What if we end up being the bad aliens?

All biological cognitive minds which exist for a fleeting moment in a 20 billion year old universe make cognitive inferences. Most of these cognitive inferences are wrong and are a synthesis of an infinite series of mistaken inferences based on the inability of a biological cognitive mind to understand the complex organization of information in 20 billion years of natural law, cause-and-effect, and self-organization.

In other words, to say this more simply, and to keep this post short, the world we live in is a product of evolution of a primitive cognitive space; life, as we know it is an illusion; a world created out of an epic human quest for survival, knowledge and self-awareness, mostly based on mistaken inferences.

All life, viewed from the human cognitive mind, is an illusion that is only real to homo sapiens and those infected by this self-generated "reality", based on the serial history, conditioning and synthesis of cognitive inference in a vain attempt to understand 20 billion years of cause-and-effect.

Most of us, the author included, struggle to keep vBulletin tuned and forum users to frequent our virtual communities; and in context, have little hope to understand 20 billion years of science and natural law. Someday, humans may simply be the "maintainers" for machines who will have cognitive abilities in excited silicon that will far surpass cognitive abilities in homo sapiens. Who knows?

Unfortuately, these machines will more-than-likely be built and bootstrapped with the same wrong inferences that infect our biological cognitive spaces. This is simply the limitations of biological and carbon based life as we "know it". In closing, because science and technology have only emerged in the past few hundred years of a 20 billion year history, this is only about 0.000000001 of the history of the universe as we know it. There is a long way to go and much to learn. I would say Earthlings are doing OK, considering their relatively short emergence in the cosmos.

Yes, as the original poster [from the vB boards] stated, "we are the bad aliens".....

I can see it now though.

We will finally get everything right and then the next big bang or something like that will happen and then we get pushed back to square one again.

The jury is still still out if the universe will keep expanding or reverse into "the big crunch". There is a factor called, "the critical factor" or "the critical mass" (I can't recall off hand), that scientists have calculated is the threshold; and that number is unknown (to us humans on Earth).

Either way, "we" will be a relative term in a billion years. Machines will far exceed the cognitive ability of carbon based life, and things will be very different than they are today Our Sun has a limited lifespan and "we" will have to migrate to a different solar system before the "big whatever" happens (unless some disaster occurs, like a big rock hitting earth, etc.!!)

Since the dynos were wiped out by the effects of a "big rock", seems likely another "big rock" will hit someday.

But if the universe is going to end with say a big bang or whatever. Will the natural instinct of survival for humans be to search out to find if there is such an existents of a parallel universe?

If so will we make it there in time?

Yes, if the universe does indeed end in "a big crunch" (as some theory suggests), there will be surely be "desire" to escape certain death - but that scenario is so long into the future that humans, as we know and understand them, will have long ceased to exist...

For example, if you examine the world via the eyes of information theory (entropy and the third law of thermodynamics) and the fact that the universe is becoming "more organized," and the accepted fact that in the not-do-distant future that machines will have much greater cognitive abilities that human brains -- the need for "biological bodies" may be less important, and one could venture to say; and then all the "accumulated knowledge" could be "pushed" (sent, mailed, shot, passed, etc.) into "passages" to other universes, if there are indeed more than one and a way to go between them.

There is so much transfomation of "life" that we can only speculate, out of total ignorance, what "life" will be like 10 billion years. "Life" could simply be energy traveling in the universe..... and the need and desire to "live" may not exist, as we know it today in our current biological, carbon based, housing for our minds.

In all honesty, I have no idea......

in a sense ... we'd all be like ghosts ... cannot be seen ... haunting the place ...

More like electronic remnants (not ghosts), if you ask me:

3 entries found for remnant.
rem�nant    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (rmnnt)
n.

   1. Something left over; a remainder.
   2. A piece of fabric remaining after the rest has been used or sold.
   3. A surviving trace or vestige: a remnant of his past glory.
   4. A small surviving group of people. Often used in the plural.

About the big crunch, can anybody even imagine what will 'be' after the big crunch?

in light of the recent developments re: china and taiwan ... the big crunch could come quicker than we think ...

The funny and sad thing I think is we think suicide is a horrible evil thing and when you look at alot of the things that we are doing to each other and the world we life in when the "big bang" does some it will be nothing more then a mass suicide on our part.

I look at the balances we share one shift in the current and we will end up in another iceage, one push of a button after a series of codes are incerted and the turing of a key and the world is a waste land. I think more then that with all of the single acts of violence in the world we are losing such more we lost what it means to be humain.

But I could be totally off the mark.

But about the sun dont you think by the time the "Big Crush" happens that the sun would have allready swallowed the earth and planets and many after earth.In my mind the only safe place till the "Big Crush" would be pluto and that if not swallowed would proble have the intense heat of venus on the bright side and the intence freezing of its noy aday heat.And in fact if there was some way that we did make it to pluto and it was not destroyed we would not beable to survive on it for very long due to the nature of humans ruining every thing we come in contact with so in every way possible to me we are the "Bad Aliens".

Good point. The sun will supernova and wipe out life in the the solar system long before the "big crunch."

I surmise that our collective cognitive space (electronic remnants) will be embedded in silicon long before that event and "we" will survive as electronic remnants in other solar systems long before the supernova.

Even if another "life supporting" plant is not found, it will not matter much because robots will build, on other planets, an environment suitable for our electronic remants to "exist."

Actually, our Sun cannot supernova. It is too small for that. (cite)

However, if you would like something to worry about, how about Eta Carinae. It could hypernova in our lifetime. Since it is only 8,000 light years away, the resulting gamma ray burst would completely sterilize the Earth. Or to look at it another way, because of the distance, it may have already gone hypernova and we are just waiting for the GRB to arrive.

our sun is not too small any star can either super nova or become a black hole which they are the oposties of each other it just depends on the conditions of the star acroding to study our would be come a super nova

I think Perderabo did his homework and is correct about our sun. His reference from Cornell says

Thanks for clearing up the science, Perderabo.

On the other hand, the reference from Cornell also says:

Which means that we will burn up before we freeze (I guess) :o which is what I remember now... not a supernova, but a Red Giant, that is our destiny.

From the same reference:

And also from this reference:

Well, during the Red Giant phase, that's no sweat... we could migrate to one the moons of Jupiter. They should be warm enough. Another idea I've seen kicked around is to enlarge the Earth's orbit. This involves building some huge spacecraft that zoom around Jupiter and Earth in a particular way. The idea is to steal angular momentum from Jupiter and impart it to Earth. This would take a very long time and Earth would slowly move away from the Sun.

As for freezing during the white dwarf phase...well, ok, that is a problem. You can't have everything.

This reference on supernova seem to contradict your theory, Perderabo:

8,000 light years is "way out" of the "tens or hundreds" of light years, which some say are the range for supernova destruction.

Supernova yes, hypernova no. Actually no one is sure how close you can safely be to a hypernova. But everyone agrees the a few hundred light years won't cut it. The lowest estimate I ever saw was 2000 light years. The hightest is that a hypernova will sterilize a entire galaxy. Any size galaxy....

There still seems to be quite a body of references to counter your theory.

OK, perhaps we are safe from Eta Carinae after all. This page says

So, according to this thinking, a hypernova has a "direction" to it and we happen to be out of the line of fire. Other pages seem to support your view that a few thousand light years is completely safe except for astronauts in outer space.

There is a lack of concensus here, but everyone seems to agree that a hypernova is a big explosion. And I'd still feel safer if Eta Carinae was a few thousand more light years away. Like I always say, with a hypernova, better safe than sorry.