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The Fermi paradox revisited: Technosignatures and the contact era

arxiv.org

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

#221

Post by georgeg23 »

Ancalagon wrote: post #172
georgeg23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people realize how quickly EM radiation falls off with distance, and how large the scale of "transmitters" would need be before we could detect. Today we can finally, barely detect massive planets occluding suns, and we can only do this in our neighborhood of this galaxy. Modulated communication from a source not at planetary scale is currently impossible for us to detect. We need something much much bi…

On the other hand all those tech developments you pointed out we’ve only discovered and utilized in the last 100 years. Now imagine a civilization with 10 times that experience/time

Agree, likely the signals are of a type we are not yet capable of receiving. GRBs for example.

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

#222

Post by paulpauper »

popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)

It look like physics.pop-ph is the new physics.gen-ph for low quality submissions.

Skimming the paper, it does not look promising either. Attempts at answering the Fermi Paradox often fails to meet the bar of science. It's impossible to estimate any of the parameters except for things which are approximated through observations, like the number of galaxies. Otherwise, predicting how many rocky bodies may have life, who knows. Or how many attain intelligent life.

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

#223

Post by nckthrn »

brotchie wrote: post #186
staunch wrote: post #18

My pet theory (which I'm sure is not original) is that absolutely all intelligent life, through AGI and/or genetic engineering, eventually converges into an undifferentiated super intelligent state. These super intelligences continuously decide, for one reason or another (but always the same reason(s)), not to expand their presence into the universe in an invasive way. Maybe it would simply be unnecessary for them to…

Yup, feel like there's a "strong attractor" to a non-biological super intelligent end-game for any civilization and this happens relatively quickly once their species enters an external-to-biology recursive self-improvement state (e.g. humans discovering, externalizing, and transmitting technology over multiple generations leads to recursive self improvement of technology). Just as there's probable chemical gradients…

Yes, my extremely layman pet theory is that dark matter / energy are the evidence of advanced intelligent civilisations too; just we don't understand what we're looking at yet.

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

#224

Post by WhitneyLand »

AlbertCory wrote: post #176
credit_guy wrote: post #149

The Fermi paradox is good for a nice chat at a party. But it's not a paradox at all. Imagine there's an alien civilization in our galactic neighbor Proxima Centauri. How would we know they are there? To make it more plausible. Let's say we figure out a way to send a space probe to Proxima Centauri. How do we communicate with that probe? Easy, you say, just like we communicate with the Voyagers: they point a reasonabl…

Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understand probability, i.e. dice or card games. That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe, but we have that pesky problem of distance and the speed of light, as you said. People like to imagine that eventually civilizations find…

It seems to have been pretty successful at its intended purpose:

The equation was formulated in 1961 not for purposes of quantifying the number of civilizations, but as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at the first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)

Even today, it’s not the end all be all tool but there are still serious papers being published that refer to it.

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

#225

Post by AlbertCory »

gcanyon wrote: post #206
AlbertCory wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understand probability, i.e. dice or card games. That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe, but we have that pesky problem of distance and the speed of light, as you said. People like to imagine that eventually civilizations find…

> There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms... > That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe ...pick one :-)

I gather you're getting all triumphant there: "Hah! A contradiction! So there."

Not really, sorry.

"Probability" as in "something you can assign an exact number between 0 and 1 to."

"Probably" as in "I dunno, maybe."

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

#226

Post by detritus »

thereddaikon wrote: post #162
ngvrnd wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why couldn't life evolve multiple times in a simulation?" Because the Grad Students don't want it to, and act to prevent it? :-)

Why would they bother making a sim that big if it was empty? Even No Man's Sky is full of cookie cutter creatures.

It's more of a psychological experiment, perhaps?

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

#227

Post by pfdietz »

AlbertCory wrote: post #176
credit_guy wrote: post #149

The Fermi paradox is good for a nice chat at a party. But it's not a paradox at all. Imagine there's an alien civilization in our galactic neighbor Proxima Centauri. How would we know they are there? To make it more plausible. Let's say we figure out a way to send a space probe to Proxima Centauri. How do we communicate with that probe? Easy, you say, just like we communicate with the Voyagers: they point a reasonabl…

Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understand probability, i.e. dice or card games. That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe, but we have that pesky problem of distance and the speed of light, as you said. People like to imagine that eventually civilizations find…

> there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe

How can you even say that?

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

#228

Post by pfdietz »

AlbertCory wrote: post #225
gcanyon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms... > That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe ...pick one :-)

I gather you're getting all triumphant there: "Hah! A contradiction! So there." Not really, sorry. "Probability" as in "something you can assign an exact number between 0 and 1 to." "Probably" as in "I dunno, maybe."

No, he was rightly pointing out that your "there probably is" statement was bullshit, not supportable from the evidence.

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

#229

Post by booleandilemma »

It always amazes me that right now, as I type this comment, there could be countless intelligent civilizations out there with their own histories, philosophies, science, literature, etc. All asking themselves the same thing: "are we alone?".

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

#230

Post by AlbertCory »

pfdietz wrote: post #227
AlbertCory wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. The "Drake Equation" is complete and utter garbage. There is no such thing as a "probability" of any of those terms, in the way we normally understand probability, i.e. dice or card games. That said, there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe, but we have that pesky problem of distance and the speed of light, as you said. People like to imagine that eventually civilizations find…

> there probably are intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe How can you even say that?

I type and the characters come out.

It's an opinion. You can have your own.

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