The Fermi Paradox - Where Are All The Aliens?

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May 13, 2002
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#1



The Great Filter

The Great Filter, in the context of the Fermi paradox, is whatever prevents "dead matter" from giving rise, in time, to "expanding lasting life". The concept originates in Robin Hanson's argument that the failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies the possibility something is wrong with one or more of the arguments from various scientific disciplines that the appearance of advanced intelligent life is probable; this observation is conceptualized in terms of a "Great Filter" which acts to reduce the great number of sites where intelligent life might arise to the tiny number of intelligent species with advanced civilizations actually observed (currently just one: human). This probability threshold, which could lie behind us (in our past) or in front of us (in our future), might work as a barrier to the evolution of intelligent life, or as a high probability of self-destruction. The main counter-intuitive conclusion of this observation is that the easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are.​
 
May 13, 2002
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#3
Props x2

Did you post this because of the election? If so that's funny our minds went to the exact same place.

Leading up to the election and through Trumps victory all I could think about was the Great Filter and that I think we are about to get caught by it....
Ha. Yeah that was basically my train of thought.

On the actual subject of the great filter, the idea there are not more advanced intelligent life forms, or at least the ones that did evolve went extinct, I remember reading about this when I was young and thought how stupid the idea was; it simply wasn't possible. I dismissed it entirely. Now, with further thought and reading, the possibility seems extremely depressing. I'm sure the difference being young full of optimism, to now looking at the current state of mankind and knowing how fragile life is (due to mankind ourselves), it's difficult to come to terms that this is a real possibility and that our dreams of "star wars", intergalactic space travel with thousands of different advanced species, could always remain fiction. I guess for now we can always dream of colonizing Mars, something i definitely think will happen so long as we don't wipe ourselves out first and hopefully advanced AI will be created well enough to explore the cosmos for us long after mankind dies.
 
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May 13, 2002
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#4
This is such a good read:

The Fermi Paradox - Wait But Why

I'd like to think the galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some "desolate rural area" of the galaxy and there is no point for anyone else to come here, at least yet, and we just haven't observed enough of the universe to find anything ourselves.

But there so many possibilities, for example "There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location. This is an unpleasant concept and would help explain the lack of any signals being received by the SETI satellites. It also means that we might be the super naive newbies who are being unbelievably stupid and risky by ever broadcasting outward signals. There’s a debate going on currently about whether we should engage in METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence—the reverse of SETI) or not, and most people say we should not. Stephen Hawking warns, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.” Scary."
 
Nov 24, 2003
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But there so many possibilities, for example "There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location. This is an unpleasant concept and would help explain the lack of any signals being received by the SETI satellites. It also means that we might be the super naive newbies who are being unbelievably stupid and risky by ever broadcasting outward signals. There’s a debate going on currently about whether we should engage in METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence—the reverse of SETI) or not, and most people say we should not. Stephen Hawking warns, “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.” Even Carl Sagan (a general believer that any civilization advanced enough for interstellar travel would be altruistic, not hostile) called the practice of METI “deeply unwise and immature,” and recommended that “the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.” Scary."


I would recommend reading The 3 Body Problem if you have the time.


The Three-Body Problem - Wikipedia
 
May 13, 2002
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#7
I would recommend reading The 3 Body Problem if you have the time.


The Three-Body Problem - Wikipedia
Sounds fascinating. Makes you wonder how likely of a scenario something like that it is and how quickly something could transpire; we would be completely unprepared.

I noticed it talks a little about their advanced technology and nanotechnology. Which always brings me back to Molecular nanotechnology, or Molecular manufacturing or even more specifically a Molecular factory. We will have a future of nanotechnology that will build complex structures at an atomic level and eventually to the point of a Molecular factory; a machine able to manipulate individual atoms and machines with organism-like self-replicating abilities. Surely to be the next industrial revolution.

So think about what that means once we get there, just how incredibly fast technology will move - it's mind boggling. Like never before, the advances we will make will be so quick and rapid it's difficult to grasp what that means for mankind. All aspects of life will forever be changed. So this may be the single greatest technological paradigm shift mankind has ever gone through.

That leads to the catastrophic risk it will also bring - the dangers will be far larger than anything else man made. I've read a lot of Nick Bostrom and his work and not only does he bring up the obvious downside to Molecular nanotechnology weapons, but a legit fear that self replicating Nanomechanical robots could consume the raw materials of the entire planet, quickly, among many other scary possibilities. Makes you wonder if this is the great filter. That once intelligent life reaches this point they fuck themselves. It's easy to conclude when you consider at some point it's feasible everyone could have their own Molecular factory, able to create whatever the fuck they feel like. The means of production would shift so dramatically things would no longer be bought and sold, they would simply be created, by anyone, at any time. It's hard to grasp how differently the world will be.

On the other hand, if a species is able to create self replicating machines, you'd think they'd send them out in space in all directions and continue replicating, evolving and existing for millions of years. Perhaps they have, perhaps they've mastered Molecular nanotechnology and become nano fog, where biological bodies aren't even necessary and they could live collectively in virtual reality Utopia's. That would certainly make it difficult for us to detect.
 
May 13, 2002
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#8
Im going to post this here. So I've been following Tabby's star for the past two years, obviously the idea of something that could be an "alien megastructure" or Dyson Sphere/Swarm is awesome to think about, even if it was so unlikely. But now new dips have occurred for the first time in two years and shit is getting crazy/weird with the latest data. The astronomical community has gone quite crazy over this rhe past several days or so, with everyone dropping whatever they we're doing to provide telescope time and resources.

Basically the new data suggests whatever the "object" is responsible for the dips in light, is BIGGER than the star itself. So the weird thing is that in order for something to be bigger than the star and only block a maximum of 20% of the light would mean that the object is not a solid mass. That obviously can suggest some crazy things, like a Dyson Sphere.

That isn't coming from some amateur that comes directly from the head researcher:


Tabetha Boyajian @tsboyajian
Whatever is occulting the star is ~the size of the star itself. Or larger.

Here is a good illustration to give an idea:



There are other natural explanations of course such as the theory of a giant ring system + trojan swarms has been proposed:
Two New Tabby’s Star Papers | AstroWright
However, the required size of the planet, ring system, and swarm is mind-boggling, so nothing proposed so far has even really been observed before in the universe, which is why this is considered so exciting. Of course, a megastructure seems so far fetched but even the leading researchers haven't been able to rule it out. We should learn more in the upcoming weeks.
 
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May 13, 2002
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#10
I am all but convinced the only thing that can save humans from ourselves is aliens.

Hopefully they are the friendly kind.
Well we better hope we discover them, or they discover us, pretty fucking fast.

Since I posted the Tabby's star stuff a number of theories have came out to explain it naturally, and for about a week there people were already accepting one theory in particular, Trojan asteroids, until about 20 hours ago another dip happened and pretty much killed the leading theory (since this theory relied on two big dips, the next to happen in 2021) and so this most recent dip seems to have disproven it. It's really weird because there isn't any pattern, not at least observed. What could possibly block or have blocked a quarter of a star is still baffling anyone.

Of course there will be a natural explanation, as it simply seems that the more we look with better technology and systems of observing, the more we are realizing we are all alone, at least as far as highly advanced intelligent life goes.