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THE GREAT FILTER AND WHY HUMANITY IS FUCKED

Started by tyrannosaurus vex, September 18, 2014, 02:03:01 AM

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Reginald Ret

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on September 18, 2014, 12:14:26 PM
Nigel touched on a point that bears another look.

On one hand, the conditions that make up life as we know it (for the sake of brevity, we're not going to speculate about creatures that are other than carbon-based, or somehow exist in environments currently unfatyhomable) are extremely rare.  A brief look at what we can see of our galaxy seems to show that to be true.

On the other hand, you've got essentially an infinite universe.  Simple probability insists there should be life out there.

But Nigel has noted that there is a horizon.
Quote from: Your MomThe laws of physics governing our Universe causes there to be areas that are unreachable for us. For our purposes, they don't exist.

"Infinite universe" though it may be, we'll never know about it.  Just on the other side of the horizon, there could be massive Star Trek and Firefly type civilizations that bounce from star to star.  Maybe there's a solar system where five planets, reachable by nothing more clever than an Apollo-type rocket, are habitible and serve as some galactic council.  We'll never know, and they'll never know about us. 

And when you start thinking probalilistically (is that even a word?), it's far more likely that there's unreachable life, rather than some sort of cataclysmic barrier to being an interstellar species.
Probabilistically is a word, yes. Also, it's a philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilism#Philosophy
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hooplala

However, after having interjected that rather pointless idea, I'd like to say that I think Vex's theory is a sound one... the problem in the scenario is us.

It would make sense that the Dunning-Kruger effect would also be present on a wide scale, not simply on an individual scale.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

The Wizard Joseph

I think it's important not to overlook the scale of the detection problem. Even a galactic empire of hundreds of worlds is a very tiny and diffuse thing among the 'billions and billions'. More later. Gotta work.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

tyrannosaurus vex

The Fermi Paradox exists because all of the considerations about the rarity of conditions and the vastness of space have already been tabulated by people who are much smarter than I am, and life should still be so prevalent that we should be tripping over each other. Granted, some of the assumptions in those numbers are probably unfounded, just like the assumption some futurists make about Dyson Spheres and Civilization types based on how they use energy and where they get it from. But if the numbers are errant, they are probably too conservative, because they operate on assumptions about what is possible based only on what we already know to be possible.

Even if it is impossible to to achieve faster than light travel -- which we do not actually know to be a fact, our best science just says it would be very hard to do -- the universe and our galaxy itself have existed long enough for some intelligent species to have arisen and colonized the entire expanse the slow way. Even if our current technology can only hope to receive and identify artificially generated signals originating within an insignificant fraction of space, that fraction is still so incredibly huge that it should be filled with intelligent communications.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

But that makes so many assumptions that essentially rely on our planet being in some way unusual in our immediate neighborhood. There is exactly zero reason to assume that we are anything but average. If we assume that we are average, and that the curve is narrow, not having encountered any other spacefaring creatures is perfectly logical by Occams Razor, without adding any mysterious forces.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Wizard Joseph

Alternatively, and this may brush theology as well, earth is not average but a special case among worlds either by rarity of conditions or, perhaps, because it is cut off intentionally by some other intelligence. Maybe both.

I try to explore the concept of both in some of my tales.

The truth as far as I can tell is we don't know and may never.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

Eater of Clowns

The aliens are all partying and we aren't invited.   :sad:
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EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

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EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

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the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Conceptuality is one thing, probability is another.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Wizard Joseph

You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

PANGO!

WHOLE ARGUMENT IS POINTLESS, DOGS. HUMANS DO NOT FIND ALIENS FOR SIMPLE FACT THAT HUMANS ARE BLIND TO 99.99% OF ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM. FUNCTIONALLY COMPLETELY DEVOID OF SENSES. YOU DO NOT SEE BLIND MAN ASK WHY THEY NEVER FIND WOMAN WHO IS PLEASANT TO LOOK AT, NO? IS SAME THING.

ALSO, EARTH IS QUARANTINE ON ACCOUNT OF CONTAGIOUS STUPIDITY.

hooplala

Quote from: PANGO! on September 19, 2014, 03:58:24 AM
ALSO, EARTH IS QUARANTINE ON ACCOUNT OF CONTAGIOUS STUPIDITY.


I find this to be more and more manifest the harder I look.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

P3nT4gR4m

I hate that phrase "Fermi Paradox" cos it suggests that there's some kind of paradox. Even though there's any number of perfectly simple explanations.

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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on September 19, 2014, 08:23:34 AM
I hate that phrase "Fermi Paradox" cos it suggests that there's some kind of paradox. Even though there's any number of perfectly simple explanations.

I posted one, but it wasn't what people wanted to hear.   :lulz:
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- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

LMNO


The Wizard Joseph

Along the 'we are god's mistake' line there's the fun Sitchenesque theory that there's other life that made us to be labor proxies when they bitched up. Then we got out of hand.

I think this is likely BS, but I don't discount the theory as impossible. I just like the idea that humanity as we know it is the result of a labor dispute compromise and some Days of Our Lives drama among the 'gods'.
Humanity as some bio-industrial waste containment problem seems to fit our nature when I look around at the works of our 'civilization'.  :fnord:
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl