Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox

In the discussion of simulation I have just produced a blog that might
be of some interest.

http://ipsim.blogspot.com

On the question of extraterrestrial life, the general opinion, which
does have some plausibility, is that life is common, but intelligent
life rare. We don't in fact know. We can at this stage make
deductions.

What is known, apart from the limits we have placed on an intelligent
ET, is that planetary formation is common. The planets discovered so
far are by and large giants, but that is because it is all we can
observe.

There is also one other interesting fact. All the stars, some of which
are similar to the Sun, which have giant flares all have a giant
planet close to them. Hence radio emmissions from stars are governed,
to an extent, by giant planets.

You are right about the statistics. I have just worked this out.

If intelligent life evolves according to e^(-ax^2). The
differential of that is -2axe^(-ax^2)

Hence if we live at time x and we assume a to be 2/500million years.
If there are a billion civilizations this puts x at a value of about
10 deviations from the mean. This gives a time of about 1/10SD for
evolution of the next intelligent species.

It would seem from such things as Cretaceous/Tertiary that we have a
Gaussian.A Gaussian is the result of a lot of separate events. Gauss
in fact originally worked it out on this basis.

However my point that if you are waiting 50 million years for
something to happen, it could happen next year. That is what I was
stressing.

We can put an existential risk probability on this. It is very roughly
the same time as Cretaceous/Tertiary! Hence ET is rather less
dangerous than large asteroids. Certainly asteroids are more dangerous
as the smaller ones can still do a lot of damage. We know from orbits
that C/T will not be until at least 2020.


- Ian Parker

In article m,
Ian Parker wrote:

I believe that within 50 years, we'll have mind uploading.
(Ray Kurzweil puts it at more like 20 years, but I am a pessimist.) If
you and I are both right, then those "unmanned" probes may well have
people on board, albeit in digital form.

That is an interesting thought. I have a philosophical point here.
Suppose we split our brains. One bit went to Alpha Centuri. The other
bit went around here on Earth. Could you put those two memories
together? Could two separate memories be knitted together?

That's a technological question, not a philosophical one. Such merging
of separate memories is a common feature in science fiction, but I'm
more skeptical about it than about uploading itself. The brain isn't
built the way an intelligent designer would design it; it's a messy
system, with information about events spread out and mixed together with
information about all other events. So recombining someone who has been
duplicated, and then had significant differences in experience, is going
to be very hard. Probably not impossible, I guess, but definitely in
the "nontrivial" category.

We could of course simply back ourselves up when we were about to do
anything dangerous.

Yes, that one IS trivial.

I don't agree. VN machines are certainly possible, but I hope they're a
long way off, and carefully regulated. If ever there was a technology
ripe for disaster, that's it. I see very little benefit to justify the
risk.

Are you thinking about the risk that VN machines will evolve, or that
they will be deliberately misused.

Both.

In terms of evolution, a Reed Soloman code will prevent evolution
in that it will be inpossible for the VN genome to change.

No, it can only make it very unlikely -- and even that, only if done
exactly right. Any flaws in the implementation will make it easier
(just as with any cryptographic scheme).

Interesting that you're willing to seriously consider the possibility
that two civilizations would arrive at virtually the same instant, but
when it comes to breaking a checksum, this you refer to as "impossible."

BTW - I believe we will get VN machines a long time before brain
downloading.

It's "uploading" please, not downloading. And I'll take that bet.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

Ian Parker wrote:
On 1 Aug, 03:41, Einar wrote:
Ian Parker wrote:
On 31 Jul, 13:37, Einar wrote:

It?s quite possible to
imagine, say for every 10 species that happen in the Galaxy at least 9
linger indefinitelly at a preindustrial state of development.

Maybe, but I really doubt it. Once you have cultural evolution
outstripping genetic evolution, I think things are going to proceed
rapidly and inevitably pretty much as they have for us. Memes evolve
just like genes, only much faster. The scientific method is a powerful
one because it works (it produces useful results), which is why it has
caught on pretty much universally here (right-wing nut jobs aside), and
it would do the same in any alien culture too. That will ultimately
lead to labor-saving devices, more intensive energy use, etc.

The idea of an "industrial revolution" is again an oversimplification of
history. In reality, it was much more continuous like that, a long
stream of ideas and inventions feeding upon one another, each step
enabling the next steps. It's been an exponential curve, pretty much
any way you measure it, which produces the illusion of little progress
when you're living through it, but extremely rapid progress when you
look back (or forward) on it.

I think it was very important the idea that christianity invented that
of the separation of the realms, i.e. that there were activities that
were nonreligious. The ancient world lacked this distinction, hence
religious activities and ideas permeated all types of activity. In the
hierarchy of gods there was a god for every realm of activity. This
appears to be the single largest difference between christianity and
islam, in islam all activities belong to god. While the church may
have been selfishly reserving religious activities for itself solelly,
in order to maximize its own power, this created more opportunities
for thought, speculation about things, free of religious thinking.

This is why I think it´s no coincidence that scientific thought was
gradually able to develope within the christian countries. However,
that does not yet necessarilly give an explanation for the industrial
revolution.

The ancient Greegs knew about steampower, yet did not develope it.
Same about the Chinese, not enough is known about wether that was the
case in India. The Roman civilization inherited all the knowledge og
the Greegs, and was much richer to boot. But while it appears that
development of industry would have been possible, it didn´t happen.

There has been a great deal of discussion about why the industrial
revolution took place. I think that theoretical knowledge had more
effect than people suppose.

James Watt was at Glasgow university and he had to get a Newcoman
engine working. He found that the engine was very inefficient. What
happenned was that when water was poured onto the cylinders the water
boiled at a lower lemperature because of the change in pressure. He
went to see Joseph Black at Edinbourgh who told him about this. Watt
then designed an egnine with valves where the steam pressure, and
hence water temperature was kept up. So knowledge of thermodynamics
may have been more inportant than is generally realized.

Christian civilization did indeed have this spirit of enquiry and
managed to acquire considerable theoretical knowledge. I think you are
probably right there.

Britain was successfuul because she had a mercantile economy. Other
countries went in much more for state control, particularly overseas.

People have been exploring it why this happened in Britain in the end.
What was so special about Britain that impetus eventually developed to
create a practical steam engine?

In the ancient cases of models of steam powered experiments, there was
clearly allways lacking reliable and efficient means of transforming
the energy in the steam into logomotive power. It was the invention of
the moving piston which was the big break. That took decates to be
developed.

In Britain uses were found for the extremelly inefficient early tipes
of piston arrangement, i.e. to pump water from coalmines. By that time
Britain no longer had enough forests to fuel those engines, so only in
the very immediate viscinity of coal mines were they at all practical.
Over time the engines were improved, and around the beginning of the
19th. century the steam engine became practical for other
applications.

Britain also was by that time a world power, able to import and export
to allmost everywhere. So circumstances appear in many respects to
have been very advantagous in Britain, more so than anywhere ellse and
also more so than at any time before. Sounds bit chancy to me.

- Ian Parker

Preciselly why industrial revolution happened may never be fully
answered. However, I read your other posts and noticed you are hoaping
mind can be copied. Personally I find it unlikelly ever to be
possible. Mind you, sure they are learning a real lot, but a large
aspect of the problem, even though a way might be found to record
thoughts being made as they are made, is that real lot of the
information stored in the brain is not thought about with regularity.
There are lots of memories, things you don´t often think about, and in
addition things that are there that you think you have forgotten but
which can be triggerd into remembrance by a chance event. All of these
things, memories that you are avare of having, and those you are not
avare of having, are part of what make you who you are, part of what
has made you who you are. Therefore, in order for a record to be the
very same personality it will have to contain it all, ellse it will
not be the same.

Agreed, but it might surprise you to hear me say it! I think what we
need is some clarification of what I am saying and not saying.

Kurzweil is talking about a complete silicon brain and life in a
complete simulation. This will become possible in the fullness of time
although it is not an objective I have talked about very much. It is a
far furure objective. Kurzweil is one of these people who you would
like to do a PhD with. He is chalenging, but you would not want to
live at his pace for ever.

No I think we can divide AI into the following categories.

1) Complete Kurzweil simulation.
2) Complete motor simulation.
3) Turing, including high order debating skill.
4) Interstellar AI requirements.

I have discussed "1". I agree with you completely.

I do not know why "2" is even discussed. Well failed astronauts don't
want to face the truth. If you have a dynamical system and the laws of
Physics it is predicatable. If we know the effects of motor
stimulation we can make an optimal path, quite simply in the majority
of cases.

"3" Turing. This is interesting. I feel before we go any further we
ought to know a little bit about how chatterboxes work. Eliza was
brought forward as a psycotherapist. All she did was remember the
inputs thast the user had made and select the most appropirate
response from a database.

Remember Eliza has no reasoning ability of her own, neither does any
chatterbox. If I am debating with you there are a limited number of
appropiate responses to the subject. If I have a large database I can
cover those responses. So in fact Turing = Bueno espagnol. For both we
need essentially the same thing, an accurate vector describing
context.

If you have been reading my previous postings you will see that I have
given AI a role in combating terrorism and also in "hearts and minds".
We need to find people who have joined, or are about to join jihadic
groups and engage them in dialogue. This, as I have said, will require
a large database, not a high order of reasoning ability.

Similarly we can form Erdos type graphs. Again if we have a database,
that database is capable of finding all the relationships it can
understand.

In the Middle East the greatest problem is getting high quality
information though uncensored. This is why I advocate the conformal
array. I have now thought of a design which is attractive in that it
cal be scaled up and a large number of conformal arrays added. I have
also thought of a low emission - could not be seen by detector vans
version which would be based on doing superhet on a shielded chip, and
setting a high frequency by means of a set of lower frequencies. The
setting of a frequency would be based on prime number theory. I will
tell you my thoughts later.

What is required for an interstellar trip. First of all it is in the
far future, or possibly not that far in geological terms. A probe wil
need to operate autonomously. If our large telescope tells us there is
a possibility of intelligent life it will need to have language
learing ability. The Hittite language was decoded with one phrase. :-

"Now you can eat bread and drink water".

There is a method of doing this.


- Ian Parker

Mind you, if they ever do perfect a nondestructive method of recording
a personality, especially if done within my lifetime, I wouldn´t mind
hedging my options and create a copy of myself. Who knows, perhaps
then one would excist among the living and among the dead presuming
ther is such a thing an exchistence beyond death.

An alternative might be if means of talking independent of distance
were discovered, perhaps quantum entanglement can lead to that
outcome. In such a case the ship might be in constant realtime contact
with home at all times.

Cheers, Einar

In article . com,
Einar wrote:

Mind you, if they ever do perfect a nondestructive method of recording
a personality, especially if done within my lifetime, I wouldn´t mind
hedging my options and create a copy of myself. Who knows, perhaps
then one would excist among the living and among the dead presuming
ther is such a thing an exchistence beyond death.

I doubt nondestructive scanning at the resolution needed will ever be
possible, but here's a way to achieve the same thing, at least with a
bit of luck: put off the uploading until your biological body has
already failed. At that point, you have nothing to lose.

Note that you can arrange for this possibility even before uploading is
developed, by having yourself frozen upon your death (a practice known
as cryonics). Once frozen, your condition is stable, and there's a
chance that you can be uploaded and revived at some point in the future.

An alternative might be if means of talking independent of distance
were discovered, perhaps quantum entanglement can lead to that
outcome. In such a case the ship might be in constant realtime contact
with home at all times.

As I understand it, there are pretty strong theoretical grounds to hold
that such FTL communication is impossible. Or at least, if it is
possible, then it can be used for a number of other seemingly-impossible
things, like sending information back in time.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

Ian Parker wrote:
On 31 Jul, 20:25, Joe Strout wrote:
In article .com,
Ian Parker wrote:

No, I think it will be nornal. Probably if we are the first
civilzation the gap will be of the order of a million years, or at
least 100,000. However you can't be absolutely sure.

You can be very extremely darn close to sure. In a normal distribution,
the spacing between the outliers is quite large (as compared to those
near the mean, which of course is rather small). What "large" means
depends on the standard deviation, but in the case of
time-to-civilization, any reasonable model will result in a standard
deviation of hundreds of millions of years, if not billions.

In that case, the spacing between the two most extreme outliers at one
end of the distribution being a mere 100 KY is quite unlikely. Millions
or billions is more likely.

The model I was
thinking about at the back of my mind was the radioactive atom. It is
not impossible that there could be another civilization close to ours.
Unlikely perhaps, but just possible.

Right. Not sure what radioactive atoms have to do with it, but of
course we can only speak of probabilities. The probability you bring up
here is very, very small.

In my discussions on ET I have sought to eliminate the impossible. NOT
the improbable.

Well, great, but that doesn't help much. It's not impossible that we're
all just figments of the God computer's imagination, which will be shut
off next week. It's not impossible that the our solar system is inside
a vast shell 1 LY across, built by aliens, which serves as a giant 3D
display, and eventually the Pioneer and Voyager probes are going to go
splat against it. It's not impossible that there is some way we can't
yet fathom for advanced races to leave the universe of their birth and
get an entire universe to themselves, thus explaining the apparent
emptiness we see.

But, most of those we can't even assign probabilities too. This one we
can, and it works out to a very small number. (No, I don't have a
number handy; it's been a while since I actually did the math.) Why
focus on such an unlikely situation, when there are far more likely ones
that fit the observations just as well? (Namely, that we're the first,
and our closest competitors are millions of years ahead or behind us.)

I am saying that with a large number competition is more intense and
there might be one near us. We of course don't know. For all we know
Earth could be rare.

It really doesn't matter how many there are; competition won't be more
intense in any case, since all that matters is the first couple of
outliers. If there are many participants, then the outliers will be
more extreme, and thus more spread out. If there are few (i.e. life is
rare), then the outliers won't be as extreme, but they'll still be
spread out.

I feel I'm explaining this poorly... where's a statistician when you
need one?

I will agree that an ET at our level is improbable but not impossible.

Indeed. I believe that well within 50 years we will have a full space
capable Von Neumann machine. An interstellar probe may well be closer
than we imagine. Unmanned of course.

Perhaps. I believe that within 50 years, we'll have mind uploading.
(Ray Kurzweil puts it at more like 20 years, but I am a pessimist.) If
you and I are both right, then those "unmanned" probes may well have
people on board, albeit in digital form.

That is an interesting thought. I have a philosophical point here.
Suppose we split our brains. One bit went to Alpha Centuri. The other
bit went around here on Earth. Could you put those two memories
together? Could two separate memories be knitted together? We could of
course simply back ourselves up when we were about to do anything
dangerous.

A civilization a million years in advance of us, I repeat, is an
impossiblility. We would know about it.

Unless they are intentionally hiding from us. In that case, I have no
doubt that they could do so successfully, and our crude efforts to
detect them would be futile.

But I tend to feel that this is unlikely. More likely, there's simply
nobody out there, and won't be anyone else for millions of years. When
those late-comers finally arise, they'll awaken to a galaxy long since
settled by us and our descendants.

Agreed.

What I have in mind for the medium future is in fact the large
fragmented telescope. Justification - Finding out for sure. I think
Einar is right. If we do not advance it we do not have curiosity we
are indeed doomed. This is not to say that manned space flight is the
best strategy, or that we need to think of colonies in the solar
system in the medium term. In the medium term, and possibly even the
short term, we need to think about improving automation techniques
with an eventual VN aspiration.

I don't agree. VN machines are certainly possible, but I hope they're a
long way off, and carefully regulated. If ever there was a technology
ripe for disaster, that's it. I see very little benefit to justify the
risk.

Are you thinking about the risk that VN machines will evolve, or that
they will be deliberately misused. In terms of evolution, a Reed
Soloman code will prevent evolution in that it will be inpossible for
the VN genome to change.

In terms of misuse, that would depend to a large degree on what the
current political situation was. If you had cognitive AI you could
build in Asimovs laws of robotics and put thise laws as a deeply
encrypted part of the genome. It would not be infallible as once the
knowledge of how to build a VN machine became known one would not be
dependent on one machine. I think I will agree though. We would need a
world that was on the whole peaceful.

BTW - I believe we will get VN machines a long time before brain
downloading. In fact I would probably give that 20 years. What you
basically need for VN is a flatpack assembler. It is downhill after
that.


- Ian Parker

Hmm, if a way might be found to make those split brains operate like a
one. I have a different dream, namelly communication independent of
distance, taking no time. Maybe, quantum computers could operate in
this fashion, i.e. components being separated by lightyears,
communicating through quantum entanglement.

Cheers, Einar

Joe Strout wrote:
In article . com,
Einar wrote:

Mind you, if they ever do perfect a nondestructive method of recording
a personality, especially if done within my lifetime, I wouldn´t mind
hedging my options and create a copy of myself. Who knows, perhaps
then one would excist among the living and among the dead presuming
ther is such a thing an exchistence beyond death.

I doubt nondestructive scanning at the resolution needed will ever be
possible, but here's a way to achieve the same thing, at least with a
bit of luck: put off the uploading until your biological body has
already failed. At that point, you have nothing to lose.

Note that you can arrange for this possibility even before uploading is
developed, by having yourself frozen upon your death (a practice known
as cryonics). Once frozen, your condition is stable, and there's a
chance that you can be uploaded and revived at some point in the future.

An alternative might be if means of talking independent of distance
were discovered, perhaps quantum entanglement can lead to that
outcome. In such a case the ship might be in constant realtime contact
with home at all times.

As I understand it, there are pretty strong theoretical grounds to hold
that such FTL communication is impossible. Or at least, if it is
possible, then it can be used for a number of other seemingly-impossible
things, like sending information back in time.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

If one can be frosen without harming what´s to be recorded.

Cheers, Einar

Somehow I am missing the connection to the paradox. It appears to lie solely in
the assumption that if there is no moon event the planet will be all ocean. That
does not compute unless we can explain the disappearance of the moon of Venus.
If Venus had had the same amount of water as earth, and there is little way to
explain a significantly different amount, there should be enough water vapor in
its atmosphere to 9000psi (600 At.) of pressure on the surface. But last I heard
there is negligible water in the atmosphere and clearly no such pressure.

We have no idea if there is a minimum amount of ocean needed to approximate an
ecology like our own however it appears reasonable that all else being equal the
amount of rainfall is proportional to the evaporative surface of the oceans. It
also follows as a reasonable assumption (but which cannot be supported in the
least, that the more life the faster evolution but we are not in a rush so a few
extra billion years does not matter.

However surface area only would be a factor in rainfall. Depth would not be. So
without a moon and nothing lost there is nothing prohibiting large and shallow
seas. The South China Sea with a depth averaging over a few hundred feet has all
the characteristics of any other ocean save it is warming at all depths. This
would speed evolution among the cold bloods.

Tectonic forces would still raise mountains and and volcanoes broad expanses
like the Deccan Plains. As long as the planet is large enough there is no reason
to suggest plates would not form and move. The only different would be the
longevity of the created land above the surface. Given Earth we find old and new
mountains in proximity such as in the US so we can expect there would always be
dry land. So maybe a world with shallow seas needs also have greater tectonic
activity requiring a somewhat more massive planet and the world average being
more like Japan. So maybe the funny thing about ET is if the ground shakes he
curls into a ball.

Am I missing something?

--
An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
global melter.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Mission Accomplished http://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/mission.phtml a12

Matt Giwer wrote:
Somehow I am missing the connection to the paradox. It appears to lie solely in
the assumption that if there is no moon event the planet will be all ocean. That
does not compute unless we can explain the disappearance of the moon of Venus.
If Venus had had the same amount of water as earth, and there is little way to
explain a significantly different amount, there should be enough water vapor in
its atmosphere to 9000psi (600 At.) of pressure on the surface. But last I heard
there is negligible water in the atmosphere and clearly no such pressure.

We have no idea if there is a minimum amount of ocean needed to approximate an
ecology like our own however it appears reasonable that all else being equal the
amount of rainfall is proportional to the evaporative surface of the oceans. It
also follows as a reasonable assumption (but which cannot be supported in the
least, that the more life the faster evolution but we are not in a rush so a few
extra billion years does not matter.

However surface area only would be a factor in rainfall. Depth would not be. So
without a moon and nothing lost there is nothing prohibiting large and shallow
seas. The South China Sea with a depth averaging over a few hundred feet has all
the characteristics of any other ocean save it is warming at all depths. This
would speed evolution among the cold bloods.

Tectonic forces would still raise mountains and and volcanoes broad expanses
like the Deccan Plains. As long as the planet is large enough there is no reason
to suggest plates would not form and move. The only different would be the
longevity of the created land above the surface. Given Earth we find old and new
mountains in proximity such as in the US so we can expect there would always be
dry land. So maybe a world with shallow seas needs also have greater tectonic
activity requiring a somewhat more massive planet and the world average being
more like Japan. So maybe the funny thing about ET is if the ground shakes he
curls into a ball.

Am I missing something?

--
An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
global melter.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Mission Accomplished http://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/mission.phtml a12

Venus has no plate tectonics. However, it might if it had oceans.

I think it´s believed Venus' oceans evaporated, once the Sun warmed
up, and that the water left the planet altogether being blown away
into space. What remains is possibly the most hostile to life plase in
the solar system.

Einar

In article ,
Matt Giwer wrote:

Somehow I am missing the connection to the paradox. It appears to lie solely
in the assumption that if there is no moon event the planet will be all ocean.
That does not compute unless we can explain the disappearance of the moon of
Venus.

We can; Venus is too hot to have liquid water.

But the case for the Moon being responsible for continents is made
pretty convincingly in the book Rare Earth. IIRC, it basically goes
like this: without the impact event that blasted much of the Earth's
crust into orbit (forming the Moon), our crust would be too thick to
support plate tectonics (just like Venus, I think). So they would end
up a very uniform thickness, and the only mountains that would form
would be from volcanoes, and these would quickly be eroded back down,
leaving a uniform planet-spanning ocean. It's only because our crust is
so thin that we can have tectonics and enough variation to produce
continents and oceans.

Hm. I'm not explaining this very well, but check out the book, it
spends a chapter or two on this topic.

Best,
- Joe

--
"Polywell" fusion -- an approach to nuclear fusion that might actually work.
Learn more and discuss via: http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/

On Aug 2, 5:00 am, Einar wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote:
Somehow I am missing the connection to the paradox. It appears to lie solely in
the assumption that if there is no moon event the planet will be all ocean. That
does not compute unless we can explain the disappearance of the moon of Venus.
If Venus had had the same amount of water as earth, and there is little way to
explain a significantly different amount, there should be enough water vapor in
its atmosphere to 9000psi (600 At.) of pressure on the surface. But last I heard
there is negligible water in the atmosphere and clearly no such pressure.

We have no idea if there is a minimum amount of ocean needed to approximate an
ecology like our own however it appears reasonable that all else being equal the
amount of rainfall is proportional to the evaporative surface of the oceans. It
also follows as a reasonable assumption (but which cannot be supported in the
least, that the more life the faster evolution but we are not in a rush so a few
extra billion years does not matter.

However surface area only would be a factor in rainfall. Depth would not be. So
without a moon and nothing lost there is nothing prohibiting large and shallow
seas. The South China Sea with a depth averaging over a few hundred feet has all
the characteristics of any other ocean save it is warming at all depths.. This
would speed evolution among the cold bloods.

Tectonic forces would still raise mountains and and volcanoes broad expanses
like the Deccan Plains. As long as the planet is large enough there is no reason
to suggest plates would not form and move. The only different would be the
longevity of the created land above the surface. Given Earth we find old and new
mountains in proximity such as in the US so we can expect there would always be
dry land. So maybe a world with shallow seas needs also have greater tectonic
activity requiring a somewhat more massive planet and the world average being
more like Japan. So maybe the funny thing about ET is if the ground shakes he
curls into a ball.

Am I missing something?

--
An entire cool summer is trumped by a warm day in January if you are a
global melter.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3836
nizkorhttp://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
Mission Accomplishedhttp://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/mission.phtmla12

Venus has no plate tectonics. However, it might if it had oceans.

Or, if it had a nearby moon the size and mass of our moon, as most
research based upon the regular laws of physics and planetology have
to agree that a terrain as Venus has need a nearby moon or perhaps
some other binary considerations.


I think it´s believed Venus' oceans evaporated, once the Sun warmed
up, and that the water left the planet altogether being blown away
into space. What remains is possibly the most hostile to life plase in
the solar system.

Venus is a relatively newish planet to our solar system, as it losing
roughly 256 times as much of its core energy as Earth. However, due
to it's slow rotation, there's simply not enough solar tidal forces to
cause the internal heat of Venus. Go figure otherwise.
- Brad Guth