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The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

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Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#61

Post by alt187 »

this_user wrote: post #7
moomoo11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, I really hope that we establish contact with aliens in my lifetime. Hopefully they're chill, and like us lol.

Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the food chain by being nice, you get there by murdering all of the competition and plundering all of the resources. And if you were trying to be nice, someone else would have just wiped you out. The big question is if a species can eventually reach some point of co…

Bears most likely out-ruthless you, but, uh, I don't sed them building Dyson spheres anytime soon.

Aliens probably aren't this edgy, nihilist caricature. Most likely, they're kind of like us- Curious about us, hoping for the best, but irrationally fearing we're an "highly aggressive apex" or whatever self-absorbed nightmare the less enlightened individuals of their species dreamed.

Seriously, you think anyone is gonna cross 50 light-years to kill a bunch of featherless bipeds and plunder some common rocks?

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#62

Post by rozab »

Geee wrote: post #44

Be careful when training AI models on unknown signals, or uploading them publicly on the Internet to be picked up into training datasets. It might be an adversarial data poisoning attack, which is designed to bias the model into servicing the attacker. In this case, a superintelligent digital lifeform might be literally sending itself across space into every direction, and who knows what it does once it lands into a…

Although this comment is of course silly, this is a theme in Peter Watts' Echopraxia

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#64

Post by bluGill »

reactordev wrote: post #16
robocat wrote: post #4

As compared to Australian FRBs: https://www.planetary.org/articles/0417-the-cosmic-microwave...

[flagged]

Forget about why would they - they can't get here. The speed of light is too slow. They can't even detect earth exists much less there is life (dinosaurs). detectable signals won't reach then for a long time if they even can reach them.

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#65

Post by Telemakhos »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #21
this_user wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the food chain by being nice, you get there by murdering all of the competition and plundering all of the resources. And if you were trying to be nice, someone else would have just wiped you out. The big question is if a species can eventually reach some point of co…

Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation. Aggression leads to infighting; infighting wastes resources on zero-sum conflict. >based on the current state of humanity, I'm not to optimistic. Which version of Earth culture has a better shot at building e.g. a megastructure for an interstellar beacon: Earth culture during the post-nationalist 90s moment, or Ear…

> Alternatively, advanced megaprojects are only achievable through sophisticated large-scale cooperation.

In that sense, war is a megaproject. War organized the Manhattan Project, which is still the metaphor we use for any massive scale, sophisticated project. The space race was a cold war endeavor to make ICBMs that weren't obviously ICBMs, and the Soviets were terrified that the Space Shuttle was a nuclear dive-bomber (actually it was for deploying and returning recon satellites) [0]. Cooperation does not necessarily imply peace or post-nationalism: war is strong cooperation on each side of the war, with competition between the two sides. In fact, the cooperation is so strong that actions taken against that cooperation end up being punished as treason much more strenuously than in peace time.

[0] https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3855/1

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#66

Post by Juliate »

this_user wrote: post #7
moomoo11 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, I really hope that we establish contact with aliens in my lifetime. Hopefully they're chill, and like us lol.

Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the food chain by being nice, you get there by murdering all of the competition and plundering all of the resources. And if you were trying to be nice, someone else would have just wiped you out. The big question is if a species can eventually reach some point of co…

Can a highly aggressive species plundering all of the resources avoid self-suicide by destroying the very conditions of its existence?

Considering multiple invasive animal species, and past and current humans societies fate… the answer seems not very positive.

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#67

Post by giraffe_lady »

fny wrote: post #49
this_user wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any species that is advanced enough for interstellar communication will almost certainly be a highly aggressive apex species. You don't get to the top of the food chain by being nice, you get there by murdering all of the competition and plundering all of the resources. And if you were trying to be nice, someone else would have just wiped you out. The big question is if a species can eventually reach some point of co…

Here's a related thought experiment for those hoping for interstellar kumbaya: On planet Jung dwell the Jungians, sapien-like beings who need only a single cup of a rare liquid to live an entire lifetime. For humans, that same cup grants twenty extra years of healthy life. Human just landed on the planet Jung and discovered the liquid--what happens next?

The violence we do is a choice we make based on circumstances and conditions. It is not inherently part of us nor is it inevitable. In your scenario it is easy to imagine making the choice you imply. But that's all it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seville_Statement_on_Violence

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#69

Post by gtfoah »

moomoo11 wrote: post #6
treetalker wrote: post #2

Extraterrestrial as in "not of Earthly origin" — not as in space aliens.

Either way, I really hope that we establish contact with aliens in my lifetime. Hopefully they're chill, and like us lol.

[dead]

Re: The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

#70

Post by bluGill »

moomoo11 wrote: post #6
treetalker wrote: post #2

Extraterrestrial as in "not of Earthly origin" — not as in space aliens.

Either way, I really hope that we establish contact with aliens in my lifetime. Hopefully they're chill, and like us lol.

We won't. while we don't know for sure if there is life there is nothing close enough to contact. The closest star is 4 light years, anything within 20 light years has been studied and has no signs of radio or other communication. Anything more than 20 light years is a 40 year message round trip - too far to establish contact in your likely lifetime. (If you are very young maybe 30 light years - but that doesn't add much)
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