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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#141

Post by ekianjo »

sixQuarks wrote: post #125
Pigo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me. "Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is 'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the inten…

Elon Musk disagrees with that statement. He believes once intelligence gets beyond a certain threshold (which humans have), there are no such things that are beyond understanding. Most people don't know how to write complex math equations, but that doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is.

> doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is

Yet humans clearly fail to understand things like radioactivity (and the risks involved, for good or bad). I'm not sure what Musk thinks is reliable at all in this matter.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#142

Post by XorNot »

agentgt wrote: post #129
rimantas wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the best explanation is the size of the Universe. No other assumptions needed.

Its not the size but rather intelligent entity density. You could have an infinite universe but still have high ratio of contact if the universe has a high density of life forms (think of it as collisions with particles in a large volume).

Compared to the reducing human reproductive rate this is an important point. It's quite likely that somewhere in the regime of 12 billion is all the alive humans there ever will be - even with immortality technology. After all, how many times per 1000 years would you want to have some more children? How many of those people are likely to exist compared to a dormant mass who don't have children?

Now factor in a lack of FTL travel. If it takes thousands of years to go exploring, how many explorers are there likely to be, and how likely are they to stop and setup colonies instead?

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#143

Post by specialist »

bhc3 wrote: post #75
RALaBarge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I am willing to bet that all intelligent life will end up being quite lonely. Unless we find ways to bend space, there is little chance of us ever getting out of our local solar system, let alone galaxy or the local galactic cluster. I am a big fan of science and science fiction, do not get me wrong. I do feel that technology evolves and will surprise even the most tech savvy, but to violate faster than l…

I'm expecting somewhere way down the road, scientists will unlock the secrets to prolonging our lives for nearly forever. They'll stop the telomeres from degrading, come up with ways to address cancer quickly and effectively, etc. At the same time, space travel technology will also have been advanced, allowing for self-sustaining spacecraft that offer protection against the harsh environment of outer space. At that p…

> stop the telomeres from degrading

Both our bodies and minds need to hardened to endure deep space.

10,000 years between stars is a long time to be playing solitaire. The voyagers may need to sleep, hibernate, slow down their metabolism, alter their perception of time, or something, to make the journey bearable.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#144

Post by ekianjo »

rimantas wrote: post #122
agentgt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I generally agree that this is one of the strongest explanations. Especially if you consider the small spectrum of communication we are examining (and thats just electromagnetic for all we know dark energy may provide a superior mode of communication). I just like the entertainment one because its amusing and sort of describe a great portion of our own civilization. The reality I think/hope is there will always b…

For me the best explanation is the size of the Universe. No other assumptions needed.

> For me the best explanation is the size of the Universe

Size, and time of the Universe. Most probably species do not last beyond a couple of million years no matter what, and there may be very little overlap between periods of intelligence even if they were in relatively close area of space.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#145

Post by XorNot »

S4M wrote: post #89
bhc3 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm expecting somewhere way down the road, scientists will unlock the secrets to prolonging our lives for nearly forever. They'll stop the telomeres from degrading, come up with ways to address cancer quickly and effectively, etc. At the same time, space travel technology will also have been advanced, allowing for self-sustaining spacecraft that offer protection against the harsh environment of outer space. At that p…

If you want to speculate, how about the possibility of uploading people's mind to a robot? Let's say that we are able to send outer space a bunch of self replicating robots (they can travel to various planets and build a copy of themselves using the raw materials they can find there). After some time, we have lots of robots at many points in space, then you make a copy of your mind and send it at the speed of light t…

Still a relatively slow way to get around. We have some co-factor here for "median time between alien contacts" which might be thousands of years. In which case they came, they saw, and the people who saw them remembered it as folk tales.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#146

Post by [deleted] »

nicboobees wrote: post #115
thebouv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is millions of dollars for scientific research compared to millions blown on stadiums, or billions on new jet fighters?

Stadiums benefit millions of people. Jet fighters save lives. Finding out that there's water on mars, or some single cell organisms on pluto, does nothing apart from fill a few future text books.

[deleted]

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#147

Post by arglebarnacle »

RALaBarge wrote: post #72
scrumper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for intentional messages, it's certainly conceivable that another civilization with sufficient power simply transmits the message in all direction continuously. I think that scenario would imply a relative scarcity of intelligent life: after all, if a space-faring civilization needs to transmit powerful, omnidirectional signals in the blind, it must be pretty lonely. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that we're not se…

Personally, I am willing to bet that all intelligent life will end up being quite lonely. Unless we find ways to bend space, there is little chance of us ever getting out of our local solar system, let alone galaxy or the local galactic cluster. I am a big fan of science and science fiction, do not get me wrong. I do feel that technology evolves and will surprise even the most tech savvy, but to violate faster than l…

I'm hoping that even though we don't seem to be so lucky, there are other solar systems out there with multiple worlds where intelligent life developed roughly in parallel.

At least someone in the universe would be living out my space opera fantasies!

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#148

Post by logingone »

sixQuarks wrote: post #125
Pigo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like too much assumption to me. The scenario described well by Michio Kaku is the only one that seems probable to me. "Lets say we have an ant hill in the middle of the forest. And right next to the ant hill, they're building a ten-lane super-highway. And the question is 'Would the ants be able to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and the inten…

Elon Musk disagrees with that statement. He believes once intelligence gets beyond a certain threshold (which humans have), there are no such things that are beyond understanding. Most people don't know how to write complex math equations, but that doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is.

Elon Musk is an engineer, not a philosopher, and I stand to be persuaded, but I find using him to counter Michio Kaku ridiculous.

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#149

Post by tosseraccount »

ekianjo wrote: post #141
sixQuarks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk disagrees with that statement. He believes once intelligence gets beyond a certain threshold (which humans have), there are no such things that are beyond understanding. Most people don't know how to write complex math equations, but that doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is.

> doesn't mean they can't understand what mathematics is Yet humans clearly fail to understand things like radioactivity (and the risks involved, for good or bad). I'm not sure what Musk thinks is reliable at all in this matter.

Humans do understand radiation dangers. Why do we have no nuclear war since the atom bomb? Why are there so few deaths from nuclear power plants? Why do people use sunscreen and shield spacecraft?

Re: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100M Initiative to Seek ET

#150

Post by furyofantares »

codeshaman wrote: post #133
furyofantares wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should start exploring the inner space just like we are exploring the outer space. When will we see $100m invested in that ? :) We already have: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-spend-... And I'm sorry to tell you that I think brain science does a good job at explaining perception when intoxicated without invoking "other stuff out there"

Yes yes, the brain, the mapping, the neural network... the physical, chemical, electrical thing that if wired properly would produce consciousness... It would be so easy if it were that easy... And brain science can't explain too much, because it couldn't research these substances, since they're illegal everywhere in the world. Edit: Long story short - take the red pill and you'll see for yourself how little we under…

Brain science has a very long way to go for sure, and legislation had impeded studying certain substances, yes. But there has been research on perception and its limitations and this leads to an understanding where it is not remotely surprising that a substance could cause severe misperceptions undetected by the owner of the brain -- it happens continuously to all brains even when they are not tripping.
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