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It bothers me that the authors' assumptions are so controversial and that they hide them in the middle of the article. In the simulations the authors are using

It bothers me that the authors' assumptions are so controversial and that they hide them in the middle of the article. In the simulations the authors are using, civilizations have lifetimes, meaning that all of them end after a while. And that simply isn't supported by events. Technological civilization has never vanished even from our little one-planet civilization. Polities do decline, but there is usually someone there to pick up the pieces. In an interstellar civilization there would be more recovery opportunities: interstellar visitors who arrive to see why a collapsed planet went offline. The authors of this piece are asking us not just to assume that simultaneous disaster is possible on ten, a hundred, or a thousand planets. They are asking us to assume that it happens to every single time a civilization has achieved interstellar travel, and that it has been happening for the last ten billion years. Simultaneous catastrophes on thousands of worlds affecting millions of species for billions of years? Life arising only once could easily be the more plausible option.

adabsurdo 7y ago
> Life arising only once could very well be the more plausible option Indeed I feel like coming to this conclusion is something that the authors - and most of us rationalist types - do not _want_ to come to. Because if you accept that hypothesis, then it follows as a consequence that an alternative view of the world makes a lot more sense: what if, rather than living in an emergent, random universe where life sprouts up everywhere, hundreds of billions of times, but somehow _always_ disappears before we can ever observe it outside Earth, we are instead living at the center of a universe where we are the sole intelligent species that ever existed? In that system of the world, the universe is being directed by beings existing outside its bounds - gods. A simulation created and managed by uncaring observers - as hypothesized by the likes of Elon Musk? Or a benevolent God in the Judeo/Christiano/Islamic tradition? The truth is that this alternative is being rejected a priori, indeed not even acknowledged, by the authors of the article or most people in this thread, because it is an affront to their core beliefs, not through pure logical reasoning.
- danans 7y ago
  > The truth is that this alternative is being rejected a priori, indeed not even acknowledged, by the authors of the article or most people in this thread, because it is an affront to their core beliefs, not through pure logical reasoning. I think it isn't acknowledged because it is inconsistent with literally everything we have learned about physics and the universe, and even if it were true, as you said, they are outside this reality and don't care. They set the simulation parameters, and then walked away, so they are irrelevant. If however, you point to something like miracles occuring in our reality to back up the "gods" view, then you aren't really having the same discussion as the authors.
seventhtiger 7y ago
It's interesting to think that although it is highly likely that life originated on Earth, we don't have evidence of multiple originations. If life is so rare that it occurs only once even in hospitable conditions, then it may follow that life is extremely unlikely even on a cosmic scale.

adabsurdo 7y ago

> Life arising only once could very well be the more plausible option Indeed I feel like coming to this conclusion is something that the authors - and most of us rationalist types - do not _want_ to come to. Because if you accept that hypothesis, then it follows as a consequence that an alternative view of the world makes a lot more sense: what if, rather than living in an emergent, random universe where life sprouts up everywhere, hundreds of billions of times, but somehow _always_ disappears before we can ever observe it outside Earth, we are instead living at the center of a universe where we are the sole intelligent species that ever existed? In that system of the world, the universe is being directed by beings existing outside its bounds - gods. A simulation created and managed by uncaring observers - as hypothesized by the likes of Elon Musk? Or a benevolent God in the Judeo/Christiano/Islamic tradition? The truth is that this alternative is being rejected a priori, indeed not even acknowledged, by the authors of the article or most people in this thread, because it is an affront to their core beliefs, not through pure logical reasoning.

danans 7y ago
> The truth is that this alternative is being rejected a priori, indeed not even acknowledged, by the authors of the article or most people in this thread, because it is an affront to their core beliefs, not through pure logical reasoning. I think it isn't acknowledged because it is inconsistent with literally everything we have learned about physics and the universe, and even if it were true, as you said, they are outside this reality and don't care. They set the simulation parameters, and then walked away, so they are irrelevant. If however, you point to something like miracles occuring in our reality to back up the "gods" view, then you aren't really having the same discussion as the authors.

seventhtiger 7y ago

It's interesting to think that although it is highly likely that life originated on Earth, we don't have evidence of multiple originations. If life is so rare that it occurs only once even in hospitable conditions, then it may follow that life is extremely unlikely even on a cosmic scale.