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I paged through the deck, and, I mean, most of this is just various subplots for The X-Files Mytharc. The thing I can never get past in arguments on the subjec

I paged through the deck, and, I mean, most of this is just various subplots for The X-Files Mytharc. The thing I can never get past in arguments on the subject is this: if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light, surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? Unless you put a bunch of other conditions on it (the space ships are unmanned/derelict, they were in "hypersleep" of some kind and woke up disoriented, whatever else you can imagine for why they didn't turn on their cloaking devices), it all sounds so incredibly unlikely to the point of parody.

keepamovin 3y ago
Yeah, I don't think the deck is that good. But it was from a "philosopher", and I found slow news day on HN. So I pulled the trigger :)
- dangitnotagain 3y ago
  Expectations and presumptions become as much a feature as the curiosity. - our visitors cannot travel faster than the speed of light, however they can communicate (through their minds no less) faster through entanglement. - they do not “travel” in space, they “live” where ever they are. These travel as their populations swell and they move on toward the closest of infinite outward curiosities. - Their craft are living organisms which host up to city sized populations many of which will never leave their embryonic sac. - a rare few have set foot upon Earth, yet some have lived here for 10,000 years (the first of their kind to “find” Earth.) - Heat gives them away. These use fusion, intense electromagnetics, and the acceleration of counterweights toward the speed of light for propulsion. The enormity of heat must always be accommodated; exhaust you know. - these are altruistic, though they’ve heard those stories about others from inward of disc too. - these have traveled for so long none among them can remember where they are from or which star they were [originally] born. At least a million years of them, though unwilling to stretch it much further.
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  Also known as the day that everyone everywhere decided to post about their Xbox 360 emulator.
nyokodo 3y ago
> if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light, surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? Firstly, FTL travel isn’t necessary for interstellar travel so, maybe they can’t travel FTL but their ships can last the long journey. That’s not such a ridiculous leap. Secondly, even if FTL travel is possible and if it has been developed it may be impossible, prohibitively difficult, or just unnecessary for ETs to hide perfectly. Also, even if it were possible to hide perfectly now, if ETs exist and have had potentially billions of years to travel around, fight wars, have accidents, mutinies, or plagues etc then it could be impossible to perfectly hide the wrecks and detritus.
- remarkEon 3y ago
  Yeah, I think the problem with my thought experiment is that I'm probably assuming too high a level of precision (or perhaps perfection) in whatever alien species we're talking about. Time, I suppose, is the great equalizer and there's probably little reason to assume that a space fairing civilization would no longer have the kinds of problems that plague every civilization, so your explanations ring true to me.
StanislavPetrov 3y ago
>The thing I can never get past in arguments on the subject is this: if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light, surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? I never understood the logic behind both these arguments. >if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light Why do people keep making this baseless assumption? Whose to say where (or when) some other intelligent species comes from? Maybe there are intelligent species that we can't (or don't) perceive all around us. Maybe they evolved on Venus when we were tree squirrels and left before that planet overheated. Maybe they are from some other place, and developed some means of travel that wasn't faster than light, but employed the use of wormholes or some sort of extra-dimensional travel that we are completely unaware? It seem self-evident that our limited knowledge of physics, which we have only truly developing for a few hundred years, would be absolutely dwarfed by a civilization that is potentially hundreds of millions of years ahead of us? It seems to me like incredible hubris to even begin to imagine what technologies we will have developed in a million years, let alone a billion. >surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? Do we worry about hiding from ants or bugs that are crawling on the ground while we fly overhead collecting data?

keepamovin 3y ago

Yeah, I don't think the deck is that good. But it was from a "philosopher", and I found slow news day on HN. So I pulled the trigger :)

dangitnotagain 3y ago
Expectations and presumptions become as much a feature as the curiosity. - our visitors cannot travel faster than the speed of light, however they can communicate (through their minds no less) faster through entanglement. - they do not “travel” in space, they “live” where ever they are. These travel as their populations swell and they move on toward the closest of infinite outward curiosities. - Their craft are living organisms which host up to city sized populations many of which will never leave their embryonic sac. - a rare few have set foot upon Earth, yet some have lived here for 10,000 years (the first of their kind to “find” Earth.) - Heat gives them away. These use fusion, intense electromagnetics, and the acceleration of counterweights toward the speed of light for propulsion. The enormity of heat must always be accommodated; exhaust you know. - these are altruistic, though they’ve heard those stories about others from inward of disc too. - these have traveled for so long none among them can remember where they are from or which star they were [originally] born. At least a million years of them, though unwilling to stretch it much further.
mnky9800n 3y ago
Also known as the day that everyone everywhere decided to post about their Xbox 360 emulator.

nyokodo 3y ago

> if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light, surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? Firstly, FTL travel isn’t necessary for interstellar travel so, maybe they can’t travel FTL but their ships can last the long journey. That’s not such a ridiculous leap. Secondly, even if FTL travel is possible and if it has been developed it may be impossible, prohibitively difficult, or just unnecessary for ETs to hide perfectly. Also, even if it were possible to hide perfectly now, if ETs exist and have had potentially billions of years to travel around, fight wars, have accidents, mutinies, or plagues etc then it could be impossible to perfectly hide the wrecks and detritus.

remarkEon 3y ago
Yeah, I think the problem with my thought experiment is that I'm probably assuming too high a level of precision (or perhaps perfection) in whatever alien species we're talking about. Time, I suppose, is the great equalizer and there's probably little reason to assume that a space fairing civilization would no longer have the kinds of problems that plague every civilization, so your explanations ring true to me.

StanislavPetrov 3y ago

>The thing I can never get past in arguments on the subject is this: if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light, surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? I never understood the logic behind both these arguments. >if some intelligent species developed the means to travel faster than light Why do people keep making this baseless assumption? Whose to say where (or when) some other intelligent species comes from? Maybe there are intelligent species that we can't (or don't) perceive all around us. Maybe they evolved on Venus when we were tree squirrels and left before that planet overheated. Maybe they are from some other place, and developed some means of travel that wasn't faster than light, but employed the use of wormholes or some sort of extra-dimensional travel that we are completely unaware? It seem self-evident that our limited knowledge of physics, which we have only truly developing for a few hundred years, would be absolutely dwarfed by a civilization that is potentially hundreds of millions of years ahead of us? It seems to me like incredible hubris to even begin to imagine what technologies we will have developed in a million years, let alone a billion. >surely they also developed the means to hide from us, right? Do we worry about hiding from ants or bugs that are crawling on the ground while we fly overhead collecting data?