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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, 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.