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I’ve been doing a lot of reading on megastructures, giant black hole powered computers, Von Neumann probes, and all the other super advanced technologies, and t

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on megastructures, giant black hole powered computers, Von Neumann probes, and all the other super advanced technologies, and then thinking about the Fermi paradox, and I can’t shake the feeling these are just gussied up magic by effectively godlike entities. They’re completely impractical and take some pretty big hand waving to make them sound plausible. We’re running out of excuses. We’re either alone, or we’re effectively alone ie everyone else is forever undetectable. Meaning they’re more primitive, or stuck in some subterranean ocean or something. Either way, we’re the Ancients sci-fi stories ale we ya talk about.

awb 5y ago
> We’re either alone, or we’re effectively alone ie everyone else is forever undetectable. Native tribes could be forgiven for assuming they were alone until explorers and conquistadors arrived. It’s possible that a civilization millions (or billions) of years ahead of us in biology, energy, philosophy, etc. is just beyond our comprehension at this moment to even know what to look for, where or how. Plus, we already try to make things hard to find like stealth fighters. Perhaps it’s a good idea for survival in the universe to be difficult to find.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  Where’s their waste heat? A pocket dimension? At some point you’re just arguing for magic.
xyproto 5y ago
Or everybody is hiding. Have you read The Three-Body Problem?
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  You mean the books where magical aliens warp the fundamental constants of the universe to eliminate physical dimensions? Even if you skip past that to the underlying dark forest idea, it’s an argument based on pure faith with zero evidence to support it. You need an all power malevolent society that works on a time scale of thousands if not millions of years, and then nit only eliminates another society for “reasons”, but also then also perfectly covers up its own existence, because there may be some other bigger bad out there. It’s about as convincing as the unicorn that’s always right behind you, but everyone ignores because unicorns are super dangerous.
  - xyproto 5y ago
    Yes, it is science fiction, but I think it drives home the dark forest idea.
- prettyStandard 5y ago
  I've been waiting to read this on Libby. I hope you didn't spoil it.
  - xyproto 5y ago
    No spoiler. The books are filled with events. They are well worth the read, IMO.
ncmncm 5y ago
Space is big. Like, really big. The galaxy could have a million civilizations more powerful than you could imagine, and there is no reason why we would necessarily be able to see any of them. That assumes we would even be able to recognize one if we could see it.
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  How are all powerful, but hidden entities, that live far away, but can kill us all in an instant, any different from the evidence for the invisible magical sky daddy? Even if I wanted to be generous, “really big” and “no reason why we would necessarily be able to see any of them” is indistinguishable from my statement of being “effectively alone”.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Us not seeing them is in no way the same as them not seeing us. Being spied on is quite different, in detail, from actually being alone.
fullstackchris 5y ago
But why would they leave the same artifacts over and over again? Seems like a pretty boring existence for a "god". We've got blackholes, magnetars, pulsars, binary stars... and... that's about it... Seems much more likely these structures are the end result of some fixed set of physical rules than insane gods trapsing around the universe. Also agreeing with one of the comments above about how mind bogglingly massive space is, we've been effectively "listening" to space for only about 100 years, which creates an effective "listening sphere" of 4.188×10E6 light years^3, or 0.000524% of the milkyway's EIGHT TRILLION cubic lightyears in size (even if we could listen to all directions simultaneously, which we can't!) I mean, we've been listening to the Wow! area for 50 years now, which also hampers the kind of electromagnetic 'sweep' we could possible be doing in the meanwhile. My overall opinion is that it's just simple not been enough time of listening. Actually this idea seems quite interesting, it would be cool to do the calculus to figure out our effective "increase" in contact intersection as each consective second, minute, hour, day, and year goes by as we "listen" to space. Infinite overlapping spheres in an infinite 3D space... hmmmm
- jonathankoren 5y ago
  What artifacts are they leaving? Literally nothing has EVER been detected. The reasons why they listen to the hydrogen line is because it’s the most easiest to detect. However, the 50 year timeframe isn’t really a problem. The entire sky has been measured multiple times in this 50 years, and nothing has been found. Unless you believe the signals passed 51 years ago, then the silence is deafening.

awb 5y ago

> We’re either alone, or we’re effectively alone ie everyone else is forever undetectable. Native tribes could be forgiven for assuming they were alone until explorers and conquistadors arrived. It’s possible that a civilization millions (or billions) of years ahead of us in biology, energy, philosophy, etc. is just beyond our comprehension at this moment to even know what to look for, where or how. Plus, we already try to make things hard to find like stealth fighters. Perhaps it’s a good idea for survival in the universe to be difficult to find.

jonathankoren 5y ago
Where’s their waste heat? A pocket dimension? At some point you’re just arguing for magic.

xyproto 5y ago

Or everybody is hiding. Have you read The Three-Body Problem?

jonathankoren 5y ago
You mean the books where magical aliens warp the fundamental constants of the universe to eliminate physical dimensions? Even if you skip past that to the underlying dark forest idea, it’s an argument based on pure faith with zero evidence to support it. You need an all power malevolent society that works on a time scale of thousands if not millions of years, and then nit only eliminates another society for “reasons”, but also then also perfectly covers up its own existence, because there may be some other bigger bad out there. It’s about as convincing as the unicorn that’s always right behind you, but everyone ignores because unicorns are super dangerous.
- xyproto 5y ago
  Yes, it is science fiction, but I think it drives home the dark forest idea.
prettyStandard 5y ago
I've been waiting to read this on Libby. I hope you didn't spoil it.
- xyproto 5y ago
  No spoiler. The books are filled with events. They are well worth the read, IMO.

ncmncm 5y ago

Space is big. Like, really big. The galaxy could have a million civilizations more powerful than you could imagine, and there is no reason why we would necessarily be able to see any of them. That assumes we would even be able to recognize one if we could see it.

jonathankoren 5y ago
How are all powerful, but hidden entities, that live far away, but can kill us all in an instant, any different from the evidence for the invisible magical sky daddy? Even if I wanted to be generous, “really big” and “no reason why we would necessarily be able to see any of them” is indistinguishable from my statement of being “effectively alone”.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Us not seeing them is in no way the same as them not seeing us. Being spied on is quite different, in detail, from actually being alone.

fullstackchris 5y ago

But why would they leave the same artifacts over and over again? Seems like a pretty boring existence for a "god". We've got blackholes, magnetars, pulsars, binary stars... and... that's about it... Seems much more likely these structures are the end result of some fixed set of physical rules than insane gods trapsing around the universe. Also agreeing with one of the comments above about how mind bogglingly massive space is, we've been effectively "listening" to space for only about 100 years, which creates an effective "listening sphere" of 4.188×10E6 light years^3, or 0.000524% of the milkyway's EIGHT TRILLION cubic lightyears in size (even if we could listen to all directions simultaneously, which we can't!) I mean, we've been listening to the Wow! area for 50 years now, which also hampers the kind of electromagnetic 'sweep' we could possible be doing in the meanwhile. My overall opinion is that it's just simple not been enough time of listening. Actually this idea seems quite interesting, it would be cool to do the calculus to figure out our effective "increase" in contact intersection as each consective second, minute, hour, day, and year goes by as we "listen" to space. Infinite overlapping spheres in an infinite 3D space... hmmmm

jonathankoren 5y ago
What artifacts are they leaving? Literally nothing has EVER been detected. The reasons why they listen to the hydrogen line is because it’s the most easiest to detect. However, the 50 year timeframe isn’t really a problem. The entire sky has been measured multiple times in this 50 years, and nothing has been found. Unless you believe the signals passed 51 years ago, then the silence is deafening.