I like to theorize that there is some sort of undiscovered transmission method used by alien civilizations to communicate, one which we can't detect yet. Billions of neutrinos pass through your body every second, and trillions upon trillions through the Earth; a possible transmission medium which may be less susceptible to planetary interference than, say, radio waves.
The speed of light appears to be an unbreakable barrier given our incomplete understanding of the universe. If it does indeed hold up, getting from one galaxy to another may take eons. Perhaps this is keeping the aliens at bay...
It also makes more sense for our society to evolve into robotic intelligent life for space travel. Human bodies are poorly built to leave the Earth. We need to bring oxygen, air, food, etc... Atrophy of the muscles and bones occur during prolonged space flight. We're high maintenance, and not nearly as efficient as, say, a future robotic being specifically built for space travel. It may only needs sunlight for energy, or rely on nuclear fusion.
If we ever meet one, an alien may simply be the evolutionary product of their own technology, looking nothing like the species which initially built it. Do you imagine humans will look like they do today 500 years from now, or completely different?
I've got my doubts about the search for intelligent life out there - mainly due to the fact that we have plenty of intelligent life on earth, yet haven't really found a way to have meaningful intelligent communication with them - life forms that share the exact same conditions as us as opposed to who-knows-what out there.
For all the studies done on dolphins / primates / birds that have shown them to be very intelligent by many measures, studies that have shown they have very intricate communications systems, we still seem to be no closer to having anything resembling intelligent conversation similar to what happens in most people's daily lives.
We do not know the rate at which technology-producing species come about, period. A couple months ago there was a post about how people will come up with a business idea and falsely extrapolate how much money they can make by assuming a seemingly tiny fraction of their imagined potential customer base:
This is precisely the same principle. Remember, there is no designer. The universe was not created as a petri dish for technology-producing species. There is no evidence we are not the only one.
This article tries to cloak the discussion in "logic", but the data is so horridly poor that any discussion about it will serve only to identify each respondent's personal biases about human nature and etc. Your opinion on this topic is all assumptions and no data.
One billion years really is not that long, and we're still living in a young universe. I accept that as time goes on, the possible amount of intelligent life that exists/existed increases.
Though speculation is fun, it is not meaningful until we have have another data point to connect.
There could be a fourth option: An advanced civilization has control over our region of the galaxy. Perhaps the reason why we don't detect other civilizations is because the dominant civilization neutralizes others when they get too advanced? If they have a billion years head start, it's hard for other civilizations to put up much of a fight.
The reason why we haven't detected the dominant civilization is because they don't want to be detected :)
As an alternative, there could also be one or more civilizations out there that studies us and shields us from outside signals.
On the plus side, if aliens like these ever do show up it's because they genuinely have our interest at heart or they want something but not something they can just take -- leverage on our part -- which for them, would be easy. Also good, they can eliminate us in a heart beat so don't have to worry about waging war with them. :D
why can't the answer simply be that we have not received any signs of ET life because the signals simply have not reached us yet?
Assuming that the speed of light is still the fastest possible thing in the universe, we can infer from the vastness of space that the time required for a signal to reach Earth could be in the millions of years.
Furthermore, just because a civilization is advanced, still doesn't mean it is capable of conquering the vastness of space. I think we've been watching too many Startrek and Starwar movies. Space is not something that an advanced civilization can just wonder through.
These two points combined probably explain why we haven't encountered any real proof of ET life. Not to mention our time in the universe is merely but a spec in the grand scheme of things. Hardly a blip on anyone's radar.
"The odds of there being only one single planet that evolved life among all that unfathomable vastness seems so incredible that it is all but completely irrational to believe."
Not at all true, until we find a second. Because you can't really use statistics until that point.
> The US government, for example, spends on “Defense” (including “preemptive” warfare) and Homeland Security, 8 times what it spends on educating the next generation.
You know, whenever I heard numbers like those, it always seemed like it was missing some very subtle point, but I never could quite put my finger on it. I think I just figured it out:
Myself, American citizen, I've gotten, I don't know, maybe 1/10th of my knowledge and education from U.S. government related things? Something like that? Maybe I'm being charitable here, I've learned a heck of a lot more from books, primary and secondary research, my own experiences, and acquaintances with expert domain knowledge than I ever learned in school. I dropped out of two high schools, and I would've left the education system earlier if I was a little more self assured and independent when I was younger.
So maybe 1/10th of my education has come from the U.S. government, maybe. How much of my defense against foreign warfare has? 90%? 99%? The rest being my utterly trivial-in-comparison training in martial arts, marksmanship, and other survival and combat skills? I guess you could count the time time I've traveled as under the protection of the English government, or French government, or whatever else.
But the basic point is - various government-run military has provided almost all of my defense against foreign warfare, and very little of my education. If you cut military spending by 7/8ths without implementing mandatory service, conscription, or a draft, we'd be a hell of a lot less safe. Multiplying educational spending in the current American public education system by 8 times wouldn't make us a lot more educated.
"... US government, for example, spends on “Defense” (including “preemptive” warfare) and Homeland Security, 8 times what it spends on educating the next generation... You know, whenever I heard numbers like those, it always seemed like it was missing some very subtle point, but I never could quite put my finger on it. I think I just figured it out: ..."
"... if you add up the money we spend on public education in this country, at the local, state, and federal levels (most of it is at the local level), it's about what we spend on defense. It may even be more ..."
Defence at 4% (2005) [0] and education at 7% of GDP (2007-006). [1] But there is no mention of costs associated in the intelligence community. You can read more about the breakdown of spending for education in the reference.
> > The US government, for example, spends on “Defense” (including “preemptive” warfare) and Homeland Security, 8 times what it spends on educating the next generation.
> You know, whenever I heard numbers like those, it always seemed like it was missing some point, but I never could quite put my finger on it. I think I just figured it out:
There's the small problem that the bulk of US education spending is by state and local govts, not the federal govt.
The feds may dominate college spending, emphasis 'may'.
Curious about the downvote here - is my reasoning off? I'll elaborate on my position a little bit -
It seems to me like top-down centralized education has historically done a somewhat poor job of teaching, and extra top-down education funding probably wouldn't make us more educated. Whereas top-down military seems to be the best way to defend against aggressive foreign powers.
Considering that there's always been aggressive military powers in known history - the Khanate Mongols, Alexander's Greeks, Shaka's Africa, Imperial Japan, Fascist Germany, Soviet Russia, the Khmer Rouge, North Korea today, etc, etc - defense against these types of places becomes an unfortunate necessity. And it seems like top-down, state-run military/defense works better than individual militias, individual defense and military, or whatever the alternative solution should be.
I think governments have done a relatively poor job as educators and education typically works well in an individual, decentralized way. Military? I don't think you want that as decentralized, but maybe you do. So when you see that the U.S. government has a much larger defense than education budget, that's because there's lots of quality private education happening, but not so much quality private defense happening. Agree? Disagree?
It seems to me like top-down centralized education has historically done a somewhat poor job of teaching, and extra top-down education funding probably wouldn't make us more educated. Whereas top-down military seems to be the best way to defend against aggressive foreign powers.
I'm not entirely certain of my history, so here's as good a place to ask as any: when was the last time the United States was under threat of invasion from aggressive foreign powers?
Not that the general thrust of your argument is incorrect or anything; it just seems a little bit like Russia being worried about unreliable oil imports.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but unreliable oil imports are exactly the kind of thing our military does worry about for us.
There are several ways to strike a serious blow to America besides outright invading it. We have always been blessed by geography and our good relationships with our immediate neighbors to lessen that particular risk. However, since the 1970s we have become increasing dependent on resources found outside our borders (oil isn't the only one, but it is the elephant in the room). In the same period, our allies have become increasingly dependent on us to assist in providing their defense as well.
Aside from all that, this whole discussion is born out of the idea that more money will automatically improve education. I'd argue against that. Sure, there are lots of way money would help in a lot of places, but every extra dollar doesn't translate into an extra well-adjusted knowledge worker. Also, a stable society that doesn't have to concern itself with wars and violence has a lot more time to spend learning, rather than surviving, so military spending indirectly benefits education.
> I'm not entirely certain of my history, so here's as good a place to ask as any: when was the last time the United States was under threat of invasion from aggressive foreign powers?
Threat of even a remote chance of attempted invasion/occupation ending 1989-1991 with the dissolution of the USSR.
That said, massive global conflicts don't start with the superpower getting invaded - they start with the aggressor seizing control of their local economies, conscripting soldiers, and invading for strategic locations and resources near them.
I was just talking about this with a friend of mine - what would the world look like without America as the world police? Any time a medium sized country is thinking of invading a smaller country, they need to consider whether the United States will intervene.
So for instance, think about the first Gulf War. Saddam's Iraq invaded Kuwait. Map here:
Lots of oil in Kuwait, small and weak military compared to Iraq of that time, strategic position in the Persian Gulf, etc.
Let's say America and allies doesn't step up and stop him. He conquers and assimilates Kuwait. What's next? Invade Saudi Arabia for Mecca and trying to install himself or a puppet actor as a new Caliph (supreme Muslim leader, office dissolved under secular Turkey post-WWI)? That'd give him legitimacy under an Islamic war banner. Try to take over Iran? Semi-peaceful assimilation of another neighbor? "Holy" war on Israel?
Certainly - Kuwait wasn't an end-all, be-all goal for Saddam. Who knows what he'd have done if the UN coalition led by America hadn't stopped him?
I mention these things because I'm generally in favor of American non-interventionist policies. American world policing is very expensive. The American people have had the benefit of living in the world's dominant empire recently, the standard global currency, the generally accepted world political system, the most military bases across the world, a fairly high quality passport, but at this point, the cost is probably higher than its worth for its citizens, and the job America does is a mixed bag for the rest of the world.
It's also kind of capricious in where it intervenes - there was no real American interest in the Kosovo campaign, whereas in Burma horrible things are happening similar to what happened in Kosovo. Why Kosovo, which was expensive, no strategic value to the USA, and no threat to the USA, but not Burma, which would also be expensive, have no strategic value to the USA, and is no threat to the USA? Similar sorts of violence/repression/abuses happening in both places.
Alright, that was a bit tangential. So to answer your question, America is absolutely in no danger of being invaded, what with the world's most powerful military and the geography layout of the world. But imagine if America went non-interventionist, or decommissioned its Navy and went to a a much cheaper homeland defense urban skirmishing style of military - how long would it be until North Korea went to "unify" with South Korea, or cooked up a pretense to invade Japan? I'd guess pretty fast. And that's how aggressive powers are built - they don't take on the world's dominant power until they've seized control over home industry, begun conscripting, and started taking over strategic places near them.
A friend suggested the possibility that advanced life might lose the desire to explore or engage in behaviors that would leak EMF (a sort of technical nirvana).
Since it's a weekend, I believe the board is open to rampant speculation, and this is a good topic as any for it.
I mostly lean towards C -- all civilizations perish. But I think we use the word "perish" to mean some sort of cataclysmic end. That's probably not the case at all. As I look back on the last 300 years, I see mankind evolving more and more technologies. With each new evolution, people do less and less physical activity, and more and more emotion is put into virtual reality. The cataclysm won't be nuclear war -- we should be so lucky. The cataclysm will be eon after eon of inactivity and stagnation. (I already see this in the movement to "solve problems at home first" before space exploration and the "what right do we have to contaminate other planets" school of environmentalism.
I'd give B good odds as well -- good enough that there are probably thousands or millions of civilizations that survived. Also looking at patterns in our own evolution, I think machine-based intelligences operating at super-high bandwidths and living for millions of years would have as much in common with us as we do with ants. Do ants know that people exist? Probably not.
For your C to be the solution, you'd have to posit that all technological civilizations go this route. Maybe that'll turn out to be the case, but do you have a reason to think that, other than that it seems to be happening here?
A combination might be at work as well. Perhaps civilizations stagnate for so long that if they ever do evolve into a true space-faring species that they're so removed from our reality as to effectively have transcended it.
This would explain the lack of contact, the observed trend of mankind, and the odds-on-favorite that something more advanced has to be out there somewhere.
Humanity could have had a technological infrastructure outside the atmosphere in the 1970s. (They sadly lost out to NASA politically.)
An Orion exploration could generate money from extra-terrestrial mineral sources inside a not too long time window.
Second, consider how much longer the virtual reality thing would take if we were half as fast at speeding up computers (3 years for Moore's law, not 1 1/2). A not unrealistic assumption for a civilization with some other focus.
Third, consider if one of the small scale fusion projects (EMC, General Fusion, etc) works. Or a future idea. Then an Oort cloud would be livable, for a technological civilization.
From that, it seems a large fraction of technological civilizations should not have all eggs on one planet/culture before cultural stagnation starts. And the groups further away would be able to see the problem happening to others and have a good chance to do things differently.
In the same way, a physics experiment with "unexpected" results would need to destroy a whole solar system and not only a planet.
And the groups further away would be able to see the problem happening to others and have a good chance to do things differently.
Well, the initial premise that all civilizations have this happen suggests that later groups wouldn't see it as a problem, but as a goal or path to the goal.
There are groups here on Earth that seem to be resistant to the pull of the virtual, but all by resisting technologies of other kinds as well, so it could still be that any group capable of building advanced computing succumbs. There's a depressing thought: Dune as an accurate picture of the attitude towards computing in long-lived technological civilizations.
To be a bit cynical, most controlling ideologies are against any new way of living. Your argument needs that all the groups of leaders/high priests fails to control their subcultures, even far away from the central system/culture.
Note that the argument needs that most every subculture fails at controlling its faithful in most every technological civilization...
Doesn't really sound likely -- consider a North Korea or Salafism in the Oort cloud.
There really should be some analysis somewhere (just for Fermi's Paradox, if nothing else) to answer this question:
How fast could humanity have reached viable colonies in space -- if we had used Orions or "normal" nuclear rockets? (NERVA, or better).
NASA would hardly fund research into their total failure to reach a fraction of what could have been. Is that the reason why this isn't well published?
Since we're still here, I think physics experiments to explain Fermi's paradox has to be wrong (unless they destroy a whole solar system).
I think I'll email the guy which has centauri-dreams.org and ask.
Edit: A meme like virtual worlds which everyone got dependent on, disregarding species and culture, sounds just impossible. It seems more likely that older civilizations kill off the new ones, to be like Greta Garbo (alone).
Edit 2: My point is that the "Great Filter" (see http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1848) should be behind humanity, unless it is that other civilizations kill new ones, since a large fraction of all civilizations that are where we are in development, would have viable space colonies.
The speed of light appears to be an unbreakable barrier given our incomplete understanding of the universe. If it does indeed hold up, getting from one galaxy to another may take eons. Perhaps this is keeping the aliens at bay...
It also makes more sense for our society to evolve into robotic intelligent life for space travel. Human bodies are poorly built to leave the Earth. We need to bring oxygen, air, food, etc... Atrophy of the muscles and bones occur during prolonged space flight. We're high maintenance, and not nearly as efficient as, say, a future robotic being specifically built for space travel. It may only needs sunlight for energy, or rely on nuclear fusion.
If we ever meet one, an alien may simply be the evolutionary product of their own technology, looking nothing like the species which initially built it. Do you imagine humans will look like they do today 500 years from now, or completely different?