Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier • Hacker News Board

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#141

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

JJMcJ wrote: post #117

pc86 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The face with a mountain with coincidental lighting. Everything else has very plausible natural explanations as well. You're hearing footsteps and hoping for zebras when it's probably horses.

Human neurology is optimized to see and recognize faces, so of course anything facelike will look like a face. Faces in clouds, faces in the uneven paint on drywall, the Man In The Moon.

I'm beginning to suspect human culture is optimised to see aliens, so anything potentially alien-like will be labelled "aliens."

Real aliens stand a good chance of being unimaginably, perhaps even invisibly, alien.

What are the odds that in a galaxy that is billions of years old, first contact will be an encounter with a contemporary-ish technology straight out of a 20th century science fiction novel?

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#142

Post by tgflynn » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #139

tgflynn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here. Maybe after another million years of development a species' main moti…

https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 MAD with Aliens? Interstellar deterrence and its implications

Just from reading the abstract that looks extremely speculative. Frankly you might as well try to make inferences about human behavior by studying aggression in bees.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#143

Post by kentonv » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #120

kentonv wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of other planets doesn't seem to explain why they wouldn't colonize Earth. I would expect them to go everywhere.

What would the point of going everywhere be?

To harvest all available resources in the service of whatever higher goal the civilization has.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#144

Post by doytch » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #125

pc86 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this comment, I'm not sure you know what "AI" or "perfect" mean.

Why would this not be a good domain for image recognition?

If you’re trying to classify images as whether or not they contain something, you need a bunch of images that you already know don’t contain the thing (got it), and a bunch of images that you already know /do/ contain the thing. We lack the latter, so there’s nothing for the algorithm to learn based on.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#145

Post by landryraccoon » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

throwaway316943 wrote: post #116

kentonv wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touc…

I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? I…

Consuming all available resources and destroying all competing life doesn’t make sense even for us as the dominant species of a single planet.

What’s the evidence that wholesale environmental destruction is a good idea on a galactic scale if it’s already known to be a terrible idea on a planetary scale?

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#146

Post by StantheBrain » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

tgflynn wrote: post #138

kentonv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.

Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here. Maybe after another million years of development a species' main moti…

Exactly, the classic Terran (of the norm), functions mainly with the help of cognitive biases and other syndromes preventing him, by social cohesion, to admit other tunnels of reality than those that composed their groups (majority currently) It's a pity, with a brain so powerful, if you knew what you could understand, admitting to omit the permanent self-awareness.

Exactement, le terrien classique (de la norme), fonctionne principalement à l'aide de biais cognitifs et autres syndromes l'empêchant, par cohésion social, à admettre d'autre tunnel de réalité que ceux qui ont composé leurs groupe (majoritaire actuellement) C'est dommage, avec un cerveau si puissant, si vous saviez ce que l'on peux comprendre, en admettant d’omettre la permanente conscience de soi.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#147

Post by svieira » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #128

throwaway316943 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? I…

Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of th…

You should really read The Count to the Eschaton Sequence by John C. Wright. The Cold Equations is another answer to the question you pose.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#148

Post by coredog64 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #106

throwaway316943 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dar…

While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touc…

What resources does Earth have that wouldn’t be more plentiful elsewhere? Minerals are cheaper to extract from asteroids (no gravity well). If I have the ability to cross interstellar space, then I can’t imagine that water is even worth that much.

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#149

Post by _8j50 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #55

jameshart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which forces the logical conclusion that this isn't the first such probe, obviously.

That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.

They?

Re: Mystery of interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua gets trickier

#150

Post by landryraccoon » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #128

throwaway316943 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? I…

Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of th…

That's self destructive behavior on a planetary scale. No species that has an instinct or culture to consume all available resources will survive long enough to do it on a galactic scale.

Also, the math doesn't work out in the sense that if a species that had this instinct reached interstellar travel a million years ago the Milky Way galaxy would already have entirely been consumed. That's the Fermi Paradox in a nutshell.

If the species you are describing exists, they must have just started eating the galaxy, because the galaxy would already be eaten in an blink of an eye on the cosmic timeline.

Lets suppose that it takes a ten thousand years to reach a star system and consume it, and the swarm needs the resources of an entire star system just to build 2 more probes.

That means that the number of star systems consumed doubles every ten thousand years. At that rate it takes no more than 50 generations, or half a million years, to consume the entire galaxy.

Note that if the number of probes the Von Neumann swarm builds is more than 2 per star system consumed, this process happens even faster.