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Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them? If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technolo

Time is a factor here. How close in time and space would be them? If we get something coming from more than 100 light years away we might not have the technology to respond, and if we do it may not matter anyway if we are at risk of not having a technological civilization anymore 100-200 years forward. So the meaningful actions on those cases may not include answering back. Then it will be the actual use of that message. Lets assume that we will decide that is a signal from a civilization that is out there. It will be a signal meant for us and for any other civilization that doesn't have the knowledge/culture level as them, meant for giving us a common ground for communicating back, or it will be something that just will tell us that someone intelligent is out there, but no mean to understand it? So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one, and how our civilization will react if widely enough will change with time, novelty at first and indifference a few years later.

kulahan 1y ago
I cannot imagine any scenario where we're just 100-200 years away from "no more tech" that isn't purely total nuclear destruction. Even then, we'd probably be so close to getting back to a technological civilization that it'd be a blip in the radar at best if we're talking about a society that far away. We lost 150 years of progress? That's okay, we had 800 more years to advance before the aliens showed up or whatever. It's such a weird thing I see so many people assuming. We were down to like 16,000 humans on Earth at one point, and that was before we'd developed things that you could theoretically scavenge and jumpstart your tech. People need to stop doomscrolling; I'm certain this is depression projected.
- wat10000 1y ago
  It was also before we'd burned all the easily accessible fossil fuels.
  - smallmancontrov 1y ago
    We mined all of the easily accessible drywall gypsum too, I guess we wouldn't be able to have houses either and would have to live outside in the cold and rain!
    - nradov 1y ago
      Perhaps the aliens will share advanced technology with us such as how to build a tent.
      - datavirtue 1y ago
        I can't wait until everyone realizes how easy it is to rebuild Göbekli Tepe with hand tools.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      There are lots of other building materials available. What other sources of energy are there which are suitable for driving a new industrial revolution if you’re starting over? Wind and solar aren’t worth too much without high tech to enable them. Biomass is insufficient. Nuclear needs high tech. Hydro could do, but it’s pretty limiting.
      - smallmancontrov 1y ago
        Insufficient for a hydrocarbon sugar high, but hardly insufficient for bootstrapping a civilization. Yeah, bio and hydro are limiting. So we would deal with the limits for longer until we worked our way past them. It's wildly condescending to imagine that this would be a show-stopper, doubly so when you review the history of all the things that were historically not stopped by the lack of fossil fuels.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Thankfully, unless somehow everything manmade disappears, we'll have scraps of windmills, solar panels, and hydro electric generators - with that laying around, it's easy to eventually figure out the underlying concepts and rebuild them.
- elbasti 1y ago
  With all due respect, I don't think you understand what the "worst case" scenario looks like for global warming, and how close we are to that scenario. For reference, check out figure 1 in this nature article [1]. That has warming by 2300 as 8C in an "emissions continue current trends" path. Here's chatgpt giving a picture of what 8C warming looks like. Speculative, hallucinations, caveat emptor, etc...but to give a sense of proportion this, last time the earth was 8C *cooler* than now, ice covered 25% of the planet: > At +8°C, Earth is fundamentally transformed. Large parts of today’s populated zones—South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, southern Europe, the southern U.S.—are functionally uninhabitable for humans outdoors. Wet-bulb temperatures regularly exceed survivable limits. Agriculture collapses across the subtropics; even mechanized, climate-controlled farming is marginal. Most of the world’s food comes from high-latitude regions: a narrow band across northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Sea levels are dozens of meters higher, drowning coastal megacities; Miami, New York, Shanghai, and London are gone. Phoenix is lifeless desert. Seattle is coastal tundra, wetter but still survivable. > Civilization persists only in fragments. Mass migration and resource wars have rewritten borders. Population is a fraction of 21st-century levels. Global trade, universities, and modern governance are mostly memories. Local, self-sufficient polities dominate. The United States as an institution likely dissolves or transforms beyond recognition—2 out of 10 chance of recognizable survival. Harvard or MIT survive, if at all, as digital archives or autonomous AI-driven knowledge systems—3 out of 10. The world would still have people and culture, but not civilization as we know it. Edit: I would appreciate knowing why I'm getting downvoted when I added citations for *possible* warming paths (from nature!). Yes, the chatgpt explanation is speculative but I mean, look at the thread we're discussing. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0121-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0121-5
  - antonvs 1y ago
    I appreciated your comment. I’ll also note that the path to that future will not be fun - you/chatgpt describe a kind of end state 275 years away, but things will evolve to that state over time. I suspect the downvotes may reflect people’s desire not to face the likely reality.
  - gmuslera 1y ago
    Part of the problem of getting +/- 8C of different global temperature is the speed of it. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ shows a timeline that goes back to 20000 AC, where global average temperature was like 5ºC less. There has been changes, but also adaptation. Now in less than 200 years we increased 2ºC, and the speed of change has increased, it was around 10 years ago when we reached 1ºC over preindustrial times, and now we are at 1.5ºC. And without adaptation you get mass extinction. And the human system may be pretty fragile against the disappearance or deep change of key components of the global system.
- leptons 1y ago
  In Carl Sagan's Cosmos, he talks about how many advanced civilizations could be out there capable of radio astronomy, and how as in our own experience, we have the capability to wipe out own civilization, so that would also be a factor in other advanced civilizations and could act as a limiting factor. There are many such factors other than nuclear destruction that could impact all functioning of an advanced society, rendering it nonviable. The idea has nothing to do with "doom scrolling". Go watch some Cosmos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsl9f83P0Ys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsl9f83P0Ys
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Of course it's related to your doom scrolling-provided depression. You think every single civilization is going to wipe itself out? You think most will? You think half will? Why, because humans are mean? I've seen Cosmos. It's not a counter to this argument in any way.
- ruszki 1y ago
  When we have a nuclear destruction, and some of us survive, then we will have a problem which we cannot solve easily even today: absolute annihilation of the ozone layer. It won’t be a soft reset at all. If the ozone layer disappeared right now, its consequences would be absolutely catastrophic even with the current civilization completely intact.
  - sgt 1y ago
    It'll recover even after a nuclear war, but it'll take time. But the impact on Earth in terms of resources will also be significantly lower during those 200-300 years it takes to rebuild. The population will be very small, but being very focused and hopefully able to jump start civilization again based on all the materials and knowledge still available.
stronglikedan 1y ago
> So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one I hope the second scenario is the most probable. Any aliens that could contact us would already know we can't even get along with each other, much less them. Even the most benevolent of aliens should see us as a "problem". (I was going to say "threat" but who am I kidding.)

kulahan 1y ago

I cannot imagine any scenario where we're just 100-200 years away from "no more tech" that isn't purely total nuclear destruction. Even then, we'd probably be so close to getting back to a technological civilization that it'd be a blip in the radar at best if we're talking about a society that far away. We lost 150 years of progress? That's okay, we had 800 more years to advance before the aliens showed up or whatever. It's such a weird thing I see so many people assuming. We were down to like 16,000 humans on Earth at one point, and that was before we'd developed things that you could theoretically scavenge and jumpstart your tech. People need to stop doomscrolling; I'm certain this is depression projected.

wat10000 1y ago
It was also before we'd burned all the easily accessible fossil fuels.
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  We mined all of the easily accessible drywall gypsum too, I guess we wouldn't be able to have houses either and would have to live outside in the cold and rain!
  - nradov 1y ago
    Perhaps the aliens will share advanced technology with us such as how to build a tent.
    - datavirtue 1y ago
      I can't wait until everyone realizes how easy it is to rebuild Göbekli Tepe with hand tools.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    There are lots of other building materials available. What other sources of energy are there which are suitable for driving a new industrial revolution if you’re starting over? Wind and solar aren’t worth too much without high tech to enable them. Biomass is insufficient. Nuclear needs high tech. Hydro could do, but it’s pretty limiting.
    - smallmancontrov 1y ago
      Insufficient for a hydrocarbon sugar high, but hardly insufficient for bootstrapping a civilization. Yeah, bio and hydro are limiting. So we would deal with the limits for longer until we worked our way past them. It's wildly condescending to imagine that this would be a show-stopper, doubly so when you review the history of all the things that were historically not stopped by the lack of fossil fuels.
- kulahan 1y ago
  Thankfully, unless somehow everything manmade disappears, we'll have scraps of windmills, solar panels, and hydro electric generators - with that laying around, it's easy to eventually figure out the underlying concepts and rebuild them.
elbasti 1y ago
With all due respect, I don't think you understand what the "worst case" scenario looks like for global warming, and how close we are to that scenario. For reference, check out figure 1 in this nature article [1]. That has warming by 2300 as 8C in an "emissions continue current trends" path. Here's chatgpt giving a picture of what 8C warming looks like. Speculative, hallucinations, caveat emptor, etc...but to give a sense of proportion this, last time the earth was 8C *cooler* than now, ice covered 25% of the planet: > At +8°C, Earth is fundamentally transformed. Large parts of today’s populated zones—South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, southern Europe, the southern U.S.—are functionally uninhabitable for humans outdoors. Wet-bulb temperatures regularly exceed survivable limits. Agriculture collapses across the subtropics; even mechanized, climate-controlled farming is marginal. Most of the world’s food comes from high-latitude regions: a narrow band across northern Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia. Sea levels are dozens of meters higher, drowning coastal megacities; Miami, New York, Shanghai, and London are gone. Phoenix is lifeless desert. Seattle is coastal tundra, wetter but still survivable. > Civilization persists only in fragments. Mass migration and resource wars have rewritten borders. Population is a fraction of 21st-century levels. Global trade, universities, and modern governance are mostly memories. Local, self-sufficient polities dominate. The United States as an institution likely dissolves or transforms beyond recognition—2 out of 10 chance of recognizable survival. Harvard or MIT survive, if at all, as digital archives or autonomous AI-driven knowledge systems—3 out of 10. The world would still have people and culture, but not civilization as we know it. Edit: I would appreciate knowing why I'm getting downvoted when I added citations for *possible* warming paths (from nature!). Yes, the chatgpt explanation is speculative but I mean, look at the thread we're discussing. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0121-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0121-5
- antonvs 1y ago
  I appreciated your comment. I’ll also note that the path to that future will not be fun - you/chatgpt describe a kind of end state 275 years away, but things will evolve to that state over time. I suspect the downvotes may reflect people’s desire not to face the likely reality.
- gmuslera 1y ago
  Part of the problem of getting +/- 8C of different global temperature is the speed of it. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ shows a timeline that goes back to 20000 AC, where global average temperature was like 5ºC less. There has been changes, but also adaptation. Now in less than 200 years we increased 2ºC, and the speed of change has increased, it was around 10 years ago when we reached 1ºC over preindustrial times, and now we are at 1.5ºC. And without adaptation you get mass extinction. And the human system may be pretty fragile against the disappearance or deep change of key components of the global system.
leptons 1y ago
In Carl Sagan's Cosmos, he talks about how many advanced civilizations could be out there capable of radio astronomy, and how as in our own experience, we have the capability to wipe out own civilization, so that would also be a factor in other advanced civilizations and could act as a limiting factor. There are many such factors other than nuclear destruction that could impact all functioning of an advanced society, rendering it nonviable. The idea has nothing to do with "doom scrolling". Go watch some Cosmos... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsl9f83P0Ys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsl9f83P0Ys
- kulahan 1y ago
  Of course it's related to your doom scrolling-provided depression. You think every single civilization is going to wipe itself out? You think most will? You think half will? Why, because humans are mean? I've seen Cosmos. It's not a counter to this argument in any way.
ruszki 1y ago
When we have a nuclear destruction, and some of us survive, then we will have a problem which we cannot solve easily even today: absolute annihilation of the ozone layer. It won’t be a soft reset at all. If the ozone layer disappeared right now, its consequences would be absolutely catastrophic even with the current civilization completely intact.
- sgt 1y ago
  It'll recover even after a nuclear war, but it'll take time. But the impact on Earth in terms of resources will also be significantly lower during those 200-300 years it takes to rebuild. The population will be very small, but being very focused and hopefully able to jump start civilization again based on all the materials and knowledge still available.

stronglikedan 1y ago

> So the options are that we find apparently benevolent aliens willing to contact us, or that we find out that someone is out there but no way to communicate/reach them. I think the second scenario is the most probable one I hope the second scenario is the most probable. Any aliens that could contact us would already know we can't even get along with each other, much less them. Even the most benevolent of aliens should see us as a "problem". (I was going to say "threat" but who am I kidding.)