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That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I

That could only be true if they are intentionally hiding from us, rather than replicating and harvesting the solar system as fast as they can. But personally I have a hard time believing that hyper-intelligent devices would care about avoiding detection by lowly biological organisms like us.

badrabbit 6y ago
They?
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  She
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    Hmm...She!
throwaway316943 6y ago
If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dark forest to the prime directive could be used as an argument to do so. I agree with the other comments that it’s fairly likely that our system has had multiple probes pass through. The unlikely event will be when one decides to contact us.
- 14 6y ago
  In case there are some younger non Trekkies not sure what the Prime Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
- kentonv 6y ago
  While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touch planets that have native life on them. And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all available resources. They would want to hide from external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no reason at all to hide from us. Hiding from us would be a strict loss for them, as it means they can't mine Earth for resources.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? It’s not practical to ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There’s a limit on the number of probes it would be rational to make in any one system even if you were going for high redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since there’s a good chance something could go wrong and you’d wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were paving the way for a colony but even then you’d only build what you needed to avoid having to constantly maintain the structures until they were useful. The only way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes are useless old technology since you would just send a fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating probe.
    - kentonv 6y ago
      Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of things to build. If there's any competition between civilizations, then it's even more obvious that each one will be racing to claim any star system that isn't already claimed. But even with no competition, it makes sense to spread rapidly. If you don't find that intuitively obvious, consider this: In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This presents us with a literal galactic-scale single-turn prisoner's dilemma: If intelligent life exists in Andromeda, they may already be preparing to conquer the Milky Way. If they are, and we don't prepare to fight back, they will obviously win. We won't have any ability to communicate with Andromeda to find out their intentions until it's too late. The earlier we start preparing, the more likely we are to survive. So if I were a spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way today, I'd be doing everything I could to mobilize every star system in the galaxy in preparation to beat Andromeda. There's just no reason not to...
adventured 6y ago
Those are not the only two options. Besides, we still routinely fail to spot asteroids until they get close to Earth or pass by. There may be more dwarf planets like Pluto, or a major planet the size of Neptune (per Caltech researchers, so called Planet Nine or Planet X) in our own solar system and we can't easily find them. No need to intentionally hide from the primitive humans that are still struggling to locate large objects in their solar system and near their planet.
- kentonv 6y ago
  The existence of other planets doesn't seem to explain why they wouldn't colonize Earth. I would expect them to go everywhere.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    What would the point of going everywhere be?
    - kentonv 6y ago
      To harvest all available resources in the service of whatever higher goal the civilization has.
    - scotth 6y ago
      Maximize resource collection and manufacturing? Surely there's usefulness in raw materials.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tgflynn 6y ago
Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here. Maybe after another million years of development a species' main motivation would be simple curiosity, in other words they are basically scientists. Scientists may want to avoid interfering with a species they are studying and therefore remain hidden. But then the same scientists conducting a different experiment may want to selectively perturb the specimen's environment to probe their psychological reactions and degree of intellectual development.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 MAD with Aliens? Interstellar deterrence and its implications
  - tgflynn 6y ago
    Just from reading the abstract that looks extremely speculative. Frankly you might as well try to make inferences about human behavior by studying aggression in bees.
- StantheBrain 6y ago
  Exactly, the classic Terran (of the norm), functions mainly with the help of cognitive biases and other syndromes preventing him, by social cohesion, to admit other tunnels of reality than those that composed their groups (majority currently) It's a pity, with a brain so powerful, if you knew what you could understand, admitting to omit the permanent self-awareness. Exactement, le terrien classique (de la norme), fonctionne principalement à l'aide de biais cognitifs et autres syndromes l'empêchant, par cohésion social, à admettre d'autre tunnel de réalité que ceux qui ont composé leurs groupe (majoritaire actuellement) C'est dommage, avec un cerveau si puissant, si vous saviez ce que l'on peux comprendre, en admettant d’omettre la permanente conscience de soi.
hinkley 6y ago
Someone asked this once and now I can't stop thinking about it: There's so much good stuff out in the Oort cloud, why would you ever bother climbing down the gravity well, let alone attacking the poor primitives most of the way down it? A more likely "War of the worlds" scenario would be someone mining the outer solar system to bits and leaving without us being able to throw so much as a rock at them. If they take enough, even our ability to hunt them down for revenge would be significantly hampered.
robodale 6y ago
Agreed. I don't sneak up on the ant colony that's become too close to my house before I dispatch it.

badrabbit 6y ago

They?

8bitsrule 6y ago
She
- badrabbit 6y ago
  Hmm...She!

throwaway316943 6y ago

If the mission of the probe is exploration then it doesn’t need to consume all of the resources of a solar system. It just needs enough to make a few copies to reach the nearest handful of stars. If they are using light sails as propulsion they probably need barely anything. I don’t have a hard time believing that an advanced civilization would choose hiding as the default method of exploration. Anything from the dark forest to the prime directive could be used as an argument to do so. I agree with the other comments that it’s fairly likely that our system has had multiple probes pass through. The unlikely event will be when one decides to contact us.

14 6y ago
In case there are some younger non Trekkies not sure what the Prime Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
kentonv 6y ago
While it's entirely possible they'd have a good reason to be stealthy, I don't think it's likely to be anything we've thought of. The Prime Directive is a mushy human emotional idea, not something that makes any logical sense for a space-faring civilization to follow. If there's any competition out there among space-faring civilizations, none of them are going to tie their hands behind their backs by refusing to touch planets that have native life on them. And under the Dark Forest, the best way to survive would be to replicate as fast as possible, consuming all available resources. They would want to hide from external, more-powerful civilizations, but they'd have no reason at all to hide from us. Hiding from us would be a strict loss for them, as it means they can't mine Earth for resources.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  I’m not sure that reasoning holds up. There’s no reason to believe that “mushy human emotional ideas” are not the norm. There’s no data to support that claim since humanity is the only example we have of intelligence. So for the sake of the argument I’m going to define alien intelligence as similar to human intelligence. I’d also inquire what the point of having a Von Neumann probe consume all of a system would be? It’s not practical to ship the resources anywhere at sub light speed. There’s a limit on the number of probes it would be rational to make in any one system even if you were going for high redundancy. Even use as a weapon would be foolish since there’s a good chance something could go wrong and you’d wind up killing your own systems. Maybe if you were paving the way for a colony but even then you’d only build what you needed to avoid having to constantly maintain the structures until they were useful. The only way I see an exploitive strategy working is if you have FTL travel and if you have that then Von Neumann probes are useless old technology since you would just send a fleet of ships with what you need to get started rather than trying to bootstrap from a single self replicating probe.
  - kentonv 6y ago
    Once a civilization is capable of building Von Neumann probes, it would be silly for them not to do so. They are basically free, since they are self-replicating. Of course a civilization is going to want to control and harness as many resources as it possibly can. We may not be able to imagine what they'd want to build out of whole star systems, but I absolutely don't believe that civilization will ever run out of things to build. If there's any competition between civilizations, then it's even more obvious that each one will be racing to claim any star system that isn't already claimed. But even with no competition, it makes sense to spread rapidly. If you don't find that intuitively obvious, consider this: In 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This presents us with a literal galactic-scale single-turn prisoner's dilemma: If intelligent life exists in Andromeda, they may already be preparing to conquer the Milky Way. If they are, and we don't prepare to fight back, they will obviously win. We won't have any ability to communicate with Andromeda to find out their intentions until it's too late. The earlier we start preparing, the more likely we are to survive. So if I were a spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way today, I'd be doing everything I could to mobilize every star system in the galaxy in preparation to beat Andromeda. There's just no reason not to...

adventured 6y ago

Those are not the only two options. Besides, we still routinely fail to spot asteroids until they get close to Earth or pass by. There may be more dwarf planets like Pluto, or a major planet the size of Neptune (per Caltech researchers, so called Planet Nine or Planet X) in our own solar system and we can't easily find them. No need to intentionally hide from the primitive humans that are still struggling to locate large objects in their solar system and near their planet.

kentonv 6y ago
The existence of other planets doesn't seem to explain why they wouldn't colonize Earth. I would expect them to go everywhere.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  What would the point of going everywhere be?
  - kentonv 6y ago
    To harvest all available resources in the service of whatever higher goal the civilization has.
  - scotth 6y ago
    Maximize resource collection and manufacturing? Surely there's usefulness in raw materials.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tgflynn 6y ago

Speculating about the motives of a species that may or may not be biologically similar to us and which, even if they are similar, may well be millions of years more advanced than us is very hazardous. I think these kinds of speculations lead many people to hold all sorts of strongly held but unfounded beliefs about what ET's may or may not do here. Maybe after another million years of development a species' main motivation would be simple curiosity, in other words they are basically scientists. Scientists may want to avoid interfering with a species they are studying and therefore remain hidden. But then the same scientists conducting a different experiment may want to selectively perturb the specimen's environment to probe their psychological reactions and degree of intellectual development.

formerly_proven 6y ago
https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.0606 MAD with Aliens? Interstellar deterrence and its implications
- tgflynn 6y ago
  Just from reading the abstract that looks extremely speculative. Frankly you might as well try to make inferences about human behavior by studying aggression in bees.
StantheBrain 6y ago
Exactly, the classic Terran (of the norm), functions mainly with the help of cognitive biases and other syndromes preventing him, by social cohesion, to admit other tunnels of reality than those that composed their groups (majority currently) It's a pity, with a brain so powerful, if you knew what you could understand, admitting to omit the permanent self-awareness. Exactement, le terrien classique (de la norme), fonctionne principalement à l'aide de biais cognitifs et autres syndromes l'empêchant, par cohésion social, à admettre d'autre tunnel de réalité que ceux qui ont composé leurs groupe (majoritaire actuellement) C'est dommage, avec un cerveau si puissant, si vous saviez ce que l'on peux comprendre, en admettant d’omettre la permanente conscience de soi.

hinkley 6y ago

Someone asked this once and now I can't stop thinking about it: There's so much good stuff out in the Oort cloud, why would you ever bother climbing down the gravity well, let alone attacking the poor primitives most of the way down it? A more likely "War of the worlds" scenario would be someone mining the outer solar system to bits and leaving without us being able to throw so much as a rock at them. If they take enough, even our ability to hunt them down for revenge would be significantly hampered.

robodale 6y ago

Agreed. I don't sneak up on the ant colony that's become too close to my house before I dispatch it.