4 ms·

Looking at the rate of technological progress, my bets are that intelligent life that spreads intergalactically takes extremely small time to do so (relative to

Looking at the rate of technological progress, my bets are that intelligent life that spreads intergalactically takes extremely small time to do so (relative to the expected time to randomly spawn life from fluctuations). So the odds of two simultaneous fluctuations competing is nearly zero. We're just the first, and it is the normal thing to expect to be the first. With sufficiently high ratio between these two durations, most observers in most universes would be the first ones. Being first isn't special, it's actually the most common.

vlovich123 4y ago
Why do you conclude we’re the first?
- last_responder 4y ago
  Hubris, bravado and ego most likely. There is no evidence of any sort that would indicate this so this thought has to have manifested itself from some fantasy.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    This is an ad hominem argument. "If you believe this theory, you are a bad person, therefore the theory must be wrong."
    - bicijay 4y ago
      Hmm i dont think so in this case. We dont really have any evidence for this theory, so the thought of "we are the first" might be coming from those adjectives he just said. Not that they are bad, but it might just be true.
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        I do think so. The motivation of the person stating the theory is entirely irrelevant to the correctness of the theory. Bringing it up is nothing but an attempt to disparage the theory by illegitimate means.
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    On the contrary, all the evidence supports it. We have spent significant time and resources looking for extraterrestrial life and found nothing.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Is the zeroth I'm worried about.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    > There is no evidence of any sort that would indicate this so this thought has to have manifested itself from some fantasy. Actually I think you got that backwards. It’s not fantasy, considering that the only evidence that we have that life exists at all are ourselves and what we have on this planet. Of course it’s logical to assume that life exists elsewhere because the math and universe’s scale is staggering and it’s reasonable to assume that if there is life elsewhere some could be more advanced than us. However, until we find someone or something else, all the evidence we have is on this blue marble of ours…so if we are only going to believe what the evidence currently tells us…it’s that we are the only or first emergence of life. All the rest—conjecture and faith. In essence other civilizations are the fantasy until more evidence is provided to the contrary.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but, and we don't know if there will be others. Given that we believe the universe to be infinite, we could be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3 billionth, etc. But one thing is for sure, we're on the list, but our likelihood of correctly guessing our position on the list is 1/Infinity. However, if we assume that there is SOME constraint, then that list is no longer infinite. Instead of our 'guess accuracy' being effectively 0, it's 1/<list length>. If there are 3 billion, we might be 3 billionth, but if there are 2 billion, we are definitely not 3 billionth. The same follows all the way down to if there are only two, we may be either first or second. We know that there is at LEAST one, so if we guess first, we're at least certainly not guessing out of range. The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. Therefore it is a more logical conclusion—although clearly it should not be parroted as a fact.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    I think that depends on the size of the universe. If the universe really is infinite, I don’t think we can say anything about where we are on the list. Even if only one star in a billion galaxies has intelligent life, there could already be an infinite number of civilizations ahead of us.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but I'd say we do: - we have plenty of evidence that at a given point of time, our knowledge/evidence is incomplete (consider the history of science) - so, since we are at a given point in time, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. - we have plenty of evidence that how things appear to people (say: no evidence) is very often other than how it really is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... > The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. This seems very unintuitive to me, is it possible to demonstrate this in some sort of a mathematical form (And: is the only possible probabilistic calculation one could do)?
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  There are three time periods: before there is any intelligent life, during the spread of the first intelligent life, and afterwards where it's already extremely unlikely to be independent of the first life. If you assume life spreads very fast, the first duration being much much longer than the second, and the third duration has no room for independent life to exist, it means in most universes most observers are the first. Only if a second life somehow develops during the second time window despite the expectation time being the first time window, you'll have a chance of not being the first. The time for a critical fluctuation to arise is much much longer than the time it takes for it to dominate, so most critical fluctuations are the first. Universe isn't infinite because we know it started with the big bang. We're likely the first in whatever scale it is likely that life can spread to faster than develop independently. So we're likely be the first anywhere we'll ever be able to reach.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    > Universe isn't infinite because we know it started with the big bang. We don't know that whatever was created then was not infinitely large. Also, we don't know how large it is now, due to inflation phase of the big bang creating a space so large that we're still receiving light/signals today that were outside our visible space yesterday.
throw_me_5555 4y ago
There is pbs space video https://youtu.be/uTrFAY3LUNw https://youtu.be/uTrFAY3LUNw about topic.
mannykannot 4y ago
We have one example of life beginning and zero examples of intelligent life that spreads intergalactically. About the most favorable thing one can say for your hypothesis is that we have insufficient data to rule it out.

vlovich123 4y ago

Why do you conclude we’re the first?

last_responder 4y ago
Hubris, bravado and ego most likely. There is no evidence of any sort that would indicate this so this thought has to have manifested itself from some fantasy.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  This is an ad hominem argument. "If you believe this theory, you are a bad person, therefore the theory must be wrong."
  - bicijay 4y ago
    Hmm i dont think so in this case. We dont really have any evidence for this theory, so the thought of "we are the first" might be coming from those adjectives he just said. Not that they are bad, but it might just be true.
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      I do think so. The motivation of the person stating the theory is entirely irrelevant to the correctness of the theory. Bringing it up is nothing but an attempt to disparage the theory by illegitimate means.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  On the contrary, all the evidence supports it. We have spent significant time and resources looking for extraterrestrial life and found nothing.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Is the zeroth I'm worried about.
- kcplate 4y ago
  > There is no evidence of any sort that would indicate this so this thought has to have manifested itself from some fantasy. Actually I think you got that backwards. It’s not fantasy, considering that the only evidence that we have that life exists at all are ourselves and what we have on this planet. Of course it’s logical to assume that life exists elsewhere because the math and universe’s scale is staggering and it’s reasonable to assume that if there is life elsewhere some could be more advanced than us. However, until we find someone or something else, all the evidence we have is on this blue marble of ours…so if we are only going to believe what the evidence currently tells us…it’s that we are the only or first emergence of life. All the rest—conjecture and faith. In essence other civilizations are the fantasy until more evidence is provided to the contrary.
d1sxeyes 4y ago
Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but, and we don't know if there will be others. Given that we believe the universe to be infinite, we could be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3 billionth, etc. But one thing is for sure, we're on the list, but our likelihood of correctly guessing our position on the list is 1/Infinity. However, if we assume that there is SOME constraint, then that list is no longer infinite. Instead of our 'guess accuracy' being effectively 0, it's 1/<list length>. If there are 3 billion, we might be 3 billionth, but if there are 2 billion, we are definitely not 3 billionth. The same follows all the way down to if there are only two, we may be either first or second. We know that there is at LEAST one, so if we guess first, we're at least certainly not guessing out of range. The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. Therefore it is a more logical conclusion—although clearly it should not be parroted as a fact.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  I think that depends on the size of the universe. If the universe really is infinite, I don’t think we can say anything about where we are on the list. Even if only one star in a billion galaxies has intelligent life, there could already be an infinite number of civilizations ahead of us.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Because we have no evidence to suggest we are anything but I'd say we do: - we have plenty of evidence that at a given point of time, our knowledge/evidence is incomplete (consider the history of science) - so, since we are at a given point in time, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility that we may still be in a position of non-omniscience. - we have plenty of evidence that how things appear to people (say: no evidence) is very often other than how it really is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence... > The probability, without any other information to the contrary, of us being 'first' is higher than the probability of us being 'second' or any other possible point on the list. This seems very unintuitive to me, is it possible to demonstrate this in some sort of a mathematical form (And: is the only possible probabilistic calculation one could do)?
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
There are three time periods: before there is any intelligent life, during the spread of the first intelligent life, and afterwards where it's already extremely unlikely to be independent of the first life. If you assume life spreads very fast, the first duration being much much longer than the second, and the third duration has no room for independent life to exist, it means in most universes most observers are the first. Only if a second life somehow develops during the second time window despite the expectation time being the first time window, you'll have a chance of not being the first. The time for a critical fluctuation to arise is much much longer than the time it takes for it to dominate, so most critical fluctuations are the first. Universe isn't infinite because we know it started with the big bang. We're likely the first in whatever scale it is likely that life can spread to faster than develop independently. So we're likely be the first anywhere we'll ever be able to reach.
- trashtester 4y ago
  > Universe isn't infinite because we know it started with the big bang. We don't know that whatever was created then was not infinitely large. Also, we don't know how large it is now, due to inflation phase of the big bang creating a space so large that we're still receiving light/signals today that were outside our visible space yesterday.

throw_me_5555 4y ago

There is pbs space video https://youtu.be/uTrFAY3LUNw https://youtu.be/uTrFAY3LUNw about topic.

mannykannot 4y ago

We have one example of life beginning and zero examples of intelligent life that spreads intergalactically. About the most favorable thing one can say for your hypothesis is that we have insufficient data to rule it out.