This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is the Fermi Paradox Debunked?
A new paper is out(https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404) concluding that the Drake equation is poorly designed and humans are most likely alone in the universe:
TDLR the Drake equation is wrong by dramatically overrating the probability of other intelligent life. We are more likely to be alone than we thought, and my take on this has been for a while that if life was common we'd have experimentally demonstrated abiogenesis by now. But this in turn debunks the great filter arguments people(mainly liberals) make about all sorts of pet issues- the great filter is already behind us.
A nearly 50% chance of not being alone in the galaxy sounds pretty damn high to me.
I'm surprised at the hate piled on the drake equation and fermi paradox in this thread.
Maybe I've just been living with those 2018 number estimates for a while. I've always seen them as things that pose an interesting question, but don't definitively give us any answers.
I'm honestly surprised this papers numbers go so high and that you'd think of the fermi paradox as "debunked" on those high numbers. To me a .1% chance of other life in the galaxy is enough to make the fermi paradox an interesting question. Id consider my interest in the drake equation result about equal to the odds of someone losing Russia roulette in front of me. A .1% chance of someone blowing their brains out in front of me is a little worrying. A 50% chance is downright horrifying.
The main reason for worry is "von neuman probes". Self replicating probes that explore the galaxy. It's a very convenient method for any would be galactic explorers or colonizers to do some pre scouting. Send a probe. It replicates itself. Sticks around and transmits useful information about the star system it is in. The copies of itself fly off to other systems and repeat the process.
The problem is that there are billions of stars in our galaxy and that means billions of chances for a bit of the von neumans programming to go wrong and remove any safeguards around not replicating too much. It only needs to happen once and that galaxy and possibly nearby galaxies are fucked. They'll end up littered with these machines. And distance will not save you, not on geological time scales. The Milky Way is 100000 lightyears across. The fastest human made spacecraft is traveling 0.062% of the speed of light. So it would take it 156,250,000 years to cross the Milky Way. A long time for us, but not so long on geological time scales. There could have been hundreds of non simultaneous civilizations before us exploring the whole galaxy, giving up after not finding anything and going either extinct or into a deep hidden hibernation.
But again it only takes one of them to fuck up the programming on a von neuman probe system to doom the galaxy to sterility.
Having said all that I can definitely agree with some criticisms of how the drake equation has been used. I feel like there should be some standard set of advice to logicians and people in general: don't reason from an unknown. In economics the advice was "never reason from a price change". The idea being that it could be supply, demand, or both causing the price change, which is pretty close to saying "anything".
Fermi, drake, Hanson. It's all ways to think about the structure of an unknown and break it down into which parts would mean what when and if we figure them out. I never got a chance to talk to Fermi or Drake. But I have talked to Hanson before. He never struck me as someone who felt certain about these things. He always seemed to present ideas like the great filter as a way of organizing uncertainty.
If someone points to the idea of the great filter and suggests we are doomed because the filter is in front of us, then I think that person is being a charlatan. It doesn't mean we need to throw out Fermi, Drake, or Hansons ideas.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link