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I have to admit it would be poetic and typical of scientific progress in general that while the religious texts have marked the creation of mankind as the begin

by gfodor 13y ago

I have to admit it would be poetic and typical of scientific progress in general that while the religious texts have marked the creation of mankind as the beginning of the great cosmic opera, with our story as the center, if in fact it turned out we're not only nothing special, but worse: an epilogue, a post-credits reel, an afterthought appearing in a flicker as the lights go out well after the real saga has ended.

arethuza 13y ago
I think that has been fairly clear for a long time - certainly since geologists like James Hutton realised about deep time in the late 18th century: "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time." and "The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an end." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time
- gfodor 13y ago
  I guess my point is that it wouldn't surprise me, given the way science tends to downgrade humans from being at the center of the universe, if we were in fact not alone but instead are one of many intelligent species throughout the galaxy and universe today (while on the lower end of the intelligence scale as our relative lack of time in existence would suggest.) What would be rather surprising but yet poetic to me is if we find out that ultimately humans are special: we are special in our solitude, entering the cosmos in a period of declining intelligent life due to the expansion. It would be a strange twist: we get some satisfaction in knowing we are unique in being an unremarkable, irrelevant, isolated civilization.
jerf 13y ago
While an interesting idea, I have the same objection to that idea that I have to the idea that life in general is abundant today, which is that we should see the evidence of it. Any truly long-lived society is going to have to engage in some cosmological engineering to survive, and we don't see it. Furthermore, while any given species might not have survived from so long ago, life itself should never have died out, if intelligent life was common and abundant. The challenges of surviving that era are such that even we can plausibly imagine being able to meet the challenges in a century, or less if we were concentrating. It's a poetic idea, but the universe does not look like one in which we are some last dying ember living in the carcass of past giants; it looks like one in which there's little-to-no intelligent life in our past light cone.
- andreftavares 13y ago
  If you consider the "infinite" of space and, especially, time, I believe that the probability of the existence of (at least) one "inteligent" species capable of reaching any given place of the universe is 100%. The question of why they don't contact us is simple: Prime Directive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive) Disclaimer: I'm not a particular fan of Star Trek and bumped into this interesting principle, which I believe makes perfect sense.
  - NathanKP 13y ago
    The Prime Directive only works if you assume that these hypothetical species are much more altruistic than we ourselves are. I find it highly unrealistic that any species, however highly evolved, would be 100% altruistic, with no rebels/thieves/slavers/prospectors that would desire to interfere with or destroy us humans. And that's not to mention that realistically it would be almost impossible for a civilization to completely hide its presence. For example as humans our radio footprint from TV and radio and satellite broadcasts is spreading out of our solar system. That's going to keep on traveling and I don't see any way that we'd be able to just "erase" that so that no one else would notice it.
  - jerf 13y ago
    Time is not infinite, and our past light cone is not infinite. It grows as less than the cube of the space we can observe (the universe is very not universally distributed), while the independent probabilities of whatever is required for life multiply exponentially. The idea that the odds of life are 100% is just a naive "Big Numbers" fallacy. The Prime Directive was created to preserve the desired structure of drama on a TV show. It is ludicrous from any other perspective.

by gfodor 13y ago

arethuza 13y ago

I think that has been fairly clear for a long time - certainly since geologists like James Hutton realised about deep time in the late 18th century: "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time." and "The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning,–no prospect of an end." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time

gfodor 13y ago
I guess my point is that it wouldn't surprise me, given the way science tends to downgrade humans from being at the center of the universe, if we were in fact not alone but instead are one of many intelligent species throughout the galaxy and universe today (while on the lower end of the intelligence scale as our relative lack of time in existence would suggest.) What would be rather surprising but yet poetic to me is if we find out that ultimately humans are special: we are special in our solitude, entering the cosmos in a period of declining intelligent life due to the expansion. It would be a strange twist: we get some satisfaction in knowing we are unique in being an unremarkable, irrelevant, isolated civilization.

jerf 13y ago

While an interesting idea, I have the same objection to that idea that I have to the idea that life in general is abundant today, which is that we should see the evidence of it. Any truly long-lived society is going to have to engage in some cosmological engineering to survive, and we don't see it. Furthermore, while any given species might not have survived from so long ago, life itself should never have died out, if intelligent life was common and abundant. The challenges of surviving that era are such that even we can plausibly imagine being able to meet the challenges in a century, or less if we were concentrating. It's a poetic idea, but the universe does not look like one in which we are some last dying ember living in the carcass of past giants; it looks like one in which there's little-to-no intelligent life in our past light cone.

andreftavares 13y ago
If you consider the "infinite" of space and, especially, time, I believe that the probability of the existence of (at least) one "inteligent" species capable of reaching any given place of the universe is 100%. The question of why they don't contact us is simple: Prime Directive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive) Disclaimer: I'm not a particular fan of Star Trek and bumped into this interesting principle, which I believe makes perfect sense.
- NathanKP 13y ago
  The Prime Directive only works if you assume that these hypothetical species are much more altruistic than we ourselves are. I find it highly unrealistic that any species, however highly evolved, would be 100% altruistic, with no rebels/thieves/slavers/prospectors that would desire to interfere with or destroy us humans. And that's not to mention that realistically it would be almost impossible for a civilization to completely hide its presence. For example as humans our radio footprint from TV and radio and satellite broadcasts is spreading out of our solar system. That's going to keep on traveling and I don't see any way that we'd be able to just "erase" that so that no one else would notice it.
- jerf 13y ago
  Time is not infinite, and our past light cone is not infinite. It grows as less than the cube of the space we can observe (the universe is very not universally distributed), while the independent probabilities of whatever is required for life multiply exponentially. The idea that the odds of life are 100% is just a naive "Big Numbers" fallacy. The Prime Directive was created to preserve the desired structure of drama on a TV show. It is ludicrous from any other perspective.