Dear Unknown Worlds. Hi! It's me! Austin!
You have made a Subnautica
expansion (or you're making one, it's still in early access, and it SHOWS sometimes...)
BUT! That's not what this is about.
This is about ME finally having an excuse to make a video on Subnautica, which I WANTED to do for ages,
but COULDN'T because
I'm dumb and couldn't come up with an idea. BUT NOW I HAVE ONE, and it's gonna be awesome
it's gonna be terrifying on a cosmic
An Existential level (oh boy here we go) AND it's gonna have spoilers for the first Subnautica game and the new expansion
so if you're scared by spoilers more than you are the inevitability of death and
Extinction, you can click away in five four three
two
one
Let's Go
Honestly, there's a lot of cool things hiding in Subnautica
but when Subnautica was making the rounds on YouTube my kid was just about 1 year old and so like honestly it's amazing
I was able to get any videos done during that time at all
Let alone come up with something cool about one of the most unique small ish
Titles to remain relevant for as long as it did want to know why I was constantly
Shrieking for my first year and a half on the game theorists?
It's because I was only able to stay awake and make videos by downing enough coffee to drown a small European nation!
*dying* Where was I- OH RIGHT! Okay, but no subnautica. We're back on track. Subnautica on its surface is a game about swimming in an
Extraterrestrial ocean filled with alien fish if you go one layer deeper
it's a game about overcoming a biological epidemic that wiped out an entire species before you if you go even deeper it's a game about
correcting a millennia-long
Injustice imposed on an innocent sentient species by freeing their children! if there's something wrong with your brain
like mine and you know that the story of subnautica is one about why we
Humans are all secretly doomed to extinction, (oh boy he's going at it) our destiny to fade into obscurity
In the cosmos ignored by other sentient species, that will arise
Millions of years after our Sun has exploded and erased all evidence of our planet from the cosmic map
and since it's part of my mission to spread whatever is wrong with my brain among the masses so that the abnormal things that I
Think about become so prevalent as to be the new normal
So that the doctors will stop threatening to commit me and instead I can put them in the psych ward
THIS is what we're talking about today how subnautica DOOMED humanity and it all starts with one
simple
multiplication problem.
R star times F of P times n of e times F of one times F of I times F of C
times. L who could have predicted that you would have learned everything you needed to know to be able to
Calculate the end of human civilization by the time you're in sixth grade
Welcome to the wonderful world of Drake equations and Fermi paradoxes walk with me down the dark path
Of infinity
Okay, this formula, this long string of multiplication is what's known as the Drake Equation and it's our stepping stone into
understanding the wider world of well... our galaxy, the wider galaxy, but
Whatever this equation was written by. Dr. Frank Drake in
1961 as a way of quantifying and
Informing the conversation about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
And while the math in the equation is very simple
The methods used to estimate the numbers in it are not but we'll forego that for now
R star is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
f of P is a
fraction of those that have planets and of E is the average number of planets that can potentially support life for a star that actually
has the planets F of 1 is the fraction of those planets that actually
develop life at all F of I is the fraction of those that actually develop
Intelligent life F of C is a percentage of those that develop
Technology that releases signals of their existence into space and L is the length of time for which those civilizations
Release those signals into space and all of these return of value n which represents the number of civilizations
That should exist in our galaxy that we should be able to communicate with drakes initial variables in
1961 returned a value of 20 meaning that there should be when we look up into the sky evidence of about 20
civilizations that we should be able to communicate with or
At least
receive signals from this gets a little bit more complicated as you consider that the speed of light is a pretty
Significant speed limit when you're talking about an entire galaxy
But that might become important later on modern estimates are actually quite a bit
Larger for a number of reasons as we've learned that planets are actually a lot more
Common and our communication estimates have been a lot more
truncated giving us anywhere from
Okay
Giving us anywhere from a hundred and fifty three to six thousand three hundred possible visible
Civilizations in our galaxy and at this point you're like, but Austin
Where the hell is everybody then?
Congratulations, you're asking exact question Enrico Fermi did in
1950 if you're part of the other group of people
That's like but Austin, what does this have to do with subnautica? We are about to get there
I promise but I gotta explain the Fermi paradox first
Thankfully, it's a very simple concept and it's very easily explained by the question Fermi asked where is everybody
Where the f*ck is everybody?
So this paradox the idea of if there's life where the hell is it?
does pretty date the Drake Equation but
Unfortunately, the Drake Equation only reinforces the idea that there's something wrong with how we look at the universe and the origins of life
We've been actively trying to communicate since the 70s by sending out signals like the outer SIBO message
But we've been broadcasting our butts for nearly 200 years which while light travels fast
No that fast and our signals have only got a few millimeters into the Galactic map
But every year they go that much further and the fact of the matter. Is that any civilization
Predating us by any major amount should have left some evidence behind yet
They haven't so there's something we're not
Accounting for when we're looking for life out there in the rest of the galaxy but back to subnautica
Because this is a world filled with life
We don't have to worry about Fermi paradox is because the paradox isn't a paradox life exists in these worlds
Not just life, but intelligent life
There's the precursors the primordial intelligent race that left behind relics and there's the sea emperor Leviathan an intelligent
Giant whale thing. So no Fermi paradox. No problem right wrong
You are so dang wrong. It ain't even funny
And in fact the existence of not just complex multicellular life and animals on this planet isn't just a major issue with the Fermi paradox
It combined with the existence of not one but two
Intelligent species only one of which formed a technologically advanced spacefaring and brain downloading culture. Oh my god
humanity is
Absolutely doomed this is due to any number of reasons
But the biggest one is that they establish multiple times in Subnautica that intelligent
extraterrestrial life capable of communication is mostly undiscovered and life itself is generally pretty rare this if anything is a
validation of the Fermi paradox because as calculated by the most conservative solutions of the Drake Equation
There should be like at least tens more civilizations and millions more planets with complex life
So to summarize where the heck is everybody and in order to answer that question we have to loop in one more principle
for the search of
extraterrestrial life great
Filters honestly, if you're a fan of this show, then you're probably a fan of Kurtz good to carets Gazette
Just put it on screen, Tonya
anyway
You're probably a fan of the show in a nutshell like I am but a bears repeating for those of you who aren't familiar
Anyway, because it's super important to our conclusions here
I learned about the Fermi paradox before I learned about great filters because the concept of great filters is relatively new
It was originally coined by economist Robin Hanson in
1996 and elaborated on by him in 1998 great filters are a proposed solution to the Fermi paradox
And it goes something kind of like this
So in order for life to exist a universe has to be born the laws of physics have to form exactly the way they are
Now the right star system with habitable planets has to form reproductive molecules like RNA
And DNA have to form than single-cell life than sexual reproduction. Multi cell life bigger multi cell life tool using animals
Big brains have to happen then maybe we get to someplace like where humans are now then a smart tool using species has to survive
long enough to populate their system
Then the galaxy each of these steps listed here
which is a short list by the way is a potential grape filter a place where life
May not
find a way along the way if you take a
Relatively liberal estimate that it's guaranteed that a universe and physics will form and everything else is a coin flip
The end result is that surviving a great filter and becoming a spacefaring species is only point one
percent this explanation is elegant because it supposes that the reason we don't see life happen more is because there's some
barriers along the way that almost statistically impossible
For life to form as we would expect it to whether it's that there are so few types of molecules that can store and reproduce
Information or that gamma-ray bursts are microwaving. Yes
I know they're not really microwaves shut up life to death or well other terrible things happen
There's any number of steps up until where we are
now that could be making it much more difficult for life to gain intelligence and
Technology a simple explanation may be that honestly
Intelligence is overrated from a day-to-day life in the jungle perspective intelligence is honestly more of a burden than a boon
Sure, we talk about how great it is now, but we've already conquered our planet look at my cat
My cat does not need intelligence. Look how happy she is. Look at Trina's dumb
stupid fuzzy widdle happy face our kids come out dumb and
Helpless and loud not exactly prime survival stuff in the cutthroat world of the wild
but that's where subnautica comes in because right now among some of you an
Existential dread might be forming. What if what if it's possible that we haven't passed our great filter yet?
What if intelligence is really common?
but the reason the reason we don't see more evidence of civilizations out there is because
intelligence is really mundane, but it also
Naturally destroys itself if we're alone in the galaxy
It becomes increasingly unlikely that we have yet to pass our great filter
but if say we start running into sparse but still existent life-forms on planets like four five or six be
Teeming with simple life a near extinct intelligent species and ancient relics of a technologically advanced definitely extinct race
But we haven't resolved the Fermi paradox. It means that our great filter is still yet to come
It is before us in the subnautica universe. There's actually an explanation
Microbes the khara bacterium obliterated the precursors and many other forms of life
Remember my tuberculosis episode from a few weeks ago. Remember the
Drug-resistant strains. Remember the most deadly disease on earth HIV malaria
Global climate change nuclear weapons. There's a bajillion
Potential great filters before us so running into extinct life in a galaxy where life is still kinda rare?
that means that we still have our greatest challenge to our existence to overcome or our extinction is
guaranteed because of life is this common and getting to this place is this likely it means according to
again, our *literal* estimates
Humanity is best-case looking at a point one chance of surviving past the next great hurdle
I do not like those odds
The best-case scenario is that the Fermi paradox is just wrong that there's a crap-ton of life out there and civilizations
But we just can't see them a mass effect solution and he'll even mass effect had a great filter
In fact, that game is a perfect example
reapers
Obliterating generations of species over and over and over it's artificial, but it's still a filter and hell
Maybe our filter is AI that wants to kill us. Who knows?
That's the great thing about living in our universe gamma-ray bursts traveling at the speed of light the 30 to 40
Invisible near-earth asteroids that we know are somewhere we don't know the size or exactly where they are nukes robots
there's bajillions of things that could end our existence like that and it turns out discovering something as
Amazing as life on another planet may in fact be terrible
Terrible news life is impermanent dying is easy and that's the bedtime story
I tell my child every night before putting them down to bed
Sleep tight
sincerely, Austin