
The Big Alien Theory - simonh
http://www.thebigalientheory.com/
======
lowdose
> It's a complete myth that a single data point is inadequate for making
> predictions. For example, let's take Usain Bolt's 100m World Record of 9.58
> seconds. Imagine that was the only data point we had regarding human running
> speed. Wth that one data point we could confidently make a powerful
> prediction, that anyone we pick from the world population will take more
> than 9.58 seconds to run 100 meters.

We have measured countless people running the 100 meter and that's why we know
who is the fastest. Isn't the world record the opposite of one data point by
the accumulated knowledge is contains?

~~~
simonh
It’s just an extreme example to help illustrate the point. By itself it isn’t
enough to make the argument, but that’s why the author also makes the rest of
the argument.

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ianai
This is actually a really fun read. I agree that the standard assumptions
about aliens are vastly negatively biased to the point of absurdity. Though
reading this does highlight how an alternative approach may come across way
too speculative for academia.

~~~
nikofeyn
> I agree that the standard assumptions about aliens are vastly negatively
> biased to the point of absurdity.

could you elaborate?

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Nevermark
The main point is unassailable, most individuals (in any category) will be
from larger pools vs. small pools.

One implication I have seen mentioned before is that we are far likelier to be
living in a time of high population than low. That within 95% accuracy, we are
living in a time segment with 95% of humanity.

To make any sense of that, given the long future humanity _could_ have on
Earth, the chance of human extinction is great.

Given the serious challenges of any meaningful colonization of the moon, Mars
or anyone else, and the number of existential threats to humanity, many of
them self created (weapons, brittle dependency on tech, environmental damage,
etc.) it is another reason to take collective human action toward risk
mitigation much more seriously than our leaders and citizenry have done till
now.

One way our civilization could continue, but numbers come down, is if
artificial intelligence inherently needs less individuals. Maybe there will be
no good practical reason for more than one post-human AI and economics will
simply result in one, inevitably more complex and modular, intelligent
individual chewing through the resources of our solar system and beyond.

That would fit with the articles conclusion that our civilization must already
be on the larger population side, so any future we have must contain much
fewer individuals or none? Not very reassuring - but worth considering.

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blamestross
The fallacy here is simple:

All of the assumptions mapping from our experiences to "alien" experiences are
built on that those experiences share fundemental premises. That the
demographics of alien civilizations match our own. That we are a median point
and not an extreme outlier. There are even solid arguments for considering us
an outlier (Fermi paradox)

Even if we take the sketchy assumptions that the sizes of alien civilizations
are zipfy, we could equally reasonably assume most civilizations are smaller
than us even if we are the smallest civilizations to ever exist.

~~~
Nevermark
The article is making the (almost explicit) assumption that the "power law"
holds for civilization populations.

That seems reasonable to me.

But I think we can also find good arguments that we have more information than
simply where each of us as individuals appeared.

For instance, the resources of the universe can easily support quadrillions of
us (or individual entities), so if even one civilization is able to extend
itself to other solar systems reliably, there must be civilizations with
quadrillions or more individuals somewhere.

That would strongly imply that while most individuals are in large
civilizations, we have counter evidence that we might still be not in one.

Or the argument could be that the power law doesn't hold due to a strong
threshold effect, or some other effect.

For instance of some civilizations become galactic, but most individuals still
appear in a great many more civilizations that die out before becoming immune
to collective disasters.

In which case, I really hope we are not typical!

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nikofeyn
this is a difficult article to get through.

> Aside from a disproportionately large brain, we're fairly ordinary mammals.

we're rather inadequate mammals. it is our brain in conjunction with our
propensity for violence and ability to use tools that separates us, not
necessarily in a good way, from other mammals.

> However we should also consider ourselves to be a member of a very different
> group - those species, scattered throughout the universe, which ponder the
> existence of life beyond their own planet.

this is wholly narcissistic. we have no evidence that other animals don't have
philosophy.

> Given the vast scale of the universe, this group is likely to be even more
> numerous and diverse than our own animal kingdom.

no evidence for that either.

> Which begs the question: how should we expect to stack up against these
> other intelligent species?

that's not what "begs the question" means.

so an article going off about interpreting data and logical conclusions is a
little hard to give credence to when the opening paragraph is basically
sentence after sentence of non-evidentiary or incorrect statements.

~~~
simonh
> our propensity for violence

I think you’re underestimating how brutally violent many animals can be, even
herbivores. Just look at what the males of many species will do in competition
over females. Yes our organisational skills and automation take it to another
level, but the propensity to brutalise and kill is everywhere in the natural
world.

~~~
nikofeyn
i am not underestimating it all. just because other animals are violent
doesn't matter or contradict what i said. additionally, a lot of what we see
in the animal world in terms of violence is fighting for food and survival.
yes, nature has a lot of violence, but is often reasonable violence. other
cases of it not being reasonable pale to that seen in humans, where humans
showcase violence against non-competitive species and against other humans.

there is lot of evidence that homo sapiens' early dominance over other
hominids was due in no small part to violence.

