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Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#101

Post by nend »

throwaway2245 wrote: post #55
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

> I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants From Wikipedia for "ant": "More than 12,500 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified." From our human perspective, we are interested in ants. Everybody has seen ants. Everybody is curious about ants. From an ant perspective, humans scarcely exist. There are 10,000 ant species that don't have a relationshi…

Yes but there's a difference between being unable to study all ant species due to a lack of resources, and being uninterested in doing so.

I expect we'll continue studying ant species with the goal of studying all of them we can (assuming we don't wipe ourselves out or ant species out before we have a chance to).

Similarly I also expect we (or an advanced alien species) would attempt to study as many other alien species as they can as well, and wouldn't stop simply because they don't want to.

We've studied 12,500 out of an estimated 22,000 so far. It's not like we've stopped and said "ok we're good, no need to study other ant species."

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#103

Post by whitepaint »

hartator wrote: post #102

Yes, it’s exactly why we should be septic regarding ufo sightings and such. If aliens are so advanced, we are probably no different than ants for them. Why they should care about us? Why they should protect themselves to be seen?

> Why they should care about us? Why they should protect themselves to be seen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#104

Post by chrisseaton »

sandworm101 wrote: post #65
chrisseaton wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Do you know that early in the development of trains people were sure it would be physically impossible for humans to travel over 30 mph or so? They thought something would happen with the air pressure or something. Our understanding of physics changes.

Only the crackpots thought train travel impossible. Anyone with experience of air moving at such speeds, ie the everyone in the navy, knew there wouldn't be a problem.

It's easy to sort the crackpots from the people who know what they're talking about post hoc! Not so easy before!

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#105

Post by Cthulhu_ »

behnamoh wrote: post #84
GistNoesis wrote: post #77

It's all about computation. The computer running universe-simulations needs to be able to run fast. Regularities can be integrated quickly. Life not so much. Life can make computers which can ask computations which can't be reduced. Therefore as soon as a big enough computer is built somewhere in the universe, the whole simulation-time starts crawling to an halt because the inner computer use all the resources, and f…

It's a very interesting point that I hadn't noticed before. Of course, this relies on assuming (believing?) the universe is a giant simulation run on a computer with limited resources. I did not get your last sentence though. Could you elaborate?

I dig the universe-is-a-simulation theory, given how we live in an era where our own computation power and simulation accuracy has only continued to increase for the past 70-odd years. Which is a tiny amount of time on a galactic scale.

I wish suspended animation and the like was a thing, I'm super curious about the future and development of humans. I can imagine that within a thousand years, assuming we don't hit a cataclysmic event that wipes everything out, I could no longer understand anything that's going on anymore. (I mean I'm starting to struggle with the younger generations' stuff already... is this it? :o ).

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#106

Post by stabbles »

hartator wrote: post #102

Yes, it’s exactly why we should be septic regarding ufo sightings and such. If aliens are so advanced, we are probably no different than ants for them. Why they should care about us? Why they should protect themselves to be seen?

We study ants too...

Go to the ant, thou sluggard;

Consider her ways, and be wise

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#107

Post by alistairSH »

drclau wrote: post #48

What bothers me quite a bit, both in more-or-less scientific conversations and in Science Fiction, is that we virtually always assume a human-like psychology for aliens, and we judge what they may want or not based on our thinking. Even when we think about potentially highly advanced aliens, we still assume they'll have a psychology similar to ours, and they'll just be more advanced technologically (ie. the aliens an…

Children of Time & Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The first chronicles the development of sentient, space-capable spiders. The sequel follows the development of octopuses. I found both to be quick, easy reads - perfect for vacation or a rainy weekend. In both, the psychology of the species, and how humans can relate, is a plot point.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#108

Post by Cthulhu_ »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #39
imglorp wrote: post #21

The hard fact is there are no shortcuts to interstellar travel, barring new physics. Any trip will consume vast amounts of energy and it will take decades if not centuries or longer. Advanced tech may reduce the expense to your civilization but the fact won't change. While all life, ants or not, may be universally worthy of study, is it worth that much sacrifice? Also, if the ants talk, exchanging messages would make…

There is a paper that suggests we could, in theory, direct the sun itself towards something while we continued to live as we normally do with little to no change in our lives until we arrived at our destination. This does not effectively cost as much, but it will take a lot of time. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...

At those time scales though, the whole world's population would not only have forgotten, but probably gone extinct and re-evolved multiple times over. Humans have only been a thing for a few million years, if that.

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#109

Post by ryanmercer »

kypro wrote: post #23
nend wrote: post #2

>We may be a phenomenon as uninteresting to them as ants are to us; after all, when we’re walking down the sidewalk we rarely if ever examine every ant along our path. Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants. Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primi…

It's also not true that the only time ants come into contact with humans is when they're being observed. Even if aliens were uninterested in us, it wouldn't necessarily mean we'd expect not to see any signs of alien life. In the same way an ant might stumble across a human building or notice a human above the grass, you would think if life was so prevalent in our galaxy that there would be some sign of their technolo…

>you would think if life was so prevalent in our galaxy that there would be some sign of their technology.

There's a big problem though, I've written about it here https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/11/30/this-jus...

Basically time + the vastness of space = an insanely low probability that any two intelligent civilizations would overlap within a detectible sphere, especially with our current level of technology.

If we assume 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets exist in 100 billion galaxies and that 1 in 100 of those host single cellular life, that 1 in 1000 of those host multi-cellular life, that 1 in 1000 of those have animal life, that 1 in 10 of those has sentient tool-building species you then have 10 trillion planets with tool-building species.

If we assume an even distribution that's 100 tool-building species per galaxy spread out over 12-13 billion years.

Oof.

Even if you make far more generous assumptions, and that 1 in 2 planets has single cellular life and that 1 in 2 of those have tool-building life. That gives you an average of 25,000 tool-building worlds per galaxy, something like a 1 in 20 million change any star in our galaxy has a tool-building civilization.

If you remove the first billion years of the galaxy you get 12.21-12.51 billion years.

Again if we assume an even distribution and assume 140,000 light-years in diameter for a galaxy, that gives you something like 1 tool building civilization per 600,000 square light-years spread out over 12 billion years.

:( :( :(

Re: Why do we assume extraterrestrials might want to visit us?

#110

Post by Cthulhu_ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #34

Is there a single animal on planet earth that doesn't get the occasional visit from an interested human? From deep sea squid to albatross, someone eventually arrives for a chat. There must be the extraterrestrial equivalent of Attenborough out there somewhere.

Oh there must be, but that's assuming they have means of actually finding and reaching us.

At the moment, the only thing I can imagine that would be like that would be a deep space probe that has been traveling for thousands of years, moving so fast it can't actually slow down and make contact. What if Oumuamua was one of those, or the melted slag remains of that? We'll never know.

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