5 ms·

It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the wil

It's not a particularly good candidate I would think. For example we know what's happening and could theoretically have stopped it but didn't/don't have the will. The Fermi paradox requires it to be extremely unlikely to survive, but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it.

louthy 10y ago
> but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it. I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of 1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found the political will.
- deathhand 10y ago
  Because we are not unified and working towards the same goal. Tribalism is our roots and they will be our ends. That is the problem with too many sentient beings-everyone believes they deserve something. Thus no intilligent life unless they are a single entity.
  - jnicholasp 10y ago
    Competition is not the only response to being one entity among many, and it is not even necessarily the most reasonable response. Cooperation is also possible, and it is one of the necessary elements in every human organization, from the family to global cultures. We have civilization because we are to some degree able to cooperate, and if you simply turn up the dial on that trait, it is easy to imagine that other creatures could exist who were even better cooperators - and who would be collectively even more successful because of it.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Sure. The point here, we're not coordinated enough. Not by a long shot.
      - jnicholasp 10y ago
        I'm not arguing here that we are. I'm arguing that it is conceivable that intelligent creatures could exist that were.
        M_Grey 10y ago
        Why would such a cooperative require intelligence, never mind high intelligence? We already see such vast cooperatives in fungi, but they have no selection pressures for intelligence. Far from it, competition is the driver that made us "smart".
        jnicholasp 10y ago
        I'm not saying that cooperative behavior requires intelligence. I'm saying that cooperative behavior is a reasonable and effective choice for creatures intellectually capable of choosing between behavioral strategies, no matter what the evolutionary forces were that developed them to the point of being intelligent.
- jnicholasp 10y ago
  I feel like your imaginative capacity could stand to be exercised more. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which intelligent entities could meaningfully differ from us, and which would lead to different political circumstances. And we ourselves are not that far from being able to deal reasonably with problems like this. If nothing else were different about us, except that average IQ were, say, 120 on the current scale, I think we'd be able to respond sensibly to non-immediate threats.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    There is no reason to believe that intelligence, in whatever form it takes, ever stops being energetically expensive. Is it possible to imagine selection pressures that would select for high intelligence over other factors? How harsh can an environment get, or how easy, before something like brute strength or rapidly breeding is always a cheaper strategy? Some rules are universal, because they're thermodynamic. That's not to say that your species of intelligent individuals is impossible, but it is unlikely. When you really take the time to think through these scenarios, you often find that there is no justification to assume that exceptional intelligence would evolve.
    - jnicholasp 10y ago
      We already know that thermodynamics and evolutionary pressures can allow for intelligent beings with a population average IQ of 100 (on the arbitrary scale we've devised for ourselves) to exist, since we humans do exist. I'm suggesting that a slight increase in that population average might be enough to make a large difference in how we collectively respond to mid- to long-term problems. If you're arguing against that suggestion, it seems you would have to be arguing that human intelligence exists at a level that is nestled directly up against some kind of hard thermodynamic limit, even though a non-trivial portion of our species already exists on the other side of that line. I don't see how that argument could plausibly be made.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    You could liken our situation to yeast in a bottle of wine. Given that comparison, what good would an average 20 iq points do? I don't see how any species could not evolve for conditions of scarcity, and I don't see how sudden abundance wouldn't lead down the same path we're on. If anything smarter would be worse. But, like you say, we don't know we're screwed, so it's a lot of supposition.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Massive changes do happen. But - the changes are through economics and culture, not through politics. Culture guides the long term behaviours in a civilization, economics play key part in what resources they have to use, politics only guide the short term effects generally. I agree, it's unlikely a massive change can happen through a political shift (which happen only generally in revolutions and civil wars). A cultural change, however, is completely feasible. If Facebook for instance turned into a zero-carbon marketing machine I'm pretty sure they could convince the planet to shift gears in consumption. Is the any plausible scenario where they would do this? I suppose if the global catastrophe could be computed as certainly as a trajectory of a asteroid that was about to hit earth - maybe.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    Can we make them do that somehow?
richardw 10y ago
The problem is that any race gets increasingly powerful as technology and science improve, so it takes a smaller and smaller mistake to end us all. Also, the population of those who are able to end us increases. Right now very few people have the ability to save or destroy us. One day every human might be able to, unless we hand the keys to the robots and we aren't certain how that'll play out. Edit: and we affect our environment more, which is always a battle with our level of understanding to manage that. Right now it's the climate. One day it could be the sun.
- rl3 10y ago
  >Right now very few people have the ability to save or destroy us. One day every human might be able to, unless we hand the keys to the robots and we aren't certain how that'll play out. Ironically one of the more likely ways an individual could end humanity (in the future) is via the haphazard or malicious creation of said robots. If all it takes is someone to execute a bootstrapping process on a large amount of computers, we're in trouble. There's no 100% reliable way to prevent that short of what you said: handing over the keys. It would require the creation of an entity so omnipotent and powerful that it may as well be considered a god. Another way to look at it is the creation of an operating system kernel for humanity itself, with each individual human being akin to a user-land process.
api 10y ago
What if it's not lack of will but game theory? Maybe it's actually impossible for a large complex system to act against these trends because there exists no stable game strategy for the kind of large-scale cooperation that is necessary?
- huxley 10y ago
  I can think of two counter-examples: * Polio eradication * The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer/Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer Both are examples of multi-state cooperation that dealt with serious world-spanning issues, the Polio eradication has had the most immediate impact, but Ozone Layer depletion has been checked and the numbers will trend down to 1980s levels over the next 20 years.
  - nradov 10y ago
    I don't think polio eradication is a good counter-example. There were no strong economic forces advocating for the status quo; the iron lung industry was quite small. There are still polio cases today but pretty much only in areas ruled by death cults who don't care whether their people live or die. So game theory isn't a factor there.

louthy 10y ago

> but you could imagine scenarios on other worlds where the right kind of political situation was around to stop it. I can't imagine that. The only evidence I have to date (from a sample size of 1 planet) is that there is next to zero real political will, even if the politicians of the world create additional heat saying they have in fact found the political will.

deathhand 10y ago
Because we are not unified and working towards the same goal. Tribalism is our roots and they will be our ends. That is the problem with too many sentient beings-everyone believes they deserve something. Thus no intilligent life unless they are a single entity.
- jnicholasp 10y ago
  Competition is not the only response to being one entity among many, and it is not even necessarily the most reasonable response. Cooperation is also possible, and it is one of the necessary elements in every human organization, from the family to global cultures. We have civilization because we are to some degree able to cooperate, and if you simply turn up the dial on that trait, it is easy to imagine that other creatures could exist who were even better cooperators - and who would be collectively even more successful because of it.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Sure. The point here, we're not coordinated enough. Not by a long shot.
    - jnicholasp 10y ago
      I'm not arguing here that we are. I'm arguing that it is conceivable that intelligent creatures could exist that were.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        Why would such a cooperative require intelligence, never mind high intelligence? We already see such vast cooperatives in fungi, but they have no selection pressures for intelligence. Far from it, competition is the driver that made us "smart".
        jnicholasp 10y ago
        I'm not saying that cooperative behavior requires intelligence. I'm saying that cooperative behavior is a reasonable and effective choice for creatures intellectually capable of choosing between behavioral strategies, no matter what the evolutionary forces were that developed them to the point of being intelligent.
jnicholasp 10y ago
I feel like your imaginative capacity could stand to be exercised more. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which intelligent entities could meaningfully differ from us, and which would lead to different political circumstances. And we ourselves are not that far from being able to deal reasonably with problems like this. If nothing else were different about us, except that average IQ were, say, 120 on the current scale, I think we'd be able to respond sensibly to non-immediate threats.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  There is no reason to believe that intelligence, in whatever form it takes, ever stops being energetically expensive. Is it possible to imagine selection pressures that would select for high intelligence over other factors? How harsh can an environment get, or how easy, before something like brute strength or rapidly breeding is always a cheaper strategy? Some rules are universal, because they're thermodynamic. That's not to say that your species of intelligent individuals is impossible, but it is unlikely. When you really take the time to think through these scenarios, you often find that there is no justification to assume that exceptional intelligence would evolve.
  - jnicholasp 10y ago
    We already know that thermodynamics and evolutionary pressures can allow for intelligent beings with a population average IQ of 100 (on the arbitrary scale we've devised for ourselves) to exist, since we humans do exist. I'm suggesting that a slight increase in that population average might be enough to make a large difference in how we collectively respond to mid- to long-term problems. If you're arguing against that suggestion, it seems you would have to be arguing that human intelligence exists at a level that is nestled directly up against some kind of hard thermodynamic limit, even though a non-trivial portion of our species already exists on the other side of that line. I don't see how that argument could plausibly be made.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  You could liken our situation to yeast in a bottle of wine. Given that comparison, what good would an average 20 iq points do? I don't see how any species could not evolve for conditions of scarcity, and I don't see how sudden abundance wouldn't lead down the same path we're on. If anything smarter would be worse. But, like you say, we don't know we're screwed, so it's a lot of supposition.
fsloth 10y ago
Massive changes do happen. But - the changes are through economics and culture, not through politics. Culture guides the long term behaviours in a civilization, economics play key part in what resources they have to use, politics only guide the short term effects generally. I agree, it's unlikely a massive change can happen through a political shift (which happen only generally in revolutions and civil wars). A cultural change, however, is completely feasible. If Facebook for instance turned into a zero-carbon marketing machine I'm pretty sure they could convince the planet to shift gears in consumption. Is the any plausible scenario where they would do this? I suppose if the global catastrophe could be computed as certainly as a trajectory of a asteroid that was about to hit earth - maybe.
- kaybe 10y ago
  Can we make them do that somehow?

richardw 10y ago

The problem is that any race gets increasingly powerful as technology and science improve, so it takes a smaller and smaller mistake to end us all. Also, the population of those who are able to end us increases. Right now very few people have the ability to save or destroy us. One day every human might be able to, unless we hand the keys to the robots and we aren't certain how that'll play out. Edit: and we affect our environment more, which is always a battle with our level of understanding to manage that. Right now it's the climate. One day it could be the sun.

rl3 10y ago
>Right now very few people have the ability to save or destroy us. One day every human might be able to, unless we hand the keys to the robots and we aren't certain how that'll play out. Ironically one of the more likely ways an individual could end humanity (in the future) is via the haphazard or malicious creation of said robots. If all it takes is someone to execute a bootstrapping process on a large amount of computers, we're in trouble. There's no 100% reliable way to prevent that short of what you said: handing over the keys. It would require the creation of an entity so omnipotent and powerful that it may as well be considered a god. Another way to look at it is the creation of an operating system kernel for humanity itself, with each individual human being akin to a user-land process.

api 10y ago

What if it's not lack of will but game theory? Maybe it's actually impossible for a large complex system to act against these trends because there exists no stable game strategy for the kind of large-scale cooperation that is necessary?

huxley 10y ago
I can think of two counter-examples: * Polio eradication * The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer/Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer Both are examples of multi-state cooperation that dealt with serious world-spanning issues, the Polio eradication has had the most immediate impact, but Ozone Layer depletion has been checked and the numbers will trend down to 1980s levels over the next 20 years.
- nradov 10y ago
  I don't think polio eradication is a good counter-example. There were no strong economic forces advocating for the status quo; the iron lung industry was quite small. There are still polio cases today but pretty much only in areas ruled by death cults who don't care whether their people live or die. So game theory isn't a factor there.