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

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#201

Post by DennisP » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #198

jseliger wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 iPho…

The watch isn't necessarily useless, if he's prone to get distracted with email and so on when he uses his iPhone to check the time.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#202

Post by kbutler » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #139

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…

There's a plausible case that advertising is a negative-sum game (in the game theory sense). If no one advertised, they wouldn't be worse off since we would still buy the stuff, but if one player defects and advertises, they gain an advantage so the Nash equilibrium involves wasting lots of money on advertising to no net gain.

The best advertising educates the receiver, rather than just trying to persuade to buy one product over another.

Advertising can thus be a positive-sum interaction.

Unfortunately, it's usually easier to target the other product, rather than promote one's own (see political advertising).

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#203

Post by efnx » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 5:33 PM UTC

exratione wrote: post #173

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 big problem with most people's responses to the Fermi paradox is that they invoke some form of universality of behavior for intelligent life. This can't work - if even one species of the expected very large number of species sends out self-replicating probes that do large-scale work, then we should see the evidence of that. It really doesn't matter what expected distribution of behaviors and psychologies is: the…

What would be the point in a self-replicating wave of expansion? I don't see why that would make life more enjoyable. Unless that wave is used as a discovery machine - in that case it's a scientific tool, and as scientists we have rules about interacting with other species, conservation, etc. I'm sure if these aliens exist they have reasons for deliberately not devouring our galaxy, and we'll know those reasons as soon as we are able to launch a self-replicating wave of expansion.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#204

Post by doktrin » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 5:49 PM UTC

roc wrote: post #185

freshhawk wrote: post #82

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,…

While a subset of humanity definitely can become addicted to such 'artificial' stimuli -- porn, videogames, webcam, television, books, drugs, etc -- most of us do not. Most people who play videogames still go to work and make things. Most people who consume porn still seek out physical mates. Most people who have done opium still seek out life and pleasures beyond the artificial orgasmic haze of the high. Most people…

>>Most people who play videogames still go to work and make things. Most people who consume porn still seek out physical mates. Most people who have done opium still seek out life and pleasures beyond the artificial orgasmic haze of the high. Most people who smoke pot still go about life like the rest of us. And more to the point: most people who interact with computers do not do so the way that HN readers do.

This is a salient point. To piggyback on your mention of marijuana, the article's core argument is not that dissimilar from the near-apocalyptic predictions made in anti-drug campaigns.

I think a fundamental assumption on which this article is based is that we just haven't found that perfect, reality-effacing high yet. It's essentially a prohibitionist message looking to the horizon rather than the present.

"Oh, so all-that-other-stuff hasn't annihilated society... but the next-big-thing totally will!"

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#205

Post by maratd » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #195

maratd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> it also has measurable, negative impact on a person's life span.

Every activity has a "measurable, negative impact on a person's life span" so long as the person doing the measuring is opposed to the activity. What was it that Benjamin Disraeli said? There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I find it curious that in the age of nuclear weapons, video games, consumerism, hamburgers, drugs, alcohol, etc. our average life spans are actually increasing.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#206

Post by aamar » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:01 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #136

aamar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obstacle might be that by entering the VR, you'd be ceding a lot of control to the people "outside" your reality--they might gain physical advantage over you or hack your VR. But if that concern could be definitively answered--and I think it could--then quite possibly the VR is a good move. Maybe any preference for our outside, non-simulative reality will in time be seen as narrow-minded chauvinism.

The main obstacle for me seems to be that by entering the VR, you're actually getting your chances to reproduce down to exactly zero. By the way, a good book on this subject is "the machine stops" from the early 1900s...

If that is a priority, you can reproduce manifoldly inside the VR. Why disprefer those children? It's possible to make the simulation run as long in subjective time as the outside universe.

Thanks for the book tip. For curious others: The Machine Stops, a story by E. M. Forster: http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#207

Post by dinkumthinkum » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:04 PM UTC

dextorious wrote: post #195

maratd wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You're missing the point. It's just hand-wavy set of statements thinly veiled as an explanation for the lack of aliens, which is really nothing more than another cliche railing against consumerism and how society is just so bad. You could just replace whatever cause celeb that you'd like but that doesn't mean there is any real merit to it. Even if the aliens wiped themselves out with Farmville, Lays, or thermonuclear weapons; it seems unlikely they would go straight to the Zynga deathcamps without any exploration etc in between.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#208

Post by mediacrisis » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:06 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #154

georgieporgie wrote: post #2

Old (2006), Luddite-licious, and awfully full of presumed universality. Of course we've transitioned into a virtual economy (though we haven't): the virtual economy didn't exist, and neither did the ability to provide intangible services to the degree that is possible now. And of course an MIT engineer goes into video games, how many can NASA possibly employ? How many engineers were designing boring old toasters and…

> how many can NASA possibly employ? If we are to develop easy space access, not nearly enough.

I don't think its so much a lack of work with NASA so much as a lack of funding.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#209

Post by dextorious » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:15 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #205

dextorious wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""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.

> it also has measurable, negative impact on a person's life span. Every activity has a "measurable, negative impact on a person's life span" so long as the person doing the measuring is opposed to the activity. What was it that Benjamin Disraeli said? There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. I find it curious that in the age of nuclear weapons, video games, consumerism, hamburgers, drugs, al…

"""Every activity has a "measurable, negative impact on a person's life span" so long as the person doing the measuring is opposed to the activity. What was it that Benjamin Disraeli said? There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."""

Obesity has a negative impact on life span because of BIAS??? I thought it was because of scientifically proven processes, well understood by modern medicine. Maybe it's just me.

"""I find it curious that in the age of nuclear weapons, video games, consumerism, hamburgers, drugs, alcohol, etc. our average life spans are actually increasing."""

That's because there's another kind of lie, Disraeli missed, the "correlation/causation" kind of lie. If the average life spans actually increase it's not because of the above, but because of better sanitation, vaccines, and a few other important factors.

The lifespan of people doing drugs/alcohol/hamburgers etc is actually decreased, compared to an imaginary control group.

And I'll go on a limb and say that the lifespan of people in 1945 Hiroshima was also greatly reduced compared to any control group of the time that didn't had a nuclear bomb dropped on them.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#210

Post by HilbertSpace » Thu, Dec 22, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #184

HilbertSpace wrote: post #47

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…

While that's certainly 'possible' it doesn't seem particularly logical. Why would "nearly every" intelligent civilization have evolved millions of years before ours?

Let's see: We've been okay with radio for less than 200 years so far. The earth was formed ballpark 4.5 billion years ago. The big bang was about 13.7 billion years ago.

Assume that to get a civilization need a planet and, thus, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Those heavier elements are created in big stars that supernova, that is, have their cores collapse under gravity and blow off their outer layers where during the explosion all the heavier elements in the periodic table are created by fusing together lighter elements. So to get a planet, have to have a star form, burn out, and supernova. So, assume that are getting candidate planets 3.7 billion years after the big bang. Then have been forming candidate planets for 10 billion years.

Now take the planets that have achieved mastry of radio (i.e., working with photons from 60 Hz up to gamma rays). Take the date when they first made this progress with radio. Take the distribution of those dates over the planets. That distribution is 'concentrated' on the last 10 billion years. Now in that distribution spread out over 10 billion years, what is the probability mass of the last million years? It's TINY. Maybe it's 0.01%. Then 99.99% of the civilizations that mastered radio did it over one million years ago and, thus, are a million years or more ahead of us. Done.

Okay?