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Grabby Aliens (2021)

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Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#211

Post by throwuwu »

iraqmtpizza wrote: post #208
throwuwu wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you responding to? I gave one reason and it’s called the inverse square law. The distances we’re talking about are unimaginably huge so the chances of any signal reaching us is practically zero unless it’s close by (within a few hundred light years) and intentionally directed at us with sufficient power.

[flagged]

Despite all your bluster you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about if you think exoplanet detection techniques can tell us if there is even a single radio transmitter on that planet.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#212

Post by ben_w »

simne wrote: post #210
ben_w wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My previous (brief) line manager was Iranian. I asked him if the Iranian rhetoric about the USA being "the great Satan" was a translation issue or sincere, he said it was sincere.

Greetings from Ukraine! Must say, from practice of living on fast changing territory, it is very typical for people to hate all new, because sometimes new things appear too fast, that just their appear are pain. This is not something supernatural. Even more - for people is natural when things are NOT change fast, even when all these new things are good. I'm sure, you will admit, from steam railroad there was many thi…

That's why I asked if it was a translation issue; "scary" is understandable and mild, "actual literal Satan" is much more severe.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#213

Post by simne »

ben_w wrote: post #212
simne wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greetings from Ukraine! Must say, from practice of living on fast changing territory, it is very typical for people to hate all new, because sometimes new things appear too fast, that just their appear are pain. This is not something supernatural. Even more - for people is natural when things are NOT change fast, even when all these new things are good. I'm sure, you will admit, from steam railroad there was many thi…

That's why I asked if it was a translation issue; "scary" is understandable and mild, "actual literal Satan" is much more severe.

That is difference of "1st world" and other world.

In 1st world, changes are just literally changes, may be you retire later or your deposit will become smaller for few bucks.

But in "3rd world", life is extremely fragile. Most people does not have savings, and typically to not have any safety measures, just because constant under-financed. For example, in India, great disaster, when temperature falls below zero - every time this happen, people die.

So, people in 3rd world typically consider literal daemon everyone who do risky things or ask others to do risky things. People even could literally kick somebody for talking about risky things.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#214

Post by cryptonector »

ben_w wrote: post #105
cryptonector wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't be cohesive civilizations though, not unless their individual lifetimes were very long.

While true, a poor choice of name doesn't invalidate the logic. I'd call them "lineages" for this reason, but I don't really expect the name to catch on.

It's just not a single cohesive civilization. Though it would be fascinating. Imagine if our world were seeded with life and terraformed (which now would be quite the misnomer) to be able to host the human-like spawn of a human-like "civilization" that very slowly and discontinuously spread through our corner of the galaxy. That would be quite something, though how would we know unless the parent civilization left us clues to this? And they would have to, if they wanted us to eventually further spread the species/whatever.

Or maybe we are sui generis and about to embark on such a program. Or maybe we are about to run headlong into another's such program, possibly causing conflict. Or maybe it's all much too unlikely. I wouldn't know.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#215

Post by iraqmtpizza »

throwuwu wrote: post #211
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Despite all your bluster you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about if you think exoplanet detection techniques can tell us if there is even a single radio transmitter on that planet.

you literally think that aliens are all so primitive and just happen to be completely absent from anywhere within 5000 light-years despite that being so statistically improbable it's laughable.

that every alien race just happens to either be on the opposite side of the galactic core or they all abide by the Georgia Guidestones and live primitive one-planet lifestyles.

how many copes do you need, honestly? either that or some people are literally incapable of grasping basic statistics.

by the way, how would you have felt if you didn't have breakfast this morning?

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#216

Post by ben_w »

simne wrote: post #213
ben_w wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I asked if it was a translation issue; "scary" is understandable and mild, "actual literal Satan" is much more severe.

That is difference of "1st world" and other world. In 1st world, changes are just literally changes, may be you retire later or your deposit will become smaller for few bucks. But in "3rd world", life is extremely fragile. Most people does not have savings, and typically to not have any safety measures, just because constant under-financed. For example, in India, great disaster, when temperature falls below zero - ev…

You're over-estimating the average first-world experience; people on this forum are mostly much richer than the average of those who live in the same nations. People die in the UK from the heat and the cold, and yet religious beliefs are on the decline; the US is richer yet more religious than the UK.

Also, the theocratic leadership of Iran is not so fragile.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#217

Post by ben_w »

simne wrote: post #202
yreg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if interstellar travel is impractical, an advanced expansionist civ would be interested in building megastructures. And since there is no stealth in space (unless you can somehow mask heat), they should be observable. Ofc there are explanations for that part of the paradox as well, but the impractical travel theory doesn't cover it.

> no stealth in space (unless you can somehow mask heat) I know two things. 1. We are now already using heat mask measures, even when we are very young civ in terms of Kardashev scale. We already use simple slit heat emitters in military tech (many Stealth planes have slit nozzles and for example, Leopard tanks also use slit exhaust for same reason). 2. Even we now know about possibility of laser heat, which could em…

> In conclusion, idea is, to surround whole civ with heat mask blanket, and make all heat exhausts directly focused on directions, where now observer expected.

Although focussing emissions (not really a blanket) is possible, not only would some specific civilisation have to actually do that, it would have to be a common enough choice that every example we would otherwise have been able to see actually does choose to do that that — this gets increasingly difficult the more such examples there are: if a civilisation can build a Dyson swarm, what are they afraid of that they would want to hide? Even if one civilisation has a reason, everyone has to make this decision, regardless of how many (or few) "everyone" is.

"Dark forest" is a bad reason, as everyone with a Dyson swarm will have been able to know your planet existed and had life on it even when it was all single-cell species; a star winking out of existence is noteworthy, and easily noticed[0].

One Dyson swarm is enough to directly colonise a high percentage of all galaxies that aren't beyond the "reachable horizon"[1] of the universe. As soon as we can make artificial self-replicating machines (we know such machines can be made because all life is self-replicating nano-machines, we just don't know enough to do it completely from scratch yet), this would take us about 31 years[2] to make such a swarm.

[0] So easily noticed that we have, in fact, noticed it: https://vascoproject.org/vanishing-stars/

[1] the "reachable horizon" is how far stuff can get from here starting now given the universe is expanding and no FTL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Home_in_...

[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DvQ7cYxhnrZtWngvW/how-to-tak...

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#218

Post by simne »

ben_w wrote: post #216
simne wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is difference of "1st world" and other world. In 1st world, changes are just literally changes, may be you retire later or your deposit will become smaller for few bucks. But in "3rd world", life is extremely fragile. Most people does not have savings, and typically to not have any safety measures, just because constant under-financed. For example, in India, great disaster, when temperature falls below zero - ev…

You're over-estimating the average first-world experience; people on this forum are mostly much richer than the average of those who live in the same nations. People die in the UK from the heat and the cold, and yet religious beliefs are on the decline; the US is richer yet more religious than the UK. Also, the theocratic leadership of Iran is not so fragile.

> Also, the theocratic leadership of Iran is not so fragile

You're confusing leadership and economy. This is very significant difference - when economy suffer in first-world, whole world hear this from independent press, but when similar thing happen in countries like Iran, people are killed if try to open truth, because leadership pressures to open just info it think should be open and nothing more.

For example, when in North Korea happen great hunger, nobody outside country knows except CIA.

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#219

Post by simne »

ben_w wrote: post #216
simne wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is difference of "1st world" and other world. In 1st world, changes are just literally changes, may be you retire later or your deposit will become smaller for few bucks. But in "3rd world", life is extremely fragile. Most people does not have savings, and typically to not have any safety measures, just because constant under-financed. For example, in India, great disaster, when temperature falls below zero - ev…

You're over-estimating the average first-world experience; people on this forum are mostly much richer than the average of those who live in the same nations. People die in the UK from the heat and the cold, and yet religious beliefs are on the decline; the US is richer yet more religious than the UK. Also, the theocratic leadership of Iran is not so fragile.

BTW people on this forum are mostly have much higher education, than the average of those who live in the same nations, and this is one obvious reason, why they are richer than average.

In countries like Iran, NORMAL higher education just does not exist. For example, I lived in USSR, where instead of Philosophy learned history of communists party. Imagine, what happen with other knowledge, which communists considered harmful - laws and rights, journalism, history, diplomacy - they just substituted whole parts of science with their surrogates.

Read. Use your rights to obtain real information, not surrogates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

Re: Grabby Aliens (2021)

#220

Post by simne »

ben_w wrote: post #217
simne wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no stealth in space (unless you can somehow mask heat) I know two things. 1. We are now already using heat mask measures, even when we are very young civ in terms of Kardashev scale. We already use simple slit heat emitters in military tech (many Stealth planes have slit nozzles and for example, Leopard tanks also use slit exhaust for same reason). 2. Even we now know about possibility of laser heat, which could em…

> In conclusion, idea is, to surround whole civ with heat mask blanket, and make all heat exhausts directly focused on directions, where now observer expected. Although focussing emissions (not really a blanket) is possible, not only would some specific civilisation have to actually do that, it would have to be a common enough choice that every example we would otherwise have been able to see actually does choose to…

> this would take us about 31 years[2] to make such a swarm

They assume, when have already working general AI technology and it have some limited size (volume-mass-energy consumption).

Unfortunately, we still not have GAI and even cannot predict, how large will be first practical unit.

Must admit, looks like we very close to do it, but from history of previous great technical inventions, some things takes decades to achieve production status and was repeatedly reinvented in some years after another inventor fail.

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