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Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

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Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#121

Post by chess_buster »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #42
me_me_me wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we though? Universe is huge. Wars on earth are waged over scares resources. If we are capable of reaching aliens would we really be incentivized to fight them while there are so many resources available elsewhere?

I think it's a cold war situation. In the early years, sure, no problem. But conceivably the pace of resource utilization will increase as well. Eventually they will conflict. Worse, greedy civilizations would probably be selected for. And how long before random differences and exponential growth mean the other side gets an overwhelming power advantage? Historically in human societies, that is essentially never a goo…

Maybe civilisations will merge. I just had my double LOR'xin with extra pumpkin spice. Later I will resume work on my ansible station for the Y'norxa-Wallmart Corporation… hopefully I can push some lines of lox-lang to production today.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#122

Post by baja_blast »

godelski wrote: post #104
koheripbal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but if you were a billion years old and had seen ants before, it's unlikely that you'd take interest in any specific ant hill you walk by.

Idk, there are still people that study ants. Both professionally and as a hobby. Just because you don't care doesn't mean someone doesn't. I don't know why the same wouldn't be true for aliens. Unless those aliens are ant like (hive mind...ish)

Not to mention there are endless number of nature documentaries on Ants. If ants were not interesting then the National Geographic channel wouldn't have ant documentaries as often as they do.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#123

Post by skissane »

vl wrote: post #112
vmception wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fermi paradox does convey this.

Basically there is not need and motivation for humans to colonize anything outside the Earth. It's just too far, too expensive and too uncomfortable. Humans evolved specifically to live on Earth, to live somewhere else, they need to be severely altered. Now you just seeded civilization of another species, that might turn out to be confrontational or outright hostile. Why would you do that? Too see how well this works…

> Basically there is not need and motivation for humans to colonize anything outside the Earth. It's just too far, too expensive and too uncomfortable.

There is definitely motivation. Some people want to colonise Mars. Not everybody, but likely enough people to make it happen. Elon Musk wants to make it happen, and while there is no guarantee he'll get his wish, I think he has a decent chance of succeeding.

And establishing a permanent base on the Moon probably falls into a similar category. Moon has certain attractions over Mars – e.g. much more feasible target for space tourism, as a near-Earth testbed for developing technologies that may then be deployed to more distant parts of the solar system.

If the US (or a US-led multinational consortium excluding China) establishes a permanent base on the Moon and on Mars, that would increase the likelihood that China would do it too, in order to prove themselves equal to the US. (In principle other countries might feel the same urge, but China is possibly the only country who feels that urge strongly enough, and has sufficient resources, to actually pull it off; the US policy of excluding China from space ventures also gives China a motivation that does not apply to many other countries with which the US is willing to cooperate.)

Whether there is a "need" – the boundary between "wants" and "needs" is a value judgement. People who want to colonise Mars likely have different values from people like you who don't see it as worthwhile.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#124

Post by Osiris »

jcims wrote: post #114
deeeeplearning wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the age of the Milky Way, a civilization using even slow sub light travel with generation ships or autonomous probes could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over. Why has no one done that? Hence the paradox.

I'm fairly confident we'll eventually find that our form of life is the result of intentional or unintentional colonization of Earth. If you look at how quickly life began after the oceans settled out, then look at precisely how complex even the most primitive forms of life are (in terms of likelihood of stochastic construction to the point of sophistication to support evolutionary mechanisms) it seems incredibly unl…

This is an interesting idea. Look at how religion explains the origin of life: A lifeform not from this planet, far more advanced than us, gave "the breath of life", and calls us their "children".

The vastness of this universe leads me to believe that it's impossible to dismiss the idea that there is an intelligence/lifeform sufficiently advanced as to appear to be a God to us.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#125

Post by ceejayoz »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #98
ceejayoz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motivations lead to the justifications. The problem with interstellar warfare is, outside the "Dark Forest" concept of "kill everyone just in case", there aren't all that many motivations that seem to make sense. Any interstellar species probably doesn't really need to steal planets, resources, etc.

If planets in the “goldilocks zone” are extremely rare and they want to “terraform” (xenoform?) those planets then thats a motivation.

1. That seems very unlikely, from what we've found so far. We'll know more as things like the JWST come online, but right now it seems like planets of all sorts are everywhere.

2. Any civilization capable of interstellar travel is likely not to care all that much about a narrow band of natural habitability. They've already solved harder problems.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#126

Post by tzs »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #71
bena wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not well. It makes the assumptions that all of the problems with space travel are logistically possible.

Given the age of the Milky Way, a civilization using even slow sub light travel with generation ships or autonomous probes could have colonized the entire galaxy many times over. Why has no one done that? Hence the paradox.

It could be that none of them have seen any point in doing so.

Generally on Earth colonization has happened in order to provide a tangible economic benefit to those supporting the colonization effort. With someplace that you can only travel to and from by slow generation ship its hard to find any such economic benefit in having a colony there.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#127

Post by swebs »

tsimionescu wrote: post #116
baja_blast wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be multiple abiogenesis events? It seems once life evolves it can survive a lot and has all extinction events. The fact life occurred almost immediately after it formed suggests abiogenesis is common and more the rule as opposed to the exception. Multicellular life on the other hand could be much rarer since it took billions of years to happen.

If abiogenesis is common, we should expect it to keep happening everywhere around us. We should have noticed at least a few instances by now, given that we have been trying explicitly to produce it. So at the very least, we can say that the conditions for the apparition of life and the conditions for the proliferation of life seem to be quite different. Also, given the amount of isolated biomes on earth, if abiogenes…

The entire planet is coated with bacteria and bacteriaphages. It's entirely possible that any new life created through abiogenesis is almost immediately outcompeted by evolved microbes.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#128

Post by delecti »

tsimionescu wrote: post #116
baja_blast wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be multiple abiogenesis events? It seems once life evolves it can survive a lot and has all extinction events. The fact life occurred almost immediately after it formed suggests abiogenesis is common and more the rule as opposed to the exception. Multicellular life on the other hand could be much rarer since it took billions of years to happen.

If abiogenesis is common, we should expect it to keep happening everywhere around us. We should have noticed at least a few instances by now, given that we have been trying explicitly to produce it. So at the very least, we can say that the conditions for the apparition of life and the conditions for the proliferation of life seem to be quite different. Also, given the amount of isolated biomes on earth, if abiogenes…

What would abiogenesis even look like today? Some random molecules bouncing together in just the right way and spontaneously forming some organic compounds. And then a bacteria comes along and eats it, or it encounters the huge concentration of environmental oxygen and reacts.

Going from inorganic sludge to life isn't "an event", it's multiple events over millions of years until the right chemicals get together and form something that can reasonably be called "a thing" that can even be alive. It only makes sense for that process to have happened once, because the resulting life would have outcompeted any future proto-life.

Re: Aliens on 1k nearby stars could see us, new study suggests

#130

Post by jcims »

Osiris wrote: post #124
jcims wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly confident we'll eventually find that our form of life is the result of intentional or unintentional colonization of Earth. If you look at how quickly life began after the oceans settled out, then look at precisely how complex even the most primitive forms of life are (in terms of likelihood of stochastic construction to the point of sophistication to support evolutionary mechanisms) it seems incredibly unl…

This is an interesting idea. Look at how religion explains the origin of life: A lifeform not from this planet, far more advanced than us, gave "the breath of life", and calls us their "children". The vastness of this universe leads me to believe that it's impossible to dismiss the idea that there is an intelligence/lifeform sufficiently advanced as to appear to be a God to us.

Totally agree. Joscha Bach laid out a few interesting ideas around this at the end of a podcast.

If you have a few minutes start here for a broader context (starts of wholly unrelated but with some great concepts):

https://youtu.be/P-2P3MSZrBM?t=10084

If not, he drills into it here:

https://youtu.be/P-2P3MSZrBM?t=10400

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