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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: 2) by mhajicek on Monday August 14 2017, @02:48AM (4 children)
We have this thing called "archeology".
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @08:51AM
Plate tectonics. Nothing survives being subducted.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:59PM (2 children)
You seem to misunderstand the concept of "billion". Only a few million years ago, most of the US was ocean. No civilization three billion years ago would leave any trace at all today.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday August 14 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
What about the fact that we still find fossil resources to exploit?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:41PM
What kind of plant or animal did that coal use to be?
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