Mathematical logic saying the end is near

[Clarissa_xx]

I was hanging out with friends and, somehow, the conversation turned in an interesting and strange way.

There was a guy who seemed pretty smart who claimed there was logic as to why the end of humanity was near. It went something like this and I hope I get it right.

The probability of intelligence (humans) rising on a world must very unlikely. Reasons given were that it took half the lifetime of the sun for intelligence to arise. If intelligence was easy to come by, it should have happened much quicker. Also, if it were so easy, there would be evidence of intelligent life from other worlds all around us. I’m not sure if I remember all the logic perfectly.

If intelligence is hard to come by, then intelligence is more likely to evolve toward the end of the span of time allowed for it to happen. He used an analogy of taking 6 die and having 50 shakes to roll all 1’s, then 2’s …to all 6’s within 50 shakes. Not going to happen often, but if it DID happen, it would tend to happen on shake 50 or close.

To add to it, it was brought up about why we/I are alive NOW. I mean, if humans are destined to colonize the galaxy over millions of years, why are we/I alive now so close to the beginning?

My first thought is that I am alive now and somebody has to be and so I am that person so the question is pointless.

However, I can’t help but think there might be SOMETHING to this. I mean, wouldn’t you think that there would have been millions of years of civilized human history and zillions of people having existed prior to when I was born and not just a few thousand years? Can the fact of me being here now have any meaning about millions of years from now? I mean, since I exist I might have had to exist now because there are no humans in a few million years.

It makes my mind melt and I can’t seem to get my thoughts around it.

Can anyone help?

[Wendell_Wagner]

This isn’t mathematical logic. It’s mathematics, but just using math in your reasoning doesn’t make it mathematical logic. Look up the term “mathematical logic.” (You can do a Google on it, for instance.) Some of what your friend has told you is a commonly discussed subject. Do a Google on “Fermi Paradox.” The Fermi Paradox says, “If there were other intelligence in the universe, we would have been contacted by them by this point. So where are they?”

[Whack-a-Mole]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
I mean, wouldn’t you think that there would have been millions of years of civilized human history and zillions of people having existed prior to when I was born and not just a few thousand years?

Nah…everything has a beginning…even the Universe itself. Just because you happen to live closer to the beginning than the end (assuming humans manage to stay around for several million years) doesn’t mean a thing.

As for intelligence developing remember that intelligence evolved LONG before anything resembling a human (or even a monkey) was on the scene. To be honest I’d say the earth moved along at a fairly good clip developing life and intelligence. The intelligence of dinosaurs did not rise to the level of current human capacity but who’s to say it culdn’t have given enough time? As long as the dinos were around what ultimately became humans was suppressed from developing very much. Once the dinos disappeared mammals got their shot.

Your friend is confusing the issue by making long odds seem like a reason for something when in fact it doesn’t indicate anything.

Consider the chances of exactly you existing. Not only did your mom and dad have to meet but a particular egg (out of dozens to choose from) and a particular sperm (out of millions to choose from) met to create you (if you think that is silly consider why your brothers and/or sisters differ so greatly from you). Now extrapolate that back to your grandparents, great grandparents and so on ad nauseum to the beginning of life in a mucky pool somewhere. You are truly a bazillion-to-one chance but here you are.

Don’t sweat it. We may be around a long time yet or go poof tomorrow from a dozen different things. Just have to keep on keeping on and hope for the best.

[bup]

Yeah, as WW says, it’s similar to the Fermi paradox, which concludes we are probably the first intelligent life in the galaxy; however, your friend’s logic is wanting, particularly this:

If intelligence is hard to come by, then intelligence is more likely to evolve toward the end of the span of time allowed for it to happen. He used an analogy of taking 6 die and having 50 shakes to roll all 1’s, then 2’s …to all 6’s within 50 shakes. Not going to happen often, but if it DID happen, it would tend to happen on shake 50 or close.

Just because something is rare doesn’t mean it comes near the end. How does he know the universe allows 50 rolls of the dice, and not 5000? or 500000000?

Also, rare things happen all the time. What are the odds that a man will bear at least one son, who will bear at least one son, who will bear at least one son, for, say, 2000 generations? Any study of royal lineage tells you that’s a pretty tough trick.

However, every man who walks the earth today has a father who had a father who had a father who had…

The point is, looking at what’s happened, seeing that it’s rare, and concluding it means something is flawed.

[rsa]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
To add to it, it was brought up about why we/I are alive NOW. I mean, if humans are destined to colonize the galaxy over millions of years, why are we/I alive now so close to the beginning?

My first thought is that I am alive now and somebody has to be and so I am that person so the question is pointless.

I’m not sure that I can help with the big question, but your idea in the portion I quoted is right on. Do a search on the Anthropic Principle.

[Skammer]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
He used an analogy of taking 6 die and having 50 shakes to roll all 1’s, then 2’s …to all 6’s within 50 shakes. Not going to happen often, but if it DID happen, it would tend to happen on shake 50 or close.

Well this is wrong. Your chances of rolling all 6’s on the very first roll are just as good as rolling them on the 50th.

Your chances of rolling all 6’s in 50 rolls is 50 times greater than doing it in just one roll; but it would be just as likely to occur near the beginning as near the end.

[Clarissa_xx]

rsa, I agree that my first thought is probably correct and that there is nothing to it. However, the more I think about it, I’m a little less confident of completely dismissing it. It seems that there is SOMETHING there that I can’t grasp but there none the less. It probably is an illusion but wanted to hear what other people had to say.

Skammer, I think what your saying is incorrect. If I need to roll all 1’s then on a future roll, roll all two’s etc all the way up to all sixes, I believe that if you actually do this, it will occur at or near the end at a much higher probability.

Bup, if it were easy, why didn’t intelligence evolve during the first few percent of the sun’s life? Why did it take over half way?

Wendell, I will never use the term mathematical logic again, ok?

[KidCharlemagne]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
** Also, if it were so easy, there would be evidence of intelligent life from other worlds all around us. I’m not sure if I remember all the logic perfectly.

If intelligence is hard to come by, then intelligence is more likely to evolve toward the end of the span of time allowed for it to happen. He used an analogy of taking 6 die and having 50 shakes to roll all 1’s, then 2’s …to all 6’s within 50 shakes. Not going to happen often, but if it DID happen, it would tend to happen on shake 50 or close.

**

Here is an essay on Fermi’s Paradox:

http://www.transhumanism.ndtilda.co.uk/Fermi.htm

For the life of me I don’t know where they come up with this stuff:

Somewhere along the path from the existence of a suitable planet to the existence of a corresponding space-colonizing species there appears to be some unlikely step that almost always fails.

Lot of data to back up this claim.

That die roll analogy of your friend’s is absurd. Whose to say what the number of “trials” is? A 1 in a million chance may be a long shot over 5-10 trials but not in a googolplex’s worth. And regarding the idea that intelligent life should have contacted us already:

We haven’t even made it out of our Solar System yet and we expect other civilizations to have made it to us when our own galaxy is 80,000 light years across? And there are 125 billion odd galaxies??? Even if our friends were right outside our own galaxy and could travel at 1/10th the speed of light it would take 800,000 years!

[dauerbach]

No, he’s not saying just roll all sixes but consecutively roll all ones, then twos, etc. Because the five previous conditions have to already exist, the sixes would neccessarily be near the end of the trial, and in fact could not happen at all in the first five rolls.

[RickJay]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
Skammer, I think what your saying is incorrect. If I need to roll all 1’s then on a future roll, roll all two’s etc all the way up to all sixes, I believe that if you actually do this, it will occur at or near the end at a much higher probability.

No, that is indisputably wrong. The probability is the same on every roll.

Look, add it up. If you’re playing Yahtzee and you roll 5 dice, the odds of getting six sixes are 1 in 6 raised to the power of 5, which is 6x6x6x6x6, or 1 in 7,776. So every time you roll your dice, the odds yu’ll hit five sixes are 1 in 7,776.

Those odds are 1 in 7,776 for the first roll, they are 1 in 7,776 for the 25th roll, they are 1 in 7,776 for the 50th roll. They never change; they are the same for every roll.

So if you want to roll 5 1s, 5 2s, 5 3s, etc. all in a row (the odds against doing this are so astronomical you could roll dice all your life and it would probably never happen - the odds are 1 in about 22 sextillion!) the odds are about 1 in 22 sextillion for ANY consecutive 6 rolls of the dice - it doesn’t matter if it’s Rolls 1 through 6 or Rolls 45 through 50. For any six honest rolls, it’s always the same. Always. The dice don’t change, do they? There’s no magical property that causes them to be more likely to roll Yahtzees the more they roll. Dice, after all, don’t have memories; they had the same odds every time you roll them. If you roll them 50 times it is unquestionably, absolutely true that the odds of 5 1’s through 6’s happening at the END of the 50 rolls are no more and no less likely than at the beginning.

I know this seems really strange to you, because you’re thinking “well, if I tried to do it, it would take forever to do it.” Yeah, it literally would; the odds are just as astronomical. But that doesn’t mean it’s LIKELIER to happen as you go along. It just means that, obviously, the early rolls are very unlikely to produce the results you want. But it’s also true of the later rolls! THEY aren’t likely to produce the same results either. It’s equally unlikely for any 6 rolls.

Let’s say you buy 50 lottery tickets. What are the odds Ticket #50 will win as opposed to Ticket #1? They’re exactly the same, aren’t they? The fiftieth ticket isn’t special in any way - it’s just numbers on paper. Those numbers are just as likely as any other.

This is part of your friend’s error; he’s doesn’t understand the fundamental laws of probability.

Or look at it this way; using your logic, Moses should have been able to say, logically, “The human race is doomed.” After all, relatively speaking, he was in the same position you are, right? To expect the human race to last another 4000 years, he would have had to assume he was right at the beginning of things, since the majority of humans have lived after Moses, not before. But he would have been wrong. The human race HAS lasted another 4000 years. So if the logic didn’t work for him, why would it work for you?

Bup, if it were easy, why didn’t intelligence evolve during the first few percent of the sun’s life? Why did it take over half way?

Well, there’s two reasons:

1. Because that’s just the way it happened. But we have no way of knowing if it happens the same way on other worlds. All our information about life comes from this planet. Maybe on other planets, life evolved more quickly, or more slowly, or in a way we can’t even fathom. How could we possibly know, anyway? We’ve never been anywhere else.

We can’t assume that the way life evolved on this planet is typical. We have no idea how life evolves on other planets.

2. Because it just takes a long time for life to evolve - at least, the way it has here.

[heresiarch]

*Originally posted by dauerbach *
**No, he’s not saying just roll all sixes but consecutively roll all ones, then twos, etc. Because the five previous conditions have to already exist, the sixes would neccessarily be near the end of the trial, and in fact could not happen at all in the first five rolls. **

Ah - I missed that part also.

BUT I would only agree that the probability of making that sequence of rolls increases as the total number of tries increases. It doesn’t imply anything about the total amount of tries available.

Originally posted by Clarissa_XX (bolding mine)
If intelligence is hard to come by, then intelligence is more likely to evolve toward the end of the span of time allowed for it to happen.

Allowed by whom? Who says there’s a time limit? For that matter, how can we prove that the universe is nothing more than a petri dish designed for the evolution of intelligent life (if you think that it is)?

[bup]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
**Bup, if it were easy, why didn’t intelligence evolve during the first few percent of the sun’s life? Why did it take over half way?

**

I didn’t say it was easy. Your friend is arguing that because the sun is middle-aged, that means the end is near? Now my brain hurts.
Quoting Kid Charlemagne:

We haven’t even made it out of our Solar System yet and we expect other civilizations to have made it to us when our own galaxy is 80,000 light years across? And there are 125 billion odd galaxies??? Even if our friends were right outside our own galaxy and could travel at 1/10th the speed of light it would take 800,000 years!

Your reasoning assumes that all stars are the same age, and that Fermi was talking about other galaxies. He was talking about our galaxy, and the fact that once you get to a certain level of technology, you should be able to colonize all the inhabitable parts of a galaxy within (somewhere between 5 and 20 million years, depending on assumptions). 20 million years, in cosmic time, is a blink. Other stars in our galaxy had a several BILLION year head start on us, and no life from those stars colonized earth before we evolved?

In a crucible, whoever gets to interstellar travel first will probably populate an entire galaxy before other technologically-advanced life can evolve, because the time it takes to colonize a galaxy is so short compared to the time it takes for life to evolve from nothing to a technologically advanced state.

[Whack-a-Mole]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
Bup, if it were easy, why didn’t intelligence evolve during the first few percent of the sun’s life? Why did it take over half way?

This is pretty simple really. Life, much less intelligence, didn’t form during the first few percent of the sun’s life because the earth didn’t or barely existed during the first few percent of the sun’s life.

Once the earth did form it was a decidedly hostile place to life. Volcanic, molten, no water and when the first water came you’d have sulphiric acid for rain not to mention fairly regular bombardment by meteors. Add to that the issue of the sun pouring in UV radiation MUCH more powerful than we receive today.

All-in-all it took some 2 billion years for the earth to settle down enough where life could even consider getting a toehold and frankly, once the possibility existed, life seemed happen pretty quick.

As for intellignece define intelligence…or rather how intelligent?

[KarmaComa]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
There was a guy who seemed pretty smart who claimed there was logic as to why the end of humanity was near.

AVOID CONVERSATIONS WITH THESE PEOPLE AT ALL COSTS! THEY ARE EGOMANIACS, AND FURTHERMORE THEY ARE IN GENERAL PARTIAL TO BERETS AND PHILOSOPHY DEGREES!

:dubious: Just wanted to use that new one.

[ftg]

I think the argument given in the OP is so, so laughable. How could anyone accept any of it even for a second? The anthropic principle mistakes have been discussed but there are more.

Take another look at the rollings 1’s, etc. in 50 tries. (Which too many people have failed to understand.) It is superficially true but completely irrelavent. How do you know that: a. 6 is the last? b. That we are the 6? Maybe we’re 2 out of 100 and there’s a long way to go. The exact same argument could have been made about bacteria 4 billion years ago. I mean, sheesh, how could someone … (grumble, mumble).

Also note, that humans+technology are evolving far faster than evolution. We can move very fast, lift huge objects and solve incredible problems with the aid of technology. Then there is gene therapy coming in a few years. We are not near a dead end, we are at the very beginning of a whole other phase.

I think the OP’s friend was “trolling” to see if anyone was dumb enough to believe it.

[ZenBeam]

No, he’s not saying just roll all sixes but consecutively roll all ones, then twos, etc. Because the five previous conditions have to already exist, the sixes would neccessarily be near the end of the trial, and in fact could not happen at all in the first five rolls.

I also missed the detail of rolling 1’s, followed by 2’s, etc. in the first reading, but it’s still wrong. The number of rolls needed will be large, but if you run the experiment many times, the number of rolls necessary will peak at some finite value.

I tried this just now in Matlab to see how long it would take to roll a single 1, followed by a single 2, and so forth up to 6. After 1000 trials, the number of rolls needed peaked at just below 30, and never took more than 90 tries. If I look at the average number of rolls needed, it’s about 31 +/- 3, once I’m allowing at least 60 rolls to accomplish it. That is, there was no difference in how many rolls it took on average between allowing 60 rolls, 100 rolls, or 200 rolls. For rolling six dice, the time will take much longer, but will still peak at some finite number.

To relate this back to the end of humanity, if the typical time (analogous to the average of 31 rolls above) to develop intelligence were about 5 billion years from the cooling of the Earth, then we’d have intelligence by about now, even if we’ve got another 5 or 10 billion years to do it in.

[KidCharlemagne]

*Originally posted by bup *
**I didn’t say it was easy. Your friend is arguing that because the sun is middle-aged, that means the end is near? Now my brain hurts.
Quoting Kid Charlemagne:
Your reasoning assumes that all stars are the same age, and that Fermi was talking about other galaxies. He was talking about our galaxy … **

Ok I didn’t realize he was just speaking of our galaxy. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if there wasn’t any other life in our own galaxy.

[Clarissa_xx]

• by heresiarch*

Allowed by whom? Who says there’s a time limit?

I would assume the lifetime of the sun. If intelligent life hasn’t emerged by the time the sun’s life is up, then it won’t evolve, right? Plus, just because the sun is in mid-life, doesn’t mean it will support life much longer. Isn’t the sun getting hotter?

I appreciate the link [bKidCharlemagne**. Interesting.

I am very new to this type of knowledge so forgive me if I don’t understand quickly.

Back to the OP, I am still not completely convinced there is not some information here. Believe me, I am 90% sure there is nothing to it but I cannot dismiss the fact that I am here so close to the beginning. I know someone has to be here even if mankind colonize the galaxy and last for millions of years spanning many stars. However, I find it a bit odd to be so close to the beginning. Moses and I are essentially at the same time frame when talking millions of years. Is there not some information about the future here? I agree with you all and believe there is not but I can’t completely close my mind around the math involved in order to be sure.

• quote by whack-a-mole*

All-in-all it took some 2 billion years for the earth to settle down enough where life could even consider getting a toehold and frankly, once the possibility existed, life seemed happen pretty quick.

The Earth is 4-5 billion years old, right? Life has been around for a couple billion or more, right??? Why did it take 2-3 billion years for intelligent life to evolve? Even if dinosaurs evolved intelligence (and by IQ I mean a tech civilization or something) it would still have been 2-3 billion years minus 100 million or so right? About the same amount of time.

This doesn’t strike me as ‘easy’. If it was easy, intelligence should have evolved a couple billion years ago. If you look at KidCharlemagne’s link it mentions that once ape-link animals evolved, humans evolved within a very short time but it took 2-3 billion years for the ape-like (pre-intelligent) animals to evolve. If it is ‘easy’, I would think it would happen quick.

I also think bup and the link has a point that if intelligent life had evolved and survived then they should have colonized the galaxy over a short time like 20 million years. They are not here so…

Is there anything to indicate we should be the first? Is it possible that Earth had a ‘head start’ and that the galaxy is suitable for intelligent life but is just starting to get suitable and Earth was, for some reason, inherited the prime requirements early? If not, I would think that I would wager that intelligent life is not common.

Please excuse my ignorance, this is all new to me.

[Elethiomel]

Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
*** by heresiarch
I would assume the lifetime of the sun. If intelligent life hasn’t emerged by the time the sun’s life is up, then it won’t evolve, right? Plus, just because the sun is in mid-life, doesn’t mean it will support life much longer. Isn’t the sun getting hotter?

I appreciate the link [bKidCharlemagne**. Interesting.

I am very new to this type of knowledge so forgive me if I don’t understand quickly.

Back to the OP, I am still not completely convinced there is not some information here. Believe me, I am 90% sure there is nothing to it but I cannot dismiss the fact that I am here so close to the beginning. I know someone has to be here even if mankind colonize the galaxy and last for millions of years spanning many stars. However, I find it a bit odd to be so close to the beginning. Moses and I are essentially at the same time frame when talking millions of years. Is there not some information about the future here? I agree with you all and believe there is not but I can’t completely close my mind around the math involved in order to be sure.

• quote by whack-a-mole*
  The Earth is 4-5 billion years old, right? Life has been around for a couple billion or more, right??? Why did it take 2-3 billion years for intelligent life to evolve? Even if dinosaurs evolved intelligence (and by IQ I mean a tech civilization or something) it would still have been 2-3 billion years minus 100 million or so right? About the same amount of time.

This doesn’t strike me as ‘easy’. If it was easy, intelligence should have evolved a couple billion years ago. If you look at KidCharlemagne’s link it mentions that once ape-link animals evolved, humans evolved within a very short time but it took 2-3 billion years for the ape-like (pre-intelligent) animals to evolve. If it is ‘easy’, I would think it would happen quick.

I also think bup and the link has a point that if intelligent life had evolved and survived then they should have colonized the galaxy over a short time like 20 million years. They are not here so…

Is there anything to indicate we should be the first? Is it possible that Earth had a ‘head start’ and that the galaxy is suitable for intelligent life but is just starting to get suitable and Earth was, for some reason, inherited the prime requirements early? If not, I would think that I would wager that intelligent life is not common.

Please excuse my ignorance, this is all new to me. **

We don’t know that it didn’t. Consider the “dinosaur-killer” natural disaster. It struck shortly before dinosaurs had any time to develop intelligence. We have several other, older craters about the same size as the one some people think are tracks from a dino-killer asteroid hit. How do we know these didn’t kill off budding civilisations of (at least potentially) intelligent creatures?

Also, for those of you who have a nagging feeling that it’s unlikely that you exist close to the beginning of the “human lifecycle” – it’s probably much more unlikely that exactly you would exist at all, especially considering that humanity probably (the following strictly IMHO) will begin to tamper with its gene pool in short (evolutionary speaking) order. So even though humanity may grow to inhabit a zillion stars, we will not be the speices we are today.

Consider; this timeframe is the only timeframe you have a shot at being exactly you - in fact, the number of different gene combinations that can possibly occur for any given individual is so staggering that it’s likely the only time “you”, as in your specific gene combination, could exist at all is during your parents’ reproductive period (and beyond, as you age, of course).

[Whack-a-Mole]

*Originally posted by Clarissa_xx *
Why did it take 2-3 billion years for intelligent life to evolve?

Why should it happen faster? Seriously.

Intelligence is merely a survival adaptation. MOST life on earth gets along just fine without the smarts to build a car. Animals evolve speed, fangs, poison, camoflage, flight and so on to better enable them to survive.

Along come proto-humans. Not terribly fast, not very strong, pretty much on the lunch menu for many sizeable predators. What did proto-humans have that the sabre-tooth tiger lacked? More brains. When they put their brains to use to avoid being something else’s lunch along came the ability to do a lot of other things such as communicate in a complex manner so others could learn the advance skills necessary to survive. Cars and Silly Putty are just side effects.

If you look at it ‘modern’ (by that I mean essentially genetically the same as us) humans appeared on the scene about 120,000 years ago (I think). 120,000 years is an eye blink in geologic not to mention galactic time. Granted it took a majority of those 100,000+ years to get some serious tech going but it’s only been about 7,000 years since the first full-blown civilizations settled down. I also read somewhere that humans had more technologic advancements in the last century than the rest of human history combined.

It would seem the pace is speeding up…

I also think bup and the link has a point that if intelligent life had evolved and survived then they should have colonized the galaxy over a short time like 20 million years. They are not here so…

You can come up with lots of reasons why the galaxy hasn’t been colonized yet by aliens.

• Maybe humans are in the lead intelligence wise in our galaxy.

• Maybe it is simply too difficult to colonize. Light speed might be a hard and fast speed limit (i.e. no sneaking through hyperspace) and reaching even 1/10 light speed is beyond human means to achieve at this time. The resources and time necessary to get us even as far as Alpha Centauri (some 4 light years away) would be staggering. You’d REALLY have to want to do it…like our sun is going to blow-up in a decade or something. Also, to what benefit would this be. A phone call to AC would take 4 years and 4 years for the reply. Trade? Wildly impractical and useless. Short of sending an Arc off to save humanity or something there really isn’t a motivation to do so.

• Maybe other lifeforms have colonized the galaxy and simply don’t feel like revealing themselves to humans yet (ala the Prime Directive from Star Trek).

• Maybe other lifeforms like planets with different climates than our solar system possesses so they just haven’t bothered with us.

You could go on and on. The bottom line is we don’t really know. Fermi’s Paradox might be spot on or wildly off base. The point is it doesn’t prove anything. Just gives you some food for thought.