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Not to start a massive flame war, but just a personal opinion: I rather prefer humans to be the only intelligent species in the observable Universe - that means

Not to start a massive flame war, but just a personal opinion: I rather prefer humans to be the only intelligent species in the observable Universe - that means it will be all ours to play with.

bpodgursky 5y ago
Being the only intelligent life means that it's far more likely that we have a long and promising future. If there is other intelligent life out there... we have to ask why they aren't _everywhere_. Because unless we're missing something big, it would be clear that intelligence is either perpetually stuck in their own tiny tiny corner of the universe, or kill themselves off before they can reach the rest of the visible universe.
- nazgulnarsil 5y ago
  dark matter is like 96% of the universe by mass...
  - garmaine 5y ago
    This is incorrect.
    - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
      Expand please? I read a book that also proposed this. If science has moved on I'd like rto know.
      - garmaine 5y ago
        It is conflating dark matter with dark energy, and counting them both together.
      - lgl 5y ago
        It's pretty close. Only 5% of all matter is "regular" matter, and ~27% is dark matter which makes it be 85% of all mass but not of mass-energy since there is ~68% of dark energy. It's the combination of dark matter + dark energy that makes for ~95% of the universe's total mass-energy. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#:~:text=In%20the%20standard%20Lambda%2DCDM,of%20total%20mass%E2%80%93energy%20content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#:~:text=In%20the%2....
  - baja_blast 5y ago
    Dark matter may not exist, in fact many observations conflict with our dark matter models. IMO I just think our understanding of physics is incomplete.
- sib301 5y ago
  Or we’re early... How is that not an obvious possibility?
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Sure, but given that humans are only about 500k years old, that makes us the only intelligent life so far. The lack of any other intelligent life so far means that we have no evidence one way or another that we will succeed or fail. Better than if 100 million civilizations already tried and died.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Or they are everywhere, but our technology is too primitive to see them. Or we just have not collected enough data yet to make out the patterns.
- d_silin 5y ago
  One of the explanations for Fermi paradox is that we just got lucky to be one of the first civilizations to the party. A few billions years from now Universe will be filled to the brim with life and sentience.
- hazeii 5y ago
  ...or because they're out there, and when they notice us they'll splat us like we'd splat an ant nest with no more thought than that.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    Let's just count the number of movies where we kill the aliens versus where we get to live with them.
  - taberiand 5y ago
    I vaguely recall a story to that effect? Scientists finally receive a brief interstellar message of intelligent origin. After painstaking study, a breakthrough and finally they decipher it: Be quiet! They'll hear you.
    - lgl 5y ago
      I was about to comment that it's somewhat similar to The Three Body Problem that's often discussed on hn's comments sections from time to time but decided to search for that last phrase and apparently it's from a /r/nosleep story: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2j3nxz/radio_silence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2j3nxz/radio_silen...
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The speed of light is too slow for them to pull that off. They are limited by the same physics as us. There are some possible loopholes like wormholes, but even they are limited.
  - nly 5y ago
    ...or the intelligent life in the universe is so beyond us that, even though they have the capability to communicate, or even visit, they don't see us as worth contacting. Perhaps them talking to us would be like us talking to a tree stump or a bucket of plankton. Perhaps it's not even a conscious decision on their part. Perhaps all our achievements, everything we are, isn't recognized amongst alien-kind beyond a short 1 line entry in an alien log file,. Perhaps their monitoring system detects and discards a thousand worthless blips like us every day. What if we're just not that special
- causality0 5y ago
  Yes, that is the least scary. If species like us are stuck in our own solar system, we're eventually doomed. If we're not, it would only take a few million years to colonize the galaxy. If two non-stuck colonizing species exist at the same time they have to arise within a few million years of each other, in a galaxy thirteen billion years old. Frankly, us being the only/first sapient species is by far the most optimistic possibility.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    Basically, for us to colonize another star system I think we have to be a space native species that no longer needs to. I think by the time we colonize anything beyond alpha centuri, there are more of humanity living on o'neil cylinders than on any planet, and the people living on planet are the ones that desire to live somewhere 'wild'
- argvargc 5y ago
  Given a premise that perfect evolution is possible: The following is dependent on the unknown likely duration to perfect evolution, and how it overlaps with unknown (but widely-assumed to be light-speed) travelling limits. Given appropriate overlap distance of the two, there will inevitably arise the first civilisation to perform the following steps in order: 1) Attain self-mastery of internal planetary conflict and resource management. (Permanently sustainable peace and sustenance.) 2) Use their now abundance of time to perfect mastery of physics as is physically possible (something we know to have barely-conceivable limits in terms of size/scale etc). 3) Traverse the universe looking for any others, who - by not being the first - will therefore likely be behind them in terms of any conceivable aspect. 4) Immediately upon finding them, imprison them virtually in a seemingly "empty" but otherwise identical universe. This forces the same conditions upon them that were known to cause success, and also eliminates all risk of contamination of the existing peaceful equilibrium. 6) Wait. 7) The found species either: a) achieves mastery of peace and sustainability, at which point contact is initiated as peaceful equals. b) the species fails and dies. 8) Permanent universal peace is the only possible outcome, no matter how many times the above process is repeated. Given the age of the universe, and how far we have come in such a short time, to me the above seems a likely resolution to the paradox. With slight modification, it also explain various unexplained "contacts". Perhaps the "virtual imprisonment period" does not ideally have a definitive binary on/off, instead is progressive in a reversible way (hence the lack of believability and proof for many "encounters"). Such non-invasive contact events may serve as research/assessment, and non-polluting "helping hands" for those who may be watching and waiting. It would certainly appear we are very near (relatively speaking), to the point mastery of the physical world, making us likely virtual imprisonment and observation targets. Whether we can do the peace and sustainability bit remains to be seen.
podiki 5y ago
The speed of light (or compensated with very long travel time) is limiting, though. Much less volume within reasonable, for your definition of reasonable, reach both for ourselves and others. The universe, to put it mildly, is ginormous.
- taurath 5y ago
  The speed of light is an insurmountable barrier to us now and as far out as we can see, but we can’t really see that far out :p
- kruasan 5y ago
  This is true, we can travel only up to 8.2 billion light years (radius of the affectable universe/2) which is the largest completely causally connected region, in the sense that every point can observe and reach every other. 8.2 billion light years is the furthest distance that we could reach and then return from at the speed of light. And it is much smaller than the radius of the observable universe (46.4 billion light years)
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  > The speed of light (or compensated with very long travel time) is limiting It's only limiting if you're trying to reach C when traversing the spacetime. But if you're bending spacetime instead, there's no such limitation!
  - podiki 5y ago
    Certainly there may be loopholes ;-) Anything I've seen with things like wormholes would require massive amounts of energy and/or exotic matter, as well as difficulties in things like stability and actually traversing with non-negligible mass. No free lunches!
natch 5y ago
Enjoy it while it lasts…
Cookingboy 5y ago
On one hand I see where you are coming from, but on the other hand I really, really want to witness First Contact and the subsequent reaction from the world. It will be the single most monumental moment in human history.
- hulitu 5y ago
  We will all be monuments afterwards.
- irrational 5y ago
  I doubt it. Based on the past year, many/most people would think it is fake news or some conspiracy to control them that they are too smart to fall for. For others, they’ve seen so many aliens in video games, TV shows, movies, etc. that they will be blasé about it and complain that the aliens in video game X looked more realistic than the real thing. Others will be interested for a day or two, then will move onto the next new thing on the news cycle. Others will be so self absorbed by social media that they will only care if they can use footage to make TikTok memes. Others will be know it all’s that will want to point out to everyone that they always said there was extra terrestrial life and everyone should acknowledge how smart they are. Others will see this as a great opportunity to write a book in the hopes of striking it rich. Others are just trying to scrape by and are too worn down, tired, depressed, etc. to pay any attention. Many people live subsistent lifestyles and don’t have access to news feed to even know it happened. I would expect exceedingly few to really give this sort of event the acknowledgement it deserves.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    I think you're being overly pessimistic. It revolutionizes everything. Philosophy, science, math, linguistics, religion (maybe), computers, physics, art, history, music (maybe)...etc. If they share their technology, it could allow us to leap hundreds or thousands of years in the future within decades.
- nly 5y ago
  It could also be our last moment.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
I've prefer this as well. If humans do ever cross the vastness of space to other solar systems, the travelers would eventually become a separate species anyway - wouldn't they? It would be a split, unless there is regular travel between star systems, but I can't see that happening without Star Trek like technology.
- rriepe 5y ago
  They totally would. And anyone we meet will probably already be related to us, if life is panspermic.
hulitu 5y ago
"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth! " Monthy Python
koheripbal 5y ago
Even if today humanity is the only sentient life, it is unlikely to remain so. AI will advance faster than we can evolve and it will be their universe to play with, not ours.
- irrational 5y ago
  Only if we construct that AI. Nothing says we have to.
  - officialjunk 5y ago
    do you think there are enough sufficiently interest groups that will continue to work toward an AI?
pndy 5y ago
> that means it will be all ours to play with That also means we need to survive here on Earth, and perhaps change as a species in various aspects in order to even make a small step of becoming an interplanetary and then, in long the run maybe even interstellar species.
codeulike 5y ago
I find the responsibiltiy of that somewhat terrifying. If we snuff outselves out then all that is left is a universe of stars shining on barren rocks.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  I have always believed the human race will end eventually. So why "If we snuff ourselves out..."?
pfdietz 5y ago
If intelligent life were common then the Great Filter would likely be ahead of us, not behind us. Finding that ETI would be the worst news humanity ever receives.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  I don't believe in The Great Filter, as I disagree with it's basic premise, i.e. the Fermi paradox. The Prime Directive is the most plausible explanation.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    That would require a uniformity of purpose over billions of years, not only in our galaxy but in galaxies at cosmological distances (where we could detect K3 civilizations).
    - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
      It would only require such uniformity for some millennia, that is how long civilization has existed. A hundred thousand years tops, if you're to believe traditional tales and mythology ;) We don't know if alien civilizations interfered a million years ago.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        It would require a prohibition on colonizing planets on which intelligent life might arise in the future. This would have to be enforced over the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed.
m4rtink 5y ago
That's a good point & divergent evolution once enough systems get settled should produce many interesting alien cultures anyway, so not a huge problem. :)

Not to start a massive flame war, but just a personal opinion: I rather prefer humans to be the only intelligent species in the observable Universe - that means it will be all ours to play with.

bpodgursky 5y ago

Being the only intelligent life means that it's far more likely that we have a long and promising future. If there is other intelligent life out there... we have to ask why they aren't _everywhere_. Because unless we're missing something big, it would be clear that intelligence is either perpetually stuck in their own tiny tiny corner of the universe, or kill themselves off before they can reach the rest of the visible universe.

nazgulnarsil 5y ago
dark matter is like 96% of the universe by mass...
- garmaine 5y ago
  This is incorrect.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    Expand please? I read a book that also proposed this. If science has moved on I'd like rto know.
    - garmaine 5y ago
      It is conflating dark matter with dark energy, and counting them both together.
    - lgl 5y ago
      It's pretty close. Only 5% of all matter is "regular" matter, and ~27% is dark matter which makes it be 85% of all mass but not of mass-energy since there is ~68% of dark energy. It's the combination of dark matter + dark energy that makes for ~95% of the universe's total mass-energy. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#:~:text=In%20the%20standard%20Lambda%2DCDM,of%20total%20mass%E2%80%93energy%20content https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#:~:text=In%20the%2....
- baja_blast 5y ago
  Dark matter may not exist, in fact many observations conflict with our dark matter models. IMO I just think our understanding of physics is incomplete.
sib301 5y ago
Or we’re early... How is that not an obvious possibility?
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Sure, but given that humans are only about 500k years old, that makes us the only intelligent life so far. The lack of any other intelligent life so far means that we have no evidence one way or another that we will succeed or fail. Better than if 100 million civilizations already tried and died.
jandrese 5y ago
Or they are everywhere, but our technology is too primitive to see them. Or we just have not collected enough data yet to make out the patterns.
d_silin 5y ago
One of the explanations for Fermi paradox is that we just got lucky to be one of the first civilizations to the party. A few billions years from now Universe will be filled to the brim with life and sentience.
hazeii 5y ago
...or because they're out there, and when they notice us they'll splat us like we'd splat an ant nest with no more thought than that.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  Let's just count the number of movies where we kill the aliens versus where we get to live with them.
- taberiand 5y ago
  I vaguely recall a story to that effect? Scientists finally receive a brief interstellar message of intelligent origin. After painstaking study, a breakthrough and finally they decipher it: Be quiet! They'll hear you.
  - lgl 5y ago
    I was about to comment that it's somewhat similar to The Three Body Problem that's often discussed on hn's comments sections from time to time but decided to search for that last phrase and apparently it's from a /r/nosleep story: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2j3nxz/radio_silence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/2j3nxz/radio_silen...
- bluGill 5y ago
  The speed of light is too slow for them to pull that off. They are limited by the same physics as us. There are some possible loopholes like wormholes, but even they are limited.
- nly 5y ago
  ...or the intelligent life in the universe is so beyond us that, even though they have the capability to communicate, or even visit, they don't see us as worth contacting. Perhaps them talking to us would be like us talking to a tree stump or a bucket of plankton. Perhaps it's not even a conscious decision on their part. Perhaps all our achievements, everything we are, isn't recognized amongst alien-kind beyond a short 1 line entry in an alien log file,. Perhaps their monitoring system detects and discards a thousand worthless blips like us every day. What if we're just not that special
causality0 5y ago
Yes, that is the least scary. If species like us are stuck in our own solar system, we're eventually doomed. If we're not, it would only take a few million years to colonize the galaxy. If two non-stuck colonizing species exist at the same time they have to arise within a few million years of each other, in a galaxy thirteen billion years old. Frankly, us being the only/first sapient species is by far the most optimistic possibility.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  Basically, for us to colonize another star system I think we have to be a space native species that no longer needs to. I think by the time we colonize anything beyond alpha centuri, there are more of humanity living on o'neil cylinders than on any planet, and the people living on planet are the ones that desire to live somewhere 'wild'
argvargc 5y ago
Given a premise that perfect evolution is possible: The following is dependent on the unknown likely duration to perfect evolution, and how it overlaps with unknown (but widely-assumed to be light-speed) travelling limits. Given appropriate overlap distance of the two, there will inevitably arise the first civilisation to perform the following steps in order: 1) Attain self-mastery of internal planetary conflict and resource management. (Permanently sustainable peace and sustenance.) 2) Use their now abundance of time to perfect mastery of physics as is physically possible (something we know to have barely-conceivable limits in terms of size/scale etc). 3) Traverse the universe looking for any others, who - by not being the first - will therefore likely be behind them in terms of any conceivable aspect. 4) Immediately upon finding them, imprison them virtually in a seemingly "empty" but otherwise identical universe. This forces the same conditions upon them that were known to cause success, and also eliminates all risk of contamination of the existing peaceful equilibrium. 6) Wait. 7) The found species either: a) achieves mastery of peace and sustainability, at which point contact is initiated as peaceful equals. b) the species fails and dies. 8) Permanent universal peace is the only possible outcome, no matter how many times the above process is repeated. Given the age of the universe, and how far we have come in such a short time, to me the above seems a likely resolution to the paradox. With slight modification, it also explain various unexplained "contacts". Perhaps the "virtual imprisonment period" does not ideally have a definitive binary on/off, instead is progressive in a reversible way (hence the lack of believability and proof for many "encounters"). Such non-invasive contact events may serve as research/assessment, and non-polluting "helping hands" for those who may be watching and waiting. It would certainly appear we are very near (relatively speaking), to the point mastery of the physical world, making us likely virtual imprisonment and observation targets. Whether we can do the peace and sustainability bit remains to be seen.

podiki 5y ago

The speed of light (or compensated with very long travel time) is limiting, though. Much less volume within reasonable, for your definition of reasonable, reach both for ourselves and others. The universe, to put it mildly, is ginormous.

taurath 5y ago
The speed of light is an insurmountable barrier to us now and as far out as we can see, but we can’t really see that far out :p
kruasan 5y ago
This is true, we can travel only up to 8.2 billion light years (radius of the affectable universe/2) which is the largest completely causally connected region, in the sense that every point can observe and reach every other. 8.2 billion light years is the furthest distance that we could reach and then return from at the speed of light. And it is much smaller than the radius of the observable universe (46.4 billion light years)
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
> The speed of light (or compensated with very long travel time) is limiting It's only limiting if you're trying to reach C when traversing the spacetime. But if you're bending spacetime instead, there's no such limitation!
- podiki 5y ago
  Certainly there may be loopholes ;-) Anything I've seen with things like wormholes would require massive amounts of energy and/or exotic matter, as well as difficulties in things like stability and actually traversing with non-negligible mass. No free lunches!

natch 5y ago

Enjoy it while it lasts…

Cookingboy 5y ago

On one hand I see where you are coming from, but on the other hand I really, really want to witness First Contact and the subsequent reaction from the world. It will be the single most monumental moment in human history.

hulitu 5y ago
We will all be monuments afterwards.
irrational 5y ago
I doubt it. Based on the past year, many/most people would think it is fake news or some conspiracy to control them that they are too smart to fall for. For others, they’ve seen so many aliens in video games, TV shows, movies, etc. that they will be blasé about it and complain that the aliens in video game X looked more realistic than the real thing. Others will be interested for a day or two, then will move onto the next new thing on the news cycle. Others will be so self absorbed by social media that they will only care if they can use footage to make TikTok memes. Others will be know it all’s that will want to point out to everyone that they always said there was extra terrestrial life and everyone should acknowledge how smart they are. Others will see this as a great opportunity to write a book in the hopes of striking it rich. Others are just trying to scrape by and are too worn down, tired, depressed, etc. to pay any attention. Many people live subsistent lifestyles and don’t have access to news feed to even know it happened. I would expect exceedingly few to really give this sort of event the acknowledgement it deserves.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  I think you're being overly pessimistic. It revolutionizes everything. Philosophy, science, math, linguistics, religion (maybe), computers, physics, art, history, music (maybe)...etc. If they share their technology, it could allow us to leap hundreds or thousands of years in the future within decades.
nly 5y ago
It could also be our last moment.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

I've prefer this as well. If humans do ever cross the vastness of space to other solar systems, the travelers would eventually become a separate species anyway - wouldn't they? It would be a split, unless there is regular travel between star systems, but I can't see that happening without Star Trek like technology.

rriepe 5y ago
They totally would. And anyone we meet will probably already be related to us, if life is panspermic.

hulitu 5y ago

"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth! " Monthy Python

koheripbal 5y ago

Even if today humanity is the only sentient life, it is unlikely to remain so. AI will advance faster than we can evolve and it will be their universe to play with, not ours.

irrational 5y ago
Only if we construct that AI. Nothing says we have to.
- officialjunk 5y ago
  do you think there are enough sufficiently interest groups that will continue to work toward an AI?

pndy 5y ago

> that means it will be all ours to play with That also means we need to survive here on Earth, and perhaps change as a species in various aspects in order to even make a small step of becoming an interplanetary and then, in long the run maybe even interstellar species.

codeulike 5y ago

I find the responsibiltiy of that somewhat terrifying. If we snuff outselves out then all that is left is a universe of stars shining on barren rocks.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I have always believed the human race will end eventually. So why "If we snuff ourselves out..."?

pfdietz 5y ago

If intelligent life were common then the Great Filter would likely be ahead of us, not behind us. Finding that ETI would be the worst news humanity ever receives.

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
I don't believe in The Great Filter, as I disagree with it's basic premise, i.e. the Fermi paradox. The Prime Directive is the most plausible explanation.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  That would require a uniformity of purpose over billions of years, not only in our galaxy but in galaxies at cosmological distances (where we could detect K3 civilizations).
  - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
    It would only require such uniformity for some millennia, that is how long civilization has existed. A hundred thousand years tops, if you're to believe traditional tales and mythology ;) We don't know if alien civilizations interfered a million years ago.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      It would require a prohibition on colonizing planets on which intelligent life might arise in the future. This would have to be enforced over the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed.

m4rtink 5y ago

That's a good point & divergent evolution once enough systems get settled should produce many interesting alien cultures anyway, so not a huge problem. :)