I must purge the mailbox of a few worthy links…so here they are.
There are a couple of calls for submissions:
A few carnivals I failed to mention this week:
Freethought Filter is back up and running again!
Darksyde addresses the Fermi “paradox”. I don’t think it’s a paradox at all, and that the answer from his list is the rarity solution.
Regarding the Fermi paradox, another possibility is that the chance of intelligence successfully exploiting the window of opportunity for getting off the planet is vanishingly small.
The idea of the technology window is that, if getting off the planet requires a certain level of technology and if constructing that technology requires a certain quantity of our finite resources, then should an intelligent race fail to get off the planet before running out of those resource, that race is screwed. In fact you don’t have to run out of the resources, you just need to deplete them and breed at a rate that makes local usage a priority over making spacecraft to exploit extra-global resources.
By the time you realize you may *need* extra-global resources it may in fact be too late to exploit them without making fatally unpopular choices about who starves while you construct rockets.
A similar window of opportunity would also then exist for escaping the solar system before depleting the resources of that venue.
So given two major hurdles to expansion and the world we see around us as an example of how intelligence behaves, it might not be so startling that it’s rare out there.
Even at warp=12 (2000c) the stars would not come
speeding by. The orgional travelers would not live
long enough to arrive at a meaningful destination.
MD = 2 million light years away. We may be able to
slow time down by continuous acceleration but the
distance is too vast. We also cannot forget the affect
of g’s on the human travelers, More than a year of
heavy acceleration on both ends of the trip.
We will have to find a new way or the space travel
of our childhood may be very far away.
In my very humble opinion, they have never come, and
we may never go. Just too far between us.
I’m in the transcendence camp. People today spend many, many hours per day engrossed in virtual worlds on their computer. And as those worlds grow ever more complex and “real”, the time spent their will increase.
Now just imagine what these worlds will be like after a few centuries of progress. Who is going to want to stuff themselves into a tin can and take a 40-year trip to Proxima? Not I. I’m going to be in Xanadu with Zhang Ziyi.
Off topic: I found an incredibly mind-draining article here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11747932/
The scariest part of it is that this guy “Taylor has been a national security analyst for more than 30 years, also serving as a senior associate for five years at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Shudder
Rarity seems the right answer to me too. Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee make what seems like a good argument to me for this in Rare Earth, splitting part of the usual assumption apart – they expect to find single-celled life all over the place, but regard more complicated life as what’s vanishingly rare. PZ, are you in a position to say if either of these guys is some sort of kook? :)
Most of the terms in Drakes equation are more of Bayesian degrees of belief instead of frequentist probabilities derived from measurements or real models, instead of fair estimates. That means we can’t make much of the current outcome, until we eliminate all uncertain terms or can firm up the constrained belief with statistics on observed communicative civilisations.
However, it’s a fairly legible base for a consequence analysis, such as Darksyde’s.
I think bmurrays and Ick’s scenarios are fair, the later is expounded in for example Poul Andersson’s “A boat of a million years”, where the main population get integrated with the web.
But the later is in my opinion more of a senescence scenario, which Darksyde’s exposition lacks. It’s exemplified in A.E. van Vogt’s novella “War of nerves” in for example “The best of A.E. van Vogt”. The civilisation survives bmurrays extinction scenario, but instead retreats in a fairly stable noncommunicative state. van Vogt draws parallels to ancient India.
I’d stuff myself into a tin can for 40 years for that kind of experience. Easier said than done, I realize. Plus I would be 90 at the end of the voyage, if I lived. On another note, the “anomaly” is at ~15,000 ft. Why doesn’t somebody fly or climb up and investigate? Fucking Christ! Sorry about taking the so called Lords name in any way shape or form.
I would think the only way, other than hibernation, to make a 40-year journy bearable would be to have an advanced VR system for the travellers to inhabit.
And once they reach their destination, how many are going to want to leave their VR kingdoms where they can swoop and soar, fornicate to their heart’s content, and dine on fresh BBQ squid whenever they desire?
It just doesn’t seem realistic to me. Tinned primates hurtling through space from one gravity well to another when they can be as gods in worlds of their own creation.
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Why don’t they climb up and investigate? You damn secularist liberal scientists! Always trying to unweave the rainbow! Can’t you just take it on faith that an oblong rock formation is Noah’s Ark? I mean…what else could it possibly be?!
While the “rarity solution” to the Fermi Paradox seems like the most straightforward answer, it has a bit of what particle physicists would call a “fine tuning” problem: the probability of an intelligent civilisation must be very small — but it can’t be *too* small, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. So the various variables in Drake’s equation would have to be finely tuned to be “just right” to end up with a total number of civilisations of order one. We can solve this anthropically, but I don’t care too much for anthropic solutions myself…
It seems more likely that there may be or have been lots of civilizations out there, but for one reason or another — transcendance, extraordinary difficulty of space travel, resource depletion, or outright self-destruction — they are very, very unlikely to get off their planet to be discovered by other civilizations.
Which would mean, by the way, that we’re not getting off our planet either… So take good care of it!
(The anthropic solution is: the probability of having any civilisations at all in the universe is very small, but there are lots and lots of “universes”. Most universes have no civilisations, but those that do have a civilisation almost always have only one. But only universes with a civilisation will be observed, so a typical *observation* is of a universe with just one civilisation. This has the virtue of arriving at just the right answer for a wide range of parameters. It has the vice of postulating the existence of large numbers of other universes that we can’t observe, but only infer their existence from the improbable fact of our own existence.)
I agree that it is not a paradox, and it’s unfortunate someone named it that. Zeno’s Paradox is a paradox.
You know, I think the headline for that *cough* article should read something more like: “Holy Shit! A Rock! Someone circle it with a red pen!“
“Holy Shit! A Rock! Someone circle it with a red pen!”
The shape of the rock convinces me. It must be Noah’s Kayak.
While the “rarity solution” to the Fermi Paradox seems like the most straightforward answer, it has a bit of what particle physicists would call a “fine tuning” problem: the probability of an intelligent civilisation must be very small — but it can’t be *too* small, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
Actually, it’s very, very hard to have too small a probability, as long as it’s positive. Intergalactic travel is very, very difficult, so we can for the moment ignore it (for one, we don’t know anything about the priorities and capabilities of a type III civilization) and concentrate on our own galaxy. We want relatively few civilizations in our galaxy – say, at most 10 by now (note that it’d be hard for a star to produce a civilization long before our time) – while having at least one civilization in the Universe. This constrains the rate of civilizations per star to at most 1 in 15 billion and at least 1 in a sextillion.
We now can turn lead into gold, fulfilling the old alchemists’ dream, but it is not worth it. Maybe the same is true of the economics of interstellar space travel.
bmurray: In fact you don’t have to run out of the resources, you just need to deplete them and breed at a rate that makes local usage a priority over making spacecraft to exploit extra-global resources.
The question becomes: a priority according to whom? The richest people on Earth today have several orders of magnitude more wealth than the poorest; even if most of the world breeds itself into a Malthusian state, there may be people willing to accumulate and use some of the “seed corn” for their own children rather than their neighbors’ dinner. That may just be wishful thinking on my part, though.
Speaking of wishful thinking, you’re not the Dr. B. Murray I know personally, are you?
Fred Gray: Even at warp=12 (2000c) the stars would not come speeding by.
Who needs the stars to speed by? All you need is enough fuel (preferably fusionable, but fission will work in a pinch) to keep a self-contained colony alive until you get to a star with enough light output and orbiting material to let you build more colonies. 0.01c would work fine, no need even to take advantage of relativistic effects.
Ick of the East:People today spend many, many hours per day engrossed in virtual worlds on their computer. And as those worlds grow ever more complex and “real”, the time spent their will increase. Who is going to want to stuff themselves into a tin can and take a 40-year trip to Proxima? Not I. I’m going to be in Xanadu with Zhang Ziyi.
This is an evolution-focused blog, right? So why is there this focus on how the majority of people will behave? Did most single-celled organisms evolve into multicellular life? Not by a long shot, but it only takes a tiny minority to move into an ecological niche and expand. Sure, 99.9% of the population would be happy to ignore the real world for a virtual one; that just means the remainder would take a few more generations of exponential growth to fill out the population around each new star.
Arun: We now can turn lead into gold, fulfilling the old alchemists’ dream, but it is not worth it. Maybe the same is true of the economics of interstellar space travel.
Interstellar space travel will never be economical for the society launching a trip – what could you send back from another star (other than data) that would be worth the expense of a round trip mission? That’s not a problem, though; raising children doesn’t have to be economical for parents to want to do it. Providing a better life for your descendants is one of the goals of economics, not one of the means.
Roy S: My personal guess would be technologically aided self-destructiveness. ICBMs are by definition easier to build than orbital rockets. Nuclear bombs were easier to make than nuclear rockets. Launching a spacecraft into orbit is harder than launching buckshot into a retrograde orbit. I’ll bet it turns out to be easier for nanotechnologists to create “grey goo” than “universal constructors”. It may be that by the time we’ve reached the level of technology necessary for large groups of people to send colonies to other stars, we’ll also be at a level where a single lone nut could sabotage such a project.
Sure, 99.9% of the population would be happy to ignore the real world for a virtual one; that just means the remainder would take a few more generations of exponential growth to fill out the population around each new star.
Populations of what though? Meat units?
I don’t buy it.
As I said, I’m sure there will be some who choose the “realverse” over the virtual. But I can’t imagine that any of these beings would choose to remain as meat when they can upload into a durable and replaceable machine.
And what would these machines need planets for, other than as places to explore and wonder at?
The question becomes: a priority according to whom? The richest people on Earth today have several orders of magnitude more wealth than the poorest; even if most of the world breeds itself into a Malthusian state, there may be people willing to accumulate and use some of the “seed corn” for their own children rather than their neighbors’ dinner. That may just be wishful thinking on my part, though.
That would be my fear (the wishful thinking part). In general people don’t act for the long term. Governments are barely able to act for 4 years in the future, and it’s their mandate to manage the long term. I’m not optimistic that there is anything other than short term benefit that will drive anyone out of the gravity well to exploit those resources, and I don’t see how exploiting those resources can be anything but a long term plan. There are steps that might be part of different short term plans that would be part of a scaffold needed to accomplish this though — like a spacecraft that doesn’t need to carry a ton of reaction mass and deal with the earth’s gravity every time we want to go somewhere. Such a workhorse might be developed for short term prospects and wind up being called to serve for real exploitation at a later date. I think there is a basis for this kind of reuse in genetics (obligatory evolutionary comment there folks).
Anyway, there are things that give me hope, especially as I see rich dilettantes trying to make their own spacecraft, but my fear is that there is a point beyond which it is simply impossible. I don’t know where that point is so I don’t know how close we are to it, but if it exists and it’s closer than we hope, then it may be sufficient to explain a lack of neighbours — you only get a few thousand years to solve the puzzle and it’s really hard to solve.
Certainly if we get mired down with solving (completely necessarily mind you!) local problems like starvation, plague, and climatic upset, we may easily find ourselves out of tools for extra-global exploitation, especially as we don’t tend to see that exploitation as a necessary step. Maybe those problems will actually drive the need and become part of the solution.
Anyway, all that is just mumbling about how we might get through the window. The window necessarily exists (resources are finite), we just don’t know how big it is. We hope it’s big enough.
Speaking of wishful thinking, you’re not the Dr. B. Murray I know personally, are you?
I’m flattered but no, I’m just another self-educated boob with an internet connection and an interest in science.
And what would these machines need planets for, other than as places to explore and wonder at?
Raw materials. Even in a society of silicon navel gazers, there are bound to be individuals who want to reproduce for reproduction’s own sake – and the funny thing about reproduction is you only need a few reproducers to start with.
Of course, there are selfish motives to consider too. These virtual universes, they’re designed by the smartest and most creative members of society, right? Wouldn’t a society with a population of quadrillions be likely to have more creative geniuses than a society of billions? Even if your only reason to exist is entertainment, you’re still going to want lots of options to choose from.
I’m not optimistic that there is anything other than short term benefit that will drive anyone out of the gravity well to exploit those resources, and I don’t see how exploiting those resources can be anything but a long term plan.
That’s a depressing thought.
For all my concerns about technology-aided destruction and conflict, it does seem like the only reason we’re in space now is military R&D. I know of all the useful commercial satellites, of course, but I don’t know if they would have been enough of a market alone to develop orbital launchers for; warheads and spy satellites are what drove rocket technology.
Planets are full of raw materials, but they are also full of gravity. If you are a space traveler who does not need to grow food for a population of billions, planets are something to avoid like a 40-foot pothole.
Comets, asteroids, and rings are also full of raw materials and much more gravity friendly.
And how many designers of VR universes do you really need? Do you need to be sentient at all? We’re talking about setting up parameters, starting things up, and letting the result evolve in quick time. Then you see what you got, choose what interests you, and play with it until you want something else. The joy is in discovering what came up, not in fiddling with the details yourself.
You need a year of `heavy acceleration’ to approach c? I suppose you do, as long as you consider one gravity to be `heavy acceleration’.
The hard part is finding the reaction mass. The Bussard ramjet doesn’t work (because of turbulence, mostly, and because as far as I know nobody’s figured out a way of decelerating the thing), so we’re stuck carrying our own fuel along. Even with total-conversion, that constrains our top speed greatly, and rules out continuous-acceleration profiles and the time dilation effects they allow.
But intergalactic travel is quite practical, as long as you’re a very hardy microorganism or other suitable von Neumann machine. You just have to be willing to wait.
Oh, and the obvious things to mine are (if you want small quantities of raw materials) asteroids, and (if you want large quantities of raw materials) stars. You need transmutation to make much use of the latter, but that’s what fusion is for. You’ll probably get a good bit of energy out of it as well.