Burial at Sea/Hymn to the Immortal Wind by MONO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEvpqR6B8ns

Indeed, and another point to consider is that it’s highly unlikely we’d observe a civilization at our level of development. Life on Earth appears around 4.5 billion years ago. Humans start evolving around 2.8 million years ago. Use of language appears around 100,000 years ago. Writing is invented around 5500 years ago.

Inventions of language and writing are the landmark moment here. Before language was invented the only way information could be passed down from ancestors to offspring was via mutations in our DNA. If an individual learned some new idea it would be lost with them when they died. Language allowed humans to communicate ideas to future generations and start accumulating knowledge beyond what a single individual could hold in their head. Writing made this process even more efficient.

So, after millions of years of life on Earth no technological development happened. Then when language was invented humans started creating technology, and in a blink of an eye on cosmological scale we went from living in caves to visiting space in our rocket ships. It’s worth taking a moment to really appreciate just how fast our technology evolved once we were able to start accumulating knowledge using language and writing.

Now let’s take a look at how technology itself has been evolving. Once we discovered radio communication we went through a noisy period where we were leaking a lot of our broadcasts into space, and within a span of a 100 years we started using more efficient communication, and encryption. If somebody intercepted our broadcasts today they would look like noise because they’re designed to look like noise. Our society today is utterly and completely unrecognizable to somebody from even a 100 years ago. If we don’t go extinct, I imagine that in another thousand years future humans will be completely alien to us as well.

So the period during which intelligent life would be recognizable to us during its course of evolution is infinitesimally small. The time between creating language and becoming an advanced technological society is measured in thousands of years, while evolution of life is measured in millions of years. The chance of two different intelligences finding each other at exact same stage of development where they might be able to communicate is incredibly unlikely.

I would also imagine that the biological phase for intelligent life is rather short. We’re likely to develop human style AIs within a century, and they will be the ones to go out and explore the universe. Meat did not evolve to live in space, we’re adapted to gravity wells. An artificial life form could be engineered to thrive in space without ever needing to visit planets. This is the kind of life that’s most likely to be prolific in space. Furthermore, post biological intelligences would likely be running at much faster speeds than our mental processes operate on. What we consider real-time would be might we consider to be geological scales. Such beings might consider what we view as real time akin to the way we look at continental drift. We’re aware that it’s happening, but it’s of little interest to use on day to day basis. It’s quite possible that advanced civilizations become solipsistic and care little for the outside universe.

For all we know the Universe may be teeming with intelligent life and we just don’t recognize it as such. We might be like an ant hill next to a highway looking to see if there are other ant hills around.

Chances that there is other intelligent life somewhere out there are pretty high, but the chances of us meeting it are slim to none.

For the same reason Republicans haven’t released the Epstien client list. Many of them and their donors are on the list.

Great, now let’s extend this logic to a solar system and see how that works.

Out of curiosity, what do you think the sentence “I’m home alone” means exactly?

One huge impact mass FOSS adoption would have is that there would be a lot less software and hardware churn. Commercial nature of proprietary technology is the main driver for constant upgrade cycles we see. Companies need to constantly sell products to stay in business, and this means you have to deprecate old software and hardware in order to sell new versions of the product.

Windows 11 roll out is a perfect example. Vast majority of Windows 10 users are perfectly happy with the way their computer works currently, they’re not demanding any new features, they just want their computer to continue to work the way it does currently. However, Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 and now they’re forced to buy a new computer to keep doing what they’ve been doing.

This problem goes away entirely with open source because there is no commercial incentive at play. If a piece of software works, and there is a community of users using it, then it can keep working the way it does indefinitely. Furthermore, in cases where a software project goes in a directions some users don’t like, such as the case with Gnome, then software can be forked by users who want to go in a different direction or preserve original functionality. This is how Cinnamon and Mate projects came about.

Another aspect of the open source dynamic is that there’s an incentive to optimize software. So, you can get continuous performance improvements without having to constantly upgrade your hardware. For most commercial software, there’s little incentive to do that since that costs company money. It’s easier to just expect users to upgrade their hardware if they want better performance.

I would argue that non technical software users would be far better off if they had the option to fund open source software instead of buying commercial versions. Even having to pay equal amounts, the availability of the source puts more power in the hands of the users. For example, building on the example of Gnome, users of an existing software project could also pull funds together to pay developers to add features to the software or change functionality in a particular way.

This is precisely what makes licenses like GPL so valuable in my opinion. It’s a license that ensure the source stays open, and in this way inherently gives more power to the users.

Yup, it’s frustrating that there’s still no process that’s easy enough for a non techie to go through easily.

Yeah basically, a turn key solution where your machine gets wiped and imaged with a Linux distro that does all the basic stuff most people need would be an ideal solution. A good way to look at it would be making sort of a Linux based console for non technical users as opposed to a general purpose computer. Tech people want the latter, but non technical users just want a reliable tool that can reliably handle a few tasks.

Indeed, it kills me how much perfectly hardware is constantly thrown out because Windows refuses to run on it.

I think the trick has to be that somebody who has a bit of technical skill sets the laptop up initially. I did this for my mom a while back, and once I set it up once, it just worked from there on. Non technical users tend to have a fairly small set of things they need to do like check email, browser the web, and play media. Once that’s working, they never need to change anything. In fact, they don’t want to change anything because they get used to the workflow, and they’re comfortable.

It would be great if people set up community centres where people can bring their old laptops, and somebody switches them over to Linux for them.

A local park, looks especially awesome in fall when it’s foggy. Some pics from last year.

Yeah, for a decent entry level camera it’s around a thousand bucks, and lenses tend to go for close to that as well. If you do decide to go for it at some point, something like Sony A6100, is a good starter. I started on the older A6000 model, and it served me pretty well.

That’s how I started originally. I’d just walk around and if I saw something that looked neat, I’d snap a pic with my phone. And then I figured getting an actual camera might be a good pretext to get out of the house. The lockdowns kind of sealed the deal since I started getting cabin fever with nowhere to go. :)

Thanks, I find processing the photos tends to be half the fun. There are a lot of blackbirds around here, and they’re very feisty. Sometimes they’ll even attack hawks, and dive bomb people if they pass to close. But they’ll also eat seeds right out of your hand. And titmouses definitely look neat. I like the color scheme, and the mohawk is very cool. Apparently they do come to Ontario, but I’ve yet to see one myself.

It’s definitely a fun hobby, although a bit pricey in terms of gear. And I very much agree, just being around nature makes you feel better and allows you to think clearly. I was between jobs for a couple of months a few years ago, and I spent the whole summer going to the park. I’d get up around 6 in the morning, leave my phone at home, and go spend the whole day at the park. It was the happiest I can recall being in my adult life. Completely disconnected from everything, and just vibing.

I started with plants, but moved on to birds and occasional critters like chipmunks. Birds definitely take a bit of patience to get nice shots I find. I post some of my stuff on here https://pixelfed.social/Yogthos

I got into doing nature photography over the pandemic as a way to get out of the house, and it’s been amazing for my mental health. It forced me to get out and just live in the moment really paying attention to the environment around me. I’ve realized how little we notice of the world around us normally. I’ve also found martial arts are a similar experience in a sense that you’re really just focused on the moment and forget about everything else you’ve been thinking about.

thank you for gracing us with an example of how a thirteen year old understands the world

The all-caps delivery really frames your thesis beautifully.