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: 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.