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The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

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Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#61

Post by Nevermark »

sameerds wrote: post #53
Nevermark wrote: post #22

> Furthermore, light-speed lag and distance mean that child civilizations must be functionally independent of parent cultures. Makes me wonder if a solar system wide civilization, with trillions of beings, wouldn't invest in ships to go to the next system, extract resources, and create a stream of resources ships going back to the original solar system. That might sound uneconomical. Why not just go to the other syst…

> Makes me wonder if a solar system wide civilization, with trillions of beings, wouldn't invest in ships to go to the next system, extract resources, and create a stream of resources ships going back to the original solar system. You mean colonize and feed the empire?

Exactomundo.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#62

Post by Nevermark »

qayxc wrote: post #42
Nevermark wrote: post #22

> Furthermore, light-speed lag and distance mean that child civilizations must be functionally independent of parent cultures. Makes me wonder if a solar system wide civilization, with trillions of beings, wouldn't invest in ships to go to the next system, extract resources, and create a stream of resources ships going back to the original solar system. That might sound uneconomical. Why not just go to the other syst…

> Long distance/time dependencies could develop and be naturally maintained via complex decentralized indirect but intertwined economic arrangements. But that would require causality-breaking FTL, no? Otherwise the speed of light itself would create enough of an obstacle to make any trade impractical. Property rights only work if they are enforceable, which is the case on Earth but not over interstellar distances.

If a system is distributed enough, with complex financial and legal dependencies, a great deal of indirection becomes stable, because to violate the indirection would put so many direct relationships in peril.

And when there is reliability, even over vast distances and time, that future-value can be traded as today-value. With risk assessments of course, but this is how a great deal of the economy works. More and more of the economy, as it becomes growth and innovation focused, operates on the currency of expectation.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#63

Post by bryanrasmussen »

pigpop wrote: post #51
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. First, I would just naturally assume you are wrong as Fermi would have known that FTL was practically impossible. Fermi evidently made the comment in the 1950s at Los Alamos, as I understand it became widely known due to Carl Sagan's 1963 paper "Direct contact among galactic civilizations by relativistic interstellar spaceflight" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003206... What the…

"I have a vague recollection, which may not be accurate, that we talked about flying saucers and the obvious statement that the flying saucers are not real. I also remember that Fermi explicitly raised the question, and I think he directed it at me, ‘Edward, what do you think? How probable is it that within the next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving faster than light?’ I remember that…

OK I wasn't aware of this document, although I still say the first proposing of the problem publicly was Sagan's article, and this one is people trying to recollect a lunch time conversation years after the fact.

So I feel it is really Sagan's summation of the problem that is the original. So I would say maybe they said the only way it could work was if there was FTL or some similar formulation, but I think Sagan also showed that it could work in other ways.

So I guess we just sort of disagree on this.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#64

Post by stasomatic »

d_silin wrote: post #6

You can absolutely select founding population to be maximally genetically diverse and of large enough number to avoid inbreeding. Speciation is a likely outcome for interplanetary and interstellar colonies, yes.

Will falling in love be required or will the breeding program be institutionalized?

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#65

Post by jacobgold »

sfn42 wrote: post #60
jacobgold wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenhouse gas emissions are a huge problem, but there's no reason to believe we can't solve or mitigate the effects one way or another. It may come at a terrible cost, or it may turn out to be easier than you'd expect. You're not using "science" to predict the future. You're just expressing a pessimistic belief that we're doomed based your own idea of how things will play out. To me, optimism seems far more justifie…

The difference between the problems you listed and climate change is that those problems are solvable. That's why we've solved them. They're also not nearly the same scale as climate change which is apocalyptic. You just cherry picked a few things we've solved and ignored the plethora of things we haven't as if that proves anything at all. How about cancer? All the other diseases we can't cure? Most of the world stil…

> They're also not nearly the same scale as climate change which is apocalyptic.

This is a claim about the future which the science does not support, and you seem to be basing a lot of your worldview on it. Have some humility about predicting the future.

> Obviously nobody can know for sure, maybe we will get lucky and someone will come up with a genius plan that actually works.

Nobody can know at all. We're talking about predicting the future.

But it's not really a matter of luck. Humans are problem solvers, now with immense power, capable of doing amazing things when we decide to.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#66

Post by bethekidyouwant »

qayxc wrote: post #39
pianopatrick wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if a generational ship is absolutely required. There's this assumption that interstellar ships would be full of human astronauts who are alive and awake. But that might not be strictly required. You might be able to have everybody go there frozen. Or have a robot ship that gives birth to the colonists from an artificial womb on arrival.

> You might be able to have everybody go there frozen. Common trope in sci-fi, pretty much impossible in practise. Humans aren't capable of surviving being frozen, we lack the genetic machinery for that. Could you breed/engineer hybernation-capable humans? Sure. Otherwise this approach would require to literally being able to kill and then resurrect people at will. > Or have a robot ship that gives birth to the colon…

if you have robots that are sufficiently sophisticated that they can raise children you are just sending von Newman probes with extra steps.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#67

Post by sfn42 »

jacobgold wrote: post #65
sfn42 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between the problems you listed and climate change is that those problems are solvable. That's why we've solved them. They're also not nearly the same scale as climate change which is apocalyptic. You just cherry picked a few things we've solved and ignored the plethora of things we haven't as if that proves anything at all. How about cancer? All the other diseases we can't cure? Most of the world stil…

> They're also not nearly the same scale as climate change which is apocalyptic. This is a claim about the future which the science does not support, and you seem to be basing a lot of your worldview on it. Have some humility about predicting the future. > Obviously nobody can know for sure, maybe we will get lucky and someone will come up with a genius plan that actually works. Nobody can know at all . We're talking…

> This is a claim about the future which the science does not support

There is scientific consensus that +5C is a doomsday scenario. Civilization ending. This isn't my prediction, this is the scientific consensus. And obviously it's not like +3C or +4C is a walk in the park either. We will be close to +5C within this century unless something changes drastically.

That's not a prediction that's a projection, just like if you're driving your car at 100 miles per hour then in an hour you will be 100 miles ahead. The difference is when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions we do not have a brake pedal and there is no friction. We can't take back the carbon. The only thing we can do, and the only thing we are doing, is accelerate. And on top of that, we're going downhill - we're accelerating whether we want to or not. And it's getting steeper the further we go.

Ice reflects an enormous amount of energy back into space, as the amount of ice drops the amount of heat absorbed by the planet increases. On top of that, the ice traps enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. In the poles and previously permafrozen tundras that are now thawing. As the atmosphere heats up it is capable of holding more water vapor which is also a greenhouse gas. Warmer temperatures also lead to forest fires, releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases and weakening one of the few ways we're actually removing some carbon from the air.

These are some of the feedback loops in play causing warming to rise exponentially the worse it gets.

> Nobody can know at all. We're talking about predicting the future.

Scientists predicted the future 50 years ago and we are right on track for those predictions. 50 years ago they said this is where we will be in 50 years, and here we are. Now you're like "but we can't predict the future" well we did. And to top if off you're waxing about how powerful we are - apparently not powerful enough to predict global warming, but powerful enough to stop it? When? Why aren't we doing it then if we're so powerful? Why are we just making it worse instead?

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#68

Post by tptacek »

yogthos wrote: post #41
randomImmigrant wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really don’t know this for certain at all. We do know crows can communicate information about the face of a person they dislike to their murder, including to new generations. It seems a bit of a stretch to say their cultural transmission is quite that narrow. In general, pre-writing human oral culture seems to have dynamics much in common with such abilities in other animals. Barring error correction mechanisms, o…

We kind of do though since we don't see crows accumulating knowledge at any scale comparable to humans and using this knowledge to shape their environment in increasingly complex ways. And crows very obviously do make tools and even teach each other to do it, so it's not like they don't have the inclination for it. The language itself is a a human invention, and a product of how our brains are wired. However, there's…

They're not saying humans don't have profound communication advantages. Obviously the crows don't have nuclear generators and spacecraft. They're saying that the categorical claims about why humans have profound advantages aren't correct.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#69

Post by randomImmigrant »

yogthos wrote: post #41
randomImmigrant wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really don’t know this for certain at all. We do know crows can communicate information about the face of a person they dislike to their murder, including to new generations. It seems a bit of a stretch to say their cultural transmission is quite that narrow. In general, pre-writing human oral culture seems to have dynamics much in common with such abilities in other animals. Barring error correction mechanisms, o…

We kind of do though since we don't see crows accumulating knowledge at any scale comparable to humans and using this knowledge to shape their environment in increasingly complex ways. And crows very obviously do make tools and even teach each other to do it, so it's not like they don't have the inclination for it. The language itself is a a human invention, and a product of how our brains are wired. However, there's…

But scale of knowledge acquisition is mediated by, at minimum, lifespan, and what knowledge there is to verbalize and pass on, no? It’s not like we got the language then built our hands based on the knowledge shared by another person with hands.

Instead, these co-evolved. Our language is shaped by that, and we shouldn’t give it too much causal power when it’s only a slice of the system.

We are also very unclear on what birds can communicate. They’re social migratory species with 4 color vision and magnetoreception. Their sensory context is deeper and richer in some ways, and whatever communication they layer atop it will be shaped by that. What seems like squeaks and chirps can hold information that another bird, but not humans, can decode. We’re getting better at layering all this context and then interpreting bird song and sounds.

But we’re at the beginning of this exercise, not a place where we can make a firm conclusion.

Re: The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding

#70

Post by yogthos »

randomImmigrant wrote: post #69
yogthos wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We kind of do though since we don't see crows accumulating knowledge at any scale comparable to humans and using this knowledge to shape their environment in increasingly complex ways. And crows very obviously do make tools and even teach each other to do it, so it's not like they don't have the inclination for it. The language itself is a a human invention, and a product of how our brains are wired. However, there's…

But scale of knowledge acquisition is mediated by, at minimum, lifespan, and what knowledge there is to verbalize and pass on, no? It’s not like we got the language then built our hands based on the knowledge shared by another person with hands. Instead, these co-evolved. Our language is shaped by that, and we shouldn’t give it too much causal power when it’s only a slice of the system. We are also very unclear on wh…

Sure, lifespan is a factor, but it's hard to argue that lifespan has been the main factor for humans. Or that lifetime of many other organisms isn't sufficient. And I already pointed out that we co-evolved with language, that's what it means for it to be a dialectical process. However, for language even get bootstrapped, it needs the prerequisite brain structures to support recursive grammars and abstractions we use.

What we can look at is what other species are able to accomplish and how much they are able to shape their environment. I'm not arguing the fact that we don't have a good grasp on how other animal communicate and different kinds of intelligence we have in the animal kingdom. What I'm saying is that our unique combination of being able to abstract concepts and package them up using language, and especially writing, is what allowed up to rapidly accumulate knowledge and pass it across generations. We are demonstrably the only species that does this. Although, there were other hominids originally with similar capabilities that went extinct.

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