Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#121

Post by mseebach » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:05 AM UTC

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…

The companies that buy Boeings products very much are selling stuff over the Internet.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#122

Post by itmag » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:08 AM UTC

If we are in the Matrix, then it would not be strange if we could change our physical reality with thought alone. There is no spoon, and all that.

Napoleon Hill talked about this in "Think and grow rich".

http://knol.google.com/k/tom-butler-bowdon/think-and-grow-ri...

Of course, such effects can always be explained by rational means...

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#123

Post by iso8859-1 » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:10 AM UTC

rubyrescue wrote: post #9

luser001 wrote: post #4

Almost everything good and bad that humans have done is due to the drive of a SMALL number of (or single) individuals (American Decl. of Independence, Soviet revolution, Indian freedom struggle, race to colonize the world, WW2, 9/11, Iraq invasion). That is why it doesn't matter if 99.999% of the world is pre-occupied with one mindvirus or other. It's the 1-in-100k person who really takes humanity to the next level o…

totally agree but at 1:100,000 there are 70,000 of those people alive today.

And you have >10^6 Wikipedia articles. How many of those are biographies? 1:100000 suggests that any state-league rugby player is a great man.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#124

Post by freshhawk » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:13 AM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #110

freshhawk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is an excellent word and concept, thank you.

But it lacks the appreciation of how interesting the depressing observation is.

Weltschmerzfreude seems like it's just a contradiction (also I know almost no german at all so it's likely just gibberish) but it doesn't sound bad.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#125

Post by iso8859-1 » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:14 AM UTC

extension wrote: post #116

There is this assumption that the ambition of humanity should be to physically expand far into space. But why exactly? Spanning large distances isn't a very interesting goal per se. We will learn a lot of cosmology and physics in the process, but I would imagine that once you've seen a few thousand stars, nebulae, and black holes up close, you've pretty much seen them all. The idea of building a giant computer (or tu…

Exactly. Disappointing how a professor of psychology seems so intolerant. Curiosity isn't a universal value; that seems to be the fallacy.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#126

Post by iso8859-1 » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:19 AM UTC

Immensely disappointing how he (professor of psychology) dismisses MDMA as entertainment when it is shown to help treating PTSD.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#127

Post by aamar » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:23 AM UTC

iso8859-1 wrote: post #120

aamar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but if these super-advanced aliens are populating many planets, then we'd presumably be able to detect them somehow, irrespective of whether they care about us. It may be electromagnetic leakage or Dyson spheres or any of a number of other signs of artifice.

Maybe our universe runs in their VM. I don't know how you can assume that we would be able to detect anyone. If they are smarter than us, they'd know how to hide.

If we run in their VM, then the Fermi paradox still applies--since physics is consistent in this VM and seemingly leads frequently to life, why wouldn't we see signs of it elsewhere in the galaxy?

If the "we're like ants/barnacles to them" theory is true, then they wouldn't bother intentionally hiding from us, because we're no threat to them. If they do it unintentionally, that would still be interesting: for example, it would probably mean that civilizations do not in fact aggressively colonize the galaxy.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#128

Post by ck2 » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 10:31 AM UTC

extension wrote: post #119

ck2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we are not just observing the wrong places but the wrong time . Our observations are millions of years old.

They are millions of light years away, but there is no absolute time frame in which our observations could be called "old" or "new". You can choose to think of far away things as "the past", if you like. But the point is, that doesn't make it any less cool. EDIT: Actually, I missed your point, which was that far away things have less history in which intelligence could evolve. This is true, but the amount of history…

You only have to miss the right time period by several thousand years to miss signs of (intelligent) life.

Someone remotely viewing earth with just a 10k year delay would not be able to measure signs of human life.

They would see exactly what we see elsewhere - nice possibly life-supporting planets, but no signs of any functionality.

Now realize we aren't just missing 10k years but 1000k years (at best).

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#129

Post by biggfoot » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 11:05 AM UTC

calydon wrote: post #63

I thought the argument was brilliant and scary. A lot of you are getting distracted by the headline. This article isn't really about aliens or the search for ET life. It's about social decay - entertaining ourselves to death AND virtual hedonistic narcissism resulting in extinction. HOWEVER, the author, in his own narcissist fog, forgets to mention that this is a fate that will befall only the wealthiest, the whitest…

Well, in such a large universe everything is too far away.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#130

Post by incandenza » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 11:06 AM UTC

HilbertSpace wrote: post #47

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…

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…

That is my preferred explanation as well. A caveman would not notice a WiFi signal even if it was blasting right through the cave; he would probably be looking for smoke signals or something.

Also, a huge intelligence gap makes communication uninteresting. e.g. we know a little bit about how ants communicate via pheromones, but we're not trying to send "messages" to them; what would it possibly be useful to say?