Do you believe we are alone in the universe?

Doctor Futurity said:

Of course not. I don't know such information any more than you could assert otherwise. We can safely say that we have yet to find any evidence of prior sentient beings on Earth....and yes, we are also aware that it is possible something sentient arose ten or a hundred million years ago and failed the Pass Go evolutionary test for any number of reasons.

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For the curious... I don't have the paper handy, but it is estimated that the remains of an abandoned civilization would persist for about 3 or 3.5 million years, after which point current human technology would be unlikely to detect that it ever existed.

Shasarak said:

Of course they wont start a project that will take a thousand years to complete. There is going to be a ten year plan, which will naturally lead to another ten year plan and so on and so on. The city of London has been around for two thousand years and do you think that the people who first lived there imagined what would happen over the next hundred, five hundred or two thousand years? Of course not.

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The city of London was not built with a unified goal of doing anything in particular, much less crossing the void between stars. London was built in reaction to needs of the moment, with unified intent. Now, while it is possible that such random-walk development would spontaneously create a city that plies the star lanes... I wouldn't bet any money on it. It is not like in another century or two, anyone is going to say, "Hey, wait a minute! London can FLY!!!1!"

In effect, London pseudo-evolved over time - and evolution is *NOT* directed to a goal. Evolution optimizes for current needs, not a future desire.

Umbran said:

The city of London was not built with a unified goal of doing anything in particular, much less crossing the void between stars. London was built in reaction to needs of the moment, with unified intent. Now, while it is possible that such random-walk development would spontaneously create a city that plies the star lanes... I wouldn't bet any money on it. It is not like in another century or two, anyone is going to say, "Hey, wait a minute! London can FLY!!!1!"

In effect, London pseudo-evolved over time - and evolution is *NOT* directed to a goal. Evolution optimizes for current needs, not a future desire.

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And terraforming Mars is not going to be some kind of unified goal. That is just a particularly stupid idea to start with, how can anyone on Earth develop a plan that will survive contact with an alien planet when they can not even build a subway line on time and within budget?

Any colonisation of Mars is going to start with a single base. Which will probably get bigger over time. And then at some stage there is going to have a second base which will get bigger. And then a thousand years have passed and who knows what it is going to look like then?

Even building the International Space Station was not some kind of unified goal, it was just some kind of "random walk" development and yet I am supposed to beleive that the colonisation of Mars is going to be somekind of unified goal. Please, just no.

Shasarak said:

If replication is impossible then how did life manage to get by until now? How do rabbits breed like rabbits if they can not replicate themselves fast enough to overcome failures? I dont really understand the point you are trying to make.

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Someone may have covered this, but just in case...

*Perfect* replication is impossible. So, rabbits evolve over time - the rabbit of today is not the same as a rabbit of a million years ago. Go back 40 or 55 million years, and things you'd call a rabbit didn't exist at all. And it is okay if rabbits change over time, as there is nobody who is expecting them to not do so, with a goal that requires they stay exactly the same over a million years....

The issue is that to complete their task of spreading through the galaxy, the self-replicating machines must remain on task, and behave pretty much exactly as they were designed, with no notable alterations. We are probably talking about the most complex machine ever conceived: able to enter a solar system, locate various resources, travel to those resources, gather and refine them (likely pulling them out of gravity wells in the process), and build new machines that can repeat that process tens to hundreds of light years away. Our *entire civilization* cannot do that yet, but we imagine making a single package that can do it.

A small alteration - say, it refines some modestly important element to too low a level of purity - is apt to mean the next generation breaks down before it reaches the next stars, or cannot replicate. Too many cosmic rays through its memory, and it forgets something mission critical. Remember, this thing is getting no operating system updates.

Hell, this thing needs some level of what we might call "intelligence" to operate. We build an intelligence, and send it out alone, not practically capable of communicating with anyone, thinking to itself for decades to centuries. What are the chances that it just goes mad? Or makes decisions in its isolation that doom it's mission? You and I can't stand more than a few hours in sensory deprivation, but you want this thing to handle it for decades?

Someone mentioned the idea that if you can manage this feat, you have probably solved all humanity's problems first - and that seems a reasonable point given all this.

Shasarak said:

And terraforming Mars is not going to be some kind of unified goal.

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Yes it is. It is right in the name, "terraforming" - forming it into Terra!

That is just a particularly stupid idea to start with, how can anyone on Earth develop a plan that will survive contact with an alien planet when they can not even build a subway line on time and within budget?

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Whether the plan has to change, and whether the goal is set are not at all the same thing.

We all play role playing games. You walk into a big battle with a plan. It quickly falls apart. But the goal is still to make the BBEG kick the bucket.

Any colonisation of Mars is going to start with a single base. Which will probably get bigger over time. And then at some stage there is going to have a second base which will get bigger. And then a thousand years have passed and who knows what it is going to look like then?

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We have slid from "terraforming" to "colonization". Those are *NOT* the same thing - you can colonize without terraforming, but all your colonists have to stay inside or in space suits. Which one do you want to discuss?

Even building the International Space Station was not some kind of unified goal, it was just some kind of "random walk" development

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Hardly. There's nothing "random" about the development of the ISS. If nothing else, NASA is far too risk averse to be part of the most massive construction project in space, the vast majority of which was done using NASA's Space Shuttle, the most expensive and complex machine built by humankind at the time, if it were "random".

Good gosh, do I have to go into the differences between Waterfall and Agile management, and show how neither one of them is random? I don't think anyone wants that. Let me try to keep it to saying - just because plans change over time, does not make the changes "random".

Umbran said:

For the curious... I don't have the paper handy, but it is estimated that the remains of an abandoned civilization would persist for about 3 or 3.5 million years, after which point current human technology would be unlikely to detect that it ever existed.

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There are a couple good books on the subject, too. Alan Weisman stands out (The World Without Us) in analyzing the way a modern civilization would decay, and how long it would leave evidence behind of our passing. There was also a TV show along these lines as well IIRC.

I think in terms of millions of years we'd find that the evidence left in our wake would include fossil remains and some really strange concentrations of specific types of deposits....but on a scale of geologic time that stuff could indeed be difficult to identify, or be erased entirely. The fossil evidence I think is the most compelling argument for why we don't see this, though. No evidence of dinosaurs with gunshot wounds, for example!

As I once said to a person taking an archaeology course who was obsessed with this idea that there were ancient civilizations in Antarctica*, though: sure, it's not entirely impossible, but I wouldn't stake my career on it.



*Thanks Youtube.

Umbran said:

Someone may have covered this, but just in case...

*Perfect* replication is impossible. So, rabbits evolve over time - the rabbit of today is not the same as a rabbit of a million years ago. Go back 40 or 55 million years, and things you'd call a rabbit didn't exist at all. And it is okay if rabbits change over time, as there is nobody who is expecting them to not do so, with a goal that requires they stay exactly the same over a million years....

The issue is that to complete their task of spreading through the galaxy, the self-replicating machines must remain on task, and behave pretty much exactly as they were designed, with no notable alterations. We are probably talking about the most complex machine ever conceived: able to enter a solar system, locate various resources, travel to those resources, gather and refine them (likely pulling them out of gravity wells in the process), and build new machines that can repeat that process tens to hundreds of light years away. Our *entire civilization* cannot do that yet, but we imagine making a single package that can do it.

A small alteration - say, it refines some modestly important element to too low a level of purity - is apt to mean the next generation breaks down before it reaches the next stars, or cannot replicate. Too many cosmic rays through its memory, and it forgets something mission critical. Remember, this thing is getting no operating system updates.

Click to expand...

The main problem with this idea is that there would be a single point of failure that would ruin everything. To be honest for someone smart enough to create such a machine it seems odd to think that they would send one. Even Christopher Columbus did not discover America by sailing in one ship so why would we expect an even more advanced species to make such a stupid decision?

Hell, this thing needs some level of what we might call "intelligence" to operate. We build an intelligence, and send it out alone, not practically capable of communicating with anyone, thinking to itself for decades to centuries. What are the chances that it just goes mad? Or makes decisions in its isolation that doom it's mission? You and I can't stand more than a few hours in sensory deprivation, but you want this thing to handle it for decades?

Someone mentioned the idea that if you can manage this feat, you have probably solved all humanity's problems first - and that seems a reasonable point given all this.

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Could you include a 'sleep' mode. I dont know thats just an idea off the top of my head why would that even be a problem for someone smart enough to create such a machine in the first place? If it was me then I would have separate guidance, detection, maintenance systems with the "real" intelligence protected until it was actually needed.

Umbran said:

Yes it is. It is right in the name, "terraforming" - forming it into Terra!

Whether the plan has to change, and whether the goal is set are not at all the same thing.

We all play role playing games. You walk into a big battle with a plan. It quickly falls apart. But the goal is still to make the BBEG kick the bucket.

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If we use your roleplaying game analogy then how can we fight the BBEG when it was not even part of our unified plan for completing the campaign. And how can our party even act without considering all the possible permutations that might happen; without consulting with everyone else first to make sure that we have a consensus?

Or what if we consider how many Astral Diamonds that our 1st level characters will have to pay for costs over the campaign? Who would even spend that kind of money or use that many resources?

We have slid from "terraforming" to "colonization". Those are *NOT* the same thing - you can colonize without terraforming, but all your colonists have to stay inside or in space suits. Which one do you want to discuss?

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What are you going to do fire a 'Genesis Device' at the planet and let it magically terraform the planet? Meh, chances are you are going to need boots of the ground and unless one of them is Arnold Schwarzenegger and his alien terraforming machine, the whole process is going to take a while.

Hardly. There's nothing "random" about the development of the ISS. If nothing else, NASA is far too risk averse to be part of the most massive construction project in space, the vast majority of which was done using NASA's Space Shuttle, the most expensive and complex machine built by humankind at the time, if it were "random".

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So there is a USA section, a Soviet section and a European section that were all built off the same plans, the same 'unified' plan? No of course not. There is no such unified plan.

Good gosh, do I have to go into the differences between Waterfall and Agile management, and show how neither one of them is random? I don't think anyone wants that. Let me try to keep it to saying - just because plans change over time, does not make the changes "random".

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Maybe you can explain to me the differences between Waterfall and Agile management and how they relate to the development of say Google following the unified business plan that ‎Larry Page‎ and ‎Sergey Brin had from 1998? I am sure that the goals from 1998 are exactly the same as the goals from 2018 as nothing much has changed in the last 20 years.

Shasarak said:

The main problem with this idea is that there would be a single point of failure that would ruin everything. To be honest for someone smart enough to create such a machine it seems odd to think that they would send one. Even Christopher Columbus did not discover America by sailing in one ship so why would we expect an even more advanced species to make such a stupid decision?

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Now, you are expecting Columbus to travel for a million years without suffering a single change. It doesn't matter if you send a million Columbus' out, the odds of catastrophic failure over a long enough time become 1. Because, no matter how many you send out, they need to replicate themselves every time the jump to a new star system right? That's the plan. Go to star A, create a bunch of new probes and head to stars B, C and D. Every replication will introduce errors. It has to. Perfect replication is impossible.

And, over enough generations, you wind up with catastrophic failures.

Could you include a 'sleep' mode. I dont know thats just an idea off the top of my head why would that even be a problem for someone smart enough to create such a machine in the first place? If it was me then I would have separate guidance, detection, maintenance systems with the "real" intelligence protected until it was actually needed.

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How much time is this mind going to spend "sleeping"? After all, it needs to be awake sometime. And, again, over the millions of years that you're talking about, even if it's only spending 1 hour a year "awake", it's still going to go stark raving mad.

Hussar said:

Now, you are expecting Columbus to travel for a million years without suffering a single change. It doesn't matter if you send a million Columbus' out, the odds of catastrophic failure over a long enough time become 1. Because, no matter how many you send out, they need to replicate themselves every time the jump to a new star system right? That's the plan. Go to star A, create a bunch of new probes and head to stars B, C and D. Every replication will introduce errors. It has to. Perfect replication is impossible.

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Why is replication even necessary. The race could just make a bunch of probes that go from system to system to system. A race that advanced can shield the probes sufficiently and collisions and cosmic radiation won't be an issue.