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Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

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Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#91

Post by powertower »

api wrote: post #43

This is just a bunch of idle speculation. We can't speculate on the motives of aliens at all. Look at how hard it is to discern the motives of other humans, and now tell me you're going to discern the motives of something biologically completely unlike us? You can't assume they're rational motives either. Why should aliens be incapable of something like religion, egotism, mass delusion, or hedonic desires? As far as…

> You can't assume they're rational motives either. Why should aliens be incapable of something like religion, egotism, mass delusion, or hedonic desires?

I think the question would be if irrationality, egoism, delusion, and hedonism allows (or prevents) a species to advanced to FTL travel.

They might also have an idea that the only life that should exist in this universe is theirs. Or they might believe that connecting with all other sentient beings is a primary goal in existence. Or they might be incredibly altruistic and want to help and benefit all others.

Though the author's other points are all valid... There is no reason to invade this planet for its resources when a few asteroids in their own solar system contains everything they need.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#92

Post by iamthepieman »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #41
roc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the level of interest/affection we have for intelligent animals on our own planet isn't exactly reassuring. We know/strongly suspect dolphins/whales/etc are intelligent. But we don't care enough about what they might have to say to really try to communicate them. And we know gorillas are intelligent. We even know we can teach them to communicate on a simplistic level -- but we don't really do it. We just d…

I think there's at least some reason to be a little more optimistic. Aliens technologically capable of visiting us are likely to have progressed through much of the same social development we have, and more (assuming that the pattern that has held for our species is common, which seems reasonable). We are still doing terrible things to each other, but not as often as we used to; I think it's likely that aliens would…

I don't think it's reasonable at all to assume that the pattern of our species is universal or even common.

The problem with the assumption is that our sample-size, as far as our species is concerned, is one. The very concept of society may not exist for an alien that is a single collective intelligence or for one that has simply developed a very advanced set of instinctual responses without higher-level thought.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#93

Post by johngalt »

webwielder wrote: post #13

Another day, another instance of someone saying "Stephen Hawkings" or "Jony Ives". The biggest impediment in my mind to alien contact is time. Intelligent life could have evolved any time in the past 13 billion years or any time in the next googol years. The probability that we would cross temporal paths in our few thousand years of viable existence seems low.

Exactly, other life would be a minimum of a million years ahead of us or a million years behind. Using earth as a reference. Life has been on earth for 4 billion years, and nothing remotely interesting until the last 0.5 billion years. All of human civilization has occurred in the last .000012 billion years.

From our perspective 'Alien life' will be either the faintest traces of ancient ruins or pond scum.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#94

Post by TheSOB88 »

old-gregg wrote: post #87
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…

And this is the top rated comment? None of these "misconceptions" have much to do with the main point OP is making: we think too small, and we pick the wrong analogies and frameworks when we discuss an alien visit. If anything, your post is yet another manifestation of this. It simply doesn't matter what happened to native americans, when the entire Columbus story does not apply. And what do your comments about googl…

Shut up, asshole. You're so disgusted with the Internet? Go eat a turnip. Then, study Ryan McGreal's response as the proper HN way to say what you were trying to say.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#95

Post by tylee78 »

katbyte wrote: post #34
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…

Not to mention they may have religious or cultural reasons to contact/convert/kill any other form of intelligent life.

indeed. again, looking at world affairs, that might be a greater motivational force than anything else.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#96

Post by coldtea »

pekk wrote: post #84
davedx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the 100,000 years number to get to another star?

Where do you get any number? It's a back of the envelope, order-of-magnitude thing. We don't have anything close to faster-than-light spacecraft and there's no reason to think we will in the near future, except for pure religious hope.

>Where do you get any number?

By studying the actual quantities involved?

>It's a back of the envelope, order-of-magnitude thing.

No, that's not how you get "any number". Just some of them, the more sloppy ones.

The nearest star is like 5 light years away. With 1/10 of the speed of light that's like 50 years. Wanna make it 1/100 and 500 years?

In any case much less than the 100,000 years estimation.

>We don't have anything close to faster-than-light spacecraft and there's no reason to think we will in the near future, except for pure religious hope.

First, we don't need "faster than light" to make it to there to less than 100,000 years.

Second, we actually DO have some ideas about that, too:

http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-...

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#97

Post by unclebucknasty »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #63

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. W…

Right, or a coherent logical basis that we would understand.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#98

Post by jessriedel »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #56
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…

The author's central thesis - that aliens who are advanced enough to send an invasion to earth but not advanced enough to get the resources they need by other means is highly implausible - doesn't rest on the throwaway points with which you're quibbling.

If you don't understand enough to know that the extremely small probabilities that have been argued for abiogenesis can completely overwhelm the large number of planets in the universe--so much that you dismiss it out of hand--this is a bad sign of the author's competence on this topic.

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#99

Post by jacobparker »

pekk wrote: post #84
davedx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get the 100,000 years number to get to another star?

Where do you get any number? It's a back of the envelope, order-of-magnitude thing. We don't have anything close to faster-than-light spacecraft and there's no reason to think we will in the near future, except for pure religious hope.

> It's a back of the envelope, order-of-magnitude thing.

You... need to work on that.

There are plenty of stars within 14 light years. https://www.google.ca/search?client=ubuntu&hs=HNq&ch...

If you took 100,000 years that would be a speed of 0.00014c. That is pretty pessimistic - we have put objects into space that are travelling away from earth faster than that already! (Yada yada accleration :).)

At 0.1c you can go 14 lightyears in 140 years. There are stars closer than this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars#Map_of_ne...

Re: Why We'll Never Meet Aliens

#100

Post by [deleted] »

old-gregg wrote: post #87
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…

And this is the top rated comment? None of these "misconceptions" have much to do with the main point OP is making: we think too small, and we pick the wrong analogies and frameworks when we discuss an alien visit. If anything, your post is yet another manifestation of this. It simply doesn't matter what happened to native americans, when the entire Columbus story does not apply. And what do your comments about googl…

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