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Why Life On Mars May Foretell Our Doom
Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Bostrom has an interesting interpretation on why the failure of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for the past half-century is good news and why the discovery of life on Mars could foretell our doom. Bostrom postulates a 'Great Filter,' which can be thought of as a probability barrier and consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems."
That would be a major headline. Even when hints of life on Mars are announced there is a story.
The guy dismisses the possibility that most civilizations evolve in some direction other than midlessly colonizing every star they can reach.
After all our own civilization has pretty much lost interest in anything beyond putting up more geostationary TV transmitters.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities. What if many simply don't bother leaving their own solar system because the speed of light proves to be unbreakable and they aren't interested in planting colonies that will have little or no contact or impact on their own civilization?
Or what if we just got lucky and got a galaxy to ourselves?
Democrat delenda est
But he doesn't really address the possibility that there will be sufficient advanced life to "deal with" the advanced life trying to bring havoc to innocent blue-green balls. If you do expand the Drake equation thusly, you must also account for advanced civilizations interacting with advanced civilizations. What is the probability of an intergalactic ethic forming versus an intergalactic ethic not forming? Frankly, based on the fact that developing technology to the point of intergalactic travel requires social stability on your home world, I would think the balance favors HAVING an intergalactic ethic.
In a way, he is just restating the Fermi Paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.
There aren't that many ways to perceive the world around you. There are a limited number of information vectors out there.
And SETI is searching a narrow range because the frequencies outside that range get garbled in the interstellar noise.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
That would imply a entire universe subset that isn't available to our senses nor even hinted on the possibility of how we could even potentially sense.
If true, then they wouldn't matter since we wouldn't be able to interact anyway.
Suppose we find trilobite skeletons on Mars ... and the next day an alien ship enters our system. In his work, those two are contradictory events. They cannot happen in the same universe. But there are all kinds of ways they COULD happen.
...
... develop that area ... and then move out from that fringe in X years. So you would have a new fringe area every X years. And X would (given human life spans) be a few thousand years. Just long enough to get the colony's population up to where it could build a space program of its own.
So his theory is flawed.
Now, whether a million years is significant or not
It is not in the entire history of Life.
It is VERY significant in the history of any single species.
You assume that such civilization would instantly launch a ship to each and every star and that none of those ships would have problems in the million year long flight. Although many ships would have to cross our galactic core.
Rather, a civilization would colonize the area around it
No doubt. Of course, there's nothing about the concept of "ethic" that implies "We'll let you live out your pathetic lives peacefully on your planet, instead of building an Interstellar Bypass through it."
Remember, the Azteca had Ethics too.
"ethic" != "nice"
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Mars is too close to us to say much about exobiology IMHO. The Earth and Mars have been exchanging tons of biologically active material for their entire existence (large meteor strikes cause material to be ejected to escape velocity, and some small fraction of that will be treated gently enough not to kill any bacteria).
So, there is is likely to be life on Mars, and it is likely to be pretty similar to some life on Earth, proving nothing on the big question of where is everybody.
There is a third possible answer - that the ecological niches in the galaxy tend to be already filled with entities that are hostile to such exponential growth. (As, indeed, are the ecological niches on Earth.) That suggests that the Great Silence may be a defensive mechanism, which would have very worrying implications for us, as we sit here broadcasting away the fact of our existence.
And don't forget that our Sun is a second-generation star. The lack of heavy elements makes developing technology on a planet orbiting a first-generation star, but a civilisation evolving around one that didn't kill itself off by now would have had a few billion years head start on us by now. If our rate of technological progress continues linearly (which would involve quite a slow-down) then a million years is enough time for us to colonise the entire galaxy, decide it was a bad idea, clean up all evidence of our existence and go off somewhere else.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What if most evolve beyond physical forms?
There is no such thing as "beyond physical." Everything we know of has a basis in physical reality. Even ideas. Unless you're positing some kind of transcendental disembodied magic, everything has a physical existence.
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As we have seen through our own history and present, when civilizations interact, it is often hostile and violent. It would only take one aggressive, space-faring, xenophobic race to send the rest into hiding.
With two such crazies, even the aggressors would hide lest they meet their doom in a kinetic fireball. Planets and space habitats are just too easy a target.
This fits with UFO observations too. We see their ships, but not their home worlds. Ships are mobile and hyperspace travel may be untraceable. Additionally, why would they communicate with us when we're broadcasting everything into space? That's crazy talk. It's only a matter of time before the Zurgs find us, drop some comets in our oceans and turn Earth into an algae farm or just bust it up and leave us for dead.
Hell, it may have happened before. We have an asteroid belt that some propose was formerly a planet. Our Moon was supposedly formed through some sort of cataclysmic collision between Earth and some other large planetoid.
We need ships. Lots of them. We're sitting ducks out here.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Our previous colonies could look forward to resupplies within a couple of years (at the most). A colony in another solar system
And THAT is even considering that you're on an Earth-clone planet. If you're on a space station (the way I believe it would work) then you're in even greater danger of dying out before help gets there.No, it is very easy to understand when you understand the DISTANCES involved.Why? You are stating their starting time as if it were a fact.
IF species X started at location Y, Z years ago.
And IF species X traveled A lightyears every B years.
THEN species X would be at location C by date D.
Assuming no problems were encountered.
That species X is NOT at location C
And his theory is SO flawed that if we don't expand, that means that there IS a "Great Filter".
And if we die out and are replaced by intelligent dolphins, they they won't expand because of the "Great Filter" except that THEIR "Great Filter" will be completely different than ours. And so on and so forth.
Which kind of negates the "Great" aspect of the "Great Filter". Because there is not a SINGLE "filter" that would apply to both cases.
Vernor Vinge spoke at my company once and talked about ways the Singularity might not happen. For example, what if we never figure out how to create massive software that actually works?
The most interesting scenario he pointed out is one in which exponential technological progress is a temporary phase, like a 13-year-old's growth spurt, and the curve of development goes S-shaped and reaches a high but stationary plateau.
Vinge pointed out a book called "The Coming of the Golden Age -- a View of the End of Progress" which suggested that after the leveling off we'd be living in a pretty comfortable world, close to some visions of Utopia. If the natural limits of technology fall short of self-replicating interstellar probes, then the answer to "Where are they?" is "They're enjoying themselves on their garden planet".
The book is even more provocative in arguing that this is already happening. It's kind of plausible at first glance: how much development is simply more of the same only cheaper and faster, how much is outright pointless, and how much progress has really happened on groundbreakers like true AI?
The punch line is that the book was written in 1968.
By a molecular biologist.
The author doesn't consider the possibility that interstellar travel is prohibitively difficult.
It may be, for example, that a minimal interstellar expedition costs 20 years production of the entire civilization.
That's a lot of effort to put into finding out that the neighboring star system consists of dead rocks, and even if we're lucky and find a habitable planet, it's our great-to-the-nth grandchildren who will reap the benefit.
Can you really see any human civilization taking such an enormous gamble? What politician is going to tell the people "You'll have to pay 20% more tax for the next 100 years, because I want to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, which is probably a dead rock, but our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be very interested in the result" ?
If a lunatic dictator did embark on such a folly, would his successor, and his successor, share his monomania?
It only takes one politician in a century tp see some advantage in offering the people a huge tax cut, and the project would lapse.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
This was an interesting article, but it neglected to address the idea that life on earth may have been seeded from outside the planet. It is possible that life on our planet is the result of panspermia. This throws into doubt any conclusions about a Great Filter, and may also invalidate the idea that life appearing on Mars is bad news for us (humans), since if life here may have been the result of panspermia, then so too would life on Mars likely have occurred for the same reasons. An even more far-out hypothesis is that life on our planet is itself the result of alien efforts to seed life on other worlds (a sort of biological von Neumann probe).