Advanced Civilizations Could Be Indistinguishable from Nature
universetoday.com
universetoday.com
Organized human civilizations go back 2000-3000 years. Industrial civilization at scale goes back less than 200. A useful starting point is the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830). This the moment when the industrial revolution got out of beta, and, quite literally, picked up steam.
Extractable natural resources are somewhat finite. Sometimes, with more inputs, you can get more output. Fracking is a modern example. An older example is taconite, the low-grade iron ore (15% iron) mined after the reserves of high-grade ore (65% iron) were exhausted.[2] Gold and rare earths are extracted at great expense from very low concentrations in the raw material. At some point, extraction in high volume becomes impracticable.
We're only two hundred years into high-volume mined resource extraction. The USGS has a Critical Materials List.[3] Most of the current problems are political and commercial, not outright shortages. USGS lists known reserves for mined resources. Most have at least a century of known resources left, but not a millennium. On a time scale of civilizations, that's not long.
Recycling is a battle against entropy. Almost all gold is recovered. About 80% of aluminum is recovered. About 60% of steel is recovered. Each time around, you lose some through dispersal into forms not easy to collect and recycle. So that, too, has a diminishing returns problem.
Sometime in the future, perhaps closer than the distance in time since Oxford University was founded, most of the minerals will no longer be available in large quantity. It will be a slow, but difficult transition.
Biological systems, though, mostly keep shuffling around C, H, O, and N. That's been working for over 300 million years now, pretty much recycling the same atoms. Long term, on the scale of millennia, systems running on the weaker bonds in that space can go on for millions of years. That's the default mode of planetary operation.
Energy isn't a long-term problem because forms of energy are convertible, and wind and solar keep working as long as the sun does, at least if there are enough materials left to build generators. That looks like a long-term win on the scale of thousands of years. Millions, though...
It's quite possible that industrial civilizations have a finite lifespan, bounded by material availability. Doesn't mean there can't be sentient civilizations. Or that they're limited to "nature". Biological systems can be engineered, too.
But you don't get interstellar travel out of biology. Too low-powered.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_and_Manchester_Railw...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite
[3] https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/us-geologica...
- the Great Pyramid is closer to 4600 years old
- we will always have common crust elements, eg 27.7% silicon, 8.1% aluminum, 5% iron, 3.6% calcium, 2.8% sodium, 2.6% potassium, and 2.1% magnesium; so the question is those and biological elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen)
- you can probably do space travel from that list, which gets you easier to consume versions of those elements as well, eg asteroids
- and from there interstellar travel is possible.
Mortar was used generously in the Great Pyramid's construction. In the mixing process ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be extracted and radiocarbon dated. A total of 46 samples of the mortar were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were clearly inherent to the original structure and could not have been incorporated at a later date. The results were calibrated to 2871–2604 BC.
To suggest otherwise is just insane aliens conspiracy theory nonsense. Is this post a satire of that BS? I really find it hard to tell.
Below the crust is the mantle, which is ~2,900km thick. Like the crust, is also mostly solid rocks and minerals, but punctuated by malleable areas of semi-solid magma. Composition primarily silicon, magnesium, and oxygen.
Below the mantle is the outer core, a liquid layer mostly made up of iron and nickel. The outer core is ~2,200km thick. It is primarily responsible for generating the magnetic field of earth.
Below the outer core is the solid inner core, with diameter of about 2,400km. It is solid and primarily made up of iron and nickel.
You're absolutely right about the recycling entropy battle - those diminishing returns are brutal. But I'm curious about where biological innovation might shift this equation. We're already seeing organisms that can work well beyond the traditional C/H/O/N sandbox - bacteria that reduce metals, engineered microbes that synthesize quantum dots. This hints at possibilities that blur your distinction between biological and industrial approaches.
The interstellar travel conclusion particularly caught my attention. While current biological systems are indeed low-power, that very efficiency might be what makes them perfect for long-haul space missions. Imagine hybrid systems where bio-engineered organisms maintain spacecraft over generations, working alongside traditional tech. Maybe slow and steady wins the interstellar race.
I'd argue we're on the cusp of even more radical transformations in materials science. What if atomic-scale manufacturing fundamentally changes our relationship with scarce resources? The jump from 65% to 15% iron ore might look tiny compared to what's coming. Maybe we're not facing a binary choice between current industrial systems and purely biological ones. The sweet spot might be in hybrid approaches that combine biological resilience with industrial capability.
Curious to hear your thoughts on this - particularly around how engineered biological systems might reshape our assumptions about resource constraints. There's something compelling about the idea of building civilization's next chapter on that 300-million-year track record of biological innovation.
Separate metals from organics, yes.[1] Reduce metals, probably not. Reduce means to pull a metal out of its oxide. This is way uphill energetically. It is usually done by heating the oxide to a high temperature in an oxygen-poor environment. The other direction, oxidation, produces energy, and there are some biological processes that use that.
Still, there are some bacteria which manipulate manganese.[2]
> What if atomic-scale manufacturing fundamentally changes our relationship with scarce resources?
I used to know Drexler, the early nanotechnology guy, back when nanotechnology meant pushing atoms around by mechanical means, rather than surface chemistry. Not much came of that. It's hard to apply enough force to break strong molecular bonds apart. IBM did manage to spell out "IBM" with xenon atoms, but xenon is inert and doesn't bond strongly to anything. No strong bonds to break.
Asteroid mining is potentially possible. Somebody will probably try it for gold and platinum within fifty years. It's unlikely to become cost-effective for cheaper metals.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/16/world/metal-eating-bacteria-i...
I bought his book Engines of Creation when it came out and his thesis had the air of inevitability - how could it not materialize some day ? It seemed so self-evident.
For iron (Fe2+) is about the same order of magnitude than getting organic matter out of CO2, which is what photosynthesis does, so it doesn't really sounds impossible. The main problem is that in an oxygen rich atmosphere, any metallic iron atom it would spontaneously get back to its oxide form pretty much instantly…
For context, it was founded over 800 years ago.
Perhaps, but unlikely.
As far as we know (but we could be wrong), interstellar civilization is the business of a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale. They can extract fusion energy, raw materials, and information from multiple solar systems.
As far as we know? We know nothing and the Kardashev scale is just a toy hypothesis come on.
3 thousand million?
More like 10,000 at least [0]
Australian Aborigines are at 50,000 or so, depending on your definition of "organised".
And, inferring from the article, I kinda like the idea that advanced civilisation fade back into nature. Modern humanity is about 100,000 years old. Is that long enough for a civilisation to rise, peak, and fade back into nature? It's a fantasy trope, obviously, but it's cool to think about again with this angle.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_continuously_in... shows a city from 6000BC, so 8000 years ago. I'm not sure that a city is required for an organised civilisation, but an organised civilisation is definitely required for a city.
The thing is interstellar travel makes no sense except in science fiction books: there's literally nothing of interest to be worth trading in other planetary systems, and trade has always been the motive for maritime exploration, because it's what get you the massive funding such endeavor requires.
And btw even close space colonization doesn't make any sense either: we may end up with a vanity base on Mars before realizing that it costs a lot, for living conditions that are more harsh than at the top of mount Everest. Even if world population wasn't plateauing and headed to a decline, colonization of Siberia or even Antarctica would make much more sense.
Space is big, inhospitable and mostly empty, its size doesn't work with the time frame the human species is working on.
>interstellar travel makes no sense
For vacation or finding new spices to sell, no, but if you've exhausted all the matter in the solar system or humanity outlives useful solar output from the sun and fusion energy is still +20 years away, there isn't really a choice.
The time it takes for interstellar travel doesn't make sense on human time scales, but people still plant trees knowing they will not live to sit under their shade.
Stuff like this really gives me faith in humanity amidst the insanity I see in the news.
I've been watching a "volunteer" oak sapling grow for the last few years and I'm trying to work around it so I don't have to cut it down. I may very well be dead before it provides appreciable shade, but it's nice knowing that it's there.
On the other hand, when my now 14-year-old was three, he stuck a cast-off bit of a branch (I think it's a basswood?) into the ground outside the house and declared it as his tree and watered it faithfully for a few days before losing interest. That "branch" now towers over the house and shades a room that used to get pretty hot in the afternoon. If I had any idea that it would actually take root and grow, I'd have moved it farther away from the house.
I like trees. I've planted a few using the County's native sapling program and it's been nice watching them grow over the last 15 years.
Space on earth isn't going to run out anytime soon (as I said colonizing Siberia and Antarctica is much more approachable, and there's the oceans too!) especially since the world population is plateauing!
> but if you've exhausted all the matter in the solar system or humanity outlives useful solar output from the sun and fusion energy is still +20 years away
That “if” really feels like “I'll need a second hat if I grow a second head in the night”.
> The time it takes for interstellar travel doesn't make sense on human time scales, but people still plant trees knowing they will not live to sit under their shade.
That's a good analogy, because individuals do, but for-profits mostly plant trees with short lifetime and quick return on investment. And you're not going to fund space travel with individuals' money…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42388557
It's about multiple orbital rings around earth, and what that would enable.
Just needs some more https://daniel-suarez.com/Delta-v_synopsis.html and 'Critical Mass' ( sequel https://daniel-suarez.com/index.html ) to get into early The Expanse stage :)
Have you read Delta-V or a summary of it at least?
The 'opera' part is just about common human/political stupidity, the space and technology parts don't seem to be.
Which ors.deaken.dev conveniently leaves out, at the moment, like empty geopolitics :)
With vast discretionary spending, people would be able to sacrifice some pleasures for pleasures related to achieving a long-term impractical goal. Space travel does not have to be the most efficient means of enjoying life to be a human choice.
A colony in Antarctica would be much more practical than one on the Moon, but a Lunar colony is more romantic.
If material trade is not worthwhile, conquest may be somewhat discouraged. (Some people might wish to rule all of humanity or convert/exterminate all heretics, so no distance would be perfectly safe, but a perceived threat in Antarctica would be easier to eliminate than a perceived threat on the Moon or in the Large Magellanic Cloud.)
> A colony in Antarctica would be much more practical than one on the Moon, but a Lunar colony is more romantic.
This really highlights the problem with the belief of “space colonization”: people have a romanticized fantasy of what it would be like: because it's so remote, and dangerous (and expensive), a lunar base would be the exact opposite of isolation: people would live packed in really tight space with little opportunity for isolation or intimacy except in the bathroom. It would be the modern version of being a sailor in a 17th century merchant ship, hopefully without the scurvy.
> but a perceived threat in Antarctica would be easier to eliminate than a perceived threat on the Moon or in the Large Magellanic Cloud.)
What makes you think that? If we have transportation mediums able to build a colony on the moon (that is, able to send tons of material out there) we have the means of transportation needed for carpet bombing it! But you wouldn't even need that, as a moon base would be as dependent from earth as an antarctic base is from mainland (you're not going to put a TSMC chip fab on the moon anytime soon…)
The modern space rockets are slow and easily detectable, and I am sure that if one could get to the moon, and then wanted to build a system that shoots them down, they'd be able to. Especially given that moon-based interceptors will have much smaller gravity well to worry about.
Another argument is that very technically complex products, like space rockets, require a complex society. So if Earth falls into anarchy, there is a good chance the supply chains would be disturbed enough that no one could build multiple space rockets full of bombs even if they wanted to.
You realize that any failure of a life-support device (air containment and renewal, water storage and renewal, heating) means you're dead before anyone can send help? It's like being stranded on an inflatable boat in the middle of the ocean: one tiny hole you can't fix and you're dead.
> provided the colony is self-sufficient and does not depend on supplies from Earth. Mars is better then Moon though.
Please tell me how your colony is going to manufacture the semiconductors it relies on in a self-sufficient way…
> So if Earth falls into anarchy,
That's the opposite argument from the one you made above (“Some people might wish to rule all of humanity or convert/exterminate all heretics” is the opposite of anarchy!) and in that case you're as safe on Antarctica from a military perspective.
> there is a good chance the supply chains would be disturbed
Which means death in medium terms, because as I said above as no space base can be self-sufficient (heck no country on earth can be self sufficient in the modern world already, how do you expect a small spacial colony to be better at self-sufficiency than China?!)
Which is the topic of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car? from 2006.
So 'mass market' could very well have been possible about 30 years ago, without Grumpy Management … … …
As long as you can get to one of those stages before you run out of the required industrial capacity you should be fine.
If we absolutely had to, I think the human species could moonshot our way to either fusion or asteroid mining inside a couple decades. At least with our present resources, maybe not in a century from now.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/5045860
The conclusion: most material demand is for elements so common on Earth that supplies will never run out. Only more energy is required to deal with super-low-grade ores (like 10% Fe basalt instead of 15% Fe taconite). The rare elements can largely be substituted so that the residuum of non-substitutable demand can stretch supplies to millions of years.
As you'd expect of a paper coauthored by Alvin Weinberg in 1975, the energy solution proposed is "fission breeder reactors" but there's a nod toward the long term potential of solar power and fusion.
Sure, but if you had a consideration for human well-being, if you had a society where people thought about "what should things look like in a hundred or a thousand years" you wouldn't have any impetus for exponential growth.
For example, currently society is busy transitioning to electrified transport. Los Angeles had a vast network of that 80+ years ago (red car light rail system). We also have had nuclear power as an option for a very long time. And yet, red cars were scrapped, rail removed, freeways built, we still burn gas and what not for power, and California has a ban on new nuclear… It’s not that we can’t do all this, it’s that for various reasons we choose not to.
It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices. It seems more likely that there will be as many choices and value systems as there are possible life sustaining planets out there. This doesn’t answer the paradox of course.
Well, it is seventh grade mathematics. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
https://expatcircle.com/cms/why-the-future-might-hold-troubl...
The limits of growth are real. Very real. And unfortunately, many problems we are seeing might be the prelude to the prediction.
"It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices."
Well, there should be many and we see none. This is not encouraging. While the best idea to look for life is to look for an entropy source, I think advanced live in space may be similar to us. They would need some kind of sensors (eyes, ears) and likely they would have been predators at one stage in the evolutionary path.
And…?
I think that actually supports the other person’s view: if your entire argument amounts to “in 400 years, we’ll need to have space stations or settle Mars with nuclear!” that isn’t really an argument against growth now.
It goes on to predict that to maintain
> 2.3% annual energy growth for 1350 years from the present time
Will require total exploitation of our local star. This is a tight timetable to construct the relevant dyson sphere, even with the associated gains in engineering/construction efficiency and expertise.
There are additional cogent arguments that bypassing the solar energy requirement (with e.g. nuclear methods) will pose significant challenges in radiating the waste heat within ~1400 years.
These projections are based solely on the rate of growth, so it seems clear that while we may be able to keep growing indefinitely, the rate at which we do so will need to asymptotically approach zero.
Trying to guess from 1AD what 2024AD would look like would make me sound like I was speaking myths — so again, I have to assume I’m similarly unable to guess at the timeline (4000AD) where we’d run out of galactic solar energy what our existence would be like.
There’s nothing in my grandchildren’s grandchildren’s time that would prohibit growth — and I’m okay admitting I lack the wisdom or capability to solve problems on so grand a scale. The links posted bolster my position that the “limits of growth” are irrelevant to me, almost entirely.
To the extent that they may impact my great-great-great-great-grandchildren, I think they’ll be better able to handle the troubles of their time with the benefits of a robust economy, vibrant society, and abundant wealth. Nothing you’ve posted suggests that I should try to limit growth or that anyone would benefit from the attempt.
However, this thread is about detecting alien civilizations in far off star systems so I'm not sure why you'd expect any of this conversation to be relevant to your immediate situation.
It won't. Population growth is slowing down, per-human energy growth is probably even decreasing compared to 20 years ago.
My personal theory is that any advanced civilization that is capable of interstellar travel must have conquered their animal instincts and realized that growth for the sake of growth is pointless.
If we accept the hypotheses of an expanding universe then we find ourselves in a pickle as our potentially infinite resources race out of our light cone faster than we can chase them.
We should certainly explore and hope to discover rich deposits of varied resources that are worth expending the time and energy to find, extract, and use. However, to our knowledge, asteroids probably consist of clay and silicate rocks, some containing nickel-iron[1]
The reason that the software industry is so valuable today is not just that it's innovative, it's also that it can grow in a way that isn't strongly constrained by material.
The material required to provide one dollar of value in digital goods or services is very little.
This leads to a virtuous circle, since business unconstrained by material attracts more capital.
Basically, we can shift the physical economy to a circular cradle-to-cradle economy, and then continue getting growth from digital goods and services.
Note that this does not simply mean we'll all be living in VR - digital goods and services are growing across all industries.
For example, back in the day, drugs were discovered by massive wet lab experimentation programs. Today, increasingly components of a drug discovery program can be done in silico.
Is "sustainability" for the sake of "sustainability" pointful? For all we know, everything may just be reduced back to energy in a Big Crunch in the future, so the outcome is the same regardless. Is a civilization that languished in stagnancy for millions of years have any more paticular meaning than one that burned brightly but briefly?
Perhaps future people will have some important but finite need for them. So we save them for that one big moment when they're used for the really important purpose that will never be important anymore in the future of the human race? Seems unlikely such a use will appear, at least not one more important than what we've already done in building our industrialized society.
"But scarcity", as an argument should not be deployed where it will hamper further innovation and value creation. Consuming petroleum fuels increases our standard of living and productivity. It is from this comfortable perch of increased productivity that we are able to apply our resources towards finding additional energy sources.
Thus far there have not been "Limits to Growth" along this path of natural market incentives. Yet, it is easy to see how fears of scarcity could hamstring the process. The actions driven by these fears could potentially limit growth and manifest the fears into a reality.
Scarcity arguments typically have powerful political incentives. Central planners are tasked with determining which uses of energy are 'righteous' or acceptable. Some have even suggested that carbon credits be issued as a new form of currency. Move over petro-dollar, there's a new sheriff in town. Permission slips to consume energy, gatekept by our betters, the benevolent central planners.
Similarly, tin mining developed during antiquity. As easily accessible surface deposits were exploited, new sources were tapped from Cornwall to Bactria.
Scarcity theorists overlook the human element. Humanity itself is our greatest resource. Increases to our standard of living drive productivity gains. Leisure time offers opportunities for our ingenuity to solve additional problems. When measured by the decentralized markets, these endeavors further increase human productivity. The cycle continues and we all benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_during_a...
Turns out we didn't use up fossil fuels before we invented at least some alternatives, so lucky us. But that's not because previous generations restricted their economic development to altruistically save some for us, which is what modern save-the-resources people want.
No, respectfully, we don't.
Every organism that succeeds in doing what you advocate for (growing "sustainably") is swept from the record. If life doesn't cycle (grow/shrink) or otherwise live in equilibria, life exhausts its niche on any meaningful timescale, and the universe sends it into oblivion.
Perhaps interestingly, even records of "successfully" growing are purged, because the most effective thing that persists records of life on long timescales is the descendant path of the life itself (whether that's specific DNA sequences maintained as mutational clocks by cellular machinery, or libraries of books and concepts maintained by specific civilisations), and uncapped growth collapses the informational diversity required for life to thrive and persist -- by which I mean that we, as continuously persisting living biological and cultural structures, are the best evidence of living things like us existing a million or a thousand years ago.
When the lineage dies, evidence of the experiment rapidly decays, compared to actually successful experiments that refrain from growth and collapse of their ecology. Only DNA/culture that doesn't "succeed" in growing beyond its resources survives on a significant timescale. When an overly zealous strain of life grows too much and fails, evidence of that life is swiftly and rapidly purged as well, for any later life that cares to try to look.
We are already ignoring them - right now it's freezing outside, and no human could not survive in such weather using biology alone. I am also living in a city which is way too dense to sustain natural human society.
There is always a risk of entire species dying out, for example via global war, or everyone suddenly deciding they don't want technology and then freezing to death in the winter; but there are no universal long-term limitations. At some moment there will be independent colonies at other worlds, and then humanity will be eternal.
can somebody (or ChatGPT) take a stab at making this make more sense?
[1] https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scientists-disturbing-remote-i...
The article seems to be looking at things from an energy-usage perspective. Why don't we detect Dyson spheres and other large-scale technological projects? Maybe the most efficient ways of harnessing the energy of a planet blend in with the natural processes of the planet itself.
Or, as a sibling comment suggested, maybe the civilization that makes (alien) people happiest is one that outwardly resembles the world they evolved in.
Like what if it was easier to master biology, create some kind of biologic computer distributed amongst all the living things on a planet, and load all the consciousnesses of the advanced beings onto that.
So the idea of a highly advanced civilization requiring so little resource extraction, or even being able to entirely synthesize all its resource needs from energy, and manage global resources in a non-destructive way, while letting the natural ecology revert to as close as possible to a pre-civilizational state.
So you see small hubs of super-high-density cities, and vast expanses of "nature". Harder to detect from space that way, thus it could resolve the paradox?
You can see our own time moving that direction with urbanization and re-greening happening simultaneously, population growth falling, and a huge effort to abolish the use of one particular variety of extracted resource.
Nature isn't 'natural'by any sense of the word. But the advanced machines all tend to show an interest in maintaining natural spaces for humans to enjoy. And the machines are part of the beauty as well!
I think you could argue that they (humans) all died when the Ringmaster was grabbed by the Gaea entity, and they are now all living in a simulation.
There was so much effort to do things biologically, that that needs to be an aspect of the story. Another author, more grounded who also wrote about such ideas was Hal Clement, see his short stories, "The Mechanic" and "Raindrop" (which are still relevant today).
Here's the paradigm: the introduction of technology (starting with the wheel?) led us inexorably down the wrong path, and only in this century are we beginning to see its civilization-ending effects.
Technology breeds new technology. It's seductive (all those cool mechanical/electrical/quantum-mechanical problems to solve!). It relieves many burdens, and makes life easier - but then leads to explosive population growth dependent on technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process). And attendant to this, pollution and environmental degradation: a slow erosion of life-sustaining processes.
The path of technology inevitably leads to a dead end. There's no escaping our vast population: 8 billion individuals is a lot, by any measure. It is the root cause of all our environmental problems. Can we creatively apply new technologies to solve this problem in time to prevent ecological and environmental collapse? We're right in the middle of the experiment, and there's no guaranteed outcome...
Imagine if we had chosen an alternative path to "civilization" without mechanical technology - what would it look like? It's easy to mock the idea of "living in harmony with Nature", but what if that's the only way to a sustainable human civilization?
It is interesting to think about what technology harbored the destruction of the civilization said technology ushered in.
For context, the wheel is estimated to have been invented around 3,500BC, while we've had structures and systems that resemble and arguably are foundational to today's civilization: the cities that even older than wheels, like Argos, Athens, Plovdiv, Jericho, Thebes, Larisa, etc.
OMAM's "Numb Bears" track off their "My Head is an Animal" album is delightful. We are already there.
Article does a bad job summarizing the great filter position, and seems unaware of the follow-up on grabby aliens -- the latter being fairly convincing as a resolution to the paradox.
I am not saying random mutations can't build entities that are accurate or can exist in reality. Of course they can. But it's also pretty obvious these structures are result of mutations and not creative thought.
Also last Thursday is also just an idea. There no Physical representation of last Tuesday out there. Tuesday is also merely an idea.
There is only the now.
>Random mutations can't build structures like Aeroplane or a Watch.
Perhaps that's why nature evolved us (randomly or by some not-entirely-random 'mechanism' we haven't spotted - does it matter?) (Consider how many bacteria live in the human body. Could we even exist without them? ) ... WE could be the experiment that builds structures ... and is able to let the whole works look at itself.
In that sense the plane and the watch are just natural products, just like this website is.
Unlike designing a plane for example which consists of thousands of decisions carefully thought through based on a human objective.