The case for globalism

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Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Aliens seem pretty far-fetched, OP - at least aliens we could ever hope to relate to. Any alien civilization advancing along more or less the same tech tree we are would be visible from galaxies away, and we haven't seen anything, and we've been looking for a good while now.

It's probably nothing but bacteria and slime molds from here to the edge of the visible universe, with maybe one relatable (not necessarily extent) alien 'civilization' in between.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 10:17

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:18

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

doverhog posted:

Any civilization will move to just simulating things on a quantum computer sitting somewhere out in space pretty quickly. That is not visible, and there is no need to ever go anywhere.

Nah. The computing power required to simulate trillions of universes, each with trillions of sentient beings, would easily overwhelm the resources of a medium-sized galaxy, even if that civilization was doing computing close to the theoretical limits of efficiency.

Not to mention, if they want to keep their simulation safe from other aliens, they'll have to devote considerable resources to defence - enough that we could probably measure it from here.

The solution to the Drake equation is that one of the factors (IMO, the transition from single-celled, prokaryotic life to multi-cellular eukaryotic life) is epsilon, and we're the epsilon. There are no aliens - we're alone.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 17:37

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Also note that I'm using "trillions" to mean "a whole lot". Any civilization simulating universes is going to gobble up energy until there isn't any left, consuming energy as quickly as they can acquire it. We'd know about this (shortly before our extinction).

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 17:40

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

doverhog posted:

Maybe they are simulating something a little simpler than trillions of universes, but still interesting enough that they don't wanna go around meeting hairless monkeys.

Maybe some of them place an artificial limit on the number of sentient beings they will create - which is fine until someone else comes along who doesn't play by this rule, and re-purposes their atoms for something else (simulating sentient beings more like them).

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 17:55

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

AMLOVINIT posted:

Bah...my theory on all this is pretty simple: we're the scum of the universe and nobody wants to have anything to do with us. They probably like the water we have but we're such belligerent little shites, it's not worth the hassle of invading.

There's probably aliens everywhere, they just don't want to be seen...interacting with us. It kind of lowers their universe street-creed.

Water is a really common molecule and a space-faring civilization would have little reason to lift our water out of our gravity well, as opposed to just grabbing from somewhere more readily accessible. The fact is our natural resources are probably not very remarkable - if an alien race took an interest in Earth it would probably be to study Earth biology and repurpose it somehow.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 17:08

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Pochoclo posted:

What if we are the most advanced civilization in the universe? What if we -are- the Ancients?

If there are many alien species with technological capability even moderately exceeding our own, they are certainly showing - without exception - a great deal of restraint as they go about their business.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 13:37

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Isn't there a decent chance the signals emanating from our solar system indicating intelligent life just turn into background noise at relatively limited (on the cosmic scale) distance? Which would of course also apply to any aliens out there.

It's not even just signals - if there were Kardashev type-III civilizations out there you would expect to see some evidence of it. And I mean literally see, with a telescope looking at the visible spectrum of light. A supernova from a star that shouldn't have supernova'd according to our understanding of stellar physics, a sequence alteration out of no where of some star, celestial objects putting shitloads of energy at certain frequencies but missing the corresponding energy signature at other frequencies that you would expect from natural phenomena, and so on.

Same goes to a more limited extent for type-II civilizations, for that matter.

To be fair we haven't looked that hard even within our own galaxy. But, we have looked hard enough that if intelligent life were anything other than really incredibly rare, and perhaps even unique to Earth, then we should have seen something by now.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 15:44

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I think type II/III civilizations are a bit beyond simply "moderately exceeding our own".

The leap from type-I to type-II is not that great in the sense that it is merely a matter of technological achievement. It's not farfetched at all to think we'll get there in 500 years - perhaps much sooner - and even on the scale of human history that is certainly a moderate amount of time. On the scale of real history it's not even worth thinking about, of course.

Assuming you can't do FTL, the jump from type-II to type-III must take many hundreds of thousands of years. So that's more than moderate, sure. And it doesn't seem that anyone has done it yet.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 16:08

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

jiggerypokery posted:

The problem with the fermi paradox and the drake equation etc is that our definition of intelligent is woefully inadequate. We assume it to mean homosapien-like. Of course we do. The problem with that definition is that we totally overstate our own intelligence. Genetically there is less difference between us and chimpanzees than there is between rats and mice, but a human toddler can perform times tables and a human adult can seriously question the nature of intelligence as I am here. The difference between us and alien life in terms of intelligence could be unfathomable. Particularly if genetics turns out to be fairly unique to earth.

Intelligent life could be everywhere, just completely imperceptible to us as we haven't even considered its effect measurable yet. Consider we only discovered radioactivity recently. What if consciousness were 'measurable' on a device like some form of Geiger counter also? Simply because we haven't discovered some means to measure it yet. It could be everywhere. DNA based 'life' could be very very unique indeed. Consciousness on the other hand could be ubiquitous.

It goes in both directions, too. Chimpanzees have more working memory than we do, and can perform feats of memorization that no human who has ever lived could hope to match.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 03:48

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

i am harry posted:

Oh I don't know, do these advanced civilizations need to inhabit advanced states of population? With robots and AI, couldn't we get by with less of us, and therefore, less visible output?

Simply put you can do more stuff with more energy, so if you can consume more energy why wouldn't you? Yes, they can live lives of fabulous luxury by our standards, but if you're already consuming 40% of the energy output of your star to perform computations, why wouldn't you want to do that one trillion more times if you could? And that's not even getting into the arms race aspect of it: once they get to the point where they can make the jump to a type-III galactic civilization, choosing not to is equivalent to waiting around to be gobbled up by the first civilization that does make the jump.

jiggerypokery posted:

Then suppose that quantum effects are seen in the process of photosynthesis http://phys.org/news/2014-01-quantum-mechanics-efficiency-photosynthesis.html. That is literally processes life we recognise relying not even on matter, rather the vibrations that make an atom green.

So what if the common ancestor of life on earth, the origin of our biosphere, and consequentially intelligence isn't even something like some primordial amino acid or even matter, rather some quantum process?

FYI you're really crawling up your own rear end in a top hat with the quantum physics stuff. The quantum-mechanical processes that are a part of photosynthesis are interesting, but you're acting like they upend our understanding of the origin of life on Earth, which is not true.

jiggerypokery posted:

the fact that we can make radio waves because our ancient ancestors simply evolved eyes (long long after genetics) rather than something like telepathy

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 02:44

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

rudatron posted:

what if...we're the von neumann probes

Prometheus was such a lovely movie in so many interesting ways - it's almost worth a watch on that basis alone.

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 02:45

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 07:18

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

I mean, we can't even build a Saturn V rocket anymore.

(We can build better, more efficient, and safer rockets in its place, but goes to show how quickly knowledge like that can be lost.)

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 16:31

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