Vivian on 8/11/2016 at 16:10
OK safe, I agree.
I think. I'll read properly when I've got time. Soz.
faetal on 8/11/2016 at 16:14
Yeah, sorry, I do try to avoid walls of texts in case I accidentally fillibuster a discussion simply because I'm willing to slack off more than the person I'm talking to.
But in this case, I've just got too many years of stored up thoughts and it isn't often I actually get to properly have the discussion.
faetal on 8/11/2016 at 16:16
In other related news, on a planet with enough years left before our star supernovas, it's really pretty awesome, but at the same time disappointing to know that we're the first advanced species to have happened. Can you imagine how cool it's going to be when the next lot find their first perfectly preserved PS Vita or Fleshlight?
faetal on 8/11/2016 at 16:20
One last related point about the Fermi paradox - I'm thinking bell curves may be responsible. When a species hits that magic point where how clever they are is teamed with how stupid they are, they just implode. Hence no visitors.
Renzatic on 8/11/2016 at 16:44
The thing about the Fermi Paradox is that, since we have yet to experience contact with any other intelligent species, you can all but fill the reason in for it with any explanation that only has to be sortakinda scientifically plausible. I've seen it cover every argument from "aliens don't want to contact us because we're mean and crazy" to "we're all living in one giant VR simulation, and Our Creators forgot to add in the aliens and all the weird stuff down at the quantum level." Anything works, so long as its a logically feasible conclusion. Which, with a question so broad, could be anything at all.
One of the more optimistic conclusions I've read is that we could very well be the first intelligent species in the galaxy. Possibly even the universe. It takes billions of years to produce a species that can make PS Vitas and Fleshlights, and the conditions have to be excruciatingly specific even then. It's very possible that we could be the one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. One planet in the right part of space to be left unmolested by the cosmos surrounding it, located just the right position away from its sun, with just the right mix of gasses to produce an environment friendly to life, with just the right course of evolution taken to produce a physically efficient intelligent species, with just the right environmental stressors to drive it forward, with just the right blah blah blah etc. etc. With the wide body of evidence available to us, assuming we're merely the first is equally as valid as assuming aliens not being able or willing to contact us.
faetal on 8/11/2016 at 16:58
In my mind, the following explanations exist:
1) The aforementioned doomed to failure one
2) Probability is so low that the spatial and/or temporal distances between entities are just too big to guarantee contact within the short period of time we've been around
3) Probability is as guessed, but we are anomalously far from the nearest entity in space or time
4) We're the originals baby (someone has to be)
5) Hitler and Trump have frightened all prospects away
6) We're simulated and there just isn't the processing power for two
7) There really is a god and we're its one of a kind experiment (can understand why such a hypothetical entity would stop at one after seeing what it did with us)
Vivian on 8/11/2016 at 18:40
Quote Posted by faetal
Is that clear?
Hmmm. Ok, is what we're talking about really worse than the PT? Guess the timescales of something that old in terms of species die-off is pretty tricky as it gets filtered through the deep fossil record, where it's difficult to tell a one year timescale from a tens of thousands of years timescale. Plus all of the data we have are subjected to the vagaries of what does and doesn't get fossilised at the best of times. This is attempting to refute something with a lack of data, I realise, but I think it's still worth considering that we don't really know the tempo of ME events that well, even nice obvious giant impact ones. So while things are going extinct at a fucking alarming rate right now, I've not seen anything that proves it's worse than anything that's happened before? (if you've got some though please share, lazy researcher here, soz). Hence I suggested 'multiple large impactors' (which has yet to happen to a populated earth) as the kind of scenario that might make things bad enough to exterminate even an unprecedentedly cosmopolitan generalist like ourselves.
I also suspect we're getting a bit caught on the distinction between 'death of human civilization as we know it' and 'extinction of humans'. It's the latter I'm talking about.
I'll try and dig out the data on estimated kill-rates for the big five if you can do the same for the holocene extinction? (such a nice friendly name isn't it).
(NB I am not poo-pooing the idea that we're as sensitive to ecosystem collapse as anything else. You are right. We are. But I am saying that we have our fingers in almost every extant ecosystem, so you would need to knock pretty much everything out to completely deny all humans, everywhere, access to something)
heywood on 8/11/2016 at 19:01
Quote Posted by faetal
Since the rate of warming we are seeing is unprecedented
Is it?
Ice core records, which are the best global temperature indicators we have, show a pattern of rapid +10C temperature changes which occur every 100k years to mark the end of each major glacial period. During these warming periods the rate of temperature change is on the order of what we’re experiencing now. These rapid warming periods haven’t produced any mass extinctions. If rapid temperature change alone is sufficiently disruptive to cause a mass extinction, there would be many more mass extinction events.
Although present day temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels appear to be higher than they’ve been in the last million years, they are still well below past maxima. Past maxima aren’t well correlated with mass extinctions. For example, the maximum in the Eocene occurs within a period of increasing biodiversity. And the fossil record in general shows some correlation between higher temperatures and higher biodiversity. So I don’t think it’s a given that a hot greenhouse climate is sufficient to cause mass extinction.
Quote Posted by faetal
In my mind, the following explanations exist:
1) The aforementioned doomed to failure one
2) Probability is so low that the spatial and/or temporal distances between entities are just too big to guarantee contact within the short period of time we've been around
3) Probability is as guessed, but we are anomalously far from the nearest entity in space or time
4) We're the originals baby (someone has to be)
5) Hitler and Trump have frightened all prospects away
6) We're simulated and there just isn't the processing power for two
7) There really is a god and we're its one of a kind experiment (can understand why such a hypothetical entity would stop at one after seeing what it did with us)
I think #2 is all the explanation you need.
Let me add one other possibility though. The speed of light is so slow relative to cosmic distances that the time delays make two-way communication impossible. Maybe other life forms have concluded the same thing and decided not to bother.
Starker on 8/11/2016 at 19:12
I'm still not buying it. We might lose access to some knowledge, but it's not that hard to copy things by hand even if all computers stop working for some reason and we can't make any more. And we, uniquely, can alter our environment in large scale. We don't just know how to grow and store our food, we know how to cultivate it and change it to our liking. We can make plants more drought resistant etc...
Now, if things got so bad that everyone would be starving to death at the same time and we even run out of soylent green, sure.
Renzatic on 8/11/2016 at 19:17
Quote Posted by Starker
Now, if things got so bad that everyone would be starving to death at the same time and we even run out of soylent green, sure.
Exactly. As long as there are people, there will always be dead people we can eat. The problem solves itself.
