Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist • Hacker News Board

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#31

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

jobigoud wrote: post #27

stcredzero wrote: post #24

I don't think societies/civilizations are a viable organization scheme on cosmic time scales. What if very advanced civilizations all reorganize themselves into symbiotic aggregations of less-than-wholly-individual entities? Communications between these entities inhabiting virtual reality is so fast that the aggregate seems like a hyper-intelligent hive mind to human-like sentience? If we take mind upload as a given,…

> What if [...] all "all" is usually the key issue with solutions to the Fermi paradox. We can certainly find reasons for any given civilization to go the other way, but it's more difficult to argue that all of them do.

There are very strong reasons to believe that all civilizations (multitudes of independent, individualistic semi-cooperating sentient creatures) are inherently chaotic and therefore unstable. There are loads of arguments as to why they are doomed to fail, or to try to expand exponentially. If we take a cold and realistic eye to technological civilizations, they do seem doomed to self-destruct or "sublime" into something incomprehensible. There aren't many examples in nature of things that are the confluence of two or more super-exponential processes that are long-term stable. (In our case, those would be population, energy use, and technological change.) In fact, I think there are basically none.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#32

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

api wrote: post #29

stcredzero wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if someone is off by just one percentage point, then they're 13 million years ahead. There needs to be something so unlikely about sentient life, that it only arises approximately one at a time in each galaxy, or the Fermi paradox would apply.

This hypothesis works best if we propose an extremely narrow developmental range. Of course since we have basically no data, we can't actually argue either way beyond vague hand-wavey speculation. You can't calculate standard deviation from a sample size of one.

In general, sub percentage point uniformity is taken as evidence of a very strong synchronization mechanism. The extreme uniformity of the cosmic ray background was taken as evidence of inflation, which is quite an extreme position, if you look at the numbers.

That such a synchronization mechanism should work with such precision over the entire universe seems very unlikely. Filtering would not require synchronization, so that seems much more likely.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#33

Post by coldtea » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:49 PM UTC

They call economics a "dismal science", but I find such attempts at 'astrophysics' (or whatever this and stuff like the Drake equation are called) even more dismal...

Tons of unknown variables filled-in with vigorous hand waving, ad-hoc and unproven assumptions left and right, etc, and some high school math thrown in for good measure...

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#34

Post by eridius » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #25

eridius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 reasons come to mind: 1. Advanced societies have probably solved the aging problem, leading to either extremely long lives or effective immortality. As long as these societies keep reproducing (and they will, unless they deliberately engineer out the urge to procreate, which I consider to be unlikely), they'll need space to spread out. Sure, they could probably pack themselves like sardines into a single solar syst…

1. Advanced societies have probably solved the aging problem, leading to either extremely long lives or effective immortality. As long as these societies keep reproducing (and they will, unless they deliberately engineer out the urge to procreate, which I consider to be unlikely), they'll need space to spread out. If they had as little agency around the issue of population control as you suggest, this makes me questi…

I did not suggest that they have little agency around population control. What I suggested was that aliens will continue to want to have children, and so space will be needed for those children given that the parents won't be dying any time soon.

Beyond that, if you have effectively infinite space and resources, there's no need at all to have even the slightest bit of population control. Population control is only necessary to ensure adequate resources (including space to live) for everybody. But when there's no constraint on resources, there's no reason why anybody shouldn't have as many children as they desire.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#35

Post by coldtea » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

xemoka wrote: post #30

sgt101 wrote: post #23

I wonder what ants think of airports? Or what mice believe about tube trains as they scuttle under the platform. We are separated from mice (or at least somewhat similar animals) by approximately 40m years of evolution, I think that the separation to a Galaxy altering level entity would be much more profound, and frankly we wouldn't understand what it was if it came and tickled us.

We are in no way separated by 40m years of evolution. Our common ancestor 'is'. That mouse you see today has been evolving just as long as you have, but with different priorities.

Technically yes, but practically the mouse reached a more or less standard form millions of years ago, in a local maximum, and we've been developing into all that we are mostly far more recently and represent a far more advanced form with lots of metrics (fitness to local environment is not the be all end all metric -- just the one evolution uses).

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#36

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:54 PM UTC

vox_mollis wrote: post #13

nostrademons wrote: post #3

Plot twist: the "dark matter" in the universe actually consists of Type III societies harnessing the electromagnetic radiation of their galaxies by a means as-yet unknown to us.

Unfortunately, this idea has been explored and discarded. Thermodynamics requires the emission of detectable EM energy from such shells, just at longer wavelengths. We'd expect to see dark matter emitting in microwave or IR, but we don't.

It doesn't require that a Dyson Sphere be an isotropic radiator, though. It could be emitting its heat in a different direction.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#37

Post by coldtea » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #16

cwmma wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like maybe there is a very good reason NOT to be emitting radiation at that obvious wavelength, because we might not be the only ones looking...

We are very secure trough obscurity.

Security through obscurity give huge success at minimal effort.

It might not be 100% secure but it's not meant to be, either. Just more secure than nothing.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#38

Post by metaphorm » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #15

Why would technologically advanced species explore the (mostly empty) universe, when they can sit inside their holodecks and have much more fun?

because the holodecks can only show them what they already know and what they can imagine. the (mostly empty) universe can show them things they were not yet capable of imagining.

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#39

Post by ep103 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #33

They call economics a "dismal science", but I find such attempts at 'astrophysics' (or whatever this and stuff like the Drake equation are called) even more dismal... Tons of unknown variables filled-in with vigorous hand waving, ad-hoc and unproven assumptions left and right, etc, and some high school math thrown in for good measure...

I think you're taking a wrong look at this paper. This paper isn't actually about whether or not type 3 societies exist. This paper is about the fact that there appear to be no galactic clusters that show a particularly abnormal, greater, amount of electromagnetic emission than the known standard. Which, actually, I'm pretty dang surprised hasn't been searched for already. Then, in order to be a little whimsical and make sure the paper gets read, (s)he explains where they came up with the idea for this experiment.

Seems to me like a completely rationale thing to measure about the universe. Imagine if the result had come back true?

Re: Type III Societies (Apparently) Do Not Exist

#40

Post by xiphias » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

maxander wrote: post #28

Could be great news- it rules out (within some limitations) most of the really bad paperclip-maximizer scenarios. At least if society is doomed we'll only doom ourselves, and not the entire Milky Way! One takes what cheer one can get when pondering this sort of subject.

It means it won't take long after we are doomed. Singularity which can bring doom and eternal life comes at almost the same time. I would pick longevity over Singularity any time.