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This is a stupid question. Any world we discover that doesn't harbor intelligent life we would in all surity dismiss as a world that never will. See Mars, for i

This is a stupid question. Any world we discover that doesn't harbor intelligent life we would in all surity dismiss as a world that never will. See Mars, for instance. OTOH, any world that was inhabited by aliens would, besides within a very narrow time frame, either have advanced to a state where their world would, for sure, be unrecognizable by us, or have destroyed themselves to such an extent that we would never have known they were there. Typically human hubris, why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? The wreckage and debris of a great alien war. Face it humanity, you're not the pinnacle of intelligence that you think, but, frankly the figurative apes throwing stones at each other after a (galactic version of) World War III.

fierarul 7y ago
> why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? The wreckage and debris of a great alien war. Ooh, this one is original. Great sci-fi idea.
Ygg2 7y ago
> Typically human hubris, why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? It's not hubris. It's rationality. If what you say is correct, we would probably see more evidence of alien life. You can't just see a star flicker and jump to aliens. Why is that explanation much better than we're inside Matrix. And dark matter is rounding error or even worse our overlords manually tweaking parameters. Both are untestable theories, which means they are essentially useless.
- topmonk 7y ago
  They aren't useless, they are a direction which could be pursued but isn't. Why do you think it takes a one out of a million type of person to develop new technologies? Everyone dovetails into the same overarching implied narrative that everything we see has become that way based only on a few simple laws and everything was empty before that. So all our discoveries tend to cement that narrative because we aren't looking for anything else.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fennecfoxen 7y ago
I'm afraid that this comment is not the pinnacle of intelligence that you think it is. But for people who come by and want to know why this dark matter suggestion is fundamentally ill-informed and wrong: Dark matter isn't merely "not bright" matter, it is matter which does not interact with electromagnetic radiation. It is generally expected that the vast majority is non-baryonic, for a variety of reasons. The observed density of all matter in the universe is about 30% of the universe's critical density, but Big Bang nucleosynthesis results readable in the cosmic microwave background show much less helium and lithium than you would expect if it were baryonic — it is safe to say that baryonic matter is only 5% of the critical density. Moreover, small dense objects (black holes) would produce gravitational micro-lensing effects which aren't present, while more diffuse objects would affect the absorption spectra of light. And finally, the observed distribution of dark matter in the universe just ... sorta makes it a rather poor candidate for war debris.
- topmonk 7y ago
  Why can't the remenants from an alien war not be baryonic? The observed distribution is very odd, actually. In some galaxies there is nearly none, in others quite a lot, yet it tends to be hang quite close to matter even though the forces between them are quite weak.
coldtea 7y ago
>OTOH, any world that was inhabited by aliens would, besides within a very narrow time frame, either have advanced to a state where their world would, for sure, be unrecognizable by us, or have destroyed themselves to such an extent that we would never have known they were there. Why? It's entirely possible (also for us) that scientific and technological advancement plateaus. You get the early hanging fruit and a progress that looks like an exponential curve but turns out to be more like a sigmoid, as more advanced inventions get harder to reason for a human level intelligence, require too much energy, need resources that are depletable (minerals etc), are too complex to manufacture, etc. So there wont be any logical necessity for "a state where their world would, for sure, be unrecognizable by us". Nor it's required that they would "have destroyed themselves". >Typically human hubris, why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? The wreckage and debris of a great alien war. Black matter has some physical properties. It's not just garbage we can't identify. Also how is a "great alien war" the "most logical" explanation for black matter?
- topmonk 7y ago
  > It's entirely possible (also for us) that scientific and technological advancement plateaus. If technology does plateau and did so near where we are now, it would be extremely unlikely, because it would require two unlikely but unrelated events both happening. Mathematically, you would multiply the probabilities of each together. > Also how is a "great alien war" the "most logical" explanation for black matter? It's distribution is quite odd. In some galaxies but not much in others, and tends to be around regular matter even though it there isn't much force keeping it that way.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >If technology does plateau and did so near where we are now, it would be extremely unlikely, because it would require two unlikely but unrelated events both happening. Yeah, I don't buy this argument. First, regarding "technology plateau" being unlikely, that presupposes what it oughta prove [1]. We can discuss it as a counter-assertion to mine, but it can't be part of an argument that proves that we're unlikely to be in a plateau, because that would be circular reasoning. Second, even if that "technology plateau" is low probability was a legit argument, and even given that "technology plateaus now" is also low probability, and thus their chances of happening together being even lower probability (the multiplication of those two low probabilities) -- that would just prove that "technology plateaus now" is low probability. It wouldn't mean it's impossible, much less that it's not happening. And my assumption wasn't based on probabilities, but on empirical observations. Winning the lottery is low probability. Your first script getting accepted to be made into a major movie is too. But if you have the lottery ticket in your hands, have verified the winning numbers, and you just got a call from a Hollywood director that want's to buy your script, the fact that those two events occurring together are "low probability" doesn't matter. They are reality. (Besides, for any two events with low probability that have happened in history, somebody could have made the exact same argument you've made, to "prove" that they didn't happen). Plotting the outline of inventions on a timescale, and their impact, one can see that there's a big boom in the 18th century, continues to 19th century, peaking in 20th to mid 20th century. For 60+ years we haven't found anything as big as electricity (Maxwell and co), electric light, combustion engine, telephone, television, internet, photography, AD/DA conversion, nuclear power, transistors, DNA, Quantum Mechanics, penicillin, antibiotics, Relativity, flight, plastics, rockets, etc. Even computers and the internet herald back to 30s and 60s respectively. Where are those equivalent impact theories or inventions (as opposed to mere optimizations and marginal improvements to existing theories/inventions) in the last 60 years? I'm sure you'll find a few. I doubt you'll find 1/10th as many as in, say, 1900-1950. (High impact items, equivalent to the ones listed above. Not e.g. string theory -- compared to the advent of Relativity or QM it's small incremental peanuts). [1] Of course, me saying that "technology does plateau" is also an assertion that I haven't proven. So, sure, one could argue in favor or against it. But one can't start from asserting that technology plateau is an "unlikely event" to disprove that technology plateaus, because that would be a circular argument. So at best your argument is not an induction, but just an unproved assertion itself).

fierarul 7y ago

> why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? The wreckage and debris of a great alien war. Ooh, this one is original. Great sci-fi idea.

Ygg2 7y ago

> Typically human hubris, why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? It's not hubris. It's rationality. If what you say is correct, we would probably see more evidence of alien life. You can't just see a star flicker and jump to aliens. Why is that explanation much better than we're inside Matrix. And dark matter is rounding error or even worse our overlords manually tweaking parameters. Both are untestable theories, which means they are essentially useless.

topmonk 7y ago
They aren't useless, they are a direction which could be pursued but isn't. Why do you think it takes a one out of a million type of person to develop new technologies? Everyone dovetails into the same overarching implied narrative that everything we see has become that way based only on a few simple laws and everything was empty before that. So all our discoveries tend to cement that narrative because we aren't looking for anything else.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fennecfoxen 7y ago

I'm afraid that this comment is not the pinnacle of intelligence that you think it is. But for people who come by and want to know why this dark matter suggestion is fundamentally ill-informed and wrong: Dark matter isn't merely "not bright" matter, it is matter which does not interact with electromagnetic radiation. It is generally expected that the vast majority is non-baryonic, for a variety of reasons. The observed density of all matter in the universe is about 30% of the universe's critical density, but Big Bang nucleosynthesis results readable in the cosmic microwave background show much less helium and lithium than you would expect if it were baryonic — it is safe to say that baryonic matter is only 5% of the critical density. Moreover, small dense objects (black holes) would produce gravitational micro-lensing effects which aren't present, while more diffuse objects would affect the absorption spectra of light. And finally, the observed distribution of dark matter in the universe just ... sorta makes it a rather poor candidate for war debris.

topmonk 7y ago
Why can't the remenants from an alien war not be baryonic? The observed distribution is very odd, actually. In some galaxies there is nearly none, in others quite a lot, yet it tends to be hang quite close to matter even though the forces between them are quite weak.

coldtea 7y ago

>OTOH, any world that was inhabited by aliens would, besides within a very narrow time frame, either have advanced to a state where their world would, for sure, be unrecognizable by us, or have destroyed themselves to such an extent that we would never have known they were there. Why? It's entirely possible (also for us) that scientific and technological advancement plateaus. You get the early hanging fruit and a progress that looks like an exponential curve but turns out to be more like a sigmoid, as more advanced inventions get harder to reason for a human level intelligence, require too much energy, need resources that are depletable (minerals etc), are too complex to manufacture, etc. So there wont be any logical necessity for "a state where their world would, for sure, be unrecognizable by us". Nor it's required that they would "have destroyed themselves". >Typically human hubris, why can't we recognize the most logical explanation for so much dark matter? The wreckage and debris of a great alien war. Black matter has some physical properties. It's not just garbage we can't identify. Also how is a "great alien war" the "most logical" explanation for black matter?

topmonk 7y ago
> It's entirely possible (also for us) that scientific and technological advancement plateaus. If technology does plateau and did so near where we are now, it would be extremely unlikely, because it would require two unlikely but unrelated events both happening. Mathematically, you would multiply the probabilities of each together. > Also how is a "great alien war" the "most logical" explanation for black matter? It's distribution is quite odd. In some galaxies but not much in others, and tends to be around regular matter even though it there isn't much force keeping it that way.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >If technology does plateau and did so near where we are now, it would be extremely unlikely, because it would require two unlikely but unrelated events both happening. Yeah, I don't buy this argument. First, regarding "technology plateau" being unlikely, that presupposes what it oughta prove [1]. We can discuss it as a counter-assertion to mine, but it can't be part of an argument that proves that we're unlikely to be in a plateau, because that would be circular reasoning. Second, even if that "technology plateau" is low probability was a legit argument, and even given that "technology plateaus now" is also low probability, and thus their chances of happening together being even lower probability (the multiplication of those two low probabilities) -- that would just prove that "technology plateaus now" is low probability. It wouldn't mean it's impossible, much less that it's not happening. And my assumption wasn't based on probabilities, but on empirical observations. Winning the lottery is low probability. Your first script getting accepted to be made into a major movie is too. But if you have the lottery ticket in your hands, have verified the winning numbers, and you just got a call from a Hollywood director that want's to buy your script, the fact that those two events occurring together are "low probability" doesn't matter. They are reality. (Besides, for any two events with low probability that have happened in history, somebody could have made the exact same argument you've made, to "prove" that they didn't happen). Plotting the outline of inventions on a timescale, and their impact, one can see that there's a big boom in the 18th century, continues to 19th century, peaking in 20th to mid 20th century. For 60+ years we haven't found anything as big as electricity (Maxwell and co), electric light, combustion engine, telephone, television, internet, photography, AD/DA conversion, nuclear power, transistors, DNA, Quantum Mechanics, penicillin, antibiotics, Relativity, flight, plastics, rockets, etc. Even computers and the internet herald back to 30s and 60s respectively. Where are those equivalent impact theories or inventions (as opposed to mere optimizations and marginal improvements to existing theories/inventions) in the last 60 years? I'm sure you'll find a few. I doubt you'll find 1/10th as many as in, say, 1900-1950. (High impact items, equivalent to the ones listed above. Not e.g. string theory -- compared to the advent of Relativity or QM it's small incremental peanuts). [1] Of course, me saying that "technology does plateau" is also an assertion that I haven't proven. So, sure, one could argue in favor or against it. But one can't start from asserting that technology plateau is an "unlikely event" to disprove that technology plateaus, because that would be a circular argument. So at best your argument is not an induction, but just an unproved assertion itself).