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Wouldn't this have profound implications for Drake's Equation? If the universe is that much older, then heavy elements have likely been around much longer. If t

Wouldn't this have profound implications for Drake's Equation? If the universe is that much older, then heavy elements have likely been around much longer. If that's true, then the Solar system is much younger than it was yesterday, relatively speaking...

jfengel 3y ago
Not really. Many of the Drake equation numbers have enormous error bars. Which means that the result goes from "We don't really have any idea" to "We don't really have any idea, times two". I suppose you could think of that as a big update to your prior, but it's no change at all to your confidence, which still runs from (0, 1).
- consumer451 3y ago
  Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/384/ https://xkcd.com/384/
Pxtl 3y ago
At this point it's reasonable to assume the great filter is ahead of us. Even in the "13-billion-year-old universe" scenario, even a 1% head-start gives another alien species time to colonize every habitable planet in the galaxy thanks to the miracle of geometric growth... if interstellar colonization is at all possible. Which it almost certainly isn't.
- m3kw9 3y ago
  I think the ideas about needing our seeds spreading across the universe made us very narrow minded. My theory is that the desire to do that is eliminated with advanced enough tech. Say they can create their own universe, dimensions/ virtual worlds/ transfer consciousness/ live forever/etc witch would go against us expecting alien species populating every corner
- cogman10 3y ago
  That assumes that they want to colonize and that our definition of "habitable" matches is close to their own. Perhaps the most common form of intelligent life likes to live without oxygen. Requires very light gravity. Or has a temperature range widely different from our own. I'd assume that if they wanted to spread out, they'd probably have the ability (like we do) to scout out a solar system before sending a ship. Maybe our 8 planets don't have anything of value for the species looking.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    We can ignore all those cases. Because the fact is that carbon-based oxygen-breathing mostly-liquid-water lifeforms must exist out there since they're the only kind we're aware of. And if exotic life does not interact with carbon/oxygen/water life, then those other aliens can still expand freely. And so they should be here already.
    - cogman10 3y ago
      That seems like a logic leap. If you look at what we know about the history of the earth's atmosphere it went through a phase of high sulfur dioxide, then carbon dioxide, then oxygen rich, then what we have today. A very large portion of that was controlled by the specific life that evolved here. It's almost a fluke that we have an oxygen rich atmosphere. There are so many adaptations that could have happened to deal with the various stages of our atmosphere. All we know is it's possible for intelligent life to evolve under these specific circumstances. What we don't know is if these are the only circumstances or if these circumstances are particularly common. What is carbon/oxygen/water life is the only type of life capable of developing intelligence? What if that circumstances that lead to a carbon/oxygen/water rich environment only happen once in a galaxy? And what about the other elements? What if something like iron is, in fact, super rare in the universe on a planet with water/oxygen/carbon. Could you imagine how that might impact the technological growth of an intelligent species? Could you imagine what humanity would look like if the iron age was simply impossible due to a lack of iron? Intelligence is also a weird evolutionary fluke. Maybe there's life on other planets, but the earth went over a billion years with animals before it finally developed a species with intelligence. Whose to say that nat 20 gets rolled often or at all? Then there's the sad possibility that interstellar civilizations are simply an impossibility. It takes too many 1000s of years to colonize anything and so no species has tried. There are just so many factors and the likes of the Drake equation seem to just handwave it all away in a neat little broad overgeneralization.
- AgentME 3y ago
  Why assume it's ahead of us? That would be assuming there are many intelligent civilizations in the local observable universe, facing challenges that are much more insurmountable than the tiny chances of abiogenesis and development of intelligent life. Interstellar colonization sounds hard, but when you include possibilities like self-replicating probes and AI, it doesn't sound so impossible to expect no intelligent life to have managed it yet in a well-populated universe. The possibility of the great filter being behind us (life, complex life, or intelligent life is exceedingly rare) still makes a lot of sense.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    An industrial and expansionary civilisation which came into existence anywhere in the Milky Way 10 Mya, and whose interstellar travel was limited to 0.01c, would’ve colonised Earth while we were still in the process of losing our body fur and interbreeding with Neanderthals. This is fairly recent compared to the age of the universe, and the speeds can be achieved with know (albeit expensive) human technology. If the aliens had self replicating probes (of the robotic kind, not the organics-in-factories kind), the known rules of physics suggest that a Dyson swarm can be built in less than a century, at which point (0) now you have to ask why there are stars to see, and (1) 0.9c is easy, as is going intergalactic, so such a civilisation can’t have been that recent in half the Council of Giants either. That we can see stars and that we exist, says that expanding industrial intelligences like us, either never got to this stage, or are filtered in what currently looks like a small gap between here and there. Misaligned AGI that doesn’t want to expand could be one, so could in-fighting necessarily becoming too easy at the same time as any tech for interstellar expansion. Personally, I think there’s dozens to hundreds of small-ish (think factors of 0.95-0.10) filters, some ahead, some behind.
    - ulizzle 3y ago
      Assuming there is such a thing as other civilizations in the universe, which there is no proof of. Big Filter should leave space debris.
      - 3y ago
mensetmanusman 3y ago
So we are all Korean now?

jfengel 3y ago

Not really. Many of the Drake equation numbers have enormous error bars. Which means that the result goes from "We don't really have any idea" to "We don't really have any idea, times two". I suppose you could think of that as a big update to your prior, but it's no change at all to your confidence, which still runs from (0, 1).

consumer451 3y ago
Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/384/ https://xkcd.com/384/

Pxtl 3y ago

At this point it's reasonable to assume the great filter is ahead of us. Even in the "13-billion-year-old universe" scenario, even a 1% head-start gives another alien species time to colonize every habitable planet in the galaxy thanks to the miracle of geometric growth... if interstellar colonization is at all possible. Which it almost certainly isn't.

m3kw9 3y ago
I think the ideas about needing our seeds spreading across the universe made us very narrow minded. My theory is that the desire to do that is eliminated with advanced enough tech. Say they can create their own universe, dimensions/ virtual worlds/ transfer consciousness/ live forever/etc witch would go against us expecting alien species populating every corner
cogman10 3y ago
That assumes that they want to colonize and that our definition of "habitable" matches is close to their own. Perhaps the most common form of intelligent life likes to live without oxygen. Requires very light gravity. Or has a temperature range widely different from our own. I'd assume that if they wanted to spread out, they'd probably have the ability (like we do) to scout out a solar system before sending a ship. Maybe our 8 planets don't have anything of value for the species looking.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  We can ignore all those cases. Because the fact is that carbon-based oxygen-breathing mostly-liquid-water lifeforms must exist out there since they're the only kind we're aware of. And if exotic life does not interact with carbon/oxygen/water life, then those other aliens can still expand freely. And so they should be here already.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    That seems like a logic leap. If you look at what we know about the history of the earth's atmosphere it went through a phase of high sulfur dioxide, then carbon dioxide, then oxygen rich, then what we have today. A very large portion of that was controlled by the specific life that evolved here. It's almost a fluke that we have an oxygen rich atmosphere. There are so many adaptations that could have happened to deal with the various stages of our atmosphere. All we know is it's possible for intelligent life to evolve under these specific circumstances. What we don't know is if these are the only circumstances or if these circumstances are particularly common. What is carbon/oxygen/water life is the only type of life capable of developing intelligence? What if that circumstances that lead to a carbon/oxygen/water rich environment only happen once in a galaxy? And what about the other elements? What if something like iron is, in fact, super rare in the universe on a planet with water/oxygen/carbon. Could you imagine how that might impact the technological growth of an intelligent species? Could you imagine what humanity would look like if the iron age was simply impossible due to a lack of iron? Intelligence is also a weird evolutionary fluke. Maybe there's life on other planets, but the earth went over a billion years with animals before it finally developed a species with intelligence. Whose to say that nat 20 gets rolled often or at all? Then there's the sad possibility that interstellar civilizations are simply an impossibility. It takes too many 1000s of years to colonize anything and so no species has tried. There are just so many factors and the likes of the Drake equation seem to just handwave it all away in a neat little broad overgeneralization.
AgentME 3y ago
Why assume it's ahead of us? That would be assuming there are many intelligent civilizations in the local observable universe, facing challenges that are much more insurmountable than the tiny chances of abiogenesis and development of intelligent life. Interstellar colonization sounds hard, but when you include possibilities like self-replicating probes and AI, it doesn't sound so impossible to expect no intelligent life to have managed it yet in a well-populated universe. The possibility of the great filter being behind us (life, complex life, or intelligent life is exceedingly rare) still makes a lot of sense.
- ben_w 3y ago
  An industrial and expansionary civilisation which came into existence anywhere in the Milky Way 10 Mya, and whose interstellar travel was limited to 0.01c, would’ve colonised Earth while we were still in the process of losing our body fur and interbreeding with Neanderthals. This is fairly recent compared to the age of the universe, and the speeds can be achieved with know (albeit expensive) human technology. If the aliens had self replicating probes (of the robotic kind, not the organics-in-factories kind), the known rules of physics suggest that a Dyson swarm can be built in less than a century, at which point (0) now you have to ask why there are stars to see, and (1) 0.9c is easy, as is going intergalactic, so such a civilisation can’t have been that recent in half the Council of Giants either. That we can see stars and that we exist, says that expanding industrial intelligences like us, either never got to this stage, or are filtered in what currently looks like a small gap between here and there. Misaligned AGI that doesn’t want to expand could be one, so could in-fighting necessarily becoming too easy at the same time as any tech for interstellar expansion. Personally, I think there’s dozens to hundreds of small-ish (think factors of 0.95-0.10) filters, some ahead, some behind.
  - ulizzle 3y ago
    Assuming there is such a thing as other civilizations in the universe, which there is no proof of. Big Filter should leave space debris.
    - 3y ago

mensetmanusman 3y ago

So we are all Korean now?