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In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

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Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#51

Post by rsync »

jandrese wrote: post #22

This is not something I'm worried about. Unless FTL travel is real, the amount of resources necessary to make the trip to kill off/enslave humans makes the entire effort unprofitable. Basically, if you have the ability to travel between star systems, you already have the technology to exist effectively forever in a self contained environment. You can mine asteroids/planets forever in your own solar system for effecti…

"Its like you are thirsty so you build an intercontinental jet plane from scratch using parts from around your house to fly to Japan to steal a single Coke from a 7-11."

The flaw in this analogy is that the you with these capabilities has different, and possibly incomprehensible desires, compared to the you who wants a Coke.

The natives of Central America and Mexico were not aware of how excited those Spaniards would be about Gold and Silver.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#52

Post by dfilppi »

SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #6

I haven't seen any anti-METI argument which counters this: "Humans, Vakoch said, have been using radar, which can purportedly be detected 70 light-years away, since World War II. Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said."

Really? How many habitable exoplanets are within 70 light years, and what are the odds of life (let alone super-advanced space pirates) existing on them? Also a little known fact: only energy travels at light speed. So even in the worst case scenario, they won't be here for a few hundred years.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#53

Post by bovermyer »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #35
bovermyer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating mushrooms in the wild is not even remotely similar to inviting contact from other sentient species.

Was that what the parent comment said?!? I thought it was something about not understanding fear of the unknown. And then like I thought, hey is there a metaphor that might show how sometimes that it would be wise to have some little bit of wariness about the unknown at least? And then I said ah hah, there is and I wrote it down. I'm pretty sure it went something like that.

You can be cautious around something without being afraid of it.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#54

Post by jandrese »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #34
jandrese wrote: post #22

This is not something I'm worried about. Unless FTL travel is real, the amount of resources necessary to make the trip to kill off/enslave humans makes the entire effort unprofitable. Basically, if you have the ability to travel between star systems, you already have the technology to exist effectively forever in a self contained environment. You can mine asteroids/planets forever in your own solar system for effecti…

This is the wrong way to look at it. You're not thirsty for resources. You're protective of them. Imagine if you were aware of giant, angry Americans who were flying to Japan to steal all of your coke and convert all your land and resources into coke manufacturing plants. Do you let the plane in? Do you stop it from traveling at all? Do you glass the surface of America with nuclear weapons? How do you know they won't…

But that makes no sense. You're spending resources protecting against a scenario that is effectively impossible. The term for that is paranoia.

Plus, it doesn't even make sense to try to "protect" yourself because their first move if they even thought like this would be to nuke everything flat with no warning. There's no defense against it. You can't hide either, the signals are already out there, they know where you are.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#56

Post by pmoriarty »

jerf wrote: post #14
SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #6

I haven't seen any anti-METI argument which counters this: "Humans, Vakoch said, have been using radar, which can purportedly be detected 70 light-years away, since World War II. Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said."

The atmosphere point is even more compelling. Earth has been broadcasting with quite non-trivial power "I HAVE LIFE" for about two and a half billion years. Most of the "hostile alien" hypothesis work out to the hostile aliens needing to exterminate all life, not just life that already seems to be intelligent, because you don't know how fast something might become intelligent when you're not looking, so if Earth was…

"The atmosphere point is even more compelling. Earth has been broadcasting with quite non-trivial power "I HAVE LIFE" for about two and a half billion years. Most of the "hostile alien" hypothesis work out to the hostile aliens needing to exterminate all life, not just life that already seems to be intelligent, because you don't know how fast something might become intelligent when you're not looking, so if Earth was going to be wiped out, it should have been a very, very long time ago."

Even if they're out to destroy all life, they might prioritize killing intelligent life first, as it could be a threat (or for some other reason).

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#57

Post by jandrese »

kmm wrote: post #48
CharlesColeman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming aliens prioritize profit. Perhaps they're technologically advanced and have everything they need, but have deeply internalized the logic of using preemptive strikes to protect themselves from potential future threats. Such a strike might not even be that expensive or need FTL technology: just send out a few one-way nuclear-armed suicide drones at 0.12 c [1], via a path that obscures their origin (e.g.…

Or send a chunk of metal at near light speed. Things in space move very predictably for thousands of years, and as the projectile only barely trails the signal of its departure, it would come as a total surprise even for very advanced civilizations. Let's say an advanced civilization around Sirius wants to take us out. A chunk of metal (or anything really) of about 1000 metric tonnes would be completely invisible unt…

This is kind of like worrying that God might just decide to kill everyone some day. There's nothing you can do about it, so it's best to just forget about it and hope that by the time a civilization is advanced enough to build such technology they also have advanced ethics enough to not use it.

This used to be a common SciFi staple, that a civilization advanced enough to travel the stars must have solved their social issues first or they would have destroyed themselves with their own technology. Basically as the cost of ending all life on the planet drops you need to advance your ethics fast enough to prevent it from happening. Eventually everybody is carrying around pocket antimatter batteries and either everybody is well adjusted or everybody is dead.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#58

Post by CharlesColeman »

kmm wrote: post #48
CharlesColeman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming aliens prioritize profit. Perhaps they're technologically advanced and have everything they need, but have deeply internalized the logic of using preemptive strikes to protect themselves from potential future threats. Such a strike might not even be that expensive or need FTL technology: just send out a few one-way nuclear-armed suicide drones at 0.12 c [1], via a path that obscures their origin (e.g.…

Or send a chunk of metal at near light speed. Things in space move very predictably for thousands of years, and as the projectile only barely trails the signal of its departure, it would come as a total surprise even for very advanced civilizations. Let's say an advanced civilization around Sirius wants to take us out. A chunk of metal (or anything really) of about 1000 metric tonnes would be completely invisible unt…

The problem with that is that targeting may be much more difficult. A passive weapon could be thrown off target over long distances due to gravitational perturbations or survey inaccuracies, and would likely have been mistargeted in the first place due to civilizational changes at the target (kinda like the problem with aiming flak, your target can move unpredictably between when you fire your gun and when your shell arrives, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRJC2mkrZks).

An active weapon could be targeted at a solar system too far away for an accurate preparatory survey, then identify and target rocky planets and large artificial structures once it arrives. It could also perform course-corrections in transit, and remain substantially dormant for much of the trip for stealth and surprise.

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#59

Post by rdiddly »

"Any predatory civilization would probably have detected us by now simply by analyzing our atmosphere, they reason. Humans, Vakoch said, have been using radar, which can purportedly be detected 70 light-years away, since World War II. Television and radio signals would long ago have signaled our presence to malevolent space ruffians, he said."

That's how he justifies the broadcasting of signals, but take the next logical step: It also indicates either that nobody is listening, or that they're unable or unwilling to contact us, or that they're already in the process of trying. In any case, it's hard to imagine the METI messages would change anything. By that same argument. And I mean why would the intentional/contrived message be any more persuasive than all our "honest" and un-self-conscious messages to each other over the years? Anybody who was curious could have learned everything by now.

I also would like to call out the typical assumption of a "technically-advanced race of aliens" and whatnot. The aliens always seem to be technically advanced, don't they? In other words, like us, but more so. That's a mirror you're looking at, and it's how you recognize something man-made. Homo sapiens is the one with the fetish for techne. It seems the aliens we imagine are always either similar to us (which we like) but better, or else they're dissimilar, and predictably worse/more evil (and tend to look like combinations of creatures from THIS planet that we don't like... insects and reptiles figuring prominently). That's more a mirror of our dislikes, but still a mirror. Aliens are always created in our image, and that shows an embarrassing narcissism & lack of imagination. We're just projecting our hopes & fears. Keep your mind open.

One more nitpick: "We won’t know for about 25 years, assuming the communique is sent at the speed of light." Pretty good assumption, given that it's not possible to send EM waves at any other speed!

Re: In search of ET: Fear of what’s out there causes split among space scientists

#60

Post by sbuttgereit »

mrob wrote: post #40
sbuttgereit wrote: post #19

I think the fears of some ET empire with Darth Vader (or similar) at the head is very misplaced. Just think of the economics... "let's go exploit that world 10 LY away from us that we don't fully understand and which will still takes us an insane amount of time to enslave and milk resources from!" What a scalable strategy given the size of space... one might even say it's astronomically large! The resource consumptio…

The motivation isn't exploiting Earth resources, but killing us before we can kill them. Most humans don't believe non-human species have any right to life, so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life? Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them. And even if the aliens are convince…

"so why would sapient aliens believe humans have any right to life?"

I'm suggesting that it doesn't matter and that there are other, more significant factors that render this concern moot.

"Humans have a non-zero probability of growing powerful enough to be an existential threat to the aliens, so the safest option is to preemptively eliminate them."

Non-zero, but near zero. The same sorts of constraints on resource coordination and how much one can likely play with the physics involved not only constrain our would be destroyers, but constrains us as well. Any aliens advanced enough to hear our signals and have the realistic ability to contemplate a move against us can probably do the math: the likely threat of any alien civilization is from a practical perspective, zero, to them or us. The costs are too high, the barriers are too high, the risks are too remote, the rewards are too low.

But here's a different perspective. While hand-wringing about the risks, we completely ignore the possible rewards of actually making contact.

Given that the benefits for all involved in knowledge transfer could well be non-zero and is much more likely to be accomplished. The only issue there is that it's likely to be very, very slow. So maybe they have knowledge about achieving commercial scale fusion energy production. Maybe they help us to understand the dangers of recursive AI (which I also think are overblown). Maybe they can help us understand how to colonize our own solar system (much more realistic than interstellar colonization). Maybe they can help us escape our tendency to indulge in distinctly emotional responses, especially when confronted with the unknown, and rely a little more on reason and rationality...

If I were to gamble on this topic, I'd bet on the more possible, optimistic outcome than on the less likely doomsday scenario. And in the meantime, I'm going to hop into my car (and thereby taking a real risk) and pick up my son from school. Cheers!

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