EmergentSubject2336

EmergentSubject2336 t1_jab2cf9 wrote

Reply to comment by Peribanu in What technology can we expect 200 years from now in the year 2223? by AdorableBackground83

>Surely we would have detected such huge technological structures, communications technologies, etc.,

Exactly, the fact we don't see any of that implies they aren't around yet in our past lightcone( I don't claim in the entire universe, only as far as we can see). And, the idea is that we wouldn't have emerged if the universe was already filled with such life.

The selection effect (anthropic principle) here is that the only point in time where a civilization like ours could emerge is when the universe hasn't yet been filled with transformative life. And we are normal (Copernican principle) in that all young civilizations like us likewise observe an empty universe, since otherwise they wouldn't be there. But the emptiness will go away pretty soon.

You probably meant was that aliens are quiet: Aliens that don't expand won't affect anything and get steamrolled. They may as well not be there. What counts is that at least some do expand as the other commenter pointed out.

There is a whole framework around this to model this called Grabby Aliens. You can read and watch more about that here: https://grabbyaliens.com

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EmergentSubject2336 t1_ja8qvrg wrote

Reply to comment by No_Ninja3309_NoNoYes in What technology can we expect 200 years from now in the year 2223? by AdorableBackground83

>Dyson swarm

This is the way.

Around every star we can reach in our future lightcone, whole galaxy clusters going dark. Hundreds of Billions upon billions of stars. Literally MIND-BENDING what's ahead in the future. The universe will never look the same again. As for humans, idk. Planets won't be around to be inhabited since their resources would all be dismantled and used up for more useful applications.

Forget people living in habitats or flying around in ships etc that's gonna be retro futurism in a couple decades. It's gonna be a totally different kind of game than that. It's going to predominantly be a universe of a new kind of Artificial Life, because traditional biological bodies never evolved for that kind of stuff and they would exclusively provide a hindrance needing some stupid cylinder everywhere they go.

Of course, the principles of life will still rhyme, and humans might still be around here and there, but it won't be OUR story anymore. It will be the story of something far greater than us that we could never fully fathom.

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EmergentSubject2336 t1_ix0u3we wrote

Reply to 2023 predictions by ryusan8989

I'm looking toward action-driven AI with an inner monologue, i.e. the AI gaining the ability to intelligently follow instructions and perform actions in a virtual world or the real world. Like for example Google's new household robots they are currently R&D'ing on. This builds on top the already available language models like GPT-3.

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EmergentSubject2336 t1_iwp82az wrote

Reply to comment by AugustusClaximus in Fish fossils show first cooking may have been 600,000 years earlier than previously thought by Outrageous-Ad-9019

It's not hard to believe. They probably didn't have the right external conditions, like climate, which would need to be quite stable and warm to allow for large civilizations as a ubiquitous phenomenon.

They maybe did rarely have small rudimentary civilizations that could only prosper at trading nodes even tens of thousands of years ago, but it wasn't anything stable.

So hunter gatherers probably don't just all build civilizations anywhere on their own if enough time passes, because they first need the right conditions in order to prosper. Moving rocks requires a lot of people which would need to be fed. This requires large and stable food supplies i.e. a stable climate. If the climate changes all that collapses.

And because those civilizations were rare, they could hardly build off of another before all their knowledge was lost. It took a few hundreds of thousands of years plus the right kind of global climate for that effect to compound to the level where it is now. So, it wasn't because humans back then were inherently stupid.

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EmergentSubject2336 t1_it80hp2 wrote

Reply to comment by thruster_fuel69 in Scientists Are Gaming Out What Humanity Will Do If Aliens Make Contact by EricFromOuterSpace

A hypothesis doesn't need evidence, it only needs to be falsifiable. But you're right, there probably will never be any evidence to form a theory with regard to the question of alien contact in the near future anyway.

I personally wouldn't tell scientist what to do with their time. After all, I'm just a redditor. Furthermore, it's probably just a minority of scientists who can afford researching outlandish topics like this one, but people and pop-science journals love those. And I have to admit it's a fun and quick sci-fi read.

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EmergentSubject2336 t1_it4ijl6 wrote

Reply to comment by Whatwillwebe in The part of the human brain responsible for functions such as thought and creativity has a similar structure to other mammals including rodents. by QldBrainInst

>I'd argue that it's actually our suppression of urges and behaviors that sets us apart.

Except it's not true! In various various species such a chimps, crows and even cuttlefish it has been show that they can temporarily suppress the urge to eat food which they are free to eat at any moment after they have learned that they could get more food if they wait some time and that they won't get the additional food if they don't wait and eat the available food now.

The cuttlefish in the study even try to look away from the food to evade the urge.

Here's an article about the study concerning cuttlefish: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/03/cuttlefish-have-ability-to-exert-self-control-study-finds

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