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By definition there are a lot of UFOs around, the trouble is just that none of them are commandeered by alien intelligences from beyond the Earth. There is no c

by Udo 12y ago

By definition there are a lot of UFOs around, the trouble is just that none of them are commandeered by alien intelligences from beyond the Earth. There is no credible evidence for it (although I recognize that credibility standards vary a lot depending on who you talk to). Personally, I find the absence of aliens surprising. This may one day even turn out to be problematic. Most HNers are probably aware of the Fermi Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox). One of the most likely answers seems to be that space is big and manipulating spacetime for FTL travel might be technologically intractable. Maybe we are living in a galactic dead patch, as a statistical fluke. Maybe technology-building civilizations are astonishingly rare. In any case, we would expect at least a few drones zooming by every once in a while. But the absence of contact might also hint at a severe problem in our galactic region which we have not yet encountered. Another common scenario is that technology using species are so unstable as to exterminate themselves in most cases. It is unclear how such civilizations would all have a tendency collapse though, as it seems that different types of life forms should have vastly different behavioral characteristics. However you turn it, most scenarios mean that more likely than not the galaxy should already have been colonized many times over, and by rights it should at the very least contain a lot of artifacts left behind. But apparently it doesn't. We should be very worried about this, something is not right.

krapp 12y ago
>We should be very worried about this, something is not right. Should we be worried? We base our assumptions about what 'right' is, in this case what a universe containing the presence of life should look like (colonies and trash littered about,) on a single example of intelligent civilization (our own) with no knowledge at all of how normative that is, or what the actual technological capabilites of a truly interstellar civilization would look like. We can extend our own dependence on fossil fuels exponentially and come up with the Kardashev Scale, then expect to find evidence of interstellar empires burning stars as fuel, or come up with clever math like the Drake Equation and feel confident that life should be abundant - but to quote Han Solo, it's all simple tricks and nonsense. We don't even know enough to know whether or not we should be worried.
- Udo 12y ago
  Inevitably we are working with a lot of assumptions. But the Drake equation is one of the simplest expressions of our reasoning in this area imaginable. There is nothing contrived about the equation itself. You might choose to put in different variables, but the result would be the same. At this point we do have a much better idea about the individual factors than we had when Frank Drake first wrote it down. We now know that planets are common. We know that tool-using intelligences arose independently several times on our planet, our civilization just happens to be the first on the local stage. We know that AI and nano technology have the potential to vastly increase the amount of time during which civilizations have a detectable output (hence the drone argument). We know there is nothing in principle preventing a civilization from colonizing the galaxy, even if speed-of-light restrictions always apply. So the argument goes that some species should already have done that. Given the age of the universe, it also seems unlikely that we're simply one of the first civilizations to arise. While you can easily argue that it's all useless speculation as long as we don't know the exact value of every single factor, the sheer volume of scenarios pointing to the WTF-ness of the Fermi Paradox should absolutely bother us. We're not exactly a cautious or rational civilization (yet), so the odds of us ignoring something fundamental in this area might be quite high.

by Udo 12y ago

krapp 12y ago

>We should be very worried about this, something is not right. Should we be worried? We base our assumptions about what 'right' is, in this case what a universe containing the presence of life should look like (colonies and trash littered about,) on a single example of intelligent civilization (our own) with no knowledge at all of how normative that is, or what the actual technological capabilites of a truly interstellar civilization would look like. We can extend our own dependence on fossil fuels exponentially and come up with the Kardashev Scale, then expect to find evidence of interstellar empires burning stars as fuel, or come up with clever math like the Drake Equation and feel confident that life should be abundant - but to quote Han Solo, it's all simple tricks and nonsense. We don't even know enough to know whether or not we should be worried.

Udo 12y ago
Inevitably we are working with a lot of assumptions. But the Drake equation is one of the simplest expressions of our reasoning in this area imaginable. There is nothing contrived about the equation itself. You might choose to put in different variables, but the result would be the same. At this point we do have a much better idea about the individual factors than we had when Frank Drake first wrote it down. We now know that planets are common. We know that tool-using intelligences arose independently several times on our planet, our civilization just happens to be the first on the local stage. We know that AI and nano technology have the potential to vastly increase the amount of time during which civilizations have a detectable output (hence the drone argument). We know there is nothing in principle preventing a civilization from colonizing the galaxy, even if speed-of-light restrictions always apply. So the argument goes that some species should already have done that. Given the age of the universe, it also seems unlikely that we're simply one of the first civilizations to arise. While you can easily argue that it's all useless speculation as long as we don't know the exact value of every single factor, the sheer volume of scenarios pointing to the WTF-ness of the Fermi Paradox should absolutely bother us. We're not exactly a cautious or rational civilization (yet), so the odds of us ignoring something fundamental in this area might be quite high.