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Let's imagine there are billions of planets out there (a true Sagan-esque billions) which have spawned intelligences that have achieved interstellar travel - ie

Let's imagine there are billions of planets out there (a true Sagan-esque billions) which have spawned intelligences that have achieved interstellar travel - ie. they have the ability to actively seek out and communicate with others of similar ability. Perhaps like the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek, except many, many of these, separated from others by various degrees of intelligence or ability. Let's imagine there are far more planets like ours that have life - let's throw intelligence out, because that is defined by some relative standard - which has not yet reached that capability. Why would we be interesting in the scope of these far more advanced extraterrestrial societies? Perhaps they don't reach out because it would be as fruitless as us trying to communicate with ants. Perhaps they don't care to study us because we seem about as interesting as primordial soup (ie. a nuclear holocaust might be a trait of that). Perhaps intelligences like ours are well understood, well classified in the genus of the universe, and we are about as ordinary as a barnacle on the hull of a tug boat.

aamar 15y ago
True, but if these super-advanced aliens are populating many planets, then we'd presumably be able to detect them somehow, irrespective of whether they care about us. It may be electromagnetic leakage or Dyson spheres or any of a number of other signs of artifice.
- iso8859-1 15y ago
  Maybe our universe runs in their VM. I don't know how you can assume that we would be able to detect anyone. If they are smarter than us, they'd know how to hide.
  - aamar 15y ago
    If we run in their VM, then the Fermi paradox still applies--since physics is consistent in this VM and seemingly leads frequently to life, why wouldn't we see signs of it elsewhere in the galaxy? If the "we're like ants/barnacles to them" theory is true, then they wouldn't bother intentionally hiding from us, because we're no threat to them. If they do it unintentionally, that would still be interesting: for example, it would probably mean that civilizations do not in fact aggressively colonize the galaxy.
- majmun 15y ago
  maybe we <re detecting it now but cant distinguish it from random noise.
Roboprog 15y ago
Perhaps life is common (happened about a billion years ago here), but intelligent life is not (about 100,000 years ago, give or take). Perhaps without FTL drive, it takes what explorers there might be a long time between (expensive!) visits, so sightings are rare. Without FTL, and without some kind of cold-sleep, a journey to the nearest stars pretty much takes a lifetime. A few would go, but not many. It's too late (bedtime) for me to slap "Drake's equation" type numbers on this, but hopefully you get the idea. Maybe we've not seen anybody because they only visit any given planet every million years or so, and "they" equals 2 or 3 species local enough to even bother with that paltry schedule. I'm not saying there is anybody out there, just that lacking pure freaking magic technology, it's a hell of a trip to make if they were. OTOH, if there is an outpost 100 light-years away, expect a visit in another 100 to 1000 years???
rsheridan6 15y ago
Primordial soup is interesting. If we had any of it to study, we'd have hundreds of postdocs studying it right now, as we have lots of labs studying all sorts of things that are not obviously useful. Any species that didn't have intellectual curiosity about things that aren't obvious useful would probably never make it off its home planet. A lot of the math and science that underlies stuff we use every day didn't seem useful when it was developed - see, for example, the theory of computation, worked out when there were no computers, and without which there probably still wouldn't be any computers.

aamar 15y ago

True, but if these super-advanced aliens are populating many planets, then we'd presumably be able to detect them somehow, irrespective of whether they care about us. It may be electromagnetic leakage or Dyson spheres or any of a number of other signs of artifice.

iso8859-1 15y ago
Maybe our universe runs in their VM. I don't know how you can assume that we would be able to detect anyone. If they are smarter than us, they'd know how to hide.
- aamar 15y ago
  If we run in their VM, then the Fermi paradox still applies--since physics is consistent in this VM and seemingly leads frequently to life, why wouldn't we see signs of it elsewhere in the galaxy? If the "we're like ants/barnacles to them" theory is true, then they wouldn't bother intentionally hiding from us, because we're no threat to them. If they do it unintentionally, that would still be interesting: for example, it would probably mean that civilizations do not in fact aggressively colonize the galaxy.
majmun 15y ago
maybe we <re detecting it now but cant distinguish it from random noise.

Roboprog 15y ago

Perhaps life is common (happened about a billion years ago here), but intelligent life is not (about 100,000 years ago, give or take). Perhaps without FTL drive, it takes what explorers there might be a long time between (expensive!) visits, so sightings are rare. Without FTL, and without some kind of cold-sleep, a journey to the nearest stars pretty much takes a lifetime. A few would go, but not many. It's too late (bedtime) for me to slap "Drake's equation" type numbers on this, but hopefully you get the idea. Maybe we've not seen anybody because they only visit any given planet every million years or so, and "they" equals 2 or 3 species local enough to even bother with that paltry schedule. I'm not saying there is anybody out there, just that lacking pure freaking magic technology, it's a hell of a trip to make if they were. OTOH, if there is an outpost 100 light-years away, expect a visit in another 100 to 1000 years???

rsheridan6 15y ago

Primordial soup is interesting. If we had any of it to study, we'd have hundreds of postdocs studying it right now, as we have lots of labs studying all sorts of things that are not obviously useful. Any species that didn't have intellectual curiosity about things that aren't obvious useful would probably never make it off its home planet. A lot of the math and science that underlies stuff we use every day didn't seem useful when it was developed - see, for example, the theory of computation, worked out when there were no computers, and without which there probably still wouldn't be any computers.