8 ms·
Advanced Civilizations Could Be Indistinguishable from Nature
- chimen 2y agoUnless it's a simulation and stuff exists only when you look at it to save GPU cycles for more important stuff.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- banga 2y agoAdvanced civilizations should be indistinguishable from nature.
- ledauphin 2y agoI read this whole article and I can't figure out what they're actually claiming, other than some version of "we should try to imagine that things might be different than we imagine." can somebody (or ChatGPT) take a stab at making this make more sense?
- tiahura 2y agoAdvanced civilizations may be indistinguishable from nature, as they prioritize sustainability by integrating their technology into their planet’s biosphere rather than expanding destructively. This challenges assumptions like exponential growth and the Kardashev Scale, suggesting that undetectable, harmonious technospheres could be the norm. Researchers argue for rethinking planetary histories, sustainability, and life beyond Earth to better understand the Fermi Paradox.
- sudhirj 2y agoWe’re not considering the possibility that most civilizations will consider progress to be a move to a utopian state of living in harmony with nature, with buried machines. Not paving the planet and the sun with solar panels.
- walterbell 2y agoSales pitch for sustainability tax on space economy.
- tsumnia 2y agoThe 'plastic rock' formations off Brazil [1] may be something? Like if advanced civilizations incorporate some element of time/pressure/environments to something, the plastic that has melted, merged, and reformed into rock formations may produce newer elements that turn out to be breakthroughs? [1] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scientists-disturbing-remote-island-plastic.html https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scientists-disturbing-remote-i...
- AdamH12113 2y agoOne thing that immediately came to mind upon seeing the title is the way that efficient (digital) radio communications look much more similar to noise (due to information density) than old analog communication methods. The article seems to be looking at things from an energy-usage perspective. Why don't we detect Dyson spheres and other large-scale technological projects? Maybe the most efficient ways of harnessing the energy of a planet blend in with the natural processes of the planet itself. Or, as a sibling comment suggested, maybe the civilization that makes (alien) people happiest is one that outwardly resembles the world they evolved in.
- ymyms 2y agoI think it's saying something like: what if it's impossible for a civilization to grow big enough or quick enough with our current technological path to make the bigger steps like harnessing the energy of our star and becoming space-faring. Perhaps instead there's some other path that looks more like nature which is why we can't detect it. Like what if it was easier to master biology, create some kind of biologic computer distributed amongst all the living things on a planet, and load all the consciousnesses of the advanced beings onto that.
- pc2g4d 2y agoThey claim one resolution to the Fermi paradox is that civilizations tend to evolve toward a state that resembles nature (non-industrial or non-civilizational, I'm not sure). So the idea of a highly advanced civilization requiring so little resource extraction, or even being able to entirely synthesize all its resource needs from energy, and manage global resources in a non-destructive way, while letting the natural ecology revert to as close as possible to a pre-civilizational state. So you see small hubs of super-high-density cities, and vast expanses of "nature". Harder to detect from space that way, thus it could resolve the paradox? You can see our own time moving that direction with urbanization and re-greening happening simultaneously, population growth falling, and a huge effort to abolish the use of one particular variety of extracted resource.
- sudhirj 2y agoA lot of sci-fi already makes this premise. The bright future is not one of concrete and metal, it’s sunsets and trees and lakes tended to by invisible robots, with all the ugly machines, generators and data centres buried deep in rock.
- Loughla 2y agoI like the future offered by Iain Banks in the culture series. Nature isn't 'natural'by any sense of the word. But the advanced machines all tend to show an interest in maintaining natural spaces for humans to enjoy. And the machines are part of the beauty as well!
- euroderf 2y agoNo Mind wants to be responsible for a wholly Brutalist petting zoo.
- WillAdams 2y agoOr, a fully biologic solution, even for a space habitat as was envisioned in John Varley's "Gaea" Trilogy: _Titan_, _Wizard_, and _Demon_.
- zabzonk 2y agoTo quibble a little Gaea is not fully biological. For instance, at one point a particle accelerator is mentioned as being in the ship's shell, and both the original (well, latest) Gaea entity and later Gaby are obviously running on some giant supercomputer somewhere. The inhabitants (crew?) are certainly biological, though.
- WillAdams 2y agoWhere does mechanism end and biology begin when the entirety of the structure was made from an "egg" which was sent off to mine a nearby moon? (possibly extending the rings still more)
- sologoub 2y agoThe growth is unsustainable argument is very strange to me. We absolutely have the technology to make growth sustainable, but societies choose to go for other things because overall growth and advancement of humanity is not generally a goal at mass individual level. For example, currently society is busy transitioning to electrified transport. Los Angeles had a vast network of that 80+ years ago (red car light rail system). We also have had nuclear power as an option for a very long time. And yet, red cars were scrapped, rail removed, freeways built, we still burn gas and what not for power, and California has a ban on new nuclear… It’s not that we can’t do all this, it’s that for various reasons we choose not to. It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices. It seems more likely that there will be as many choices and value systems as there are possible life sustaining planets out there. This doesn’t answer the paradox of course.
- darkerside 2y agoPerhaps what you view as unique, quirky human behavior is just one manifestation of a common pattern in advanced intelligence. In the long run, most J curves are S curves.
- Beijinger 2y ago"The growth is unsustainable argument is very strange to me. We absolutely have the technology to make growth sustainable, but societies choose to go for other things because overall growth and advancement of humanity is not generally a goal at mass individual level." Well, it is seventh grade mathematics. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ https://expatcircle.com/cms/why-the-future-might-hold-trouble-for-us-part-2/ https://expatcircle.com/cms/why-the-future-might-hold-troubl... The limits of growth are real. Very real. And unfortunately, many problems we are seeing might be the prelude to the prediction. "It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices." Well, there should be many and we see none. This is not encouraging. While the best idea to look for life is to look for an entropy source, I think advanced live in space may be similar to us. They would need some kind of sensors (eyes, ears) and likely they would have been predators at one stage in the evolutionary path.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoBullshit. Nature evolves through small random mutations. Random mutations can't build structures like Aeroplane or a Watch. That requires thought and creativity. Advanced civilizations would continue to use creativity. And hence making them distinguishable from structures that are present in Nature.
- defrost 2y agoSo birds and circadian clocks accurate to seven years are not the result of random biological mutations?
- hshshshshsh 2y agoYou can tell a bird is built through evolution pretty easily. Lot of give aways in the structure which serves no point or is badly designed because mutations can only change small changes at a time without being able to think through to future. I am not saying random mutations can't build entities that are accurate or can exist in reality. Of course they can. But it's also pretty obvious these structures are result of mutations and not creative thought.
- andsoitis 2y agoAs far as we know, creative thought, at least in humans here on earth, is an outflow of evolution through natural selection. In that sense, creative thought is produced by evolution, and not some supernatural phenomenon. There are some that talk about consciousness and intelligence as something that permeates the universe and hence orthogonal to evolution on earth, but that is highly speculative and not scientific assertion.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoBedrock on Scientific knowledge is also a widely speculative assumption that a physical reality exists outside consciousness.
- Animats 2y agoWell, yes. Organized human civilizations go back 2000-3000 years. Industrial civilization at scale goes back less than 200. A useful starting point is the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830). This the moment when the industrial revolution got out of beta, and, quite literally, picked up steam. Extractable natural resources are somewhat finite. Sometimes, with more inputs, you can get more output. Fracking is a modern example. An older example is taconite, the low-grade iron ore (15% iron) mined after the reserves of high-grade ore (65% iron) were exhausted.[2] Gold and rare earths are extracted at great expense from very low concentrations in the raw material. At some point, extraction in high volume becomes impracticable. We're only two hundred years into high-volume mined resource extraction. The USGS has a Critical Materials List.[3] Most of the current problems are political and commercial, not outright shortages. USGS lists known reserves for mined resources. Most have at least a century of known resources left, but not a millennium. On a time scale of civilizations, that's not long. Recycling is a battle against entropy. Almost all gold is recovered. About 80% of aluminum is recovered. About 60% of steel is recovered. Each time around, you lose some through dispersal into forms not easy to collect and recycle. So that, too, has a diminishing returns problem. Sometime in the future, perhaps closer than the distance in time since Oxford University was founded, most of the minerals will no longer be available in large quantity. It will be a slow, but difficult transition. Biological systems, though, mostly keep shuffling around C, H, O, and N. That's been working for over 300 million years now, pretty much recycling the same atoms. Long term, on the scale of millennia, systems running on the weaker bonds in that space can go on for millions of years. That's the default mode of planetary operation. Energy isn't a long-term problem because forms of energy are convertible, and wind and solar keep working as long as the sun does, at least if there are enough materials left to build generators. That looks like a long-term win on the scale of thousands of years. Millions, though... It's quite possible that industrial civilizations have a finite lifespan, bounded by material availability. Doesn't mean there can't be sentient civilizations. Or that they're limited to "nature". Biological systems can be engineered, too. But you don't get interstellar travel out of biology. Too low-powered. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railw... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite [3] https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/us-geological-survey-releases-2022-list-critical-minerals https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/us-geologica...
- csomar 2y agoI was expecting something along the lines of: A very advanced civilization will exist while hiding signs of its existence; kind of creating a privacy shield as it is aware of potentially dangerous situations if it is discovered.
- fractallyte 2y agoThe problem is that it's very difficult to think in, or even imagine, a new paradigm. Here's the paradigm: the introduction of technology (starting with the wheel?) led us inexorably down the wrong path, and only in this century are we beginning to see its civilization-ending effects. Technology breeds new technology. It's seductive (all those cool mechanical/electrical/quantum-mechanical problems to solve!). It relieves many burdens, and makes life easier - but then leads to explosive population growth dependent on technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process). And attendant to this, pollution and environmental degradation: a slow erosion of life-sustaining processes. The path of technology inevitably leads to a dead end. There's no escaping our vast population: 8 billion individuals is a lot, by any measure. It is the root cause of all our environmental problems. Can we creatively apply new technologies to solve this problem in time to prevent ecological and environmental collapse? We're right in the middle of the experiment, and there's no guaranteed outcome... Imagine if we had chosen an alternative path to "civilization" without mechanical technology - what would it look like? It's easy to mock the idea of "living in harmony with Nature", but what if that's the only way to a sustainable human civilization?
- baq 2y agoNitpick: the wheel is easy. The true revolution was the axle.
- andsoitis 2y ago> the introduction of technology (starting with the wheel?) led us inexorably down the wrong path, and only in this century are we beginning to see its civilization-ending effects. It is interesting to think about what technology harbored the destruction of the civilization said technology ushered in. For context, the wheel is estimated to have been invented around 3,500BC, while we've had structures and systems that resemble and arguably are foundational to today's civilization: the cities that even older than wheels, like Argos, Athens, Plovdiv, Jericho, Thebes, Larisa, etc.
- exe34 2y agoreminds me of the metamorphosis of prime intellect.
- astral_drama 2y agoIronically, you are already more advanced than you can imagine. In your human form, you set yourself apart from existence. Most humans don't identify as the the ground of reality, but you are as much as you are human, just as the rocks and trees are, and so on. OMAM's "Numb Bears" track off their "My Head is an Animal" album is delightful. We are already there.
- smolder 2y agoThere are still plenty of things in nature we don't fully understand. In some sense fungi might be more advanced than us, but nothing on earth seems more inclined towards growth and omnivorous consumption as humans. It's almost tautological that many people think our own qualities are markers of sophistication among lifeforms. We're the best because we act a certain way and acting that way is the best because we do it.
- metalman 2y agoThis has all been "hacked out" in sci-fi, where the techno VS bio ideas have been explored and quiet VS LOUD civilisations are thought through. To put things into perspective, we are still discovering VERY LOUD types of phenominon eminating from deep space, and puzzling over what they might be.And if we can miss and not understand every type of pulsar and black hole collision,stellar mergers, etc ,etc, then it is presumptuous to to speak about exo-civilisations energy signatures in any absolute terms.
- Jach 2y agoSome, probably not all. Same thing with the dark forest idea: some may buy into it, hard to argue none ever making a grab for more. Having so much more stuff seems like a pretty robust dominant strategy against a bunch of smaller terrified entities hiding in the forest lobbing relativistic missiles at discovered others (such lobbing itself being somewhat self-exposing). And at some point shouldn't von neumann probes let one dominate a forest/galaxy if growth to rearrange tons of natural-looking matter really must take vast amounts of time? Article does a bad job summarizing the great filter position, and seems unaware of the follow-up on grabby aliens -- the latter being fairly convincing as a resolution to the paradox.
- novaRom 2y agoI don't know why each time on topics about Advanced Civilizations they mention Kardashev Scale, species of types I, II, etc. ? All those energy-centric speculative ideas are simply stupid. "Civilization" is modern concept and it's not isomorphic to "Intelligence" nor intelligence is a long-preserved property of any system per se. What we know so far is Nature allows to exist systems that can show some unusual (statistically speaking) properties, although connecting those to necessarily "interesting" information-processing formations is IMO wrong. Even AI (eq. AGI) is possibly a short-term phenomenon - who knows if "smart matter" or "smart energy" can ever be distinguishable from their "dark" pairs.
- throw4847285 2y agoThis is science fiction, not science. If Star Trek didn't exist, nobody would think this way. It's wild how art can so powerfully colonize the minds of people to the degree that they believe their unfalsifiable assertions about the universe just happen to adhere to ideas about the world that were designed as metaphors for the human condition.
- MrGuts 2y agoWhen people do not read Stanislaw Lem, they must reinvent him.
- gnarlouse 2y agoYeah bc birds are cameras
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]