Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 353 posts

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#41

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

bnralt wrote: post #15
krapp wrote: post #3

Another Fermi Paradox thread. Take a shot any time von Neumann probes are mentioned. Regarding the paper (or at least its abstract) it's worth mentioning that our own radio transmissions have become significantly less likely to be detected after our transition to digital, and that electromagnetic signals dissipate, so they might no longer be recognizable as intelligent signals beyond a certain distance. That would se…

I've been wondering what the advantage of von Neumann probes are. Once you have the ability to autonomously construct probes, it seems like it would be easier and faster to mass produce them in one solar system and send them directly to their destinations. For instance, with a von Neumann probe you have to have probes with additional mass for self-replication, have it accelerate halfway to point A, decelerate halfway…

If the probes don't have replication devices in them, what are they doing?

The main point of the von-Neumann strategy is that if you don't build a self-replicating hegemonic swarm object, someone else will (whether that be an alien or merely someone else in your own society), and despite what science fiction movies would like to have you believe, you don't win in a war against the Replicators.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#42

Post by drowsspa »

seanw444 wrote: post #27
api wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something visits us from another star system it's also likely to be an AI. Hibernation for thousands of years to travel between stars would be almost trivial for machine intelligence. Just turn yourself off. It'd be easy to tie this directly to solar power. Have an array of solar panels that powers you near a star and in interstellar space you just naturally go to sleep. When you approach the next star system the…

What's hard to comprehend is how there could be a possible way to preserve our consciousness through a hibernation state. Like, our cells might not die, and we might be technically revived, but we'd still be brain-dead. And if we figure it out, does the original "experiencer of consciousness" in that body return to life? Or is it a new consciousness, with the same memories, but the original person who went to sleep w…

That sounds like a non-issue. Our conscience already "pauses" when we go to sleep or get hit in the head, we already have people being resuscitated...

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#43

Post by marcosdumay »

causality0 wrote: post #36

The universe we find ourselves in isn't very compatible with a species like our surviving for an extended period. If humans exist for millions of years we're going to either spread out to fill the galaxy or our machines will. The fact earth was free to develop us means that no other species like us existed long enough to beat us to it. We ought to hope that's because species find some other priority besides expansion…

> because otherwise the reason we're free to exist is because species like us always wipe themselves out before they spread

That's a complete non-sequitur. There can be plenty of reasons for a species like us never appearing on the first place, and they are way more reasonable than postulating that life like us always destroy itself.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#44

Post by spuz »

This paper seems to explore a question I've had for a while which is: What is the maximum distance an Alien civilisation could eventually detect life signatures from Earth assuming their detection technology matches ours? I know that our current radio signals extend 100 light years or so but at which distance could these eventually be detected?

I ask because I've read that in order for the SETI program to make a detection the signal would need to be much more powerful than the radio transmissions we currently produce.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#45

Post by Hizonner »

bnralt wrote: post #15
krapp wrote: post #3

Another Fermi Paradox thread. Take a shot any time von Neumann probes are mentioned. Regarding the paper (or at least its abstract) it's worth mentioning that our own radio transmissions have become significantly less likely to be detected after our transition to digital, and that electromagnetic signals dissipate, so they might no longer be recognizable as intelligent signals beyond a certain distance. That would se…

I've been wondering what the advantage of von Neumann probes are. Once you have the ability to autonomously construct probes, it seems like it would be easier and faster to mass produce them in one solar system and send them directly to their destinations. For instance, with a von Neumann probe you have to have probes with additional mass for self-replication, have it accelerate halfway to point A, decelerate halfway…

To send you back any information, your probe has to either send back something physical or use the electromagnetic spectrum. If you send a probe with no manufacturing capacity, then it either has to carry all the fuel, shielding, and redundancy for both directions of the trip, or carry a very large radio and its much larger power source. That's gonna be really, really heavy. Probably heavier than the manufacturing machinery. So you would want to be able to manufacture just so you could report back.

Once you have the manufacturing stuff, you might as well build a bunch more probes. Each generation of will start from the furthest range of the previous generation, with all the knowledge accumulated by its predecessors.

A probe with a generalized manufacturing capability can also do other interesting things on station. If it's smart enough, it's more like a colony than a probe... and it would probably have to be that smart anyway. A probe with no manufacturing capability can only report back, and then you have to send something all that way again if you want to do something interesting at the destination.

I'm not sure the whole project is worth it, though.

And, with very high probability, the reason we haven't seen or heard from anybody isn't that they haven't gotten around to "viewing our Earth television programs" and responding. It's not even that they don't want to talk. It's that there's nobody out there. I don't understand the desperation that leads people to come up with increasingly farfetched ways to hide from that obvious conclusion.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#46

Post by bzzzt »

api wrote: post #12
antirez wrote: post #5

The first alien we will ever encounter is likely a neural network we built with our hands.

If something visits us from another star system it's also likely to be an AI. Hibernation for thousands of years to travel between stars would be almost trivial for machine intelligence. Just turn yourself off. It'd be easy to tie this directly to solar power. Have an array of solar panels that powers you near a star and in interstellar space you just naturally go to sleep. When you approach the next star system the…

> If something visits us from another star system it's also likely to be an AI.

Let's hope it's not programmed to make paperclips ;)

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#47

Post by photonic37 »

seanw444 wrote: post #27
api wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something visits us from another star system it's also likely to be an AI. Hibernation for thousands of years to travel between stars would be almost trivial for machine intelligence. Just turn yourself off. It'd be easy to tie this directly to solar power. Have an array of solar panels that powers you near a star and in interstellar space you just naturally go to sleep. When you approach the next star system the…

What's hard to comprehend is how there could be a possible way to preserve our consciousness through a hibernation state. Like, our cells might not die, and we might be technically revived, but we'd still be brain-dead. And if we figure it out, does the original "experiencer of consciousness" in that body return to life? Or is it a new consciousness, with the same memories, but the original person who went to sleep w…

I often find myself wondering if the same is true from simply going to sleep at night.

You woke up this morning, and you are likely pretty confident that you’re the same entity that went to sleep yesterday. Are you?

A pause in continuous consciousness is a convenient way to think of a discrete “before” and “after” entity, but why shouldn’t it generalize further? Is the person who occupied your body and saw through your eyes five minutes ago alive in a meaningful way right now?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/is-beaming-down-in-st...

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#48

Post by lapcat »

d_silin wrote: post #39
lapcat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the process of wrecking our own ecosystem. We have the military capability to wipe ourselves out at any moment. The use of nuclear weapons has been discussed a lot lately, even nuclear first strike. And when some natural threat arises — take the pandemic for example — we turn on each other and bicker. "Don't Look Up" seems quite plausible.

Above statements are proving my point. Despite its many flaws human civilization is stronger than ever and is on the verge of expanding beyond the home planet.

> Above statements are proving my point.

I don't really see how.

> human civilization is stronger than ever

I don't really see how.

> on the verge of expanding beyond the home planet

I don't really see how.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#49

Post by simiones »

seanw444 wrote: post #27
api wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something visits us from another star system it's also likely to be an AI. Hibernation for thousands of years to travel between stars would be almost trivial for machine intelligence. Just turn yourself off. It'd be easy to tie this directly to solar power. Have an array of solar panels that powers you near a star and in interstellar space you just naturally go to sleep. When you approach the next star system the…

What's hard to comprehend is how there could be a possible way to preserve our consciousness through a hibernation state. Like, our cells might not die, and we might be technically revived, but we'd still be brain-dead. And if we figure it out, does the original "experiencer of consciousness" in that body return to life? Or is it a new consciousness, with the same memories, but the original person who went to sleep w…

Do you ask yourself the same questions before undergoing anesthesia, or even going to sleep each night? The experience would be identical (unless you believe in some kind of life after death) - since consciousness just stops, and you can only hope it will pick back up later on. Whether it actually will or not doesn't affect the experience you have right now though.

Re: The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

#50

Post by AlanSE »

causality0 wrote: post #36

The universe we find ourselves in isn't very compatible with a species like our surviving for an extended period. If humans exist for millions of years we're going to either spread out to fill the galaxy or our machines will. The fact earth was free to develop us means that no other species like us existed long enough to beat us to it. We ought to hope that's because species find some other priority besides expansion…

That argument seems to violate the basic rules of exponentials. If an advanced species did settle on an stasis, then that will only last until some subset of the population decides to go beyond the stasis. Particularly for a space-faring civilization, the time scales and resources are so fast, that any multiplication factor beyond unity will eventually go bananas. Any individuals with the prerogative to multiply will swamp those who lack it, same with Earth evolution. The selfish gene will prevail unless there is centralized control.

I don't have any problem with this reading - advanced space-fairing beings have never existed in our light cone. SETI won't find anything because there's nothing there. We have a good chance of making it ourselves, but it's 50/50 because we have no priors, our decisions actually matter.

Post reply on HN