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There Have Probably Been Aliens

nytimes.com

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Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#91

Post by kirykl »

XorNot wrote: post #71
madaxe_again wrote: post #6

The most likely reason that nobody seems to be out there is the great filter. The author asks if our civilisation will last millenia or millions of years - but I think a more apt scale would be decades or centuries. It just seems pretty obvious that we have an ever increasing set of opportunities to extinct ourselves, and therefore the probability of a civilisation ending disaster only grows. All the aliens either bl…

Conversely, by 2025 there might be living humans on Mars (if Elon Musk gets his way). And while that's not enough to form the basis of a backup civilization, I'm somewhat more interested in the effect on global zeitgeist it's likely to have. The feeling of the times is, I feel, an underestimated factor in how democracies pick their priorities - and the early 21st century has been very down on itself trying to figure…

The great filter could well be going from single to multi planetary, on a single planet our survival (quite) long term is zero.

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#92

Post by tyingq »

Houshalter wrote: post #73
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes we'd recognise the interaction as an interaction. A super-intelligent species would have no trouble modelling and manipulating human politics from behind the scenes. It's naive to assume that an interaction will look like the old explorer or conquistador model - a ship arrives, someone gets off it, and then demands to talk to the chieftain, or starts killing people and blowing shit up to make a point abo…

Why would they want to hide? You are making a very strong claim about the motivations of aliens.

SciFi usually offers this sort of explaination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#93

Post by greggman »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #30
apsec112 wrote: post #9

"In other words, given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets, the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational." This is terribly silly. It reminds me of the Onion talks: "Step 1: Devise an idea to create a car that runs on compost. Step 2: Create the car. We’ve already compl…

I think what will really help us to get at a better estimate is to answer the question whether there exists life in our solar system that evolved independently of that on Earth. If we should find traces of bacteria on Mars or another planet, that would immediately take the corresponding probability factor in the Drake equation to a number close to 1 (i.e. most solar systems with planets in the habitable zone produce…

what if life didn't evolve here but arrive on other space debris? Has that theory been ruled out?

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#94

Post by someguydave »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #17

If you parse the article carefully, the entire argument is summarized as "There are more than 10^22 planets, therefore ETI probably exists[ed] if P(intelligent life|planet) > 10^-22". Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first. [...] In other words, given what we now know about the number and orbital po…

Indeed. Furthermore, the NYT tells us that we are apparently irrational if we believe the probability of advanced life appearing is less than 10^-22.

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#95

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hudibras wrote: post #84
SonicSoul wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not mild clickbait. it's the definition of click bait. it states a very controversial conclusion, as if the argument is finally settled, while the body has little new information and fudges around with statistic that "it's likely probable that there is or once was another species".

Since this is published in a newspaper, the terms that are generally used are "headline" or "title," not "click bait."

Their media kit claims 78 million online viewers vs. 5 million wealthy newspaper audience. I think more people click to read the article than turn a paper page to read it. Newspapers are online media companies now that happen to also produce limited paper versions.

Perhaps I'm missing your point?

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#96

Post by dave_sullivan »

apsec112 wrote: post #9

"In other words, given what we now know about the number and orbital positions of the galaxy’s planets, the degree of pessimism required to doubt the existence, at some point in time, of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization borders on the irrational." This is terribly silly. It reminds me of the Onion talks: "Step 1: Devise an idea to create a car that runs on compost. Step 2: Create the car. We’ve already compl…

One of my favorite explanations and counterpoints come from Neil deGrasse Tyson:

It took modern astrophysics to determine the origin of the chemical elements. We observe stars (and) we know what goes on in their center. They explode, laying bare their contents. And what we have discovered is that the elements of the periodic table -that which we are made of- derive from the actions of stars that have manufactured the elements, exploded (and) scattered their rich guts across the galaxy, contaminating or enriching gas clouds that then form a next generation of stars populated by planets and possibly life.

And so, when you look at the ingredients of the universe, the number one ingredient is hydrogen, next is helium, next is carbon- sorry- hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen. Those are the top ingredients in the universe. And you say well, okay, that’s kind of cool. Well, and you look at Earth- cause we like thinking of ourselves as special- we say Oh! we’re special! What are we made of?

Well what’s the number one molecule in the body? It’s water. But what’s water made of? H-2-O. Hydrogen and oxygen. Hm. Hydrogen and oxygen. In fact, if you rank the elements in the human body, with the exception of helium, which is chemically inert- useless to you for any reason other than just to inhale it and sound like Mickey Mouse. You can’t die from helium unless that’s all you breathe. So, number one in the human body is hydrogen. Matches the universe. Number two? Is oxygen. Matches the universe. Number 3? Carbon. Matches the universe. Number 4? Nitrogen. Matches the universe. And for each of us the fifth element- other- is the same in both places. Ok? Other.

So, we learned in the last 50 years that, of course, not only do we exist in this universe. It is the universe itself that exists within us. And had we been made of some rare isotope of bismuth, you’d argue and say hey, we’re something special.

From https://tiainkorea.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/a-fascinatingly-...

Also, this is the most interesting explanation to the Fermi paradox that I've seen: http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#97

Post by raverbashing »

jkeler wrote: post #39
raverbashing wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . The events that took place on earth could still be one in a billion, or they could be one in an incomprehensibly high number. I disagree with this. It seems that, from what happened to other planets on the solar system, that nothing happened on Earth too much out of the ordinary. Mars had a similar story (except for the whole Moon coming out of a giant collision), and had water. But maybe it was too small to keep…

It's not about how probable are these conditions but given these conditions how probable is that life will appear.

I suspect that given the right conditions, some kind of proto-life appears easily.

But it takes a lot of time to get to "life" as we know it.

(Now the right conditions are probably not what you have on Earth today except in a couple of places)

Life on Earth is at least 4Bi y.o. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/life-on-earth-likely-start...

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#98

Post by gh-lfneu28 »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #14
nielsbjerg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got the units of the borehole wrong, it's in meters not kilometers.

Well, we've certainly drilled more than 12 meters. :-P (Note the decimal point: 12.262km; I just converted to km to keep it consistent with the other measurements I cited) Could be confusing if you're used to the inverse comma/period from what we use in the US (comma=thousands, period=decimal).

Would be far less confusing if you'd just written "~12km" and "~11km". The meters add little to the point you're trying to make.

Re: There Have Probably Been Aliens

#100

Post by titzer »

Houshalter wrote: post #38
qaq wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given enough time anything can form out of random fluctuations if it has >0 probability no matter how small.

"Enough time" can easily be longer than the age of the universe. A million monkeys typing on keyboards will eventually write shakespeare. But it will be longer than the universe before they even type a single sentence of it correctly.

You are postulating the existence of only a single universe, ours. But there could be any number of universes, and so far we have no scientific way of testing that. The anthropic principle and the possibility of multiple universes puts all probabilistic arguments to dust: anything with non-zero probability happens in an infinite number of universes.

> A million monkeys typing on keyboards will eventually write shakespeare. But it will be longer than the universe before they even type a single sentence of it correctly.

All it takes is _one_ tiny selection force to blow this argument out of the water. For example, if only _a single_ correct letter is retained from each attempt, the problem gets exponentially easier with every iteration, making the expected time to generate any work linear in its length.

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