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I agree about the few rich people running the world. I'd even be surprised if no such group were at least trying to. The catch is, it's probably not secret: o
by loup-vaillant 16y ago
I agree about the few rich people running the world. I'd even be surprised if no such group were at least trying to. The catch is, it's probably not secret: our financial system for instance is basically designed to put all the money in the pockets of bankers (wild oversimplification). Finance is complicated and boring (for most people), but it's not secret. "Not secret" has a strong tendency to imply "no big deal" (scarcity bias), so we don't pay attention. This is frighteningly brilliant: the absence of actual secrecy (and conspiracy) tend to enhance the de-facto secrecy (and conspiracy).
Minor point about the aliens: if aliens had FTL interstellar travel, they would have built a galactic civilization before they found us. Such a civilization would be visible from Earth. See http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html for more details on these speculations. So, there may be more avenues to the abduction theory, but this one is closed.
- loewenskind 16y ago>Such a civilization would be visible from Earth. How can you possibly know this? We don't know how big the universe is. Maybe they're on "the other side"?
- khafra 16y agoThey would be visible from Earth because they would be everywhere. Even if some members of a galactic-expansion-capable civilization did not want to expand enough to exploit all available resources, they would be quickly out-competed by the ones who did want to.
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- notahacker 16y agoThe universe is a big and mysterious place. It's doubtful whether the all-pervasive influence of human civilisation on earth would be that evident to a sentient barnacle anchored to an isolated islet far from inhabited land.
- loup-vaillant 16y ago> The universe is a big and mysterious place. Sounds like a Deeply Wise Curiosity Stopper. OK, it's all speculation, but it's still reasonable to expect visible changes, like Dyson spheres. And the barnacle certainly would detect us. We changed the weather. We use planes all over the place. At the very least, it would detect Iridium Flashes, which are hardly natural. (OK, that would take a scientist sentient barnacle, but humanity does science anyway.)
- notahacker 16y agoDepends on the scientist sentient barnacle's frame of reference; I'm sure it could posit naturalistic explanations for weather changes and distant things that move across the horizon and flash light at us. I'm not saying it's impossible for us to observe the activity of extraterrestrial lifeforms (that would be absurd), simply that traces of intergalactic activity might not be immediately obvious; surely one of the side-effects of a Dyson sphere, for instance, would be to render the star almost undetectable to our telescopes.
- barry-cotter 16y agosurely one of the side-effects of a Dyson sphere, for instance, would be to render the star almost undetectable to our telescopes. No. A Dyson sphere would just emit a lot less radiation in the region that we happen to perceive as "visible". This is a special case of "Stealth is (close to) impossible in Space" http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/while_doing_some_poking_around.php http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/while_doing_som... http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/stealth_in_space_pt_2.php http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/stealth_in_spac... http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StealthInSpace http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StealthInSpace
- loewenskind 16y agoIf the universe were large enough it would be impossible for some other civilization to even see it all, much less have a presence everywhere.
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