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Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

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Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#61

Post by CapitalistCartr »

krapp wrote: post #50
zeteo wrote: post #47

This article is full of misconceptions. Let's address a few of the most egregious ones. >there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather bad at fully understanding such large numbers. There's no obstacle to working with large numbers once you understand powers and logarithms (i.e. pre-calc). Very smart people have looked at the Drake equation and it yields a very wide…

You left out the misconception where FTL travel is even possible. That's probably most likely why we'll never meet aliens... the low likelihood of them being able to harness that level of energy reduced even further by the likelihood of a ship happening to stumble across this particular rock.... and then, further still by them even caring if they find us. Heck, there might be cloud-squid in Jupiter we're not even awa…

We don't need FTL. Our current age limit is becoming more obviously arbitrary every year. Sooner rather than later we'll be able to extend our age limit to several centuries. We could spread out to all the nearby stars in less than one lifetime at even .1c. We could with generation ships anyway, but that's far less desirable. We could populate most of the Galaxy in a million years with no FTL whatsoever, and if FTL never plays out, we probably will. If we meet aliens along the way, then we do.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#62

Post by chmike »

Aliens would indeed not travel to us for earth's ressources. But our earth is special by the existence of life. If life emergence is a random process, the forms it can take may be as well. There would be alot to learn and gain from a direct access to it. Science and knowlege is the ultimate ressource any ciilization will run after, after energy and other limiting facors have been mastered.

Another frequent mistake is that ET would travel direct from home to earth. As far as we know FTL is impossible. So it makes better sense to travel by small hops from one solar system to the next one. It could be more a ant like colonization process. This would imply that ET visiting earth would irst build one or more bases in our solar system and visit earth from there.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#63

Post by LogicFailsMe »

We do a lot of crazy crap in the name of invisible gods. What's to say an alien race wouldn't get it in their heads that it's their sacred duty to their chosen deity to fill every planet in the universe with their greatness, exterminating all the impure in the process?

I have no problem believing the equivalent of the Daleks or the Ori might one day demonstrate a variant of the replicator hypothesis at our expense.

Why must they have a coherent logical basis for all their behavior? We certainly don't.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#64

Post by guard-of-terra »

If aliens exist we should be able to notice consequences of their existence - either accidental or intended.

Even if we miss the window of contact, galaxy should be teeming with shadows of alien civilizations if only we know where to look.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#65

Post by tempaccount9473 »

glurgh wrote: post #44
tempaccount9473 wrote: post #17

If aliens aren't coming to this planet, clearly this is a market ripe for disruption! I'm now looking for a cofounder who will shake up the L2L (lifeform to lifeform) market with a new disruptive social media platform for unmotivated hypotetcial advanced beings to share pictures of intergalactic felines.

'advanced' belies the sort of casual sentientism that is an embarrassment and a blight on this site, the technology industry and entrepreneurship. It's also irrational since it ignores a massive yet underserved market. Opening line of the elevator pitch - 'It's like Google, but for goo'.

> Opening line of the elevator pitch - 'It's like Google, but for goo'.

Uh, we just pivoted to a Facebook for homogeneous omniscient beings of pure energy.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#66

Post by danielweber »

krapp wrote: post #50
zeteo wrote: post #47

This article is full of misconceptions. Let's address a few of the most egregious ones. >there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather bad at fully understanding such large numbers. There's no obstacle to working with large numbers once you understand powers and logarithms (i.e. pre-calc). Very smart people have looked at the Drake equation and it yields a very wide…

You left out the misconception where FTL travel is even possible. That's probably most likely why we'll never meet aliens... the low likelihood of them being able to harness that level of energy reduced even further by the likelihood of a ship happening to stumble across this particular rock.... and then, further still by them even caring if they find us. Heck, there might be cloud-squid in Jupiter we're not even awa…

You don't need FTL to go to nearby stars. If you built something that traveled at 1% c to the star 5 years away, and then took 500 years to develop enough to launch colony ships of its own, the descendants would cover the entire galaxy from any starting point in 20 million years.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#67

Post by jblz »

jblz wrote: post #45

This article assumes a lot: * The aliens who possess the technological ability to reach Earth are the ones who built it and evolved alongside it. Who's to say they didn't take it by force? * FTL is something that must be developed through technology. (i.e. discounting the possibility of naturally occurring wormholes) * The aliens have no inherent desire for exploration Yes, I've watched too much Sci-fi :)

...also, if you're traveling FTL, then time travel isn't that much of a stretch. So, ya.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#68

Post by danielweber »

asdfadfs wrote: post #11
ebbv wrote: post #2

The idea that advanced aliens wouldn't bother talking to us / visiting us if they could because we're too primitive is obviously wrong. We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet who are far less advanced than ourselves. And it's obvious that if we could travel around the galaxy and we detected life forms on another planet, we would obviously go visit them and check them out. The…

>>The idea that advanced aliens wouldn't bother talking to us / visiting us if they could because we're too primitive is obviously wrong. We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet who are far less advanced than ourselves. Look, there are many ponds of varying sizes, a couple of meters to hundreds of meters in diameter, in the woods near my home. Some of them most likely have life…

If life is so common that alien civs just have their total pick of who to study, then we should see some evidence of all these neighbors.

Remember, civilizations are composed of billions of beings. You only need one being to decide to come study this pond, or otherwise enforce a rule against anyone doing it.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#69

Post by danielweber »

electic wrote: post #53
ebbv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't arguing the aliens would treat us well. They very well might not. But they'd probably make some form of contact with us. That was my only point. I think it's guaranteed. Just think about if we got that technology. If suddenly magically a ship capable of zipping around the galaxy appeared in NASA's hands, other than disassembling it and trying to replicate it, what would we use it for? Looking for other life…

It is not obvious. If aliens are smart enough to get here, they are also smart to observe that contacting us will cause great chaos. We are simply to primitive. We have famine, racism, wars, and overall a lot of issues that do not warrant contact at this time.

Unless there is one galactic hegemon, there's going to be someone who says "fuck it" and decides to come visit.

Unless there's no one.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#70

Post by danielweber »

anywherenotes wrote: post #31
aegiso wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own planet who are far less advanced than ourselves. Actually, as far as our interactions with other life forms go, we either ignore them (intestinal bacteria), keep them away (diseases), exterminate them (pests), or harvest and devour them (farming), or kill them for sport (hunting). The utterly insignificant fraction that become objects of our a…

pretty sure scientists would care about a new breed of cockroach. So it would make sense for some alien scientists, or perhaps just undergrad science majors to come and check out life on different planets.

One big mistake people do is conflate society as a whole with all its members.

Society, as a whole, probably doesn't care about a new cockroach species. But there is someone who does, just on Earth.

Similarly, among any civ that has the basic biological impulses required to become an interstellar civ, there are going to be people who want to branch out on their own, who want to study something on their own, who want to be the first to contact something new. It's all those millions of edge-case members that will do the amazing stuff.

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