Expanding Advanced Civilizations

[Bobunf]

"I would like to ask a question. what is more important then the very survival of earth that we all live on? Where are our priorities?"

It depends not only on the quantity of the danger, but on the probability. A super-nova or gamma ray burster might go off nearby. What should be done about that? Or the coming Ice Age, Global Warming, the next Plague, the possible invasion by ET? Or the next tsunami?

What's the probability of a civilization destroying impact in this century that measures currently in effect won't take of? One in five million?

In the meantime everybody has to be feed, clothed, sheltered, given medical care and educated. And if they're not, we won't have the resourses to deal with any problem.

One can't devote all resources to all problems all the time. Yours will have to take its turn.

Bob

[eburacum45]

I agree, Albedo_1, that asteroid strikes can be very damaging; in some solar systems the dangers of asteroid impact may be higher than in our own.

All I was stating was my opinion that asteroids alone are not the answer to Fermi's Paradox;
even if half the civilised worlds are wiped out before they can develop anti-impact technology, that leaves half which do survive.

I would expect that most civilised extraterrestial species have a reasonable amount of time, on the order of millions of years, before they face extinction from impacts, so probably much fewer than half are destroyed by asteroids.

[GOURDHEAD]

It is postulated that a mars size object hit the primoidal earth causing much of the lighter material to be ejected. This coalesced into our moon. This also provided the deep trenches that allow the earth to have land masses. It is also thought that several major biological dieout were caused by space rocks or the volcanism which can be caused by a large mass striking the earth.

Except for unusually large, but still less than the moon, sized rocks, a small portion of humanity (or similar critters elsewhere) might survive provided the atmosphere is not overly disturbed. At least we would have a better chance than the less competent critters that occupied the Earth during earlier extinctions. If we can just luck out for another 500 years, our chances will be much better. It's easy to believe that critters on other planets have been so lucky, and, again, once proficient at interstellar travel the likelyhood of extinction decreases rapidly.

Astrological darwinism might be a good term to describe a cosmic induced biological extinctions.

You might want to make that "celestial interruptions of equilibria" a subset of Gould's punctuated equilibria. Astrology has little to do with evolution directly; however it may affect the mating practices of its practioneers which in turn can grow a twig or two on some family tree or other.

[Bobunf]

“…supplicants coming into the tribal offices at Pine Ridge, which is in Shannon County, S.D., the poorest county in America, a place where unemployment hovers around 80 percent, where the per capita income is $3,417 a year, the lowest in the nation.”

The income figure does not include the effects of the earned income credit, transfer payments, both cash and in-kind, nor unreported income. A family of three would be entitled to a cash grant of $3,816 per year unless one or more of the individuals were disabled, which would increase the grant by about $6,000 per year per disabled person.

In addition, food stamps in an amount about equal to $6,000 per year would be available to the family, as well as subsidized housing, and free medical and dental care, including drugs. Additional funds are available for paying certain utilities, pre- and post-natal care, and other programs. Native Americans have some additional programs available to them.

The goal of the various programs is to bring a family’s equivalent income to something approaching 135% of the defined poverty level. Because the various levels of government involved operate with the usual efficiency and promptness one would expect in any huge human bureaucracy, this goal may be honored more in the breach than not; nonetheless it is there, and is frequently at least approached. The word supplicant, however, is well taken.

The role of unreported income is not to be taken lightly, totaling several hundred billion dollars per year. It involves a huge array of trades, auto and other repair businesses, rental activities, restaurants, small retail stores, and many other small businesses. Many transactions, even in such a public forums as eBay and swapmarts, go unreported. Also adding very substantially to unreported income are illegal economic activities such as theft and other forms of property conversion, illicit drug sales, prostitution, illicit gambling, fraud, forgery, and smuggling of various kinds. The US does not have more than two million people in prisons and jails for nothing.

While larger business do fail to report some income to individuals, the vast majority of unreported income goes to lower income people. The existence of this huge economy of unreported income renders many economic measurements suspect.

So, one could imagine the song, “Don’t cry for me Shannon County.”

Bob

[Bobunf]

folkhemmet, you wrote, “Even data on life expectancy suggests that the life expectancy of many native north and south Americans was as high as those of modern Europeans.“

I’ll state four reasons to doubt such a proposition:

First, we know that the life expectancies of contemporary humans are directly related to wealth (i.e. GDP per capita), and that pre-Columbian North and South Americans were poorer than modern Europeans. Such a change in relationship begs for an explanation.

Second, we’re quite sure that Europeans of the same time period, say 1350, had life expectancies much lower than that of modern Europeans. It’s not easy to figure out, but there are huge amounts of consistent documentary evidence of and bracketing the period, such as the Doomsday Book of Norman England or the first life expectancy tables constructed by Edmund Halley. Such a difference would really beg for an ex-planation.

Third, it just doesn’t make sense (for pre-Columbian Native Americans or Europeans) for these nine rea-sons, among many others:
1. They had no effective treatment for appendicitis, gallstones, bacterial or viral infections, cataracts, and almost all other common diseases. There was essentially no effective medicine. Even by 1900, the princi-ple tenet of Osterlian nihilism was that usually the best the doctor could do was nothing.
2. They didn’t have the Germ Theory of Disease
3. They didn’t know how to set bones.
4. Tooth decay was a tremendous problem especially for per-Colombian Americans, because of the corn technology which got stone grit into the food causing very excessive wear of tooth enamel.
5. The diet could hardly be called balanced, depending almost exclusively on what happened to be locally available at each point in time, with limited ability to store food.
6. There was no knowledge of, nor ability to deal with deficiencies of, micro-nutrients such as iodine and vitamins.
7. Exposure to cold was a more significant problem than amongst modern day Europeans because of less sophisticated clothing, bedding and shelter, the almost exclusive dependence on wood and dung for fuel, and inefficient heating of dwelling.
8. Exposure to the toxic effects of heating and cooking fires with inadequate ventilation was constant.
9. Water treatment and waste disposal were not based on an understanding of the processes that presented dangers to people.
And on and on.

Fourth, the physical evidence powerfully suggests life expectancies much lower than that of modern Euro-peans. Such physical evidence has been extraordinary difficult and expensive to obtain, and, because of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, such evidence has become increasingly difficult, to the point of impossible, in the last few decades.

But, as an example (there are dozens of such studies), from Dry Bones, Dakota Territory Reflected, by John B. Gregg and Pauline S. Gregg 1987

“When many individuals are involved in a catastrophe, the end result often is a mass burial. Examination of what remains reveals information about the individuals involved, as well as the health status of the popula-tion in the vicinity, as it was during one instant in time.

“The Crow Creek Site (39BF11), located on the east bluff of the Missouri River eleven miles due north of Chamberlain, S.D…Carbon datings to 1325 and 1390 A.D indicate that at the time of the massacre the vil-lage was occupied by people who were culturally of the Initial Coalescent vari-ant, and ancestral to the Arikara (361). This large site, now a National Historic Landmark, was first excavated in 1954 and 1955… The village occupied nearly eighteen acres and contained at least fifty earth lodges.”

From Table 1.2 Crow Creek Ages At Death
Cumulative
Ages__Male_Fem_Tot % US-1999 Comparison
0 – 4_ 21_ 20_ 41 16% 7%
5 – 9_ 36_ 35_ 71 34% 14%
10-14_ 20_ 20_ 40 46% 21%
15-19_ 22__ 7_ 29 55% 29%
20-24_ 21__ 7_ 28 63% 35%
25-29_ 16__ 7_ 23 70% 42%
30-34_ 15__ 7_ 22 77% 49%
35-39__ 4__ 7_ 11 80% 57%
40-44__ 3__ 8_ 11 83% 66%
45-49__ 4_ 13_ 17 88% 73%
50-54__ 7_ 13_ 20 94% 79%
55 - +_ 6_ 13_ 19 100 100%
Total 175 157 332

Infant, childhood and female prevalence at massacres, and the Crow Creek Massacre in particular, are probably understated since the remains of infants and children would be less robust, burial practices are likely to be less formal and less preserving, and such individuals are more likely to be spared by the invad-ing party.

The comparison of the ages of the two populations can hardly be explained except as a consequence of a relatively high birth rate and high mortality rate at all ages for the pre-Columbian population. Like 70% of the pre-Columbian population under the age of 30, as opposed to 42% in the US in 1999. Comparison with a present day European population would probably be even more different, because of their lower fertility rates.

Of course, one can find people who will say the opposite, but my study of the data and my experience in the Southwest US archeological community over a long time leave me wondering how evidence of the na-ture exposed above can be explained away.

Since that’s about all the sort of evidence we have on this subject, I think it can’t be ignored; and that the life expectancy of pre-Columbian Americans, like their contemporary Europeans, was almost certainly much lower than present day Europeans.

We may, someday, be on the lower end of asymmetrical contact between civilizations. In that event, it will be really critical to have as accurate and realistic an understanding of the history and effects of such contact as possible, in order for our actions to be optimal for the well-being of our species and planet.

If we are on the upper end of such a contact, our interlocutors, toward whom we must have good wishes, can only benefit from a correct understanding of the process on our part, as will we benefit from such un-derstanding.

It’s important to focus on the truth and the reality. It’s very hard to figure out how things work even without having to stuff them into some idea box.

Bob