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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: 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.