I don’t often read through comments and chat rooms. Too many people are full of rancor over…
Let me choose my word carefully here.
…over ANYTHING. Or, should I say, EVERYTHING.
Lots of rancor out there. But I recently came across a series of comments with less rancor than usual. The comments centered on a book about coal and the Fermi Paradox, you know, that statement Fermi made that if the universe has conscious life elsewhere we should have some evidence. * Of course, you and I can think of reasons we lack such evidence, such as the age and size of the universe, both limiting the probability that tiny Earth found itself on the alien highway to discovery.
And then there’s that joke I’ve retold, the one that was once picked as the greatest joke ever: Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes go camping. In the middle of the night, Sherlock wakes his companion and says, “Watson, Watson, wake up!” Groggy Watson awakes, and Sherlock says, “Look up and tell me what you observe and deduce.” Watson says, Fermi-like, “I see thousands of stars, and I deduce there are uncountable more that I cannot see. Around some of those stars there are planets, and some of those planets have life. And among those planets are some with intelligent life. Therefore, I deduce that we are not alone in the universe.” To which Sherlock responds, “No, you idiot, someone stole our tent.”
So, anyway, the rancor-less conversation I came across centered on an argument that coal is the reason we are the technological giants we claim to be. The Industrial Age and then the Technological Age were given their start by energy from coal. The author makes the claim that since coals formed during only 2% of Earth’s existence, its rarity of formation might mean that no coals formed on other Earth-like planets, keeping intelligent life there at the pre-Industrial level we had before 1750. In the rancor-less debate, one commenter even shows the argument to be a faulty syllogism. Now, there’s the kind of debate we need more of, that is, the kind of debate based on logic and the refutation of logical fallacies.
Alas, that’s not what we usually find in rapid-fire comment sections online. Emotions well up. Heat builds, and another paradox raises its unsolvable head: If humans are intelligent beings, why do they spend so much time wallowing in emotion? Coal-fired power plants provide the energy for speed-of-light discussions that embroil “intelligent creatures” in the fiery rancor.
Now, of course, like you, I would like to see the resolution of the problem about our seemingly isolated place in the Cosmos. We’ve found and are still finding many extra-solar planets, but we haven’t found intelligent life, and certainly, we haven’t found evidence of visitors from other worlds. Seven billion living and 100 billion past humans haven’t produced any such irrefutable evidence. But we still keep hoping—and arguing. And we grab onto anything that seems like evidence, such as the recently detected signals coming from our Sun’s nearest neighbor star, or such as the famous “Wow!” signal. In our continuous state of hope we are like the audience of a Big Foot reality show, the cast going off to places where people saw Sasquatch while the audience awaits the airing of each weekly episode of a pre-recorded season. Does the audience think that someone wouldn’t leak to the media the find of the century?
I know this might generate a negative or even a heated reaction, but with regard to intelligent alien life, I usually say, “So what!” Unless there’s a mechanism to send light faster than it goes to carry a signal to Proxima b, the message takes four-plus years to get there, assuming our aim is correct since both we and Proxima b are moving. We have to exhibit the skills of a great quarterback or skeet shooter, leading the moving target whose position is in constant flux. So, say we have that skill. Now, on the other end the alien intelligence has to have the same skill, the will to respond, and the wherewithal to make the response in hopes that at the time the return signal passes Earth, we, too, some minimum nine years hence, are both listening and lucky enough to intercept it.
But maybe I should redirect what I’m saying about alien matters to Earthly matters, specifically to matters of discussion among so-called intelligent Earthlings. Maybe there’s a lesson that I can apply to heated discussions I see online. And it involves the response time.
The flames of heated arguments are fanned by immediacy. Online, someone says something, and immediately from around the world come rancor-filled responses. What if—just postulating here—what if no one could respond to a statement for four-plus years, or even nine years? Nothing puts out flames better than time.
Does it really matter in the absence of evidence that the universe might house intelligent life ubiquitously? What if we discover that intelligent life elsewhere is just as rancor-filled as intelligent life is on Earth? “No, no, no,” you are probably thinking. “That conclusion is the product of faulty logic. You can’t assume that intelligence elsewhere is similar to intelligence here. Many science fiction writers have imagined quite the opposite kind of beings, beings like Dr. Spock or like the robots and androids of numerous stories.”
We can’t speed up light beyond its cosmic limit. True, if space is stretching, then relative to us light travels faster, but there’s no galactic local analog of such a phenomenon. Light goes what it goes. Communicating means riding that fast and no faster. But maybe for the sake of peaceful communication, we should see whether or not we can’t s. l. o. w. light down.
Think of the consequences for internet chat rooms and comment sections if we didn’t have access to coal-fired electrical plants that power the response grid. No immediate flare ups of emotion-filled responses. Think of playing a chess game by mail. I make a move. I write a letter to my opponent detailing the move. My opponent makes a counter move and then writes me a letter telling me the details of the move. I make another move and write another letter, and so on. Imagine slowing down the pace of the discussions we see online and in social media.
Burning coal did lead to a rapid expansion first of industry and then of modern technology. Could we be where we are at this time without the heat stored over a mere 2% of Earth history? Not sure. To paraphrase what one rancor-less commenter states in that discussion I read, we can’t assume that had Newton not been born that someone else would not have seen and understood why an apple falls from its tree. And, as another argues, we can’t assume that wood-powered or hydro-powered sources of energy wouldn’t have gotten us to our current industrial and technological status—though that is really a stretch considering that wood and peat don’t have the BTUs that coals readily release upon burning and that hydro-power sources aren’t mobile. Burning coal, we might argue, led to the rapidity of our modern responses, and that rapidity seems to have enabled our fast emotion to outpace our slow reason.
Anyway, the point here is diminishing rancor. If we could just slow down a bit, we could allow emotions to lose energy and reason to gain it. The next time you feel the urge to respond immediately, think of sending that message to Proxima b or of playing chess by mail.
*The discussion occurs here: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/coal-and-the-fermi-paradox.998509/
Let me choose my word carefully here.
…over ANYTHING. Or, should I say, EVERYTHING.
Lots of rancor out there. But I recently came across a series of comments with less rancor than usual. The comments centered on a book about coal and the Fermi Paradox, you know, that statement Fermi made that if the universe has conscious life elsewhere we should have some evidence. * Of course, you and I can think of reasons we lack such evidence, such as the age and size of the universe, both limiting the probability that tiny Earth found itself on the alien highway to discovery.
And then there’s that joke I’ve retold, the one that was once picked as the greatest joke ever: Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes go camping. In the middle of the night, Sherlock wakes his companion and says, “Watson, Watson, wake up!” Groggy Watson awakes, and Sherlock says, “Look up and tell me what you observe and deduce.” Watson says, Fermi-like, “I see thousands of stars, and I deduce there are uncountable more that I cannot see. Around some of those stars there are planets, and some of those planets have life. And among those planets are some with intelligent life. Therefore, I deduce that we are not alone in the universe.” To which Sherlock responds, “No, you idiot, someone stole our tent.”
So, anyway, the rancor-less conversation I came across centered on an argument that coal is the reason we are the technological giants we claim to be. The Industrial Age and then the Technological Age were given their start by energy from coal. The author makes the claim that since coals formed during only 2% of Earth’s existence, its rarity of formation might mean that no coals formed on other Earth-like planets, keeping intelligent life there at the pre-Industrial level we had before 1750. In the rancor-less debate, one commenter even shows the argument to be a faulty syllogism. Now, there’s the kind of debate we need more of, that is, the kind of debate based on logic and the refutation of logical fallacies.
Alas, that’s not what we usually find in rapid-fire comment sections online. Emotions well up. Heat builds, and another paradox raises its unsolvable head: If humans are intelligent beings, why do they spend so much time wallowing in emotion? Coal-fired power plants provide the energy for speed-of-light discussions that embroil “intelligent creatures” in the fiery rancor.
Now, of course, like you, I would like to see the resolution of the problem about our seemingly isolated place in the Cosmos. We’ve found and are still finding many extra-solar planets, but we haven’t found intelligent life, and certainly, we haven’t found evidence of visitors from other worlds. Seven billion living and 100 billion past humans haven’t produced any such irrefutable evidence. But we still keep hoping—and arguing. And we grab onto anything that seems like evidence, such as the recently detected signals coming from our Sun’s nearest neighbor star, or such as the famous “Wow!” signal. In our continuous state of hope we are like the audience of a Big Foot reality show, the cast going off to places where people saw Sasquatch while the audience awaits the airing of each weekly episode of a pre-recorded season. Does the audience think that someone wouldn’t leak to the media the find of the century?
I know this might generate a negative or even a heated reaction, but with regard to intelligent alien life, I usually say, “So what!” Unless there’s a mechanism to send light faster than it goes to carry a signal to Proxima b, the message takes four-plus years to get there, assuming our aim is correct since both we and Proxima b are moving. We have to exhibit the skills of a great quarterback or skeet shooter, leading the moving target whose position is in constant flux. So, say we have that skill. Now, on the other end the alien intelligence has to have the same skill, the will to respond, and the wherewithal to make the response in hopes that at the time the return signal passes Earth, we, too, some minimum nine years hence, are both listening and lucky enough to intercept it.
But maybe I should redirect what I’m saying about alien matters to Earthly matters, specifically to matters of discussion among so-called intelligent Earthlings. Maybe there’s a lesson that I can apply to heated discussions I see online. And it involves the response time.
The flames of heated arguments are fanned by immediacy. Online, someone says something, and immediately from around the world come rancor-filled responses. What if—just postulating here—what if no one could respond to a statement for four-plus years, or even nine years? Nothing puts out flames better than time.
Does it really matter in the absence of evidence that the universe might house intelligent life ubiquitously? What if we discover that intelligent life elsewhere is just as rancor-filled as intelligent life is on Earth? “No, no, no,” you are probably thinking. “That conclusion is the product of faulty logic. You can’t assume that intelligence elsewhere is similar to intelligence here. Many science fiction writers have imagined quite the opposite kind of beings, beings like Dr. Spock or like the robots and androids of numerous stories.”
We can’t speed up light beyond its cosmic limit. True, if space is stretching, then relative to us light travels faster, but there’s no galactic local analog of such a phenomenon. Light goes what it goes. Communicating means riding that fast and no faster. But maybe for the sake of peaceful communication, we should see whether or not we can’t s. l. o. w. light down.
Think of the consequences for internet chat rooms and comment sections if we didn’t have access to coal-fired electrical plants that power the response grid. No immediate flare ups of emotion-filled responses. Think of playing a chess game by mail. I make a move. I write a letter to my opponent detailing the move. My opponent makes a counter move and then writes me a letter telling me the details of the move. I make another move and write another letter, and so on. Imagine slowing down the pace of the discussions we see online and in social media.
Burning coal did lead to a rapid expansion first of industry and then of modern technology. Could we be where we are at this time without the heat stored over a mere 2% of Earth history? Not sure. To paraphrase what one rancor-less commenter states in that discussion I read, we can’t assume that had Newton not been born that someone else would not have seen and understood why an apple falls from its tree. And, as another argues, we can’t assume that wood-powered or hydro-powered sources of energy wouldn’t have gotten us to our current industrial and technological status—though that is really a stretch considering that wood and peat don’t have the BTUs that coals readily release upon burning and that hydro-power sources aren’t mobile. Burning coal, we might argue, led to the rapidity of our modern responses, and that rapidity seems to have enabled our fast emotion to outpace our slow reason.
Anyway, the point here is diminishing rancor. If we could just slow down a bit, we could allow emotions to lose energy and reason to gain it. The next time you feel the urge to respond immediately, think of sending that message to Proxima b or of playing chess by mail.
*The discussion occurs here: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/coal-and-the-fermi-paradox.998509/
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