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JoshuaZ comments on Open thread, November 2011 - Less Wrong
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Most of your assessment seems reasonable to me. However,
seems wrong. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I suspect that a species killing nuclear war would leave enough traces in the isotopic ratios around the planet that we'd be able to distinguish it from an asteroid impact. (The Oklo reactor mentioned earlier was discovered to a large extent due to tiny differences in expected verse observed isotope ratios.)
This was actually covered in a book I read (I think it was The World Without Us). Summary: even our reactors leave clear traces that will be detectable about as long as the mass extinction event we're causing. So a civilization and species-killing thermonuclear war would definitely be detectable by us.
Fair enough. I should have said "if the dinosaurs had been intelligent, and their extinction was due to nuclear winter following a large thermonuclear exchange, the history of our own species could still look substantially similar." Although evolution might have proceeded a bit differently with higher background radiation.
Phrased that way your point seems very strong. Indeed, dinosaurs died out only 65 million years ago, which isn't that long ago, especially in the context of this sort of filtration event.
Fallout is a technological artifact.
Yes, I'm not sure what your point is. Can you expand?
What you then provided as a counterexample of other reasons to reject this theory fits within the scope of things that are missing.
Ah ok. Yes, you're right, fallout should be covered for purposes of the original comment then.