The Last Variable
The Drake Equation is a well known scientific attempt to quantify the number of intelligent civilizations likely to be in our galaxy at any given time. Now stay with me here, this isn't a science post at all, but there is a part of this equation that is illustrative in our current situation. The Drake Equation looks like this:N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
The idea being you plug in the values for the variables based on your best information/knowledge/guess and you come out with an answer. R is the number of sunlike stars, p the number of those stars with planets, e the number of those planets that are earthlike, l the number of those earthlike planets that develop life, i the number of those that develop intelligence, and c the number of those that go on to develop electromagnetic communications. The last variable, L, is the one I've been thinking about a LOT lately. It is the longevity of those intelligent, communicating societies. Because for the purposes of the Drake equation, where those societies exist in space is important, but just as important is where they exist in time. While human intelligence is 200,000 years old, technology on any level is only about 40,000 years old, we transitioned from an agrarian society to an industrial one less than 200 years ago, and only began communicating electomagnetically about 100 years ago. A thousand year old technologically advanced society might have destroyed itself only 100 years ago, and we'll never know about it. Or even more sadly, we'll receive the signal that confirms the existence of a technologically advanced society, excitedly monitor it, discuss and research it for a few years, when one day it just stops. Nothing. Ever again. We will have watched the end of this society.
Humanity is capable of great things, leaps of science and engineering, literature and art. But in many ways, we are an adolescent culture, at least as focused on destroying things as we are on building them. Much of our research goes into more and better ways to kill humans and destroy societies. At the same time, the resources of our planet are finite, and limited. Our scientists can even measure the rate they are being depleted and the time when they will be gone. Yet in our greed and immaturity, we do not reduce or even manage our consumption. Our planet's very ability to sustain human life is being reduced, and we can measure and track that too. The impact of our industrial society on the atmosphere, the seas, the clean water, indeed the earth's very ability to renew and sustain itself is huge, and growing. And yet we are unwilling to set limits, to live in a sustainable way, so our society can go on into the future.
When you think of how much damage we have done, how far down the road to our own extinction we have traveled in only 200 years, it is sobering. No, it is frightning. One can only look up at the stars at night and wonder: How many times over the millenia has this happened? How many societies developed the science that allowed them to exploit the resources of their native planet. The fossil fuels, the nuclear fuels, the forests, the agriculture, the seas. And then, long before they had developed the technology to allow them to expand to other planets, they found that they had killed the one they were born on, and in dying, it killed them. Or perhaps resources depleted, the water and atmosphere toxic, the climate deadly, a few small bands left their grand technological past behind and returned to their small, low tech agrarian roots, just outside the ruins of formerly great cities, never to live out the promise that shined so bright in the centuries before.
To merely contimplate the longevity of an intelligent race is to ask fundamental questions about our own. To whom do we owe the future? What could cause us to recognize our obligations to preserve this rare, fortuitous biological accident we were afforded? If we are truly to live up to the promise of our intelligence, of the good things inside us, how long will that take? 500 years? A thousand? Can we find a way to last that long without our greed or our hate killing us? Quite frankly, I am not optimistic.
Our planet is sick, and she is telling us that she is. And yet our priorities are "economic growth" and our military. Nothing wrong with either, in moderation and used for good, but we are neither moderate nor particularly good. We could be using these resources to help raise people out of poverty, to extend health care to the sick and dying, and work together with people all over the world to develop good, planet-healthy, sustainable processes for living. Why must that sound so hopelessly idealistic? When you think about it, it would be a process that would benefit us as much as the rest of the world. Our very greed should be taking down the path that allows our survival.
We continue to build more and more dangerous weapons. We now actually have TWO classes of "Doomsday" weapons--Nuclear and Biological. Think about that. What built-in psycopathic insanity would cause humans to develop weapons with which they could make humans extinct? What possible purpose can they serve? Not only does the world become more and more militarized, but the discourse and rhetoric becomes more strident. There are more people openly expressing hate and bigotry today than there were a hundred years ago. There are more extremists, and they are more extreme. And in another five or ten or twenty years everybody will have access to the ability to destroy the planet. Honestly, what hope is there?
Frank Drake's genius was to see that in order to detect another intelligent society, they would have to be not only relatively nearby in space, but we would have to overlap in time. But the reason we must consider the longevity of an intelligent society as a variable is that we can see how fragile it really is. We can see that any number of conditions can extinguish an intelligent society. They can destroy themselves in war. They can simply poison their environment, until there is nothing to sustain them. They can end up in a situation where the home planet simply cannot provide the food, water and sunlight they need. Mutations could become so commonplace that the species itself dies. Indeed, the paradox seems to be that to do nothing, to continue as we have before, is to die. To survive would take work, and change, and consensus. And it is for that reason that I am not optimistic.
The idea being you plug in the values for the variables based on your best information/knowledge/guess and you come out with an answer. R is the number of sunlike stars, p the number of those stars with planets, e the number of those planets that are earthlike, l the number of those earthlike planets that develop life, i the number of those that develop intelligence, and c the number of those that go on to develop electromagnetic communications. The last variable, L, is the one I've been thinking about a LOT lately. It is the longevity of those intelligent, communicating societies. Because for the purposes of the Drake equation, where those societies exist in space is important, but just as important is where they exist in time. While human intelligence is 200,000 years old, technology on any level is only about 40,000 years old, we transitioned from an agrarian society to an industrial one less than 200 years ago, and only began communicating electomagnetically about 100 years ago. A thousand year old technologically advanced society might have destroyed itself only 100 years ago, and we'll never know about it. Or even more sadly, we'll receive the signal that confirms the existence of a technologically advanced society, excitedly monitor it, discuss and research it for a few years, when one day it just stops. Nothing. Ever again. We will have watched the end of this society.
Humanity is capable of great things, leaps of science and engineering, literature and art. But in many ways, we are an adolescent culture, at least as focused on destroying things as we are on building them. Much of our research goes into more and better ways to kill humans and destroy societies. At the same time, the resources of our planet are finite, and limited. Our scientists can even measure the rate they are being depleted and the time when they will be gone. Yet in our greed and immaturity, we do not reduce or even manage our consumption. Our planet's very ability to sustain human life is being reduced, and we can measure and track that too. The impact of our industrial society on the atmosphere, the seas, the clean water, indeed the earth's very ability to renew and sustain itself is huge, and growing. And yet we are unwilling to set limits, to live in a sustainable way, so our society can go on into the future.
When you think of how much damage we have done, how far down the road to our own extinction we have traveled in only 200 years, it is sobering. No, it is frightning. One can only look up at the stars at night and wonder: How many times over the millenia has this happened? How many societies developed the science that allowed them to exploit the resources of their native planet. The fossil fuels, the nuclear fuels, the forests, the agriculture, the seas. And then, long before they had developed the technology to allow them to expand to other planets, they found that they had killed the one they were born on, and in dying, it killed them. Or perhaps resources depleted, the water and atmosphere toxic, the climate deadly, a few small bands left their grand technological past behind and returned to their small, low tech agrarian roots, just outside the ruins of formerly great cities, never to live out the promise that shined so bright in the centuries before.
To merely contimplate the longevity of an intelligent race is to ask fundamental questions about our own. To whom do we owe the future? What could cause us to recognize our obligations to preserve this rare, fortuitous biological accident we were afforded? If we are truly to live up to the promise of our intelligence, of the good things inside us, how long will that take? 500 years? A thousand? Can we find a way to last that long without our greed or our hate killing us? Quite frankly, I am not optimistic.
Our planet is sick, and she is telling us that she is. And yet our priorities are "economic growth" and our military. Nothing wrong with either, in moderation and used for good, but we are neither moderate nor particularly good. We could be using these resources to help raise people out of poverty, to extend health care to the sick and dying, and work together with people all over the world to develop good, planet-healthy, sustainable processes for living. Why must that sound so hopelessly idealistic? When you think about it, it would be a process that would benefit us as much as the rest of the world. Our very greed should be taking down the path that allows our survival.
We continue to build more and more dangerous weapons. We now actually have TWO classes of "Doomsday" weapons--Nuclear and Biological. Think about that. What built-in psycopathic insanity would cause humans to develop weapons with which they could make humans extinct? What possible purpose can they serve? Not only does the world become more and more militarized, but the discourse and rhetoric becomes more strident. There are more people openly expressing hate and bigotry today than there were a hundred years ago. There are more extremists, and they are more extreme. And in another five or ten or twenty years everybody will have access to the ability to destroy the planet. Honestly, what hope is there?
Frank Drake's genius was to see that in order to detect another intelligent society, they would have to be not only relatively nearby in space, but we would have to overlap in time. But the reason we must consider the longevity of an intelligent society as a variable is that we can see how fragile it really is. We can see that any number of conditions can extinguish an intelligent society. They can destroy themselves in war. They can simply poison their environment, until there is nothing to sustain them. They can end up in a situation where the home planet simply cannot provide the food, water and sunlight they need. Mutations could become so commonplace that the species itself dies. Indeed, the paradox seems to be that to do nothing, to continue as we have before, is to die. To survive would take work, and change, and consensus. And it is for that reason that I am not optimistic.
posted by mikey @ 5:22 PM
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