it's cool how aliens statistically exist

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > it's cool how aliens statistically exist

Necc0: Jun 30, 2005; by exmarx; Broken Cake

The Protagonist posted:

hmm...

we're completely alone in god's cruel apocalypse abyss

everybody is too far apart to notice or reach each other (it's this)

we've been found (by ancient autonomous robotic probes sending data back to the cooling gas pocket that once was their system of origin)

we've been found and quarantined (for entertainment/research, possible later invasion)

they created and subsequently hosed off to virtual space because the universe is a massive drag

what'd i miss?

only the most likely one:

there IS a great filter and it IS in front of us.

we're going to either outright destroy ourselves or squander away vital resources

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:31

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:48

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

oh gently caress the filter gently caress goddamnit

...i really hoped it'd be the nuclear apocalypse but yeah it's probably the long slow industrial death.

i don't think this is a very fun game at all

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:33

echopraxia: May 22, 2015

Necc0 posted:

only the most likely one:

there IS a great filter and it IS in front of us.

we're going to either outright destroy ourselves or squander away vital resources

I take pleasure in knowing that a hundred million years after the Holocene extinction event super-ant civilization or whale world or whoever comes next will make the exact same goddamn mistakes and choke themselves to death in their own crib

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:35

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

echopraxia posted:

I take pleasure in knowing that a hundred million years after the Holocene extinction event super-ant civilization or whale world or whoever comes next will make the exact same goddamn mistakes and choke themselves to death in their own crib

There's a decent scifi to be written about the next sentient species picking through our ruins and, hopefully, learn from our mistakes under the ticking clock doomsday of the slowly dying swelling sun

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:38

Cactus Ghost: Dec 20, 2003; you can actually inflate your scrote pretty safely with sterile saline, syringes, needles, and aseptic technique. its a niche kink iirc

the saline just slowly gets absorbed into your blood but in the meantime you got a big round smooth distended nutsack

Jerry Mumphrey posted:

i'm gettin a fermi in my underpants

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:44

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

The Protagonist posted:

yeah what bs amiright? i mean if this was all simulated you'd expect there to be boundaries to prevent inordinately large calculations, like a maximum speed limit or a minimum possible unit of distance

You are misinterpreting the length thing. That's the smallest measurable length. There are lengths smaller, it's just they can't be measured/observed.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:44

Cactus Ghost: Dec 20, 2003; you can actually inflate your scrote pretty safely with sterile saline, syringes, needles, and aseptic technique. its a niche kink iirc

the saline just slowly gets absorbed into your blood but in the meantime you got a big round smooth distended nutsack

Necc0 posted:

only the most likely one:

there IS a great filter and it IS in front of us.

we're going to either outright destroy ourselves or squander away vital resources

it's already a miracle that we've survived splitting the atom as long as we have

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:45

Gaunab: Feb 13, 2012; LUFTHANSA YOU FUCKING DICKWEASEL

I forgot to take my medication for a few days and now i'm a legitimate threat to people

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:45

VendaGoat: Nov 1, 2005

OMGVBFLOL posted:

it's already a miracle that we've survived splitting the atom as long as we have

Just wait till we decide to gently caress around with actual fusion.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:46

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

OMGVBFLOL posted:

it's already a miracle that we've survived splitting the atom as long as we have

Atoms split themselves all the time dumbass. What actually is amazing is man made sustained nuclear fission reactions.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:47

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

VendaGoat posted:

Just wait till we decide to gently caress around with actual fusion.

All of our modern nuclear weapons operate via nuclear fusion. A sustained fusion reaction is not going to blow up the planet.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:48

echopraxia: May 22, 2015

Shushkabob

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:54

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Fucker

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:56

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

SHISHKABOB posted:

You are misinterpreting the length thing. That's the smallest measurable length. There are lengths smaller, it's just they can't be measured/observed.

how do you know

"there are speeds faster than light, they just can't be reached"

# ? Jul 14, 2015 01:58

VendaGoat: Nov 1, 2005

SHISHKABOB posted:

All of our modern nuclear weapons operate via nuclear fusion. A sustained fusion reaction is not going to blow up the planet.

Not what I was thinking.

Think of the economical impact of cheap clean energy replacing EVERYTHING ELSE. Lots of rich old white folks will kill us all.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:01

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

VendaGoat posted:

Lots of rich old white folks will kill us all.

They're doing their best right now. Also your scenario doesn't require fusion, it could have happened in the 70's straight from fission.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:01

Machai: Feb 21, 2013

The Protagonist posted:

statistically speaking, provided any civilization rises to the point it can simulate the universe then it is, by virtue of being 'intelligently driven', more likely to operate on principles amenable to life than one driven by blind forces.

it follows that they'd make many iterations of their simulations, and as life arose within those simulations they would follow suit, leading to an explosion of simulated universes multiplying on far shorter timescales than cosmological processes

hence you're more likely to be simulated than real

That's a lot of effort that went into me scratching my balls just now

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:02

VendaGoat: Nov 1, 2005

The Protagonist posted:

They're doing their best right now. Also your scenario doesn't require fusion, it could have happened in the 70's straight from fission.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:02

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

VendaGoat posted:

Think of the economical impact of cheap clean energy replacing EVERYTHING ELSE. Lots of rich old white folks will kill us all.

Specious logic of this aside, there's very little reason to think that fusion power will be particularly cheap. The construction, maintenance, and disposal costs for the reactors themselves will be significant, even if fuel costs aren't.

Even for fission reactors, fuel only accounts for about a quarter of their per-kilowatt cost.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:03

VendaGoat: Nov 1, 2005

Strudel Man posted:

Specious logic of this aside, there's very little reason to think that fusion power will be particularly cheap. The construction, maintenance, and disposal costs for the reactors themselves will be significant, even if fuel costs aren't.

Even for fission reactors, fuel only accounts for about a quarter of their per-kilowatt cost.

Do you actually expect me to defend this?

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:04

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

Most people don't know criticality was achieved in a fluid molten salt for thousands of hours from U-233, an isotope derived from really fuckin' common poo poo, back in the 60's... but that's a different thread.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:05

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

VendaGoat posted:

Do you actually expect me to defend this?

No, I'm just posting

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:05

VendaGoat: Nov 1, 2005

Strudel Man posted:

No, I'm just posting

Well, loving carry on then!

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:06

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

The Protagonist posted:

how do you know

"there are speeds faster than light, they just can't be reached"

Because I'm not just wiggling my hands around , this is science ok

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:06

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

VendaGoat posted:

Well, loving carry on then!

Thank you, I shall

SHISHKABOB posted:

Because I'm not just wiggling my hands around , this is science ok

The planck length is neat because it's a length that you can derive from fundamental constants of the universe. Like a more objective metric system.

Too bad it's so unmanageably small

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jul 14, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:06

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

SHISHKABOB posted:

Because I'm not just wiggling my hands around , this is science ok

No I'm dead serious, my conception was that there was a minimum distance implying a kind of digital substrate permeating the universe. How does anyone know with any certainty that there is a physically sensible smaller distance?

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:08

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

The Protagonist posted:

No I'm dead serious, my conception was that there was a minimum distance implying a kind of digital substrate permeating the universe. How does anyone know with any certainty that there is a physically sensible smaller distance?

Ok "physically sensible", "minimum difference", etc. are all different things. What quantum physics has led us to figure out (and we figured this out in like the 20s or something) is that the act of measuring something fucks with it. And because of the way things are naturally, it turns out that you have a minimum precision to a measurement of position. This is where we get the "minimum distance". But it's not really. Just imagine a smaller distance, there you go.

This doesn't entail "spatial quantization" or anything like that.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:12

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

SHISHKABOB posted:

Ok "physically sensible", "minimum difference", etc. are all different things. What quantum physics has led us to figure out (and we figured this out in like the 20s or something) is that the act of measuring something fucks with it. And because of the way things are naturally, it turns out that you have a minimum precision to a measurement of position. This is where we get the "minimum distance". But it's not really. Just imagine a smaller distance, there you go.

This doesn't entail "spatial quantization" or anything like that.

Uncertainty principle itself doesn't do that - you can have arbitrary precision of location as long as you're willing to accept arbitrary uncertainty in momentum.

I guess the idea of the planck length (or something like it) as an actual minimum observable length comes from a more recent generalized uncertainty principle, which I don't know how well established it is.

quote:

From the above we conclude that a particle can be confined only in boxes of certain discrete lengths, and further speculate that this might indicate that all measurable lengths are quantized, since measurement of lengths require at least one particle, possibly many. We think that this result can be generalized to relativistic particles, as well as to the quantization of areas and volumes

Mostly though the planck length is just super super tiny, like many orders of magnitude less than the radius of an electron, so it's unlikely that anything smaller than it will matter for measurement purposes.

Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Jul 14, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:20

Kuato: Feb 25, 2005; "I CAN'T BELIEVE I ATE THE WHOLE THING"; Buglord

from their point of view (POV), WE are the ones who are ALIEN. Rly makes u think imo

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:23

The Protagonist: Jun 29, 2009; The average is 5.5? I thought it was 4. This is very unsettling.

I had to go read a blurb and yeah, it's the hypothetical quantum gravity model that takes it to entail spatial quantization. Could be, could not.

However saying 'just imagine it' makes it so is dumb, ala a speed faster than c. Space could be quantized. Maybe.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:23

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Strudel Man posted:

Uncertainty principle itself doesn't do that - you can have arbitrary precision of location as long as you're willing to accept arbitrary uncertainty in momentum.

I guess the idea of the planck length (or something like it) as an actual minimum observable length comes from a more recent generalized uncertainty principle, which I don't know how well established it is.

Rught, thTs right. dxdp =~ h wgatever yes ofc duh that makes it arbitrary.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:24

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

The Protagonist posted:

However saying 'just imagine it' makes it so is dumb, ala a speed faster than c.

Tachyons travel faster than c

:iwanttobelieve:

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:28

cram me sideways: Apr 26, 2015

You: "Mathematically, aliens MUST exist!!"

Me: "Great. Thank you. See you later." *struggles to figure out how to buy groceries AND pay the electricity this month*

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:31

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

cram me sideways posted:

You: "Mathematically, aliens MUST exist!!"

Me: "Great. Thank you. See you later." *struggles to figure out how to buy groceries AND pay the electricity this month*

Your life is meaningless just kill yourself and get it over with.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:32

cram me sideways: Apr 26, 2015

You: "Isn't it great how, like, BIRDS are direct descendants of dinosaurs!?!?"

Me: *remembers the phone bill is due tomorrow*

You: "Birds are tiny dinosaurs! Anyways, I just saw Jurassic World, and - heh - their 'Hollywood' version of Tyrannosaurus Rex is a bit off the mark. I'll explain why over the next five minutes."

Me: *heats up yet another Maruchan Yakisoba Beef Flavored bowl before going back to yet another 10 hour shift at CVS*

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:35

Fog Tripper: Mar 3, 2008; by Smythe

echopraxia posted:

Holocene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE

you hosed it, friend

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:38

cram me sideways: Apr 26, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:38

Strudel Man: May 19, 2003; ROME DID NOT HAVE ROBOTS, FUCKWIT

cram me sideways posted:

eh

Hey, you edited.

Anyway, I was going to say, do you like their garlic butter dipping sauce? Seems like most people I've talked to who get papa johns swear by it, but it always makes the meal a little heavy, to my tastes.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:40

echopraxia: May 22, 2015

Fog Tripper posted:

good music

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:45

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:48

Fog Tripper: Mar 3, 2008; by Smythe

echopraxia posted:

Yeah, awareness of Bon Iver is the one positive thing I can say I got from SA.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 02:54

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