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I wonder how likely is it for an advanced civilization to exist out there without having discovered electromagnetism. In the book “Project Hail Mary” by Andy W

I wonder how likely is it for an advanced civilization to exist out there without having discovered electromagnetism. In the book “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, Eridians who are at a similar stage as humans were oblivious to Ionizing Radiation and Relativity.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago
That was us until the early 1800s. So I would say likely.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  What's the definition of "advanced" here? Also our sample size is 1. This is all speculation, none of it has any practical meaning since we know nothing about even where life on earth came from. Let alone if it exists elsewhere. I love science fiction but we should not get it confused with reality.
boringuser2 4y ago
Not buying it. Humans are barely intelligent enough to be at any level of development. We don't have great apes beat by as much as people think. It's conceivable to me that we are the absolute minimum level of intellect to be a species that can develop tools allowing us to escape our ancestral environment.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  It's important to note first of all that we haven't meaningfully escaped Earth's gravity well. Our models seem to make it possible, I'm sure it can be done, I'm sure we can even get to other stars without changing our understanding of physics. At the same time the notion of "absolute minimum level of intellect" is somewhat poorly defined. It's somewhat hard to imagine, but there could be a set of physics theories that don't include relativity or gravity or any of our familiar concepts, but still enable interstellar travel. Maybe another civilization skipped our fragmentary and incorrect understanding and hit directly on a unified field theory. Or maybe we both have fragmentary and incorrect understandings, both are essentially wrong in every way, and yet they are close enough for practical purposes. Is the civilization which developed the more practical model of physics "smarter" or just lucky? Does "smarter" mean that you develop a model of physics which is closer to ground truth, or one that enables you to build better spacecraft, or one that enables you to build better computers?
- mcv 4y ago
  I don't understand this sort of comment. We obviously have the other great apes beat by an enormous amount. Our impact on our own environment is so big that we can cause planet-scale mass extinctions, either intentionally or unintentionally. We have left the surface of our planet, walked on the moon (well, some of us have), we have detailed theories explaining all sorts of phenomena about the world we live in, we have advanced tools for the weirdest things. Meanwhile we're impressed when an ape uses a tool in a clever way. We obviously don't know enough to travel in person to distant stars, and we don't even know whether or not that might one day be possible, but we can consider the possibility, which is something other great apes can't.
  - boringuser2 4y ago
    That isn't because we are substantially smarter than apes, it's because only marginal gains had large results. If anything, it's a reaffirmation of the original point.
xtagon 4y ago
What if they evolved to use radiation as a sensory input/output as a form of communication, as humans have with sound? That civilization might then be more cautious to radiation as "noise", and perhaps use sound as we do radio waves. I don't know anything about this stuff, it's just a fun armchair thought.
deleted 4y ago
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PM_me_your_math 4y ago

That was us until the early 1800s. So I would say likely.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago
What's the definition of "advanced" here? Also our sample size is 1. This is all speculation, none of it has any practical meaning since we know nothing about even where life on earth came from. Let alone if it exists elsewhere. I love science fiction but we should not get it confused with reality.

boringuser2 4y ago

Not buying it. Humans are barely intelligent enough to be at any level of development. We don't have great apes beat by as much as people think. It's conceivable to me that we are the absolute minimum level of intellect to be a species that can develop tools allowing us to escape our ancestral environment.

lukeschlather 4y ago
It's important to note first of all that we haven't meaningfully escaped Earth's gravity well. Our models seem to make it possible, I'm sure it can be done, I'm sure we can even get to other stars without changing our understanding of physics. At the same time the notion of "absolute minimum level of intellect" is somewhat poorly defined. It's somewhat hard to imagine, but there could be a set of physics theories that don't include relativity or gravity or any of our familiar concepts, but still enable interstellar travel. Maybe another civilization skipped our fragmentary and incorrect understanding and hit directly on a unified field theory. Or maybe we both have fragmentary and incorrect understandings, both are essentially wrong in every way, and yet they are close enough for practical purposes. Is the civilization which developed the more practical model of physics "smarter" or just lucky? Does "smarter" mean that you develop a model of physics which is closer to ground truth, or one that enables you to build better spacecraft, or one that enables you to build better computers?
mcv 4y ago
I don't understand this sort of comment. We obviously have the other great apes beat by an enormous amount. Our impact on our own environment is so big that we can cause planet-scale mass extinctions, either intentionally or unintentionally. We have left the surface of our planet, walked on the moon (well, some of us have), we have detailed theories explaining all sorts of phenomena about the world we live in, we have advanced tools for the weirdest things. Meanwhile we're impressed when an ape uses a tool in a clever way. We obviously don't know enough to travel in person to distant stars, and we don't even know whether or not that might one day be possible, but we can consider the possibility, which is something other great apes can't.
- boringuser2 4y ago
  That isn't because we are substantially smarter than apes, it's because only marginal gains had large results. If anything, it's a reaffirmation of the original point.

xtagon 4y ago

What if they evolved to use radiation as a sensory input/output as a form of communication, as humans have with sound? That civilization might then be more cautious to radiation as "noise", and perhaps use sound as we do radio waves. I don't know anything about this stuff, it's just a fun armchair thought.

deleted 4y ago

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