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> I would also say, one would expect "alien" technology to progress over time. No it's not. An alien civilization that can travel across galaxies to send probe

> I would also say, one would expect "alien" technology to progress over time. No it's not. An alien civilization that can travel across galaxies to send probes to observe humanity is already hugely more advanced than ours. Modern civilization is only a couple thousand years old depending on your definition. A random alien civilization that is more advanced than us is likely to be thousands of years more advanced. Are they really going to develop new tech that beats our advancements that they didn't already have, over the course of 50 years, that they didn't capture in the 3,000 year headstart? Sounds doubtful.

neom 5y ago
No what's not? I guess you're saying they're mostly done and have everything? That's valid, I thought about that too, but I still think they might have some explonentionality events, and I also think it's hard to know how far along they were the first time they visited, maybe the first time they visited they visited on our version of the titanic, and 5 years later out time, they had concord. Who knows! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > think it's hard to know how far along they were the first time they visited It doesn't really matter. The difference in human technology over the past 100 years is night and day. Even a thousand years is likely to be incomprehensibly advanced relative to where we sit. If you choose a random point in time to start a civilization, the likelihood of choosing a point in time within 1,000 years is 1,000 / ~14,000,000,000 for the timescale of the universe or 1,000 in 4 billion by the age of the earth for a more conservative estimate. Naively, you would expect a random space civ to have a couple billion years head start on earth. Do we really think there's going to be noteworthy technological advancements between years 2,000,000,000 and 2,000,000,005? I think not. Civs habitually going extinct could avoid this, but this becomes much harder for civs with intergalactic travel.
staunch 5y ago
> A random alien civilization that is more advanced than us is likely to be thousands of years more advanced. s/thousands/millions/

neom 5y ago

No what's not? I guess you're saying they're mostly done and have everything? That's valid, I thought about that too, but I still think they might have some explonentionality events, and I also think it's hard to know how far along they were the first time they visited, maybe the first time they visited they visited on our version of the titanic, and 5 years later out time, they had concord. Who knows! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

spywaregorilla 5y ago
> think it's hard to know how far along they were the first time they visited It doesn't really matter. The difference in human technology over the past 100 years is night and day. Even a thousand years is likely to be incomprehensibly advanced relative to where we sit. If you choose a random point in time to start a civilization, the likelihood of choosing a point in time within 1,000 years is 1,000 / ~14,000,000,000 for the timescale of the universe or 1,000 in 4 billion by the age of the earth for a more conservative estimate. Naively, you would expect a random space civ to have a couple billion years head start on earth. Do we really think there's going to be noteworthy technological advancements between years 2,000,000,000 and 2,000,000,005? I think not. Civs habitually going extinct could avoid this, but this becomes much harder for civs with intergalactic travel.

staunch 5y ago

> A random alien civilization that is more advanced than us is likely to be thousands of years more advanced. s/thousands/millions/