Do You BELIEVE there is life outside Earth?

[Green Baron]

The early universe lacked the necessary elements and Panspermia doesn't explain how life really formed, only how it might have been proliferated. But i think it has little scientific significance (Right ?)

Temperature is a subjective thing as well as the median energy of the molecules in a gas, their "speed", and that is quite high.

[KerikBalm]

A true vacuum cannot have a temperature. A few atoms per cubic meter can have a very high, or very low temperature, but with so little mass at that temperature, its practically irrelevant - at least when it comes to temperature regulation of a spacecraft.

Also, something from Kerbiloid's post that I didn't comment on earlier:

Quote

Ediacaran catastrophe, when the first wave of multicellulars probably has totally died out.

The ediacaran fauna did not "totally die out". Some of the stranger forms did, but its clear that the ediacaran fauna included lineages of metazoans that we know today. There are probable molluscs (kimberella) from the ediacaran, for instance. The demise of many of the forms of the ediacarans was an extinction much like other extinctions. Those that couldn't adapt were replaced - it doesn't mean anything about complexity going up or down... any more than the extinction of most synapsids and replacement by diapsids represented replacement by more/less complex forms at the end of the permian.

[wumpus]

18 hours ago, Green Baron said:

The early universe lacked the necessary elements and Panspermia doesn't explain how life really formed, only how it might have been proliferated. But i think it has little scientific significance (Right ?)

As far as I know, there really aren't many good explanations on how life really formed.  Only that if it formed on Earth it did so as fast as possible (and has appeared to do so even as our ability to find fossils increased.  I don't think there has been a gap between "earliest possible time to find fossils" and "earliest fossils found" with any statistical significance in decades).  This seems rather strong evidence that Earth was seeded from elsewhere, but the lack of [fossil] life on Mars (and anywhere else tested, but we've barely glanced at anywhere but Mars) makes it look less strong.

[Green Baron]

No hard fact because no data from that time. Abiogenesis and the RNA-World hypothesis are the widest accepted and most promising approaches. I'd call them "good explanations" until better ones come up. *shrug*

Edited November 4, 2017 by Green Baron

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

As far as I know, there really aren't many good explanations on how life really formed.  Only that if it formed on Earth it did so as fast as possible (and has appeared to do so even as our ability to find fossils increased.  I don't think there has been a gap between "earliest possible time to find fossils" and "earliest fossils found" with any statistical significance in decades).  This seems rather strong evidence that Earth was seeded from elsewhere, but the lack of [fossil] life on Mars (and anywhere else tested, but we've barely glanced at anywhere but Mars) makes it look less strong.

It might also simply be that life starts easy. 
We do not know how, however say an 50% chance of getting life in 10 million year on an entire planet is not something you can replicate in an lab but life will start very fast on planets. 
It also depend on the condition, if volcanic vents is the starting location you will get life on gas giant ice moons. If sunlight is required you will not. 

[KerikBalm]

16 hours ago, magnemoe said:

We do not know how, however say an 50% chance of getting life in 10 million year on an entire planet is not something you can replicate in an lab but life will start very fast on planets. 

Indeed, the scale of the "natural abiogenesis" experiment is staggering. Staggering size, staggering time (even if 10 million years is a short time in terms of geology/cosmology), and a staggering diversity of conditions.

Quote

It also depend on the condition, if volcanic vents is the starting location you will get life on gas giant ice moons. If sunlight is required you will not. 

And if both are required, that could change things too. And if tidal pools are also required, then it wouldn't happen on mars (also mars seems to have had less underwater vents). If a certain daytime temperature is also required for the seperation of strands of nucleic acids before the evolution of a helicase, then mars again probably didn't have life.

If freeze-thaw cycles were additionally required, that would also argue against life on icy moons.

If large amounts of radioactive isotopes were required, that may mean that the icy moons are also sterile

Abiogenesis started relatively fast on Earth, but there were many many special things going for Earth that leads to more "interesting" chemistry that weren't happening elsewhere, and it still may have taken 10s of millions of years, because our temporal resolution that far back is pretty bad.

Also it seems life could have started before the LHB, and survived it (previously this possibility was discounted), which means it could have actually taken a few hundred million years to happen... we don't know.

So, the % of planets with life if they have liquid water is a very very big unknown.

[PB666]

On 11/3/2017 at 6:12 PM, KerikBalm said:

A true vacuum cannot have a temperature. A few atoms per cubic meter can have a very high, or very low temperature, but with so little mass at that temperature, its practically irrelevant - at least when it comes to temperature regulation of a spacecraft.

Also, something from Kerbiloid's post that I didn't comment on earlier:

The ediacaran fauna did not "totally die out". Some of the stranger forms did, but its clear that the ediacaran fauna included lineages of metazoans that we know today. There are probable molluscs (kimberella) from the ediacaran, for instance. The demise of many of the forms of the ediacarans was an extinction much like other extinctions. Those that couldn't adapt were replaced - it doesn't mean anything about complexity going up or down... any more than the extinction of most synapsids and replacement by diapsids represented replacement by more/less complex forms at the end of the permian.

^^^^ and many forms of them, some are detected in the fossil record. The problem with paleontology is that it geologic events tends to preserve massive and bony things, things that burrow deep in the mud, and of course shell builders.

Imagine if you are big soft-fleshy thing in the ediacaran and something with teeth evolves. Now imagine the big soft fleshy things grow in a scalar manner from tiny soft-fleshy things to big ones. The first thing that comes along with the tiniest teeth can wipe them all out. When that guy evolves, he will not even show up to a scientist living in the ediacaran, let alone paleontologist. With predator prey ratios of today it would take an awful lot of fossils to find the one smoking gun. In the case where a tiny egg-biter is basically eating all the progeny before they mature such a predator would be invisible in the fossil record.

The prime example of replacement is Lystrosaurids represent 95% of fossils from the southern hemisphere after the Permain-Triassic extinction event, within 15 million years they are all gone. No extinction event required.

The critical event in life on earth is not neobiogenesis, this is probably common in the Universe and may  have happened on earth on multiple occasions. The formation of cyanobacteria and diversification of Archea, particular the development of commensal organisms that live inside a single lipid bilayer paves the way for compartmentalization of functions. Cyanobacterium do this to the extreme, they compartmentalize nitrogen fixation (which is extremely toxic process to most life forms) into a compartment that can basically be jettisoned when adequate nitrogen is available. Think of where life on earth would be without that one advantage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazotroph

So Ediacarans may get wiped, lystrosaurids may get wiped, but cyanobacterium and Archea barely notice.

[Green Baron]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Also it seems life could have started before the LHB, and survived it (previously this possibility was discounted), which means it could have actually taken a few hundred million years to happen... we don't know.

Depending on where the boundary between chemistry and life is drawn it (hypothetically) may have started not only once but several times after the crust had solidified, at vents, ocean ridges, shallow continental seas, being destroyed by impacts/volcanism, forming again.

Sure is it is there 3.5by before now, probably 3.8, maybe 4.1 and lately discussed 4.28 (and here), which is short after ocean forming.

Btw. this timespan is the same than that from the late pre-Cambrian to right now ;-)

Edited November 5, 2017 by Green Baron

[WinkAllKerb'']

Spoiler

https://xkcd.com/1335/
 

Spoiler

https://xkcd.com/13/

 

http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?t=20255&start=200

Edited November 10, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[GoSlash27]

Statistically speaking, extraterrestrial "life" is a certainty. We now know that rocky planets in goldilocks zones around high metallicity stars are common. It's now just a matter of time until we confirm it through indirect means.

Having said that, I am a lot less confident that any of that life will prove to be intelligent, and I highly doubt that ET will have the technological means to pay us a visit.

 

[Matuchkin]

There is life outside of Earth, period. The question is really about the Fermi Paradox, and why it is so. These are answers that I can think of from the top of my head:

- At some point in time, every civilisation develops technology that is capable of destroying the civilisation in question. I believe this point is not true. This is the equivalent of generalising that "all that these damn humans do is kill each other", when clearly this isn't the case. Just because there is an alien civilisation does not mean that said civilisation is war-torn and about to die out. Life isn't an Isaac Asimov novel, we just may be talking about creatures who have their own cities, transport, communication, thoughts, memes (in a mass-psychology way, not the internet jokes, though they can have an equivalent of those too), connections to other creatures, dreams of their own, celebrities, science facilities of their own, etc.

- There is a limit when it comes to interstellar travel. This seems to be a good point: maybe the outer edges of the Oort cloud contain an even worse shooting gallery than the inner solar system, and after light years of travel hitting a piece of debris turns into a very likely possibility. Maybe radiation from Sagittarius A* reaches insane levels outside of the Sun's magnetic field. Maybe after a certain speed below the speed of light, weird stuff starts happening to matter. Maybe it is impossible to go to a close star because, to get to any candidate on our side of the Milky Way, we would need to use a crazy amount of delta-v (we wouldn't be able to do an orbital transfer around the Milky Way centre, because this would take hundreds of thousands of years). I don't know, there can be a million obstacles, I'm not an astrophysicist so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but still...

[RX2000]

The universe is unfathomably huge. Its hard to believe that there isnt some sort of life somewhere on one of the quadrillions of planets out there.

[GoSlash27]

Again... We are using the word "civilization" as if it is a fixed percentage of "life". I'm not convinced that this is so, given our own history.
 Civilization requires intelligence, which must be a product of either natural selection or freak accident. In the entire history of evolution on our planet, natural selection has favored bigger/ stronger/ faster over smarter. The most enduring alpha predators on this planet have never developed more intelligence, they've simply been effective dumb eating machines. The anthropologists are still scratching their heads over how humans ever wound up evolving braininess and ( more importantly) why. The most popular theory right now is that intelligence was an accidental by- product of upright bipedalism and the ability to perspire and was never favored by natural selection. Even in today's society, intelligence seems to be of fairly low value in the genetic "dating" market.
 It could be that the evolution of intelligence is not the norm, but rather a freak accident. And if that's the case, then civilization may be exceedingly rare (or nonexistent) even if life is fairly common.

Best,
-Slashy

[Green Baron]

Yeah, this is a question that hasn't yet been solved. The human brain is 2* the size of that of comparable mammals and enabled us (or should i say them :-) ?) to complex problem solving.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11380

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166223608002099

 

Evolution is apparently not always a steady path, sometimes new arrangements appear and are not immediately sorted out. Edit: i am not a creationist !

But, maybe soon(*) this question isn't that important any more since with the late Neanderthals and early modern humans the maximum size apparently was reached. It is shrinking again. Fun fact ?

(*) a few hundred generations.

Edited November 10, 2017 by Green Baron

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Edit: i am not a creationist !

Green Baron,
 I should also point out that I'm not either

Best,
-Slashy

[Just Jim]

23 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

Statistically speaking, extraterrestrial "life" is a certainty. We now know that rocky planets in goldilocks zones around high metallicity stars are common. It's now just a matter of time until we confirm it through indirect means.

Having said that, I am a lot less confident that any of that life will prove to be intelligent, and I highly doubt that ET will have the technological means to pay us a visit.

This is where I'm at as well, I think... I wrote this earlier, it's easy for me to believe, because the numbers are just too high, and getting higher by the day it seems.

But if moons like Europa and Enceladus do have oceans under the ice, and critters living down there near some hydro-thermal vents, then they're probably not too smart... unless they've evolved some sort of cephalopod... All bets are off if krakens are involved... lol...  

Anyway, I have to agree the odds of intelligent ET's seems much, much smaller... but I'd be ecstatic if they just found an extraterrestrial shrimp on Enceladus. 

 

[Broco]

Yes, of course there is life outside Earth. But it doesn't matter that much to be honest.

The more interesting question is "Will we as a species ever communicate with an intelligent alien species?" and the answer for that is, for me at least: unlikely, for multiple reasons.

[KerikBalm]

On 11/11/2017 at 12:02 AM, Green Baron said:

the late Neanderthals and early modern humans the maximum size apparently was reached. It is shrinking again. Fun fact ?

A very concerning fact... This seems appropriate:

 

[MinimalMinmus]

Life, somewhere else in the Universe, among the few billion billion planets available? You'd bet.

 

A sapient species wise enough not to destroy itself? I have yet to find one.

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

A very concerning fact... This seems appropriate:

 

Doubtful, first people today are more intelligent than say 200 years ago. Far better food an an more mental challenging environment, school and more hacking the surveillance parents put up  
Visible is that the common man is on Facebook and not only on labor district pubs. 
On the other hand we are generating more sick people as lots of stuff can be easy medicated so people pass on bad genes. 
On the gripping hand this is an short term problem, GM will solve it in less than 100 years. yes it would create new problems who is next in list to solve. 

Neanderthals had bigger brains but they was not very innovative. Its likely that homo sapiens simply won on efficiency, they was much better at hunting and surviving because of better technology and probably organisation, no need for war just a bad year every generation over 1000 years with increasing number of modern humans. 

Humans has an major restriction in the pelvis, its limited how big head you can push trough, think Neanderthals was more sturdy and big boned so they could have babies with larger heads. 
Yes its an obvious design flaw however evolution is not smart and build on previous designs. 
Having smaller babies and more growth later should work, think marsupials,  only issue would the kids still be humans? Does it mater, give them larger ears as radiators for the larger faster running brain, elfs are cute anyway, then their militant wing called them-self Thalmor just a few historians on obscure stuff reacted. 
Anyway uplifting cats and dogs worked so well, gang fights become more serious. 

 

 

[Green Baron]

31 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Doubtful, first people today are more intelligent than say 200 years ago.

I highly doubt so, judging just by reading about the explorers, philosophers, etc. from these times. But 200 years are just 8 generations ...

Quote

Far better food an an more mental challenging environment, school and more hacking the surveillance parents put up  
Visible is that the common man is on Facebook and not only on labor district pubs. 

The pub is surely more mentally challenging than Facebook, that you can bet. I mean, if you actually speak with people and don't just sit there. When did you last have to remember a phone number ? I mean remember, not save to ram-chip ;-)

And better food today only if people take care what they eat.

Quote

On the other hand we are generating more sick people as lots of stuff can be easy medicated so people pass on bad genes. 
On the gripping hand this is an short term problem, GM will solve it in less than 100 years. yes it would create new problems who is next in list to solve. 

Yeah, that may be a thing of concern ...

Quote

Neanderthals had bigger brains but they was not very innovative. Its likely that homo sapiens simply won on efficiency, they was much better at hunting and surviving because of better technology and probably organisation, no need for war just a bad year every generation over 1000 years with increasing number of modern humans. 

Neanderthals were few, they didn't create the same cultural multitude as modern humans, but they were about to develop similar things. In the end (which hasn't been written yet !) the two races/subspecies intermixed, i (and others) doubt we can speak of competition in this case. Modern human technology at that time was different, if you compare late Mousterien/Chatelperronien with early Aurignacien the differences are clearly visible, but a qualitative judgement may be misplaced. Different stone tool industries.

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Humans has an major restriction in the pelvis, its limited how big head you can push trough, think Neanderthals was more sturdy and big boned so they could have babies with larger heads. 

This hypothesis is wanting for a source :-)

Quote

Yes its an obvious design flaw however evolution is not smart and build on previous designs. 

Oh, yes it does. Genomes aren't that different as it looks. And structures are repetitive.

Quote

Having smaller babies and more growth later should work, think marsupials,  only issue would the kids still be humans?

Hominidae developed from hunted to hunters. Enabling the offspring to stand and run on its own feet was a selection criterion. Otoh enabling the mother to carry a baby until it can run was important as well.

Edit: i see there has been a redefinition of homininae and hominidae. I learnt it the other way round, just 15 years ago ...

Edited November 14, 2017 by Green Baron

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Doubtful, first people today are more intelligent than say 200 years ago.

I strongly disagree with this. People today have access to much more advanced technology, but that doesn't make them more intelligent, especially at the individual level.
 

   The system of slavery, as practised in the United States, has been, and is now, but little understood by the people who live north of the Potomac and the Ohio; for, although individual cases of extreme cruelty and oppression occasionally occur in Maryland, yet the general treatment of the black people, is far more lenient and mild in that state, than it is farther south. This, I presume, is mainly to be attributed to the vicinity of the free state of Pennsylvania; but, in no small degree, to the influence of the population of the cities of Baltimore and Washington, over the families of the planters of the surrounding counties. For experience has taught me, that both masters and mistresses, who, if not observed by strangers, would treat their slaves with the utmost rigour, are so far operated upon, by a sense of shame or pride, as to provide them tolerably with both food and clothing, when they know their conduct is subject to the observation of persons, whose good opinion they wish to preserve.

-Charles Ball, An uneducated slave who served in the war of 1812

Compare and contrast that with the typical writings of today's "more intelligent" people. Every time I watch these old documentaries (whether from wars, or other events), I am always struck by the eloquence, wit, and awareness of even the least educated among them. How do today's average 'blogs compare to this?

 And then take a look at the incredible advances they were making in the fields of engineering and science, and how little they had to work with. John Harrison, a self- educated astronomer and clock- maker actually created a pendulum clock (a family of them, really) that was so precise that it rivals today's quartz watches and was totally impervious to movement, temperature, humidity... This was back in 1737, BTW, and a large part of the reason why the Royal Navy dominated the seas.
 200 years ago, astonishing inventions were coming out every year.

1801- The discovery of ultraviolet radiation
1809- Electric light
1814- Steam locomotive and photography
1829- Typewriter
1830- Sewing machine
1835- Babbage Engine (the first digital calculator)

And so on and so forth...

No, I don't buy even for a second that people today are more intelligent than they were back then. Not by a long shot...
Best,
-Slashy
 

 

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, GoSlash27 said:

Quote

The system of slavery, as practised in the United States, has been, and is now, but little understood by the people who live north of the Potomac and the Ohio; for, although individual cases of extreme cruelty and oppression occasionally occur in Maryland, yet the general treatment of the black people, is far more lenient and mild in that state, than it is farther south. This, I presume, is mainly to be attributed to the vicinity of the free state of Pennsylvania; but, in no small degree, to the influence of the population of the cities of Baltimore and Washington, over the families of the planters of the surrounding counties. For experience has taught me, that both masters and mistresses, who, if not observed by strangers, would treat their slaves with the utmost rigour, are so far operated upon, by a sense of shame or pride, as to provide them tolerably with both food and clothing, when they know their conduct is subject to the observation of persons, whose good opinion they wish to preserve.

-Charles Ball, An uneducated slave who served in the war of 1812

Compare and contrast that with the typical writings of today's "more intelligent" people. Every time I watch these old documentaries (whether from wars, or other events), I am always struck by the eloquence, wit, and awareness of even the least educated among them. How do today's average 'blogs compare to this?

With all respect to Mr. Ball and his service, it's misleading to represent those as his verbatim words. From the introduction to that book:

"Mr. Fisher, (the author) intimates in his preface, what is, indeed, sufficiently obvious from the felicity of his style, that the language of the book is not that of the unlettered slave, whose adventures he records. A similar intimation might with equal propriety have been given, in reference to the various profound and interesting reflections interspersed throughout the work." (And so on.)

Who's this Mr. Fisher?   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ball
"After several escapes and recaptures, he wrote his autobiography with the help of the white lawyer Isaac Fisher."

So your "uneducated slave" had a lawyer at the very least editing that text, if not writing it for him based on his speech. Of course it sounds good. I can't find much more info about Mr. Fisher, but I would hazard a guess that he was an abolitionist with every reason to want to see Mr. Ball represented positively in print (after all, why else would he have taken on the project?). Guess how many lawyers are helping the typical blogger proofread?

There's also the confounding effect of dialect drift over time, with older sources tending to sound more formal and proper because they use archaic vocabulary and grammar. I think this is why the King James Bible can sound particularly authoritative and elegant to us now.

Quote

No, I don't buy even for a second that people today are more intelligent than they were back then. Not by a long shot...

At the risk of triggering a debate over the validity of IQ tests, the data that we have on this indicates an aggregate increase of 2-3 IQ points per decade.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Regarding inventions in different time periods, the experiment is missing a control group. We don't face the same set of opportunities and prior art that they did. Invent a typewriter now and you'll get at most a hearty laugh.

Edited November 15, 2017 by HebaruSan

[GoSlash27]

29 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

At the risk of triggering a debate over the validity of IQ tests, the data that we have on this indicates an aggregate increase of 2-3 IQ points per decade.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

HebaruSan,

 Counterpoint:

 Today's college students can't spell without the aid of a spell- checker, can't perform simple math without a calculator, and display a dismal grasp of current events, history, and indeed can't even pass the naturalization exam for citizenship.

 Certainly from my personal experience, I can't point to a single thing to suggest that individual humans are gaining in intelligence. If anything, I watch "Idiocracy" and see it as prescient rather than farcical.

Best,
-Slashy

[PB666]

3 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

I strongly disagree with this. People today have access to much more advanced technology, but that doesn't make them more intelligent, especially at the individual level.
 

 

-Charles Ball, An uneducated slave who served in the war of 1812

Compare and contrast that with the typical writings of today's "more intelligent" people. Every time I watch these old documentaries (whether from wars, or other events), I am always struck by the eloquence, wit, and awareness of even the least educated among them. How do today's average 'blogs compare to this?

 And then take a look at the incredible advances they were making in the fields of engineering and science, and how little they had to work with. John Harrison, a self- educated astronomer and clock- maker actually created a pendulum clock (a family of them, really) that was so precise that it rivals today's quartz watches and was totally impervious to movement, temperature, humidity... This was back in 1737, BTW, and a large part of the reason why the Royal Navy dominated the seas.
 200 years ago, astonishing inventions were coming out every year.

1801- The discovery of ultraviolet radiation
1809- Electric light
1814- Steam locomotive and photography
1829- Typewriter
1830- Sewing machine
1835- Babbage Engine (the first digital calculator)

And so on and so forth...

No, I don't buy even for a second that people today are more intelligent than they were back then. Not by a long shot...
Best,
-Slashy
 

 

SO I think I can answer this debate.

Lets go back 150 years ago, in the age of steam, during the age of steam you where either an industrialist who hired people who build things made to harnass steam (such as a press, or a locomotive,  . . . .) no one who did not have resources had access to the keys to unlock the power of civilation of the time. The problem in the 1850 to 1900 period was in order to make steam you need a boiler which at the time was made of cast iron/steel it had to be thick, it had to hold pressure, you had to regulate the pressure. There needed to be a coal stream (remember the christmas carol, the worker got a lump of coal  . . . .) it was not uncommon for the common man to due his daily business with a handful of coal per day.

The came Rudolf Diesel's rather odd observation that if you placed a carbon source (cotton, oil, etc) in a cylinder and compress the surrounding air, that material would spontaneously combust, creating pressure. The pressure was generated whether it was a gallon or an thimble-size in volume. Once the full exploitation of this technology was observed the common man could take a used engine and invent something. Edison had a farm of young people from all walks of life inventing things. A couple of bicycle mechanics used a 4 cylinder engine to create the first powered flight and we enter the American Age. This eventually went from manual to electronics to software. Software was once the sole domain of Ph.Ds working on huge machines that produced more BTU's than actual results, then in the 1970s there was the computer chip, the 808X series most are unaware was not really used first as a CPU for personal computers, but as advancement of the 8008 processor for big machines, displays and equipment, there were like 6 instructions in the instruction set. Then came the Z80 that was really targeting hard programmed devices like cash registers monitors, etc. At the same time the 8086 was released as a competitor to the Z80 in the same market because the better intel chip was delayed. The Z80 was simple enough that anyone who could solder could create a circuit board and hard wire devices into it and create a computer, and the Z80 was cheap enough that it could be done, and a few kids in the bay area decided to build and sell computers. Then came the IBM PC and then the 8088. At that time if you used a computer you learned some aspect of programming you had to.At least one person in every house or company with a computer had to know how to program Dos, and programming in Basic was of great benefit. The Apple II had visicalc (long before excel). Alot of Microsoft apps (eventually part of Dos) where written by users. Microsoft originally sold its windows programming systems for hefty price, but soon after you could get it for free . . . .and that is when Apple got its butt kicked, everybody and their brother was writing software, everybody was stealing software, modifying others software . . . . . .

Not only this but the bulletin boards were occupied by pretty much computer savvy, college kids and geeks. There weren't forums per say just mail (NNTP versus SMTP) flying on bulletin boards and no such thing as moderation, it was hardly needed, the intellectual universe was exploding . . .  then WWW hit then google. Anyone and his brother could now have access to any bulletin board and the old net started to collapse and those well researched folks started leaving to moderated and then tightly moderated groups. Google brags about how they opened up the Internet, but they opened up the internet to complete chaos, they actually resulted in intellectuals closing off the internet from the common folk. So now what you see on the internet is duck-faced precocious teenager ranting about who tagged them in a photo on someone's facebook page as our equally foulmouthed politicians have moved to twitter to pronounce their general hatred of civility. Now you go to a store, theres a device that any 4 year old can use and probably better than I can, you put the money, you get a sim card and you can then log onto the internet with no knowledge what-so-ever about computers, how they work,  . . . . . . . .

This is not a genetic outcome, its a poison of my generations crafting. We build all the equipment, worked day and night to get these unfettered connections between people going. But we paid almost no mind about what it became once it got going. And to say we were not warned about Russian meddling in elections or Fake news . . . .All the fate of Twitter and Facebook can easily have been observed on the Usenet between 1994 and 1998. It is the reason I don't face or tweet; it is akin to taking an intellectual bullet and blowing your intellectual mind out.

The problem about our society is that there is alot of information in great variety. Eat this, buy this, take this drug, don't eat this, don't buy this, don't take this drug.  . . . . . .Our society is undergoing an insideous culture creep in which to keep your wits about you, you almost have to have a Ph.D. to side step all the risk that society creates. The opiod drug epidemic and type II diabetes epidemic are two examples of where you have to pay attention or you can easily get swept into the perils of the modern masses. I can give an example; for a friend that can no longer get out, I was buying a loaf of bread at the store the other day.  But its not bread anymore on the shelves, I don't know what it is but its not bread. 25 grams of sugar in once serving of bread, enzymatically modified wheat glutin ,  . . . . They were selling bread with whole flax seeds on them, you cant digest whole flax seeds, they come out in your poo. I picked up a bag of corn tortillas the first ingredient was wheat, a bottle of soy-sauce . . .same thing. Nothing is what it says it is anymore. And the problem is that all this sugar, excess of animal fat, weird chemicals . . . .Its making people dumb, its literally killing their brains, picking their brains in aldehydes, inflammation is cutting off the blood supply, hormones in the foods are  . . . . . . . . . .When I was coming up we never had a test called A1C, people when I was a kid very rarely died from diabetes, it was like #20 on the cause of death list. Now everyone and their brother has a positive score on their A1C. How can there not be something really wrong with the way people behave?

And just to make a point, when you have two Ph.D.s in a household its not exactly easy to have kids . . . . .we were working from dawn to dusk for many years, sometimes 4 or 5 years without a vacation. There's no point where the boss comes up and says, 'well we have a time to take a 6 month break'. In fact its the opposite, after you have retired they continue to call you up to do work . . . . .