5 ms·
That argument seems to violate the basic rules of exponentials. If an advanced species did settle on an stasis, then that will only last until some subset of th
by AlanSE 4y ago
That argument seems to violate the basic rules of exponentials. If an advanced species did settle on an stasis, then that will only last until some subset of the population decides to go beyond the stasis. Particularly for a space-faring civilization, the time scales and resources are so fast, that any multiplication factor beyond unity will eventually go bananas. Any individuals with the prerogative to multiply will swamp those who lack it, same with Earth evolution. The selfish gene will prevail unless there is centralized control.
I don't have any problem with this reading - advanced space-fairing beings have never existed in our light cone. SETI won't find anything because there's nothing there. We have a good chance of making it ourselves, but it's 50/50 because we have no priors, our decisions actually matter.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoBut in real life, it never actually is an exponential. There always is some limiting resource or saturation point or something, that turns it from an exponential into an S curve. An argument based on "the basic rules of exponentials" typically ignores second-order effects (there seem to always be some, even if we may not be able to see them in advance). > that will only last until some subset of the population decides to go beyond the stasis. You are assuming that they can go beyond the stasis. I'm not sure that's a valid assumption.
- Nevermark 4y agoWell yes, after the distance to the our solar system’s other resources, the next pauses in exponential expansion would be crossing to the next star system, then the spaces to other galaxies, and then to other galaxy clusters. There are not a lot of opportunities to saturate & stall once we sustainably develop resources beyond Earth And stalls or extinctions due to conflict become very unlikely after we colonize a few systems
- btilly 4y agoIt never is truly an exponential in the limit, but exponential growth for surprisingly long times is very common.
- thereddaikon 4y agoI think the answer is pretty obvious, we are the precursor species. Or it could be any number of things other than nobody out there. For example, advanced life could be out there but it might be rare enough that you only end up with a handful of space capable civilizations at any one time. The milky way is a big place. If we assume that ultimately there isn't a clever way around the speed of light then two civilizations on the opposite side of the galaxy will never encounter each other. Or maybe its rare enough that you are only likely to have at a time in a galaxy. Or maybe the prerequisite tech to thrive on an interstellar level means they simply aren't detectable by out primitive sensors. Poor backwards humans, still using the electromagnetic spectrum to measure things! Hell, we could have a Prime Directive situation on our hands too. Although I think that one is really really unlikely.
- damontal 4y agoor we are in a simulation
- hackernudes 4y agoThat doesn't really solve the problem because the simulation is (apparently) big enough to allow life to evolve. Why couldn't life evolve multiple times in a simulation? Isn't the argument about simulation more about pondering the question "what is the fundamental nature of reality?", not "why is there life?". If you say that some beings are interfering with our simulation (either designing life, or preventing other life, etc...), that is just another word for god.
- ngvrnd 4y ago"Why couldn't life evolve multiple times in a simulation?" Because the Grad Students don't want it to, and act to prevent it? :-)
- thereddaikon 4y agoWhy would they bother making a sim that big if it was empty? Even No Man's Sky is full of cookie cutter creatures.
- lisper 4y ago> the basic rules of exponentials A space-faring civilization cannot expand faster than O(n^2) because physics.
- AlanSE 4y agoYes, this is true but only from the reference frame of the cosmic background radiation. It is still possible that you can get O(n^3) from the reference frame of the aliens themselves, because time dilation makes travel fairly fast. You get into some spacetime philosophy about what metrics are worth evaluating O against in the first place.
- lisper 4y agoOK, but even O(n^3) is still polynomial, not exponential. That matters. There's a reason that P=?NP is a thing.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoThere's no exogenous law that exponential trends continue indefinitely. In fact I'd argue it's much more common to see sigmoid behavior where eventually negative feedback loops cause a plateau.