1000 earths

[thomasmark71]

hello

ive always wondered

if, 50,000 years ago, 1000 earths were put in the universe, and humans ( just as they were cavemen) were put on all the 1000 earths at the same time

would all those hunans end up in the same place…ie invented fire, internet, space flight, cars etcetc

 

[swansont]

Chaos theory says no. Life on earth is highly nonlinear, even tiny differences in the starting conditions, or the influence of random events, would yield different outcomes.

[thomasmark71]

yes i understand that, maybe not at the same time, but ultimately would fire be created on all 1000 earths , even at different times?

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, thomasmark71 said:

yes i understand that, maybe not at the same time, but ultimately would fire be created on all 1000 earths , even at different times?

Well, yes, of course it would. Fire happens naturally as a result of lightning, and in some instances of volcanic eruptions. Humans would naturally go looking for food after a wild fire, and like the results. We started using fire by finding ways to prolong naturally occurring fires, as camp fires and cooking fires, and it's very likely that most or all of the Earths would begin using fire by doing the same thing. 

Likely, but not certain, there might be the odd Earth where they didn't go down that path.

There was until recently an isolated Island in the Indian Ocean, where people had no contact with the outside world, and it was observed by fishermen that there were long periods when no smoke could be seen, until the next thunder storms and lightning strikes. So they apparently have never found an artificial way of starting a fire. So even here on Earth, there is a lot of variation in progress levels.

[Halc]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Chaos theory says no. Life on earth is highly nonlinear, even tiny differences in the starting conditions, or the influence of random events, would yield different outcomes.

Can't totally agree here. Sure, evolution would have gone in a completely different direction in each place, but humans were pretty much as they are now by 50000 years ago. Neanderthals were well integrated into the blood lines of the southern breeds. Most of the adaptations that have been made since then revolve around dealing with new diseases as they pop up, which probably would be wildly different from world to world.

Chaos theory has strange attractors, and humans going technological is a reasonable inevitability from a state that recent.  So maybe 25% of those 1000 worlds?  It would of course take more or less than 50000 years to do it on each.  The 25% is a POOMA estimate. Probably higher now that I think of it, since the only way to stop it would probably be something that wipes us out, unlikely in that short time. The intelligence needed is already there (and is actually currently on the decline), so it seems to be a matter of time.

As for an illustration of chaos theory, consider 1000 copies of Earth circa 1900. None of the humans alive today would exist on any other world after 123 years. There's no attractor for that. War(s) is inevitable, but the actual main players are not. Of those 1000 worlds, technological civilization would end before 2023 in many (majority?) of them. We've come too close too many times to make it particularly probable that we get as far as we have.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Humans would naturally go looking for food after a wild fire,

Humans had controlled fire for at least 3/4 million years. 50000 is nowhere far back enough to ask if it would happen again.

[swansont]

49 minutes ago, Halc said:

Can't totally agree here. Sure, evolution would have gone in a completely different direction in each place, but humans were pretty much as they are now by 50000 years ago. Neanderthals were well integrated into the blood lines of the southern breeds. Most of the adaptations that have been made since then revolve around dealing with new diseases as they pop up, which probably would be wildly different from world to world.

Chaos theory has strange attractors, and humans going technological is a reasonable inevitability from a state that recent.  So maybe 25% of those 1000 worlds?

Evolution was not part of the framing, and the question was if all would end up in the same place. So you do agree.

Quote

As for an illustration of chaos theory, consider 1000 copies of Earth circa 1900. None of the humans alive today would exist on any other world after 123 years. There's no attractor for that. War(s) is inevitable, but the actual main players are not. Of those 1000 worlds, technological civilization would end before 2023 in many (majority?) of them. We've come too close too many times to make it particularly probable that we get as far as we have.

Given how close we know we came to nuclear annihilation on more than one occasion, one has to think that in some iterations, it would happen. In some iterations, a critical person dies an untimely death not seen in other incarnations. A butterfly flaps its wings…

[Halc]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Evolution was not part of the framing, and the question was if all would end up in the same place. So you do agree.

He said "ie invented fire, internet, space flight, cars etcetc", and those things are pretty inevitable given the state 50000 years ago. It just doesn't take exactly 50000 years in each case. Maybe 20000 or 200000, but it gets there. You said Chaos theory says 'no' to the question in the OP, and it was that with which I was disagreeing.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Given how close we know we came to nuclear annihilation on more than one occasion, one has to think that in some iterations, it would happen. In some iterations, a critical person dies an untimely death not seen in other incarnations. A butterfly flaps its wings…

Agree about the annihilation bit, but the goals mentioned in the OP would already have been achieved in that case. We were never capable of destruction of the species before the advent of fire, flight, and cars. It could admittedly happen (and almost did) before the internet came around, so that one is far less inevitable.

About the 'crucial person', that depends on what you mean by it. I mean, sure, one idiot can push the button and doom a world permanently back to near animals. There are several examples of crucial decisions that prevented things like that. But other things: No Einstein say. Somebody else would have stepped up, and in short order. The time was ripe for one or more world wars given the state of things around 1900. The first war was perhaps a political fluke, but the second seems almost mandatory given the advances in military technology at the time, making the transitions from [he who has the most soldiers] to [he who invents (and uses) stuff first] and finally to [endgame where either MAD dominates, or one power takes a permanent brutal hold]

 

Of the 1000 worlds (from 50000 years ago, not 1900), how many manage to place a permanent self-sufficient off-planet colony somewhere?  Not many. Not ours I bet.

 

[julius2]

If I understand the original statement, this would be 1000 exact copies of earths? And then rely on chaos theory to create the variations in time?

But if you mean 1000 copies of earths but each with different land masses, and different composition of minerals that would be different.

For example if 1 of these earths didn't have iron ore, the production of steel would never come about, and we wouldn't have cars.....

[Sensei]

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Chaos theory says no.

Don't use the word "chaos" because it reminds me of your former president..

 

[swansont]

9 hours ago, Halc said:

He said "ie invented fire, internet, space flight, cars etcetc", and those things are pretty inevitable given the state 50000 years ago. It just doesn't take exactly 50000 years in each case. Maybe 20000 or 200000, but it gets there. You said Chaos theory says 'no' to the question in the OP, and it was that with which I was disagreeing.

If it takes 200,000 years, that’s a “no” according to the conditions of the OP. If one iteration annihilates the world before we send people to space, that’s also a “no”

The result also depends on what “end up in the same place” means and what “etcetc” includes. If the requirements are vague, then it’s more likely to be true, but predictions are like that. Psychics make money relying on it (the Barnum effect)

[mistermack]

14 hours ago, Halc said:

Humans had controlled fire for at least 3/4 million years. 50000 is nowhere far back enough to ask if it would happen again.

That's assuming that the 1,000 Earths had no history. The OP says 1,000 Earths with cave men. So they would probably be already making fire. 

Edited October 14, 2023 by mistermack

[Halc]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

If it takes 200,000 years, that’s a “no” according to the conditions of the OP.

To quote his clarification:

20 hours ago, thomasmark71 said:

maybe not at the same time, but ultimately would fire be created on all 1000 earths , even at different times?

So it taking longer or not is irrelevant to what the OP is asking. The question is, what percentage gets there.

There are of course several problems with the OP. The fact that humans need to be 'put on' each of those 1000 planets implies that the planets don't already have people on them, and if they don't already look exactly like our Earth 50000 years ago, what else is different? Is there something to eat? The unstated differences are likely to make survival impossible.

So we all took the question as seemingly intended: 1000 identical copies, complete with all people at the time, solar system, etc.

He asks just above: "would fire be created". Fire happens naturally, so of course. Controlled fire by humans has been around for nearly a million years, so again, of course.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

The result also depends on what “end up in the same place” means and what “etcetc” includes.

He gave s short list, and the implication was simply a technological outcome, enough to give us the capability of wiping ourselves out seems to be the only criteria that matters. Yes, I agree that the question wasn't posed with particular rigor.

 

Another assumption is non-deterministic physics (or some other environmental difference on each of the 1000 worlds. If everything is identical and physics is deterministic, then not even chaos theory allows any differences at all between them. This implies the 1000 worlds are each isolated in their own identical observable universe. An assumption of non-determinism is again irrelevant since it's absence renders the OP question moot.

 

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

That's assuming that the 1,000 Earths had no history. The OP says 1,000 Earths with cave men. So they would probably be already making fire. 

I pointed out repeatedly that they would already have fire. I don't know what you mean by a planet having 'no history'. I mean, history is part of the state of a thing, so if the history is different, the copy isn't identical. Are the humans on these other places stripped of the knowledge and experience that the humans on actual Earth 50000 years ago had? I don't think the OP intended anything of that nature.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Halc said:

So it taking longer or not is irrelevant to what the OP is asking. The question is, what percentage gets there.

Would they all end up at the same place means 100%, and if a civilization doesn’t have fire (or whatever technology you choose) after 50,000 years, they haven’t ended up at the same place as we are today.

Quote

Another assumption is non-deterministic physics (or some other environmental difference on each of the 1000 worlds. If everything is identical and physics is deterministic, then not even chaos theory allows any differences at all between them.

We know physics is not, so this is moot. 

[Halc]

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

Would they all end up at the same place means 100%, and if a civilization doesn’t have fire (or whatever technology you choose) after 50,000 years, they haven’t ended up at the same place as we are today.

Totally agree that 100% is unrealistic. They're not all going to make some arbitrary goal. Fire is a bad goal because they already have it at the start, so 100% in that case.  The 'after 50000' part is not specified as a deadline. The original poster allowed different times. Less is bad as well. If they get to say space in 40000 years, odds are very high that they won't be technological after 50000.

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

We know physics is not [deterministic], so this is moot. 

There are multiple deterministic interpretations of QM, so unless you're aware of them all being falsified, we know no such thing.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Halc

[Sensei]

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

That's assuming that the 1,000 Earths had no history. The OP says 1,000 Earths with cave men. So they would probably be already making fire. 

Consider, done:

 

 

[mistermack]

Making fire is a fascinating topic, and it's not easy, even if you are shown how.

It's much easier to prolong a fire, and to carry smouldering embers with you from place to place. That probably happened thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before anyone found out how to ignite a fire from cold. 

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, Halc said:

Fire is a bad goal because they already have it at the start, so 100% in that case. 

Not all of them would know how to use it, or create it, or have time to work it out; so all we can say, with any certainty is, the odds might be 1,000:1... 😉

[Knowledge Enthusiast]

Forget 1000 earths. Going forward into the year three trillion and beyond, it may be feasible to colonize the vastness of space and create literal heaven in this universe of ours. Of course, it is not a given that we reach three trillion and beyond but as far as we can tell, we are the best shot at heaven in this universe.

[iNow]

Humans haven’t even been around 3 hundred thousand years, and you’re taking 3 trillion with a T

 

🤣

Edited November 15, 2023 by iNow

[Peterkin]

54 minutes ago, Knowledge Enthusiast said:

Going forward into the year three trillion and beyond, it may be feasible to colonize the vastness of space and create literal heaven in this universe of ours. Of course, it is not a given that we reach three trillion and beyond but as far as we can tell, we are the best shot at heaven in this universe.

Yes, indeed: just look at the heaven we've made of this one planet. Except that "we" will not be anywhere at all by then, and neither will the Earth and whatever colonies it may have conquered in the meanwhile, because we're at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy and will be in the first encounter with Andromeda in something under 4 billion years.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Peterkin

[Knowledge Enthusiast]

@PeterkinHopefully having our code exist till then means we have a chance to experience the future but that of course is very wishful thinking. It is still fine if Facebook and Twitter get preserved and our legacy continues with these social media sites.

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, Knowledge Enthusiast said:

@PeterkinHopefully having our code exist till then means we have a chance to experience the future but that of course is very wishful thinking. It is still fine if Facebook and Twitter get preserved and our legacy continues with these social media sites.

..unlikely.. HTTP/HTTPS web archivers work only with true HTTP/HTTPS servers.. but Facebook and Twitter are dynamically generated JavaScript servers. They change stuff depending who is watching it, and (try to) ignore bots.. i.e. archiver will get nothing..

Some (devs) says "use WebAPI"..

Have you seen the "prove you're human" requests (created by Google!) where you have to click something in the right order...? Web archiver won't work with that - and it won't archive pages.. Entire FB, Twitter are "blank pages" for automatic archivers..

ps. I have created HTTP/HTTPS search crawlers. (like "Google")..

Google demands data from you, to index pages, and at the same time, dismiss giving you their data.. The result will be equivalent to "dark ages" like three thousands years ago in the Greece..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages

They even want to speed up the collapse by automatically deleting data due to user inactivity. Two or more years without logging into an account and deleting the account.

 

The days when "Google is cool" passed about twenty years ago..

Edited November 15, 2023 by Sensei

[Knowledge Enthusiast]

@SenseiI guess that an improvement could be a project for a young programmer hoping to make it. A legacy site sounds like a good idea. With search options for advice from those who have passed and real-life stories to read about, it would be amazing.