this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
288 points (85.3% liked)

politics

19079 readers
4436 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Our models are wrong

Well, your models are wrong. In both examples, you assume exponential growth will continue forever. Resource limits are a thing in the real world, as evidenced by every population in history (humans or animals).

[–] afraid_of_zombies -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I assumed linear growth and I assumed a frankly absurdly low growth rate. Under this model earth is only sending out a colony ship once every 15,000 years. Does that seem likely? We made 6 trips to the moon and about 50 years later are now planning more. Is there a single thing you can mention that humanity would only bother doing once every 15k years?

What is far far more likely is waves of ships, pauses of a century or less, more waves of ships...

Additionally I didn't assume forever. I assumed a malthusian growth pattern where by aliens keep growing until nothing is left.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, you assumed no catastrophic failures. On long timelines there are going to be world or civilization ending events.

There are so many species that were wiped out through their actions or just naturally. That's the point of the Drake equation; the sky should be full of other civilizations, but it isn't.

The common answer is that there may be a "great filter", some event that all advanced species encounter. Maybe it's ahead of us, or maybe it's behind us. It could be something simple like "walking upright is rare" or it could be some powerful weapon everyone discovers.