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Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

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Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#71

Post by rictic »

m3kw9 wrote: post #59
Houshalter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nick Bostrom says it's one of the worst discoveries we could make. Especially if the life is complex like animal life. That would greatly increase the probability that the great filter is ahead of us instead of behind us.

I really think the great filter is us destroying ourselves from by inventing something that goes out of control or just by war itself.

The great filter can't just be something that wipes out most civilizations, it has to be something that wipes out essentially every civilization, and in such a way that doesn't propagate. I don't think war is enough by itself. Maybe war with the weapons of tomorrow.

If it's as easy to make a nuclear-class weapon as it is to make a microwave, for example. That would probably be the end of us.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#72

Post by bdamm »

autokad wrote: post #61
bdamm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the comparison, but personally I think it only works if we found tool-using behavior in aquatic species that shows they are actively modifying their environment to improve their survivability, so that they can have some meaningful basis for judging us as like them. Such as dolphins using agriculture. Otherwise we're just part of the freak show up where there is more light and less pressure.

" actively modifying their environment to improve their survivability" does a hermit crab count?

No more than bees making a beehive.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#73

Post by Asooka »

deadmetheny wrote: post #41
bdamm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the comparison, but personally I think it only works if we found tool-using behavior in aquatic species that shows they are actively modifying their environment to improve their survivability, so that they can have some meaningful basis for judging us as like them. Such as dolphins using agriculture. Otherwise we're just part of the freak show up where there is more light and less pressure.

Octopuses have been observed using tools, and we're very quickly determining that they are extremely intelligent. If they had longer lifespans and weren't solitary, who knows what they may have become.

Given that they breed fast, I'm a bit surprised nobody has tried to breed sociable octopuses.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#74

Post by Houshalter »

aalleavitch wrote: post #45
Houshalter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nick Bostrom says it's one of the worst discoveries we could make. Especially if the life is complex like animal life. That would greatly increase the probability that the great filter is ahead of us instead of behind us.

Unless we find out that for some reason all life develops at more or less the same rate from the beginning of the universe. In which case our future could be very crowded. That, or the window of technological development that we can detect and are capable of recognizing as intelligent is very small. It's possible that superintelligence is all over the place, but we're unable to perceive or comprehend it, in the same…

>all life develops at more or less the same rate

I don't think that's likely. Earth is billions of years old but we have just been around for a few thousand. If we an alien world had evolved just a few thousand years earlier, it could have colonized the galaxy by now. We can't possibly be synced that perfectly. All sorts of random events, like asteroid collisions, had a huge impact on the timing of our evolution.

>we're unable to perceive or comprehend it

That doesn't seem likely either. An advanced civilization could easily build many kinds of megastructures that would be detectable to us, like dyson spheres. I also think it's very unlikely they wouldn't interact with us. Either to help us if they were moral, or to exterminate us if they were not.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#75

Post by EthereumDublin »

Apparently the ocean on Enceladus is kept warm due to geothermal heat. And that hear is accessible to the water because the ocean’s crust is very porous. Which naturally leads us to ideas like geothermal vents that may have been the source of life on Earth.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#76

Post by Asooka »

diggernet wrote: post #70
mirimir wrote: post #4

I'm reminded of the argument[0] that conscious beings that evolved on worlds like this will be very freaked by the discovery of stuff above the ice. Seeing planets and stars, we humans have always had some sense that there's more to the Universe than Earth. 0) The Killing Star by George Zebrowski and Charles Pellegrino

Or perhaps below the ice, from their perspective. http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/downandout.html

It should be "above" due to the gravity imparted by the planet. Unless the species doesn't develop something analogous to our vestibular apparatus and can't actually tell up from down.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#77

Post by Houshalter »

rictic wrote: post #71
m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think the great filter is us destroying ourselves from by inventing something that goes out of control or just by war itself.

The great filter can't just be something that wipes out most civilizations, it has to be something that wipes out essentially every civilization, and in such a way that doesn't propagate. I don't think war is enough by itself. Maybe war with the weapons of tomorrow. If it's as easy to make a nuclear-class weapon as it is to make a microwave, for example. That would probably be the end of us.

A sufficiently large scale nuclear war could easily set humanity back to preindustrial levels of development. And it's not certain to me that we would ever get back to where we were. The first industrial revolution was bootstrapped by easy to get to minerals and fossil fuels. Many of those have been used up.

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#78

Post by Asooka »

Asparagirl wrote: post #18
mirimir wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is rather the idea in The Killing Star . Also The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin.

Also the classic 1941 short story “Nightfall” by Asimov. Aliens live on a world that is part of a complex solar system orbiting multiple stars, so it’s only nighttime once every two thousand years. At that point, the civilizations look up at the dark sky, perceive that there are many other stars, which shocks them with the enormity of the universe and how small and insignificant they are, and...well, it doesn’t go ve…

Wasn't that an allegory for the spread of Nazism?

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#79

Post by hliyan »

rictic wrote: post #71
m3kw9 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think the great filter is us destroying ourselves from by inventing something that goes out of control or just by war itself.

The great filter can't just be something that wipes out most civilizations, it has to be something that wipes out essentially every civilization, and in such a way that doesn't propagate. I don't think war is enough by itself. Maybe war with the weapons of tomorrow. If it's as easy to make a nuclear-class weapon as it is to make a microwave, for example. That would probably be the end of us.

I personally believe the Great Filter will be psychological. Our will to achieve things and propagate is in our brains. Future generations are likely to ask "Why do we have to move around a lot of matter and energy to achieve very minuscule electrical changes in a bunch of neurons, when we can short circuit the whole process and do those changes directly?"

We're already kind of doing this with drugs and digital simulations...

Re: Chances of E.T. Living Subsurface Ocean of Enceladus Given Major Boost

#80

Post by ComputerGuru »

drewrv wrote: post #15

If alien life were discovered within our solar system, I wonder what the implications for the Drake Equation would be. Assuming panspermia is ruled out, the fact that abiogenesis occured twice within a seemingly ordinary system would imply life is incredibly common.

I don’t see how - mathematically - panspermia could ever be ruled out. Unless they’re non-organic life forms.
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