71–80 of 231 posts
A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…
A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…
It is simply way way too early for us to assume that there are hard to reach limits to computation. For all we know there could be problems that need to be solved that are not realistically solved using computation or the problems get exponentially more complex faster than their solutions exponentially increase our computing ability or the necessary complexity of the systems increases too quickly to manage.
(no, waving a "true AI" magic wand doesn't make these disappear, it buries them in another layer of conjecture)
We can't even solve the damned P vs NP problem yet!
> Can we convert our entire future
> light cone into computronium? There
> seems to be no physical laws to prevent
> that outcome
Let me rephrase that in a more scientific way: No one has disproved that this is impossible. It's a bit of cheat to phrase it this way when we don't even know what those physical laws would look like so have no idea of whether or not we know of any laws that would prevent that outcome.
There is only one definitely true thing about these types of predictions, they are interesting, inspiring, necessary and a few generations from now they will be looked at the same way we look at the rocket pack/floating city/flying car predictions of previous generations (which is the same way they looked at the previous futurist predictions and so on)
How about this ... the aliens reached the height of their civilization 3758435 years ago and since then they don't care about people like us. We are too different from them and insignificant to communicate in ways we can recognize.
My theory is that we haven't met aliens yet because the aliens have been to earth sereptitiously, have taken some DNA samples, and have decided there's nothing to be gained from making contact with us. They've told everyone else in the universe that the planet is hostile and not particularly technologically developed. They have also noted that it is not a threat just as long as they don't get advanced space travel te…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possible answer: First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago. Second, nearly every such civilization long ago found much better means of communications than we know about. Third, they realize that trying to communicate via radio is silly and use much better means we don't know about. Net, they are out there and communicating, but we don't hear them and they don't hear us or…
But if they're so advanced, they probably still have radio receivers somewhere though. They should be able to receive our signals and reply with some sort of super advanced method that appears as radio waves so that we can receive them, but that travel much faster so it doesn't take a thousand years to reach us.
A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…
Care to explain what's terrible about it?
Do you find it a plausible article?
A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…
Really? You know the future? Citation needed, at the very least.
I think we haven't met any Aliens because we're selfish, paranoid, violent, irrational, un-evolved monkeys with baseball caps and video games and nobody wants to make friends people who happily destroy their environment [and therefore themselves] because it's easier than cleaning up their mess. Our major societies are full of petty, self-serving, closed-minded assholes and i'm a perfect example of that. The technolog…
> somebody notices, we start pulling back
> on our rampant destruction enough to keep
> things operating
We did? That's great news. It must be recent though, so far i've only heard a lot of talk and a few useless feel good activities for guilty first worlders to distract themselves with like recycling their pop cans.
As far as self correction goes, the only thing any species has proved to be good at long term is going extinct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if they're so advanced, they probably still have radio receivers somewhere though. They should be able to receive our signals and reply with some sort of super advanced method that appears as radio waves so that we can receive them, but that travel much faster so it doesn't take a thousand years to reach us.
I like the idea that these advanced civilizations are actually all around us and just don't interact with us at all because we are too stupid/too boring/not ready/etc.