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posted by mrpg on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-are-doomed dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:33PM (21 children)

    by Hartree (195) on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:33PM (#553394)

    Yet again we attempt to do statistics on a sample size of one and draw conclusions.

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  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:41PM (17 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday August 13 2017, @11:41PM (#553397) Journal

    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)

      by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @12:09AM (#553402) Journal

      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)

        by hemocyanin (186) on Monday August 14 2017, @12:43AM (#553409) Journal

        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

          by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @01:42AM (#553416) Journal

          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.

          Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon: these words all derive from Arabic, reflecting Islam’s contribution to the West.

          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?

          Al-Ghazali was worried that when people become favorably influenced by philosophical arguments, they will also come to trust the philosophers on matters of religion, thus making Muslims less pious. Reason, because it teaches us to discover, question, and innovate, was the enemy; al-Ghazali argued that in assuming necessity in nature, philosophy was incompatible with Islamic teaching, which recognizes that nature is entirely subject to God’s will [...] For example, Mohammed Yusuf, the late leader of a group called the Nigerian Taliban, explained why “Western education is a sin” by explaining its view on rain: “We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.”

          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)

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday August 14 2017, @05:52AM (#553508) Journal

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:12PM (#553782)

            ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.

            Fuck you hairy-nigger. Wash your filthy black ass-feet.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Monday August 14 2017, @03:01AM (2 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Monday August 14 2017, @03:01AM (#553440) Journal
        A little quibble, the mesoamericans and south americans were also essentially 'stone age' when Europeans arrived. They could work gold, silver, and copper into jewelry but their tools were still stone and they did not know how to make hard copper alloys that are suitable for tool-making, so their technology was stone based. That doesn't imply anything about the sophistication of their societies, however.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 2) by jelizondo on Monday August 14 2017, @03:55AM (1 child)

          by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @03:55AM (#553470) Journal

          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

            by Arik (4543) on Monday August 14 2017, @11:17AM (#553589) Journal
            "Of course a good calendar does not allow you to murder your neighbors easily, so the Europeans won."

            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)

        by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday August 14 2017, @06:22AM (#553525) Journal

        Without sounding racist, cultures develop at different rates for different reasons.

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:55AM (#553533)

          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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:29AM (#553545)

        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)

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Monday August 14 2017, @02:47PM (#553688) Homepage Journal

        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

          by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @07:18PM (#553808) Journal

          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)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Monday August 14 2017, @12:32AM (#553407) Journal

      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)

        by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Monday August 14 2017, @02:50PM (#553691) Homepage Journal

        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 VLM on Monday August 14 2017, @12:35PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 14 2017, @12:35PM (#553616)

      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.

      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

    by gidds (589) on Monday August 14 2017, @07:40AM (#553547)

    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)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday August 14 2017, @09:43PM (#553851) Homepage
    Strangely enough, Bayesian statistics permits you to do this. Abd it's not wrong. Knowing one data point is more than knowing zero data points. From a Bayesian perspective, we should conclude that we're more likely to be a member of a bigger-than-average group, but that's about all. Not all definitions of what such "group"s are make that statement make any sense, and therefore attempting to extrapolate is mostly futile as you say.
    --
    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

      by Hartree (195) on Monday August 14 2017, @10:17PM (#553863)

      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.)