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Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

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Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#101

Post by maaku »

exratione wrote: post #19

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…

Put more simply, either we're A) doomed, B) boring!, or C) in the Matrix.

Merry Christmas.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#102

Post by freshhawk »

tdrgabi wrote: post #94
balbeit wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are right, in theory. 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…

I have some hope that the maker/3d printer/home fabrication sector could combine the profitable small startup business that we all seem to love with some progress that will actually provide substantial benefit to humanity.

I think we need a lot more time to figure out how to organize and motivate and fund large projects as well as evolve culturally before any interesting large scale space exploration will be done. SpaceX type experiments might be the first step, even if it's just a data point about what doesn't work.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#103

Post by mtts »

davedx wrote: post #76
mtts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain what's terrible about it?

It claims aliens haven't been in touch in the short history we'd recognise them because they're busy eating pizza and playing World of Warcraft. Do you find it a plausible article?

Since the aliens are only brought in for comedic effect, yes, I find it a plausible article about the effects of entertainment on progress.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#104

Post by c3d »

peterwwillis wrote: post #34

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…

Humans do not always self-correct. Ever heard of Easter Island?

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#105

Post by mojuba »

ck2 wrote: post #95

Finding earth (or another earth-like planet with people) would be like finding a particular particle of sand on a beach. 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 "billi…

Organic life can be detected in the emission spectrum of even the most distant objects, without establishing any contact. In fact we can theoretically detect life at very early stages. But we haven't detected anything yet, which makes the Fermi paradox even more valid (and chilling).

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#106

Post by extension »

ck2 wrote: post #95

Finding earth (or another earth-like planet with people) would be like finding a particular particle of sand on a beach. 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 "billi…

We don't need to find a particular grain of sand, we just need to find a grain of sand that's a particular shape or color. How rare such grains are is the big question. Everything we know tells us that they should be everywhere, but they aren't.

We can see for 93^h^h47 billion light years in all directions. That's a pretty big ball-o-space. Plenty to observe.

And if we find ETI, even at distances that preclude ever interacting with them, it will still be the most amazing thing to ever happen in all of human history.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#107

Post by azernik »

I'm kind of peeved at how (in talking about how the human economy has become so focused on entertainment as opposed to "real" economic activity) the author cites "IBM, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Matsushita, Samsung, Micron Technology, Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu" as companies that are pushing out "fake", "virtual" goods that do not contribute to human material success, and then lists Victoria's Secret as a company that makes "real things". (Victoria's Secret being, by the way a prime example of a company that bases its success on manipulating evolved behavioral mechanisms. I don't think this is wrong in the way the author does, but this does betray a certain internal inconsistency.)

The antipathy to computing is incomprehensible - I would say that the ability to have fast and high-bandwidth communications, computerized organization (calendaring, e-mail storage, etc.) and the like is more likely to contribute to human growth to the stars than (in the author's example) zippers.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#108

Post by freshhawk »

eru wrote: post #92
freshhawk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As another example: China is now starting to clean up. They won't be able to displace the mess to poorer places, because the country is just so big that there just aren't enough poorer places left to take all the mess. I am confident the Chinese will be able to clean up their country.

I think they will as well. India will shortly have to address this seriously and probably will.

That covers the types of pollution and over-consumption that are a visible and immediate threat, like dumping toxic waste in rivers and highly toxic air pollution.

There has been no serious willingness to address the issues of the increase in per-captia consumption of finite resources.

I was really taking issue with the statement that humans will be the first species that does not reproduce and consume as much as it possibly can before partial or complete extinction. That somehow humans will naturally reign in their natural impulses before it becomes too dangerous. That statement is based on zero evidence. We think we are the exception, humans are good at that, individually and collectively. Here's hoping.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#109

Post by ck2 »

mojuba wrote: post #105
ck2 wrote: post #95

Finding earth (or another earth-like planet with people) would be like finding a particular particle of sand on a beach. 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 "billi…

Organic life can be detected in the emission spectrum of even the most distant objects, without establishing any contact. In fact we can theoretically detect life at very early stages. But we haven't detected anything yet, which makes the Fermi paradox even more valid (and chilling).

The observations we are making are millions of years old - what if in 100k years those same analysis we do now suddenly show life.

We are not just looking at the wrong places, we are looking at the wrong times.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#110

Post by noonespecial »

freshhawk wrote: post #87
firefoxman1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha thanks. I read somewhere that at the same time you think of a grand new idea, 10 people somewhere in the world will also have the same idea. I doubt that's always true, but it's pretty amazing nonetheless.

Heh, that is depressingly likely given the numbers. There must be a german word for the appreciation of a clever/accurate but depressing idea.

Weltschmerz comes close.
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