Fermi Paradox & the Human/E.T. Condition

a reply to: Cosmic911

There are several reasonable scenarios that allow for a populated, silent universe or galaxy.

An intelligent species could have had a head-start and progressed further down the path of technology than us. Perhaps the environment of our planet has led us to take a different fork in that path than they have? In that context, we've taken the fossil fuel route and perhaps missed the urgency of discovering a different form of usable energy. Here we are in the midst of oil dependence; what if a civilisation never had oil to rely upon? What manner of technology would arise from that?

Our futurists are proposing that our future will be one of biological integration with AI and physical mechanisms. We're already imagining a point in the distant future when consciousness might be seen as an energy matrix (I know! Technobabble terminology) that can be copied ad infinitum and integrated into avatars. At that point, who can say how identifiable a civilisation might be? If something goes that far, might it also choose to remain out of sight from biological species so far down the evolutionary ladder?

There are concepts like Bracewell Probes that could, speculating, be programmed to evade identification. They might have an AI whose purpose (of many) is to block any give-away energy signatures. They could be 'vehicles' that transport iterations of alien consciousnesses that don't want to be identified...where would that leave us?

More comprehensible, perhaps, is the idea that we are not alone and just represent the cutting edge of technological intelligence. Maybe we're the first ever to put a powered object into flight? We may be relatively surrounded by numerous planets and moons that are populated by cultures no further down the path than we were in the Bronze Age.

Type 3 Civs as described by Kaku and Kardashev leave everything so wide open that meaningful speculation is screwed. 'Indistinguishable from magic' is the same as saying we don't have the concepts or terms to even begin to comprehend something that could be right before our eyes.

Personally, I'd prefer to find *proof* of ETI at arm's length. Like the spectra of some light-years-distant planet showing heavy metals in the atmosphere. Or maybe some piece of pocked technology drifting into our local space.

I think our problem is a matter of scale.

we as a race have only been around for a insanely tiny fraction of the assumed age of the universe.
countless other races could have come and gone long before we even evolved even on THIS planet
earth is old enough to have erased every trace of a prior civilisation to ours.

those that are out there may be simply to far away to be detectable to us or use tech to primitive OR to advanced
to be detected by our methods as this time.

or they may be some who simply dont want to be found!
here's one for you Dr J Brandenburg is fairly certain that Mars had a race living on it a few million years ago
that was subjected to what seems like a massive nuclear attack from orbit utterly destroying them and leaving markers in the atmosphere detectable today and around the same time earth experienced one of its worse mass extinction events and we have the same markers in our atmosphere (which we attribute to the weapon testing from the 50's) so perhaps there is or was a space fairing race out there that destroys others as it finds them.
if this were true that's a good reason to hide.

We may have already been visited. There is some compelling evidence/data that get's lost in the avalanche of false/fake/fraud in the UFO/ET community. Really, it's almost too much to sift through. But some compelling video, photo, eye witness, multiple eye witness, radar, military memo/document, whistleblower, and other smaller things-pieces of evidence. They could have already been here and are monitoring us even now. Reading this thread, even now.

There isn't much of a paradox if you take away the one part of the equation most important to the whole problem. Life (let alone intelligent life) may be much less common than guessed at (and "they" are guessing, more or less) in the FP. I'd say the perfect conditions that exist on earth to support life are so rare that they may even be unique...at least in the area of the universe we can detect.

originally posted by: RedParrotHead
There isn't much of a paradox if you take away the one part of the equation most important to the whole problem. Life (let alone intelligent life) may be much less common than guessed at (and "they" are guessing, more or less) in the FP. I'd say the perfect conditions that exist on earth to support life are so rare that they may even be unique...at least in the area of the universe we can detect.

I think that's a 50/50 guess though. I think if I think intelligent life is abundant and you think it's not, we both have an equal chance of being right, until we get more information.

originally posted by: Cosmic911

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
a reply to: Cosmic911

Prove they aren't extraterrestrial craft.

I agree with mistermasterminder the drake equation doesn't give a high estimate of the probability of extraterrestrials.

Yeah, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' I get it. But the burden of proof rests with the person proclaiming a sighting is otherworldly if they want to be taken serious, and not considered a fake or mentally ill. Bob Lazar said much, proved nothing. How's his reputation holding up?

going 7,000 mph and doing a 90° turn without slowing down would kill a human instantly unless they had anti inertia tech oh and they would need antigravity tech too being that they hover with no wings. We are nowhere near having either of those. Those craft aren't ours don't kid your self.

UFO/ET research is more an like a crime investigation. You have to take each case as it's own. Sure you need to look at the big picture and metadata but if you take each case on it's own, it makes more sense, much easier to disgard as fake/fraud or find a case that's an anomaly that you should take a closer look at that can't be explained so easy.

Someone Mentioned Bob Lazar...curios case. You can't discount his story right away either. He new the inside layout of sections of Area 51. He was there. He was in the phone directory of Los Alamos...he was there. He made a rocket car and has a business selling supplies to government agencies. He knew about tests at are 51 and has documented proof that they took place. Interesting case.

a reply to: amazing

That's flawed logic. One of two people believing in something without any scientific proof does not give one a 50/50 chance of being right. This isn't flipping a coin...we already have what, 50+ years worth of information gathered by SETI.

BTW - nobody wants there to be somebodies "out there" more than i do...I just have come to the conclusion that we're probably alone (except for some simple life forms: microbes, bacteria and such), either that or they're all being dicks and not inviting us to the party.

a reply to: Cosmic911

Why would they hide from us?
Just imagine if they tuned into our television broadcasts before actually visiting! they would have no choice but consider us completely insane!
Every ten minutes or so every channel spews out the commercials. Take a real thoughtful look at those commercials!
I wrote a thread about this very subject. Here's part of what I wrote.
Imagine aliens tuned in ans saw the following.

A singing cake telling me to eat it.
Talking vegetables telling me to cook them.
Bowls of talking breakfast cerals.
I'm offered new Ultra absorbent peepee pants so that I can still "dance the night away"
Toothpaste that will cause laser beams to burst from my mouth everytime I smile.
A fridge teeming with little singing plastic fridge men, and I can have buckets of dangerous chemicals to keep me safe from all those giant fang toothed germs (and cause the genocide of the little plastic fridge men!).
And what about the effing great grizly bear trying to sell me car insurance! A GRIZLY BEAR!!!

See what I mean? Now just what conclusions might an alien race come to after realising that we watch this insane nonsense every ten minutes of every day!

originally posted by: RedParrotHead
a reply to: amazing

That's flawed logic. One of two people believing in something without any scientific proof does not give one a 50/50 chance of being right. This isn't flipping a coin...we already have what, 50+ years worth of information gathered by SETI.

BTW - nobody wants there to be somebodies "out there" more than i do...I just have come to the conclusion that we're probably alone (except for some simple life forms: microbes, bacteria and such), either that or they're all being dicks and not inviting us to the party.

I don't see why I don't have just as much chance of being right as you though. I mean, 50 years of Seti is a very small, inadequate drop in the bucket coupled with the billions of years that our galaxy as been here. Just as you have embraced your own theory, I have come to the conclusion that the universe is teaming with evolved life. I could be wrong as could you, but that's why we search and explore and fund research, right? Look where we were in the field of astronomy just 100 years ago. Not a scientist and not a statistician, but I see all the planets that we've just recently discovered that could be habitable and I can't think but how much life there is out there. I don't think we're unique at all.

originally posted by: Alien Abduct

originally posted by: Cosmic911

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
a reply to: Cosmic911

Prove they aren't extraterrestrial craft.

I agree with mistermasterminder the drake equation doesn't give a high estimate of the probability of extraterrestrials.

Yeah, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' I get it. But the burden of proof rests with the person proclaiming a sighting is otherworldly if they want to be taken serious, and not considered a fake or mentally ill. Bob Lazar said much, proved nothing. How's his reputation holding up?

going 7,000 mph and doing a 90° turn without slowing down would kill a human instantly unless they had anti inertia tech oh and they would need antigravity tech too being that they hover with no wings. We are nowhere near having either of those. Those craft aren't ours don't kid your self.

Uh huh. And how exactly do you determine speed and the angle of the 'turn'? Hint: You don't.

Here' a thought I have always had about the paradox and SETI... We have been communicating using the RF spectrum for about 100 years, and since it's the newest thing we have invented, we assume that it is high-tech. We are searching (via SETI) for RF communications all across the spectrum. I propose that one possible reason we can't detect anybody using this mechanism is this...

1. Most civilizations in the cosmos will either be significantly younger than us or significantly older than us.
2. Civilizations more than 100 year younger than us will not have discovered the use of RF frequencies for communications so we can't detect them.
3. Assumption (here's where it gets speculative): The use of the RF spectrum for communications represents a relatively short period in the lifespan of an older more advanced civilization. Imagine a civilization one million years older than us, and that they only used the RF spectrum to communicate for a few hundred years, until a more advanced method was discovered. Think about how short the telegraph's life was in our own history.

Let's plug in some math and see what happens:
1. 50% of civilizations are younger than us so they cannot be detected
2. 50% of civilizations are older than us so they cannot be detected.
2a. Their age ranges from 1 year older than us to 10 billion years older
2b. A civilization outgrows the RF spectrum communications by the time they reach 1 million years old
2c. So now, of that 50% that are older, only 0.01% of them are in their first million years of existence
3. That means that by searching the RF spectrum, we would be capable of detecting a grand total of 0.005% of all existing civilizations out there.

Thoughts?

One recent line of thinking is the Dark Forest Rule. Simply put due to the distances involved between these civilizations, and no way to sort out who would or would not be hostile, he who stays the quietest and strikes first might be civilization's best end game.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

originally posted by: Alien Abduct

originally posted by: Cosmic911

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
a reply to: Cosmic911

Prove they aren't extraterrestrial craft.

I agree with mistermasterminder the drake equation doesn't give a high estimate of the probability of extraterrestrials.

Yeah, 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' I get it. But the burden of proof rests with the person proclaiming a sighting is otherworldly if they want to be taken serious, and not considered a fake or mentally ill. Bob Lazar said much, proved nothing. How's his reputation holding up?

going 7,000 mph and doing a 90° turn without slowing down would kill a human instantly unless they had anti inertia tech oh and they would need antigravity tech too being that they hover with no wings. We are nowhere near having either of those. Those craft aren't ours don't kid your self.

Uh huh. And how exactly do you determine speed and the angle of the 'turn'? Hint: You don't.

RADAR

originally posted by: Alien Abduct
RADAR

Does radar tell you there are stereotypical humanoid Aliens inside?

a reply to: draknoir2don't be silly, RADAR was the answer to the question. The speed at which the craft go when performing sharp instant turns shows anti inertia tech and hover capability with what appears to be some sort of anti gravity tech makes it obvious they aren't ours. We are nowhere near not even close to having this tech.

The OP is suggesting that aliens have not made contact with us. There is plenty of evidence that suggests otherwise.

a reply to: Alien Abduct

That's inferring a lot from a radar blip.

a reply to: Cosmic911

The object of this thread goes beyond the 'suggestion that aliens have not made contact with us.' Anyone failing to see that has a short-sided motive that is not the point of this thread.

Actually I don't think it's that much of a paradox. Life might be common enough in the galaxy/universe, however, per our assumption that we are an "average" world, it stands to reason that most other worlds are about as advanced as we are (yikes). So they are all out there, but we are all in the same boat, so to speak, and thus it's going to be a while before we contact one another. Even if there are other species out there more advanced than we are (and it is statistically likely that they exist) they will be outliers on the curve and therefore rare. The very few which are the most advanced might still only be capable of sublight speed interstellar travel. Perhaps they might be at the far end of the galaxy and so news of them has not propagated to our neck of the woods, so to speak. Even sending radio/light/em signals, even if they sent such a message 50,000 years ago, given the vast distances in our galaxy, their message might not have arrived here yet. Or perhaps we haven't figured out what to look for.

Another possibilty, which I think Neil Degrasse Tyson elucidates perfectly, is that our assumption that ET would want to communicate with us is flawed. It is possible that, as intelligence goes, ours is unremarkable or even somewhat below average. The most advanced, oldest civilizations, especially those capable of interstellar travel and/or communication, might not even regard us as an intelligent/sentient species. IN fact, they might not regard us at all. We might seem like ants to them; not worthy of their notice except perhaps to study. This is terrifying. If they are anything like humans: if they treated us the way humans treat what we view as unintelligent, non-sentient creatures, then should we ever come under their scrutiny, we are in trouble. Maybe it is best if we do not make contact with those more advanced than we, as per Steven Hawking. Some smartest guys in the world think so.

Neil Degrasse Tyson, starting around 8:35


Stephen Hawking, starting around 5:17


Michio Kaku, starting at 1:16

originally posted by: Alien Abduct

The OP is suggesting that aliens have not made contact with us. There is plenty of evidence that suggests otherwise.

I don't believe he is, nor do I think the point was to argue with the "Alienz R Here" crowd.




Cosmic - have you ever read Macroscope by Piers Anthony?