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Model Simulates How ET Civilizations Could Be Deliberately Avoiding Earth

15 points by voctor 10y ago

informatimago 10y ago
Prime Directive!
okket 10y ago
Putting a freshly discovered intelligent species, that started to use technology for a few hundred years, under quarantine for a few thousand years, makes sense. If they survive, they might be worth bothering with. Otherwise, observation from distance, without interfering/risking massive amounts of energy, is a logical and sane course of action. IMHO.
- mywittyname 10y ago
  I imagine it's very difficult for civilizations it is to coordinate over the span of millennia -- even within the limited geography of their regions or planets, much less throughout a solar system or galaxy.
restalis 10y ago
"alien civilizations would need to network to forge a treaty to leave primitives, like us, in the cold" Or they just need to think alike, with no need for a complicated assumption that they forged some kind of treaty with each other. Maybe it's hard to see now, but in a space faring era with enough alien contact it might just come out as an obvious thing to not trust others too much and thus limit the exposure as the first measure of precaution.
dogma1138 10y ago
Hmm it still doesn't answer the issue of emerging civilizations, we have been sending quite a bit of signals to outer space unintentionally and we still do, and while those signals aren't powerful enough or directed enough for communication they can still be somewhat picked up. I also don't understand how exactly such treaty would be negotiated given the distance and luminal or subluminal communication speeds in a relativistic universe. I'm still of the opinion that the best answer to "where's everyone" is that while life isn't rate, intelligent life is, and technological intelligence is even rare at least at any given moment, and it's quite likely that there are sufficient great filters ahead of any civilization that evolves to make any coexistence of technological civilizations within a given galaxy a rarity. Life spawned on earth virtually the second it cooled down but it took it 3.5-3.8 bln years to develop a life form capable of even basic space travel, a lot of things can happen within a period if nearly 4 bln years and a lot of things have happened on earth where almost all life (and possibly all life) have been erased. Add to that the possibility that earth just happen to form around the time that life was started to be possible in our own galaxy as the younger Milky Way could have been too violent even around the galactic rim for complex life to evolve due to the constant star formation and death and you give even more credence to the fact that we can be first, rare, and doomed all at the same time. I find overall the notion that "we aren't special" to be a slight logical fallacy, it is quite possible that both our universe and earth are very special that doesn't mean that they were created or we are in a simulation it just means that they are special and we live in a special time in the universe where the various constants are favorable for not only atoms to develop but for live to evolve and we are in a special part of the universe or even in a special part of our own galaxy and if not in a special location possibly in a special time. Saying that earth isn't special and hence life is everywhere with a sample of one is like saying that winning the lottery isn't special from a sample of one, saying that earth and the sun are average and if they were special statistically we wouldn't be here also holds very little merit because while statistics do not take sides but if they would not have played "in our favor" we wouldn't be here discussing them in the first place.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  We may just be not-intelligent-enough. Why go visit the smart apes, when everybody else is an energy-being chilling in a white hole?
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Could be, although i am fairly confident that any technological species out there is far more similar to us or a few other candidates than to anything else we might imagine. There are likely to be fairly strict biological and environmental constraints on the development of technological intelligence and technological progress. I will admit that non-corporeal beings are excluded from this since no normal rules can actually apply to them. I also find it quite unlikely that a civilization can exist for a million years because it would be really interesting to see how does biology factor into this, even given our current conditions 1 million years is enough time for our own species to speciate. You also have to consider the limitation of the existence of civilizations in a relativistic universe we have had 1000's of culture and subcultures on earth developing over very short distance even without considerable isolation, if you put a human colony even on say Proxima Centauri at a distance of only 4.5 light years which would still allow similar communication times to what was not uncommon on earth even several 100's years ago how much time would have to pass before they are no longer the same civilization as earth or SOL? And if we take even longer distances then there is almost not way for it to work, at a 100 light years away by the time the message would arrive from one point to another both the sender and the recipient would have likely to expire, at 500-1000 light years the whole civilization might not exist anymore or be considerably different, at a few 1000's light years and above the species itself might not exist anymore.

15 points by voctor 10y ago

Prime Directive!

okket 10y ago

Putting a freshly discovered intelligent species, that started to use technology for a few hundred years, under quarantine for a few thousand years, makes sense. If they survive, they might be worth bothering with. Otherwise, observation from distance, without interfering/risking massive amounts of energy, is a logical and sane course of action. IMHO.

mywittyname 10y ago
I imagine it's very difficult for civilizations it is to coordinate over the span of millennia -- even within the limited geography of their regions or planets, much less throughout a solar system or galaxy.

restalis 10y ago

"alien civilizations would need to network to forge a treaty to leave primitives, like us, in the cold" Or they just need to think alike, with no need for a complicated assumption that they forged some kind of treaty with each other. Maybe it's hard to see now, but in a space faring era with enough alien contact it might just come out as an obvious thing to not trust others too much and thus limit the exposure as the first measure of precaution.

dogma1138 10y ago

Hmm it still doesn't answer the issue of emerging civilizations, we have been sending quite a bit of signals to outer space unintentionally and we still do, and while those signals aren't powerful enough or directed enough for communication they can still be somewhat picked up. I also don't understand how exactly such treaty would be negotiated given the distance and luminal or subluminal communication speeds in a relativistic universe. I'm still of the opinion that the best answer to "where's everyone" is that while life isn't rate, intelligent life is, and technological intelligence is even rare at least at any given moment, and it's quite likely that there are sufficient great filters ahead of any civilization that evolves to make any coexistence of technological civilizations within a given galaxy a rarity. Life spawned on earth virtually the second it cooled down but it took it 3.5-3.8 bln years to develop a life form capable of even basic space travel, a lot of things can happen within a period if nearly 4 bln years and a lot of things have happened on earth where almost all life (and possibly all life) have been erased. Add to that the possibility that earth just happen to form around the time that life was started to be possible in our own galaxy as the younger Milky Way could have been too violent even around the galactic rim for complex life to evolve due to the constant star formation and death and you give even more credence to the fact that we can be first, rare, and doomed all at the same time. I find overall the notion that "we aren't special" to be a slight logical fallacy, it is quite possible that both our universe and earth are very special that doesn't mean that they were created or we are in a simulation it just means that they are special and we live in a special time in the universe where the various constants are favorable for not only atoms to develop but for live to evolve and we are in a special part of the universe or even in a special part of our own galaxy and if not in a special location possibly in a special time. Saying that earth isn't special and hence life is everywhere with a sample of one is like saying that winning the lottery isn't special from a sample of one, saying that earth and the sun are average and if they were special statistically we wouldn't be here also holds very little merit because while statistics do not take sides but if they would not have played "in our favor" we wouldn't be here discussing them in the first place.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
We may just be not-intelligent-enough. Why go visit the smart apes, when everybody else is an energy-being chilling in a white hole?
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Could be, although i am fairly confident that any technological species out there is far more similar to us or a few other candidates than to anything else we might imagine. There are likely to be fairly strict biological and environmental constraints on the development of technological intelligence and technological progress. I will admit that non-corporeal beings are excluded from this since no normal rules can actually apply to them. I also find it quite unlikely that a civilization can exist for a million years because it would be really interesting to see how does biology factor into this, even given our current conditions 1 million years is enough time for our own species to speciate. You also have to consider the limitation of the existence of civilizations in a relativistic universe we have had 1000's of culture and subcultures on earth developing over very short distance even without considerable isolation, if you put a human colony even on say Proxima Centauri at a distance of only 4.5 light years which would still allow similar communication times to what was not uncommon on earth even several 100's years ago how much time would have to pass before they are no longer the same civilization as earth or SOL? And if we take even longer distances then there is almost not way for it to work, at a 100 light years away by the time the message would arrive from one point to another both the sender and the recipient would have likely to expire, at 500-1000 light years the whole civilization might not exist anymore or be considerably different, at a few 1000's light years and above the species itself might not exist anymore.