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This gets my vote. My hunch is that intelligent life like the kind we would love to meet happens either on the order of once or twice per galaxy during the gala

This gets my vote. My hunch is that intelligent life like the kind we would love to meet happens either on the order of once or twice per galaxy during the galaxy's entire lifetime, or it happens SO rarely that, if the universe is infinite in extent, then any intelligent observer looking out from the "center" of their observable universe will most likely be in the only intelligent civilization in that visible radius. Depressing, but it seems more plausible than things like "Great Filters of DOOM". It would predict that there is a lot of intelligence in the entire universe, but each cluster of intelligence is profoundly alone.

samstave 11y ago
Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Seriously, if we taught this level of intelligent-life appreciation to every born soul... the world would be a better place. Rather than starting with the teachings we do for youngsters; why not just teach them how freaking rare and lucky they are to be a consciousness present to hear that fact and then know that they can then expand the known universe... but do this in a much more deliberate fashion than we are now? We need to be much much more deterministic from a species if we will survive for eons.
- civilian 11y ago
  To quote Ender's Game: "I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it." It doesn't really answer why we commit suicide. But it does give an answer to why we aren't happy.
- baddox 11y ago
  > Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Because the knowledge that "us killing ourselves" collectively is bad for us collectively does not affect the decision for an individual to kill another individual.
- vectorjohn 11y ago
  We keep killing ourselves because so many people are so damned reassured that death isn't the end. That or they just pessimistically assume there's no way we'll make it to eons. I think we could easily last for eons, but yeah. We have to get people on board with that possibility.
- zardo 11y ago
  >Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Not enough game theorists in charge.
- Florin_Andrei 11y ago
  > Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? We are slaves to our own genetic sequences to a much larger extent than we usually think. It's pretty easy to show that the behaviors that lead to people killing each other are driven by mechanisms initially evolved to ensure that our own genetic sequences keep multiplying and spreading out, eliminating competition. And they're pretty dumb mechanisms, running on the lower levels of our brains, so don't expect them to be very selective, or run without failure. Sometimes they hit an internal bug and become runaway destruction loops, which sometimes even turn against the individual itself. Many things that are typically considered "evil" can be traced back ultimately to these mechanisms that ensure that our own genetic sequences win the race. In a way, "evil" was actually useful, way back in time, in an evolutionary sense. It's just recently that we've acquired new desires and aspirations, which are in conflict with the old, narrow, dumb routines.
baddox 11y ago
Where do you get the estimate of "once or twice per galaxy"? I can agree that it might be "rare," but I have no idea how you would pin down the rareness to that level of accuracy.
- breckinloggins 11y ago
  It's a total guesstimate. The interesting thing to me is that I have no idea how anyone else pins down THEIR estimates to any level of accuracy, but they are apparently confident enough in their estimates to posit things like the "Great Filter", when other (equally likely) estimates such as mine require no such thing.

samstave 11y ago

Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Seriously, if we taught this level of intelligent-life appreciation to every born soul... the world would be a better place. Rather than starting with the teachings we do for youngsters; why not just teach them how freaking rare and lucky they are to be a consciousness present to hear that fact and then know that they can then expand the known universe... but do this in a much more deliberate fashion than we are now? We need to be much much more deterministic from a species if we will survive for eons.

civilian 11y ago
To quote Ender's Game: "I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it." It doesn't really answer why we commit suicide. But it does give an answer to why we aren't happy.
baddox 11y ago
> Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Because the knowledge that "us killing ourselves" collectively is bad for us collectively does not affect the decision for an individual to kill another individual.
vectorjohn 11y ago
We keep killing ourselves because so many people are so damned reassured that death isn't the end. That or they just pessimistically assume there's no way we'll make it to eons. I think we could easily last for eons, but yeah. We have to get people on board with that possibility.
zardo 11y ago
>Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? Not enough game theorists in charge.
Florin_Andrei 11y ago
> Then why the fuck do we keep killing ourselves? We are slaves to our own genetic sequences to a much larger extent than we usually think. It's pretty easy to show that the behaviors that lead to people killing each other are driven by mechanisms initially evolved to ensure that our own genetic sequences keep multiplying and spreading out, eliminating competition. And they're pretty dumb mechanisms, running on the lower levels of our brains, so don't expect them to be very selective, or run without failure. Sometimes they hit an internal bug and become runaway destruction loops, which sometimes even turn against the individual itself. Many things that are typically considered "evil" can be traced back ultimately to these mechanisms that ensure that our own genetic sequences win the race. In a way, "evil" was actually useful, way back in time, in an evolutionary sense. It's just recently that we've acquired new desires and aspirations, which are in conflict with the old, narrow, dumb routines.

baddox 11y ago

Where do you get the estimate of "once or twice per galaxy"? I can agree that it might be "rare," but I have no idea how you would pin down the rareness to that level of accuracy.

breckinloggins 11y ago
It's a total guesstimate. The interesting thing to me is that I have no idea how anyone else pins down THEIR estimates to any level of accuracy, but they are apparently confident enough in their estimates to posit things like the "Great Filter", when other (equally likely) estimates such as mine require no such thing.