• Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Donald Trump has been president and was told all the secrets the president gets to hear… I think if there was secret extra terrestrial stuff, we would know by now. I do think there are aliens, but I don’t think anyone anywhere has any proof yet.

    I actually subscribe to the theories mentioned in one of the most recent kurzgesagt videos. It combines two separate theories into a reasonable blended conclusion.

    The first theory, is that as far back as we have been able to determine, life has increased in complexity at a pretty predictable rate. The only thing that doesn’t follow that pattern is that the earliest life found on our planet seems more complex than that formula allows for. If we keep following the formula back, the time at which life would have been uncomplicated enough to explain it’s random formation from inert base materials was way back in the early universe.

    The other theory, is that there was a time in the early universe where for hundreds of millions of years long, almost the entire universe was at a temperature range where liquid water would have existed. That time period lines up with the time the complexity of life formula predicts life started.

    So if it ends up being that both those theories are correct, then life likely started in the entire universe at the same time, and is roughly equally as complex everywhere in the universe at the same time. And it was only deposited on earth from a meteor when we first have record of life on earth. Which would be a pretty common way of it being distributed to other places too. We’ve already seen plenty of earth based life forms that could theoretically survive a trip through space. And they have no good reason to have evolved that way.

    The cool part about if these theories are both correct is that meeting aliens is much more likely to be how we depict it in our better sci-fi games and TV shows. Aliens will all be roughly equally advanced and have technologies worth trading, and we’ll have stuff worth it to them. Although significantly fewer of them will likely be bi-pedal humanoids.

    It also would explain the paradox of how common they should be and why we have no signs of them yet. They are likely not much further ahead/behind on stuff like space travel or making use of radio waves and stuff. Just depends on the luck of the draw on what they would focus on and when they happened to gain enough intelligence as a random mutation that actually stuck. Humans actually technically shouldn’t be there yet naturally. Surprisingly a huge part of the last 10’000 years of human progress is thanks to what we up until recently referred to as “mental illness”. It just so happens to be the only way to get up into the “genius” level of intellect currently.

    Unfortunately it does so by way of a random process that accidentally duplicates sections of DNA and omits what was supposed to be in the area the duplicate instead took up. Which has alot of downsides, the main one being that it doesn’t always result in a viable or useful human. But when it does, and when that human got alot of copies of a part of DNA that makes part of the brain, and didn’t lose parts that were too important, the brain can compensate through neuroplasticity to a degree for the parts that weren’t originally made. But the parts that were made extra densely basically give free extra intelligence in that area.

    Then that human has to go on to actually use that gift productively, which is one of the biggest filters unfortunately. There are many reasons why though, so if you zoom in closer and take a look at each reason individually, it’s only the biggest filter if you categorize them all together.

    Anyway, this has gone on long enough, I could ramble about it for hours. Either way, main point is, I hope those theories are correct. If so, the future of life seems way more interesting than if they are not correct.

    • SignullGone@lemmy.worldOPM
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      1 year ago

      Although I may not completely subscribe to these theories, this is an excellent write-up and definitely a possibility. Thank you for sharing!

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Life starting in roughly the same cosmological era wouldn’t result in civilizations of comparable advancement because a civilization’s advancement is many orders of magnitude faster than cosmological evolution.

      If we encountered human civilization from 1,000 years in the future we might not be able to understand or recognize it.

      • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But the first half, that the complexity of life increases at a predictable rate at least would put all life on an even footing, still a ton of room for random. But it’s hard to say if we should assume we had good luck, bad luck, or average luck.