BS: Civilizations before and beyond

Subject: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 10:51 AM

Everything has a lifetime, debatably even a proton. Civilizations are sometimes short lived and occaisionally long. The odds are that there are other rare high tech civilations elsewhere in the universe it is likely they are older than our current civilization. For two emerging high tech civilizations to meet during their lifetimes is unimaginably rare. Carl Sagan had to face these questions when he wrote 'Contact'.

Considering such an encounter is as bizzare as imagining future archeology. There are more people than just Carl who are willing to weigh the possibility. Here are real scientific researchers
in contrast to the cosmic loons on the TV show Ancient Aliens
Our current civilization has obvious blunders that will lead to our demise if there is not a drastic change. Drastic change does not seem to be a saving grace for prior civilizations.

If there is a good time to create stone monuments to the next possible civilization, now would be it. I suggest we should be less cryptic than our predecessors :^/

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 02:29 PM

Ancient Aliens say "why bother".

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Rain Dog
Date: 07 Apr 21 - 02:46 PM

A link to mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 21 - 05:27 AM

It is a central dilemma of human life—more urgent, arguably, than the inevitability of suffering and death. It surely troubles us more than ever during this plague-ridden era. Philosophers call it the problem of other minds. I prefer to call it the solipsism problem.

Solipsism, technically, is an extreme form of skepticism, at once utterly nuts and irrefutable. It holds that you are the only conscious being in existence. The cosmos sprang into existence when you became sentient, and it will vanish when you die. As crazy as this proposition seems, it rests on a brute fact: each of us is sealed in an impermeable prison cell of subjective awareness. Even our most intimate exchanges might as well be carried out via Zoom.

You experience your own mind every waking second, but you can only infer the existence of other minds through indirect means. Other people seem to possess conscious perceptions, emotions, memories, intentions, just as you do, but you can’t be sure they do. You can guess how the world looks to me, based on my behavior and utterances, including these words you are reading, but you have no first-hand access to my inner life. For all you know, I might be a mindless bot Auto post 3000.
Natural selection instilled in us the capacity for a so-called theory of mind—a talent for intuiting others’ emotions and intentions. But we have a countertendency to deceive each other, and to fear we are being deceived. The ultimate deception would be pretending you’re conscious when you’re not.

The solipsism problem thwarts efforts to explain consciousness. Scientists and philosophers have proposed countless contradictory hypotheses about what consciousness is and how it arises. Panpsychists contend that all creatures and even inanimate matter—even a single proton!—possess consciousness. Hard-core materialists insist, conversely (and perversely), that not even humans are all that conscious. Say something Gaia I'm giving up on you.

We have also invented mythical places in which the solipsism problem vanishes. We transcend our solitude and merge with others into a unified whole. We call these places heaven, nirvana, the Singularity. But solipsism is a cave from which we cannot escape—except, perhaps, by pretending it doesn’t exist. Or, paradoxically, by confronting it, the way Charlie Kaufman does. Knowing we are in the cave may be as close as we can get to escaping it.

Conceivably, technology could deliver us from the solipsism problem. Christof Koch proposes that we all get brain implants with wi-fi, so we can meld minds through a kind of high-tech telepathy. Philosopher Colin McGinn suggests a technique that involves “brain-splicing,” transferring bits of your brain into mine, and vice versa.

But do we really want to escape the prison of our subjective selves? The archnemesis of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the Borg, a legion of tech-enhanced humanoids who have fused into one big meta-entity. Borg members have lost their separation from each other and hence their individuality. When they meet ordinary humans, they mutter in a scary monotone, “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”

As hard as solitude can be for me to bear, I don’t want to be assimilated. If solipsism haunts me, so does oneness, a unification so complete that it extinguishes my puny mortal self.

author-avatar        John Horgan
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of Science, The End of War and Mind-Body Problems, available for free at mindbodyproblems.com. For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog Cross Check for Scientific American.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: JHW
Date: 08 Apr 21 - 05:33 AM

Tale recently of the Golden Disc sent into infinite space.
Story is that distant Aliens phoned back saying "send more Chuck Berry".

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 21 - 05:48 AM

I surmise some intelligent life need not concern themselves with a fast and furious short life span such as ours that evolved close to a hot and spicy star. They evolved more slowly around a red dwarf and 2,000 years is still middle age for them.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Apr 21 - 06:01 AM

A conversation with them can take years and bore you to tears.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: robomatic
Date: 08 Apr 21 - 09:22 PM

The Last (And First) Word On Solipsism, SCI-FI Style

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Apr 21 - 09:09 PM

An arguement that holds dirty water is that any discovery of us as a people would be turned into annihilation just as we have done to ourselves, 'aliens' would do the same unto us. The point is we have punished our own people for new land be it any selected peoples or a religion or indian tribes or party or vermin or insects...
ULTIMATELY IT ALWAYS ENDS THE SAME In violence, dehumanization. murder, slavery and extermination. We have new names for this reality today be it genocide or shoah but it has probably existed extending back into PRE history. I hold certain people respondsible for the lustful murderous crimes of such an ideology.
'The alien They' may not be cruelly killing women and children but the process remains the same while the means usually progress from starvation to killing a weakened people by knife , sword, gun, bomb, gas, missile and disease.

The small number of possible visitors against our 8 billions makes this fear of invasion arguement impossible.

On the bright side it has been written if some heavenly gods just gave us a computer drive that answers all our questions then peace and progress would reign forever. It wouldn't. Uusually once all the witnesses to war have passed away a new crop could be fooled into war.

The fault is not in the stars, it is in us.
Some believe it is best to pretend we have never been seen whether we have or have not.
President Reagan told the UN assembly he would welcomed an alien conflict in in order to unite our world.
He was already demented at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Apr 21 - 09:20 PM

Don.. that lengthy post at 08 Apr 21 - 05:27 AM is not properly identified as a quote from a magazine. At the bottom, it does indicate the source, but a brief clip with a link would be better.

original

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 21 - 06:19 AM

other stories by JH
How do I know I'm the only being in the universe? is the story on solopcism

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 21 - 06:26 AM

Bill you might like https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-mechanics-the-mind-body-problem-and-negative-theology/

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 21 - 06:51 AM

not for your average cat

btw
I am a pilot wave guy with overtones of Penrose and a fence sitter on realism. :^?

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Apr 21 - 11:58 AM

perhaps links only is best?
N war or impact? place your bets
but who will collect?

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Apr 21 - 01:18 PM

Yep.. that article has issues quite familiar:
"Philosophy addresses questions that probably can’t be solved, now or ever. Examples (and these are of course debatable, some philosophers and scientists insist that science can answer all questions worth asking): Why is there something rather than nothing? Does free will exist? How does matter make a mind?"

I read Heidegger in about 1963 about the primary philosophical question.. and my partially done Master's thesis was on "The only possible way to resolve the Free Will/ Determinism question."

I think science 'can' give some answers on how matter makes a mind.. though it won't satisfy everyone.
Once a mind exists that can ask the question, it can also find more that one way to cope with it.. that's where Phenomenology gets into the game. (google the "Eidetic Reduction" when you have a month free... *grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Apr 21 - 02:18 PM

Just ran onto this today: It's an example of what I said above.. an off-the-wall rhetorical spinning of a what-if scenario
https://thenextweb.com/news/physicists-working-with-microsoft-think-the-universe-is-a-self-learning-computer

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Apr 21 - 07:20 AM

Our brain may be as plastic as the universe - evolves and learns - but I think both are subject to entropy and 'laws' will follow the path of a lower energy state.
Meanwhile the universe appears middle aged (growing larger and less interactive) although it will not fully decompose for a near eternity when even fossil black holes evaporate.

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Apr 21 - 03:37 PM

Yeah... old joke:
An elderly lady went to a talk at a planetarium. Afterwards, she asked to astronomer: "When did you say the Sun will burn up and take the Earth with it?

"Oh, in about 2-3 billion years."

   "Oh, thank goodness... I thought you said 2-3 million!"

Subject: RE: BS: Civilizations before and beyond
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Apr 21 - 10:10 AM

There was a sci fi story from the 50s or 60s in which the rhetoric and policies of the Soviet Union and the United States have led to preparations for major unlimited war. Finally, a November election has led to the peace candidate being elected by a thoroughly frightened American electorate.

The victorious president-elect shows up at the White House for his briefing from the President. He has a good mind to rake him over the coals for the frightening escalation of tension and heavy expenditure of funds in arming the country and setting the two major nations on the threshold of war.

When he is received by the President, he is ushered into the Oval Office. Already there is the Soviet Premier! He and the President are on a first name basis!

"It had to be this way", they tell the president-elect. "We learned a few years ago that there is an alien flotilla of warships heading for the solar system to conquer Earth. The only way we knew to prepare the world for planet wide defense as rapidly as possible was to foment war, rile up our populations and get the factories building the weapons we will need. We don't know for sure if we can survive. But we do know we will be wiped out in any other scenario."

"You need to understand this immediately and get with the program."

"They arrive tomorrow."