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UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#32"they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent" I'm curious what the probability is that this statement is true. Alien species that have been around much longer than us may view humans as microbe-like in intelligence.
Astrophysicist Neil Tyson makes a great point on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E Essentially: chimpanzees share ~98% of our DNA, yet we don't view them as having anything near our intelligence. If it only takes a 2% difference for this to happen, imagine how more advanced alien species might view us.
I really dislike this example because the underlying metric is so poor.
It's not the least bit surprising for 2% to make such a large difference. We deal with this sort of thing on a highly regular basis -- ordering food at a restaurant, writing code, reading books, having conversations...
The 2% example says the obvious: "Aliens could be really advanced compared to humans because they're different from humans in a way that makes them really advanced."
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_tim... You would most likely meet completely unintelligent microbes on Earth. Or no life at all. Maybe some stupid animals or plants. The likelihood of meeting intelligent life during the existence of this planet is something like 0.004 percent (200,000 years of intelligent life on a 4.5 billion year old planet…
That’s not human arrogance. That’s just how it looks to be at the moment. Human arrogance I say (and that is not aimed at you personally). We're making assumptions based on a ridiculously small and sparse amount of knowledge. We assume the universe is 14 billion years old, we assume other lifeforms are carbon based like us and evolve the same way we do, we assume faster-than-light travel is not possible. I don't see…
It's much different from assuming a flat earth. There has always been good and readily available data supporting the hypothesis of a non-flat earth. Various cultures have used this data to realize that the earth is not flat.
Our dataset about life is ostensibly limited to earth-based life. If we abandon available data, we are limited to making wild untestable conjectures.
What is the alternative? Should we just stop thinking about it?
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#34Sounds sort of like a "Yes Men" press release, TBH.
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#35Well, I came here expecting snark, and here is aplenty.
It’s almost impossible that we will be contacted by little green men, stepping out of their flying saucers in front of the white house. Instead, if the SETI search continues at its current pace, it is possible that some time in the next few decades we will have our first evidence of an extra-terrestrial intelligence. This could be either in the form of received radio signals, or an exo-planet, who's atmosphere shows telltale markers of an industrial civilization.
What happens next is as much a political question as a scientific one. Even if we sit on the news for years, its obvious that someone is eventually going to try and send a signal back. The UN has a role to play in ensuring that first contact is handled in a calm and thought out way. Unless there is somebody in a position to co-ordinate things, every other country with a radio telescope will be beaming up signals. Would you really want first contact to come from the US, China, North Korea, Russia and France, all at the same time? It’s good that the UN is thinking about these problems now, so that if, and when that momentous day does arrive, we are prepared to speak clearly, with one unified voice.
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution#Basic_tim... You would most likely meet completely unintelligent microbes on Earth. Or no life at all. Maybe some stupid animals or plants. The likelihood of meeting intelligent life during the existence of this planet is something like 0.004 percent (200,000 years of intelligent life on a 4.5 billion year old planet…
That’s not human arrogance. That’s just how it looks to be at the moment. Human arrogance I say (and that is not aimed at you personally). We're making assumptions based on a ridiculously small and sparse amount of knowledge. We assume the universe is 14 billion years old, we assume other lifeforms are carbon based like us and evolve the same way we do, we assume faster-than-light travel is not possible. I don't see…
Nobody assumes that humans are any kind of pinnacle of evolution. I never said that, the submission never said that. There is a difference between “most life out there is probably microbes” and “all life except for life on Earth is microbes”.
It’s a wild guess (astrophysicists would take exception, however, with the assertion that they got the age of the universe wrong) but it’s also the best we have. And there is nothing wrong with that and it is not arrogance.
Re: UN to appoint Earth contact for aliens
#37articles like this make me laugh: it's like wondering if god has a mouth, eyes, and does he shit too? anything alien will be so radically different from these expectations i doubt it'd be recognized.
we are the aliens.