(Thread IKs:
sharknado slashfic)
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Show us a picture of the peanut people
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Dec 21, 2021 19:05
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| # ? May 31, 2024 01:46 |
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Barry Foster posted:Neon Peanut Evangelion
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Dec 21, 2021 19:34
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:Show us a picture of the peanut people 
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Dec 21, 2021 19:37
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I really loathe the whole "dark forest" crap that has become popular in recent years. Like most things, I think it says more about the person proposing it than it does about alien life. Like are we are so incapable of imagining an existence outside of perpetual war and exploitation?
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Dec 21, 2021 19:40
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Also, this recent KIC 846 drama underlines another point I was making. We had the Kepler telescope collecting data for only 9 years starting around 2009, and if i recall correctly it was imaging only about 100 square degrees of the sky, of just a limited part of our own galaxy. In that time, we've already discovered something (maybe several somethings?) totally unprecedented and unexpected that we still don't understand. And yet people still want to somehow say the universe is conclusiely cold and dead and devoid of life and we need to explain why, as if we've even scratched the surface of our own galactic neighborhood.
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Dec 21, 2021 19:49
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Oh Radar, you rascal
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Dec 21, 2021 19:52
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Rickshaw posted:I really loathe the whole "dark forest" crap that has become popular in recent years. Like most things, I think it says more about the person proposing it than it does about alien life. Like are we are so incapable of imagining an existence outside of perpetual war and exploitation? i don't know, i see it as a logical argument built on the axiom that it's possible there's another form of life out there who is superior and hostile enough to pose an existential threat. probabilities don't figure into it. the fact that that possibility exists should be enough to dictate the way you interact with the greater universe until you've proven otherwise. the way cixin liu lays it out, while extremely cynical and pessimistic, makes sense to me. to be fair though, i'm not sure if we can enough hide our biosphere from such a life form even if we thought it prudent. so much oxygen in our atmosphere aught to be a shining beacon for anyone willing to check our emission spectra
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Dec 21, 2021 19:56
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Chris Pistols posted:Very fair point. Seems I've got my answer from that twitter account, though: the peanutties better gussy up their space ships to look like Santa's sleigh and fly across the earth on Christmas Eve. that will be a perfect way to mess with folks
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Dec 21, 2021 20:03
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Hiding isn't much of an option given we've been happily radiating EM emissions for decades now and that's on top of the whole spectrum analysis as mentioned above. Hostility doesn't need to be deliberate or ideological, it could easily be a byproduct or unintended consequence of actions that don't consider us a factor or an incomprehensible mentality that makes mutual understanding impossible.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:04
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there's also the interpretation that our emissions spectra makes us the galactic equivalent of a colony of howler monkeys. anything out there both sees us and steers clear because there's nothing on our world that isn't abundantly available elsewhere on worlds not covered with psychotic apes. occasionally unmanned recon probes get sent in and they see that we continue to be bloodthirsty little shits but also not remotely threatening to anything capable of crossing the stellar gulf, so we're left alone until either something unique is discovered or we settle down
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Dec 21, 2021 20:05
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Hooplah posted:i don't know, i see it as a logical argument built on the axiom that it's possible there's another form of life out there who is superior and hostile enough to pose an existential threat. probabilities don't figure into it. the fact that that possibility exists should be enough to dictate the way you interact with the greater universe until you've proven otherwise. the way cixin liu lays it out, while extremely cynical and pessimistic, makes sense to me. I know you think this seems logical and reasonable but it is, in fact, the deranged raving of your paranoid monkey/lizard brain. Nothing about this is remotely axiomatic. It is entirely the result of growing up on this planet, in this dumb body, with this dumb brain. My argument is that abandoning the paranoid insanity (trying to absorb the true vastness and especially scale of the universe helps) and moving to a species-wide attitude of cooperation and optimism is literally the only way to colonize the stars and build Dyson spheres or whatever. Any entity that's hostile in the way you're thinking of will self destruct like we are right now long before it can hurt anyone else. It's pure projection.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:05
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Rickshaw posted:I really loathe the whole "dark forest" crap that has become popular in recent years. Like most things, I think it says more about the person proposing it than it does about alien life. Like are we are so incapable of imagining an existence outside of perpetual war and exploitation? This is pretty much my take on it - it's an interesting thought experiment but i don't know that i take it seriously as an "explanation" for anything (cause the general assumptions are flawed). That being said i do think it's funny cause guess what, humans have been in a "dark forest" situation before, in a literal dark forest. And how's that working out for the forests 
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Dec 21, 2021 20:06
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Slavvy posted:I know you think this seems logical and reasonable but it is, in fact, the deranged raving of your paranoid monkey/lizard brain. Nothing about this is remotely axiomatic. It is entirely the result of growing up on this planet, in this dumb body, with this dumb brain. There is literally no proof this is true. It is a naive assertion at best.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:07
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It's about as good as any other explanation, for the time being
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Dec 21, 2021 20:10
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Hooplah posted:i don't know, i see it as a logical argument built on the axiom that it's possible there's another form of life out there who is superior and hostile enough to pose an existential threat. probabilities don't figure into it. the fact that that possibility exists should be enough to dictate the way you interact with the greater universe until you've proven otherwise. the way cixin liu lays it out, while extremely cynical and pessimistic, makes sense to me. Bah. Bah!
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Dec 21, 2021 20:10
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Morning Light Mountain from the Commonwealth novels is an interesting concept along these lines. It's a civilization-entity that is relentlessly hostile to all other forms of life due to its own evolutionary conditions.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:11
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The Chad Jihad posted:It's about as good as any other explanation, for the time being the point is that anyone saying "it can't be that" isn't basing that on data, because every time we upgrade our ability to look at the universe, we find multiple things that completely break our understanding of what is possible, so we just don't have the data to make any logical conclusions
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Dec 21, 2021 20:15
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They could also be the goofiest poo poo ever. I think if we're still sticking to predator/prey metaphors when we interact with them then well we're probably shooting ourselves in the foot, we don't know, anything is possible, there's no reason to think they're all hosed up or all cool or dangerous or whatever so for the time being you may as well just pick the flavor that appeals to you and/or helps you think about life
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Dec 21, 2021 20:19
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Douglas Hofstadter (of godel, escher, bach) was in charge of scientific american's mathematical games column for several years. At one point he became fascinated with the prisoner's dilemma, and after reviewing the research among game theorists and economists, he decided to conduct a large multi-person, single-round prisoner's dilemma game with 20 mathematician / economist friends. You can read the details here (pdf warning): http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/AxelrodComputerTournaments.ExcerptsFromHofstadterSciAmArticle.1983.pdf quote:... His writing really does a good job of putting a fine point on how crazy this all is. One gets the feeling that a better world must be possible, and everyone agrees, yet everyone does the "rational" thing and defects, leading to a worse outcome. I think about this a lot.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:27
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Vernii posted:Hiding isn't much of an option given we've been happily radiating EM emissions for decades now and that's on top of the whole spectrum analysis as mentioned above. right, i was using hostility as shorthand for anything incompatible with us continuing to exist. it'd be incredibly naive to assume another life form would be comprehensible in any way. e- also i wanted to mention i've heard the em emissions really aren't a big deal. because the strength of the signal drops off geometrically, the size of the telescope required to detect them quickly enter the "arbitrarily large" category Slavvy posted:I know you think this seems logical and reasonable but it is, in fact, the deranged raving of your paranoid monkey/lizard brain. Nothing about this is remotely axiomatic. It is entirely the result of growing up on this planet, in this dumb body, with this dumb brain. i'm not saying the assertion is axiomatic. i'm saying the possibility there's something out there that poses an existential threat to us exists. that's the axiom. the possibility alone is enough to inform our choices. much in the same way the possibility of a gamma ray burst, or a future comet impact should inform our decision making. the possibility our whole planet could be sterilized at any moment by a star exploding across the galaxy is possible. it's not paranoid insanity to make choices to mitigate that. i think the dark forest argument is similar. the difference being that we know GRBs are out there. can't say the same for other life, but we exist, don't we? and we can be fairly destructive. and we don't have nearly enough knowledge of the universe to know an entity would self destruct in the way you're describing. the real issue here is that the whole argument is moot, as we collectively aren't making decisions to guide us as a species towards survival. we're moving too fast for that. as usual, the answer comes down to that we need to move towards a social order focused on collective good so we can have a shot at surviving our innumerable existential threats. corporations aren't people, billionaires shouldn't exist, etc Hooplah has issued a correction as of 20:31 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 20:27
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Barry Foster posted:Neon Peanut Evangelion is about to occur
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Dec 21, 2021 20:30
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Hooplah posted:t'd be incredibly naive to assume another life form would be comprehensible in any way. I can communicate with my cat, even though i can't actually speak with her or know her exact thoughts. Why would aliens necessarily be any different? Maybe some are impossibly advanced and inscrutable, and maybe some aren't.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:30
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Dark Forest theory probably true but only because an alien race will detect us and put us down like we do with rabid animals in the forest
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Dec 21, 2021 20:32
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Rah! posted:I can communicate with my cat, even though i can't actually speak with her or know her exact thoughts. While I broadly agree, I also consider that this universe has historically produced such incomprehensibilities as when the first lungfish crawled out of the water not knowing that its descendants would some day produce goatse.cx
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Dec 21, 2021 20:35
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Rah! posted:i can communicate with my cat, even though i can't actually speak with her or know her exact thoughts you have a lot in common with your cat. a completely alien life form might not even distinguish between you and your cat. you might both be just "earth life" we have no idea what form other life might take, and form dictates function. gently caress, we can't even settle on a proper definition of what life is. every definition we can come up with ends up being self-referential in some way if you dig deep enough.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:35
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Comedy star trek universe is true and all aliens are humanoid with two eyes, nose and mouth but funky hair and forehead features
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Dec 21, 2021 20:37
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Hooplah posted:you have a lot in common with your cat. a completely alien life form might not even distinguish between you and your cat yeah or maybe it would Hooplah posted:we have no idea what form other life might take exactly!
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Dec 21, 2021 20:38
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I'm pretty optimistic about math being an on-ramp to communication with ETIs. But then maybe there's Slafrigs suffering from astral terror bombings on Zekron 3 because they won't accept that theres no such thing as a discrete entity therefore the concept of 1 is illogical mind poison
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Dec 21, 2021 20:43
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skewetoo posted:Comedy star trek universe is true and all aliens are humanoid with two eyes, nose and mouth but funky hair and forehead features convergent evolution but its all crabs
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Dec 21, 2021 20:49
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telepathic crabs that like hats
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Dec 21, 2021 20:50
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Dec 21, 2021 20:50
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Hooplah posted:to be fair though, i'm not sure if we can enough hide our biosphere from such a life form even if we thought it prudent. so much oxygen in our atmosphere aught to be a shining beacon for anyone willing to check our emission spectra
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Dec 21, 2021 20:50
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Octopi erasure. The octopi have been battling the crabs for millennia
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Dec 21, 2021 20:50
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Let's try it this way: Our one and only assumption will be that the tabby's situation is, in fact, the result of ET activity. If that's our starting point, it means we have two data points for intelligent life in the universe. One of those entities is currently constructing Dyson swarms across a large volume of space. The other is currently going extinct because of an inability to solve or prevent simple problems through cooperation. The latter also really fucken loves empires built on slavery and domination. I posit that slavery and domination are a dead end and that any entity capable of doing what we're seeing around tabby's will already know this and wouldn't concern itself with monkey brain paranoia about interstellar super predators or whatever.
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Dec 21, 2021 20:51
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i love tjis guy
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Dec 21, 2021 20:52
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Slavvy posted:Let's try it this way: At least as reasonable as dark forest enjoyers
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Dec 21, 2021 20:53
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skewetoo posted:Comedy star trek universe is true and all aliens are humanoid with two eyes, nose and mouth but funky hair and forehead features ugly bags of mostly water 
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Dec 21, 2021 20:56
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endocriminologist posted:i love tjis guy 
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Dec 21, 2021 20:58
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Azathoth posted:there's also the interpretation that our emissions spectra makes us the galactic equivalent of a colony of howler monkeys. anything out there both sees us and steers clear because there's nothing on our world that isn't abundantly available elsewhere on worlds not covered with psychotic apes. occasionally unmanned recon probes get sent in and they see that we continue to be bloodthirsty little shits but also not remotely threatening to anything capable of crossing the stellar gulf, so we're left alone until either something unique is discovered or we settle down u can get natural resources anywhere, every planet and moon has sunrises to enjoy but boy howdy if u wanna really get on up inside a one-way digestive system, earth is where its at baby
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Dec 21, 2021 21:00
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| # ? May 31, 2024 01:46 |
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I'm partial to the idea that any sufficiently advanced civilisation will never even leave their home planet. If they are in equilibrium with their environment, and if they are at peace with their place in the universe, it may not even occur to them. I'm also quite skeptical about the existence of dyson spheres and other such technological megastructures out there. My bet is that truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature - and we might not even recognise it if we were staring right at it.
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Dec 21, 2021 21:02
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