The Case for Team Non-Teeming
December 29, 2022 11:05 PM Subscribe
Why We Might Be Alone David Kipping, of Columbia University, takes on the usual arguments for a universe that is “teeming with life” and finds them all wanting.
Note that most of the objections people will raise at first glance are addressed within the lecture.
Note that most of the objections people will raise at first glance are addressed within the lecture.
At least a partial answer for the Fermi paradox goes: A space faring species cannot expand exponentially, due to not having enough energy. We'll never see many signs of them since they won't spread much.
Aurora by KSR proposes an even tighter bound:
“Aurora” affronted some readers and sci-fi writers, as it was meant to; its goal was to shift the structure of feeling in science fiction, making it less escapist and more certain that Earth is our only home. “As soon as I read it, I thought, Of course, he’s right,” the science-fiction writer Ted Chiang told me. (The novel, he added, suggests that interstellar settlement is not just “impractical” but “immoral,” since it involves “condemning generations of one’s descendants to lifelong hardship when you cannot possibly get their consent.”)
posted by jeffburdges at 1:38 AM on December 30, 2022 [15 favorites]
Aurora by KSR proposes an even tighter bound:
“Aurora” affronted some readers and sci-fi writers, as it was meant to; its goal was to shift the structure of feeling in science fiction, making it less escapist and more certain that Earth is our only home. “As soon as I read it, I thought, Of course, he’s right,” the science-fiction writer Ted Chiang told me. (The novel, he added, suggests that interstellar settlement is not just “impractical” but “immoral,” since it involves “condemning generations of one’s descendants to lifelong hardship when you cannot possibly get their consent.”)
posted by jeffburdges at 1:38 AM on December 30, 2022 [15 favorites]
I believe we are functionally alone in the universe even if not actually alone. Space is too big, the timescale is too large. If they are 500,000 light years away and at our level of technology we might never know they are there. If we detected the faint signature of a 500,000 year old radio message the life that generated it may be long extinct and even if they are still there it isn’t like we could ever hope to have a conversation.
posted by interogative mood at 1:41 AM on December 30, 2022 [29 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 1:41 AM on December 30, 2022 [29 favorites]
None of these worlds are yours, except Earth.
posted by sudogeek at 3:16 AM on December 30, 2022 [20 favorites]
posted by sudogeek at 3:16 AM on December 30, 2022 [20 favorites]
Now that we know (n=1) that a species can take itself from starting farming/towns to destroying its whole planets climate, contaminating its biosphere with radiation, heavy metals and persistant organic poisons etc in the span of 10-15 kiloyears, we have two plausible Fermi explanations.
We don't find alien life because we shat-the-bed so fast after getting capable of rudimentary signal detection that we haven't had time to find them and them us. The more general case is that we are enacting a great-filter style lorenz attractor toward pollution and externalities.
Since most species and many societies can and do figure out how to live and grow without putting lead into their wine (etc) Its unclear whether this is a "Great Filter" problem or a "West Asian subcontinent imperial cancer capitalism" problem.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:09 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
We don't find alien life because we shat-the-bed so fast after getting capable of rudimentary signal detection that we haven't had time to find them and them us. The more general case is that we are enacting a great-filter style lorenz attractor toward pollution and externalities.
Since most species and many societies can and do figure out how to live and grow without putting lead into their wine (etc) Its unclear whether this is a "Great Filter" problem or a "West Asian subcontinent imperial cancer capitalism" problem.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:09 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
Jim Rutt of the Santa Fe Institue loves to ask his guests (corporate woo salesmen and scientists alike) about the Fermi paradox and you get a whole range of interestinf answers.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:11 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 4:11 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
We have close to zero data on this yet and speculation is largely meaningless.
posted by kyrademon at 5:04 AM on December 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by kyrademon at 5:04 AM on December 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
Speculation is not meaningless.
Avi Loeb's book published after ʻOumuamua's discovery (Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth) is an engaging and topical read on this very point.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:19 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Avi Loeb's book published after ʻOumuamua's discovery (Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth) is an engaging and topical read on this very point.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:19 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
We actually can make meaningful conjectures here:
Intelligence took life here 4 billion years. As David Kipping says, we cannot conclude anything from this alone, due to sampling bias. Yet, we've some idea that problem look crazily complex, so 4-ish billion years for intelligence maybe typical. If so, too much variability elsewhere could prevent intelligent life arising before starts grow too large, so even if life were moderately commonplace, then intelligent life could be extremely rare.
We typically want to believe the opposite that intelligence is some "goal", but really our intelligence is likely a peacock tail, another random display to impress mates, but one that requires fairly specific intellectual setup, otherwise you just end up with whale songs.
As a concrete Fermi paradox answer, I linked above Peter Hague's remarks that spacefaring races lack the energy for exponential expansion, meaning intelligent life could exists but if they only ever colonize a few nearby stars then we'll never actually find them.
As an exception, and assuming it even works, the halo drive idea by David Kipping maybe the only viable mechanism for reaching many stars, except the only usable stars are binary black holes, so most intelligent species evolve too far away from a binary black hole transit station.
We know humans have lived sustainably for thousands of years, but only because they were forced into doing so. We'll maybe wreck our civilization beyond repair via climate change, maybe even make ourselves extinct. A priori, I'd expect any species who explored space faces similar existential ecological challenges.
It's plausible intelligent life exists who never received this carbon pulse, like because increased geological activity burns up stored hydrocarbons. We solve problems by throwing energy at them, so even a highly intelligent species without this energy surplus would not view technology the same way, and maybe never voyage into space. It's likely they'd still face other planetary boundaries though, so who knows.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:14 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Intelligence took life here 4 billion years. As David Kipping says, we cannot conclude anything from this alone, due to sampling bias. Yet, we've some idea that problem look crazily complex, so 4-ish billion years for intelligence maybe typical. If so, too much variability elsewhere could prevent intelligent life arising before starts grow too large, so even if life were moderately commonplace, then intelligent life could be extremely rare.
We typically want to believe the opposite that intelligence is some "goal", but really our intelligence is likely a peacock tail, another random display to impress mates, but one that requires fairly specific intellectual setup, otherwise you just end up with whale songs.
As a concrete Fermi paradox answer, I linked above Peter Hague's remarks that spacefaring races lack the energy for exponential expansion, meaning intelligent life could exists but if they only ever colonize a few nearby stars then we'll never actually find them.
As an exception, and assuming it even works, the halo drive idea by David Kipping maybe the only viable mechanism for reaching many stars, except the only usable stars are binary black holes, so most intelligent species evolve too far away from a binary black hole transit station.
We know humans have lived sustainably for thousands of years, but only because they were forced into doing so. We'll maybe wreck our civilization beyond repair via climate change, maybe even make ourselves extinct. A priori, I'd expect any species who explored space faces similar existential ecological challenges.
It's plausible intelligent life exists who never received this carbon pulse, like because increased geological activity burns up stored hydrocarbons. We solve problems by throwing energy at them, so even a highly intelligent species without this energy surplus would not view technology the same way, and maybe never voyage into space. It's likely they'd still face other planetary boundaries though, so who knows.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:14 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
“No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers” (and consumption) ― Carl Sagan
As another affront, we could've a sci-fi story about a "darker" analog of the prime directive from StarTrek which dictates what first contact looks like:
It's 2150, our remaining oil & gas are largely unrecoverable, the climate is +5°C, half the world's land area is uninhabitable by humans for a few months out of the year, most other species went extinct, the human population has shrunk to 100 million, due to heat stroke, famines, diseases, cannibalism, and even mild nuclear & bio wars.
We do still have a fair bit of solar, computers, nuclear, chemistry, and bio technology though, but we've accepted certain limits: Any large scale CO2 or methane emissions are considered acts of war, to which other nations respond by nuclear strikes or bio-weapons, aka you get poisoned or nuked if you start a cattle ranch or even relinquish your nations' two-child policy.
At this point but not before some nice friendly aliens pop out from behind a moon of Jupiter, from where they've watched humanity die back for 100 years. As their first question, they ask us if we've learned our lesson yet and if we're now a grown up species who're safe to talk to.
At first there is jubilation in which some people celebrate they could maybe have more than two kids with the alien's technology. Yet, the aliens nicely explain that physical limits do not work that way, so those people are all rounded up and sterilized by their own governments. The friendly aliens take these forced sterilizations as a sign that we're an adult species now and finally meet us, and even help us settle Mars.
At some point they mention that they'd have nuked us back down to 10 million if we'd failed that population self regulation test. We understand that necessity of course.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:23 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
As another affront, we could've a sci-fi story about a "darker" analog of the prime directive from StarTrek which dictates what first contact looks like:
It's 2150, our remaining oil & gas are largely unrecoverable, the climate is +5°C, half the world's land area is uninhabitable by humans for a few months out of the year, most other species went extinct, the human population has shrunk to 100 million, due to heat stroke, famines, diseases, cannibalism, and even mild nuclear & bio wars.
We do still have a fair bit of solar, computers, nuclear, chemistry, and bio technology though, but we've accepted certain limits: Any large scale CO2 or methane emissions are considered acts of war, to which other nations respond by nuclear strikes or bio-weapons, aka you get poisoned or nuked if you start a cattle ranch or even relinquish your nations' two-child policy.
At this point but not before some nice friendly aliens pop out from behind a moon of Jupiter, from where they've watched humanity die back for 100 years. As their first question, they ask us if we've learned our lesson yet and if we're now a grown up species who're safe to talk to.
At first there is jubilation in which some people celebrate they could maybe have more than two kids with the alien's technology. Yet, the aliens nicely explain that physical limits do not work that way, so those people are all rounded up and sterilized by their own governments. The friendly aliens take these forced sterilizations as a sign that we're an adult species now and finally meet us, and even help us settle Mars.
At some point they mention that they'd have nuked us back down to 10 million if we'd failed that population self regulation test. We understand that necessity of course.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:23 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Would we have developed past agriculture and simple factories without coal and oil? If another planet develops intelligent life but the geologic mechanisms don't give them a truly easy to use, super dense, and abundant energy source would they ever get to radios even?
That's the one avenue I can see us as being unique in. Uniquely lucky to have had hundreds of millions of years of oil/coal deposits building up and readily available for use so we can leapfrog to something else.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:43 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's the one avenue I can see us as being unique in. Uniquely lucky to have had hundreds of millions of years of oil/coal deposits building up and readily available for use so we can leapfrog to something else.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:43 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well... "unique". Space is mindbogglingly large. I wouldn't be shocked if a near identical planet to ours was out there. But the easy to use energy bit may be faaaaar more rare than we think.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:44 AM on December 30, 2022
posted by Slackermagee at 6:44 AM on December 30, 2022
Leaving the entire question of intelligence aside, we’re told that all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor that lived some four billion years ago — so in a universe supposedly teeming with life, on a planet exquisitely suited to life, the evidence we have indicates that life arose exactly once. This has always bothered me, and makes me question the probabilities that the Drake equation assumes.
posted by newmoistness at 6:48 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by newmoistness at 6:48 AM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
If there is no curvature to space then the universe is infinitely large, so we've measured 0% of it and that number will never get larger. Even the physical constants we cling to may be different in different places, we'll never know.
If space is curved then there is an estimate that diameter of the total universe is at least 14 trillion lightyears.
We are ants on a rock in the middle of the Sahara, trying to derive the existence of ice caves in the Himalayas. It's a fun game, but it's only useful in that it may lead to an understanding of very local phenomena.
> Space is too big
The limitations of the speed of light are not all they're cracked up to be. Not that quantum entanglement itself seems like a practical solution, but the tyranny of light speed should be taken with a grain of salt.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:00 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
If space is curved then there is an estimate that diameter of the total universe is at least 14 trillion lightyears.
We are ants on a rock in the middle of the Sahara, trying to derive the existence of ice caves in the Himalayas. It's a fun game, but it's only useful in that it may lead to an understanding of very local phenomena.
> Space is too big
The limitations of the speed of light are not all they're cracked up to be. Not that quantum entanglement itself seems like a practical solution, but the tyranny of light speed should be taken with a grain of salt.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:00 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I refuse to believe that Earth is alone in the universe. It is probably the one thing I have faith about.
posted by rhymedirective at 7:15 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 7:15 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
It's plausible life arose many times here, newmoistness, depending upon whichever pre-cell RNA world step you consider to be life arising, but only one of those won some early evolutionary struggle, like being the first to produce a cell wall or something.
We use coal as far back as 1000 BC or earlier, Slackermagee, but afaik it did not dominate our technology until the steam engine. We'd basic seam devices as early as 1000 AD but real steam engines only came after Newton and Leibniz invented calculus aka rudimentary physics.
Your question maybe: If we lacked coal then we'd lack much metal working, so would we have made much wire and explored electricity as early?
We'd have burned trees if we'd no coal I guess, but trees run out much faster, so yes we'd have less wire I guess. We'd have stuck with sailboats too, or maybe the UK would've died like Easter island. We'd experiments with static electricity and magnetism by 1600, so likely they've have progressed even without coal.
I think electricity would've remained a toy much longer though until someone first screwed around with enough wire to make a generator, and later someone else invented a hydro-electric dam. Yes, real adoption would happen much slower, but imho it'd still happen given an extra 1000 years or so, given they already know calculus and some rudimentary electro-magnetism.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:23 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
We use coal as far back as 1000 BC or earlier, Slackermagee, but afaik it did not dominate our technology until the steam engine. We'd basic seam devices as early as 1000 AD but real steam engines only came after Newton and Leibniz invented calculus aka rudimentary physics.
Your question maybe: If we lacked coal then we'd lack much metal working, so would we have made much wire and explored electricity as early?
We'd have burned trees if we'd no coal I guess, but trees run out much faster, so yes we'd have less wire I guess. We'd have stuck with sailboats too, or maybe the UK would've died like Easter island. We'd experiments with static electricity and magnetism by 1600, so likely they've have progressed even without coal.
I think electricity would've remained a toy much longer though until someone first screwed around with enough wire to make a generator, and later someone else invented a hydro-electric dam. Yes, real adoption would happen much slower, but imho it'd still happen given an extra 1000 years or so, given they already know calculus and some rudimentary electro-magnetism.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:23 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
> "Speculation is not meaningless. Avi Loeb's book ..."
Avi Loeb's speculation is particularly meaningless.
posted by kyrademon at 7:36 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Avi Loeb's speculation is particularly meaningless.
posted by kyrademon at 7:36 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
We're not necessarily talking about zero coal either, Slackermagee, like surely we've burned up 20% of the shit by now, no? Imagine a world where Haber still defeats Malthus, our population explodes up to one billion, and then the fossil fuels run out, so agricultural yields plummet, and famines return the population to lower levels. We'd partially support this unsustainable population by being vegetarian like India of course, but also by extracting food from colonies. We'd never permit extreme population growth in poorer countries either, assuming western scoeity even survived long enough to have many colonies. In this, we'd likely have a real social collapse of western society too of course, which yeah maybe slows down discovering electricity even more, but imho we'd still get there.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:41 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jeffburdges at 7:41 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Intelligence took life here 4 billion years. As David Kipping says, we cannot conclude anything from this alone, due to sampling bias.
This is true, but I think elides Kipping's other assertion, namely that it is equally valid to assume that life on Earth is singular in the universe, as it is to say that something we'd recognize as life is not singular.
There's another method that I think refutes his argument: he claims the Copernican principle (the argument from mediocrity) is arbitrary and moves on. However, let us look at the claims on their face: life is singular on Earth or it is not.
Which is the more extraordinary claim? When it comes to physics and astronomy, even if you have only one positive data point establishes as fact the nonzero possibility of its occurrence. It is quite extraordinary to claim that the probability is so close to zero that life on Earth is singular. Far, far more extraordinary than to claim that it is not singular. So extraordinary, in fact, that you must then allow for supernatural reasons to explain the total singularity of life's existence to be only here.
Kipping is basically making a theological argument, and I'm not on board.
posted by tclark at 7:46 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is true, but I think elides Kipping's other assertion, namely that it is equally valid to assume that life on Earth is singular in the universe, as it is to say that something we'd recognize as life is not singular.
There's another method that I think refutes his argument: he claims the Copernican principle (the argument from mediocrity) is arbitrary and moves on. However, let us look at the claims on their face: life is singular on Earth or it is not.
Which is the more extraordinary claim? When it comes to physics and astronomy, even if you have only one positive data point establishes as fact the nonzero possibility of its occurrence. It is quite extraordinary to claim that the probability is so close to zero that life on Earth is singular. Far, far more extraordinary than to claim that it is not singular. So extraordinary, in fact, that you must then allow for supernatural reasons to explain the total singularity of life's existence to be only here.
Kipping is basically making a theological argument, and I'm not on board.
posted by tclark at 7:46 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
There's a huge gulf between life and intelligent life, and that distinction isn't really covered here. His "fast start" life, for example, suggests that you'll have single celled organisms all over the place, and only the complex multicellular organisms are rare.
The last part of the Drake equation, the lifetime of intelligent civilizations, seems to be the most relevant one here. Human civilization has existed for a few tens of thousands of years at most, out of an evolutionary history hundreds of thousands of times longer than that. How long are we really going to stick around for?
A million years is an almost incomprehensibly long amount of time, but it's still a blink of an eye, evolutionarily speaking.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 8:00 AM on December 30, 2022
The last part of the Drake equation, the lifetime of intelligent civilizations, seems to be the most relevant one here. Human civilization has existed for a few tens of thousands of years at most, out of an evolutionary history hundreds of thousands of times longer than that. How long are we really going to stick around for?
A million years is an almost incomprehensibly long amount of time, but it's still a blink of an eye, evolutionarily speaking.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 8:00 AM on December 30, 2022
Loeb's book - described in a single aphorism
posted by lalochezia at 8:05 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by lalochezia at 8:05 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think Kipping's opening point is the most solid one, arguing that the Drake equation is too open because we just lack data on that one key piece.
I am surprised neither he nor anyone in this thread raised the Dark Forest idea yet.
posted by doctornemo at 8:12 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I am surprised neither he nor anyone in this thread raised the Dark Forest idea yet.
posted by doctornemo at 8:12 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
We are only now learning to recognize the intelligence of other life on earth and we have lived with them forever.
How not on earth are we supposed to recognize intelligent life from elsewhere?
posted by srboisvert at 8:13 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
How not on earth are we supposed to recognize intelligent life from elsewhere?
posted by srboisvert at 8:13 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I find Kipping’s lecture fairly comforting, because most other answers to the question of why we haven’t detected any signs of extraterrestrial civilizations are just so damn bleak. By comparison the idea that intelligent life is incredibly rare seems fairly hopeful.
posted by Kattullus at 8:16 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 8:16 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
His "fast start" life, for example, suggests that you'll have single celled organisms all over the place, and only the complex multicellular organisms are rare.
The thing about conceptualizing the universe is that the sheer incredible numbers take off so quickly as to overwhelm the statistics -- it is virtually impossible to have a singular instance of a large thermodynamically complex thing as multicellular life.
You have to basically posit a "cliff" of probability where you assign arbitrariness to all previously known factors and you get to pick where the probabilities become so incredibly steep as to render everything beyond that utterly singular.
"Bodies around stars? Common. Thermal gradients on bodies? Common. Liquid-phase water? Common. Carbon chemistry? Common. Nucleotides? Common. Unicellular organisms? 'All over the place.' Multicellular organisms? 10^-100. Sentient life? Singular. Sapient technology using life? Singular."
This isn't a good argument. The universe is vast enough that the sheer incredible numbers make you go from zero to 1 to abundant (across space, if not necessarily at the same time) extremely fast.
I'm not talking about Fermi's paradox, which IMO is somewhat overblown by a very understandable human difficulty in fully conceptualizing relativistic physics.
My questions are: Where is the probabilistic cliff? And why is it where you've decided to put it? I think we know where the probabilistic cliff is, because we have measured it. The speed of light is a hell of a barrier to the best of our knowledge. Unless a sapient, technology-using civilization is capable of bypassing it, I have no trouble whatsoever in finding sapient life to be non-singular in the galaxy, and feel extremely comfortable with the notion that it is, in astronomical terms, common in the universe.
posted by tclark at 8:17 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
The thing about conceptualizing the universe is that the sheer incredible numbers take off so quickly as to overwhelm the statistics -- it is virtually impossible to have a singular instance of a large thermodynamically complex thing as multicellular life.
You have to basically posit a "cliff" of probability where you assign arbitrariness to all previously known factors and you get to pick where the probabilities become so incredibly steep as to render everything beyond that utterly singular.
"Bodies around stars? Common. Thermal gradients on bodies? Common. Liquid-phase water? Common. Carbon chemistry? Common. Nucleotides? Common. Unicellular organisms? 'All over the place.' Multicellular organisms? 10^-100. Sentient life? Singular. Sapient technology using life? Singular."
This isn't a good argument. The universe is vast enough that the sheer incredible numbers make you go from zero to 1 to abundant (across space, if not necessarily at the same time) extremely fast.
I'm not talking about Fermi's paradox, which IMO is somewhat overblown by a very understandable human difficulty in fully conceptualizing relativistic physics.
My questions are: Where is the probabilistic cliff? And why is it where you've decided to put it? I think we know where the probabilistic cliff is, because we have measured it. The speed of light is a hell of a barrier to the best of our knowledge. Unless a sapient, technology-using civilization is capable of bypassing it, I have no trouble whatsoever in finding sapient life to be non-singular in the galaxy, and feel extremely comfortable with the notion that it is, in astronomical terms, common in the universe.
posted by tclark at 8:17 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is one of those debates that I'd really relish listening in on if I were secretly an alien visiting Earth.
I can only hope that there's some extraterrestrial reading this thread and quietly smirking to themselves.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:25 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I can only hope that there's some extraterrestrial reading this thread and quietly smirking to themselves.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:25 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
You could live alone on an island in the remote art of an ocean and never see another human and therefore conclude that you're the only sentient thing in the world.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:43 AM on December 30, 2022
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:43 AM on December 30, 2022
A couple of people have pointed out that the odds that there would be exactly one instance of sentient life in the universe are astronomically small. This is becoming a back door for letting in Copernican mediocrity (i.e., claiming a special status for our planet raises a red flag in the argument). I don’t think Kipping’s argument depends on the exactly one argument. The argument is there is nothing wrong in principle with the idea that sentient life is vanishingly scarce in the universe, and that the “teeming with life” argument bears the burden of proof.
posted by argybarg at 8:47 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by argybarg at 8:47 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
The argument is there is nothing wrong in principle with the idea that sentient life is vanishingly scarce in the universe, and that the “teeming with life” argument bears the burden of proof.
If we were to graph the probability curve that Kipping's argument requires, I contend that the metastable point of "vanishingly scarce" where to the left of that little probabilistic shelf on the graph is a universe containing zero sentient life (which we already know to be a scenario that does not obtain) and to the right of the curve you have such a steep dropoff as to require "vanishingly scarce" quantities of sentient life (he references a tweet of 10^-100 in his argument), you are asserting an extremely specific statistical scenario that I contend the burden of proof is greater than on those who do not assert a vanishingly small quantity.
If there is more than one, what is the statistical significance between two sentient species and a hundred? If there is only one, you are making an extremely narrow assertion as to the quantities you are willing to accept for values of "vanishingly scarce."
I firmly believe that Kipping's argument is the one making the more extraordinary claim.
posted by tclark at 8:55 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
If we were to graph the probability curve that Kipping's argument requires, I contend that the metastable point of "vanishingly scarce" where to the left of that little probabilistic shelf on the graph is a universe containing zero sentient life (which we already know to be a scenario that does not obtain) and to the right of the curve you have such a steep dropoff as to require "vanishingly scarce" quantities of sentient life (he references a tweet of 10^-100 in his argument), you are asserting an extremely specific statistical scenario that I contend the burden of proof is greater than on those who do not assert a vanishingly small quantity.
If there is more than one, what is the statistical significance between two sentient species and a hundred? If there is only one, you are making an extremely narrow assertion as to the quantities you are willing to accept for values of "vanishingly scarce."
I firmly believe that Kipping's argument is the one making the more extraordinary claim.
posted by tclark at 8:55 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
In the absence of any other information, I would agree that “next to zero” is a statistically precarious spot. But we can make inferences from our situation.
The number of stacked contingencies on our own existence,* each one seemingly quite rare, and the removal of any one of which might have precluded our existence, makes “very rare” a reasonable first guess.
* (the right temperature for liquid water; a star with sustained stable output over a long period; a magnetic field; a proportionally large moon stabilizing our orbit; plate tectonics)
posted by argybarg at 9:09 AM on December 30, 2022
The number of stacked contingencies on our own existence,* each one seemingly quite rare, and the removal of any one of which might have precluded our existence, makes “very rare” a reasonable first guess.
* (the right temperature for liquid water; a star with sustained stable output over a long period; a magnetic field; a proportionally large moon stabilizing our orbit; plate tectonics)
posted by argybarg at 9:09 AM on December 30, 2022
* (the right temperature for liquid water; a star with sustained stable output over a long period; a magnetic field; a proportionally large moon stabilizing our orbit; plate tectonics)
I think some of these items on this list are not necessarily specifically required for sentient life (which I define as a superset of sapient life) -- the magnetic field, large moon, and plate tectonics are how life happened here but are not necessary.
What do I feel is necessary?
Roughly stable thermal gradients over a long period of time (typically but not necessarily and solely provided by a nearby star). Liquid-phase water. Carbon chemistry. Nucleotides. Energetically advantageous "inside" vs "outside" bodies (i.e. some form of unicellular life). Energetically advantageous cooperation of multiple bodies working together (multicellular life). Energetically advantageous specialization of members of multicellular life (organs). Energetically advantageous use of specialization in sensing and responding to environmental conditions (the dawn of sentience, literally "sensing").
Where is the probability cliff there? I don't know, but I have no reason to believe that any of those is dozens or hundreds of orders of magnitude less likely than its preceding condition -- especially because none of the known likelihoods of preceding conditions evidences a dozens or hundreds of orders of magnitude step between them.
There are many means by which to have environments which support complex life. Even in our solar system I expect we will find multicellular life in places where there is liquid water, carbon chemicals, and thermal gradients, such as in the oceans of Europa or the water on Enceladus, neither of which have Earth-like magnetic fields or plate tectonics.
The magnetic field can be substituted with any form of "radiation protection" and a thick ice cap suffices quite nicely. Plate tectonics can be substituted with any form of "geologic availability of organic and mineral resources" and a tidally massaged body core suffices quite nicely for that. There are a lot of ways to solve the problems that would hamper the development of life, and it's somewhat provincial to believe that we always need magnetic fields to protect from radiation just because our magnetic field does that job.
posted by tclark at 9:27 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think some of these items on this list are not necessarily specifically required for sentient life (which I define as a superset of sapient life) -- the magnetic field, large moon, and plate tectonics are how life happened here but are not necessary.
What do I feel is necessary?
Roughly stable thermal gradients over a long period of time (typically but not necessarily and solely provided by a nearby star). Liquid-phase water. Carbon chemistry. Nucleotides. Energetically advantageous "inside" vs "outside" bodies (i.e. some form of unicellular life). Energetically advantageous cooperation of multiple bodies working together (multicellular life). Energetically advantageous specialization of members of multicellular life (organs). Energetically advantageous use of specialization in sensing and responding to environmental conditions (the dawn of sentience, literally "sensing").
Where is the probability cliff there? I don't know, but I have no reason to believe that any of those is dozens or hundreds of orders of magnitude less likely than its preceding condition -- especially because none of the known likelihoods of preceding conditions evidences a dozens or hundreds of orders of magnitude step between them.
There are many means by which to have environments which support complex life. Even in our solar system I expect we will find multicellular life in places where there is liquid water, carbon chemicals, and thermal gradients, such as in the oceans of Europa or the water on Enceladus, neither of which have Earth-like magnetic fields or plate tectonics.
The magnetic field can be substituted with any form of "radiation protection" and a thick ice cap suffices quite nicely. Plate tectonics can be substituted with any form of "geologic availability of organic and mineral resources" and a tidally massaged body core suffices quite nicely for that. There are a lot of ways to solve the problems that would hamper the development of life, and it's somewhat provincial to believe that we always need magnetic fields to protect from radiation just because our magnetic field does that job.
posted by tclark at 9:27 AM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
“No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers” (and consumption) ― Carl Sagan
This keeps appearing in these discussions. Carl Sagan was many excellent things, but neither prescient nor conversant with the succeeding 40 years of human experience. As the discoveries and inventions that would be required for extraplanetary expansion require at the very least energy productions and efficiencies where depending on the scale, the same energies would be adequate to sustain numbers right up until the physical carrying limit of the planet, this quote always feels unnecessarily eco-fascist in implication.
There are great reasons to consider population, but this isn't one. Nobody knows what it takes to survive to become an interstellar spacefaring civilization. Pretending Carl Sagan does is an illicit appeal to authority.
posted by abulafa at 9:28 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
This keeps appearing in these discussions. Carl Sagan was many excellent things, but neither prescient nor conversant with the succeeding 40 years of human experience. As the discoveries and inventions that would be required for extraplanetary expansion require at the very least energy productions and efficiencies where depending on the scale, the same energies would be adequate to sustain numbers right up until the physical carrying limit of the planet, this quote always feels unnecessarily eco-fascist in implication.
There are great reasons to consider population, but this isn't one. Nobody knows what it takes to survive to become an interstellar spacefaring civilization. Pretending Carl Sagan does is an illicit appeal to authority.
posted by abulafa at 9:28 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I firmly believe that Kipping's argument is the one making the more extraordinary claim.
Agreed. There are simply far too many galaxies, with far too many stars for us to be the only intelligent life with an ongoing civilization right now.
But just because they exist doesn't mean they're next door. Enough low-probability conditions can stack up to keep us the only active beings within our current detectable window.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 9:32 AM on December 30, 2022
Agreed. There are simply far too many galaxies, with far too many stars for us to be the only intelligent life with an ongoing civilization right now.
But just because they exist doesn't mean they're next door. Enough low-probability conditions can stack up to keep us the only active beings within our current detectable window.
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 9:32 AM on December 30, 2022
The probability cliff is principally some combination of factors that get you a steady input of the right amount of energy that obtains over stable conditions over billions of years, without major disruptions. You are correct that we can arrive at that state in multiple ways (that is, perhaps something other than a large moon keeps the planet pointed at the source of energy), but each of those multiple ways is still exotic and the combination of multiple ways is going to be highly unlikely.
If you deal out cards and reshuffle after every deal and get three of clubs 20 times in a row, you could say “it didn’t have to be three of clubs; it could have been seven of hearts.” Okay, but you’re still looking at a vanishingly rare occurrence.
I do think an adherence to the mediocrity principle is lurking behind your arguments. I think perhaps you find the idea that the earth is a profoundly extraordinary case to be at least a little distasteful.
posted by argybarg at 9:41 AM on December 30, 2022
If you deal out cards and reshuffle after every deal and get three of clubs 20 times in a row, you could say “it didn’t have to be three of clubs; it could have been seven of hearts.” Okay, but you’re still looking at a vanishingly rare occurrence.
I do think an adherence to the mediocrity principle is lurking behind your arguments. I think perhaps you find the idea that the earth is a profoundly extraordinary case to be at least a little distasteful.
posted by argybarg at 9:41 AM on December 30, 2022
I think perhaps you find the idea that the earth is a profoundly extraordinary case to be at least a little distasteful.
I find the idea that the Earth is a profoundly extraordinary case to be incompatible with our observations of the universe around us.
I find the idea that any one place in the universe to be a profoundly extraordinary, verging on or literally singular case, to be distasteful.
I find Kipping's dismissal of the Copernican principle to be entirely unconvincing, because the law of large numbers is incredibly powerful, and humans have an extremely hard time contending with them.
A million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds is over 30 years.
A trillion seconds is over 30,000 years.
I find it unwise, and probably a bit hubristic, to accept an argument that when we are dealing with hundreds of billions or trillions of galaxies in the known universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars, each with a handful of planets, that technologically capable life is a ten to the minus one hundred likelihood.
posted by tclark at 9:51 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
I find the idea that the Earth is a profoundly extraordinary case to be incompatible with our observations of the universe around us.
I find the idea that any one place in the universe to be a profoundly extraordinary, verging on or literally singular case, to be distasteful.
I find Kipping's dismissal of the Copernican principle to be entirely unconvincing, because the law of large numbers is incredibly powerful, and humans have an extremely hard time contending with them.
A million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds is over 30 years.
A trillion seconds is over 30,000 years.
I find it unwise, and probably a bit hubristic, to accept an argument that when we are dealing with hundreds of billions or trillions of galaxies in the known universe, each with hundreds of billions of stars, each with a handful of planets, that technologically capable life is a ten to the minus one hundred likelihood.
posted by tclark at 9:51 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
I find the idea that any one place in the universe to be a profoundly extraordinary, verging on or literally singular case, to be distasteful.
I don’t. It may just be how things are.
There’s nothing more “correct” in finding the universe to be stochastically uniform than there is in finding it to be almost everywhere the same with a very few outlier locations.
I think the mediocrity principle is a case of bringing aesthetic judgements to science — that is, we dismiss a model because it doesn’t feel right, or feels “hubristic.” “Doesn’t feel right” is a value that changes broadly over time.
I think there is a bit of rooting for science to put humans in their place. Copernicus, in the face of religiously-founded hubris and superstition, proved we’re nothing special, so we should take up that same cause. But that is tethering science to a narrow social cause. If we find out we are in an extraordinary spot, we should say so.
posted by argybarg at 10:08 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don’t. It may just be how things are.
There’s nothing more “correct” in finding the universe to be stochastically uniform than there is in finding it to be almost everywhere the same with a very few outlier locations.
I think the mediocrity principle is a case of bringing aesthetic judgements to science — that is, we dismiss a model because it doesn’t feel right, or feels “hubristic.” “Doesn’t feel right” is a value that changes broadly over time.
I think there is a bit of rooting for science to put humans in their place. Copernicus, in the face of religiously-founded hubris and superstition, proved we’re nothing special, so we should take up that same cause. But that is tethering science to a narrow social cause. If we find out we are in an extraordinary spot, we should say so.
posted by argybarg at 10:08 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
What is extraordinary about our spot?
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 10:14 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Orange Pamplemousse at 10:14 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think the mediocrity principle is a case of bringing aesthetic judgements to science — that is, we dismiss a model because it doesn’t feel right, or feels “hubristic.”
I'm not making any aesthetic judgment when I ask why unknown probabilities are treated by Kipping's (and your) arguments differently from known probabilities. Unless you want to delve all the way down into epistemological argument, my contention is primarily that as an inductive process I have no reason to believe that as we improve our observations and capabilities that we will find a probability cliff as we have no evidence of one in our existing observations. Kipping treats the expectation of such a cliff to be as valid as supposing there is no drastic probabilistic difference between unobserved probabilities of precursors and conditions for sentient life as there are of observed ones.
Kipping's argument presumes without evidence a probabilistic cliff. My argument is that we are likely to continue to find MORE things than we expect, in wider variation, as we learn more about our universe. And that includes the existence and frequency of life.
posted by tclark at 10:17 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not making any aesthetic judgment when I ask why unknown probabilities are treated by Kipping's (and your) arguments differently from known probabilities. Unless you want to delve all the way down into epistemological argument, my contention is primarily that as an inductive process I have no reason to believe that as we improve our observations and capabilities that we will find a probability cliff as we have no evidence of one in our existing observations. Kipping treats the expectation of such a cliff to be as valid as supposing there is no drastic probabilistic difference between unobserved probabilities of precursors and conditions for sentient life as there are of observed ones.
Kipping's argument presumes without evidence a probabilistic cliff. My argument is that we are likely to continue to find MORE things than we expect, in wider variation, as we learn more about our universe. And that includes the existence and frequency of life.
posted by tclark at 10:17 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Let's just say I'm entirely comfortable betting a large sum of money that sentient life is not singular to Earth, nor even so vanishingly scarce as to have been in existence at single-digit levels in our galaxy in the last several billion years, or so vanishingly scarce as to have there be less than billions of such species to have ever existed in the universe.
I think it's a bad idea, mathematically, to bet otherwise.
posted by tclark at 10:24 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think it's a bad idea, mathematically, to bet otherwise.
posted by tclark at 10:24 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Well, perhaps lifeforms contingent on such delicate conditions as information preserved in nucleic acids, or stable climatic conditions, are rare. Meanwhile some species that thrives on the life-giving bombardment of solar winds, or the energetic influence of wildly unstable seasons, would be shocked at the slow accretive process that led to us.
But if we do assume that life requires a long, stable steady state and optimal energy inputs and not too many catastrophic events, I think life is far fetched, even at the scale of trillions of suns.
posted by argybarg at 10:32 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
But if we do assume that life requires a long, stable steady state and optimal energy inputs and not too many catastrophic events, I think life is far fetched, even at the scale of trillions of suns.
posted by argybarg at 10:32 AM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's tautological, abulafa. A generation ship must obviously strictly impose zero population growth. A Mars colony or space station might admit some limited population growth, but never faster than they could build new habitat modules, greenhouses, etc., maybe only a few extra people per year.
As for humanity here on earth.. We should expect at least +4°C as the IPCC says +3°C without tipping points, but we'll hit tipping points long before then. At +4°C we expect carrying capasity below one billion people (see Will Steffen (2018), etc). We expect significant shortfalls in staple food crops as early at the 2040s, though presumably outlawing meat could alleviate those first famines.
Eco-fascism cannot exist, because fascism is viciously productivist. Really eco-fascism makes even less sense than eco-capitalism or eco-communism. We've a couple historical examples of somewhat ecologically minded dictators, like the guy who kept the Dominican Republic livable while Haiti turned shitty. We've China as an example of a repressive non-dictatorships that mostly just wrecks the environment like everyone else, but occasionally reigns themselves slightly ala their one-child policy. China is authoritarian, but China is not fascist.
A real ecologically minded government would necessarily stop much harmful behavior activity via taxation, especially flying, driving cars, eating meat, trade with the other side of the world, or having a third kid. It'd need to economic indicators to chase other than GDP of course, perhaps maximizing vacation days or maximizing educational attainment. Actually China survived centuries without expanding in part by chasing something not totally dissimilar to educational attainment. It's more authoritarian over some aspects of people's lives, but it's really kinda the opposite of fascism.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:48 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
As for humanity here on earth.. We should expect at least +4°C as the IPCC says +3°C without tipping points, but we'll hit tipping points long before then. At +4°C we expect carrying capasity below one billion people (see Will Steffen (2018), etc). We expect significant shortfalls in staple food crops as early at the 2040s, though presumably outlawing meat could alleviate those first famines.
Eco-fascism cannot exist, because fascism is viciously productivist. Really eco-fascism makes even less sense than eco-capitalism or eco-communism. We've a couple historical examples of somewhat ecologically minded dictators, like the guy who kept the Dominican Republic livable while Haiti turned shitty. We've China as an example of a repressive non-dictatorships that mostly just wrecks the environment like everyone else, but occasionally reigns themselves slightly ala their one-child policy. China is authoritarian, but China is not fascist.
A real ecologically minded government would necessarily stop much harmful behavior activity via taxation, especially flying, driving cars, eating meat, trade with the other side of the world, or having a third kid. It'd need to economic indicators to chase other than GDP of course, perhaps maximizing vacation days or maximizing educational attainment. Actually China survived centuries without expanding in part by chasing something not totally dissimilar to educational attainment. It's more authoritarian over some aspects of people's lives, but it's really kinda the opposite of fascism.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:48 AM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
"Governments aliens should sterilize people who want kids"
"The one child policy is good, actually"
"More authoritarianism, but the *opposite* of fascism"!
I don't know, man. Your vision of the future doesn't exactly convince me that ecofascism can't exist. Also, I know you're very excited about cannibalism/forced sterilization/violent anti-pollution interventions, but I'm not sure every thread needs to be a place for you to air those fantasies.
posted by sagc at 10:56 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
"The one child policy is good, actually"
"More authoritarianism, but the *opposite* of fascism"!
I don't know, man. Your vision of the future doesn't exactly convince me that ecofascism can't exist. Also, I know you're very excited about cannibalism/forced sterilization/violent anti-pollution interventions, but I'm not sure every thread needs to be a place for you to air those fantasies.
posted by sagc at 10:56 AM on December 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Sri Lanka’s forced transition to organic farming was pretty disastrous.
posted by argybarg at 11:02 AM on December 30, 2022
posted by argybarg at 11:02 AM on December 30, 2022
Ecofascism has evolving but not opaque definitions. I'm referring to your genocidal example above as related to (emphasis mine):
I found your example of viciously genocidal aliens pretty typical of ecofascism which usually claims overpopulation and resource deprivation are only solvable by murdering an appropriate percentage of people, yet somehow the people murdered never seem to be the people making the argument. (Your imaginary aliens and by extension, you.)
I'm sorry if you think your positions transcend that characterization, but it is always gross to imagine genocide as a "solution", doubly so when you think you've discovered a loophole that makes it not gross but somehow responsible or necessary because *waves hand* resource constraints.
posted by abulafa at 11:09 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
Originally, the term "Ecofascist" was considered an academic term for a hypothetical type of government which would militantly enforce environmental measures over the needs and freedoms of its citizens.... since the 2010s, a number of individuals and groups have emerged that either self-identify as "ecofascist" or have been labelled so by academic or journalistic sources. These individuals and groups synthesise radical far-right politics with environmentalism and will typically advocate that overpopulation is the primary threat to the environment and that the only solution is to completely halt immigration, or at their most extreme, actively genocide minority groups and ethnicities.You are cherry picking definitions for closed systems like ark ships or Mars colonies and ignoring the core premise: I suggested that the amount of energy required for interplanetary (I guess I should say interstellar) expansion necessitates energy sources and efficiencies which do not yet exist. Your argument seems to assume every other thing stays the same, but we somehow managed to limp our way to Mars. sure, in that case, it will be a limited population and rarefied in many ways, and I suppose that moment we might be considered an interplanetary civilization but by no means interstellar.
I found your example of viciously genocidal aliens pretty typical of ecofascism which usually claims overpopulation and resource deprivation are only solvable by murdering an appropriate percentage of people, yet somehow the people murdered never seem to be the people making the argument. (Your imaginary aliens and by extension, you.)
I'm sorry if you think your positions transcend that characterization, but it is always gross to imagine genocide as a "solution", doubly so when you think you've discovered a loophole that makes it not gross but somehow responsible or necessary because *waves hand* resource constraints.
posted by abulafa at 11:09 AM on December 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
Any society needs "enforce [reasonable] environmental measures over the [libertarian fantasy] freedoms of its citizens". I do not have the right to build a breeder reactor, nor should I have the right to eat much meat, nor to get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world. All these have externalities that become once we decide one billion people have the right to do them. Or maybe you think air travel and meat eating should only be available to our little rarefied class? We do have a serious genocide building up right now, but it's not ecologically minded people perpetuating it. It's everyone who wants our modern high energy lifestyle to continue.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:28 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:28 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Kipping stated that from the time of the origin of life on Earth to the rise of intelligent life (now) took billions a years, and was a considerable portion of the total habitable period of Earth's existence. He claimed that period is set to draw to a close in a few hundred years due to the Sun's ongoing heating up and expansion. Extrapolating on our history, he thus argued that if life had by chance evolved a bit later, there wouldn't have had enough time for intelligent life to begin.
First of all, arguing from extrapolation seemed to undercut his entire central thesis, that we can't generalize one way or another from the one data point of our own existence.
Second, we don't for a fact know that there weren't other intelligent life forms prior to the Quaternary era. It's entirely possible that dinosaurs had hominid level intelligence. It could be they just never invented, or had a need for industry -- just as most of humanity didn't throughout most of our existence -- and thus never left any artifacts of intelligence. Having to make and acquire mountains of stuff, and the need for a money economy, leading to mining and smelting and skyscrapers and jet engines, there's no particular reason why intelligent life has to proceed along that path.
Third, regarding his claim that the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable in a few hundred million years due to the expansion of the sun, well, it seems that way but it could be that in a thousand years all we do is ask GPT ℵ₁ , "Hey GPT ℵ₁, how do we stop the Sun from swelling up and destroying us?" and boom, space cortisone or whatever. Or in the time frames that we are discussing, it could be that we will have transitioned to non-organic life and so the range of temperatures that we could endure would be much higher.
The novel Solaris is based on [spoiler] a vast singular planetary-wide super-intelligent ocean contemplating its own wet navel. Maybe most of the intelligent life in the universe is on that pattern and has no need or desire to reach out to the rest of the universe. We don't know.
posted by xigxag at 11:30 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
First of all, arguing from extrapolation seemed to undercut his entire central thesis, that we can't generalize one way or another from the one data point of our own existence.
Second, we don't for a fact know that there weren't other intelligent life forms prior to the Quaternary era. It's entirely possible that dinosaurs had hominid level intelligence. It could be they just never invented, or had a need for industry -- just as most of humanity didn't throughout most of our existence -- and thus never left any artifacts of intelligence. Having to make and acquire mountains of stuff, and the need for a money economy, leading to mining and smelting and skyscrapers and jet engines, there's no particular reason why intelligent life has to proceed along that path.
Third, regarding his claim that the Earth will be rendered uninhabitable in a few hundred million years due to the expansion of the sun, well, it seems that way but it could be that in a thousand years all we do is ask GPT ℵ₁ , "Hey GPT ℵ₁, how do we stop the Sun from swelling up and destroying us?" and boom, space cortisone or whatever. Or in the time frames that we are discussing, it could be that we will have transitioned to non-organic life and so the range of temperatures that we could endure would be much higher.
The novel Solaris is based on [spoiler] a vast singular planetary-wide super-intelligent ocean contemplating its own wet navel. Maybe most of the intelligent life in the universe is on that pattern and has no need or desire to reach out to the rest of the universe. We don't know.
posted by xigxag at 11:30 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
There were some smaller more cleaver dinosaurs, but likely not hominid "type", even if they were quite advanced somehow. I think they existed pretty late though, so maybe only 80 million years before us, fairly short relative to the 4 billion year delay noted by Kipping. In fact, reptiles only emerged like 310–320 million years ago, so really not much intelligence way back.
We've fairly intelligent animals like whales, but they use their intelligence more narrowly ala signing. I'd assume a component of what makes our intelligence so special is the artistic expression for social and matting purposes via our hands, thereby enabling more technology than say just songs. We're extra-deep into sampling bias on that one though, so really who knows.
Amusingly dark flavor of Fermi solution:
Intelligence is fairly exothermic, so it must evolve after a warm world cools off, as otherwise intelligence gains are too little for the invested resources. Invariably this cooling off happens by other life doing carbon sequestration over millennia.
Intelligent life discovers they'll have more energy by releasing this carbon. Alone, the warmer temperatures would only make them slightly dumber, but this typically results is radical climactic shifts that effectively collapse their society, and halts any expansion into space.
Also, once they've consumed their hydrocarbon battery then they'll never collect enough energy to escape their gravity well at a large enough scale to settle other planets, aka no small scale fusion, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:44 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
We've fairly intelligent animals like whales, but they use their intelligence more narrowly ala signing. I'd assume a component of what makes our intelligence so special is the artistic expression for social and matting purposes via our hands, thereby enabling more technology than say just songs. We're extra-deep into sampling bias on that one though, so really who knows.
Amusingly dark flavor of Fermi solution:
Intelligence is fairly exothermic, so it must evolve after a warm world cools off, as otherwise intelligence gains are too little for the invested resources. Invariably this cooling off happens by other life doing carbon sequestration over millennia.
Intelligent life discovers they'll have more energy by releasing this carbon. Alone, the warmer temperatures would only make them slightly dumber, but this typically results is radical climactic shifts that effectively collapse their society, and halts any expansion into space.
Also, once they've consumed their hydrocarbon battery then they'll never collect enough energy to escape their gravity well at a large enough scale to settle other planets, aka no small scale fusion, etc.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:44 AM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: some extraterrestrial reading this thread and quietly smirking to themselves
posted by doctornemo at 12:21 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 12:21 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was a space fanatic as a nerdy kid in the 60s/70s, but I'm more of a Dark Forest guy now. The indigenous inhabitants of North America can attest that education and wealth don't always lead to benevolence.
I firmly believe that it's very likely that intelligent life has evolved elsewhere in the universe. I don't relish the thought that some of them could visit soon.... but that's not very likely, unless they have more imagination and discipline than we do.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:47 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
I firmly believe that it's very likely that intelligent life has evolved elsewhere in the universe. I don't relish the thought that some of them could visit soon.... but that's not very likely, unless they have more imagination and discipline than we do.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:47 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
jeffburdges: We'd never permit extreme population growth in poorer countries either, assuming western scoeity even survived long enough to have many colonies
I honestly thought this hypothetical, casually invoking the genocide of "poorer countries", was as bad as things would get in here.
Most of jeffburdges arguments parrot the white supremacist lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin.
posted by Kattullus at 1:00 PM on December 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
I honestly thought this hypothetical, casually invoking the genocide of "poorer countries", was as bad as things would get in here.
Most of jeffburdges arguments parrot the white supremacist lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin.
posted by Kattullus at 1:00 PM on December 30, 2022 [9 favorites]
We can get the chemical ingredients for life and some simple membranes but not yet organelles or cells A) In a lab in weeks/months. B) In dust coulds in space.
Once life starts, we have multiple independent devlopment of smart species (crows, parrots, octopus, dolphins, the primates, even some humans) etc. Not space-faring mind you but tool using, number understanding, etc.
We don't know how (yet) to get from chemicals to life, and we don't know how to get from Octopus to Moon Base.
I'm actually surprised the long step is getting from single cells to multicelluar (cooperation is lifes hardest challenge -yikes).
I'm glad someone is rep-ing the No side of the argument.
My own 2 cents they are there, but interstellar distances are too large compared to planetary resources to make travel viable. And communication and travel take too long compared to how long stars live. Sad, but possible. Speed of light might be a meaningful macro limit.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:39 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
Once life starts, we have multiple independent devlopment of smart species (crows, parrots, octopus, dolphins, the primates, even some humans) etc. Not space-faring mind you but tool using, number understanding, etc.
We don't know how (yet) to get from chemicals to life, and we don't know how to get from Octopus to Moon Base.
I'm actually surprised the long step is getting from single cells to multicelluar (cooperation is lifes hardest challenge -yikes).
I'm glad someone is rep-ing the No side of the argument.
My own 2 cents they are there, but interstellar distances are too large compared to planetary resources to make travel viable. And communication and travel take too long compared to how long stars live. Sad, but possible. Speed of light might be a meaningful macro limit.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:39 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
Earth is not an egg to hatch from (and destroy in the process) it is a lifeboat to maintain and expand. The boat used to comfortably fit 1 billion hominids and lots of other mammals etc. Now we have 8 billion hominids, and lots of billions of chickens pigs cows, and everything else is dying rapidly around us. I think when Sagan says you need population control to explore space he means.... because if you eat everything on your home planet faster than it can grow back, you will die. I know, crazy right?
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
The "lifeboat" analogy is a white supremacist justification for genocide. Here's the Southern Poverty Law Center on its originator, Garrett Hardin:
Hardin’s opposition to famine relief made his opposition to immigration even more striking. He singled out refugees in a number of his writings, portraying them as greedy freeloaders. One of his favorite rhetorical tactics was to describe nations as lifeboats, each with severely limited resources. Because of these limitations, it was morally acceptable to forbid any more people from boarding a lifeboat that was close to capacity, and in some cases it would even be acceptable to throw existing residents “overboard.” In his controversial 1974 essay, “Living on a Lifeboat,” Hardin portrayed refugees as cynically choosing to “fall out of their lifeboats and swim for a while in the water outside, hoping to be admitted to a rich lifeboat, or in some other way to benefit from the ‘goodies’ on board.”posted by Kattullus at 1:52 PM on December 30, 2022 [14 favorites]
Ironically, he acknowledged that white Americans had no good moral claim to their own “goodies,” but when asked if the land their wealth was built on should be given back to the native population from whom it had been stolen, he said “[a]s an exercise in pure logic, I see no way to reject this proposal. Yet I am unwilling to live by it. … Suppose, becoming intoxicated with pure justice, we ‘Anglos’ should decide to turn our land over to the Indians… Then what would we non-Indians do? Where would we go?” Yet anyone asking the same question about nonwhite refugees was not only “irrational,” but “suicidal.”
Despite all this, Hardin is still taken seriously as a scientific and environmental thinker by the broader educated public. Excerpted portions of “The Tragedy of the Commons,” in addition to being assigned in countless college courses, were included in The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins, and American Earth: Environmental Writing since Thoreau, edited by Bill McKibben with an introduction by Al Gore, both published in 2008. After his suicide in 2003, The New York Times published an obituary of Hardin in which its strongest criticism was simply that he “saw his harsh message on overpopulation as a form of tough love.”
Over the course of his career, Hardin wrote 27 books and over 350 articles, many of which were frank in their racism and quasi-fascist ethnonationalism. Nevertheless, whenever Hardin’s views are presented to the public, the white nationalism that unified his thought is invariably glossed over. In general, the only places to find open discussions of the entirety of Hardin’s thought are on white supremacist websites, where he is celebrated as a hero. Articles and comments on VDARE.com, stormfront.org, and The Occidental Quarterly, not to mention publications Hardin personally contributed to like The Social Contract and Chronicles, recognize Hardin as one of the intellectual pillars of modern scientific racism and white separatism. After his death, John Tanton and Wayne Lutton founded the Garrett Hardin Society to continue Hardin’s mission of transforming environmentalism into a weapon to use against immigrants, minorities and poor nations.
Would we have developed past agriculture and simple factories without coal and oil?
There are 41 new comments since the last time I looked at this thread, but I hope at least one of them says, "Yes. GOOD LORD YES" in response to the above question.
posted by mediareport at 2:19 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
There are 41 new comments since the last time I looked at this thread, but I hope at least one of them says, "Yes. GOOD LORD YES" in response to the above question.
posted by mediareport at 2:19 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yes mediareport, we'd calculus, and some basic work with magnets and static electricity, before we seriously started using coal in steam engines, so we'd have figured out electricity eventually, but slower with less power and wire.
We're largely speaking in hypothetical here, Kattullus, ala what other forms would life take, so yeah hypothetical horrors get discussed. We believe coal helped end slavery, so yeah 1700s Europeans would've behaved much worse if their coal ran out early.
We've folks push that unlimited earth hypothesis all the time. I typically assume they're simply in denial that they're promoting a real genocide. Yet occasionally, one reminds me how some northern people favor climate change because they actually desire the genocidal effects upon southern peoples.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:47 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
We're largely speaking in hypothetical here, Kattullus, ala what other forms would life take, so yeah hypothetical horrors get discussed. We believe coal helped end slavery, so yeah 1700s Europeans would've behaved much worse if their coal ran out early.
We've folks push that unlimited earth hypothesis all the time. I typically assume they're simply in denial that they're promoting a real genocide. Yet occasionally, one reminds me how some northern people favor climate change because they actually desire the genocidal effects upon southern peoples.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:47 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
So, to summarize:
Intelligent life existing outside earth rests largely on unknowables due to the speed of light and humans are either an existence proof or the "exception that proves (as in tests for viability) the rule".
Intelligent life on earth represents either an enormous series of flukes within a protected multi-million year timeline or a common pattern that yields life on the regular but only occasionally the kind that can ponder its own nature.
Killing lots of intelligent human life is bad. Unless it's life that eats meat or flies in planes or objects to killing people who eat meat and fly in planes. Or, I guess, happen to be on the wrong side of the planet when malicious aliens decide to cull the herd. (How does the energy spent to get the alien inquisition to Sol compare to a billion selfish airplane-flyers? Not relevant.)
And every argument that people need to be actively killed to make the planet sustainable sounds the same when you clear away the rationalizations and blame function - racist (usually white) supremacy looking for a bulletproof argument that it is ok to kill some people so that all which remains is deciding who should be killed - which is conveniently usually those unlike the proposer of this solution. Pointing out how often this is employed by aggressive racial supremacists and nationalists and how it makes any genocidal argument (I can't believe I have to say this) weaker remains to be acknowledged by those proposing them. Except as a fun thought experiment. Isn't it fun? To imagine? Choosing to kill so many people so you can... meet aliens I guess?
Fun hypotheticals. Whee!
And in discussing aliens we definitely need to fantasize about killing humans because Carl Sagan said something about interstellar civilization and population size once, making it essential to the alien life discussion seeing as he is an all knowing alien visitor who really knows how to expand a civilization into the stars as evidenced by his fleet of interstellar two-child policy ark ships leaving a slowly rotating constellation of excess expendable humans behind as it rockets to meet the hyperlords of Genocidia Six.
Oh and you can excuse any behavior by claiming you're already being genocided so it can't be bad you're proposing genociding the genociders right back.
posted by abulafa at 2:59 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Intelligent life existing outside earth rests largely on unknowables due to the speed of light and humans are either an existence proof or the "exception that proves (as in tests for viability) the rule".
Intelligent life on earth represents either an enormous series of flukes within a protected multi-million year timeline or a common pattern that yields life on the regular but only occasionally the kind that can ponder its own nature.
Killing lots of intelligent human life is bad. Unless it's life that eats meat or flies in planes or objects to killing people who eat meat and fly in planes. Or, I guess, happen to be on the wrong side of the planet when malicious aliens decide to cull the herd. (How does the energy spent to get the alien inquisition to Sol compare to a billion selfish airplane-flyers? Not relevant.)
And every argument that people need to be actively killed to make the planet sustainable sounds the same when you clear away the rationalizations and blame function - racist (usually white) supremacy looking for a bulletproof argument that it is ok to kill some people so that all which remains is deciding who should be killed - which is conveniently usually those unlike the proposer of this solution. Pointing out how often this is employed by aggressive racial supremacists and nationalists and how it makes any genocidal argument (I can't believe I have to say this) weaker remains to be acknowledged by those proposing them. Except as a fun thought experiment. Isn't it fun? To imagine? Choosing to kill so many people so you can... meet aliens I guess?
Fun hypotheticals. Whee!
And in discussing aliens we definitely need to fantasize about killing humans because Carl Sagan said something about interstellar civilization and population size once, making it essential to the alien life discussion seeing as he is an all knowing alien visitor who really knows how to expand a civilization into the stars as evidenced by his fleet of interstellar two-child policy ark ships leaving a slowly rotating constellation of excess expendable humans behind as it rockets to meet the hyperlords of Genocidia Six.
Oh and you can excuse any behavior by claiming you're already being genocided so it can't be bad you're proposing genociding the genociders right back.
posted by abulafa at 2:59 PM on December 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm sorry I haven't been able to keep up with this thread. It's a lot. I'm driving home from work now (pulled over to comment.)
How many billions of years old is this universe? How many stars are there? How many planets have there been?
I think the most reasonable and likely assumption is that the aliens, the intelligent life, are everywhere. If we aren't already just some simulation that they're running, then they are integral to our existence—built into the physics, or hidden behind it somehow. I assume everything that we do is being witnessed and recorded by them. Call them, collectively, God, if you like, but how plausible is it that they're not already here, and have been since the beginning? I think that's the more reasonable question.
posted by newdaddy at 3:09 PM on December 30, 2022
How many billions of years old is this universe? How many stars are there? How many planets have there been?
I think the most reasonable and likely assumption is that the aliens, the intelligent life, are everywhere. If we aren't already just some simulation that they're running, then they are integral to our existence—built into the physics, or hidden behind it somehow. I assume everything that we do is being witnessed and recorded by them. Call them, collectively, God, if you like, but how plausible is it that they're not already here, and have been since the beginning? I think that's the more reasonable question.
posted by newdaddy at 3:09 PM on December 30, 2022
Something I wrote elsewhere, pure speculation, but using real numbers at least.
A G star, like the sun, can last for 10 billion years. However, the sun will get too hot for life in about 600 million years. (Dress appropriately— light cottons and knits.) So the window for sentient life may be 6% of the star’s lifetime.
But G stars are constantly being born. They make up about 7% of stars, so there are about 20 billion in our galaxy at any one time. Let’s say half of them have Earthlike planets. That gives 600 million in the sentient life window, which means that tens of thousands of planets might be about as advanced as we are, and hundreds of thousands are advanced civs. (Drastically chop the latter number if you suppose that most species reach our level of development and destroy their own biosphere.)
On the other hand, those planets could be up to 80,000 light years away, because space is vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big (See D. Adams 1979, p. 76.) So it’s not like we have a lot of close neighbors.
BTW the problem with the Dark Forest is the same as the problem with US colonize-the-galaxy sf: space is not the ocean. Personally I suspect advanced civilizations consider any planet with an ecosphere, such as we've had for half a billion years, as off limits.
One more thought: Earth has had sentient hominins for 3 million years... or 25 million if you count the great apes, as aliens arguably should. For almost all of that time hominins lived in equilibrium with the environment. It's rather parochial to insist that intelligent life should have an industrial civilisation.
posted by zompist at 3:20 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
A G star, like the sun, can last for 10 billion years. However, the sun will get too hot for life in about 600 million years. (Dress appropriately— light cottons and knits.) So the window for sentient life may be 6% of the star’s lifetime.
But G stars are constantly being born. They make up about 7% of stars, so there are about 20 billion in our galaxy at any one time. Let’s say half of them have Earthlike planets. That gives 600 million in the sentient life window, which means that tens of thousands of planets might be about as advanced as we are, and hundreds of thousands are advanced civs. (Drastically chop the latter number if you suppose that most species reach our level of development and destroy their own biosphere.)
On the other hand, those planets could be up to 80,000 light years away, because space is vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big (See D. Adams 1979, p. 76.) So it’s not like we have a lot of close neighbors.
BTW the problem with the Dark Forest is the same as the problem with US colonize-the-galaxy sf: space is not the ocean. Personally I suspect advanced civilizations consider any planet with an ecosphere, such as we've had for half a billion years, as off limits.
One more thought: Earth has had sentient hominins for 3 million years... or 25 million if you count the great apes, as aliens arguably should. For almost all of that time hominins lived in equilibrium with the environment. It's rather parochial to insist that intelligent life should have an industrial civilisation.
posted by zompist at 3:20 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
We have also only been looking for other intelligent life for a vanishingly small fraction of time, epochally-speaking.
It's like looking down at your feet, seeing no mouse, and proclaiming that you don't have one in your house.
posted by rhymedirective at 3:27 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's like looking down at your feet, seeing no mouse, and proclaiming that you don't have one in your house.
posted by rhymedirective at 3:27 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
tl'dr but this is a very good book: If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life
posted by neuron at 4:13 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by neuron at 4:13 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Put me down as someone else who gives a huge amount of side-eye to anyone who even hints at genocide as a solution to problems, especially at a time when people happy to resort to genocide are scrabbling for power all over the globe.
Somehow, the low-population people never volunteer themselves for culling; it’s always poorer, weaker people they have their eyes on.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:28 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Somehow, the low-population people never volunteer themselves for culling; it’s always poorer, weaker people they have their eyes on.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:28 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
My preferred answer to the question of how much life exists outside this planet is that I simply don't care.
I don't care because I don't believe I need to care. The issue of how much life exists outside this planet strikes me as below any reasonable threshold of consequentiality to an extent I can only conceive of as ludicrous.
Another idea that has long struck me as ludicrous is that a desire to expand off one's home planet and Conquer The Galaxy is in some way a marker of the degree to which a civilization should be considered advanced and not completely, self-destructively psychotic.
Somehow, the low-population people never volunteer themselves for culling
As somebody who holds a very strong opinion that human overpopulation is the single most consequential factor underlying the current mass extinction event, and objects even more strongly to genocide as applied to entire ecosystems than as applied to single species, I chose sterilization over reproduction thirty years ago.
None of us chose to be here. But almost all of us will, at various times in our lives, face the choice of whether or not to make more of us. And I would be much less unhappy about the general state of things if more of us, especially those of us living in advanced industrial societies, were making the same choice that I did.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't care because I don't believe I need to care. The issue of how much life exists outside this planet strikes me as below any reasonable threshold of consequentiality to an extent I can only conceive of as ludicrous.
Another idea that has long struck me as ludicrous is that a desire to expand off one's home planet and Conquer The Galaxy is in some way a marker of the degree to which a civilization should be considered advanced and not completely, self-destructively psychotic.
Somehow, the low-population people never volunteer themselves for culling
As somebody who holds a very strong opinion that human overpopulation is the single most consequential factor underlying the current mass extinction event, and objects even more strongly to genocide as applied to entire ecosystems than as applied to single species, I chose sterilization over reproduction thirty years ago.
None of us chose to be here. But almost all of us will, at various times in our lives, face the choice of whether or not to make more of us. And I would be much less unhappy about the general state of things if more of us, especially those of us living in advanced industrial societies, were making the same choice that I did.
posted by flabdablet at 4:43 PM on December 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
I used to wonder if sentience would develop elsewhere until I became familiar with the evolutionary history of octopi. Recognizable sentience has developed twice on Earth and via two very different paths, which to me makes it very likely that it can develop anywhere there is life.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:57 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:57 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
We've fairly intelligent animals like whales, but they use their intelligence more narrowly ala signing.
Assuming you meant singing, but wow, jeffburdges, I've found much to chew on in your posts here but the above is a completely unsupported assertion that relies solely on bias. Please provide the evidence on which you base your very certain assertion that whales "use their intelligence more narrowly" than humans. Good heavens. What a ridiculously uninformed thing to say. We are only just beginning to understand the scope of whale/cetacean intelligence. "Just songs"??? lol *You* try communicating with your friends and relatives over hundreds of miles through water. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I'd assume a component of what makes our intelligence so special is the artistic expression for social and matting purposes via our hands, thereby enabling more technology than say just songs. We're extra-deep into sampling bias on that one though, so really who knows.
Yeah, who really knows, indeed. I suggest that "what makes our intelligence so special" is that we ourselves have defined 'intelligence' such that - surprise - we seem to have the most of it.
posted by mediareport at 5:02 PM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Assuming you meant singing, but wow, jeffburdges, I've found much to chew on in your posts here but the above is a completely unsupported assertion that relies solely on bias. Please provide the evidence on which you base your very certain assertion that whales "use their intelligence more narrowly" than humans. Good heavens. What a ridiculously uninformed thing to say. We are only just beginning to understand the scope of whale/cetacean intelligence. "Just songs"??? lol *You* try communicating with your friends and relatives over hundreds of miles through water. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I'd assume a component of what makes our intelligence so special is the artistic expression for social and matting purposes via our hands, thereby enabling more technology than say just songs. We're extra-deep into sampling bias on that one though, so really who knows.
Yeah, who really knows, indeed. I suggest that "what makes our intelligence so special" is that we ourselves have defined 'intelligence' such that - surprise - we seem to have the most of it.
posted by mediareport at 5:02 PM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
I give an even bigger side-eye to those who think their ideology is, by definition, exempt from the possibility of doing terrible things; e.g., there can be no such thing as eco-fascism. They strike me as the most dangerous people.
posted by argybarg at 5:03 PM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 5:03 PM on December 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yet more "hominids are obviously the apex of intelligence" bias:
There were some smaller more cleaver dinosaurs, but likely not hominid "type", even if they were quite advanced somehow.
That last phrase is doing an awful lot of work. Key point: intelligence is defined in relation to the environment the intelligent creature lives in and responds to. Discussing "clever dinosaurs but likely not hominid 'type'" cannot miss the point of a discussion of intelligence more.
posted by mediareport at 5:06 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
There were some smaller more cleaver dinosaurs, but likely not hominid "type", even if they were quite advanced somehow.
That last phrase is doing an awful lot of work. Key point: intelligence is defined in relation to the environment the intelligent creature lives in and responds to. Discussing "clever dinosaurs but likely not hominid 'type'" cannot miss the point of a discussion of intelligence more.
posted by mediareport at 5:06 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
intelligence is defined in relation to the environment the intelligent creature lives in and responds to
By that standard, H. sap is less intelligent than the first wave of oxygen-producing microorganisms. We're impoverishing our own environment way faster than they did.
posted by flabdablet at 8:11 PM on December 30, 2022
By that standard, H. sap is less intelligent than the first wave of oxygen-producing microorganisms. We're impoverishing our own environment way faster than they did.
posted by flabdablet at 8:11 PM on December 30, 2022
One problem with spreading across the galaxy is that very quickly the distances are so far and communications so infrequent that culture and technology would drift apart from each other. Humanity could end up populating the dark forest with monsters of its own making.
posted by interogative mood at 8:25 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 8:25 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
(William Burroughs voice)
"And so, guided by the least intelligent, the least competent, the least farsighted most ill-informed, the species invites biologic disaster. Other species have come and gone... consider the dinosaur: a beast 50 ft in length and weighing thousands of tons, with the brain the size of a walnut. he had great problems, but he could not worry. Many theories have been advanced as to why these magnificent creatures disappeared. certainly one factor was size. the carnivorous models were so large that the difficulty of obtaining adequate nourishment posed a chronic problem which over the centuries and the millennia must have become acute. One herbivorous species was equipped with thin long necks that became longer and longer to reach more and more fodder; they may have reached an impasse or even if they ate day and night they could not sustain their way of life. there was also the problem poised by emergent mammalian creatures eating their eggs, the striking at the very roots of their survival. let us imagine a Congress and emergency meeting of the dinosaur leaders. the best and the brightest, or so they see themselves..."fellow reptiles, at this dark hour, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face great problems and I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer:, increased size it was good enough for me"(applause) "size that will enable us to crush all opposition" (applause) there are those who say size is not the answer. there are those who even proposed that we pollute our pure reptilian strain with mammalian amalgamations and crossbreeding....and I say to you that if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats then I would choose not to survive" (applause) but we will survive we will increase both in size and in numbers and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 million years" (wild applause)
And this is what we are seeing and hearing at this present time. at the time when the greatest diversity, and biologic flexibility moving towards mutation, are needed for survival, you see a demand for increased conformity and standardization...So the johnsons have an incalculable advantage. we aren't playing. we want to end the whole stupid game. to us intelligence and War are only means to an end: space exploration."
-'The Hundred year plan' from 'The Adding Machine'
posted by clavdivs at 8:31 PM on December 30, 2022
"And so, guided by the least intelligent, the least competent, the least farsighted most ill-informed, the species invites biologic disaster. Other species have come and gone... consider the dinosaur: a beast 50 ft in length and weighing thousands of tons, with the brain the size of a walnut. he had great problems, but he could not worry. Many theories have been advanced as to why these magnificent creatures disappeared. certainly one factor was size. the carnivorous models were so large that the difficulty of obtaining adequate nourishment posed a chronic problem which over the centuries and the millennia must have become acute. One herbivorous species was equipped with thin long necks that became longer and longer to reach more and more fodder; they may have reached an impasse or even if they ate day and night they could not sustain their way of life. there was also the problem poised by emergent mammalian creatures eating their eggs, the striking at the very roots of their survival. let us imagine a Congress and emergency meeting of the dinosaur leaders. the best and the brightest, or so they see themselves..."fellow reptiles, at this dark hour, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face great problems and I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer:, increased size it was good enough for me"(applause) "size that will enable us to crush all opposition" (applause) there are those who say size is not the answer. there are those who even proposed that we pollute our pure reptilian strain with mammalian amalgamations and crossbreeding....and I say to you that if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats then I would choose not to survive" (applause) but we will survive we will increase both in size and in numbers and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 million years" (wild applause)
And this is what we are seeing and hearing at this present time. at the time when the greatest diversity, and biologic flexibility moving towards mutation, are needed for survival, you see a demand for increased conformity and standardization...So the johnsons have an incalculable advantage. we aren't playing. we want to end the whole stupid game. to us intelligence and War are only means to an end: space exploration."
-'The Hundred year plan' from 'The Adding Machine'
posted by clavdivs at 8:31 PM on December 30, 2022
Humanity could end up populating the dark forest with monsters of its own making.
A not altogether dissimilar notion is in Charlie Stross's book Accelerando in the Vile Offspring.
posted by tclark at 8:58 PM on December 30, 2022
A not altogether dissimilar notion is in Charlie Stross's book Accelerando in the Vile Offspring.
posted by tclark at 8:58 PM on December 30, 2022
A derail off the Drake Equation, to my point about Sagan's polulation regulation pre-requisite to space-faring and my point that the earth is not an egg to be destroyed but a lifeboat to be protected. Protected from us.
Our current material abundance, sourced from fossil fuels, partially fossil aquifers, eroding soil and using the atmosphere and oceans as a dumping ground for waste has not eliminated poverty, bigotry, or inequality indeed there are more poor people alive now than there were people alive 200 years ago. That is because the imperialist competitive industrial extractive system that concentrates benefits to the few, costs and labor to the many and uses a rewarded middle class to oversee the exploited. That system and its cumlative pollution and habitat destruction and depletion of finite resources and over use of otherwise renewable regenerative ecosystems is why wild populations are crashing, the climate is changing and the survival of human societies face existential risk.
That many of the people who contributed past and present to the culture, knowledge base and discourse on these issues were monsters, and that their wickedness was not incidental to their work on population, economics, philosophy, ecology, aesthetics but both motivated and informed their work I do not doubt. Maybe I'm wrong that Carl Sagan wasn't fantasising about genocide of Brown people. I never met Sagan and know him through pop culture only.
I don't think each nation is a life boat, I think the earth is a lifeboat, I don't think 40 million kenyans are the cause of our environmental woes compared to 4 million high consuming Oregonians or Conneticutiers (Conneticutians?) etc. Aggregate consumption is the product of per capita consumtion times the population size.
I think humans are killing other species and polluting the earth, reducing its capacity to sustain all life including our own. The earths sustainable flows dictate the numerator, the earths population size the denominator, the ratio is the average material footprint thst benefits people and how that is distributed is politics and egalitarianism is my politics. I worry about famine and genocide, I prepare for famine and genocide, I don't advocate or hope for famine or genocide.
The scarcity-mindset Lifeboat guy sounds like a real piece of shit. That doesn't mean environmental damage is not a good candidate for a great-filter that prevents civilizations from spaning the galaxy.
There is a place in my home with a couch, tv and coffee table. I call it my living room, maybe you have one too, that doesn't make us Hitlers.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:09 PM on December 30, 2022
Our current material abundance, sourced from fossil fuels, partially fossil aquifers, eroding soil and using the atmosphere and oceans as a dumping ground for waste has not eliminated poverty, bigotry, or inequality indeed there are more poor people alive now than there were people alive 200 years ago. That is because the imperialist competitive industrial extractive system that concentrates benefits to the few, costs and labor to the many and uses a rewarded middle class to oversee the exploited. That system and its cumlative pollution and habitat destruction and depletion of finite resources and over use of otherwise renewable regenerative ecosystems is why wild populations are crashing, the climate is changing and the survival of human societies face existential risk.
That many of the people who contributed past and present to the culture, knowledge base and discourse on these issues were monsters, and that their wickedness was not incidental to their work on population, economics, philosophy, ecology, aesthetics but both motivated and informed their work I do not doubt. Maybe I'm wrong that Carl Sagan wasn't fantasising about genocide of Brown people. I never met Sagan and know him through pop culture only.
I don't think each nation is a life boat, I think the earth is a lifeboat, I don't think 40 million kenyans are the cause of our environmental woes compared to 4 million high consuming Oregonians or Conneticutiers (Conneticutians?) etc. Aggregate consumption is the product of per capita consumtion times the population size.
I think humans are killing other species and polluting the earth, reducing its capacity to sustain all life including our own. The earths sustainable flows dictate the numerator, the earths population size the denominator, the ratio is the average material footprint thst benefits people and how that is distributed is politics and egalitarianism is my politics. I worry about famine and genocide, I prepare for famine and genocide, I don't advocate or hope for famine or genocide.
The scarcity-mindset Lifeboat guy sounds like a real piece of shit. That doesn't mean environmental damage is not a good candidate for a great-filter that prevents civilizations from spaning the galaxy.
There is a place in my home with a couch, tv and coffee table. I call it my living room, maybe you have one too, that doesn't make us Hitlers.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:09 PM on December 30, 2022
Upon rereading my hasty response, let me clarify whar prepare for famine and genocide means, as I am not preparing to commit genocide but preparing to resist/avert/hide from and assist others. Thats a big difference to me. People equate preparing for bad times with hoping for them. Having food, solar panels, first aid kits, extra cots, knowing neighbors, is not the same as having kill lists and larping as a militia and preppers span the gamut. its good to be vigilant and call out white supremacy, we have actual nazis marching in the streets. Thank you. Im affraid ive derailed this conversation too much. No wonder the Aliens don't want to meet me.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:23 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 9:23 PM on December 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
That's not why the aliens don't want to meet you. It's just that... look, they just had an experience with a planet-spanning AI that... OK, it's complicated. It's not you, it's them, honest. Sometimes these things go well! They've met a lot of good species! Just give them a little space. We can try again in a couple of millennia.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:36 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:36 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm just digging my hole deeper, i'm not usefully contributing to this speculation, so I'll leave on this: the multiple times intelligence has arisen on earth and other examples of convergent evolution suggest that evolving things might randomly wander over a topography of forms that have certain persistent benefits independent of path, and thus multiple things become trees, crabs, smart, etc. Life, even on other planets could very well experience similar convergent evolutions and discover the same persistent adaptive forms. There could be space trees with smart crabs.
I'll see myself out.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 11:55 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'll see myself out.
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 11:55 PM on December 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I appreciate that the lifeboat metaphor has a seductive simplicity, but the logic of it is inherently genocidal. Another ecofascist, the execrable Pentti Linkola, extended it to the whole Earth thusly:
Earth is not a lifeboat. There is no imperative to murder millions or billions of human beings to save it.
posted by Kattullus at 4:48 AM on December 31, 2022 [7 favorites]
What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship's axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides."The logic of the lifeboat metaphor always ends at genocide.
Earth is not a lifeboat. There is no imperative to murder millions or billions of human beings to save it.
posted by Kattullus at 4:48 AM on December 31, 2022 [7 favorites]
I found this video to be all over the place. He ends with a call for agnosticism - to not take any position, except the title of the video is "Why We Might be Alone" and spends the video showing why alien intelligent life is unlikely! I think you can make a more balanced video but this wasn't it.
Paradoxically, I think our existence makes other intelligences likely. Why? Because it is clear we live in a Universe that *can* develop intelligent life. We are it. That intelligent life can develop is not the question.
His green ball metaphor shows that there is at least one green ball in that urn. But then, if there is at least one then isn't it likely there are others? The conditions exist such that green balls exist. So that makes it more likely there are other green balls than if it were another urn about which we know nothing. Why, to turn the argument around, are we so special?
We also know we aren't in any really special place in this huge Universe. An average sized planet around an average sized star in an average galaxy. We can see other planets, other stars, other galaxies and we know that Life can form in this Universe. At least once? Only, exactly once?
As to the Fermi paradox. There are many proposed solutions to that. My favorite is that Space really is a big obstacle and, well, we are at the end of a spiral arm. There may be a huge Star Wars like civilization near the center of our galaxy, where stars are closer together. We are like the tribes in New Guinea or the Amazon, sitting here at the end of the galaxy, disconnected from it all.
posted by vacapinta at 5:20 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Paradoxically, I think our existence makes other intelligences likely. Why? Because it is clear we live in a Universe that *can* develop intelligent life. We are it. That intelligent life can develop is not the question.
His green ball metaphor shows that there is at least one green ball in that urn. But then, if there is at least one then isn't it likely there are others? The conditions exist such that green balls exist. So that makes it more likely there are other green balls than if it were another urn about which we know nothing. Why, to turn the argument around, are we so special?
We also know we aren't in any really special place in this huge Universe. An average sized planet around an average sized star in an average galaxy. We can see other planets, other stars, other galaxies and we know that Life can form in this Universe. At least once? Only, exactly once?
As to the Fermi paradox. There are many proposed solutions to that. My favorite is that Space really is a big obstacle and, well, we are at the end of a spiral arm. There may be a huge Star Wars like civilization near the center of our galaxy, where stars are closer together. We are like the tribes in New Guinea or the Amazon, sitting here at the end of the galaxy, disconnected from it all.
posted by vacapinta at 5:20 AM on December 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
Kattulus: I appreciate that the lifeboat metaphor has a seductive simplicity, but the logic of it is inherently genocidal.
My first reaction was that, given a finite planet whose capacity to support life is not unlimited, the lifeboat analogy was not inappropriate. Then, kicking it around a bit, I realized that this analogy (intentionally?) only assigns value to the human occupants of the lifeboat! No consideration for the ocean, the air, non-human life...
Ok, all analogies break down. Anyway, I'm not a Malthusian; I think it's been demonstrated that human birth-rates mainly go down as their situation improves.
Back on theme, I imagine that visiting benign aliens will treat Earth like we treat cottage-country: they'll show up, marvel at how beautiful it is, then gently buy out or nudge the current inhabitants out of the best bits, and erect their hideous shoreline monstrosities.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:17 AM on December 31, 2022
My first reaction was that, given a finite planet whose capacity to support life is not unlimited, the lifeboat analogy was not inappropriate. Then, kicking it around a bit, I realized that this analogy (intentionally?) only assigns value to the human occupants of the lifeboat! No consideration for the ocean, the air, non-human life...
Ok, all analogies break down. Anyway, I'm not a Malthusian; I think it's been demonstrated that human birth-rates mainly go down as their situation improves.
Back on theme, I imagine that visiting benign aliens will treat Earth like we treat cottage-country: they'll show up, marvel at how beautiful it is, then gently buy out or nudge the current inhabitants out of the best bits, and erect their hideous shoreline monstrosities.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:17 AM on December 31, 2022
There could be space trees with smart crabs.
If an alien planet with a thriving biosphere on it is discovered I would be astonished if it doesn't have something that looks like trees (assuming there is land for them to grow on). Sunlight is where basically all of the readily-available energy of an Earthlike planet comes from, and being a tree is a huge competitive advantage over things near you that are also collecting sunlight and have not yet figured out how to tree. Maybe they'll be photovoltaic trees instead of photochemical ones, but something is gonna end up making itself tall and spreading out above its neighbors.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:28 AM on January 1, 2023
If an alien planet with a thriving biosphere on it is discovered I would be astonished if it doesn't have something that looks like trees (assuming there is land for them to grow on). Sunlight is where basically all of the readily-available energy of an Earthlike planet comes from, and being a tree is a huge competitive advantage over things near you that are also collecting sunlight and have not yet figured out how to tree. Maybe they'll be photovoltaic trees instead of photochemical ones, but something is gonna end up making itself tall and spreading out above its neighbors.
posted by NMcCoy at 2:28 AM on January 1, 2023
I don't care because I don't believe I need to care.
Then again, there are enthusiastic engineers who clearly care much more than I do and might yet give me reason to revise that position.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 PM on January 1, 2023
Then again, there are enthusiastic engineers who clearly care much more than I do and might yet give me reason to revise that position.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 PM on January 1, 2023
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Every factor in the Drake equation that we have thus far been able to directly measure has been well beyond (and sometimes vastly beyond) previous estimates for their values. 60 years ago one could plausibly argue that the frequency of planets around other stars was arbitrarily small as we had no evidence otherwise. We've discovered that planetary systems, far from being rare, are likely around a large majority of stars, and that the planetary systems come in more wild variations than even relative optimists expected.
Kipping's argument, at its core, is "a frequency of life in a location of 10^-100 is not less likely than a frequency of life of 10^-5 or 10^-2 because the latter are entirely arbitrary" and I would contend that more likely values are not entirely arbitrary, and that there is a valid inductive argument from the last few decades of astronomy that every new technology that we develop we have found MORE than we ever expected to find, and not less.
Finally, I think his warning of confirmation bias using Lowell's "canals" on Mars was frankly specious and a rather transparent attempt to finish off the lecture with a wow moment that at best is tenuously related to assessment of the frequency of various factors in the Drake equation.
posted by tclark at 12:15 AM on December 30, 2022 [22 favorites]