Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ChairmanPoo]

Interuniso you've forgotten the face of your father

[inteuniso]

... there's also nothing nonlinear about the hypothesis? Word you're looking for is cyclical, and that's spattered across history ruminations like a particularly enthusiastic porn shoot.

No, I'm not looking for cyclical, because that would imply the same cycle happens every time. What if people (I use people to refer to aliens as well as humans because it's 2018) went to a planet, engineered a species to become spacefaring, then that species left/died out. Next species arises completely independently, without any knowledge of what happened before. There's a trillion different scenarios that have all probably happened already, and I'm not going to make the same mistake of following dogma that every orthodox believer always does.

Don't hype yourself up.

Too late I've been riding this hype train for years now. You can't stop me!!!

[pisskop]

Its fun, sure.

The idea here isn't even about speculating about long-lost alien-humans who stargated out.  That's dressing to make it 'fun'.  It's a talk about the long-term impact of a civilization; about how global pollution, our habitations, and our records would fare when and if we 'left'.  And, by extension, it's about the conservation of our planets resources, and how just-plain nihilistic we can be about the permanency of humanity.  All our Washingtons and Napoleons, and G.W. Bushes and Pol Pots and our plagues, cultures, and stone monuments.  All finite, all gone.  And what hangs out the longest?  Our trash.

This is about how we might identify ancient ruins or civilizations from other planets.

And I thought that plastics in the soil would last longest?

[inteuniso]

All our Washingtons and Napoleons, and G.W. Bushes and Pol Pots and our plagues, cultures, and stone monuments.  All finite, all gone.  And what hangs out the longest?  Our trash.

And I thought that plastics in the soil would last longest?

Technically the light of all those events have been recorded and can be accessed at any time. Our trash can be remolded into whatever with adequate technology (hot enough furnaces with supercritical water pipes that can effectively sort elements)

I think we should stop being so damn fatalist and actually work to build towards the next tier of civilization, because fighting over this little bubble of mud is tiresome.

[Dunamisdeos]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

[inteuniso]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

How about a civilization that didn't dump nitrogen on their plants? How about one that didn't use rare-earth elements in their electronics?

Furthermore, how the fuck are we going to tell the difference from the baseline/any number of natural events that could cause the same sort of matter distribution?

You. Cannot. Turn. Your. Back. To. Any. Possibility.

[ChairmanPoo]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

You. Cannot. Turn. Your. Back. To. Any. Possibility.

kaixo!

[wierd]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

You. Cannot. Turn. Your. Back. To. Any. Possibility.

kaixo!

And yet people debate he existence of god all the time... Never once considering that it is not worth the effort, because god does not seem to be willing to submit to testing, and so cannot be tested for, and as a consequence, has no true meaning to pursue.   (what point is there in worshiping something that does not respond to worship? ;P)

[pisskop]

I read a book about the possibilities of aliens in various places within our solar system once.


Silicon men of mercury, living in the twilight of a planet that doesn't rotate.
Dwarves of Venus, living underground and breathing all kinds of foul gases.
Mars ice-dwellers, shaving igloos out.
Titanese man-eaters, nomming down humans for no reason.

[Frumple]

And yet people debate he existence of god all the time... Never once considering that it is not worth the effort, because god does not seem to be willing to submit to testing, and so cannot be tested for, and as a consequence, has no true meaning to pursue.   (what point is there in worshiping something that does not respond to worship? ;P)

Eh? No, plenty of people have considered that. It's one of the bitsies you could file under apatheism, off the top of my head, and probably other stuff, too.

Mind you, there's various points that still exist. Fun, for one

[ChairmanPoo]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

You. Cannot. Turn. Your. Back. To. Any. Possibility.

kaixo!

And yet people debate he existence of god all the time... Never once considering that it is not worth the effort, because god does not seem to be willing to submit to testing, and so cannot be tested for, and as a consequence, has no true meaning to pursue.   (what point is there in worshiping something that does not respond to worship? ;P)

Sorry I donīt see the existence of god discussed anywhere in that page. Why are you trying to shift the topic?

[wierd]

And yet people debate he existence of god all the time... Never once considering that it is not worth the effort, because god does not seem to be willing to submit to testing, and so cannot be tested for, and as a consequence, has no true meaning to pursue.   (what point is there in worshiping something that does not respond to worship? ;P)

Eh? No, plenty of people have considered that. It's one of the bitsies you could file under apatheism, off the top of my head, and probably other stuff, too.

Mind you, there's various points that still exist. Fun, for one

Well, if you find futile pontification and navel gazing to be fun, well more power to you.  I just hold that while I have no specific knowledge of any existing god, evidence suggests that should such a being exist, it does not give a shit-- and therefor is not something I care to spend my limited lifetime contemplating in great detail.


CP:  The existence of god is the most frequently tabled example of arguing about something that cannot be proven-- eg, the very kind of thing the razor cited is about, generally.  It applies to any such argument where the bounds are outside the ability to test.  Take for instance, most string theories.

[Reelya]

Also, the article notes that if there were a civilization as advanced as we, there would be traces visible for 100 million years (it notes our agricultural scale as an example).

Any civilization that existed before us would have had to have been around well before then to leave no trace. Presumably they wiped themselves out or left the planet entirely and completely.

I think more than that. The oldest surviving stromatolites are estimated to be 3.7 billion years old. You have to account for that. i think some of our processed materials are more durable than stromatolites. It's more a matter of location rather than time, e.g. the right bit of jewelry or engineering tools in the right spot could last 10s of billions of years, intact. At least well enough that you could determine that it's not a natural structure.

[Imic]

The thing of the thung of the theng of the ten billion year old meteorite that proves that the human race will inevitably use the magnificent powers of agriculture to wipe out the species for 10,000 years, which is the average lifespan of a fictional me.

[wierd]

Simple carbon deposits are geologically stable.  There would be evidence of an industrial society in all manner of geological records, due to the addition of industrial waste products in water and atmosphere.

Then there are things like glass objects in alluvial flows, the existence of things like silicon carbide that does not occur in nature but is damn hard to biodegrade, etc.

No.  It is very unlikely that an industrial society has predated ours. Not without a supremely well done cosmic makeover of the whole damn planet with pretty much magical technology. (Talking class II and III on the kardishev scale here.)