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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures. Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms?

I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though. 1/3 is a damn high probability. At the same time all the examples we make to wrap our heads around these mastodontic concepts are so trivial and so inherently human, that I wonder how can we really take our own musings seriously. We might be able to escape the boundaries of Earth’s gravity at some point, but will we ever be able to escape the boundaries of our human thought?

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I'm reminded of the old problem of the flight of bumble bees. Someone did some calculations on bees, modeling their flight using the same properties of aerodynamics as fixed wing aircraft, and they came to the conclusion that bees couldn't fly. Of course the obvious answer was that bees simply don't fly the way that fixed wing aircraft do and we merely did not understand how they flew at the time (we do know). But imagine an alternate world, a world where bees and other flying insects did not exist, then the equivalent calculation might be taken much more seriously about the impossibility of flying insects.

Similarly, what do we know about hyper advanced technological civilizations with the capability of colonizing galaxies? Basically nothing. So any model we have of them is fundamentally invalid. Even if we pretend that layering on a bunch of "conservative assumptions" can remove that fundamental difficulty of having zero knowledge of such civilizations, it very much does not. At the end of the day this is a problem that is beyond our current understanding and we cannot make any firm statements about it one way or another.

We're making the very best guesses humanly possible (literally), but we are still just guessing.

Unless (or until) we meet actual aliens, that is all we can do.

It's a beautiful analogy. Especially since we as so keen on learning by repeating something we saw.

Amazing analogy. What an enjoyable comment.

https://snopes.com/science/bumblebees.asp

The bumblebee thing is a myth. The rest of your comment is defeatist.

> each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures

Unfortunately, we can't do it any other way, by the very nature of conscious thoughts.

> Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms?

Why should we? We might be doing a lousy job, but we're doing the best we can.

> At the same time all the examples we make to wrap our heads around these mastodontic concepts are so trivial and so inherently human, that I wonder how can we really take our own musings seriously

It's not like we know of anyone else whose musings we could take more seriously than our own. The known universe, as beautiful and awesome as it is, is also dead.

> will we ever be able to escape the boundaries of our human thought?

If we survive long enough to achieve the ability to re-engineer our minds, I hope so, yes.

> We might be doing a lousy job, but we're doing the best we can.

We've literally never done this before, so we don't even have a very good idea whether we're doing a good job or not, that's how clueless we are. Signs are pointing to us more or less killing ourselves, though.

And everything else on the planet. So even without much experience, it's possible we can improve our performance a little on the topic.

the planet and life will be ok, don't worry. they both had already been through much worse cataclysms than puny humanity plague

I used to think that. But I have the strange feeling we have much more untapped potential than a meteor or a volcano. Call it a hunch.

"I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though."

It's boring as hell, metaphysical conjecture, suitable for late night bar talk and deus-ex-machina sci fi plots. The 1/3 probability especially is total bullshit. It's fun if viewed as an art project, and as such has some entertainment value.

It does not really explain anything. Unless one enjoys figuring out with theoretical physics, which facets of our world would point out to a simulated existence, it offers nothing of value when seriousy figuring our place in the cosmos.

Well, it depends. Often people consider the simulation as the stereotype of sci-fi simulations we read or watched about. But it could be much more than just "being in a computer".

But it could be much more than just "being in a computer".

If it's touring equivalent system, then it's just like being inside a computer.

And if it's not touring equivalent, yet 'equally powerfull', I think you need to invent some new mathematics.

Sure, we don't know what nature is but just inventing fabulous concepts that don't explain anything takes us nowhere.

> My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures.

Exactly! Each time when I hear that scientists are looking for water because that's supposed to be a condition for life - I wonder how small imagination one needs to have to think that only "water-based" forms of life exist.

Think of it this way, it's not that these scientist think that only water-based forms of life exist, but the universe is very, very large, infinitely so. Since we have finite time to search it, where would you start looking? Would you start searching every single planet/star for some life we may not be able to recognize? Or would you take what we do know - that intelligent life can evolve from water-based planets - and at least start looking there?

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