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> I'd also wager it's probably by design impossible for us detect. Humans are orders of magnitude smarter than dolphins, yet that doesn't prevent humans from e

by bb88 5y ago

> I'd also wager it's probably by design impossible for us detect. Humans are orders of magnitude smarter than dolphins, yet that doesn't prevent humans from experimenting on them.

echelon 5y ago
An interstellar intelligence is probably post-biology. Biological aliens are more than likely carbon and water based, and most likely use oxygen/oxidation for energy. The worlds that harbor these must be of a certain temperature and mass, which means the biological aliens evolved adapted to these conditions. Gravity, gravity wells, temperatures, metabolic and resource needs that are far from ideal for space. Let's also assume post-biology intelligence has the extra benefit of duplicating, transmitting, and modifying memories, experience, etc. and optimizing it. Compute nodes probably have access to more than the sum total of human knowledge at an instant, and can probably run math, chemical, and physical simulations rapidly. These intelligences will be orders of magnitude smarter than us. Imagine a trillion of the smartest humans operating at peak performance, except even smarter. These intelligences will also be concerned about other intelligences that have more resources and that may not take a friendly disposition. Unless there's an omnipotent intergalactic police force that prevents attack and extermination, intelligences will hide their presence by default. Since other adversarial intelligences probably also have technologies beyond our own, the technological needs and techniques for advanced cloaking may be beyond our present understanding. I didn't claim alien intelligence wouldn't study us. (They probably would.) I claimed they would remain very well hidden.
- bb88 5y ago
  For observation, yes you're right. I'm not disagreeing there. We do that in nature all the time -- e.g. wildlife safaris with large telephoto lenses downwind lions/tigers/etc. But when we experiment with dolphins, the beach ball has to be visible so we can see what the dolphin does with it (even if we're hidden behind two-way glass). If it is aliens (and I'm not suggesting it is) why can't it be that they're measuring our intelligence capacity? This is the proverbial, beach ball, as it were.

by bb88 5y ago

> I'd also wager it's probably by design impossible for us detect. Humans are orders of magnitude smarter than dolphins, yet that doesn't prevent humans from experimenting on them.

echelon 5y ago

An interstellar intelligence is probably post-biology. Biological aliens are more than likely carbon and water based, and most likely use oxygen/oxidation for energy. The worlds that harbor these must be of a certain temperature and mass, which means the biological aliens evolved adapted to these conditions. Gravity, gravity wells, temperatures, metabolic and resource needs that are far from ideal for space. Let's also assume post-biology intelligence has the extra benefit of duplicating, transmitting, and modifying memories, experience, etc. and optimizing it. Compute nodes probably have access to more than the sum total of human knowledge at an instant, and can probably run math, chemical, and physical simulations rapidly. These intelligences will be orders of magnitude smarter than us. Imagine a trillion of the smartest humans operating at peak performance, except even smarter. These intelligences will also be concerned about other intelligences that have more resources and that may not take a friendly disposition. Unless there's an omnipotent intergalactic police force that prevents attack and extermination, intelligences will hide their presence by default. Since other adversarial intelligences probably also have technologies beyond our own, the technological needs and techniques for advanced cloaking may be beyond our present understanding. I didn't claim alien intelligence wouldn't study us. (They probably would.) I claimed they would remain very well hidden.

bb88 5y ago
For observation, yes you're right. I'm not disagreeing there. We do that in nature all the time -- e.g. wildlife safaris with large telephoto lenses downwind lions/tigers/etc. But when we experiment with dolphins, the beach ball has to be visible so we can see what the dolphin does with it (even if we're hidden behind two-way glass). If it is aliens (and I'm not suggesting it is) why can't it be that they're measuring our intelligence capacity? This is the proverbial, beach ball, as it were.