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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: 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.