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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: 3, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Monday August 14 2017, @12:19AM
Good ol' arrogance at its best here.
Let's judge ALL by our own standards, as if we were the epitome of life, let's not imagine that other possible (probable) civilizations will probably be wildly different from us both intellectually and physically. In fact, isn't it already supposed that some alien life will take form so different from us that we might not even recognize it as such? Any really hyper advanced technological civilization would probably not even have the need for physical bodies anymore.
Just look at our closest cousins: chimps & bonobos. Both are very different in behaviour. We are much closer to chimps. Now, imagine how different humans would be if they had a behaviour similar to bonobos (who are much more peaceful). It's not difficult to imagine that some alien civilizations could be much less aggressive that humans are, and probably wise enough not to fuck up their own biosphere. You cannot judge with a sample of one. Plus, even if we have some real problems, we are not -yet- on a dead planet as the professor seems to imply!
Then there is the question of the limits of technological development. See all the advances in the last century, it's almost unfathomable what humans could learn in thousands, let alone millions -or billions- years of development, if it's at all possible, because there is the possiblity that we'll reach the limits of our human brains (too many facts to deal with), leading to a probable merger with computers. (Plus, on such timescale humans will biologically evolve, maybe a lot.) So, is there a limit to technology? What about moving suns (a frequent theme in SF novels), whole galaxies, or universes? What more could be achieved?
Even if we are typical, it's almost certain that some other civilizations would have started before us, and others have not started yet. Given the timescales considered, a couple thousand years is nothing, and a hundred is so small it's does not even count...