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

Grabby Aliens (2021)

grabbyaliens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 227 posts

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#181

Post by jiggawatts »

throwuwu wrote: post #152
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are electromagnetic waves reaching the earth from this galaxy which were emitted anywhere from 80,000 years ago to an instant ago, and everywhen in between. Practically all alien races among the hundreds of billions of solar systems would have to have been electromagnetically silent for a minimum of 80 thousand years for us not to see them. If you include other galaxies, then they would've had to have been sile…

Not silent, just not broadcasting.

Just not broadcasting powerfully enough to be detected by our current technology… which can only detect very powerful broadcasts very close to us.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#182

Post by iraqmtpizza »

throwuwu wrote: post #169
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No, I imagine them doing exactly the same thing we are: using more and more efficient methods of communication as we develop them. Compressing and encoding data, focusing our transmissions where they need to be instead of blasting at max power in all directions, using the most effective form of transmission for the purpose whether it’s laser, microwaves, specific wavelengths of radio, or hard line connections for pla…

[flagged]

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#183

Post by Towaway69 »

yreg wrote: post #178
Towaway69 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of technology that we can't imagine. Just as we can't imagine a harmonious society, so we can't imagine the technology that would arise from such a society. It's a recursive argument, I know, but that's the core of the problem.

I'm sorry, but this seems like handwaving. I don't see why we couldn't imagine the technology? Perhaps we are using technology in different context. I mean understanding of physics + a machine (made out of matter) built thanks to that understanding. Do you perhaps mean something else?

Not wanting to handwave, I was suggesting that I don't know what this technology might be.

Sure we can have ideas and possible approaches but just as many scifi authors thought that we would be flying around instead of driving by now, it doesn't have to be the right idea.

My favourite idea is to consider the planet our spaceship and ensuring our existence into the future the technology that we need. It does seem to be the hardest problem to solve currently.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#184

Post by Towaway69 »

yreg wrote: post #176
qnleigh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the resources required to communicate are planet-scale, then it would require comparable cooperation to build it. Maybe that gets you somewhere. And then maybe you choose to communicate in a way that requires massive resources at the receiver end too... Not a full answer to your question, but this gets you somewhere. A more compelling answer to me is this; civilizations that don't learn how to cooperate at the sca…

Planet scale cooperation utilizing planet scale resources is possible in a planet scale military dictatorship as well. Actually it sounds easier and more plausible than in a free society. > A more compelling answer to me Agreed, but that's just the usual great filter idea.

> Actually it sounds easier and more plausible than in a free society.

It doesn't have to be but with our current mindset, I would agree.

If imagining a cooperative society is hard then it is even harder to imagine the technology that would arise out of such a society.

Edit: for me the open source software movement is a good example of what a cooperative society could do. In 40 years we have gone from room size computers to mobile device that can communicate with anyone on the planet and have access to all the worlds knowledge. This would never have been possible IMO without millions of developers sharing their knowledge.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#185

Post by cgriswald »

zare_st wrote: post #173
cwillu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Dyson's sphere is a device to convert high frequency photons (visible light and uv) to low frequency photons (radiated “heat”). A sufficiently deep stack of shells can bring the temperature of the radiated light closer to the temperature of the cosmic background radiation, but it absolutely will radiate.

Which is exactly my point. The question isn't whether Dyson speheres radiate, the question is can we detect an artificial megastructure and my answer is no, based on the hypothetical Dyson design.

That is physically impossible unless there is new physics in that hypothetical design. All physical objects radiate heat and a Dyson sphere in particular would be trivial to detect. You look take a picture of the sky in infrared and in the visible spectrum. If you find an infrared source but no associated visible star you’ve got a strong candidate for being a Dyson sphere. Such searches have actually been conducted.

Other megastructures might be discovered through the same methods as exoplanets.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#186

Post by Veserv »

bonzaidrinkingb wrote: post #129

This theory is itself grabby, and grabs itself at that. > Furthermore, we should believe that loud aliens exist, as that’s our most robust explanation for why humans have appeared so early in the history of the universe. But if loud aliens will soon fill the universe, and prevent new advanced life from appearing, that early deadline explains human earliness. Even furthermore, we should believe that Big Foot Medusas e…

Of course it makes no sense if you are answering the wrong question.

The question being asked is not: "Why do we not see grabby aliens?"

The question being asked is: "Under what circumstances can humanity become grabby aliens that colonize the galaxy in reasonable time given that we do not see grabby aliens?"

The simplest circumstances that would allow humanity to become grabby aliens in the future is that becoming grabby aliens is easy for a modern human-like society. However, grabby aliens that colonize the universe in reasonable time preclude humanity from existing if we intersect with their existence.

That means there must either be something else special about our existence, or that we are unlikely to ever become grabby aliens. That is the entire point of the thought exercise, figuring out if there is a hope that humanity will become grabby aliens (Star Trek).

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#187

Post by scotty79 »

cwillu wrote: post #140
scotty79 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightsail seems sufficiently practical if you don't care about being fast. You basically directly exploit energy of the stars you are traveling between.

The argument is premised on grabby aliens being fast enough to explain why we don't see their expansion; grabby aliens that don't care about being fast would have showed up _long_ ago.

Maybe we are just really really early

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#188

Post by ben_w »

qnleigh wrote: post #170
ben_w wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's saying there's a good chance we'll be one of the grabby civilisations. Or at least, it doesn't rule it out. Non-grabby aliens aren't visible in this model; given the distances, "grabby" is the only way to change the environment enough for current human tech to even notice something unusual.

But if we'll become a grabby civilization, then there will presumably be at least trillions of humans born in the distant future who will live all throughout the universe. Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion? Incidentally, Carl Sagan used the above line of reasoning as a sign that human civilization was going to collapse before a few more doubling times.

> Isn't it that an extraordinary coincidence to find oneself born among the first few billion?

The weakness of the mediocrity principle is we're in a lot of categories, and we can't be near the middle of all of them at the same time.

This paper makes one particular assumption about what's a good set of things to be mediocre about; I think that's the weakest part because it's so easy for intuition to mislead there.

So I could invert your surprise: No more so than finding yourself in the last of a few trillion things that evolved into humans.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#189

Post by cryptonector »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #119
XorNot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather depends on other factors though: you can perfectly well run an interstellar empire with very long communication times and people going into suspended animation for transit. Control strategy simply has to adapt accordingly: i.e. a message probably comes with a fleet sufficient to ensure its obeyed. This was one of the ideas in the Doom novelizations: that the aliens had spent so long travelling that there was l…

AI. Instead of FTL, or FTL communication lines, or forms of suspended animation. The ships that are sent out could be run by an AI. Maybe the ships are factory ships to self-replicate. The Grabby could be more like Blindsight.

Yes, but then each colony is independent and disconnected from the mother ship. There are people who say that... that's what we are on Earth: a colony started by aliens.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#190

Post by bonzaidrinkingb »

Veserv wrote: post #186
bonzaidrinkingb wrote: post #129

This theory is itself grabby, and grabs itself at that. > Furthermore, we should believe that loud aliens exist, as that’s our most robust explanation for why humans have appeared so early in the history of the universe. But if loud aliens will soon fill the universe, and prevent new advanced life from appearing, that early deadline explains human earliness. Even furthermore, we should believe that Big Foot Medusas e…

Of course it makes no sense if you are answering the wrong question. The question being asked is not: "Why do we not see grabby aliens?" The question being asked is: "Under what circumstances can humanity become grabby aliens that colonize the galaxy in reasonable time given that we do not see grabby aliens?" The simplest circumstances that would allow humanity to become grabby aliens in the future is that becoming g…

> if there is a hope that humanity will become grabby aliens (Star Trek).

You talk as if being a loud grabby alien to other space civilizations is a hopeful thing for humanity to aspire to. Did not Star Trek had a Prime Directive for some reason? Though I do like solving the Fermi Paradox by humanity taking a good hard look in the mirror. May disprove us being Big Foot Medusas with one stone too.

Humanity just got rid of a nasty period of colonizing space on earth. I would not let us near intergalactic space without a time-out period.

Post reply on HN