11 ms·

This is why I tend to think that the industrial revolution and technology is "the great filter" for the Fermi Paradox. Life, intelligence, agriculture, society

by baking 4y ago

This is why I tend to think that the industrial revolution and technology is "the great filter" for the Fermi Paradox. Life, intelligence, agriculture, society can all occur with relatively high probability, but each planet has, at best, one shot at a technological society and a brief window solve the problems that it creates before everything collapses. Also note that global warming is determined by the ratio of CO2 produced to the amount that was in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution. Planets with lower CO2 are actually worse off because the temperature will rise faster for the same amount of CO2. Also, Earth is helped by having a lot of oceans that absorb CO2.

stormbrew 4y ago
This assumes a lot of things about alien physiology, structure, and tolerances are the same as humans. It's not hard to imagine the possibility of a species arising that either is less affected by a greenhouse effect or at maybe exists in an environment where it doesn't happen. That's not even getting into the possibility of different paths to energy production. This is always a problem with any Fermi paradox thought experiment. We're extrapolating so much from a sample of 1 and we understand so little about even that one case.
- lisper 4y ago
  The details don't really matter. What matters is that 1) a new source of energy is discovered which 2) disrupts an existing equilibrium which in turn 3) brings about ecosystem collapse faster than even intelligence can adapt. The exact mechanism by which this series of events plays out is irrelevant.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    It's such a negative thought experiment isn't it? Not saying it doesn't hold some water but man it's bleak.
    - lisper 4y ago
      Yep. I've been in a serious existential crisis over this for the last few years. It's not like disaster is inevitable. We could cut carbon emissions before they destroy technological civilization, or maybe come up with a practical way to (re-)sequester the carbon we've emitted. But right now it is not looking particularly promising to me, and time is running out fast.
      - bamboozled 4y ago
        What are you doing about it? I think if you're that concerned about it, you should be working to solve it, this would surely be the antidote to your worries. Just writing a letter to your representatives would be a simple way to help.
        lisper 4y ago
        Only if I thought that there was something my representative could do that would solve the problem. The reason I'm in existential despair is that the distance between what I think would need to be done to solve the problem and what can plausibly be done given the realities of our world is vast. Even if we cut emissions to zero tomorrow (which is obviously not going to happen) that would not solve the current problem. I think that if you look at things realistically, we have already passed the point of no return. So what I am doing is searching for someone who can persuade me that I'm wrong and that there is a plausible path forward that does not involve societal collapse in the near future (by which I mean the next 100 years or so). When I find that person I'm going to put a lot of effort into trying to help them succeed. But so far I have not found them. I'm also putting some effort into building a legacy (by which I mean a societal legacy, not a personal one) that our descendants could use to rebuild civilization once the planet settles into a new equilibrium. That will probably be at least a few thousand years from now, so this too is a real challenge.
        bamboozled 4y ago
        If nothing could be done, then why are you stressed, you'll just have to go with it.
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    I agree the details don't matter, which is precisely why there's no reason to believe (2) or (3) is universal other than that it's our own experience. You are taking our details and extrapolating them to a universal filter. Most people die of old age. A very small number of people die of being hit by rocks falling from the sky. Only one of these is a broad filter for who survives into the next century that everyone has to go through, but if you only knew the life of one person you could not say with certainty which one it was.
    - lisper 4y ago
      That's true, except that it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow, and it will do so very rapidly on evolutionary time scales. So yes, I'm extrapolating from one data point. But I think it's a plausible extrapolation based on a plausible model of evolution and ecosystems in general. Call it a hypothesis. Nothing would please me more than to have it disproved by evidence.
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        > it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow Why? Anyways even if I grant that, we then get to ask why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? Certainly the weeds in my unkempt garden would disagree that the lack of equilibrium there is a bad thing. To be honest even the hypothesis that where we are now was inevitable for us seems sketchy and unsupportable. What if we'd had a nuclear race instead of a space race? We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point.
        lisper 4y ago
        These are fair questions. > Why? Because releasing energy is invariably accompanied by change of some sort. If that energy is released as part of an intentional effort by a technological civilization, then that change is also going to be intentional. The entities releasing the energy are doing it in order to produce change. That's the whole point. Note that the situation we are facing here on earth is actually not what you would expect from that dynamic. Our current climate change is not directly related to the changes we've unleashed with the industrial revolution. It's an ancillary side-effect, and a particularly annoying one. But even if we didn't have CO2 to worry about, sooner or later we would cause some other change that would disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium. In fact, we've already done that in numerous smaller ways. Lots of species and non-technological civilizations have already gone extinct here on earth. The fundamental problem is that industrial revolutions produce exponential growth, which is not sustainable. Sooner or later that growth has to stop. (Even an arbitrarily advanced civilization is constrained by the speed of light to grow at a maximum rate of N^2 in the long run.) So either we have to decide to stop it or the laws of physics will do it for us, and the former seems unlikely. > why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? It doesn't necessarily, though it is very likely to be a catastrophe for someone. In any major upheaval there will be winners and losers. The reason I think it's likely is that there will always be a period where new technologies cause living standards to improve dramatically, and that induces techno-optimism, a belief that technology will always be able to solve any problem that happens to come down the pike. Techno-optimism will cause civilizations to go closer and closer to the edge of the existential precipice because the Malthusians warning about existential threats will always be empirically wrong until it's too late. > We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point. Yes, that's true. And it's quite possible that on a different trajectory it would have taken 1000 years or 10,000 years to reach the crisis point instead of just a few hundred. But what is killing us now is not CO2 per se, but rather techno-optimism and the prisoner's dilemma. No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living for the greater good of future generations. And that seems to me to be a universal dynamic.
ProjectArcturis 4y ago
But even before the Industrial Revolution, technology was advancing shockingly quickly, at least on cosmological timescales. If there were no commercially exploitable fossil fuels, would we have simply developed better wind and water energy? Even primitive solar (point a group of mirrors at a pot of water to boil it) could have arisen.
- baking 4y ago
  This goes in a different direction, but my thought experiment is to think about what would happen if our civilization collapsed. Assuming you had access to libraries and lots of old equipment, could you ever make a new solar cell or a wind turbine. And the Fermi Paradox is really about becoming a space-faring civilization. You need to do a lot more than boil water to show up on the galactic map.
86J8oyZv 4y ago
I mean, had we gone to nuclear power immediately as soon as we could, we likely wouldn't be where we are today. The window isn't that narrow. But there are definitely certain aspects of our ape brains that make us likely to extinct ourselves.
- mym1990 4y ago
  We certainly wouldn't be where we are today, but it's extremely speculative to know where we would be...could be worse or better. One problem I see with where we are now is that once the ball of inertia of group activity gets going, it is very very difficult to get it to go in another direction.
  - baking 4y ago
    I think the idea is that is certainly feasible for an alien civilization to go from steam power to fission in under 200 years. What makes it a "great filter" in my mind that the idea that the climate change clock might start ticking long before they are aware of it and that there could be a hard time limit. Most other possible filters aren't as tricky. Sure stars explode, planets get hit by asteroids, and species go extinct, but those are pretty much chance events.
    - mym1990 4y ago
      I think at the end of the day, planet destruction, whether it be by asteroids or global warming or anything else…is assured no matter how small the chance is. So the game is multi planet/galaxy settlement before time runs out. The hilarious part of it all is that we have a sample size of 1(and almost not even one since we haven’t hit the filter yet).
      - baking 4y ago
        For Homo Sapiens, this is our big risk. But from the aspect of the Fermi Paradox, I don't think it can be a great filter. Obviously a civilization must be multi-planetary to make contact, and once it is multi-planetary it is no longer threatened in this way. But statistically, it is still low probability. As an analogy, you need to have fire insurance, but most houses in your neighborhood don't burn down (unless you live near wildfires which for the purposes of the analogy I think we can exclude.) I think the pessimistic argument goes something like this. There is at least one great filter, probably more. Through extreme luck, we have gotten past all but one of them and are very close to the last. We may very well be the only advanced technological civilization in our galactic cluster, and if we don't extend into space soon we are at high risk of being extinct or facing societal collapse. It's an imperfect analogy, but what I'm saying is: If I have a lot of neighbors, I don't really care if they all have fire insurance. If I'm the only house in the neighborhood, I really need fire insurance.
Salgat 4y ago
I'm more curious what would have happened if fossil fuels weren't available on the scale present today. It's pretty remarkable if you think about it, it's basically a shortcut to bypass energy generation limitations for several centuries. What if humans came along before fossil fuels had a chance to form? Would we have had an industrial revolution?
- kurupt213 4y ago
  You need oceans and geologic activity for life, so there would always be oil. Coal is from trees dying and piling up faster than they rot…so vascular plants need to develop much earlier than fungi.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    It's by no means inevitable that intelligent life (us) would have deposits of fossil fuels available to jumpstart a high technology civilization, akin to the small bit of "fuel" packed into a seed for the young plant to use until it can sprout and photosynthesize. In fact, I wonder if this is the "great filter" and we've already lucked past it.
    - kurupt213 4y ago
      Oil is the fossilized remains of plankton. Anywhere life develops would have oil eventually.
      - ElevenLathe 4y ago
        Right, if: 1) plankton or something plankton-like develops and generates a lot of biomass, and 2) its remains aren't dispersed or digested by other organisms, and 3) it has time to turn into petroleum, and 4) all of this happens far enough ahead of intelligent life so that it's ready when they need it, and in sufficient quantity to bother. You could build a "Drake equation" model about how likely this is, and maybe it's pretty likely, but it's not inevitable.

by baking 4y ago

stormbrew 4y ago

This assumes a lot of things about alien physiology, structure, and tolerances are the same as humans. It's not hard to imagine the possibility of a species arising that either is less affected by a greenhouse effect or at maybe exists in an environment where it doesn't happen. That's not even getting into the possibility of different paths to energy production. This is always a problem with any Fermi paradox thought experiment. We're extrapolating so much from a sample of 1 and we understand so little about even that one case.

lisper 4y ago
The details don't really matter. What matters is that 1) a new source of energy is discovered which 2) disrupts an existing equilibrium which in turn 3) brings about ecosystem collapse faster than even intelligence can adapt. The exact mechanism by which this series of events plays out is irrelevant.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  It's such a negative thought experiment isn't it? Not saying it doesn't hold some water but man it's bleak.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Yep. I've been in a serious existential crisis over this for the last few years. It's not like disaster is inevitable. We could cut carbon emissions before they destroy technological civilization, or maybe come up with a practical way to (re-)sequester the carbon we've emitted. But right now it is not looking particularly promising to me, and time is running out fast.
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      What are you doing about it? I think if you're that concerned about it, you should be working to solve it, this would surely be the antidote to your worries. Just writing a letter to your representatives would be a simple way to help.
      - lisper 4y ago
        Only if I thought that there was something my representative could do that would solve the problem. The reason I'm in existential despair is that the distance between what I think would need to be done to solve the problem and what can plausibly be done given the realities of our world is vast. Even if we cut emissions to zero tomorrow (which is obviously not going to happen) that would not solve the current problem. I think that if you look at things realistically, we have already passed the point of no return. So what I am doing is searching for someone who can persuade me that I'm wrong and that there is a plausible path forward that does not involve societal collapse in the near future (by which I mean the next 100 years or so). When I find that person I'm going to put a lot of effort into trying to help them succeed. But so far I have not found them. I'm also putting some effort into building a legacy (by which I mean a societal legacy, not a personal one) that our descendants could use to rebuild civilization once the planet settles into a new equilibrium. That will probably be at least a few thousand years from now, so this too is a real challenge.
        bamboozled 4y ago
        If nothing could be done, then why are you stressed, you'll just have to go with it.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  I agree the details don't matter, which is precisely why there's no reason to believe (2) or (3) is universal other than that it's our own experience. You are taking our details and extrapolating them to a universal filter. Most people die of old age. A very small number of people die of being hit by rocks falling from the sky. Only one of these is a broad filter for who survives into the next century that everyone has to go through, but if you only knew the life of one person you could not say with certainty which one it was.
  - lisper 4y ago
    That's true, except that it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow, and it will do so very rapidly on evolutionary time scales. So yes, I'm extrapolating from one data point. But I think it's a plausible extrapolation based on a plausible model of evolution and ecosystems in general. Call it a hypothesis. Nothing would please me more than to have it disproved by evidence.
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      > it is plausible that any major new source of energy is going to disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium somehow Why? Anyways even if I grant that, we then get to ask why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? Certainly the weeds in my unkempt garden would disagree that the lack of equilibrium there is a bad thing. To be honest even the hypothesis that where we are now was inevitable for us seems sketchy and unsupportable. What if we'd had a nuclear race instead of a space race? We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point.
      - lisper 4y ago
        These are fair questions. > Why? Because releasing energy is invariably accompanied by change of some sort. If that energy is released as part of an intentional effort by a technological civilization, then that change is also going to be intentional. The entities releasing the energy are doing it in order to produce change. That's the whole point. Note that the situation we are facing here on earth is actually not what you would expect from that dynamic. Our current climate change is not directly related to the changes we've unleashed with the industrial revolution. It's an ancillary side-effect, and a particularly annoying one. But even if we didn't have CO2 to worry about, sooner or later we would cause some other change that would disrupt the previously prevailing equilibrium. In fact, we've already done that in numerous smaller ways. Lots of species and non-technological civilizations have already gone extinct here on earth. The fundamental problem is that industrial revolutions produce exponential growth, which is not sustainable. Sooner or later that growth has to stop. (Even an arbitrarily advanced civilization is constrained by the speed of light to grow at a maximum rate of N^2 in the long run.) So either we have to decide to stop it or the laws of physics will do it for us, and the former seems unlikely. > why a change in equilibrium universally results in catastrophe? It doesn't necessarily, though it is very likely to be a catastrophe for someone. In any major upheaval there will be winners and losers. The reason I think it's likely is that there will always be a period where new technologies cause living standards to improve dramatically, and that induces techno-optimism, a belief that technology will always be able to solve any problem that happens to come down the pike. Techno-optimism will cause civilizations to go closer and closer to the edge of the existential precipice because the Malthusians warning about existential threats will always be empirically wrong until it's too late. > We actually found alternatives to fossil fuel long before we reached a crisis point. Yes, that's true. And it's quite possible that on a different trajectory it would have taken 1000 years or 10,000 years to reach the crisis point instead of just a few hundred. But what is killing us now is not CO2 per se, but rather techno-optimism and the prisoner's dilemma. No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living for the greater good of future generations. And that seems to me to be a universal dynamic.

ProjectArcturis 4y ago

But even before the Industrial Revolution, technology was advancing shockingly quickly, at least on cosmological timescales. If there were no commercially exploitable fossil fuels, would we have simply developed better wind and water energy? Even primitive solar (point a group of mirrors at a pot of water to boil it) could have arisen.

baking 4y ago
This goes in a different direction, but my thought experiment is to think about what would happen if our civilization collapsed. Assuming you had access to libraries and lots of old equipment, could you ever make a new solar cell or a wind turbine. And the Fermi Paradox is really about becoming a space-faring civilization. You need to do a lot more than boil water to show up on the galactic map.

86J8oyZv 4y ago

I mean, had we gone to nuclear power immediately as soon as we could, we likely wouldn't be where we are today. The window isn't that narrow. But there are definitely certain aspects of our ape brains that make us likely to extinct ourselves.

mym1990 4y ago
We certainly wouldn't be where we are today, but it's extremely speculative to know where we would be...could be worse or better. One problem I see with where we are now is that once the ball of inertia of group activity gets going, it is very very difficult to get it to go in another direction.
- baking 4y ago
  I think the idea is that is certainly feasible for an alien civilization to go from steam power to fission in under 200 years. What makes it a "great filter" in my mind that the idea that the climate change clock might start ticking long before they are aware of it and that there could be a hard time limit. Most other possible filters aren't as tricky. Sure stars explode, planets get hit by asteroids, and species go extinct, but those are pretty much chance events.
  - mym1990 4y ago
    I think at the end of the day, planet destruction, whether it be by asteroids or global warming or anything else…is assured no matter how small the chance is. So the game is multi planet/galaxy settlement before time runs out. The hilarious part of it all is that we have a sample size of 1(and almost not even one since we haven’t hit the filter yet).
    - baking 4y ago
      For Homo Sapiens, this is our big risk. But from the aspect of the Fermi Paradox, I don't think it can be a great filter. Obviously a civilization must be multi-planetary to make contact, and once it is multi-planetary it is no longer threatened in this way. But statistically, it is still low probability. As an analogy, you need to have fire insurance, but most houses in your neighborhood don't burn down (unless you live near wildfires which for the purposes of the analogy I think we can exclude.) I think the pessimistic argument goes something like this. There is at least one great filter, probably more. Through extreme luck, we have gotten past all but one of them and are very close to the last. We may very well be the only advanced technological civilization in our galactic cluster, and if we don't extend into space soon we are at high risk of being extinct or facing societal collapse. It's an imperfect analogy, but what I'm saying is: If I have a lot of neighbors, I don't really care if they all have fire insurance. If I'm the only house in the neighborhood, I really need fire insurance.

Salgat 4y ago

I'm more curious what would have happened if fossil fuels weren't available on the scale present today. It's pretty remarkable if you think about it, it's basically a shortcut to bypass energy generation limitations for several centuries. What if humans came along before fossil fuels had a chance to form? Would we have had an industrial revolution?

kurupt213 4y ago
You need oceans and geologic activity for life, so there would always be oil. Coal is from trees dying and piling up faster than they rot…so vascular plants need to develop much earlier than fungi.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  It's by no means inevitable that intelligent life (us) would have deposits of fossil fuels available to jumpstart a high technology civilization, akin to the small bit of "fuel" packed into a seed for the young plant to use until it can sprout and photosynthesize. In fact, I wonder if this is the "great filter" and we've already lucked past it.
  - kurupt213 4y ago
    Oil is the fossilized remains of plankton. Anywhere life develops would have oil eventually.
    - ElevenLathe 4y ago
      Right, if: 1) plankton or something plankton-like develops and generates a lot of biomass, and 2) its remains aren't dispersed or digested by other organisms, and 3) it has time to turn into petroleum, and 4) all of this happens far enough ahead of intelligent life so that it's ready when they need it, and in sufficient quantity to bother. You could build a "Drake equation" model about how likely this is, and maybe it's pretty likely, but it's not inevitable.