[HN Gopher] Silurian Hypothesis
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Silurian Hypothesis
Author : hosteur
Score : 82 points
Date : 2023-02-11 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| zw123456 wrote:
| I wrote a novel, I know, every asshole has. About this. My
| theory, that is, either ridiculous or correct, the Silurians are
| the ancestors of the dolphin. The dolphin, or OK, the Orca, have
| a larger cerebral cortex than humans. What if, they were on once
| land dwellers, could it be? There is some science behind that.
| And say, they burned a bunch of hydrocarbons and caused a global
| warming, melted all the ice and they had to evolve to be ocean
| mammals.
|
| I understand this is a sci-fi fantasy.
|
| But my mind wanders, I think, let's say you understand your fate,
| once cast, how would you warn the next intelligent species to
| inhabit Earth?
|
| You cannot simply place an odalisque with an inscription on it,
| of course, over the millennia or billennia, it will be erased,
| you send out a sentinel into space.
|
| How would you warn the next iteration of intelligent life?
|
| Perhaps some sort of AI space craft?
|
| What if it turns out, they are the intelligent ones, having
| learned a lesson we have yet to learn?
| mshake2 wrote:
| If we can't detect previous advanced civilizations, I think it
| adds more evidence to the simulation hypothesis. Why would
| simulation designers include ancient nearly-undetectable advanced
| civilizations? Why don't video game designers fully model and
| texture areas of the world that aren't accessible?
| POiNTx wrote:
| If we were living in a simulation, I think it would be
| programmed in such a way that it would be emergent. A bit like
| a mandelbrot set, where the rules are simple but the complexity
| is infinite. No need to texture anything if the rules define
| what the texture would look like by a minimal fixed set of
| rules (laws of nature).
| mshake2 wrote:
| To me, it would be more interesting to design specific
| scenarios to study.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it would be more interesting to design specific
| scenarios to study_
|
| The weakness, to me, in the simulation hypothesis is the
| ancestor simulation assumption. Most of our computing power
| concerns itself with the future. Not the unchangeable past.
| Hell, simulated universes with different physical constants
| would be _far_ more interesting.
| roughly wrote:
| I know folks doing climate modeling - there's extensive
| simulating the past, because it's the only way for us to
| validate our models.
| dhosek wrote:
| There's a part of me that kind of views this as a theological
| prospect--that God (or however you care to name the supreme
| being, as such) is constantly upping the challenge for us as
| humanity.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| If you have the capability to run such a simulation, why not
| start from time=0 and just let it run... if you already have
| near infinite compute ability what does it matter? If you are
| an observer outside the universe so to speak does time even
| happen?
| POiNTx wrote:
| Video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lASPp9stEYA
| wdwvt1 wrote:
| If you are looking for an in depth (pop-sci) dive into the mass
| extinctions in earth's history definitely check out "The Ends of
| the World" by Peter Brannen. It covers the five mass extinctions
| with a good mix of scientific detail and entertaining writing.
| IIRC it discusses the likelier explanations for Silurian
| extinctions including disruptions to the carbon-silicate cycle
| (volcanism -> fresh silicate rocks -> weathering removes CO2 from
| the atmosphere as ultimately insoluble CaCO3 -> global ice age),
| anoxia/CO2 drawdown caused by increased phosphorous and other
| nutrient availability, and others.
|
| "The Ends of the World" stands out as a top disaster book along
| with Simon Winchester's "Krakatoa" and Sebastian Junger's "The
| Perfect Storm".
| voytec wrote:
| Much like the Ancients from Stargate.
| elbigbad wrote:
| I don't get what's interesting here if I'm interpreting this
| correctly. Paraphrasing, I'm reading the Silurian Hypothesis to
| be: Geological activity would wipe out most evidence of prior
| industrial civilization, but we could find larger scale things
| such as geothermal taps or nuclear evidence.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Have these people not seen how much garbage we leave lying
| around!?
|
| A lot of artificial materials last far longer than natural
| materials. Pure metals especially can last a very long time, like
| gold jewellery, or even just aluminium.
|
| Not to mention "forever chemicals", large scale concrete
| construction, mining, etc...
|
| We'll be finding evidence of our presence on Earth for a billion
| years or more, whether we like it or not.
| bshimmin wrote:
| A word of warning: a few years ago, the related page at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact took me down
| one of the worst Wikipedia procrastination rabbit holes I've ever
| lost myself in.
| refuse wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1096959/Myst...
| dcminter wrote:
| If you enjoy that kind of thing then you might like Terry
| Pratchett's early SF work "Strata" that riffs heavily on this
| idea (on a less parochial scale) while also enjoyably sending
| up Niven's Ringworld and a few other tomes.
| 9dev wrote:
| How kind of you to include a link to that very page with your
| post!
| pffft8888 wrote:
| They just found stone tools from 3M years ago in Kenya, so I
| assume they can also find fosilized artifacts from that long ago.
| But the Wikipedia article says that's not likely. The claim that
| it is unlikely seems to be inconsistent with the evidence.
| dghf wrote:
| Doesn't the hypothesis concern the possibility of civilisations
| a lot older than three million years, though?
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm reminded of the Reptites from Chrono Trigger. They ruled the
| planet when humans were still primitive; the arrival of Lavos
| wiped them out and allowed humans to flourish. But as it turns
| out, Lavos was "farming" humans as food for itself and its
| children...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Did Advanced Civilizations Exist Before Humans? Silurian
| Hypothesis [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32837757 - Sept 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _Silurian Hypothesis: Were There Civilizations on Earth Before
| Humans? (2018)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654393 -
| June 2020 (138 comments)
|
| _The Silurian Hypothesis_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21840320 - Dec 2019 (52
| comments)
|
| _Silurian hypothesis_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17899478 - Sept 2018 (7
| comments)
| [deleted]
| tough wrote:
| I love how in HN, comments on some thread bring others to publish
| topics brought up on the comments in as new posts too
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34734027
| pvg wrote:
| These are 'follow ups' in HN jargon and are typically moderated
| as dupes since they effectively behave the same way.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| [deleted]
| version_five wrote:
| Whenever I see this I find it really annoying. Not to say it
| isn't posted out of genuine interest and desire to share, but
| it still rubs me the wrong way and has a karma whoring vibe.
| Maybe finding too many of these is an indicator one is reading
| HN too much
| simonh wrote:
| It's true that only very few individuals would be fossilised and
| fewer if they found. Nevertheless we do generally find multiple
| fossils of the same or closely related species. We also find
| fossils of multiple stages in the evolution of many species. So
| it seems unlikely to me that we would find zero fossils of a
| species advanced enough to colonise the entire planet, as we
| have, nor any of their ancestral species.
|
| It also seems likely that technological artefacts would leave
| fossil-like impressions, or for mineral objects like ceramics
| simply straight up survive in strata. Such artefacts would
| massively exceed the number of individuals and trash has a
| tendency to get widely distributed so it seems extremely unlikely
| none would be found.
|
| One idea is that they might have only lived in a small geographic
| region such as an island, and if that location happened to
| subduct and not reach the surface we'd never find them. Well yes,
| but the major advantage of technology is that it allows you to
| overcome geographic and climatic barriers, which is why us
| hairless tropical plains apes have colonised every region on the
| planet, and did so everywhere except Antarctica but including the
| arctic with Stone Age technology. An industrial society would
| also create demand for resources, prompting global expansion.
|
| So it's an interesting thought experiment, but I just don't see
| how the hypothesis is really viable. Not impossible perhaps, but
| extremely low likelihood to the point of implausibility IMHO.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| In my will, I'm going to ask that I be buried in soft mud in a
| river delta, or some similar place likely to become sedimentary
| rock in the far future. But I also want to be buried with some
| relic that proves I was a member of a technically literate
| civilization. I surmise something like a wooden abacus. The
| wooden abacus would fossilize along with my remains. I hope my
| fossil, and the fossilized object I carry, will be found in the
| far future.
| drewrv wrote:
| I do agree that a society capable of nuclear power or space
| travel can be considered implausible. A similar thought
| experiment might be, "how technological could a prior species
| have become before we'd notice?"
|
| Animals today, from dolphins to chimps, can be found using
| tools. Is there any reason to believe this didn't happen in the
| age of the dinosaurs? Then you can expand beyond simple sticks
| and stones to other primitive technologies. Maybe we weren't
| the first to figure out fire, or agriculture, or animal
| husbandry.
|
| Or maybe any brain capable of fire + agriculture + animal
| husbandry will eventually be so successful that nuclear power
| and space travel are inevitable.
|
| I'm not arguing in favor of any of this: it' just fun to think
| about.
| riffraff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this was also in The Science of Discworld earlier
| than 2018, where a few civilizations exist before and after the
| dinosaurs.
|
| I am surprised this is not mentioned in Wikipedia, but I don't
| have the book around to be able to cite it properly.
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(page generated 2023-02-11 23:00 UTC)