Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have we already been visited by aliens?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 366 posts

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#171

Post by voldacar »

bostonsre wrote: post #54
eloff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think very many people are saying it is impossible that Oumuamua was an alien construct and actively discouraging science based on the idea it could be. Actually yes. You'll be laughed out of the virtual room, not get funding, and potentially damage your career. As he points out in his interview with Lex (linked elsewhere in the comments here) is fine to propose a multi billion dollar experiment to detect o…

Ridiculing scientists for plausible hypothesis seems very unscientific.

Yes, it is. And it has also been happening for the whole history of anything recognizable as "science."

The nice, pretty scientific method we learn about in school is largely an idealized myth

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#173

Post by lambda_obrien »

galkk wrote: post #151
yoz-y wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The books and all are nice but the Dark Forest Theory doesn't hold agains much scrutiny. Among other reasons because if that were true we would be already dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmCTmgavkrQ

I mean - it's called Dark Forest, but if you will look at any documentary, even dark forest is full of life. You will hear crickets, you will hear owls, you may see fireflies. The theory has catchy name, but even the earth's nature disproves it.

If you read the three books, you realize that the true message is that if you're considered a possible threat to an advanced species, they'll annihilate you, otherwise you'll be left alone. Maybe every other species which knows about us knows we can't even leave our own planet/moon right now, the most we can do is send useless robots to other planets over 30 years.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#174

Post by jrumbut »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #111
gfxgirl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea that there are gazillions of advanced aliens has been pretty much disproven by the fermi paradox. If there are gazillion, at least one out of all the diversity out there should have already colonized the entire galaxy and evidence should be plentiful.

A possible chink is that civilizations just don't do that -- carpet colonize the whole galaxy, or fill it with their probes to the extent that we seem them all over the place. The Fermi paradox relies on material (probes, colonies) and light (signals). With the material explained away, the lack signals is much easier to explain in that we haven't listened long and we can only hear very loud signals. (Or maybe advance…

Do you know if about any simulations of what it would look like if there were alien radio operators?

If there were 50 other Earths scattered around the galaxy (ones that have been broadcasting like us but for longer) should the first television have imnediately picked up interstellar "I Love Lucy" or would it be faint anomalies from SETI? Somewhere in between?

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#175

Post by ncmncm »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #142
ncmncm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their best future course is to stop sniping at one another. It is possible that it's aliens. It is possible that it's not. We don't have enough evidence even to estimate probabilities, so anything further is pure speculation. Speculation is a look that wears no better on conservatives than on radicals. There is hardly a field to be found where young radicals are not promoting evidence for what the tenured consider an…

> Loeb is right about one thing: the notion of "extraordinary evidence" is very destructive. Evidence is evidence. I agree with pretty much everything you're saying except this. Though I still do agree with this a bit. It seems like a shorthand for "be bayesian" that's unfortunately taken too far too frequently. But if I have a strong prior one way or another, I will need stronger evidence to turn me around. +1 on yo…

Few things in science are more subjective than the relative importance of a piece of evidence.

It is not at all unusual for a key measurement to be wrong, but also not unusual to trust the wrong one.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#176

Post by Joeri »

eloff wrote: post #86
bostonsre wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculing scientists for plausible hypothesis seems very unscientific.

This is very common in science. New theories are usually rejected and ridiculed until/if they develop enough evidence behind them to sway people. Some careers are destroyed. Some scientists are only vindicated posthumously. The process can take many decades. Scientists, like most humans, are not that open-minded and are subject to the same group-think blind spots. I think if we could get better at being open-minded a…

Ah, but my sister always says I’m not open-minded because I won’t read all her antivaxer info. If we give all ideas equal credence, better ideas will not win out.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#177

Post by time0ut »

trestenhortz wrote: post #97

It’s not aliens. Nothing can convince me that there’s any practical way to travel the distances between the stars. If you don’t agree then I think you fundamentally don’t grasp how incomprehensibly vast those distances are. I absolutely believe in life in other worlds but there’s no way to travel from star to star.

I doubt that this was anything but a natural object.

That said, our civilization already has the technology to send a probe to another star system. It may take 100k years to get there, but it could be done if we wanted to. Theoretically, sending a tiny probe within a human life time isn't that far out of reach.

I don't think we can discount the general possibility based on our own capabilities, limitations, and motivations. If we were not constrained by our biology, maybe spending thousands of years in transit wouldn't be a big deal. Or maybe a few gram payload is all we need to explore the neighborhood.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#178

Post by jwally »

johnisgood wrote: post #169
princekolt wrote: post #168

As soon as the article mentioned von Däniken in a serious light I stopped reading. von Däniken is a fraud and embezzlement convict and has admitted to fabricating lots of his fantastical stories and has no place in serious scientific research. I should have expected less from a lifestyle magazine, I guess.

Of course. Even PubMed is ridden with ridiculous stuff. PubMed! To give you an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068791/ Thankfully we can do our own research, see by whom it has been cited, in what journal it has been published, and so forth. You can easily tell that this is quite an unimportant and incredible one. Of course you could tell it yourself after having read it that it is nonsense.

Are there any guides / heuristics on how a layperson can evaluate technical literature?

For example my mother-in-law is starting to micro-dose lithium and cited this article as evidence: https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/12/lithium-and-a...

Which cites 19 medical journals. The website itself reeks of bullshit, but how can I tell if the journals it cites are valid or just woo?

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#179

Post by JoeAltmaier »

trestenhortz wrote: post #97

It’s not aliens. Nothing can convince me that there’s any practical way to travel the distances between the stars. If you don’t agree then I think you fundamentally don’t grasp how incomprehensibly vast those distances are. I absolutely believe in life in other worlds but there’s no way to travel from star to star.

And yet, stuff does all the time. We see wandering objects enter and leave our solar neighborhood.

It's just a matter of time - perhaps on human timescales its inconceivable. But that's a problem with humans, not with interstellar travel.

Re: Have we already been visited by aliens?

#180

Post by stretchcat »

gfxgirl wrote: post #90
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a giant mismatch about what side is open minded. People who think its most likely aliens think it’s closed minded to assign that low probability, presumably because we’re this tiny corner of the universe. People who think it’s most likely not aliens Think it’s closed minded to assign everything else low probability, presumably because aliens are a tiny corner of everything else. Is it a misapplicati…

I thought the idea that there are gazillions of advanced aliens has been pretty much disproven by the fermi paradox. If there are gazillion, at least one out of all the diversity out there should have already colonized the entire galaxy and evidence should be plentiful.

Every advancing civilization will eventually create an internet. Once they do that, interstellar travel is off the table. Advanced civilizations stay closely packed because they cannot tolerate latency once they get a taste for near instant communication.
Post reply on HN