Really interesting for history fans and math nerds:

It’s almost unfathomable that people were smart enough to figure that **** out.

Not to take away anything from mathematicians, but I suspect that this kind of math has a mental visual component that makes it different than the kind of abstract math that we associate with things like creativity and politics.

I mean the human brain was probably designed to solve problems that exist in a set number of computations to solve, whereas the greatest problems that the human race worries about, such as social and political problems, are far more abstract in conception, and so even comparing the difficultly isn't reasonable, let alone, you know, dealing with the difficulty.

ok

I have a question for anybody

With the technology we have and that SETI is using, from how far out in space could we detect evidence of human life on earth?

To clarify this question let me ask it another way.

If there were another identical earth with the exact same life on it as ours, from what distance could we detect with full confidence that there is “intelligent” life on the other earth?

Keep in mind that if it’s 50 light years away it could only detect whatever we were up to 50 years ago or vice versa

Is it intelligent to make the cutoff "exact same as ours"? We're talking about billions of years of a window for finding life but keeping it at exactly our few decades of advancement? I mean if we could find other intelligent life capable of finding other intelligent life we'd be at the very bottom of the possible scale and whatever life we'd probably find would be finna treat us like cavemen.

It has to be the exact same as ours. I’m saying, obviously hypothetically, it’s IDENTICAL to us. How close would we have to be to be able to detect life exactly as it is on earth?

Like I’m pretty sure if the second earth was ten light years away we would be able to detect radio waves with SETI instrumentation.

200 years ago we weren’t transmitting radio waves so from 200 light years away no technology could hear what hasn’t arrived.

I'm just confused what you're trying to accomplish.

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