Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#101

Post by BLKNSLVR » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #98

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! This! Fundamental 'human' values are likely entirely at odds with any alien life morality we ever encounter. Thou Shall Not Kill? What about an amoebic life-form that honors its ancestors by absorbing their protoplasm, thus retaining their memories? Honor Thy Father And Mother? An insectoid race may become adult by the brood attacking, killing and eating their parent colony thus proving their fitness. Thou Shall…

Add to that: the speed of interaction. Even on Earth we have everything from Sloth to Hummingbird. How will we get along with Hummingbird aliens? Aliens that move and think at the speed of a Giant Sequoia? Even a tiny mismatch could be disastrous. What if they perceived the world only slightly faster? We would speak at the very low end of their perception; our flickering lights and video images would drive them mad.…

Trees see the world as we see time-lapse photography. There's a line from a Terry Pratchett (I think) book that says something like "The trees wondering who keeps switching the lights on and off".

(I can't find the actual darn quote).

It's poetic. Our time scale is trivial in the scope of the universe, whilst quantum time scales are trivial to ours.

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#102

Post by yencabulator » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #98

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! This! Fundamental 'human' values are likely entirely at odds with any alien life morality we ever encounter. Thou Shall Not Kill? What about an amoebic life-form that honors its ancestors by absorbing their protoplasm, thus retaining their memories? Honor Thy Father And Mother? An insectoid race may become adult by the brood attacking, killing and eating their parent colony thus proving their fitness. Thou Shall…

Add to that: the speed of interaction. Even on Earth we have everything from Sloth to Hummingbird. How will we get along with Hummingbird aliens? Aliens that move and think at the speed of a Giant Sequoia? Even a tiny mismatch could be disastrous. What if they perceived the world only slightly faster? We would speak at the very low end of their perception; our flickering lights and video images would drive them mad.…

Not at all convinced a "tiny mismatch" would be disastrous. Magnitude differences, sure.

> Dogs can take in visual information at least 25 percent faster than humans

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-liv...

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#103

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #102

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that: the speed of interaction. Even on Earth we have everything from Sloth to Hummingbird. How will we get along with Hummingbird aliens? Aliens that move and think at the speed of a Giant Sequoia? Even a tiny mismatch could be disastrous. What if they perceived the world only slightly faster? We would speak at the very low end of their perception; our flickering lights and video images would drive them mad.…

Not at all convinced a "tiny mismatch" would be disastrous. Magnitude differences, sure. > Dogs can take in visual information at least 25 percent faster than humans https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-liv...

In regards to:

> Dogs can take in visual information at least 25 percent faster than humans

Something else mentioned in the Blindsight novel, and actually what gives the book it's title, is (as far as I know) a theory about the 'tension' between the conscious and subconscious parts of the brain; that there's the "lizard brain" essentially subconscious which is usually overridden by the conscious part. There's a passage in the book where the 'alien' is psychologically attacking a character causing them to go blind. The character, however, is still able to catch an item thrown to them because, whilst their conscious brain is unable to process, and therefore react to, visual cues, the "lizard brain" takes over and forces an almost subconscious reaction to catch the thrown item. The "lizard brain" is immune to the blindness-causing psychological attack (something along those lines).

Something about the visual bandwidth available via the optic nerve is rather huge compared to how much bandwidth the conscious brain can actually process. The "lizard brain" is basic, but can process the full spectrum of bandwidth available.

The 'tension' between these two systems in our heads is exemplified (in explanatory notes at the end of the book) in the scenario where one drops something hot (maybe from being held in an oven mitt) and the instant, sub-conscious reaction is to try to catch it, whilst the conscious brain has to process the individual scenario and attempt to override the default response because if we touch the thing, it will burn us.

It's god damn fascinating!

* Disclaimer: The above is my interpretation / memory, it may or may not represent what actually happens or what the author intended to convey.

Edited to add:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#104

Post by tsimionescu » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 7:58 AM UTC

three_seagrass wrote: post #100

tsimionescu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you calculate the probability of an event that we have no idea about? We don't even know for sure that life originated entirely on earth itself - life or some crucial substances required for it could have originated on some other planet with conditions we know nothing about and been brought to earth on some meteorite; or it could have originated in some extreme conditions like a comet tail in close proximit…

Life seeded implies that life still went through abiogenesis somewhere else. I agree that we can't know the exact means, just that abiogenesis happened, but we can still calculate the probability of our conditions needing to occur for abiogenesis to happen.

Of course abiogenesis had to occur somewhere, but if we can't be sure that abiogenesis occurred on Earth itself, it means we don't have any clear idea yet of the conditions necessary for abiogenesis (apart from some a priori knowledge, such as needing to have carbon and water). Perhaps the necessary conditions are extremely strange.

We already know that Earth as it is today can't support abiogenesis, since it's not happening, and judging from the phylogenetic tree, it probably hasn't happened for more than 3 billion years. There is also a reason to believe that even if the Earth was once appropriate for abiogenesis, it only happened once, given that all life on Earth shares the same chemistry (though of course it is possible that there was simply no other way for life to be, or that there have existed other forms of life from other abiogenesis events, but that they simply have not survived).

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#105

Post by JoeAltmaier » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #102

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that: the speed of interaction. Even on Earth we have everything from Sloth to Hummingbird. How will we get along with Hummingbird aliens? Aliens that move and think at the speed of a Giant Sequoia? Even a tiny mismatch could be disastrous. What if they perceived the world only slightly faster? We would speak at the very low end of their perception; our flickering lights and video images would drive them mad.…

Not at all convinced a "tiny mismatch" would be disastrous. Magnitude differences, sure. > Dogs can take in visual information at least 25 percent faster than humans https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-liv...

Look at the earning potential of those with IQ 90 vs 110 - which is largely based upon the subjects speed of answering timed questions. Maybe some enlightenment there...

Woops! Sorry. That google search just leads to a plethora of racist dogma pages with pretend data labelling ethnic groups. I'd hoped for some data across a single population.

Anyway, we learned something from that. Alien races with real significant differences will be treated vastly differently. Just like we unfairly treat one another over insignificant differences.

Re: Could the Earth be an evaporated gas giant planet?

#106

Post by anticensor » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #77

mattkrause wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure we still have plants, though I admittedly haven’t been out of the house much. A lot of carbon was also captured during the aptly-named Carboniferous Period 360-300 million years ago. Woody plants had just evolved, but microbes that could break them down had not. Thus, coal. An earlier drop in sea levels also caused carbonate (as in limestone, dolomite, and iron ores) to precipitate out. The combinatio…

> Woody plants had just evolved, but microbes that could break them down had not. Thus, coal. Does this mean we’ll never have coal again?

We will, but the balance is much more against coal now. We will have it consumed before it is replaced.