|
cat botherer posted:Uhh, gonna have to disagree with you there. Repeating the mistakes of the past has very much been a running theme with nation states and human decision-making in general. As one example, compare the fall of Saigon to the fall of Kabul. Yeah they really really haven't. We can add the invasion of Ukraine to that pile too.
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 04:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 09:07 |
|
|
cat botherer posted:Uhh, gonna have to disagree with you there. Repeating the mistakes of the past has very much been a running theme with nation states and human decision-making in general. As one example, compare the fall of Saigon to the fall of Kabul. I think we can fairly look at the argument made and conclude that I in no way suggested that nation-states act perfectly at all times in accordance to the past. Only that they generally can do so (i.e. tax data, census data, treaties, and so on), this doesn't mean that they can't have failures! The point is that there are plenty of example we can name, of entities, in this case trivially nation-states, using historical data in some form to derive certain conclusions or inferences about the future. We certainly can't look at specific policy failures out of context and then conclude historical data is useless for deriving information about the future! Why if this was the case it wouldn't make sense as an argument wouldn't it? If it were useless, then what relevance is Saigon to Kabul?  DrSunshine posted:Yeah they really really haven't. We can add the invasion of Ukraine to that pile too. I'd appreciate it if you actually responded to me directly if you're going to bring me or my positions up in discussion. It's kinda baffling that you're like, responding to someone else about an argument I made but not responding directly to it. If you disagree, then disagree with me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 04:48
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I think we can fairly look at the argument made and conclude that I in no way suggested that nation-states act perfectly at all times in accordance to the past. Only that they generally can do so (i.e. tax data, census data, treaties, and so on), this doesn't mean that they can't have failures! The point is that there are plenty of example we can name, of entities, in this case trivially nation-states, using historical data in some form to derive certain conclusions or inferences about the future.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 04:54
|
|
|
Do you believe that historical data, and history in general, gives no insight into future macro trends? I think it's fine to disagree with the example given if that's the extent of it, but Im not sure what the extent of your disagreement is, can you elaborate on your disagreement in regards to the context of a Marxist theory of history? To be clear, I gave a very specific example regarding military history, that didn't touch or invoke broader history and policy making by nation states, which is definitely outside the scope of my point. Again, consider the way military academies around the world wills tidy military history as far back as cannae and so on, because the past is important for in particular training future military leaders. I think i got caught up in your initial reply which seemed to bring up a broader scope than the initial point I made in my original post but I think this should clear it up, that it is just an example, in which nations regularly rely on history for policy making (in particular for military matters), it doesn't always work out but they certainly find good reason to believe it is the most effective tool in the bin for the task at hand. The fact that sometimes there are disastrous results doesn't mean it is not still the most effective tool. Otherwise why have healthcare if people sometimes don't get the right treatment? e to add: Or rather, to be even more specific, it may be your opinion that nation-states whether it be for military matters or domestic politics or foreign policy in general don't make good decisions very often based on history, but you can't dispute that it heavily informs the decision making process, on some level; you may dispute that the decisions made are different from what you would make but I don't think that's either here or there and is increasingly not relevant to the original point. That yes, it is legitimate to speculate about long term socio-economical trends; the past informs the future and so on; and its valid to bring up as an example to support the point that clearly, the most important and powerful entities on the planet certainly see value in this kind of process in some spheres. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 15:09
|
|
|
I like how somehow this has turned into "can history give us some insight into ways to attack problems we're seeing right now?" as opposed to the original issue, which is that history is terrible at giving insight into what's going to occur in society in the future, particularly the far future. Talk about moving the goalposts.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 15:48
|
|
|
Also most of that military history stuff has no bearing on modern conflicts besides a few big generalities which do not require a complex understanding of history to teach. The primary purpose is to fluff up the officer corps and make them feel like they are the big bad successors to Sun Tzu. Esprit de corps, or branding if you will.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 16:17
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:Talk about moving the goalposts. you can’t possibly be surprised
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 16:23
|
|
|
I think your main obstacle for asteroid mining is that it's very good for producing more things in space, but getting products from space back to Earth is harder. Refined metals could just be dropped somewhere, probably, but now you're literally doing a planned orbital bombardment. (And it might not be such a bad thing even if it kicks up dust - dust may have positive climate effects, after all.) At some point things have to couple back to Earth on some level. We can easily see the value for Earth-watching operations, both military and civilian. Extraplanetary research has a substantial value. Demonstrating/incubating new technologies to land a man on Mars or what-not also have value even if you could argue they are a big form of potlatch (albeit a form that produces valuable technologies). This personally is where I have trouble seeing an economic case. If we had a number of people in space already, it's easy; sustain them and they would probably like to expand. But how do we go from having some people crewing facilities in space, perhaps even many of them, a la Antarctic bases, to having full fledged spacenoids who can live and die in space settlements with a reasonably full personal life?
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 16:25
|
|
|
i think the main obstacle for asteroid mining is not getting things to earth it’s getting started in the first place because it would insanely expensive and either deadly to send people or too complex for current tech to send robots
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 16:31
|
|
|
Hari Seldon was a fraud and the Foundation series is wildly overrated.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 17:02
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:I like how somehow this has turned into "can history give us some insight into ways to attack problems we're seeing right now?" as opposed to the original issue, which is that history is terrible at giving insight into what's going to occur in society in the future, particularly the far future. Talk about moving the goalposts. Goalposts weren't moved? When did I respond that to you? I responded this to you: quote:History is a pretty good indicator of the future, to suggest otherwise flies in the face of entire mainstream philosophical schools of thought and to a lesser extent the basis of mathematics. Which you still haven't responded to and none of the other posts were directed towards you, but in response to other people's telephone game interpretation of other posts! In any case, your original argument is a vague rationalization about how people individually sometimes probabilistically get things wrong but this has basically nothing to do with the broader argument I've been making in the thread? What relevance is a bunch of people in a room inputting guesses to the idea the history is the result of socio-economic and political processes in conflict with each other? No one is claiming its some kind of as someone above jokingly put it, Hari Seldon-esque Psychohistory levels of perfect prediction; but that in the way I bring up Marxist history, is a valid and informative and novel take on the discussion about our ability to speculation future trends regarding space travel; especially when it comes to other thread topics like the Fermi Paradox or the Great Filter. It is still speculation, I am not claiming 100% certainty, but its just so weird the push back that has to jump through so many hoops to try to dispute it when all things considering its a pretty simple, straightforward and elegant framework and a kinda positive spin on some of the doomerism that occurs in the thread. You have some people who say only socialism can result in us having our gay space luxury communism, others think we should take the space out of gay space luxury communism until we accomplish the other words, I am just positing that as an interesting argument that well actually just as how capitalism is an essential step towards socialism, capitalism therefor will likely also provide us with outer space; for all the reasons Marx wrote 300 years ago that apply to the rest of the capitalist mode of development, potentially fulfilling the requirements of gay space luxury communism. You don't have to think the entire Marxist or other Structuralists(?) schools of thought about history being a progression is the One True Correct Philosophy and field of Social Science; it just needs to be interesting and "Yeah I can see where you're coming from if your premises are true." Nessus posted:I think your main obstacle for asteroid mining is that it's very good for producing more things in space, but getting products from space back to Earth is harder. Refined metals could just be dropped somewhere, probably, but now you're literally doing a planned orbital bombardment. (And it might not be such a bad thing even if it kicks up dust - dust may have positive climate effects, after all.) I'll point out that this has been discussed before in the thread, and for a more detailed breakdown of the possible solutions you should search back to those posts; but in general depending on the time scales involved there's different solutions. Longer term you could use a space elevator to move cargo back and forth. Or skyhooks which are feasible near future technology. Or the price of shipping goods in spacecraft continues to be low enough to make the transportation of refined materials cost-feasible (especially when we factor in the environmental costs of climate change); the price of spaceflight has dropped massively in the past decade and there continues to be new developments that are promising to further cause that price to drop. Additionally dropping goods in pods onto Earth isn't an orbital bombardment and wouldn't kick up dust; the various spacecraft that drop back to Earth certainly don't so there could very well be a viable engineering solution to "glide" the materials back to the surface. Presumably the way you get a large sustained population in space is by having economic activity take place there; extraction based industries generally only sustain a smaller amount of people, you need a shift to manufacturing and other economic activity before the population starts to rapidly increase to support the infrastructure and new industries (this process is a feedback cycle which further incentivizes further expansion). So for example, we could within a decade have a crew of 4-12 on Mars; a lot of early asteroid prospecting is going to be done remotely from Earth; but there will come a point where we will want to refine the materials insitu and these facilities probably can't be done entirely autonomously and will need humans somewhere at some point; this is where Mars is helpful because its a lot easier to get from the surface of Mars into Space; as the demand for resources increases results in larger and more complex infrastructure to exploit, extract, and refine and transport those materials then gradually there will be an increased need for people to exist nearer rather than farther from the location. So for example the moment that zero-g manufacturing happens to result in novel and potentially revolutionary new processes and alloys could be an inflection point that sees a massive increase in the economic activity in space, and thus a massive increase in the number of people. mediaphage posted:i think the main obstacle for asteroid mining is not getting things to earth it’s getting started in the first place because it would insanely expensive and either deadly to send people or too complex for current tech to send robots This was brought up and discussed multiple times before in the thread. None of these claims are correct. We've already sent robots that have collected samples from space, there already exists venture capital projects to explore asteroid mining; and the cost is something that in theory is easily covered by the value of the resources that can be extracted, but as has already been explained before just because something is really expencive initially (like cars, or spaceflight in the 70s) doesn't mean that it stays expensive; things have a habit of becoming more economical with time with investment, scale, wider adoption, and technological improvements. And currently we're very experienced with sending people into space; it doesn't make much sense to send people to an asteroid in the nearer term but that's not what's being suggested. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:10
|
|
|
There are things in space that have value. Satellites constructed / repaired in orbit. Solar power transmitted down to earth. Precious metals. It’s all just a cost equation - can we do something cheaper from the ground or (partly or fully) from space? As our technological abilities in dozens of fields evolve that equation changes - for both doing things in orbit and for their ground based substitutes. If something becomes profitable to do from space, say creating fuel in orbit or bringing back a bunch of platinum, then infrastructure will be built to handle that. Whoever controls that infrastructure will look for other ways to use it, and that will make other projects cost less. It took a whole lot of steps to go from “sail to Newfoundland for the cod fishing” to “Silicon Valley is the center of the world’s tech industry” and a lot of those steps were ugly as hell but here we are. Alternatively we’ve technologically been able to live on the ocean floor for probably 50 to 75 years now but the value equation isn’t positive so no there’s no ocean floor cities. You can’t really predict how this stuff will shake out in the short or medium term besides knowing the value equation will shift in either direction.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:23
|
|
|
It seems like you kind of have a bit of a chicken and egg thing where there could be tons of poo poo that works better, or is only possible, in zero-g (as far as manufacturing goes) but you have to have some way to go actually try to do it and learn from that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:32
|
|
|
A GIANT PARSNIP posted:There are things in space that have value. Satellites constructed / repaired in orbit. Solar power transmitted down to earth. Precious metals. It’s all just a cost equation - can we do something cheaper from the ground or (partly or fully) from space? As our technological abilities in dozens of fields evolve that equation changes - for both doing things in orbit and for their ground based substitutes. If something becomes profitable to do from space, say creating fuel in orbit or bringing back a bunch of platinum, then infrastructure will be built to handle that. Whoever controls that infrastructure will look for other ways to use it, and that will make other projects cost less. Agreed completely. There's a lot of complexities to what makes something "economical", the company I work for is like a kinda large startup? It hasn't to my knowledge made a single profit for 5 years. But the owners are willing to light a lot of money on fire with the expectation that the product we're developing will make money. And once the ball starts rolling then a lot of things will get cheaper and more profitable as we scale up production and build up contacts with other sectors of the industry. Like lets look at nuclear power plants, despite it being very expensive to build nuclear plants, there's a lot of research and development by both public and private entities into making them smaller, cheaper, and more convenient to build; honestly nuclear power as an industry due to large setbacks is probably in its worst period; but the trend still looks pretty positive. Climate change more than ever makes it clear we need nuclear power to decarbonize, there's literally no other viable technology. The technology has also made large advancements and countries around the world like China and France make good use out of it; we just need the political will for someone to make the next step to give the push it needs for rapid widerspread proliferation. Which will further make it safer, cheaper, smaller, and more convenient. Nuclear fusion is always 20 years away and private businesses seem keenly interested in giving it a go, just as an example of the ways capital will try to seek new markets whenever its having trouble extracting further value from the existing market. Nessus posted:It seems like you kind of have a bit of a chicken and egg thing where there could be tons of poo poo that works better, or is only possible, in zero-g (as far as manufacturing goes) but you have to have some way to go actually try to do it and learn from that. As I mentioned, we very recently sent a probe to a rock to bring back smaller rocks; lots of experiments are done on the ISS, there is a private corporate interest in outerspace with venture capital making early moves to take the first steps. Again I point to the rapidly declining cost of spaceflight in general likely enabling further venture interest in exploiting space. Maybe this isn't a big enough step yet, but it doesn't seem far fetched that at some point soon there's going to be like a MoriaX space mining company founded to mine space emeralds that's basically the "egg" in this scenario that starts things. Currently there's Planetary Resources Inc and Deep Space Industries Inc that are the two main entities I am aware of looking into it. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:36
|
|
|
there is a huge difference from a proof of concept mission and just blithely accepting the superiority of a space business but i guess the threads already figured this stuff out my bad. god why do i even keep this thing bookmarked
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:40
|
|
|
mediaphage posted:there is a huge difference from a proof of concept mission and just blithely accepting the superiority of a space business Superiority of what? What argument do you think is being made? Do you think that there will just be a sudden jump and some massive industry will pop out of no where from the head of Zeus? My suggestion would be to focus on the argument actually being suggested, that it takes these proof of concept missions, to prove the concept, their technical feasibility, which enables the investment and funding and further development which gradually fills the steps between "proof of concept theoretical thing" and "taken for granted everyday aspect of our lives". Again not sure what you mean by "superiority", lots of things can be profitable or economically in different contexts, mining in Alaska is no more superior to mining in West Virginia, the rate of return, the infrastructure, and economics and products are all different and have different contexts, especially regarding local vs global markets; I don't think anyone is saying the things you think are being said. The only thing that really would make space "superior" is the environmental aspect, CO2 will probably drop a lot if hypothetically long term we moved all heavy industry off world, but that's extremely speculative. Within the next 50 to 100 years maybe we can move rare earths to space? That'd be helpful. Like Nessus was literally asking, if I am interpreting this correctly, "Well the chicken sounds tasty but where's the egg that will give us the chicken?" and I'm just like, "Well someone was looking into building a chicken coup over there and started laying down the foundation, that might get us our chickens!" Will it 100% result in a chicken coup and give us chickens? Again, I am not claiming 100% yes, but it's a plausible result, that's potentially viable more likely than not; which should be all that's really required for discussion and not to have to litigate this argument all the time which seems to always come down to ones a priori priors. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:49
|
|
|
Nessus posted:It seems like you kind of have a bit of a chicken and egg thing where there could be tons of poo poo that works better, or is only possible, in zero-g (as far as manufacturing goes) but you have to have some way to go actually try to do it and learn from that. Yeah one of the things that’s most economical to do in space will be the first and a lot of the poo poo used to start it will be used to start the second. Note that doesn’t mean space families will necessarily follow - we do all sorts of poo poo on the ocean floor but no one lives down there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:55
|
|
|
Until we discover mermaids are real anyways. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:56
|
|
|
I think it's kind of lovely to say 'well we already talked about that, use search.' If it was literally one page ago, sure, but like, relink the posts or something if it was in Jan 2021. I was doing other things then. A lot of these are very dense posts. If this is the D&D practice then I will eat my hat and submit to Koos Law e: Also you read me basically right; I have a hard time drawing a direct line between 'what's going on now and a reasonable elaboration of it' into larger things. The problem with space elevators and skyhooks as I understand it is that they require a lot of international cooperation, or they would require a lot of political will for someone big to do them and just flip off everyone who's worried about it. The people who could do that right now are China and America. I could be misinformed about skyhooks since they all sounded like black magic. The orbital drop scenario was me thinking about bulk metals, as opposed to rare earths. It makes sense you could gently land a capsule full of rare earths and it'd be worth doing, depending on the per-unit weight. But iron or carbon? Useful up there, but abundant down here. Nessus fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 18:58
|
|
|
To be fair, I still gave basically the full argument. It is more that I am only suggesting you *should* search if there was something missing I haven't covered and to give a more fuller context.  I think it would've been bad if I only said "read the thread newb!" but I still typed out like several paragraphs outlining the general arguments which seems like a reasonable compromise? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 19:13
|
|
|
Someone please listen to and enjoy this dark matter rap from 1992: https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/weinberg.21/Rap/darkmatterrap.mp3
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 19:16
|
|
|
But yeah, I'm on my phone so can't link it, but there's a kurzgesagt video on sky hooks, they're basically contemporary technology we could do in the near future, Japan tested a small one recently, and generally they don't require any kind of new advancements in material sciences to work. For a space elevator, we do still need to figure out not just how to make carbon nanotubes or similar but also have the QA to ensure the needed reliability. But as for construction I don't get the sense this needs a lot of international cooperation. Beyond nuclear power plants or airports would require. China or the EU could build in the middle of the ocean in their territorial waters or their SEZ/EEZ. I don't have the sense it would be a multi trillion dollar venture. But this would be highly dependent on the final cost of mass producing the materials, probably in space. But granted this would likely get cheaper as a result of the demand. I think likely the main international aspect is to forge multilateral or bilateral agreements regarding access dependent on monetary contributions. I think for bulk resources were obviously not there yet, we'd start with rare materials which would give us an idea as to the economics and viability of bulk transport. Maybe it remains the case basically for a long rear end time we can't just move all of our mines to space and most of that stuff stays up there for space and zero g manufacturing and only the most valuable stuff gets shipped back down at a premium. But it'll depend on the economics and what new technologies arise to potentially enable it. e to add: Kurzgesegt video on skyhooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqwpQarrDwk To summarize, they present this technology as a means of getting to space with more payload and more cheaply without needing exotic materials or significantly more advanced material sciences and investments. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 19:26
|
|
|
When your talking points come from popsci animated youtube videos, you probably don't know what you're talking about. See your avatar for more information. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 20:03
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:but that in the way I bring up Marxist history, is a valid and informative and novel take on the discussion about our ability to speculation future trends regarding space travel; especially when it comes to other thread topics like the Fermi Paradox or the Great Filter. OH MY GOD I don't care. You keep bringing up these imaginary bona fides of yours and they're always Kaku-level nonsense that you got from watching a youtube video. We can barely keep people alive due to body deterioration in low earth orbit for a year, we send out space probes with stuck antennas and lots of pieces that fail all the time, and you're blabbering away about the economics of Mars colonies and asteroid mining with an authoritative assuredness even though you're engaging in Tolkien-esque fantasy worldbuilding. I'm sorry to be so blunt but I've been avoiding engaging with you directly because it always ends up with you posting 10,000-word screeds. Then it's back and forth for pages and pages which always seem to be you being incredulous at a point being made, then a lengthy gish gallop of either tangentially or often unrelated nonsense. It's exhausting. To be clear I like you as a person/personality but boy do I get tired when you feel the need to lecture us for not having the same vivid imagination as you do. ashpanash fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:When your talking points come from popsci animated youtube videos, you probably don't know what you're talking about. See your avatar for more information. Seems like a grossly unfair thing to say, for one thing none of my arguments rely or come from "popsci animated youtube videos", they are simply convenient means of conveying information in more depth about the topic. My actual argument (not talking points, this isn't politics) mainly actually comes from a dead 300 year old economics textbook and articles written by people like Isaac Asimov who helped shaped many of my positions through their writings and no I don't mean their science fiction stories, but their editorials in journals, letters, and so on; in particular "An Open Letter to Jimmy Carter"; and a lecture about the civilizational collapse of humanity also presented by Isaac Asimov. This is an dead internet forum, not the Vulcan Academy of Science, what are you expecting exactly from a thread that historically has always been explicitly about pop scifi concepts and thought experiments like UFOs, the Fermi Paradox, FTL travel, time travel, aliens, ancient civilizations and other History Channel topics? It seems absurd to take issue with me engaging with the recurring topics of the thread via the means they are often discussed and disseminated in their most convenient form. Youtube videos and tweets have always been a quick and convenient means of sharing information in this thread, what's so wrong with pop science in the speculative pop science thread? Additionally you haven't even indicated what's even wrong with the videos in question; you just seem to object to their... Accessibility? That they aren't an academic paper? You certainly aren't objecting to the validity of their contents! If you have a substantiative critique, counter evidence, why is it always like pulling teeth to get an argument that engages with the actual points being made? Am I not allowed to disagree and reasonably expect there to be a back and forth with my arguments listened to and considered fairly as intended? I certainly respect your opinions as-is when it comes to physics, but certainly when it comes down philosophy you can agree that its outside your field of expertese and anyone can make a valid argument about broader "soft" sciences no? What's so wrong with explaining and responding to the argument being made, because you know, it really sucks, if you prick me do I not bleed? I really don't get it, what does it serve, how is it productive at all, to make a remark about some avatar I got just because I sound confident; is it wrong to be confident? To express myself and my positions firmly? ashpanash posted:OH MY GOD I don't care. I'm not sure what imaginary bona fides I'm bringing up, and pretty sure there's no youtube video you can find that has the argument I'm presenting in this thread regarding capitalism and space exploration. It just seems like this is a you problem and you're unfairly putting the burden of this problem on me. The problem is that its equally exhausting to me, to put in the effort, only to have routinely my arguments taken out of context, trolled, or strawman'd. Yes it is kinda annoying if someone is engaging with a topic but not really putting thought into it and being contrarian. Yes of course I'm incredulous at times; but I try not to be if the person is just having a good natured conversation; and I'm more than willing to listen and tone it down if I come off too hard initially. Like with Nessus, my bad initially, but I think that discussion was turning out to fine? Like, c'mon, you're completely flattening all context of all past discussions as if they were all the same, that's not fair. The problem here is this is the thread to be discussing the economic of what a hypothetical Mars colony would look like, I think we shouldn't have to completely relitigate the basic premise everytime, but often not only is this what happens but the argument (specifically arguments that say we'll never colonize space or can't speculate with any reasonableness) very often just comes down to just, really bad arguments or no argument at all. There's two sides to this coin, it'd be nice if that was acknowledged instead of me being held to what seems like an arbitrary standard because I care and put in the effort. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jun 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 20:39
|
|
|
Well, I guess we could... continue not talking about anything. That's a reasonable thing to do too. So, apparently there's going to be more stuff coming up about the supposed UFO wreckage material this weekend. We'll see. Like all the other times someone came out from the government saying that "Someone in the government knows stuff!" I guess?? At this point I'm really kind of over all the teasing and dancing around, like it's hype for an upcoming TV show or movie. If you've got weird space junk then show us the weird space junk already! https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-oversight-plans-ufo-hearing-after-unconfirmed-claims/story?id=99899883 quote:The powerful House Oversight Committee is in the "early stages" of preparing a hearing on UFOs in the wake of unconfirmed claims from a former intelligence official that the U.S. has allegedly found crashed alien spacecraft -- an account the Pentagon says is unsubstantiated. https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/ quote:A former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin. I'm almost kind of wondering if the reason the military has been so evasive about this is to just avoid the massive embarrassment of making a mistake or coverup way in the past and keeping it going for so long when it hasn't really turned up anything conclusive? A kind of "oops" that has been kept going for so long that it becomes just a bigger and worse and more humiliating oops if it gets known. Or the embarrassment of shooting down some completely mundane stuff like balloons and so on. Or well who knows, maybe it's actually alien robot probes this time! But that, I feel, would bring up far more questions than it answers. For example, if some percentage of UAP are alien probes, then how would we explain the relative lack of success of SETI programs for the last 50 years? Notwithstanding active efforts to study the sky for things, Earth itself has been the subject of intense scrutiny from satellites and weather monitoring and military spy satellites for decades - you'd think that if we were constantly being buzzed by alien whatevers that something better than blurry footage and eyewitness reports would corroborate this. I AM GRANDO posted:Someone please listen to and enjoy this dark matter rap from 1992: He's such a nerd! 
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 21:16
|
|
|
DrSunshine posted:Well, I guess we could... continue not talking about anything. That's a reasonable thing to do too. to view his claims in the most charitable of lights, he’s unwilling to bring out classified docs without permission for risk of criminal sanctions. that’s obviously bad in terms of his believability. on the other hand, he’s doing the sort of thing (official complaints, testifying before congressional committees) that would also result in criminal charges if he’s lying. so i imagine in the worst case fraud scenario he might actually believe what he says. there’s supposed to be an extended interview with him going up on sunday. as for seti, space is big and finding small things is hard. not only does could a theoretical exoplanetary civilization not use standard radio, but they might also be too far away for us to detect it. and anything closer, well, afaik, seti tries hard to exclude anything local out of a necessary goal to prevent earth-centric em noise anyway i don’t necessarily put a lot of stock in any of this but i’m enjoying it nonetheless. i figure if it’s all fake it’s still as enjoyable as a good ARG and if it’s real well that’s cool too
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 21:23
|
|
|
mediaphage posted:as for seti, space is big and finding small things is hard. not only does could a theoretical exoplanetary civilization not use standard radio, but they might also be too far away for us to detect it. and anything closer, well, afaik, seti tries hard to exclude anything local out of a necessary goal to prevent earth-centric em noise That's a good point - it's often raised, too, that as a civilization becomes more efficient, its detectability should decrease wrt to radio noise, as it'd begin to rely more on even better techniques of communication. We ourselves have become more "silent" as it were, because so much of our modern communication now relies on fiber optics. But to be a little bit "Isaac Arthur"-y, presume that UAPs are automated alien Von Neumann probes. I posted in the other UFO thread that if an alien civilization is sufficiently advanced to produce and send out self-replicating Von Neumann probes, then it's almost trivial for it to very rapidly (on a cosmic timescale) have probes on every planet in every star system in the galaxy. Now, if that's also the case, then shouldn't it be capable of activity on scales large enough to be detectable by SETI? If we're talking about Kardashev level II civilizations which are capable of putting self-replicating sentient probes in every star system in the galaxy, then those civilizations ought to be capable of doing truly grand things -- to move and reshape the stars themselves. Vast swarms of quintillions of Von Neumann probes should even be visible moving around, lighting up the night with incredibly bright star drives as they accelerate from one star system to another. Where are they? I mean, perhaps they have access to forms of transportation unknown to our science. Or are capable of moving through higher dimensions of space like a person stepping over the boundaries of a hopscotch board. This thought does not sit well with me, because it suggests that the foundations of our physics -- which have been able to make incredibly good predictions and have been tested to almost unthinkable levels of precision -- are either totally wrong, or are being messed with like the sophons did in Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem. We could be being gaslit by alien civilizations. How could tests and observations of quantum mechanics and general relativity be so wrong unless it was through active intervention, either by some kind of god-like control over fundamental forces of reality, or by some kind of simulation? This leads me to discard the "alien science breaks all our understanding of physics" hypothesis. If UAPs are automated self-replicating probes, aren't capable of FTL travel, and yet we still do not see evidence of "civilizational activity" in simple observations of the night sky, then maybe a third hypothesis could maintain: that whatever created them only created them as a form of "space bacteria", letting them drift about for aeons until finding sufficient energy and materials to replicate, and whatever created them is now long gone. If UAP truly are alien artifacts and not (as I must imagine is more likely) some human military program, then they might just be some long-dead alien civilization's crude experiment in creating artificial life. A galaxy filled with dumb space junk. quote:anyway i don’t necessarily put a lot of stock in any of this but i’m enjoying it nonetheless. i figure if it’s all fake it’s still as enjoyable as a good ARG and if it’s real well that’s cool too Same. My position is more or less 
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 21:42
|
|
|
yeah i mean i think that requires a civilization to feel the need to build galaxy spanning structures, or whatever, and they may not want to. i expect there’s probably aliens out there somewhere but i don’t necessarily think there’s loads of them. and sending automated probes - if it is in fact feasible - across the milky way doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be easily visible imo
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 21:56
|
|
|
Perhaps we are merely in a statistically anomalous time and place, a galaxy that has had or will have huge civilizations, but for the moment it’s improbably empty. Or perhaps there’s something or some confluence of factors that makes the Earth truly rare on the scale of galaxies. Or perhaps there is some fundamental property of the universe we don’t yet understand that will explain the apparent paradox.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 23:42
|
|
|
i don’t think there’s any particular paradox tbh. we haven’t looked much and space is really big and spacefaring life is probably fairly rare
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 23:44
|
|
|
Yeah I don't give much credence to Fermi's paradox, it doesn't seem to make much sense given what we currently understand about physics and the known universe.
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2023 23:49
|
|
|
The main thing I've heard is that intelligent life and space faring technological civilizations likely couldn't have formed much earlier than now because the universe was a much more "dangerous" cosmological time and place. With like supernova's and stuff. So its only "recently" that the conditions are potentially good for intelligent life to form.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
Also space is really fuckin big and there could be a million space faring civilizations in the universe right now and that'd still be less than one for every 2,000 galaxies.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 03:02
|
|
|
   content!!!Las Vegas is going crazy over what is absolutely 100% not a meteor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oli6Q6y14W8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROLYGcj5bNM In the footage from the second video at around 0:56, it looks absolutely like the Chelyabinsk meteor, and it even makes a similar sound!! EDIT: lmao  Circles, you say?  And of course, our favorite professor Avi Loeb is weighing in on the matter in this week's Event Horizon with John Michael Godier. I have to say it's pretty funny seeing, over the past few years, a Harvard astrophysics professor slowly turn into the guy with the Centauri hair from the History Channel. DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jun 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 03:41
|
|
|
i’m so tired of loeb. i was willing to give him some benefit of the doubt at first - his creds are good. but then you look at how shallow all his papers are and the unhinged yelling at jill tarter during a call and i’m just sick of seeing him everywhere
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 03:58
|
|
|
This Las Vegas thing should be taken seriously, given that multiple cameras caught it, including with sound from the ring camera, as well as eye witnesses. It was not a meteor. The 8 foot tall beings were witnessed my multiple family members, and are a possibility, but not as well supported. Still, given that the reported sightings were right where this crash happened makes it more plausible. Also Avi Loeb has gone off the deep end ever since the interstellar asteroid thing. Edit: upon further consideration and metabolization of alcohol, yeah this was totally just a meteor cat botherer fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jun 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 04:36
|
|
|
Loeb smelled money and jumped at it. I can’t be too mad that a scientist is raking in millions from dumb rich people who want to meet et after decades of begging for scraps from the nsf or w/e.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 04:39
|
|
|
I AM GRANDO posted:Loeb smelled money and jumped at it. I can’t be too mad that a scientist is raking in millions from dumb rich people who want to meet et after decades of begging for scraps from the nsf or w/e.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 04:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 09:07 |
|
|
cat botherer posted:This Las Vegas thing should be taken seriously, given that multiple cameras caught it, including with sound from the ring camera, as well as eye witnesses. It was not a meteor. The 8 foot tall beings were witnessed my multiple family members, and are a possibility, but not as well supported. Still, given that the reported sightings were right where this crash happened makes it more plausible. All due respect to your family members, we have no idea what might be the case with that, but the fireball?   Kinda looks like a meteor to me!
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2023 04:52
|
|