*) tells about some intelligent race that lived on Earth 3 billion years ago but then was destroyed somehow, but left the seeds in place so that we'd evolve. How can we decisively conclude it to be impossible for an intelligent race to have lived on Earth that long ago? It's even possible there was a civilization that arose every few hundred million years or so, but got wiped out somehow.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday August 14 2017, @02:48AM (4 children)
We have this thing called "archeology".
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @08:51AM
Plate tectonics. Nothing survives being subducted.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:59PM (2 children)
You seem to misunderstand the concept of "billion". Only a few million years ago, most of the US was ocean. No civilization three billion years ago would leave any trace at all today.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday August 14 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
What about the fact that we still find fossil resources to exploit?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:41PM
What kind of plant or animal did that coal use to be?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 14 2017, @03:22AM (3 children)
How intelligent could they have been if they never had stone workers, never developed metal, glass, or any other durable materials that could exist for that long. 3 billion years ago we were just starting to have photosynthesis, yet even those primitive cells managed to leave a fossil record.
Seems we would have found something by now.
No, the whole concept is flawed because even on a planet conducive to life for a period long enough for an intelligent species to appear, the destruction of that intelligent life would leave a planet ripe for the next evolution of another intelligent species.
Red Dwarf stars [wikipedia.org] comprising maybe 3/4 of all stars, a type that is relatively constant for trillions of years. There should be plenty of time for life to appear on planets near such stars, several times over. Not so much on earth, which was still receiving heavy bombardment 3.5 billion years ago. No time .
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 14 2017, @04:41AM
How intelligent could they have been if they never had stone workers, never developed metal, glass, or any other durable materials that could exist for that long.
Would our buildings leave traces that last that long? I'm not aware of much we've found that's that old. The dinosaur fossils are only a few hundred million years old; relatively recent in terms of Earth's history. Everything we build is pretty hard to find traces of after a few centuries, and our longest-lived stuff is generally stacked-up rocks, or Roman concrete. I'm talking about a hypothetical civilization that was around over 2B years before the dinosaurs even evolved.
yet even those primitive cells managed to leave a fossil record.
So we got lucky with a few fossil finds. Even with the dinosaurs, there's huge gaps in the fossil record. We only find so much stuff (only so much is near the surface, because of geological processes), and most dinosaurs never became fossils, they completely biodegraded. A small number were preserved, by things like tar pits or volcanoes, so we get glimpses into prehistory from those rare events. Similarly, we got lucky with the Roman ruins at Pompeii: they were preserved by a shit-ton of volcanic ash dumped on them so fast, all the townspeople were killed instantly and their bodies preserved in action at that moment, and their buildings also preserved well by this. At most ancient sites, we're lucky if we can figure out where the main walls are by the foundations; if they made stuff out of wood, there's usually nothing left.
Seems we would have found something by now.
This seems to be the main argument. It isn't that great of one. If there was a civilization 2-3 Billion years ago, but it never got much past where our Medieval technology was (some stone buildings, but mostly wooden buildings, no durable roads, no cars or other large metal objects, certainly no skyscrapers), and never expanded that much before being wiped out by an asteroid, I think it's perfectly feasible that we wouldn't see a trace of it now. It's either all eroded away, or buried under so much earth that we haven't found it yet. Even if there were a civilization similar in tech to where we were in the 1800s, I think the story would be the same.
Not so much on earth, which was still receiving heavy bombardment 3.5 billion years ago. No time .
It seems like it's plenty of time: we've only been on this planet for 2 million years, and we only took about 10k years to build this level of civilization, with a lot of errors and setbacks (e.g. fall of Rome). If some other species evolved big brains, but didn't have our warlike and religious tendencies (e.g. no Mongol invasions, no rejection of reason in favor of religious fundamentalism), they could have done it faster. And with the heavier level of bombardment back then, they could have easily been wiped out relatively early (before they could build a space program) by an asteroid impact. Heck, even if they got to the point of building nuclear weapons and annihilated themselves that way, would we be able to detect that now, after 1-3B years? 2M years divides into 1B years 500 times: during a single 1 billion-year span (2-3B years ago), there could have been 500 separate civilizations like ours to evolve independently. There's plenty of time there for a species to evolve and a civilization to grow. The main problem is that there's just no evidence for it we've found; all evidence points to life back then being much simpler. What if we just haven't found it yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @11:44AM (1 child)
I'm old enough (59) that I remember being frustrated by the ever changing age of the Earth back in elementary school. We were still figuring it out, or at least, the best information was still working its way into the school systems back in the early 1960s. The Earth went from a few hundred million years old to maybe a billion, to 2 billion, to 4.3 billion years between 1st grade and middle school. (Texas school system.) Same thing for the age of the universe.
My point -- We assume the age of the solar system based on the age of the oldest rocks on Earth/Moon plus a few things we think we know about the evolution of stars. We could be wrong, or at least, a little wrong. A.C. Clarke was always good at being as scientifically accurate as possible. Remember he also said, "when an old and distinguished scientist says something is possible, he's probably right, but when he says something is impossible, he is very likely wrong." (I think he was referring to Einstein).
Anyway, the age of the oldest rocks only tell us how long ago the last time the Earth was destroyed (The moon forming event, for example.) It is possible that the Earth had many billions of years to evolve before that too-- IF our understanding of stellar evolution is in any way flawed.
If a Mars-sized object crashed into the Earth, like the moon forming event, all traces of us would be obliterated beyond detection except for the radio signals racing away at C. The "Earth" would start over from scratch.
Light of Other Days is a fascinating exploration of total loss of privacy (imagine political, business, bedroom, etc. meetings being spied upon by anyone, at will.) Well worth the read. It's also a foreshadowing of what's happening right now with our teenagers and their phones. On-line all the time, like cells in a hive-mind constantly connected...
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Tuesday August 15 2017, @01:00AM
We've dated enough meteorites and other material that did not originate on the Earth (or Moon) to know that the Earth formed with the rest of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. So we are still living on the "first" Earth, so to speak.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:03AM (7 children)
Academia ca not solve the Fermi Paradox by ignoring evidence that humanity has survived cataclysms of Biblical proportions. [youtube.com]
Many structures claimed to be built by Medieval and Colonial peoples were built by far older civilizations. [youtube.com] The truth about our history is that historic sites like the Star Fortresses of Malta were built in antiquity by a technologically advanced civilization [youtube.com], and conquerors rebuilt upon the sites claiming the whole thing as theirs. This pattern is repeated time and again. Vastly more ancient structures with a bit of Medieval construction atop is all classified as Medieval in an attempt to maintain the bogus academic time-line.
Imagine you are the Christian Saint Peter and you've gone into the wilds of Russia and recruited some savages to build a city, St. Petersburg you'll call it. Obviously these savages would miraculously build in impeccable Roman style architecture adorning the buildings with roman gods and goddesses rather than Jesus or Mary, Moses, etc. But that is what they teach in Academia! It's ridiculous! The religious zealots like Joseph Justus Scaliger rewrote history by never questioning religious dogma but reinterpreting all the world to fit that narrative. And this is STILL Academia's basis for modern day history! Oh, so "scientific", it's not dogmatic at all... "Smart" progressive people actually defend this academic snake oil. It's no wonder the religious folks can trounce literally ignorant atheists who ape such nonsense.
This iron hammer is in rock strata dated to 100 million years old. [youtube.com] The handle has carbonized into coal.
Just look at all the structures on the sea floor. [vimeo.com] Clearly remnants of giant construction projects of an ancient lost civilization.
The coast of USA is littered with ancient canals [ancient-wisdom.com] and ports and sunken pyramids and cities [bitlanders.com] last above water before the last ice age ended 12,500 years ago.
Government funded Academia ignores these for the same reason that China pays farmers to obscure Chinese Pyramids [youtube.com] by planting trees on them. Such findings erode sovereignty claims of countries that now inhabit lands. Underwater exploration is banned off the coast of Brazil [archive.is] because Roman shipwrecks were found -- If Brazilian civilization was actually founded by Rome then its sovereignty is threatened by archeology which shows a debt is owed to the original (re)colonizers (like USA still owes debts to Brittan for its colonization efforts). Fortunately, some artifacts are not hidden away fast enough such as this Roman bust found in Mexico. [andrewcollins.com]
Academia labels all these findings "mysteries", but the truth is plainly apparent to any with eyes to see: We are lied to about the history of our world. We have survived epic world destroying cataclysms and risen from the ashes. Perhaps the Fermi paradox is that WE are the "aliens" -- colonists from neighboring lands destroyed by enormous natural disaster, who carried technology to the four corners of the earth and attempted to rebuild. Just as today there are unsophisticated native peoples in jungles living along side a technologically advanced race, the history may have been much of the same.
The Antikythera mechanism demonstrates an advanced technological level that was likely widespread enough to find an example of. While I'm not absolutely convinced, since there is much disinfo and poisoning of the well in the alternative archeology community, there could be some evidence that we may have even had electronic circuit boards. [youtube.com]
When considering the Fermi Paradox it's ridiculous to ignore the possibility that our advanced civilization may only be the latest of several iterations -- or perhaps those civilizations were of a different species... Alas, that is the state of modern day academics though: Asinine... "Where are the aliens?" Have you even looked? Just, asinine.
(Score: 1, Troll) by frojack on Monday August 14 2017, @03:28AM (2 children)
What drivel.
And throughout human history EVERY paleontologist wanted to maintain this bogus time line rather than re-write history.
Except this one clown with no credentials and his podcast?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @09:14AM
You're just being willfully ignorant. How easy was it to get the theory of relativity or any new science widely accepted if it went against the dogma of the day? Don't be a dumbass.
It's common knowledge that rocking the boat in academia gets you fired. Same thing in Silicon Valley now, right? Simply stating the truth gets you fired, don't come at me with static trying to claim that doesn't happen. Do you know how many paleontologists have found soft tissue in dinosaur bones and been fired over it? About 50. Now such evidence is gaining acceptance, [livescience.com] but only because they can't keep it quiet and mainstream academia now has some insane theory about protein elasticity rather that admit the precious Scaligarian timeline is wrong. You know who else called bullshit on Scaliger's Timeline? The famous Scientist and Chronologist Isaac Newton, maybe you've heard of him? Oh, but why didn't you know he disbelieved the BS historical narrative? Is it because your education was lacking and you never did any research beyond the required craptastic scholastic curriculum?
Fact is: There has never been a study to determine the rate of petrification of silt. Carbon 14 is made in the upper atmosphere and amount fluctuates depending on the solar cycle and CO2 outgassing of the planet, so its dating is highly inaccurate beyond ordering samples with a small delta in age. Radioactive dating is based primarily on the rock layers that samples are found near, and comparing other samples against those samples -- with zero evidence to suggest how old sedimentary rock actually is. We could have stuck a ruler in the sea floor and waited a decade or two to get the petrification rate, but we haven't. Do some research and you'll find a figure for petrification stated, but no primary source -- only papers that cite each other. Classic case of Citosis. Archaeologists have no idea how old the rocks actually are... But you'll just dismiss this because you're willfully ignorant about the truth of academia. You haven't done any research yourself, but you'll glibly snub your nose at others making some stupid and inaccurate quip that makes you feel better about your cognitive dissonance. Rather than realize the false god of academic purity does not exist, and that dogma and politics are rife in academia, you claim any mention of such to be too conspiratorial to entertain. It's not secret, you're just ignorant. Dumb as a rock and twice as blind.
Watch the linked videos if you're interested, they're from several sources, and you can search for even more yourself if you like. Esp. watch the one with stuff on the sea floor, you can verify it yourself and oceanic survey imagery backs it up. The general public is kept dumb not in secret, but openly. Elites think that people like you who believe TV propaganda are so dumb they'd be dangerous if given full knowledge of the truth of our world, so while the media and government funded schooling is dumbing you down deliberately [youtube.com], the truth is out there for you to find. If you don't want to find out, then just stay ignorant chump. No skin off my teeth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @09:01PM
Perhaps most all paleontologists are merely interpreting their results by the incorrect research of others. If governments can pick and choose who gets what funding for what research this provides an avenue to ensure certain uncomfortable truths are easily suppressed.
An example: Do ALL children in kindergarten conspire against each other repeating the story of Santa Claus? No, they do so because the information they have is incorrect. They're not willingly lying about reality to their peers, they just haven't researched everything for themselves yet. Most academics are overly specialized and don't have much time for broad cross discipline research. The big picture is easy to obscure if the system ensures viewers only have time to see a tiny part.
If you're repeating what's in the books you're given, you're not really "wanting to maintain" incorrect information. It could just be a case of innocent ignorance that perpetuates incorrect data. It should be quite readily apparent to any with a love of science that this is how the system works. Or, do you suppose that all those teaching Newtonian physics were conspiring to keep us from Einstein's relativity? Of course not, that's ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:02AM
We have found the one probed by the Ancients! May god(s) have mercy on your soul for your blasphemy! You know damn well you are not supposed to talk about these things! I am reporting you to the Elders and The Ancient Ones who Sleep. You're in big trouble now, bub!
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday August 14 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)
What is this "academia" you speak of that seems to ignore all of the (archaeological) history that you somehow have gathered all by yourself? I guess it was people on vacation without any college education who discovered ancient foundations to supposedly medieval works? I sense a straw man.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @08:44PM (1 child)
It's quite ridiculous to think I've gathered this by myself, clearly there are many others recounting such evidence, you need only click a few links to discover this.
Academia government funded education and research.
If you doubt that governments suppress information, then I have no time to discuss reality with one so detached from it.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:49PM
Academic papers provide citations to credible works, making them easy to access. They are admittedly a bit behind the times, tailored to a difficult and archaic library system rather than an easier system of universal resource identifiers (URI) that allow for immediate retrieval. But they, unlike you, have not left verification of their claims as an exercise to the reader.
It's a lot easier to infiltrate and manipulate Google search results than the decentralized academic system of intellectuals (who are generally less conforming and less trusting of authority than the rest of the population). One might even say that conspiracy theories like yours are the more likely CIA plot. And as we've learned from the tactics of the Heartland Institute (who surely learned a thing or two from 1984), simply discrediting objective evidence and facts is incredibly effective at preventing people from taking action to save themselves from the machinations of the rich and powerful.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by GDX on Monday August 14 2017, @03:15AM (6 children)
The cosmic silence can be simply noise masking the transmissions and the windows to detect the radio transmission of a civilizations is really small, 100 years for the hearth, after such period the radio transmissions tend to look more like random noise making it more difficult. Wee need some radio telescope on mars or beyond to observe the earth to try to identify how the radio transmission of a civilization look from space, also it have to simulate numeric aperture of our telescopes to scale to how the heart can be seen from the deeps of space in a radio telescope.
The size of a space civilization is not limited by the speed of their ships but by the speed of their communications, basically the size of a civilizations is limited by how fast the information travel in their interplanetary networks, basically even if they have FTL ships if they can not transmit information faster than light them they have to make the communications travel in the ships like simple mail, this limits their size to days and most weeks of ship travel. This don't mean that they can't make multiyear expeditions, but this expeditions are going to be pretty aware of not doing communications with local primitive civilizations, the most that they are going to do is observe while trying to not be observed and possibly take some samples if they can.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 14 2017, @03:38AM (5 children)
Your ointment has flies.
Why do you hand waive FTL travel into existence but still balk at FTL communications?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/science/ct-quantum-entanglement-science-space-20170617-story.html [chicagotribune.com]
I submit you've got it backwards.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by GDX on Monday August 14 2017, @04:08AM (4 children)
But quantum entanglement don't guarantee FTL communications. I don't really balk at the possibility of FTL communications, but I think that FTL travel is going to happen before FTL communications, those are very different problems and also think that FTL travel is the easier one.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 14 2017, @06:03AM (3 children)
Yes,
Yes it does.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday August 14 2017, @08:53AM (1 child)
Simple contradiction is not argument:
See here: http://www.platformgiant.com/contradiction-and-an-argument/ [platformgiant.com]
Or, more famously, as referenced above, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y [youtube.com]
If you can point to an argument that correctly derives the possibility of faster-than-light communication from quantum entanglement, please do so. Mainstream quantum mechanics accepts Bell's theorem [wikipedia.org], which has been tested experimentally [wikipedia.org] to give results incompatible with purely classical mechanics. Read about Counterfactual definiteness [wikipedia.org], the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester [wikipedia.org], and Quantum pseudo-telepathy [wikipedia.org], the last of which looks very much like it almost might be faster-than-light communication (but isn't).
Against all that, how are you arguing that faster-than-light communication is enabled by quantum entanglement?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @03:04PM
This [youtube.com] comes to mind...
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 14 2017, @07:47PM
No,
No it doesn't. [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @03:41AM (1 child)
It is likely what it takes to survive the big filter ahead.
No politicians, executives, MBAs, economists, diversity commissars etc allowed as pets onboard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:57AM
No politicians on Mars? Will the Martians not elect a leader?
You can train to become an economist after landing on Mars. They will be no diversity commissars because every woman will be impregnated by Elon Musky's seed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:58AM
Mediocrity certainly applies to this reasoning. According to this guy's logic, a year after we invented the radio, we should expect that any other civilizations in the universe also have on average one year of radio experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:10AM
This is the only possible conclusion from this "assholephysicist", White Lives Don't Matter! The existence of white people is without meaning, and they were not even the ones to have invented radio! "Stuck a feather in his hat, and called it Marconi!" Stupid white people in America, responsible for technological developments, such as digitial watches, which presage the extinction of humanity, and the Telephone Handset Sanitizers. Oh, the Huge Manatees! Oh the Pathos, and the Orthos, and the D'artangian! Really, it is all quite too much. But at least India will save humanity, being not white, and actually having an active space program. But white people: evolutionary dead end.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @08:41AM (3 children)
In other words, generalize from a sample of one!
If this "principle of mediocrity" is a statistical concept, I'm sure it is a concept of what to avoid, not what to do.
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Monday August 14 2017, @12:18PM (2 children)
But saying we are special is also generalizing from a sample of one. Bayesian inference allows a single sample to produce objective revision of an initial subjective assumption. If the initial assumption is "we are special" then the lack of radio signals would not give much revision. But if the initial assumption is "we are average" the then lack of radio signals would make a significant shift - towards "we are special" or alternatively "we are doomed".
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @02:14PM
In other words, drawing any sort of conclusion from a sample of one is pointless, which is exactly my, um, point. It could be that we are average, it could be that we are special, it could be that we are doomed, it could be that they are doomed; we have no way to know—yet. If we pick one of the alternatives, and exploration of the universe proves it to be correct, we were simply lucky when picking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:20PM
This "radio silence" is not at all established. Our telescope technology is rather modest, and doesn't include many possible wavelengths. A proper search may take thousands of years.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday August 14 2017, @05:24PM (2 children)
Anybody who has seen Star Trek is familiar with the Prime Directive: Don't mess with pre-warp cultures. This can be generalized to: Don't mess with people that can't yet mess with you.
There's a reason the Klingons and the Orions didn't go around conquering pre-warp cultures: they had no reason to. Even a super-aggressive antagonist that would be interested in slave labor still isn't interested in enslaving the equivalent of chimpanzees. Why would they? Some possible reasons:
1. To eat us. Stupid.
2. To steal minerals. Also stupid (asteroids have way more and aren't inside a huge gravity well).
3. To steal culture. Don't need to even let them know you're there to do this. Also why do the super-advanced space people care about chimp culture?
4. To colonize the planet. It's not terribly likely that the aliens like the same climate we do unless our climate is common throughout the galaxy, in which case why steal it from people with nukes when you can just go get an empty one?
5. For strategic value against some opponent. Again, we're in a gravity well. There is more strategic value on Pluto than on Earth.
6. For religious reasons? Not really arguable, other than when was the last time Earthling religious nuts wanted to mess with the chimps. Religions tend to treat disinterested non-believers as "who cares", unless they're in the way for other reasons, in which case they are OK to get out of the way for other reasons.
7. For intelligent conversation. Again, who looks at chimps and thinks "I wonder what intellectual contributions that nearly-as-smart-as-me creature could make?"
Any other reasons? Any reason at all for the super-advanced space culture to look at our not-special rock with our dumber-than-them inhabitants and think, "I want to go mess with these fire ants"?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Monday August 14 2017, @06:30PM
#7 is actually not a terrible stupid reason. We humans try to communicate with animals, too. Pet owners, for example, do it all the times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @08:35PM
Consider an alien race, let's just make it one of silicon based machine intelligence, because the resource thing is hardly a problem for them (organics would just see them as a bonus).
If there's one race, maybe there's two. If there's at least two then maybe they had a war already -- or if just one, then maybe they had a civil war amongst themselves to change the direction of their race.
Having realized that other sentient creatures can potentially become a threat to their survival it behooves them to get out ahead of the problem and suppress the advancement of technology in other burgeoning races. This is easily done via lobbing a few rocks at M-class planets as a preemptive measure. In our galaxy this may have been going on for quite some time, and there are many layers of rock strata including ash and micro-diamonds (indicative of impact events).
The Freemasons hold that we are the survivors of such events, which cause great fire and flood; They see themselves as protectors of knowledge and preservers of wisdom who's ancestors also strove to persevere in the face of great disaster. Their two pillars are representative of the great fire and great flood, and these events bookend the Christian Bible and other religious works. Between the two civilization is rebuilt and thrives, or so they recount.
It could be this world has already been at war with aliens for millions of years, with us unable to fight back, and that some mass extinction events are part of the suppression campaign. Perhaps due to cost not every potential life supporting planet is visited and energy is not spent to destroy the entire planet, just bombard them with a rock or two sufficient to wipe out a civilization if it exists. If such suppression has been going on throughout our Galaxy, then it would explain why our neighbors are so scarce.