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We probably are all familiar with the Fermi Paradox, but Issac Arther noticed it has a very interesting implication: Claiming that an alien probe has visited t
by rhelz 3y ago
We probably are all familiar with the Fermi Paradox, but Issac Arther noticed it has a very interesting implication: Claiming that an alien probe has visited the earth is NOT an extraordinary claim.
Under very weak assumptions (basically that an intelligent race would have the desire and ability to explore the galaxy via self-reproducing probes) the galaxy should be crawling with such probes. Even at sublight speeds---and even if probes were only sent between stars when the stars naturally moved closer than a light year from each other just from their orbital movements around the galaxy--in a few million years the probes would be ubiquitous.
What is extraordinary is the negative evidence we get from not observing these probes. It means that there has never been even one intelligent species who had the technology and desire to explore the galaxy. Or even that there wasn't a small minority of them who wanted too--or even one Elon-Musk-esque individual who wanted to.
Given that we can almost do this ourselves (heck, if our own Elon Musk tried, I wouldn't bet against him succeeding) Avi Loeb's hypothesis that one of these probes might have hit the earth isn't an extraordinary hypothesis at all. We should expect to find these probes, and maybe we haven't found them yet because nobody has bothered to look for them.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoThe existence of Bracewell-Von Neumann probes is the one reason I don’t absolutely dismiss UFO believers out of hand. It’s actually a little bit surprising we don’t see intelligent machines in our neighborhood! But believing in this as a possibility is very different from renting a ship, sailing to a specific location, and saying “this is the residue of an alien probe.” Especially when the evidence you used to find the site is itself very shifty.
- krapp 3y ago>The existence of Bracewell-Von Neumann probes is the one reason I don’t absolutely dismiss UFO believers out of hand Bracewell-Von Neumann probes don't exist, as far as any can tell. You seem to be basing your credulity towards one unproven phenomenon on another unproven phenomenon. If anything, the fact that VN probes would in theory be easier than the sort of exotic physics breaking technology supposedly demonstrated by UFOs and yet the entire galaxy hasn't been consumed and assimilated as the math suggests should happen should cast even more doubt on UFOs.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoThat’s a weird statement coning from a self-replicating automaton that that meets many of the criteria required of a B-vN machine.
- krapp 3y agoExcept for the criteria that would let you could launch me into space and let me survive drifting through the radioactive vacuum for thousands or millions of years without harm, then allow me to self-replicate using any arbitrary matter I happen to encounter (as opposed to sexually with another member of my species, which is how humans normally replicate) then allow my progeny to repeat the process without significant failure over countless generations. You know.. all of the actually difficult (thus far impossible) criteria and complexity that would required for Von Neumann machines to work in practice.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoYou think building self-replicating machines that can build themselves from a handful of common chemicals is the easy part? I think you’re very badly estimating the difficulty of that problem.