Why ETs Have Not Shown Up Yet, And How We Can Say "We're Ready"

mysterioustranger

Why do you assume they are not here already?

I think they tend to leave underdeveloped, cruel species to themselves, because compassion cant be taught. If its taught, youre just teaching someone how to emulate some kind of action, probably by telling them that they themselves will be better for doing it to give them motivation.

And that precisely is why compassion cannot be taught, because if someone is "being compassionate" because they believe or have been taught they themselves will benefit from it, thats not being compassionate at all; thats being fake.

Compassion really has to be learned by the individual in an individual way. Some guidance can be given, but it is vastly an individual effort.

ETA- Also, why I think they have compassion, is because I dont think cruel races get very far. Cruelty is a self-dooming aspect of a species, and given enough high technology, it will destroy itself with it.

Just my opinion.

inquisitive1977
reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

 

You know Alice your post might have far more assumptions it seems.

You assume our little galaxy is not filled with life or it seems that you assumd we are the only intelligent life in it.

You either assume that humans are the most advanced or you assume other civilizations no matter how much older or how much more knowledge they have are not ever able to find answers to travelling such vast distances. (This assumption is far fetched considering that even we have theories being tested right now that might solve that issue such as warp drive)

You also assume for us to have a real chance at contact we must occupy our entire galaxy. That seems the craziest notion of all especially considering we keep learning the chances for finding life even in our own tiny little solar system are getting higher and higher. With possible flowing water on mars and possible water geysers on that icy moon (going blank on name). The chances of us finding life beyond earth keep increasing the more we learn in our own tiny litle solar system.

Let's break this down even further.
Let's pretend that we can travel instantaneously. Zap, and we're there, wherever "there" might be.

Now, on top of that, let's pretend we can know everything there is to know about a solar system in ONE Single second.

Combine the two, and with instant travel, plus only one second at every single star in just our galaxy, it would take OVER 12,000 YEARS to survey our galaxy.

That's instant travel and staying for only ONE SECOND.
Now, try applying that to more realistic speeds of travel, and more realistic durations of visitation.

How about the rest of the Universe?

Well, with instant travel and only ONE SECOND of visitation at every single star in the Universe, it would take way beyond Hundreds of Trillions of times longer than the universe is currently Old.
The Universe would be dead Hundreds of Trillions of times over before you finished even a small fraction of a survey ... while at the same time, the Universe is still changing all around you.

That's with INSTANT travel and staying for only ONE SECOND.

Even if our own galaxy were swarming with life, just our galaxy, the distances are STILL so vast, and our little solar system so unremarkable; quite a substantial distance from the more urban concentration of stars closer toward the core, way out here toward the end of one of the arms out of several arms, the likelihood of anyone else bumping into us, especially factoring in TIME SCALES, is so small, it's extremely unlikely.

An what's this "More Evolved" I'm always hearing about?
It's ridiculous.
Dinosaurs had HUNDREDS of Millions of years of evolution and they couldn't even knit a sweater.
Time is not necessarily an indicator of advancement. Technological societies could very well have upper limits to technology and cognition.

The Galaxy and the Universe is NOT SMALL, and the timescales involved, even with practical speeds of the sorts we're familiar with in fictions like Star Wars and Star Trek are still prohibitively SLOW.

Back to that instant travel and one second solar survey, let's consider someone had those abilities and found us ... 10,000 years ago. Meh. Nothing all that interesting they probably haven't seen before, so, maybe next time around ... a few thousand years from now when they get back around to us, sure, maybe, possibly, perhaps, if we haven't driven ourselves into extinction by then.

One needs think in timescales of Thousands, Hundreds of Thousands and Millions of years, all the while the whole of the Universe is still in motion and changing all around us the entire time.
By the time you actually discover something somewhere, something else somewhere else is probably extinct, and some lifeless dead rock you looked at last week that you won't see for another million years is starting to develop slime that might one day talk.

Why are we not ready? The better question is in this tiny picture of the Universe.


You see a tiny glimpse of billions upon billions of stars with as many or more planets. We have no idea where or if the Universe ends or even where its' center is.

Now, Earth is just a very tiny, tiny, blue dot somewhere out there in the vastness of this universe.

Point, if ET even does exist (Intelligent ET), then there exists trillions of reasons why they have not found us or have even cared to find us.

The picture above is Disclosure! It discloses that earth is just a tiny grain of sand sitting in the Sahara Desert. If found, it will be by pure luck. Disclosure is our responsibilty of finding them......Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.

Peace!!

OneManArmy
reply to post by CaticusMaximus

 

We are so far from ready, its not even funny.

Why do you think a ET species would care about whether we are "ready" as opposed to caring about their own plans and needs? What was Hernan de Cortes about?

We will meet ET's when they can come here, and when there's something in it for them to do so.

Lets pretend I invent a technology that allows me to travel anywhere in the galaxy. I discover a planet that's breathtakingly beautiful and decide to make it my home. The only problem is there are no animals - just plant life. After a while I get lonely and decide to share this nirvana with others. So I head back to earth to find companions.

However, there's one species I wouldn't invite, because I *know* they'll f##k it up. I would imagine that aliens that have knowledge of us would probably see it the same way.



We're a bit like that kid that ruins it for all the others by stealing their toys - not really ready for social integration yet.

reply to post by mbkennel


in this big fat fishbowl of a universe one question to ask is , during its ongoing continuing persistance, has it ever spawned a species that can traverse its length and breadth in a teleportic way ,and if so do they have the moral fortitude to resist blubbing and bragging rituals..? how fast would that knowledge spread from its inception?

funBox

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Many more assumptions there and all not very supportable. Look at us right now with our extremely limited knowledge, yet we have discovered thousands of extra solar planets. We have imaged and determined atmosphere on some. Now (granted this is an assumption but contuing from yours) imagine a more advanced civilization able to travel vast distances quickly. A civilization like that will not need to visit every star to gather information. They would be able to scan or possibly directly image planents 100s even 1000s of light years away. When they discover something interesting (such as life) they would then spend resaources to visit.

No one said all life is definitely going to evolve or develop intelligence. We are living proof that life can develop intelligence though and assuming we are so special among the extreme vastness of the universe is quite conceded.

On the other hand no one could say if given the right circumstances dinosaurs couldnt evolve intelligence. Maybe they would have at a different speed and vastly slower than us. Than it would be possible for other lifeforms to develop vastly faster than us.

Any assumption of a limit to knowledge, development and technology is greatly short sighted. Throughout history those with limited imagination have tried to state things as facts regarding possible development. We would never develop flight at one point, we would never exit our atmosphere and we would never visit the moon. If those people would have been taken at their word and as absolute fact then the only limit we would have seen is what we imposed on ourselves.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


I have a feeling it has to do with non-locality. We're connected with them mentally because we share genes and I'm sure they've mastered a trick up their sleeve or two for sure by now as far as faster than light travel. Could be instant. Why not? As you say, the chances of them finding us is slim and I agree. That's why it makes more sense that they've been here before us, probably created us and have been keeping tabs on us all along. It's the simplest answer.

reply to post by ItDepends


chances of them finding us in this deserted little corner of one tiny little galaxy is slim to none. that's why it makes more sense that they were already here to begin with and decided to make a new species (us!) to help them do their work and build beautiful and gigantic structures all over the planet and then maybe felt guilty that creating a self-aware species was a tricky endeavor and created all sorts of moral dilemmas for them so they decided to take a backseat and let us little humans fend for ourselves but we are pretty stupid and lazy and need them to help us here and there along the way? why not that scenario?

bottleslingguy
reply to post by ItDepends

 

chances of them finding us in this deserted little corner of one tiny little galaxy is slim to none. that's why it makes more sense that they were already here to begin with and decided to make a new species (us!) to help them do their work and build beautiful and gigantic structures all over the planet and then maybe felt guilty that creating a self-aware species was a tricky endeavor and created all sorts of moral dilemmas for them so they decided to take a backseat and let us little humans fend for ourselves but we are pretty stupid and lazy and need them to help us here and there along the way? why not that scenario?

I obviously cannot say your premise is impossible. However, based upon my premise, the unknown enormity of the Universe, for an Advanced Intelligent civilization to have found our exceptionally tiny blue speck, and then come here, do DNA changes to create us and then to just leave us be.....seems highly unlikely and implausible. Especially with no known artifacts for us to know that we are not alone for certain.

As I believe above, the vastness of the universe, which we are yet to comprehend, and for another civilization to find this tiny small grain of sand amongst the trillions of stars, planets and countless galaxies and solar systems, the odds are full of thousdands of zeros at the chance. Impossible no, probably not, yes.

inquisitive1977
reply to post by AliceBleachWhite

 

Many more assumptions there and all not very supportable. Look at us right now with our extremely limited knowledge, yet we have discovered thousands of extra solar planets. We have imaged and determined atmosphere on some. Now (granted this is an assumption but contuing from yours) imagine a more advanced civilization able to travel vast distances quickly. A civilization like that will not need to visit every star to gather information. They would be able to scan or possibly directly image planents 100s even 1000s of light years away. When they discover something interesting (such as life) they would then spend resaources to visit.

No one said all life is definitely going to evolve or develop intelligence. We are living proof that life can develop intelligence though and assuming we are so special among the extreme vastness of the universe is quite conceded.

On the other hand no one could say if given the right circumstances dinosaurs couldnt evolve intelligence. Maybe they would have at a different speed and vastly slower than us. Than it would be possible for other lifeforms to develop vastly faster than us.

Any assumption of a limit to knowledge, development and technology is greatly short sighted. Throughout history those with limited imagination have tried to state things as facts regarding possible development. We would never develop flight at one point, we would never exit our atmosphere and we would never visit the moon. If those people would have been taken at their word and as absolute fact then the only limit we would have seen is what we imposed on ourselves.

I'm not the one making assumptions.
I've made statements of fact based on timescales using math in illustrating how long it would take a single spacecraft that could travel instantaneously anywhere and obtain all information in a single second.

Scanning systems from hundreds and thousands of light years away?
Sure, that's the logical path of discovery.
How long does that take?
Longer than one second for sure, plus, on top of that, the data is already hundreds, if not thousands of years old due light speed lag, and let's say you did happen to send a spacecraft, whether robotic or live piloted; how long would that take? A day? A week? A Month?

Instant travel with only one single second spent, non-stop, unbroken, tick, tick, tick, just our galaxy and our galaxy alone still takes around 12,000 years.

So, it takes you one day to travel to a planet and conduct a survey?
That's 86400 seconds.
That would extend a complete survey of the entire Galaxy from 12,000years to 1,036,800,000.
That's 1.03 BILLION years if you took a single day to survey each star in our galaxy.
Do the math.
How long would it take to survey just 10% of the Galaxy if it took only one day to travel to any given point and gather all the information one might need?

What if it took a whole week? How much can any given technology learn about an entire solar system in a week?

Meanwhile, the Galaxy and the Universe still turns, ages, new stars sparking to life, and old ones dying.

I'm not saying it's impossible to find life, intelligent and technologically sophisticated life somewhere in the vast ambiguous reaches of the The Universe.
I am, however, saying that it's unlikely due the timescales involved and the extreme vastness of the Universe.

In surveying exoplanets from afar, for instance, by the time we discover life in doing distant detecting, they, if there is a 'they' could very well be extinct by the time we get there to say "hello"

Consider our own level of technology even 100 years ago compared now.
We weren't even Nuclear.
Any decade, just ten years time we could self exterminate with those nukes.
And then, hey, there's stuff like Yellowstone, and big blammo rocks in space that could come out of nowhere and give us such KaBoom at any given time it may as well equate to extinction in comparison to our current level of sophistication.

The same could happen anywhere.

I make no assumptions.
I deal in likelihoods and probabilities.

I'd certainly love for there to be a "they" out there, even if "they" showed up to turn us into tasty breakfast bacon, it'd still be confirmation.
Likelihood for that ever happening? Likelihood of ANY contact out of the black is extremely small and that's with us actively looking for it.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


The problem is your liklihoods and probababilities are based on your assumption of how unlikely life is and how limited it is in the universe. Your idea is like saying if we cant discover all life everywhere we havent accomplished anything or you just believe there is no life in our own galaxy even though chaces are we have life in our own solar system.

With your idea of instant travel chances are we would discover lifr within an hour, probably less. If there was a capability to travel instantly then scanners and communitation would probably be the same, there would be real time scanning of planets.

You impose so many limitations based on nothing but your belief in unlikliness of life out there ignoring that with the more we learn the more we realize how common life is, we find it everywhere on earth regardless of extremes.

The only probability you talk about is how unlikely it would be for any civilization, regardless how advanced, to be able to explore th he entire universe but who cares. Chances of life within our immediate vicinity (thousands of light years) is actually extremely high.

reply to post by CaticusMaximus


Anyaways sorry caticus maximus, we are hijacking your thread. Although related we are jumping off topic.

Id agree that a cruel society is more likely tovdestroy itself. Although there is always an exception to every rule. If such a civilization had a strong enough leader and if they learned of nearby life. That leadrr might be able to focus their cruelty on other life and away fron each other. Maybe they survive but with a sole purpose to dominate and use other life.

If just some stories of abductions arr true they do not seem benevolent.

Why have they not shown up? Fermi's Paradox is what started the question in the popular consciousness but I'm sure many others contemplated the same thing long before. Essentially, if a species can colonize the entire galaxy in a matter of millions of years by employing the use of self-replicating machines or something similar then WHERE ARE THEY? Note that this does not require faster than light travel. It only requires vast numbers of self-replicating autonomous entities, mostly coordinating their activities to colonize as many star system as possible. This is very possible if they've mapped most of the stars and know where they're. Very quickly there could be untold numbers of these entities sprinkled throughout the cosmos. Already we've calculated there to be trillions of cells in the human body. They calculate there're quadrillion(s) of ants on Earth. Exponential growth is something hard for us to comprehend but it enables a species to colonize our galaxy in short time.

So where're they? They have the means to be here, but aren't.

Either there's something stopping intelligent species from spreading or they have a reason to hide their presence from us or otherwise be unseen.

I read a science fiction story in one of those small mini-magazines a few years ago. It was about how Earth had sent out self-replicating autonomous machines to populate the star systems. Fast forward thousands of years into the future and every one of these machines is blinking out and disappearing. Why? Because there's a super-intelligent autonomous system killing them to preserve the cosmos so it doesn't become overriden and consumed. This super-intelligence is a league of intelligent species essentially deciding for all of us what's garbage and what's not. Just as we would kill off an animal species that consumes the Earth at a rapid and disharmonious pace to preserve the Earth. They're not hugely interested in us. This is not to say we're not important, but we're just one small part of a whole.

This is how it goes in the story:

For, of course, if any intelligent race could arrive at the Tipler argument and conclude that it must be so easy to colonize the Galaxy that the absence of any colonizing probes meant that the newly intelligent race must be alone, and destined to take over the Universe by remote control, any slightly more intelligent race could quickly come to the conclusion that if such idiots were likely to launch unrestricted self-replicating robots onto the Galaxy, it wouldn't be long before all the material in the Galaxy were converted...

This is from the mini-magazine Science Fiction Analog March 1985 issue.

It's not an answer, but it was interesting when I read it.

I think the main factor is distance really.
that's why "they" have not showed up.
Unless we have something they DESPERATELY need, or they have some kind of incredibly fast way to travel, why bother with a trip that could take absolute ages?
As for cruelty, i'm not too sure that is an issue, and this is why:
Civilization is essentially a byproduct of cruelty.
There has never been a civilization on earth that didn't display cruelty in one shape or form.
why must we assume another civilization on another planet would be different?

reply to post by ItDepends


more likely than no it is more like my way because the other way doesn't make sense and is highly unlikely.

maybe you are looking at this the wrong way?

IShotMyLastMuse

There has never been a civilization on earth that didn't display cruelty in one shape or form.
why must we assume another civilization on another planet would be different?

because they're not human

jonnywhite


So where're they? They have the means to be here, but aren't.

what makes you so sure?

reply to post by inquisitive1977


we need to get off this Earth-centric premise. let's get used to the fact that there are many many many perfectly hospitable planets in the universe (let's not even mention the multiverse) and this planet right here that we know about has life forming on it since way back even when it was still hot and forming. We are a perfect example of how easily life can thrive so why is it unreasonable to think it has happened a lot since the beginning of this universe? Why couldn't there be older much more wiser and technologically advanced species of intelligent life out there? Even if one percent of the planets out there contains intelligent life that equates to tens of thousands of other races out there all with their own agendas. and buh-leeve me if they were hostile I don't think they'd have to wait for anything. just assume they knew about this planet before we were here like back with the dinosaurs and I could even imagine the ets created them for their own enjoyment. that would be cool. I would like to see that.

reply to post by CaticusMaximus


Wrong. It's all about control. They are here now doing what they want. I've thought a lot about this issue and the conclusion was that. There are no non-intervention protocols, it is all a lie. To feel more protected and safe because we do not understand the reality we create non-existent protocols to justify all crap we live in. This kind of thinking spreads to all the other areas as, for example, religion. We prefer justify tragedies instead of fighting against them. You can beat the aliens, I guarantee it, “individually”. Collectively, I do not know, because most people are conformed to the emitted energy. They like. The materialization of energy emitted by our will is our sad and cruel reality and, obviously, it has to do with the thought system introduced here. Without this, the thought system, their goals do not materialize. They need us, we do not need them, I do not need them. If you need them you have a problem. Need only one thing: God. We have the power of thinking without the need for any ideological pre-impression because the initial parameters were not created by the "gods".