10 unsettling answers to the fermi paradox

[Steve 2.0]

i responded in the other thread before seeing this ... I think i should be worried ...

lol!!

[Sour Masher]

Actually, it would be an "average" name for a band! Math joke!

This is gold.

[Steve 2.0]

This is gold.

Something, something, something.....brilliant joke about the Golden Ratio

[onejayhawk]

The Golden Rat IO.

J

[nullnor]

fibonnacci

i am convinced the fibonacci code is the best method for picking stocks.

and

15,782 shits!

[onejayhawk]

i am convinced the fibonacci code is the best method for picking stocks.

and

15,782 shits!

The next Fib number is 17,711, which is the sum of 6765 and 10,946.

J

[gcstomp]

I found that video a beautiful bit of summary. If alien intelligence is anything like ours, before getting to the point of space travel beyond a spit of 1 or 2 planets, the self destructive nature of the race makes it likely they do themselves in. We have the ability to annihilate ourselves multiple times over, just takes some nuke power country having a trigger happy nutjob as leader.

Biochemistry isnt limited to the confines of our simple floating rock. With the same conditions, one cell organisms will occur and replicate, little more than slime on surfaces, and exist in this simple state for billions of years, before the slow roll to more complex life/higher intelligence takes place. That we humans think we could identify this life, this simple slime, from here, on planets far flung across vast distances, is silly. We barely can register the planet beyond it being a speck behaving in a certain way with light via telescope. And we are surrounded by dark energy/dark matter, and are so early in our ability to peek outside our tent and gasp at the sparkly sky we havent yet begun to ask the questions, never mind find the answers, to what life exists beyond us.

[onejayhawk]

I found that video a beautiful bit of summary. If alien intelligence is anything like ours, before getting to the point of space travel beyond a spit of 1 or 2 planets, the self destructive nature of the race makes it likely they do themselves in. We have the ability to annihilate ourselves multiple times over, just takes some nuke power country having a trigger happy nutjob as leader.

Biochemistry isnt limited to the confines of our simple floating rock. With the same conditions, one cell organisms will occur and replicate, little more than slime on surfaces, and exist in this simple state for billions of years, before the slow roll to more complex life/higher intelligence takes place. That we humans think we could identify this life, this simple slime, from here, on planets far flung across vast distances, is silly. We barely can register the planet beyond it being a speck behaving in a certain way with light via telescope. And we are surrounded by dark energy/dark matter, and are so early in our ability to peek outside our tent and gasp at the sparkly sky we havent yet begun to ask the questions, never mind find the answers, to what life exists beyond us.

What percentage of populations self destruct? Realistically, it could be fairly high but even 99% allows some leakage.

I recall a scene in Edding's Belgarion books. The two old sorcerers meet an inept sorcerer who stumbled on the secret of power, rather than having a revelation from a diety. The first thing he wanted to do was to undo the original act, which is a fast way to get dead. They assume that it is why so few similar cases are around.

The point for us is that there are exceptions, which makes it one more number for the filter. It's also a fairly limited window. Once a viable population is off planet, even in system, the danger abates rapidly.

J

[gcstomp]

"What percentage of populations self destruct? Realistically, it could be fairly high but even 99% allows some leakage."

The percent of some country, at some point, using a weapon they have either by govt sanctioned, or rogue actor, or malfunction of some sort, leading to a world annihilating virus pandemic or nuke attack, would be 100% The percent I would guess as .1 of 1 percent cumulative per year, so some point well before 1000 years of having the weapons, so in geological terms, having the weapons means we have already used them, to our immediate neighbors who are less than 1000 light years away. By the time they see us, if there was a way they could, we already have wiped ourselves out.

Think of the incidents we have had in history, be it false launch reading on screens that almost prompted a response. Or cuban missile crisis. Or think of every movie that has had a nuke as a plot device, be it mission impossible or james bond or literally thousands of others to get ideas. Or think of a country elected a president who is unstable and simply plods onward towards a course that inextricably leads to war. Or rogue actors who are right now on a nuke submarines, or are busy constructing mass biohazard or nuke weapon in their networks because govt is bad, we need a rebirth, AKA XXX movie plot.

[onejayhawk]

"[S]ome country at some point" is not going to cut it. It has to be before we have a sustainable population off-planet. That's probably less than 100 years for us. Lagrange point habitats are probably doable now except for the raditation shielding necessary. Indeed, I can see someone making a project of collecting diverse reproductive material as a failsafe. I have no problem projecting humanity past the danger period.

J

[Sour Masher]

An interesting take by Brian Cox on all of this. The short of it is that he thinks intelligent life at the level of civilizations might be extraordinarily rare, to the point where there may be only 1 or 2 per galaxy. He thinks it is possible we are the only advanced civilization in the galaxy. But since there are 2 trillion galaxies, he cannot comprehend this extraordinarily rare and special thing has not happened anywhere else in the universe. He also concedes the possibility, at the end, that advanced civilizations may develop in ways we cannot see, like developing inward, with nano tech and virtual reality sims.

But his primary hunch is interesting, because of what he thinks it means for us. If our type of self-aware meaning-making life is so rare that we are the only ones in this galaxy, it means even more that we don't squander it.

[rhd]

An interesting take by Brian Cox on all of this. The short of it is that he thinks intelligent life at the level of civilizations might be extraordinarily rare, to the point where there may be only 1 or 2 per galaxy. He thinks it is possible we are the only advanced civilization in the galaxy.

Along this same line of thinking, our Milky Way is estimated to be about 13.5 billion years old. This puts it among the very first galaxies that ever existed in the universe. If whatever is unique about our galaxy and solar system that made intelligent life possible took that long to develop, it stands to reason that we may be among the very first intelligent species in the universe. I have no idea how valid that idea is. Probably not very; just a thought. In comparison, our sister galaxy, Andromeda, is much younger, 'only' about 10 billion years old.

[The Feral Slasher]

An interesting take by Brian Cox on all of this. The short of it is that he thinks intelligent life at the level of civilizations might be extraordinarily rare, to the point where there may be only 1 or 2 per galaxy. He thinks it is possible we are the only advanced civilization in the galaxy. But since there are 2 trillion galaxies, he cannot comprehend this extraordinarily rare and special thing has not happened anywhere else in the universe. He also concedes the possibility, at the end, that advanced civilizations may develop in ways we cannot see, like developing inward, with nano tech and virtual reality sims.

But his primary hunch is interesting, because of what he thinks it means for us. If our type of self-aware meaning-making life is so rare that we are the only ones in this galaxy, it means even more that we don't squander it.

it does seem likely that we here on earth can't comprehend the infinite possibilities in the universe. Or maybe we are the smartest, most advanced civilization that could ever occur.

[johnnya24]

it does seem likely that we here on earth can't comprehend the infinite possibilities in the universe. Or maybe we are the smartest, most advanced civilization that could ever occur.

Don't make bombastic links! Infinity is a meaningless abstraction

[The Feral Slasher]

Don't make bombastic links! Infinity is a meaningless abstraction

Dense Matter Begets Life. It's a universal law that can't be denied