Your favourite unsolved mystery?

Mountainsandh

It just seems like he casually listed all the dangers one might encounter on such a hike... the mines, how far his truck was, cliffs, tarantula, mountain lion, rattlesnake, supplies...

Bongalongherb

Mountainsandh wrote: »

It just seems like he casually listed all the dangers one might encounter on such a hike... the mines, how far his truck was, cliffs, tarantula, mountain lion, rattlesnake, supplies...

But you would think that clothing or some piece's of his supplies or even blood, bones hair something would be found, but nothing. That's the mystery of this one.

Kauto0709

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'm sure it's been mentioned before, and probably by me, but I'll say it again...the Charles Walton murder was one story that always stayed with me. Maybe cos I was about 10 when I first read of it, and it was during a phase when I was pretty receptive of any good chill about ghosts, witchcraft, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Walton_(murder_victim)

Have just read about it there. Very strange case....

hefferboi

The Universe is my favourite unsolved mystery. Why hasn't there been contact with aliens?

This is genuinely one of the most interesting things I've read, if you're into that sort of stuff.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Cianmcliam

hefferboi wrote: »

The Universe is my favourite unsolved mystery. Why hasn't there been contact with aliens?

This is genuinely one of the most interesting things I've read, if you're into that sort of stuff.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Those calculations are way off for a start. Think about it, all the hundreds of millions of species of cellular life and organisms on earth and only one in all that time has been able to make tools with more than one component. It seems extremely unlikely that human levels of intelligence would evolve even if earth started off with the same conditions a second time around.

So it's not 1% of planets with life already on them that could have intelligent life, it's probably more like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Mountainsandh

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Those calculations are way off for a start. Think about it, all the hundreds of millions of species of cellular life and organisms on earth and only one in all that time has been able to make tools with more than one component. It seems extremely unlikely that human levels of intelligence would evolve even if earth started off with the same conditions a second time around.

So it's not 1% of planets with life already on them that could have intelligent life, it's probably more like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Such a pity Enrico Fermi, "father of the atomic bomb", Nobel Prize winner, died before you had a chance to review his calculations.
Edit : sorry, it sounds harsher than I mean it to be. I just think it hardly likely that an eminent physicist would not already have taken your point into account.

Maximus Alexander

Cianmcliam wrote: »

So it's not 1% of planets with life already on them that could have intelligent life, it's probably more like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

This is as random a guess as 1%. With a sample size of one, you can't calculate a probability.

endacl

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

This is as random a guess as 1%. With a sample size of one, you can't calculate a probability.

I probably could, but it'd probably be wrong.

Billy86

This might be of interest to some fans of this thread, some real life horror type stories but also a lot of the unsolved stuff like The Somerton Man & Elisa Lam.

Cianmcliam

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

This is as random a guess as 1%. With a sample size of one, you can't calculate a probability.

The sample size is the number of branches on the evolutionary tree of all life, each branch is an opportunity to lead to intelligence. Given our planet has near perfect conditions compared to other known planets and life began very early here, intelligence had every opportunity. Yet only one branch of possibly billions evolved higher intelligence. That's an enormous sample size.

Saying the sample size is 1 surely assumes that the goal of evolution is to eventually produce intelligence way beyond the survival and reproductive needs of millions of different organisms already alive or extinct. This is obviously not the case at all. There is no far sighted goal.

RichardoKhan

Lurve the sheer arrogance of Homo Sapiens.............Cos all intelligent life is going to have EXACTLY the same circumstances as us........In a infinite Universe Id make a guess that there could well be other ways life starts & establishes.

Cianmcliam

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Such a pity Enrico Fermi, "father of the atomic bomb", Nobel Prize winner, died before you had a chance to review his calculations.
Edit : sorry, it sounds harsher than I mean it to be. I just think it hardly likely that an eminent physicist would not already have taken your point into account.

It seems unlikely he wrote the linked article himself! It was their calculations I was talking about.

The Corinthian

Surprised no one suggested this one: The Mayerling Incident.

Maximus Alexander

Cianmcliam wrote: »

The sample size is the number of branches on the evolutionary tree of all life, each branch is an opportunity to lead to intelligence. Given our planet has near perfect conditions compared to other known planets and life began very early here, intelligence had every opportunity. Yet only one branch of possibly billions evolved higher intelligence. That's an enormous sample size.

Saying the sample size is 1 surely assumes that the goal of evolution is to eventually produce intelligence way beyond the survival and reproductive needs of millions of different organisms already alive or extinct. This is obviously not the case at all. There is no far sighted goal.

The sample size is 1 biosphere. For all we know, Earth's is highly unusual in having taken so long to evolve sapient life. Perhaps there is a rare or unusual selection pressure here that suppressed intelligence. We cannot say, because the sample size is too small.

As for the bolded part, no it doesn't. Saying that the sample size is one assumes nothing, other than that we have one sample.

Cianmcliam

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

The sample size is 1 biosphere. For all we know, Earth's is highly unusual in having taken so long to evolve sapient life. Perhaps there is a rare or unusual selection pressure here that suppressed intelligence. We cannot say, because the sample size is too small.

As for the bolded part, no it doesn't. Saying that the sample size is one assumes nothing, other than that we have one sample.

Earth has passed through many drastic changes in environment and millions of years of relative equilibrium but higher intelligence never evolved during all these enormous changes to the biosphere until the last few million years.

It's safe to say intelligence evolves even more rarely than other adaptations such as biological echolocation and much, much more rarely than convergent adaptations such as limbs, eyes, nervous systems etc. that are commonplace among vastly different organisms in very different environments.

There is a universal selection pressure against human-like intelligence, a simple case of cost vs benefit. Brains as massive and complex as ours burn through precious energy fast, unless writing poetry or working out mathematical theorems provides you with more food than your busy brain burns off then it is completely superfluous and a disadvantage. Likewise, having an internal rational debate in your head about whether you should run away from that predator or eat that passing prey would mean you wouldn't last as long as the quicker, simpler, instinctual and unlearned responses built in to less complex brains.

Our intelligence is a unique freak of nature. Just think about all the unlikely accidents of evolution that had to occur. For example, if one kind of primate didn't gain the adaptation that made it possible to eat unripe fruit then the common ancestor of all apes would never have had to come down from the trees and try to adapt to a new niche on the African Savannah and we probably wouldn't be here at all.

Mountainsandh

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Earth has passed through many drastic changes in environment and millions of years of relative equilibrium but higher intelligence never evolved during all these enormous changes to the biosphere until the last few million years.

It's safe to say intelligence evolves even more rarely than other adaptations such as biological echolocation and much, much more rarely than convergent adaptations such as limbs, eyes, nervous systems etc. that are commonplace among vastly different organisms in very different environments.

There is a universal selection pressure against human-like intelligence, a simple case of cost vs benefit. Brains as massive and complex as ours burn through precious energy fast, unless writing poetry or working out mathematical theorems provides you with more food than your busy brain burns off then it is completely superfluous and a disadvantage. Likewise, having an internal rational debate in your head about whether you should run away from that predator or eat that passing prey would mean you wouldn't last as long as the quicker, simpler, instinctual and unlearned responses built in to less complex brains.

Our intelligence is a unique freak of nature. Just think about all the unlikely accidents of evolution that had to occur. For example, if one kind of primate didn't gain the adaptation that made it possible to eat unripe fruit then the common ancestor of all apes would never have had to come down from the trees and try to adapt to a new niche on the African Savannah and we probably wouldn't be here at all.

With all due respect it seems to me that you are still underestimating the scale of the universe. "it's safe to say" ... "a freak of nature" are phrases that may not apply.

Cianmcliam

Mountainsandh wrote: »

With all due respect it seems to me that you are still underestimating the scale of the universe. "it's safe to say" ... "a freak of nature" are phrases that may not apply.

I'm not saying there isn't intelligent life out there, just that it's likely to be very much rarer than estimated when we think intelligence is a reasonable and likely outcome of evolution. It's no surprise there isn't a queue of aliens popping in to say hello given the vast distances involved. That's not a very controversial opinion though.

Maximus Alexander

Cianmcliam wrote: »

Earth has passed through many drastic changes in environment and millions of years of relative equilibrium but higher intelligence never evolved during all these enormous changes to the biosphere until the last few million years.

It's safe to say intelligence evolves even more rarely than other adaptations such as biological echolocation and much, much more rarely than convergent adaptations such as limbs, eyes, nervous systems etc. that are commonplace among vastly different organisms in very different environments.

There is a universal selection pressure against human-like intelligence, a simple case of cost vs benefit. Brains as massive and complex as ours burn through precious energy fast, unless writing poetry or working out mathematical theorems provides you with more food than your busy brain burns off then it is completely superfluous and a disadvantage. Likewise, having an internal rational debate in your head about whether you should run away from that predator or eat that passing prey would mean you wouldn't last as long as the quicker, simpler, instinctual and unlearned responses built in to less complex brains.

Our intelligence is a unique freak of nature. Just think about all the unlikely accidents of evolution that had to occur. For example, if one kind of primate didn't gain the adaptation that made it possible to eat unripe fruit then the common ancestor of all apes would never have had to come down from the trees and try to adapt to a new niche on the African Savannah and we probably wouldn't be here at all.

All of this applies only to Earth, we don't have the same information about the rest of the universe. The only thing that it is 'safe to say' is that higher intelligence rarely evolves on Earth. We don't have the data to make those claims about any other part of the universe.

Bongalongherb

Well in regards to a type 1 civilisation somewhere out there, we are a type 0 in regards to us still relying on fossil fuels, so the question is... would a type 1 civilisation even want to associate themselves with a much lesser intelligence ? Never mind a type 2/3 civilisation. An intelligent civilisation of any of these types would absolutely stay far away from us, I would be sure of that at least.

Just because we have not advanced far enough to break light-speed or even come close to it doesn't mean another civilisation out there hasn't. Most folk think that other civilisations out there would be using near or the same old technology as we use today completely disregarding the age of the universe and the possibility that others could be millions of years ahead of us technologically.

Ally Dick

Lord Lucan - what became of that bounder ?

omega man

Nothing "out there" but an interesting read about the mystery of a US cop who vanished after a run.

http://www.lamag.com/longform/the-deputy-who-disappeared/

WarZ

omega man wrote: »

Nothing "out there" but an interesting read about the mystery of a US cop who vanished after a run.

http://www.lamag.com/longform/the-deputy-who-disappeared/

He could have been abducted by aliens.

Cianmcliam

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

All of this applies only to Earth, we don't have the same information about the rest of the universe. The only thing that it is 'safe to say' is that higher intelligence rarely evolves on Earth. We don't have the data to make those claims about any other part of the universe.

Natural selection is one of the best candidates we have for a universal law governing evolution of life anywhere in the universe, so the cost vs benefits would surely play out across habitable planets.

I think we're looking at Earth from two different perspectives. If you think of Earth as just one biosphere then it's easy to think if intelligence evolved in this 'one' it is likely in others. However you have to consider that Earth is actually made up of billions of possible niches for evolution to experiment with, and has had billions of years to do it. All of these billions of experiments involving a vast array of variables only once resulted in human-like intelligence. That tells us that out of billions of niches in millions of different environments, the need to develop higher intelligence was close to one giant zero.

Surely you agree that there would have to be a large amount of overlap in variables on habitable planets, given the non-existence of life on the variety of planets we know about? To say the record on Earth tells us nothing about other habitable planets is a bit unreasonable.

Mountainsandh

We only really "know" about (and hardly at that) a handful in our solar system !

enfant terrible

Mountainsandh wrote: »

With all due respect it seems to me that you are still underestimating the scale of the universe. "it's safe to say" ... "a freak of nature" are phrases that may not apply.

Think it's a bit naive to think there are lots of advanced civilizations out there just because of vast scale.

This explains it better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aspMV6ERqpo

Mountainsandh

enfant terrible wrote: »

Think it's a bit naive to think there are lots of advanced civilizations out there just because of vast scale.

This explains it better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aspMV6ERqpo

Ah yeah, I read same on Wait But Why or such... it's an opinion, has not convinced me anyway.

Cianmcliam

Mountainsandh wrote: »

We only really "know" about (and hardly at that) a handful in our solar system !

Yes, the ones we do know about tell us a lot about what our planet has that they don't which make life possible at all. This in turn tells us that planets with life are likely to be vastly more like ours than Mars or Venus or Mercury etc.

Hence we have a pretty good idea what habitable planets will be like, the kind of planets scientists are currently looking for. The more planets have to be like ours, the more the argument about billions of evolutionary experiments here is relevant and the 'anything goes out there in the universe' argument loses strength.

Maximus Alexander

Cianmcliam wrote: »

If you think of Earth as just one biosphere then it's easy to think if intelligence evolved in this 'one' it is likely in others.

I haven't made this claim. I have said that we can neither say it is likely nor unlikely - we cannot determine the probability at all with the information we have available. It is a complete unknown.

We have no idea what way evolution may be driven on worlds that differ from the specific conditions of Earth in terms of things like regular global extinction events, ice age cycles, distribution of elements on the surface and in the atmosphere, etc. As it stands we don't even know how or why life arose here, nor why it took so long to progress from single to multicellular - or indeed why it ever did that at all, for example.

You are welcome to conclude that evolution from single-celled to intelligent life is a vanishingly unlikely scenario, and that may indeed turn out to be correct, but at this point it is a belief and not based in evidence.

Bongalongherb

enfant terrible wrote: »

Think it's a bit naive to think there are lots of advanced civilizations out there just because of vast scale.

This explains it better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aspMV6ERqpo

If you take into account the Drake Equation from the past and now the kepler finding of many earth-like planets already found and the vastness of space, I think it's very naive to think there are no advanced civilisations out there.

We are only a droplet of water in a vast sea imo. Time will tell eventually as we go on using new technology created.

enfant terrible

Bongalongherb wrote: »

If you take into account the Drake Equation from the past and now the kepler finding of many earth-like planets already found and the vastness of space, I think it's very naive to think there are no advanced civilisations out there.

We are only a droplet of water in a vast sea imo. Time will tell eventually as we go on using new technology created.

Did you watch the Ted talk?