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The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

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Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#61

Post by whateveracct »

mpalmer wrote: post #40
whateveracct wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean .. do you enjoy the work? I write Haskell, I make computer games, I make web apps. Mostly because it's fun and satisfying. I'm also quite good at it and it comes easily to me. I remember when I decided to go into engineering, a peer of mine from high school said "whateveracct, you're top of your class. Why aren't you going into medicine in order to do something more Worthwhile with your life?" Stuck with me ev…

In Nietzsche's words: > A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos – at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists. Where is Nietzsche's nihilism in what yo…

> Surely for a nihilist, "to have made an impact" is a non-goal.

Not when the reason for making that impact is for, say, leaving a legacy after your death, getting into heaven (Christianity is very nihilistic according to Nietzsche), "having done 'something' with your life." Those are all very nihilistic-as-in-Nietzsche.

Nihilism is first and foremost deferring this life for something else, and I think my peer's views definitely fell into that definition.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#62

Post by no_wizard »

PeterisP wrote: post #52
no_wizard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself think if any theory beyond that of the Fermi Paradox holds water it’s likely the Aurora Hypothesis which simply states that colonizing space is incredibly dangerous and therefore hard to do at scale beyond your immediate solar system, hence why we haven’t seen anything in ours I don’t quite buy it but it feels the most plausible of all the alternative explanation for Fermi Because of phenomenons like Simulta…

I'm sceptical of any notions of "we are just among the first of civilizations ever" because as far as I understand from the studies of sun-like star sytems that could be hospitable to life, Earth is a bit on the late side; close to the average, but definitely not an "early" formation, and the time advantage or "development head start" that a sizeable fraction other stars/planets comparable to ours (I'm not talking ab…

Massive caveats here:

- I’m not an expert

- I know for a fact I’m more than likely wrong

With that said, I just want to put this thought out there:

Since we don’t really know 100%, I posit that in order for life to evolve to begin with, intelligence is a prerequisite in nature, down to the microbial level. I’m not saying nor do I believe there are little microbial societies or anything, but a certain amount of attainable intelligence must be be there and shareable at that level of function

Therefore, is simultaneous discovery simply an extension of nature, in that it’s within natural systems of all kinds to have this, or is it only in the context of civilization, which is synthetic to the natural world?

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#63

Post by whateveracct »

gnramires wrote: post #48
whateveracct wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean .. do you enjoy the work? I write Haskell, I make computer games, I make web apps. Mostly because it's fun and satisfying. I'm also quite good at it and it comes easily to me. I remember when I decided to go into engineering, a peer of mine from high school said "whateveracct, you're top of your class. Why aren't you going into medicine in order to do something more Worthwhile with your life?" Stuck with me ev…

I... have to disagree. Either view is too simple. You're looking for balance of "saving the world" (i.e. our responsibility with civilization and all lifeforms) and "enjoy your life". Clearly if everyone is concerned exclusively with enjoying their lives (i.e. hyper-hedonism), society collapses; that's deeply irresponsible. If everyone is also hyper-focused on self-propagation of our species with zero regard to our a…

> why not fulfill your potential to the best you can? Invent the future, Hack the planet.

This is exactly what I'm talking about though. If I just use my programming skills to automate some common tasks, make some nice webapps, make some fun or artful video games, etc..that feels like enough.

As far as "why not?"..because the things I list are more interesting and fun for me. And they're already constrained enough by capitalism to "provide value."

And to act like they are not worthwhile life pursuits because they aren't pushing humanity forward is a nihilistic viewpoint because it's focused on spending my life so that after-my-life benefits as if that makes it more morally correct.

Structurally, that's the same mindset as "do good deeds so you go to heaven." Just with a secular greater good. Nihilism nonetheless.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#64

Post by mcswell »

GistNoesis wrote: post #37

I've always wanted to have a black-hole file-shredder on display on my desk. Not a big one, just a tiny speck that would generate crazy space-time distortion effects. I figured that it would be hard to contain on earth because it would fall to the center of the earth. So the trick is to build it in orbit. It seem far fetch but once you decide to work in space it opens plenty of engineering shortcuts to scale-up the L…

There are at least two sci fi stories based on the premise of vacuum-creating quantum black holes. In one, ("The Hole Man" by Larry Niven) aliens left such a device on Mars. Astronauts discover it, and one of them manages to release it from the force field that holds it in place, with disastrous implications for Mars.

In the other story (whose title I don't recall, but it was probably published in Analog), a bare something (perhaps a wormhole whose other end is in open space) is created, and begins to suck the Earth's air away. The hero builds a dome around it, but leaves a valve in the side to sell vacuum.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#65

Post by mcswell »

humanrebar wrote: post #58
trinovantes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's too lethal, it would probably kill all its carriers before spreading too far I wonder if anyone's ever calculated the optimal parameters for a disease to end humanity

It doesn't have to kill anyone. Just sterilize the young.

Or it could kill off only males (or only females). There is at least one SciFi story based on that premise.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#66

Post by mcswell »

ncmncm wrote: post #34

The article fails to note reasons why neither apparent existential risk was possible. We already had moon rocks on Earth, blasted off of the moon by bolide strikes. Likewise Mars rocks, and bits of asteroids and of other planets' moons. Maybe even Venus rocks. Relatedly, the energy released in certain bolide strikes on Earth far exceeds anything achieved even in Tsar Bomba, itself thousands of times more powerful tha…

"We already had moon rocks on Earth, blasted off of the moon by bolide strikes." True, but they (and any other meteorites) were likely sterilized during passage through the Earth's atmosphere.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#67

Post by mcswell »

PeterisP wrote: post #52
no_wizard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself think if any theory beyond that of the Fermi Paradox holds water it’s likely the Aurora Hypothesis which simply states that colonizing space is incredibly dangerous and therefore hard to do at scale beyond your immediate solar system, hence why we haven’t seen anything in ours I don’t quite buy it but it feels the most plausible of all the alternative explanation for Fermi Because of phenomenons like Simulta…

I'm sceptical of any notions of "we are just among the first of civilizations ever" because as far as I understand from the studies of sun-like star sytems that could be hospitable to life, Earth is a bit on the late side; close to the average, but definitely not an "early" formation, and the time advantage or "development head start" that a sizeable fraction other stars/planets comparable to ours (I'm not talking ab…

I suspect you're right, but I've also wondered at the fact that while Homo sapiens has been around and intelligent for at least 45k years, within perhaps 3000 years at least three and possibly six civilizations independently invented writing: the Babylonians and Egyptians and Minoans + Mycenaeans (probably three independent inventions), China, and the Maya.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#68

Post by mcswell »

graycat wrote: post #44
no_wizard wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I myself think if any theory beyond that of the Fermi Paradox holds water it’s likely the Aurora Hypothesis which simply states that colonizing space is incredibly dangerous and therefore hard to do at scale beyond your immediate solar system, hence why we haven’t seen anything in ours I don’t quite buy it but it feels the most plausible of all the alternative explanation for Fermi Because of phenomenons like Simulta…

> we are just among the first of civilizations ever, Well maybe could say "one of": We recall that the big bang was ~14 billion years ago. Our solar system was made ~5 billion years ago (very rough arithmetic) out of the results of an exploded star. The star may have exploded ~7 billion years ago. In that case it may have been a first generation, hydrogen star and took ~6 billion years to form, make heavy elements, a…

IIRC (it's been a long time), first generation stars were very low in "metals" (which term astronomers use to mean any element heaver than helium), and what they did have was mostly (maybe entirely) lithium. They may not have had any planets, or if they did, the planets were pure gas (hydrogen and helium). Thus no life, much less intelligent life.

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#69

Post by mcswell »

smolder wrote: post #54

If you entertain the MWI (many worlds interpretation) of quantum mechanics, then maybe you could say these moments did end humanity on other branches of spacetime. The idea is useless in practice, but fun to think about, if the popular fiction of the day is any indication. :)

In some of these universes, the LHC did indeed spawn a world-destroying black hole.

And in our universe, the LHC failed several times when they were first starting it up (the Quench Incident, for example), causing a year's delay--which seemed so unlikely at the time that I really wondered...

Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity

#70

Post by mcswell »

yesenadam wrote: post #51
sarbaz wrote: post #3

The article has some great examples of risks that were hyped out of proportion to their true severity. Should these things be considered? Yes. But only a little. If you halt programs completely for tail risks you'll never get anywhere. Modern examples, IMO, are: - Kessler Syndrome - Trying to prevent an asteroid hitting the earth - Nuclear war making the entire earth uninhabitable

In the documentary The Man Who Saved The World , Stanislav Petrov travels to meet Kevin Costner, his favourite actor, at home. Costner asks him, if he hadn't acted as he did, how many people would have died. You expect him to say, 50 million, or something. He says, everyone . Everyone on earth would've died . It's a chilling moment. (And there's been a lot more than that one near miss.) What kind of crazy species are…

Ronald Reagan agreed with that, and thought MAD was truly mad.
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