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Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. In fact I think the most likely expl

Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.

echelon 2y ago
Given how ridiculously long it took intelligence to develop on earth, I'm not so sure. Intelligence might be the hardest hard step. I do like your idea that we're in a quarantine though.
- maxbond 2y ago
  It's been a while since I read it, so I can't promise it holds up, but I remember quite enjoying this novel with a similar premise (the solar system is quarantined in a giant bubble for unclear reasons, with a side of nanotechnology-driven apps for your brain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel)
- namaria 2y ago
  That's still enough time for it to have happened 3 times over in this universe.
  - the_af 2y ago
    Three times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right? And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth. Too many "and"s for me...
    - namaria 2y ago
      It might be like a lot if there could have been intelligent civilizations 8 billion years older then us.
      - the_af 2y ago
        I doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections]. Seems very unlikely to me.
        namaria 2y ago
        We're are extremely unlikely by any available measure.
        the_af 2y ago
        What's the argument you're making?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        namaria 2y ago
        The universe is huge. Life seems to be unlikely since it's very concentrated. But the universe is very, very big and even if it is unlikely as it seems at the moment, it would be quite weird if it were unlikely to the point of only one living planet existing in 13 billion light years of space and yet we exist. Fascinating stuff really.
        Vecr 2y ago
        Yeah? But that's an argument against seeing any aliens up close (if you believe in that kind of thing), because presumably they're extremely unlikely too. They're not there, or they're far away in time and space, with a remaining tiny chance that something incredibly unlikely happened.
tastyfreeze 2y ago
That does kinda fit with stories of the Anunnaki creating humans as an experiment. Keep the science project contained to see what they do.
- namaria 2y ago
  Sumerian and early Mesopotamian mythology is very interesting reading. I won't say it's ''aliens'' but there are some strong hints of more going on at the rise of civilization then just neolithic people coming together and inventing writing. I have this idea that sedentary agrarian urban civilization was something created by nomadic peoples to farm slaves. Hunter gatherers and pastoral peoples would be very hard to control. But if they took children, and raised them to be sedentary and dependent on agriculture they could have a stable of slaves.
tzs 2y ago
> Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe. If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes. If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence. > In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range. Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology. That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies. Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something. You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other. (We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now). Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value. In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3. A few months ago there was a PBS Space Time episode on this so called "Dark Forest" scenario, which you might enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U
magneticnorth 2y ago
In the 600 million years that our planet has had complex multicellular life, only about 130 of those years has any species here been able to communicate outside the planet. That's .00002% of the time, on a planet with multicellular life. Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity. But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.
andrewflnr 2y ago
Pinnacle of intelligence within the solar system is still pretty likely, even if not in the universe. People forget how brutally hard star flight is if you're not using scifi cheats.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Nobody knows how hard interstellar travel is yet, owing to us not being at that economic level. What we think we know, says that self replicating systems are possible because we are ourselves an example, and that PV and lasers are possible, and that light imparts momentum. All of this suggests that it is possible for a civilisation that only doubles in numbers every 30 years to be able to make a Dyson swarm in 30 * log2(mass of mercury/mass of a minimal human colony and support equipment) years, which even in the most pathologically extreme case for lightweight starting colonies isn't going to be more than 2174.5 years. It appears that with a Dyson swarm, much of the future light cone of the universe can be colonised directly without needing to focus on nearby stars first. But we don't know until we try.
hnthrowaway0328 2y ago
Check out Vlad the astrophysicist, it's interesting.

echelon 2y ago

Given how ridiculously long it took intelligence to develop on earth, I'm not so sure. Intelligence might be the hardest hard step. I do like your idea that we're in a quarantine though.

maxbond 2y ago
It's been a while since I read it, so I can't promise it holds up, but I remember quite enjoying this novel with a similar premise (the solar system is quarantined in a giant bubble for unclear reasons, with a side of nanotechnology-driven apps for your brain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel)
namaria 2y ago
That's still enough time for it to have happened 3 times over in this universe.
- the_af 2y ago
  Three times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right? And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth. Too many "and"s for me...
  - namaria 2y ago
    It might be like a lot if there could have been intelligent civilizations 8 billion years older then us.
    - the_af 2y ago
      I doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections]. Seems very unlikely to me.
      - namaria 2y ago
        We're are extremely unlikely by any available measure.
        the_af 2y ago
        What's the argument you're making?
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        namaria 2y ago
        The universe is huge. Life seems to be unlikely since it's very concentrated. But the universe is very, very big and even if it is unlikely as it seems at the moment, it would be quite weird if it were unlikely to the point of only one living planet existing in 13 billion light years of space and yet we exist. Fascinating stuff really.
        Vecr 2y ago
        Yeah? But that's an argument against seeing any aliens up close (if you believe in that kind of thing), because presumably they're extremely unlikely too. They're not there, or they're far away in time and space, with a remaining tiny chance that something incredibly unlikely happened.

tastyfreeze 2y ago

That does kinda fit with stories of the Anunnaki creating humans as an experiment. Keep the science project contained to see what they do.

namaria 2y ago
Sumerian and early Mesopotamian mythology is very interesting reading. I won't say it's ''aliens'' but there are some strong hints of more going on at the rise of civilization then just neolithic people coming together and inventing writing. I have this idea that sedentary agrarian urban civilization was something created by nomadic peoples to farm slaves. Hunter gatherers and pastoral peoples would be very hard to control. But if they took children, and raised them to be sedentary and dependent on agriculture they could have a stable of slaves.

tzs 2y ago

> Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe. If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes. If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence. > In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range. Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology. That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies. Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something. You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other. (We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now). Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value. In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3. A few months ago there was a PBS Space Time episode on this so called "Dark Forest" scenario, which you might enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U

magneticnorth 2y ago

In the 600 million years that our planet has had complex multicellular life, only about 130 of those years has any species here been able to communicate outside the planet. That's .00002% of the time, on a planet with multicellular life. Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity. But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.

andrewflnr 2y ago

Pinnacle of intelligence within the solar system is still pretty likely, even if not in the universe. People forget how brutally hard star flight is if you're not using scifi cheats.

ben_w 2y ago
Nobody knows how hard interstellar travel is yet, owing to us not being at that economic level. What we think we know, says that self replicating systems are possible because we are ourselves an example, and that PV and lasers are possible, and that light imparts momentum. All of this suggests that it is possible for a civilisation that only doubles in numbers every 30 years to be able to make a Dyson swarm in 30 * log2(mass of mercury/mass of a minimal human colony and support equipment) years, which even in the most pathologically extreme case for lightweight starting colonies isn't going to be more than 2174.5 years. It appears that with a Dyson swarm, much of the future light cone of the universe can be colonised directly without needing to focus on nearby stars first. But we don't know until we try.

hnthrowaway0328 2y ago

Check out Vlad the astrophysicist, it's interesting.