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Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

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Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#191

Post by jseliger »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #174

Everybody talks about bandwidth as if that's some terribly important metric, but the real metric is brain width. Vendors are fighting tooth and nail for time on your brain. And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth. Information is not…

And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth. Information is not passive any more; it's sticky. As a consumer you are not a entity who receives services from a webapp.

This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, want it to be true. (I'm 28, wear a watch, and use a paper notebook (http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-th...) in addition to having an iPhone; but the iPhone only takes up as much mental bandwidth as I let it).

My brain is not a passive entity that is "being sucked up." People either let themselves be sucked up, or they don't.

EDIT: Also, if you want an interesting exploration of some of the trends you're describing, see Neal Stephenson's "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out,": http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?... .

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#192

Post by herdcall »

ekidd wrote: post #148

This essay is analogous to a mathematical proof that begins "Assume A and not A" and concludes: "and therefore P≠NP." It's not that I disagree with Miller's conclusion, it's just his premise is a contradiction, and thus capable of proving anything. First, the contradiction: Fermi's paradox says that intelligent species are common, and that some fraction of intelligent species will engage in interstellar colonization.…

The problem I see with this article is that it doesn't acknowledge you only need a handful of people to make the advances necessary to reach out to other civilizations. It does admit there will be variation, but talks about fundamentalists and anti-consumerism folks rather than committed scientists/researchers who will make the contact possible.

In our own history, you could argue that only a small set of outliers (the Einsteins, Darwins, etc.) really contributed to our major strides. If we're beaming signals to outer space today, you can track it back to only a few committed geniuses who made that feat possible.

So, if alien civilizations do exist, I'd say they likewise need only a handful of committed folks; and they will come about through natural variation regardless of what the societal attitudes are.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#193

Post by jerf »

There are so, so many things wrong with this line of arguing presented as The Solution that I'll just present my two biggest. First, as a solution to the Fermi paradox this must mean that ALL the millions of species with quintillions of individuals MUST always prefer to retreat into virtual reality AND completely forget about reality.

Most putative solutions to the Fermi paradox have this problem. It isn't enough to create a way to eliminate 99.999% of millions of civilizations, because the result is still that the galaxy would have been colonized before we achieved sentience. Self-loathing arguments are a particularly popular one, but even striking a fashionable "humans suck" pose (and make no mistake that this is a fashionable signal to send) proves nothing else about the other beings that could exist.

Secondly, it must mean that all species that so retreat must so thoroughly retreat that they completely forget about the outside universe and have no desires to increase their computational power for any reason, ever. This is a much higher level of tech than we have now, and none of the quintillions-is-probably-a-conservative-estimate must ever decide that hey, that juicy looking star system over there could be converted to another hunk of VR simulation and if I send over the hardware to do it, I can completely own the resulting VR installation.

(Personally I favor the other end of the argument; life evolves easily, assuming Earth-like conditions, and the Rare Earth hypothesis doesn't require very much hoop-jumping, new physics, or bizarre probability arguments, it just requires serious consideration of the possibility that organic life-as-we-more-or-less know it may really be the only solution, and may really not be able to arise in very many places. If you dig into the prevailing wisdom against that idea, you'll find it's more philosophically sourced than scientifically sourced, there really are a lot of good reasons to think there aren't that many available chemical regimes life could work in, and in general it's probably the most scientifically-sound Fermi paradox answer. It's just not philosophically fashionable.)

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#194

Post by firefoxman1 »

rbanffy wrote: post #150
freshhawk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider your analogy stolen for future use! 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"

H. G. Wells' analogy actually.

I love Wells. In what book might I find such analogy?

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#195

Post by dextorious »

maratd wrote: post #190
ekidd wrote: post #148

This essay is analogous to a mathematical proof that begins "Assume A and not A" and concludes: "and therefore P≠NP." It's not that I disagree with Miller's conclusion, it's just his premise is a contradiction, and thus capable of proving anything. First, the contradiction: Fermi's paradox says that intelligent species are common, and that some fraction of intelligent species will engage in interstellar colonization.…

> we're tempted to overlook the sloppy reasoning. Not in the slightest. This is a political opinion piece. There is a negative political statement about nuclear weapons. Then about video games. Then about consumerism, etc etc You can use anything you perceive as self destructive to show how the aliens wiped themselves out and we will too! That much is obvious without any attempt at serious reasoning. Fast food is des…

"""Replace fast food with any other activity which offends commonly accepted political decency."""

Obesity doesn't only offend "commonly accepted political decency" it also has measurable, negative impact on a person's life span.

And I would venture to say that nuclear weapons and such have too.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#196

Post by dlikhten »

The answer is much more simple. Let us assume that every 1000 solar systems has one system with intelligent life on it.

#1 given normal known methods of space travel, it would take generations to reach the nearest planet possibly containing life.

#2 given time, there is a VERY small possibility that when we arrive at that planet it has intelligent life. Intelligent life may have died out, or it may be currently evolving. Or by the time we reach it they may have up-and-left.

#3 The chances of crashing into another alien vessel in space is almost 0. Infinitely improbable. Therefore to actually meet another alien vessel, aliens must have traveled to the same planet at the same time as us. Given the vast distances this is highly unlikely.

#4 We don't have "lifesign" scanners like in star trek. Determining that a planet has advanced technology would mean going to the dark side and looking for lights. If the culture is not yet advanced enough, then we won't find enough of it to be visible from space.

#5 while talking about #4, atmospheric conditions may make it very difficult to see anything on the surface.

#6 given all above, what is the probability that a race of aliens got to earth (within the last 300 years)? Otherwise earth would look like a habitable planet, but no sign of advanced intelligent life. I'd say I have a higher chance of winning every lottery in the world on the same day.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#198

Post by dextorious »

jseliger wrote: post #191
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #174

Everybody talks about bandwidth as if that's some terribly important metric, but the real metric is brain width. Vendors are fighting tooth and nail for time on your brain. And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth. Information is not…

And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth. Information is not passive any more; it's sticky. As a consumer you are not a entity who receives services from a webapp. This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, w…

"""This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, want it to be true. (I'm 28, wear a watch, and use a paper notebook (http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-th...) in addition to having an iPhone; but the iPhone only takes up as much mental bandwidth as I let it)."""

Yeah. So on top of owning an iPhone, you are also a hipster with a (trendy but useless, considering the iPhone also tells the time) watch and a notebook (it's even a Moleskine).

Way to prove the parent poster's point.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#200

Post by karamazov »

mtts wrote: post #70
tsotha wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missed the whole protein folding thing, did you?

That's the exception that proves the rule. Also, the crowd sourcing aspect of the whole protein folding thing merely involved doing the grunt work, of which there was so much the scientists that set up the parameters for it couldn't possibly do it all themselves. The true achievement was thinking up the parameters for the thousands of monkeys to twiddle, not the twiddling itself.

This strikes me as a "no true Scotsman" argument.
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