91–100 of 231 posts
The most useful hypothesis: we are the first, and the galaxy is ours for taking. Now let's get back to work.
This is completely legitimate, right? There must be a most advanced civilization. Why can't we be it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Locally, rich countries are actually quite good at cleaning up. As an example, compare England today with England 150 years ago.
Unfortunately that's mostly accomplished through economic means of displacing the mess to poorer places. Our actual levels of consumption and destruction globally has only increased.
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…
I really did not expect this much resistance on HN to a fairly classical solution to the fermi paradox. Mostly it's spun in a more positive "retreat into virtual reality" type situation but it's the same thing. We have no idea how humans will react to the ability to sate every desire and wish artifically. It's not just hyper-porn and the xbox 720, this would apply to the desire for exploration, solving hard problems,…
But by having people click on those ads, the companies that are advertising (which could be and are companies actively engaged in "physical" products) are acquiring paying customers and thus have greater ability to fund their products. SpaceX, Boeing, GM, and Victoria Secret need revenue sources to create their 'non-virtual-reality' products, and marketing/advertising creates a revenue source. If they had a net loss…
But I get this feeling, more and more, that big, world changing companies, don't need ads revenue. The number of visits on the internet is less relevant for them.
You picked some companies randomly, but out of them SpaceX and Boeing are not selling stuff over the internet.
There is this hunch, that what we do, doesn't matter. It's mostly self congratulatory friend/social app. Yes, you might make some money out of it from VC but it doesn't change the world.
The universe is mind numbingly big - try to imagine how big and then quadruple that size and you are still wrong.
Just the observable universe is nearly 50 BILLION lightyears in each direction (there could be more and it's expanding).
(remember the deficit/debt demonstrations of "million" vs "billion")
We are trying to observe the equal of the other side of the world with optical and radio telescopes but essentially the best observations we can make out are just at the range of the doorframe to our home.
What if there is other human-like life but it's a million lightyears away - it's all but useless to us to even find out, they are long gone by the time their light and radiowaves ever get to us (and visa-versa). Now realize the nearest other galaxies are SEVERAL million lightyears away.
Try this on for size http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BjHvwSvpOw
I really did not expect this much resistance on HN to a fairly classical solution to the fermi paradox. Mostly it's spun in a more positive "retreat into virtual reality" type situation but it's the same thing. We have no idea how humans will react to the ability to sate every desire and wish artifically. It's not just hyper-porn and the xbox 720, this would apply to the desire for exploration, solving hard problems,…
But by having people click on those ads, the companies that are advertising (which could be and are companies actively engaged in "physical" products) are acquiring paying customers and thus have greater ability to fund their products. SpaceX, Boeing, GM, and Victoria Secret need revenue sources to create their 'non-virtual-reality' products, and marketing/advertising creates a revenue source. If they had a net loss…
Maybe you are right and this is just a horrible inefficiency that will be corrected as soon as we figure out how to make ad optimization and ultra addictive time wasting games more efficiently.
It doesn't seem likely to me at all though, the only arguments I've seen for it are just ideological commitments to our current economic/political system.
The statement that modern global captialism is the best system for productive human endevour we have come up with and the statement that modern global capitalism and the systems it will spawn are enough to continue the upward trajectory of civilization are not the same thing.
> If they had a net loss from advertising they simply wouldn't do it.
I have little faith in the non-scientific philosophies that this kind of statement is based on given modern neuroscience and human irrationality. There are too many counter examples. We are not self interested rational actors, it's way more complicated than that.
Regarding the more general problem: what about economics? Even if it is technologically viable for us to go into space, it is remarkably expensive. We couldn't sustain a Moon program, for all its scientific interest. So we need a pretty big return on investment to do further space exploration.
To me, there are really only two options:
1) Speed of light can't be broken, and colonization only happens by losing any practical contact with your descendants (a ping time of 1s is bad enough, think about 100 years). This reduces its economic appeal to practically zero. No return on investment at all. Not even intellectual satisfaction: you will not even know in your lifetime if your expedition was a success. So why bother?
2) Faster-than-light travel is possible, and relativity tells us it's basically equivalent to time travel. Now, just try to imagine how well our own economy would survive the availability of time travel... This is one thing that Star Trek or Star Wars or Galactica never get right, it's a problem they never consider because it's too hard to think about it. If you can jump or warp or whatever, then to the best of our knowledge, you can travel back and forth in time. How does a civilization survive this? I have no idea. A good example of singularity.
One final thought: the Fermi paradox always start with the premise that we don't see aliens. But most serious work on UFOs claims that a fraction of UFOs can't be explained away. In short, some UFOs appear to be artificial, to exhibit intelligent behavior, and to show technological capabilities well beyond our own. I'm quite surprised to write this comment at a point where there are 86 comments, and I'm the first one writing UFO. Taboo?
But back to the subject, I'm not sure if we are even smart enough to recognize any intelligence that does not resemble our own.
So far our solution to the fermi paradox may be summarized as: "We must stick them with quills! It's the only way!!"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah kind of like how bacteria don't know they're under a microscope.
They're all down there thinking "why aren't there any alien bacteria sending us some chemical messages already? It's clearly the best way to communicate"
Kind of a bummer. I was expecting the article to be about the density of the universe and the speed of light and whatnot. Instead we've got alien porn to blame. Which, if I know anything about aliens, should be reaching us in the next decade or so. ...edit... oooo, and I just thought of somethng. Or, they got so advanced that they realized they probably shouldn't alert the rest of the damn galaxy to their presence. G…
Maybe even an intergalactic SOPA is in place!