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Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#31

Post by roywiggins »

This is a good way to solve problems in NP. First, guess an answer uniformly at random. Check if it's correct (in polynomial time). If it isn't, blow up the planet. Conditioned on surviving, you also have solved the NP problem in polynomial time.

You can also use a world-ending device to prove that this reasoning works. Blow up the world with probability .99999999999. Conditioned on surviving, you will then be nearly certain that quantum hell is real- more certain than about nearly any other physical theory.

The other problem is that depending on how you count, almost all observers are actually hallucinating Boltzmann brains. There are duplicates of us, but there are arguably even more pocket universes with hallucinating brains that just very briefly remember being something like us and then die.

So that's not very reassuring.

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#32

Post by yters »

natch wrote: post #12

It brings to mind the sentient mud puddle. If a mud puddle were sentient, it might marvel at how the mud around it was so perfectly shaped so as to exactly match the shape of the water the puddle was made up of. Amazing. Unbelievable. Couldn't be a coincidence, that there's such a perfect fit. What are the chances that this unique shape of the water outline would be matched exactly by the shape of the mud around it.…

The anthropic principle doesn't make our universe any less surprising. It's like saying "of course I survived that catastrophic accident, otherwise I wouldn't be observing the fact I survived the accident."

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#34

Post by mikeytown2 »

Makes me think about the Fermi paradox [1] and Great Filters [2]. But for all we know the universe could be full of life at chimpanzee intelligence; no way to know unless we send probes [3] or seriously up our telescopes [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(spacecraft)

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#35

Post by baddox »

yters wrote: post #32
natch wrote: post #12

It brings to mind the sentient mud puddle. If a mud puddle were sentient, it might marvel at how the mud around it was so perfectly shaped so as to exactly match the shape of the water the puddle was made up of. Amazing. Unbelievable. Couldn't be a coincidence, that there's such a perfect fit. What are the chances that this unique shape of the water outline would be matched exactly by the shape of the mud around it.…

The anthropic principle doesn't make our universe any less surprising. It's like saying "of course I survived that catastrophic accident, otherwise I wouldn't be observing the fact I survived the accident."

The difference is that we have a decent amount of information on the number of catastrophic accidents that occur and the number of people who survive them. Since that number is known to be low, there’s nothing unsurprising about your own survival of such an accident.

But we don’t know the number of times life has emerged in the universe, except that it is at least 1. Every intelligent life form we are aware of are one “survivor,” but we knew very little about the number of total survivors in the universe. Thus it is a little odd for us to claim that our “survival” is surprising.

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#36

Post by natecavanaugh »

mikeytown2 wrote: post #34

Makes me think about the Fermi paradox [1] and Great Filters [2]. But for all we know the universe could be full of life at chimpanzee intelligence; no way to know unless we send probes [3] or seriously up our telescopes [4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(sp…

This is one is my favorite comments of all time, simply because while I was familiar with the Fermi Paradox, the rest of the links were new and unexpected. Thank you!

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#37

Post by zamalek »

baddox wrote: post #35
yters wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anthropic principle doesn't make our universe any less surprising. It's like saying "of course I survived that catastrophic accident, otherwise I wouldn't be observing the fact I survived the accident."

The difference is that we have a decent amount of information on the number of catastrophic accidents that occur and the number of people who survive them. Since that number is known to be low, there’s nothing unsurprising about your own survival of such an accident. But we don’t know the number of times life has emerged in the universe, except that it is at least 1. Every intelligent life form we are aware of are on…

There's this analogy. It's a bridge representing species progress. If you fall off of it, you are extinct. All life that we know of has fallen off and it is certain that we will too. AI is impressive in this scenario because it exists outside of nature, it might fall "upwards" (towards immortality). This is why I am a proponent of SAI; I would let SAI out of the box. In the larger scheme of things, humans will go extinct, but there is an ever so slight chance that SAI would take pity and take us with to immortality. However infinitesimally possible, it is more possible than impossible that it will take us with it.

Roll the dice. You can't win the lottery if you don't enter it. If it wipes us out, then that is merely the pre-emptive inevitability.

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#38

Post by simula67 »

DoubleCribble wrote: post #5
kldavis4 wrote: post #3

Many worlds hypothesis is the atheistic solution to the observation that our universe appears to be tuned for life.

Not so long ago, it was scientific dogma that all life on this planet was dependent upon photosynthesis. Then some oceanographer types sent some cameras down to the sea floor to look at some hydrothermal vents and... there went that idea! Is our universe tuned for life or is life tuned to its universe?

The argument is also that the universe itself would not exist if certain things did not happen in a very specific way

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#39

Post by lopmotr »

dougdonohoe wrote: post #15

I can't help but think of what the 17 families in Parkland, Florida would think of this article. Especially this quote: “This is a defense against instantaneous, violent death, which you will find was avoided, but anything that sort of maims or injures or mangles you or whatever is still fair game.”

Presumably they'll agree if they're being rational since it perfectly fits the situation. They may have emotional injuries but not instantaneous death.

Don't forget also, that dying in a bridge collapse is just as bad as dying in a common car crash, which happens every single day in America. Those non-newsworthy people have families too.

Re: Why Earth's History Appears So Miraculous

#40

Post by danieltillett »

mikeytown2 wrote: post #34

Makes me think about the Fermi paradox [1] and Great Filters [2]. But for all we know the universe could be full of life at chimpanzee intelligence; no way to know unless we send probes [3] or seriously up our telescopes [4]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(sp…

The Fermi paradox is unlikely to be answered by something making it very unlikely for our chimp level ancestors jumping to human level. The number of Homo species on the planet that co-evolved to human level intelligence suggests this is not extremely difficult.

What is a huge filter is the requirement of a stable climate over million of years. The key to this is the Moon which keeps the Earth's axis of rotation from wandering over a wide angle on geological timescales. The Moon is so large and unlikely (we still don't have a good theory for how it was formed and captured by the Earth) that this alone could explain the lack of other intelligent life in the visible universe.

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