Has anyone yet done any work/thinking on the possibility that the theories expressed in Guns, Germs and Steel–that it was dumb luck that a particular group of plants and animals in one spot pretty much allowed the rise of civilization–make it much less likely that there are other intelligent civilizations out there in the universe? Much has been made about the billions and billions of stars, and how some of them must have planets, and some of the planets must have life, etc. However, we have (until now) had very little information about how civilizations arise.
It seems to me that, while the Bantu or Incas may eventually have developed a technological society, it would have taken hundreds or thousands of years longer because they were short on extra calories and muscle power. Maybe we ARE the first high-tech people in the universe?
This will dissolve into a debate shortly, I imagine, but before it does I’m interested to know if there is any “official” work in this arena.
This is one of the potential resolutions of the so-called Fermi Paradox: we don’t see the extraterrestrials here on Earth because we’re the first technological civilization to arise in our galaxy.
I also recall an article in Discover magazine, back in the mid-90s, noting that the ready availability of iron ore in Earth’s crust (as opposed to locked away in the mantle or the core) is something of a geological fluke, and hypothesizing that an “average” planet would therefore not have very much iron available to them to build a technological civilization with.
“It seems to me that, while the Bantu or Incas may eventually have developed a technological society, it would have taken hundreds or thousands of years longer because they were short on extra calories and muscle power. Maybe we ARE the first high-tech people in the universe?”
Or maybe it’s the reverse. Maybe on most worlds it takes a very short time and we’re the slowpoke.
Anyhow, I think you’re misinterpeting GG&S. Yes, luck is present, but it’s luck in the context of geography.
But the trouble is that you’re still thinking on too short a scale.
50,000 years ago humans were just another interesting primate species. No cities, no agriculture, stone tools.
Compare that to the hundreds of millions of years of multicellular evolution since the Cambrian radiation, or the 3.5 billion years of evolution since life began on earth. Why didn’t we get multicellular life sooner? Why didn’t we get life on land sooner? Why didn’t we get large brained tetrapods sooner? Why didn’t humans develop agriculture sooner?. Fact is, there’s no reason to expect technological civilization ANY time. Why now? Because it just happened to be now, if it wasn’t now we wouldn’t be around to ask “why now?”. Intelligent technological therapsids could have evolved 250 million years ago, back in the Permian. Intelligent technological dinosaurs or ammonites could have evolved 70 million years ago, back in the Cretaceous. Intelligent technological proboscideans could have evolved 5 million years ago back in the Pliocene. But they didn’t.
So lack of particular resources slowing down technological discoveries by thousands of years or millions of years is just a rounding error.
There is no evolutionary teleology that will inevitably produce an intelligent tool using species after so many million or billion years of evolution. It does seem like we’re the only technological species to have ever lived on earth, but there’s no reason there couldn’t be dozens, for all we know. There’s no particular reason multicellular eukaryotes couldn’t have evolved a billion years before they actually did. There’s no particular reason that the first technological species on earth evolved 650 million years after the first animals arose. Why not 640 million years, or 500 million years, or 400 million years?
It may be that the earth has some unusual characteristics that favor the evolution of multicellular life, or technological civilization. Or it might be that we have unusual characteristics that DISfavor complex life, or technological civilization. Or maybe we’re average. We don’t know, because we’ve got a data set of one. However, it seems pretty likely that there is no other species with rough technological parity within a few dozen light years of us, even if we didn’t have any SETI evidence (that is, lack of evidence), because even if every nearby star had a planet that was a geological duplicate of Earth there’s no reason to expect that duplicate Earth to evolve anything like humans ever, and wildly unlikely that two technological species would by chance evolve at exactly the same time and have an industrial revolution at exactly the same time.
As I read GG&S, it’s not so much that our rise to civilization was entirely dependent on luck, but that the fact that Eurasia got there first was dependent on luck.
As population grows and food production increases, cities form and technological specialization increases. It may have taken longer under different geographical conditions, but I think it would have happened regardless.
I was talking about this last night and I think we are in a second generation solar system, and you need a second generation solar system for life to exist. A first generation would just be hydrogen & helium, but a second would have elements 1-92 in it. So if the Universe will continue to exist and perform fusion and have galaxies for trillions of years that means there may be 100’s of star generations. So considering that you need a second generation solar system to create life, and that intelligent life formed in a second generation solar system (ours) it seems like it would only be a matter of time before life evolves somewhere. But it could be another 10 billion years in another galaxy.
Kurzweil also addresses this a bit in his article under “Why SETI Will Fail (and why we are alone in the Universe)”
I’ve seen some speculation that we might actually be third generation, but yes, there’s a pretty strong consensus that we’re at least second. Confusingly, for historical reasons the technical term for our second or later generation star and those like it is “Population I”, while the previous generation was “Population II”.
As others have said, we should expect millions of years or more in the time spread between civilizations. On the one side, we can deal with this easily enough: We know that we can’t communicate with creatures who won’t develop technology for another million years. On the other side, though, we have no clue: If some other world developed a technological civilization millions of years ago, would there be anything now for us to communicate with? Maybe that particular line became extinct. Maybe decendants of those creatures are still around, but they’re not technological any more. Maybe their technology has advanced to a point where we wouldn’t be able to communicate with them, or possibly even able to intercept or recognize their own communications. We neither know how long technological civilizations last, nor what directions an extra few million years of technology might take such a civilization.
One of the theories I’ve heard is that a technologically advanced civilization would develop a big bang of their own and transfer to a universe that is designed (physically, mathmatically, chemically, energetically etc) to suit their particular needs instead of trying to make this universe fit their needs. It sounds far fetched, but even today scientists are experimenting with trying to create big bangs which they say could create alternate universes we never see. However that doesn’t really make sense either because even if some cultures did that, there would be others that chose to stay here.
My own opinion is that intelligent life is plentiful throughout the Universe, and they are all aware of our existence. However, Earth is still under “quarantine”, as we’re a developing world that doesn’t have warp drive, fusion power, or even hybrid cars yet. Similar to the “Prime Directive” of Star Trek, and also modern anthropologists that try to avoid contact with primitive cultures, to avoid “tainting” them. Earth is basically one big petri dish.
As for SETI…well, how do we know the ET’s still use radio?? Earth has only used radio for 100 years, and already it’s starting to become obsolete. Cell phones, wireless Internet, etc. all use microwaves now, and microwave bandwidth is too narrow and low-powered to even leave our atmosphere, let alone travel billions of miles to the nearest inhabited star system.
Definitely. Clearly Star Trek has the answers here - naturally, aliens operate in exactly the manner predicted for humans on a TV show. Though I’m not sure what you’re trying to suggest about anthropologists - since when do they try to avoid contact with “primitive” cultures? How do you think they do anthropological research? By satellite imagery?
Don’t confuse Population I, II and III with generations of stars. Two reasons: they are just broad categories and the term generation doesn’t really apply to stars very well.
The terms come from the observation that stars as a general rule fall into two categories: those with lots of metals (elements heavier than helium are metals to astronomers) and those with only a little. The first were called Population I (mainly because our sun is in this group) and the second Population II. Population III stars would be those that have essentially zero metals, or in other words, the first stars to form. And yes, they did exist, although none are still around.
But within the Populations there is quite a bit of variability of exactly how much metals they have and the abundance ratios between various elements.
As far as generations go, stars have such a wide range of lifespans that the term is meaningless. O-type stars run through their fuel in half a million years or so and there has been time in the universe for thousands of them to have existed sequentially (i.e. with no overlap in time between one star and the next). On the other hand, the first M-type dwarfs are still around and will be for tens or even hundreds of billions of years yet to come.
Yeah but do you feel that every alien culture would adopt that same outlook? What if there are literally millions of cultures in the cosmos, do you feel that all of them would agree to not intentionally & openly meddle in the earth’s affairs? I don’t find that believable myself, even in earth democracies you can count on 30-40% of a group going against the majority wishes. At least one of them would’ve made their presence known.
That’s my objection to the “beneficent quarantine” scenario. Looking at Earth’s own history of exploration, exploitation, and colonization, even if, say, the British may have been willing to sail around an island cluster and make limited contact, you still have the Dutch and the Portugese right behind them, anchoring directly in the mouth of the lagoon and claiming territory for themselves. It’s simply not plausible that an isolation agreement would be enforceable or even pursued by hypothetical extraterrestrial powers.
Years ago in Discovery magazine I read an article about someone who believed that we live in a part of the galaxy, out about 3/4 of the way from the center, which should be ‘just right’ , for life to prosper. The closer to the center you get the greater the stellar density and radiation making it more difficult for life to start or survive, and out past us in the outer edges it tends to be poor in metals, possibly hobbling high tech civilizations. This corresponds to Diamond’s geographical analysis.
Another thing to remember is that binary and trinary star systems seem to be the rule. Single star systems are less common. You might have a far more variable planetary environment if you are circling two different stars which also circle each other.
Add to that, differences: in gravity ( too much to easily reach escape velocity),
water worlds,
permanently cloud cover that never reveals starry skies,
political-cultural-religious-economic restraints preventing technological events.
Or minds so alien such as hive minds or gaia beings that we may not readily communicate with them.
Also, read Charles Stross’s funny and wildy imaginative (free!) downloadable novel ‘Accelerando’ for another take on the Fermi paradox which has to do with a Vinge’s Sinularity. He suggests another reason why they may not have bothered to come visiting. Stross also tackles some other interesting political, economic and cultural ideas regarding runaway technical advances in ‘Acelerando’ which is basically a serialized collection of short stories.
The thing that really gets me about Earth’s placement is distance from the sun. I read that if the Earth’s diameter were 1% smaller or 1% larger, the whole planet would be either too hot or too cold for liquid water to exist. Really? Liquid water can only exist on a planet within such a narrow window of distance from its star? If so, we totally lucked out.
Similar to the “Prime Directive” of Star Trek, and also modern anthropologists that try to avoid contact with primitive cultures, to avoid “tainting” them. Earth is basically one big petri dish.