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Thanks for sharing. I think we're seeing a lot of the same thing occurring in these comments. :( You'd probably be interested in my main comment too[0]. The si

Thanks for sharing. I think we're seeing a lot of the same thing occurring in these comments. :( You'd probably be interested in my main comment too[0]. The signal has always been a terrible candidate for alien communication. Classic conspiracy problem where people become fixated on one aspect while ignoring all others. Like Carl Sagan said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary science". It's sad but I think a lot of people just have these deep misunderstandings of what science actually is and how it works. There's also the really unfortunate human bias in how we read people in positions of authority[1]. Science makes you second guess and forces you to consider everything probabilistically. Nuance and detail dominate. Hard truth is that the world is noisy and figuring things out is hard. But I think one of the most important things I have learned in life is that truth has a lower bound in complexity while lies don't. You should make things as simple as possible but to make simpler requires losing accuracy. Just because something can't be explained to a layman doesn't mean the person doesn't understand it, it means the topic is complex. Simplicity only ends up coming after a lot of work and dealing with the complexities. To get side tracked a little, I have a proposal for a great filter: complexity. Any naturally evolved civilization is likely to have brains that preference simplicity and push against complexity. It's natural because complexity simply requires more computational power and that'd be a poor evolutionary strategy. You want enough to get the advantage but nor more. So when these civilizations advance they are likely to get to a point where the system they have created is far more complex that their brains can naturally handle. I think humans are in such a situation right now. No one person can understand the complexities of current issues be that from Global Warming to Geopolitics. We can do these things collectively but not individually. It's absolutely amazing what we've been able to accomplish, but I think if we're to continue we'll also have to recognize how incredible these accomplishments actually are. So the great filter is not some concrete event like Nuclear War or Global Warming (things that there's a good chance those civilizations also face), but the more abstract filter of abstraction itself. Eventually a civilization needs to cross the bridge from where its people can understand enough to navigate major problems of their world to one they aren't. Just seems unlikely brains would evolve fast enough to keep pace, since it is easier to create complexity than to understand it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45034860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45034860 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000418

NoGravitas 1y ago
> I have a proposal for a great filter: complexity. That's one of the interpretations of Gibson's "Jackpot" - that there's just too much potentially dangerous stuff going on, interacting in too many ways to manage. Though I tend to identify global warming (and related environmental damage like deforestation) as the "core" problem at the center of that tangle.
HumanOstrich 1y ago
Your take on complexity as a filter reminded me of a fascinating paper I read. You might find it interesting because it claims that evolution does tend to favor simplicity, except when under a certain kind of pressure. The paper is titled "Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of parasitism: evolution of complex replication strategies" and you can find it at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210441 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210441
- godelski 1y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of that paper. It definitely is interesting! But I'd be careful generalizing too much from it. I'm not saying my proposal is correct but rather just recognizing issues with the paper. The reason for my proposal is that 1) here we are as complex entities. We humans exist. 2) One of, if not the, things in physics we are most confident about is that everything will be in its lowest possible energy state. It's true for the electrons that emit light while doing so just as much as it is true that creatures need to eat more to do more. Notice something subtle but important in the paper. Their focus of efficiency is based on string length and reaction time. They note that string length decreases. Think about this a bit. For these strings to reduce it must mean that there was redundancy or excess in them. If mutations are random then modifying some of the characters in those strings will have no effect. We should also similarly look at parasites and see that these are a lower entropy state, in that they are able to leverage the information from the other "microbes" to perpetuate their own reproduction. They can't dominate because they can't live without the hosts but also at the same time this means they can't mutate as much and survive. There is a self selection bias to the results that isn't being properly accounted for. A survival bias that needs to be accounted for. Now let's contrast to our more complex forms of life that my proposal is being based on. These lifeforms have lots of repetition in their genetic sequences. This is actually an important fact that the foundation of things like CRISPR are based on: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Even the acronym is a bit repetitive (which makes it great!). This is a defense mechanism made so that we're robust to mutations. My proposal is dependent on some complex life already existing. I don't know how to explain how life got to this complex level (something these researchers are working on), just that we are here, that I myself exist. I hope this is not a contentious axiom :) They're tackling a really interesting problem and in no way am I trying to diminish their work. The best way to solve complex problems is to first solve overly simplified variants of them. Even if those result in completely inaccurate results the process is highly beneficial to tackling the more complex variants. Due to this we need to take results being mindful of the context. A post on the Relativity of Wrong hit the front page this morning[0] and it links to a page I've had bookmarked for over a decade. It captures what science is really about: being less wrong. Despite my disdain for that site (because it often runs contrary to the meaning of those words), the sentiment is right. Jun8's comment in [0] hits on this. It's not about being right, because "right" does not exist in an absolute sense. There is always more specificity that can make something more right. So instead, it is about decreasing our error. Just because you can't reach an idealized thing doesn't mean you can't get closer to it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025600

NoGravitas 1y ago

> I have a proposal for a great filter: complexity. That's one of the interpretations of Gibson's "Jackpot" - that there's just too much potentially dangerous stuff going on, interacting in too many ways to manage. Though I tend to identify global warming (and related environmental damage like deforestation) as the "core" problem at the center of that tangle.

HumanOstrich 1y ago

Your take on complexity as a filter reminded me of a fascinating paper I read. You might find it interesting because it claims that evolution does tend to favor simplicity, except when under a certain kind of pressure. The paper is titled "Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of parasitism: evolution of complex replication strategies" and you can find it at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210441 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210441

godelski 1y ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that paper. It definitely is interesting! But I'd be careful generalizing too much from it. I'm not saying my proposal is correct but rather just recognizing issues with the paper. The reason for my proposal is that 1) here we are as complex entities. We humans exist. 2) One of, if not the, things in physics we are most confident about is that everything will be in its lowest possible energy state. It's true for the electrons that emit light while doing so just as much as it is true that creatures need to eat more to do more. Notice something subtle but important in the paper. Their focus of efficiency is based on string length and reaction time. They note that string length decreases. Think about this a bit. For these strings to reduce it must mean that there was redundancy or excess in them. If mutations are random then modifying some of the characters in those strings will have no effect. We should also similarly look at parasites and see that these are a lower entropy state, in that they are able to leverage the information from the other "microbes" to perpetuate their own reproduction. They can't dominate because they can't live without the hosts but also at the same time this means they can't mutate as much and survive. There is a self selection bias to the results that isn't being properly accounted for. A survival bias that needs to be accounted for. Now let's contrast to our more complex forms of life that my proposal is being based on. These lifeforms have lots of repetition in their genetic sequences. This is actually an important fact that the foundation of things like CRISPR are based on: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Even the acronym is a bit repetitive (which makes it great!). This is a defense mechanism made so that we're robust to mutations. My proposal is dependent on some complex life already existing. I don't know how to explain how life got to this complex level (something these researchers are working on), just that we are here, that I myself exist. I hope this is not a contentious axiom :) They're tackling a really interesting problem and in no way am I trying to diminish their work. The best way to solve complex problems is to first solve overly simplified variants of them. Even if those result in completely inaccurate results the process is highly beneficial to tackling the more complex variants. Due to this we need to take results being mindful of the context. A post on the Relativity of Wrong hit the front page this morning[0] and it links to a page I've had bookmarked for over a decade. It captures what science is really about: being less wrong. Despite my disdain for that site (because it often runs contrary to the meaning of those words), the sentiment is right. Jun8's comment in [0] hits on this. It's not about being right, because "right" does not exist in an absolute sense. There is always more specificity that can make something more right. So instead, it is about decreasing our error. Just because you can't reach an idealized thing doesn't mean you can't get closer to it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45025600