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There's the reverse problem as well. If life develops by itself when it has (chemically) the chance ... then where is it ? Our sun is a third generation star (m

by iofj 11y ago

There's the reverse problem as well. If life develops by itself when it has (chemically) the chance ... then where is it ? Our sun is a third generation star (meaning some sun went nova, recoalesced into another sun, went nova, recoalesced in our sun and ignited, and that was 3+ billion years ago). Our sun is not a particularly early third generation star. Given that it would take a civilization about a billion years to spread through the galaxy to all liveable planets ... some civilization should have done that up to 4-5 billion years ago. If life can happen in 2nd generation stars as well, it should have happened 6-8 billion years ago. Obviously this hasn't happened. I only see 3 reasonable explanations: 1) Drake equation is too optimistic. By a huge factor (2-300 million times too optimistic) 2) It's not a problem, because civilizations kill themselves before doing interstellar travel and while we are on the way to doing that but not quite there yet. 3) There's something we don't know

dogma1138 11y ago
4) Reapers But yeah "We are first, we are rare or we are screwed..." Pretty much sums it up if there are "great filters" to life we really don't understand them yet.
- iofj 11y ago
  The thing is, it would be very surprising if we are first. Certainly wouldn't fit the Drake equation.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    https://xkcd.com/384/ https://xkcd.com/384/ The biggest problem with the Drake equation is that we are using a sample of one, it also doesn't take into account great filters that will prevent the development of intelligent life, technological civilizations and interstellar ones. Our technology jumped from sticks and stones to interplanetary rockets in 10,000 or so years after sticking to those sticks and stones for about 200,000 - 250,000 years. We still have had people living in the Stone Age during ww2 and some still do today. We probably know less about how a civilization might develop into a technological one than we know about how life can evolve.
    - marshray 11y ago
      Just out of curiosity, why do you mention WWII specifically as a time when some people were living in the stone age?
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        Because the war in the pacific had quite an impact some of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult Do while we were building rockets and going into space some of us were making airplanes out of straw to get more gifts from thier ancestors.
        iofj 11y ago
        Man that page is crap. Have you read the explanations section ? WTF. Cargo cults existed because that's how humans work, that's how humans learn. That's how the machinery that is our brain operates. We copy behavior. We do not discover, learn, think rationally, or any of that (though some of those are tricks we've learned at some point and now make sure to teach our children, but they're learned behaviors, very different from human brains, similar to how you can run logic circuits or multiplications on neural networks). Here's a stupid assumption that page makes as well. It assumes that cargo cultism had no chance of success. That's just stupid. They built these planes. It would only take someone pushing them off a cliff and paying attention to their fall to discover lift. I don't mean explaining and calculating lift (we can't even do that (the problem "here's a wing shape, now calculate the lift equations" is still unsolved except for special cases, doubly so in supersonic situations, so their chances seem limited). Once they see lift they would only need to get propellers rotating, already a much, much simpler problem. It would certainly not be impossible to make a 10-15 minute human powered flight, or they could simply learn to ride the winds. Difficult, but given enough tries that would certainly work. Therefore I'd like to offer a very much different explanation for cargo cultism : it's how humans learn. Had these tribes had 100 years or so to figure it out, we would have seen one land in a homemade bamboo airplane on Haiti.
        marshray 11y ago
- armitron 11y ago
  No it doesn't sum it up. You are assuming an advanced civilization that spread through the universe would either announce itself or we'd be able to detect it. The scenario that nobody mentions is that they're already here.
civilian 11y ago
You should read The Vital Question by Nick Lane. It proposes a hypothesis for abiogenesis which requires very specific conditions to come into existence, and explains why other abiogenesis theories probably don't work. It's by scientist who has his own theory to push, and the origin of life is still an unfinished scientific topic, but it has given me an appreciation for why the Drake equation is too optimistic.

by iofj 11y ago

dogma1138 11y ago

4) Reapers But yeah "We are first, we are rare or we are screwed..." Pretty much sums it up if there are "great filters" to life we really don't understand them yet.

iofj 11y ago
The thing is, it would be very surprising if we are first. Certainly wouldn't fit the Drake equation.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  https://xkcd.com/384/ https://xkcd.com/384/ The biggest problem with the Drake equation is that we are using a sample of one, it also doesn't take into account great filters that will prevent the development of intelligent life, technological civilizations and interstellar ones. Our technology jumped from sticks and stones to interplanetary rockets in 10,000 or so years after sticking to those sticks and stones for about 200,000 - 250,000 years. We still have had people living in the Stone Age during ww2 and some still do today. We probably know less about how a civilization might develop into a technological one than we know about how life can evolve.
  - marshray 11y ago
    Just out of curiosity, why do you mention WWII specifically as a time when some people were living in the stone age?
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      Because the war in the pacific had quite an impact some of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult Do while we were building rockets and going into space some of us were making airplanes out of straw to get more gifts from thier ancestors.
      - iofj 11y ago
        Man that page is crap. Have you read the explanations section ? WTF. Cargo cults existed because that's how humans work, that's how humans learn. That's how the machinery that is our brain operates. We copy behavior. We do not discover, learn, think rationally, or any of that (though some of those are tricks we've learned at some point and now make sure to teach our children, but they're learned behaviors, very different from human brains, similar to how you can run logic circuits or multiplications on neural networks). Here's a stupid assumption that page makes as well. It assumes that cargo cultism had no chance of success. That's just stupid. They built these planes. It would only take someone pushing them off a cliff and paying attention to their fall to discover lift. I don't mean explaining and calculating lift (we can't even do that (the problem "here's a wing shape, now calculate the lift equations" is still unsolved except for special cases, doubly so in supersonic situations, so their chances seem limited). Once they see lift they would only need to get propellers rotating, already a much, much simpler problem. It would certainly not be impossible to make a 10-15 minute human powered flight, or they could simply learn to ride the winds. Difficult, but given enough tries that would certainly work. Therefore I'd like to offer a very much different explanation for cargo cultism : it's how humans learn. Had these tribes had 100 years or so to figure it out, we would have seen one land in a homemade bamboo airplane on Haiti.
        marshray 11y ago
armitron 11y ago
No it doesn't sum it up. You are assuming an advanced civilization that spread through the universe would either announce itself or we'd be able to detect it. The scenario that nobody mentions is that they're already here.

civilian 11y ago

You should read The Vital Question by Nick Lane. It proposes a hypothesis for abiogenesis which requires very specific conditions to come into existence, and explains why other abiogenesis theories probably don't work. It's by scientist who has his own theory to push, and the origin of life is still an unfinished scientific topic, but it has given me an appreciation for why the Drake equation is too optimistic.