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> "One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the re

by huxley 12y ago

> "One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. > That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human." I linked to a reasonable article by him to establish that he wasn't just a nut, but we'll have to agree to disagree on his metaphysical crisis, because the speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me. I think he's drawn attention to some very interesting data, but that's where I get off the bus. Update: I actually watched the video he did with Supreme Master TV, give it a look and judge it for yourself: http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY

gknoy 12y ago
I think "Dianetics-level bonkers" might be overly harsh. If one believes the radiation anomalies are from nuclear explosions, it seems at least remotely plausible that they came from off-planet (because who would do that to their own?). At that pointpoint it's not entirely lunacy to consider the existence of genocidal aliens. None of that means that any of those are true, but each seems to be an explanation that might occur to any normal person who accepts the preceding points. The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect?
- bronson 12y ago
  Dianetics contains progressions of plausible hypotheses to try to make a nutty conclusion look plausible too. Very much like your comment. I wonder if you're reinforcing the statement you're arguing against...?
- actsasbuffoon 12y ago
  Uranium deposits can (under the right circumstances) can form a natural nuclear fission reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest answer is probably correct. What's simpler: A) This is the result of a naturally occurring process that has happened on our own planet. B) Aliens I'm as excited as the next sci-fi fan to shake hands with aliens, but this isn't even remotely close to a reasonable argument.
  - huxley 12y ago
    Interestingly enough, in 2011, Brandenburg thought that was the case too: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf The more recent paper seems like a rehashed subplot from Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" From chapter 11: Morrie grasped his arm, to steady himself apparently, but quite as much for the comfort of solid human companionship. "You know what I think, Ross," he began, as he stared out at the endless miles of craters. "I think I know how it got that way. Those aren't volcanic craters, that's certain—and it wasn't done by meteors. They did it themselves!" "Huh? Who?" "The moon people. They did it. They wrecked themselves. They ruined themselves. They had one atomic war too many." "Huh? What the-" Ross stared, then looked back at the surface as if to read the grim mystery there. Art stopped taking pictures. "How about it, Doc?" Cargraves wrinkled his brow. "Could be," he admitted. "None of the other theories for natural causes hold water for one reason or another. It would account for the relatively smooth parts we call ‘seas.' They really were seas; that's why they weren't hit very hard." "And that's why they aren't seas any more," Morrie went on. "They blew their atmosphere off and the seas boiled away at Tycho. That's where they set off the biggest ammunition dump on the planet. It cracked the whole planet. I'll bet somebody worked out a counter-weapon that worked too well. It set off every atom bomb on the moon all at once and it ruined them! I'm sure of it."
  - jschwartzi 12y ago
    Suppose that it is a result of a natural process. How would you create the conditions necessary for supercriticality given only plate tectonics, an atmosphere, multiple asteroid impacts, and liquid water? One necessary prerequisite is enrichment of the Uranium. We currently use industrial processes to do this. How else might uranium become enriched, absent an industrial process? Are there other elements or isotopes that are also capable of supercriticality? Could those become enriched through a natural process? I'm not arguing against Occam's Razor. I actually think, given those broad questions, that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the simplest explanation(A).
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect? Maybe that's why the entire galactic community didn't want to believe in the existence of Reapers - "Genocidal aliens cleaning up the entire galaxy? Now this is just bonkers!".
- morsch 12y ago
  > because who would do that to their own? Well, as far as we know, 100% of all species who can do it, will do it.
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  The thing about "genocidal aliens" is... one has to assume such aliens have technology "beyond human knowledge" - since we know of no way to travel between stars. Yet the supposed methods that they used against the supposed Martian civilization seem crude and simplistic, something human beings could now if we put resources into the project. Once one begins hypothesizing "things that can do anything in ways we don't understand for reasons we don't understand but occasionally do some things we do understand but again for no clear or unambiguous reason" then one's ability to use Occam's razor is gone. Maybe a spaceship go marooned on Mars and exploded in the process of trying to fix it's warp drive. What are the odds? Clearly we don't know what the odds for any of this. A simpler hypothesis is a supposed Martian civilization wiped out itself. No necessarily true or supported by much evidence but it seems at least sort-of testable since it doesn't assume variables beyond our conception of what's possible. Human civilization has been poised on the brink of large-scale nuclear in the not-too-distant past so intelligence creating world-destroying-nukes hardly seems like that big a stretch.
  - blincoln 12y ago
    "since we know of no way to travel between stars." We don't know of a way to travel between them _quickly enough to be practical for humans_. That's not a problem for machines. They can be patient and take thousands of years.
jerf 12y ago
"speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me." Like so much else, "it depends". If you're sure that's the explanation and no other makes sense, you're bonkers... our knowledge isn't strong enough to make that claim exclusively. However, as answers to the Fermi Paradox go, "Something out there stomps flat anything that looks like a developing civilization", as unpleasant as it may be to contemplate, is definitely in the running. Along with a difficult-to-bound number of other candidate answers, but it's not a crazy one based on the meager evidence we've collected to date on the topic.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  How close are you here to arguing that the probability of a great destroyer is somewhere between 0 and 1?
  - colechristensen 12y ago
    Things that are _unreasonable_ to believe: * That life in our galaxy is unique to our planet given our now solid knowledge that similar planet systems and planets of the correct size in habitable zones are beyond abundant * That intelligent life, given the above, is also not unique to our planet * That some intelligent life is not millions of years more advanced * That there is nothing capable or motivated to wipe out entire planets for reasons to us which seem irrational and murderous --- Lots of folks get confused between the increasing rationality of assuming life exists somewhere besides Earth and conspiracy nuts who think every unusual weather phenomenon and experimental aircraft is an alien. --- The disconnect and irrationality comes from attributing non-Human sentience to unexplained phenomena. If your foot hurts, it's pretty easy to go on WebMD and convince yourself that you have bone cancer. It's not irrational because it's impossible, but because your overactive imagination has chosen the most interesting solution over the most reasonable one. --- Likewise your mind shouldn't be closed to the idea of something we observe in the next century being definitely attributable to extraterrestrial intelligence; but it will take some extraordinary exclusion of natural happenings to make it conclusive.
patcon 12y ago
> the speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me. http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0624 http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0624
- huxley 12y ago
  First two sentences: "This article was written in early 2005, and submitted then to Science. Perhaps predictably enough, it was rejected." Reminder: http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2012/01/30/the-arxiv-is-not-a-journal/ http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2012/01/30/the-arxiv-is-n... The link you provided is interesting speculation, perhaps an amusing philosophical exercise, but if you think it's science, then we aren't talking the same language.
thaumaturgy 12y ago
The PZ Myers article you linked isn't very good though. It would've been a lot better if he had poked holes in the 2014 presentation's argument that analysis "ruled out large unstable natural reactors", or its argument that the data was consistent with "fusion-fission explosions", or its argument that the explosions were necessarily airbursts. But, Myers admittedly doesn't have the expertise to do that. He could've consulted with another subject matter expert, but instead he decided to act as though the very notion of an ancient civilization on Mars getting nuked to extinction is prima facie absurd, and then ended his article with the kind of things you'd expect to hear from a Fox News anchor. And I say this as someone that thinks the chances of any advanced civilization having been on Mars at any point in the past, let alone getting nuked to death, is ... rather unlikely. PZ Myers is probably right, but in this case, it's only accidentally.

by huxley 12y ago

gknoy 12y ago

I think "Dianetics-level bonkers" might be overly harsh. If one believes the radiation anomalies are from nuclear explosions, it seems at least remotely plausible that they came from off-planet (because who would do that to their own?). At that pointpoint it's not entirely lunacy to consider the existence of genocidal aliens. None of that means that any of those are true, but each seems to be an explanation that might occur to any normal person who accepts the preceding points. The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect?

bronson 12y ago
Dianetics contains progressions of plausible hypotheses to try to make a nutty conclusion look plausible too. Very much like your comment. I wonder if you're reinforcing the statement you're arguing against...?
actsasbuffoon 12y ago
Uranium deposits can (under the right circumstances) can form a natural nuclear fission reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest answer is probably correct. What's simpler: A) This is the result of a naturally occurring process that has happened on our own planet. B) Aliens I'm as excited as the next sci-fi fan to shake hands with aliens, but this isn't even remotely close to a reasonable argument.
- huxley 12y ago
  Interestingly enough, in 2011, Brandenburg thought that was the case too: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf The more recent paper seems like a rehashed subplot from Heinlein's "Rocket Ship Galileo" From chapter 11: Morrie grasped his arm, to steady himself apparently, but quite as much for the comfort of solid human companionship. "You know what I think, Ross," he began, as he stared out at the endless miles of craters. "I think I know how it got that way. Those aren't volcanic craters, that's certain—and it wasn't done by meteors. They did it themselves!" "Huh? Who?" "The moon people. They did it. They wrecked themselves. They ruined themselves. They had one atomic war too many." "Huh? What the-" Ross stared, then looked back at the surface as if to read the grim mystery there. Art stopped taking pictures. "How about it, Doc?" Cargraves wrinkled his brow. "Could be," he admitted. "None of the other theories for natural causes hold water for one reason or another. It would account for the relatively smooth parts we call ‘seas.' They really were seas; that's why they weren't hit very hard." "And that's why they aren't seas any more," Morrie went on. "They blew their atmosphere off and the seas boiled away at Tycho. That's where they set off the biggest ammunition dump on the planet. It cracked the whole planet. I'll bet somebody worked out a counter-weapon that worked too well. It set off every atom bomb on the moon all at once and it ruined them! I'm sure of it."
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  Suppose that it is a result of a natural process. How would you create the conditions necessary for supercriticality given only plate tectonics, an atmosphere, multiple asteroid impacts, and liquid water? One necessary prerequisite is enrichment of the Uranium. We currently use industrial processes to do this. How else might uranium become enriched, absent an industrial process? Are there other elements or isotopes that are also capable of supercriticality? Could those become enriched through a natural process? I'm not arguing against Occam's Razor. I actually think, given those broad questions, that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the simplest explanation(A).
TeMPOraL 12y ago
> The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect? Maybe that's why the entire galactic community didn't want to believe in the existence of Reapers - "Genocidal aliens cleaning up the entire galaxy? Now this is just bonkers!".
morsch 12y ago
> because who would do that to their own? Well, as far as we know, 100% of all species who can do it, will do it.
joe_the_user 12y ago
The thing about "genocidal aliens" is... one has to assume such aliens have technology "beyond human knowledge" - since we know of no way to travel between stars. Yet the supposed methods that they used against the supposed Martian civilization seem crude and simplistic, something human beings could now if we put resources into the project. Once one begins hypothesizing "things that can do anything in ways we don't understand for reasons we don't understand but occasionally do some things we do understand but again for no clear or unambiguous reason" then one's ability to use Occam's razor is gone. Maybe a spaceship go marooned on Mars and exploded in the process of trying to fix it's warp drive. What are the odds? Clearly we don't know what the odds for any of this. A simpler hypothesis is a supposed Martian civilization wiped out itself. No necessarily true or supported by much evidence but it seems at least sort-of testable since it doesn't assume variables beyond our conception of what's possible. Human civilization has been poised on the brink of large-scale nuclear in the not-too-distant past so intelligence creating world-destroying-nukes hardly seems like that big a stretch.
- blincoln 12y ago
  "since we know of no way to travel between stars." We don't know of a way to travel between them _quickly enough to be practical for humans_. That's not a problem for machines. They can be patient and take thousands of years.

jerf 12y ago

"speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me." Like so much else, "it depends". If you're sure that's the explanation and no other makes sense, you're bonkers... our knowledge isn't strong enough to make that claim exclusively. However, as answers to the Fermi Paradox go, "Something out there stomps flat anything that looks like a developing civilization", as unpleasant as it may be to contemplate, is definitely in the running. Along with a difficult-to-bound number of other candidate answers, but it's not a crazy one based on the meager evidence we've collected to date on the topic.

maxerickson 12y ago
How close are you here to arguing that the probability of a great destroyer is somewhere between 0 and 1?
- colechristensen 12y ago
  Things that are _unreasonable_ to believe: * That life in our galaxy is unique to our planet given our now solid knowledge that similar planet systems and planets of the correct size in habitable zones are beyond abundant * That intelligent life, given the above, is also not unique to our planet * That some intelligent life is not millions of years more advanced * That there is nothing capable or motivated to wipe out entire planets for reasons to us which seem irrational and murderous --- Lots of folks get confused between the increasing rationality of assuming life exists somewhere besides Earth and conspiracy nuts who think every unusual weather phenomenon and experimental aircraft is an alien. --- The disconnect and irrationality comes from attributing non-Human sentience to unexplained phenomena. If your foot hurts, it's pretty easy to go on WebMD and convince yourself that you have bone cancer. It's not irrational because it's impossible, but because your overactive imagination has chosen the most interesting solution over the most reasonable one. --- Likewise your mind shouldn't be closed to the idea of something we observe in the next century being definitely attributable to extraterrestrial intelligence; but it will take some extraordinary exclusion of natural happenings to make it conclusive.

patcon 12y ago

> the speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me. http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0624 http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0624

huxley 12y ago
First two sentences: "This article was written in early 2005, and submitted then to Science. Perhaps predictably enough, it was rejected." Reminder: http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2012/01/30/the-arxiv-is-not-a-journal/ http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2012/01/30/the-arxiv-is-n... The link you provided is interesting speculation, perhaps an amusing philosophical exercise, but if you think it's science, then we aren't talking the same language.

thaumaturgy 12y ago

The PZ Myers article you linked isn't very good though. It would've been a lot better if he had poked holes in the 2014 presentation's argument that analysis "ruled out large unstable natural reactors", or its argument that the data was consistent with "fusion-fission explosions", or its argument that the explosions were necessarily airbursts. But, Myers admittedly doesn't have the expertise to do that. He could've consulted with another subject matter expert, but instead he decided to act as though the very notion of an ancient civilization on Mars getting nuked to extinction is prima facie absurd, and then ended his article with the kind of things you'd expect to hear from a Fox News anchor. And I say this as someone that thinks the chances of any advanced civilization having been on Mars at any point in the past, let alone getting nuked to death, is ... rather unlikely. PZ Myers is probably right, but in this case, it's only accidentally.