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Memories are Funny

While I was looking through my scanned photo albums to locate the photos I used in the previous post, I naturally went down a rabbit hole. It wasn't the rabbit hole that surprised me as much as seeing that so many of these photos directly contradicted what I had in my memory of the events. And it wasn't details so much as times.

The only explanation—other than a wildly faulty memory—is that I know my parents were notorious for shooting a roll of film over the course of weeks or months and then often waiting an equal amount of time before getting the pictures developed (A lot of Christmas pictures are date stamped March or April of the following year!). So even though a many of the scanned photos in my collection have the processing date on the border, those can't be taken as accurate indicators of when things actually happened, and I realize that. Adding to the confusion is the fact that when my parents divorced, the original photo albums were split up, destroying the accurate timeline that had existed in those albums throughout my childhood and teen years. When my grandmother moved in with my Mom several years after the divorce and Mom decided to fold her photos into the already messed up albums based on date stamps things went from bad to worse. Six feet of snow in October? Okay, it's possible I suppose, but it's far more likely it was six feet of snow from the previous winter and the pictures didn't get printed until the following October.

And don't even get me started on the duplicates I'm still weeding out.

This still doesn't explain how I remember that Dad traded the yellow truck with the camper in on a new gray truck, but the date stamps indicate just the opposite (and my sister looking younger in the gray truck picture than she is in the yellow truck one!).

Faulty memory? Mandala Effect? More likely just the fucked up date stamps…somehow.

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Not a New Theory, But Still Depressing

From Second Nexus:

NASA Scientists Share Theory About Why We Haven't Met Other Intelligent Life—And It's Bleak

The 'Great Filter' theory proposed in the new paper doesn't have great news for the human race.

Humans have looked to the heavens for millennia and wondered if we're alone.

For some the answer is a resounding "no." If they haven't seen it with their own eyes, it doesn't exist.

…the skeptics aren't buying it.

Now NASA scientists are dashing our hopes of having an up close encounter with an extraterrestrial because of something dubbed the "Great Filter" theory.

So, what's it all about and what bleak future does it predict for humanity?

The scientific paper—which is not yet peer reviewed—posits all intelligent life capable of space travel has likely destroyed itself before reaching the technological advancements necessary for interplanetary flights.

And they predict the same will probably happen to humans…

…unless action is taken.

The paper—titled Avoiding the 'Great Filter': Extraterrestrial Life and Humanity's Future in the Universe—theorizes other civilizations capable of space flight existed during the life of the universe, but they all destroyed themselves before visiting outer Milky Way galaxy neighborhoods where the Earth is located.

While some on Earth may think they're the center of the Universe, Earth sits on an outer spiral arm in one of the estimated several hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

In other words, Earth is not exactly situated to become a prominent interplanetary tourist stop.

The researchers based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California referred to the phenomenon as "filtering out" various forms of life in the same manner some human civilizations on Earth filtered out species of flora and fauna and other human civilizations through destructive lifestyle practices, colonization, warfare and genocide.

When a lifeform reaches the final stage, their destructive tendencies—"deeply ingrained dysfunctions"—filter themselves out of existence or "snowball quickly into the Great Filter."

It is this fate the scientists warned against if Earthlings ever want to reach other planets or encounter extraterrestrials.

There is hope for humanity with some changes in attitude allowing Earthlings to take steps to avoid our own extinction.

Astrophysicist Jonathan Jiang and his coauthors wrote:

"The key to humanity successfully traversing such a universal filter is… identifying [destructive] attributes in ourselves and neutralizing them in advance."

The researchers proposed the tendencies likely to wipe out human existence would have destroyed intelligent life on other planets if the most destructive societies also gained power during their planetary evolution.

They specifically cited nuclear war, pandemic, climate change and uncontrolled artificial intelligence.

The hardest task facing Earth—according to the scentists—will be working together to survive long enough for long distance space travel.

But the Great Filter theory isn't exactly new.

The idea was first proposed in an online essay The Great Filter – Are We Almost Past It? written by economist Robin Hanson—an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. The first version of his Great Filter article was shared in August 1996 and last updated on September 15, 1998.

So the theory has been bouncing around academia and online message boards like Reddit for years. Redditors have asked about the theory in subReddits like Ask Reddit, Religion, Space and Aliens.

The Great Filter has even had its own subReddit since 2017

The subReddit states:

"The Great Filter is the most urgent question Mankind has ever faced."

"It's the solution to the Fermi Paradox—Robin Hanson's hypothesis there are no other technological civilizations (not even on Earth) because they die before they colonize a galaxy."

"The mission of r/GreatFilter is to raise awareness of the value and fragility of life, and thus the importance of peaceful colonization of space beyond Earth, one rock at a time."

"Is our destiny literally in our stars?"

As for those JPL scientists at NASA, they wrote:

"History has shown that intraspecies [human versus human] competition and, more importantly, collaboration, has led us towards the highest peaks of invention."

"And yet, we prolong notions that seem to be the antithesis of long-term sustainable growth: racism, genocide, inequity, sabotage."

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Memories of a Family Road Trip

I ran across this photo online, and it brought back a lot of memories.

It took me back to late summer 1970, reminding me of my dad's truck and a little camping trip my family made up north.

Obviously the picture above wasn't the exact same vehicle, but it was similar:

I don't actually remember where we went, but I have pictures the family took at Montezuma Castle, Sunset Crater, and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. At this point I have no memories of any of that, other than all the places we went  seemed very distant from Phoenix. It's funny because nowadays Ben and I think nothing of making that kind of road trip in a single day.

But I digress.

There are a couple things I remember from the trip. The first and foremost is the one evening I ventured outside to pee after we'd parked for the night and I saw the stars. This night sky was nothing like my backyard in suburban Phoenix. The sky was alive with dots of light. My mom did the same thing after I returned inside and she asked if I knew what the little dipper shaped constellation was called. (Keep in mind I had just gotten into astronomy and was learning the constellations; I hadn't even gotten my first telescope yet.) "Uh, The Little Dipper?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "I know that's in the north. This is tiny. And it's in the east."

I argued with her like any pre-teen would, and finally grabbed my dad's binoculars went back outside to prove her wrong. Shivering my ass off, I scanned the eastern sky and spotted it. She wasn't crazy after all. I brought the binoculars to my eyes and was blown away by what I saw. I had "discovered" the Pleiades.

My love of astronomy was cemented.

The second thing I remember was riding in the camper as we were heading to our destinations—on the sleeper portion over the cab of the truck—without any sort of seatbelts! Ah…it was a different time, for sure.

And lastly, while riding up there, I remember pouring over Radio Shack catalogs. I was fascinated by all the electronic bits and pieces you could buy and although I never (and by never, I mean to this day) grasped the how and why of how it all worked, it held me in its grip.