Ain't nobody here but us chickens

[andygates]

I'm not sure why, but lately I've become convinced that we are alone in the universe.  Just us, on our precious and singular little rock.  I don't think that it's the rock - my money is on the exoplanet guys finding a ton of Earthlikes soon - but I just have a gut feeling that they've all got bacterial mats, stromatolites, and that's the lot.



In the Drake equation, that's fi, the fraction of life-bearing planets which develop intelligent life.

It's a strange and profoundly melancholy feeling which makes even the most wretched human twaddle seen unbearably precious.

Comments

Cheer up, Munky

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Drake's equation, as I understand it, strictly applies to our galaxy.

How many billions of stars in our galaxy?

What proportion of stars in our galaxy have Earth-like planets?

How many galaxies in the universe with similar numbers of stars?

We might be bloody rare in our galaxy. It might be that any intelligent life out there is of a similar stage in development rather than more advanced. It might be less advanced.

But the only sentient life in the entire universe?

The numbers make a mockery of such anthropocentrism. I cannot bring myself to believe that we are unique. Just us, the only ones capable of complex tool manufacture, screwing our environment until we're on the verge of rendering it inhospitable, making a mockery of altruism and throwing ourselves off high bridges because we've reached the end of our tether?

Nah. That's like saying that the decay of the lunar orbit is specifically at its current stage right now so that it can produce eclipses for us to see. Just for us to look at. Because we're so big and special and clever.

Humanity is a unique and beautiful snowflake. I just doubt it's the only unique and beautiful snowflake in the whole universe.

Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. Pessimists are afraid that it is.

Even unbearably precious wretched human twaddle is wretched human twaddle.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

>But the only sentient life in the entire universe?

Nah, probably not. Even if you run Drake with teeny tiny numbers, the initial seed - star count - is so vast that it has to come up with something decent. But other galaxies are Elsewhere for anything that matters. My gut just says that we're functionally alone.

Heh. I could always take the quantum anthropic approach. The universe existed in a bajillion potential states until one of them developed the observer. Then all the possibilities collapsed, and we're left with some sabre-toothed tiger or early hominid looking at itself in a puddle and thinking, "I", and bam, it's all set.

But that is solipsistic wank. Glorious wank, mind you, a real four-hour session with special lube, but wank nevertheless. It's the kind of thing Raven would claim. "The universe? Just a mess of probability until the chance that *I* would be there came along. I created the universe, me." Ego as Creator. Chuckle.

>Even unbearably precious wretched human twaddle is wretched human twaddle.

On the one hand, all that mundane bullshit that people put out is a unique and beautiful snowflake. On the other hand, if my gut is to be believed, all of those quotidian goons could be out making music or painting the Sistine chapel or discovering new sexual positions, and instead they're doing the ironing and whining about the congestion charge. Because I'm not Rabbi Lionel Blue, and I can't find the beauty in that crap. And if we're all alone, that crap seems like so much more of a waste of time.

I hope it's just that the last SF I read was Against a Dark Background and I'm feeling blue.

It's not as if going with one's gut has the best precedent, after all. Eh, George?

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Actually, running Drake on a bunch of made-up numbers for the unknowns, it's easy to get one or fewer intelligent species per galaxy at any one time. Mind you, Drake is so vague that it's easy to get anything you like out of it.

"The Hubble Deep Field, an extremely long exposure of a relatively empty part of the sky, provided evidence that there are about 125 billion galaxies in the universe."

It would be poetic (and twee and pat and gothily, indulgently self-satisfying) to imagine just one sentient species in each of those galaxies, cut off forever by huge gert slabs of intergalactic void.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're going to be that depressing about it...

I mean, you could start using imaginary or complex numbers for Drake. Then you'll end up with stupid answers.

As for the huge slabs of intergalactic void: just because they seem insoluble barriers to us, who knows what lies in the future or what might be out there? If it took N billion years to produce us, and there are galaxies out there N+M years older than ours, there might be species out there with M years worth of technological progress.

Thing is, the universe is such an unimaginably vast place, no possibility can be rigorously discounted. I'd rather wonder at the possibilities and potentials than get depressed about how lonely we are.

I'll quite happily get depressed about how damn stupid we are, though.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

I need optimistic happy-bum sci-fi.

Re: Cheer up, Munky

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ah, found it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

We're made out of meat. :)

[katebush.livejournal.com]

http://xkcd.com/384/

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

(a total aside) *hugs KB*

I hope there are other civilizations out there. I used to use Seti as my screen saver. I have hope that one day we will rise above banging rocks into each others heads over mud, ethnocentrism, or whoever's gonads are bigger. I guess today that makes me an optimist. Check back in a few weeks for some doom and gloom.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be awful if we found other sentient life and it had politicians too?

[fox-uk.livejournal.com]

This

[andygates.livejournal.com]

This?

[fox-uk.livejournal.com]

Apparently when someone posts something you agree with and, quite possibly, would have posted yourself had you been fast enough, internet convention is now to respond with the word "this" instead of some wordy "me too" type post.

Of course, it looses something if you have to explain it every time you do it. :P

[andygates.livejournal.com]

That "something" being "the status of 'convention'", I'd hazard to guess...

Right, we need the Singularity and fast. I'm not hanging around to get old and die on one silly little rock, no matter how precious.

[teahisme.livejournal.com]

it only saves two characters of space O.o

/me sticks with Me too, agreed or amen.