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Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

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Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#151

Post by [deleted] »

HilbertSpace wrote: post #47
exratione wrote: post #19

A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…

Possible answer: First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago. Second, nearly every such civilization long ago found much better means of communications than we know about. Third, they realize that trying to communicate via radio is silly and use much better means we don't know about. Net, they are out there and communicating, but we don't hear them and they don't hear us or…

[deleted]

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#152

Post by rbanffy »

d5tryr wrote: post #60
asdkl234890 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also space is really BIG, and no one can go faster than light.

BIG space doesn't solve the exponentially-reproducing colonist issue though...

Plus, if an exponentially-reproducing civilization appeared even in a neighboring galaxy a couple million years ago, we'd probably be able to notice something very strange.

If it appeared in this galaxy, we'd probably never have evolved.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#153

Post by gizmo »

HilbertSpace wrote: post #47
exratione wrote: post #19

A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox: 1) Fermi Paradox Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 2) The Outer Bounds…

Possible answer: First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago. Second, nearly every such civilization long ago found much better means of communications than we know about. Third, they realize that trying to communicate via radio is silly and use much better means we don't know about. Net, they are out there and communicating, but we don't hear them and they don't hear us or…

> First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio, did it millions of years ago

So then we'd expect to receive signals from civilizations that are a few million light years away. Yet we don't see those signals.

We're too young a civilization to be spotted by other life forms (as you said, they'd have to be within a 100 light years or so). But when we look at space in any direction it looks dead. Just background radiation.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#154

Post by rbanffy »

georgieporgie wrote: post #2

Old (2006), Luddite-licious, and awfully full of presumed universality. Of course we've transitioned into a virtual economy (though we haven't): the virtual economy didn't exist, and neither did the ability to provide intangible services to the degree that is possible now. And of course an MIT engineer goes into video games, how many can NASA possibly employ? How many engineers were designing boring old toasters and…

> how many can NASA possibly employ?

If we are to develop easy space access, not nearly enough.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#155

Post by Jach »

sandee wrote: post #88

"We have already shifted .., from physics to psychology as the value-driver and resource-allocator. " While not agreeing to the article broadly, i agree to the statement above. Infact, i believe this is a desirable thing and we should see more of this in future. Past 200 years were about discovering the physics of things. The next 200 years would be about the discovering the working of "mind" which makes physics disc…

We may have a long way to go, but I don't think mind-science is being preferred just yet. I'd be surprised to find out we've ever had or are considering a $9bn project specifically to find out something narrow about the brain. (If you believe some people it will take about a quadrillion dollars to build a fully general AI but...) I also see no reason why it would take another 200 years from now to understand the brain at least as well as we currently understand fundamental physics. Especially since it's not like we're starting from scratch, and especially because science progress doesn't work so linearly.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#156

Post by gizmo »

freshhawk wrote: post #75
firefoxman1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they're so advanced, they probably still have radio receivers somewhere though. They should be able to receive our signals and reply with some sort of super advanced method that appears as radio waves so that we can receive them, but that travel much faster so it doesn't take a thousand years to reach us.

I like the idea that these advanced civilizations are actually all around us and just don't interact with us at all because we are too stupid/too boring/not ready/etc.

Then we presume that all these advanced civilizations are somehow living peacefully together AND that they all agree not to mess with earth. That's extraordinarily unlikely. Evolution isn't good at producing life forms that peacefully co-exist.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#157

Post by rbanffy »

wisty wrote: post #28
luser001 wrote: post #4

Almost everything good and bad that humans have done is due to the drive of a SMALL number of (or single) individuals (American Decl. of Independence, Soviet revolution, Indian freedom struggle, race to colonize the world, WW2, 9/11, Iraq invasion). That is why it doesn't matter if 99.999% of the world is pre-occupied with one mindvirus or other. It's the 1-in-100k person who really takes humanity to the next level o…

The whole "great men made history" meme is kind of discredited. It's true to a point, and it's certainly a lot more interesting (therefore easy to remember) if you say that WWII was Hitler vs. Churchill and Stalin, but it's not entirely correct. In science, it might just be 1% of the top 1% who make the big breakthroughs - how many times did one guy make more than one really huge breakthrough? I can think of one big…

I wouldn't use "great", just "weird enough not to be infected by the mind virus du jour".

We depend on weird people.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#158

Post by majmun »

two other possible solution:

- there are many advanced civilizations in our galaxy, and each tries to colonize whole galaxy, but it takes much longer than 100 million years. because of competition and other unknown reasons.

- colonization is not done as we taught, we are not experienced in planetary colonization.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#159

Post by uptown »

balbeit wrote: post #90
freshhawk wrote: post #82

I really did not expect this much resistance on HN to a fairly classical solution to the fermi paradox. Mostly it's spun in a more positive "retreat into virtual reality" type situation but it's the same thing. We have no idea how humans will react to the ability to sate every desire and wish artifically. It's not just hyper-porn and the xbox 720, this would apply to the desire for exploration, solving hard problems,…

But by having people click on those ads, the companies that are advertising (which could be and are companies actively engaged in "physical" products) are acquiring paying customers and thus have greater ability to fund their products. SpaceX, Boeing, GM, and Victoria Secret need revenue sources to create their 'non-virtual-reality' products, and marketing/advertising creates a revenue source. If they had a net loss…

That's only because we live in a world that's built around the principles of commerce and capitalism where activities are lubricated by money. There's no reason to expect that the same system exists in alien worlds.

Re: Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens

#160

Post by rbanffy »

eru wrote: post #91
ballstothewalls wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely legitimate, right? There must be a most advanced civilization. Why can't we be it?

Yes, that's possible. It just goes against the Copernican Principle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle ), and that's why many people are not happy with that explanation.

Well... Someone always wins the lottery.

You can also twist it around: if we were the first ones, what would we see?

One can also imagine the window between the dawn of technology and becoming undetectable is short enough the odds of finding a peer are very small.

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