91–100 of 353 posts
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I think it can be done cheaper than that, and with technology we have access to. Detonate a handful of large hydrogen bombs in deep space, set apart by minutes. Say hello to our fellow Aliens.
How far away do you think such a thing could be detected? Say someone set off a 100 megaton nuke in space within the Centauri star system. Could we detect it?
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…
Or it could be any number of things other than nobody out there. For example, advanced life could be out there but it might be rare enough that you only end up with a handful of space capable civilizations at any one time. The milky way is a big place. If we assume that ultimately there isn't a clever way around the speed of light then two civilizations on the opposite side of the galaxy will never encounter each other.
Or maybe its rare enough that you are only likely to have at a time in a galaxy.
Or maybe the prerequisite tech to thrive on an interstellar level means they simply aren't detectable by out primitive sensors. Poor backwards humans, still using the electromagnetic spectrum to measure things!
Hell, we could have a Prime Directive situation on our hands too. Although I think that one is really really unlikely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But in real life, it never actually is an exponential. There always is some limiting resource or saturation point or something, that turns it from an exponential into an S curve. An argument based on "the basic rules of exponentials" typically ignores second-order effects (there seem to always be some, even if we may not be able to see them in advance). > that will only last until some subset of the population decide…
There are not a lot of opportunities to saturate & stall once we sustainably develop resources beyond Earth
And stalls or extinctions due to conflict become very unlikely after we colonize a few systems
I prefer the Dark Forest interpretation of the Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
The Fermi paradox assumes that "intelligent" is one threshold, and we are beyond it. We couldn't communicate with the most advanced primates from a million years ago. A civilization a million years past ours would be unlikely to want to talk to us. The average star in our galaxy is a billion years older than our sun. You can only communicate with civilizations near your level, which are inherently much rarer. We aren…
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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…
I think the answer is pretty obvious, we are the precursor species. Or it could be any number of things other than nobody out there. For example, advanced life could be out there but it might be rare enough that you only end up with a handful of space capable civilizations at any one time. The milky way is a big place. If we assume that ultimately there isn't a clever way around the speed of light then two civilizati…
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…
A space-faring civilization cannot expand faster than O(n^2) because physics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our electromagnetic shell drops below the noise floor around 15 light years out for say 5 MW military radars. For coherent signal decoding into carrier wave and payload waveforms as opposed to being able to point to a signal and say, yep that's not natural, probably around 5 light years out. Some discussion here [1] to get you started. Even assuming super duper alien technology that violates what we know of the physi…
I would guess advanced civs don't bother with radio and look instead for direct visual and spectrographic evidence. We're very close to being able to look for spectrographic evidence and maybe 50-100 years from building a telescope that uses a planet's gravity well for optical enlargement. Earth already looks quite distinctive spectrographically because of the free oxygen, water, and CO2. In the general case you look…
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We are actually running out of places in our history to fit a great filter. Most of the events in our evolution seem probable, even inevitable. In fact the only place IMO that's really left is the emergence of the first self replicating RNA molecule. But even that seems too probable to be a great filter. And if its not behind us, it has to be in-front of us or we are under a great misapprehension about the nature of…
Probably, inevitable based on what sample size?
We will circumvent every possible logistical and physical barrier because of nebulous reasons.
It's a lot like that scene in Silicon Valley when Big Head is pitching a neuralink-esque device for a phone to the CEO and the CEO asks how long it will take and Big Head says "Soon, we just got to figure out how".
Like, no shit, the "how" isn't just the important part, it's the only part.
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…