Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20569/page1/

by as • 18 years ago

42 43 18 years ago

hacklite• 18 years ago

What difference would it make if there were extraterrestrial life?

How would an advanced Alien intelligence view human beings, who exploit and slaughter intelligent life around them on a daily basis, including other human beings, and helpless animals who they raise under torturous conditions and then dismember while conscious in order to consume them -- needlessly, as our physiology does not require animal products.

Not to mention the warmongering, as the majority of the U.S. public supported war -- as long as it seemed convenient. No anti-war stance on principle for most U.S. citizens, bogglingly, especially after the lessons of Vietnam.

A lack of human rights or environmental laws in the most populous country on Earth.

Widespread environmental destruction, wiping out forests and ecosystems all over the globe.

I don't think Aliens would be too impressed with humanity in general, including SETI researchers who retire to the cafeteria for a nice plate of murdered intelligent being on a daily basis.

dfranke• 18 years ago

The remarkable thing about humans is that we're even vaguely concerned about environmental destruction. Out of millions of species, we're the only one that is. So what makes you think that extraterrestrial species we encounter are likely to care more than we do?

garbowza• 18 years ago

It seems that most people aren't concerned with environmental description per se, but rather how that destruction might affect their own lives. So really it's just self preservation and self interest, which isn't much different from other animals.

vchakrav• 18 years ago

I believe that the author makes one fundamental mistake: Assuming that there is one great filter, and that its common across all civilizations. It seems to me there are a large number of filters, some of which applied (to dinosaurs, for example). Some filters may cause end of all life (on earth), some others may simply eradicate all human life..

Either way, on a cosmic scale, all this is beyond our control (I'd worry about the sun going nova some day, but I have more pressing things to do), so not much point worrying about it.

Tichy2• 18 years ago

I think I just found a possible alternative explanation, which given the odds might actually be very probable: there is one situation in which aliens might not want to show themselves to us. That is, if we are an experiment that their interference would mess up. Perhaps they are just studying some sociology and evolution theory with earth. We already are the result of the "von Neumann probe".

We are not seeing any other aliens because our creators (not god, but some aliens) are so powerful that they destroyed them or kept them away.

Well, just a random thought I had after reading the article.

ks• 18 years ago

I've thought about that too. What if there is a civilization out there that are millions of years ahead of us. What can't they do?

We think in human terms, but they might not have the need to spread to every planet. But they may want to stop other civilizations, because they can become threats to them. Perhaps they just monitor the galaxy and stops other civilizations from spreading too far?

That could also explain why UFO observations have increased so much after WWII. When they noticed that we could make nuclear bombs, we were put on the "no fly list" :-)

r7000• 18 years ago

Maybe the idea of messing with anything interesting is unthinkable. If you were very advanced the only thing interesting would be stuff that originated elsewhere (and mathematics). The thought of "contaminating" it would be immoral. Even terraforming a lifeless planet or moon would seem like a waste as you would be destroying information.

dangoldin• 18 years ago

I've thought about this issue in the past and have a similar view to the author's, forgive me if it's a little bit childish:

I believe that in order to develop space technology a species(let's call it that) has to be technologically advanced but in order to be technologically advanced the specieshas to be innovative and competitive.

But competition is the trait that can cause conflict and wars so any species that has the capability to colonize foreign worlds also has the ability to annihilate itself.

Thus I have this idea that every species that has been able to get this technology has killed itself off. It's a morbid view but just an idea that I have.

What I like to think is that we are getting more and more in line with nature and less and less pugnacious so at one point maybe we'll get along with the world - hopefully these advanced aliens have reached that point.

mdakin• 18 years ago

Surely the path towards becoming technologically advanced also requires cooperation in addition to competition. These two processes tend to hold one another in balance nicely and yield results. I don't see any clear evidence that suggests one or the other of those two processes will "win out" long term. But if anything it seems humans have become more cooperative over time in step with our technological advancement.

Assuming "competition" and ONLY the negative consequences of the competitive process somehow trump all else, in particular cooperation, is depressing, counterproductive and inconsistent with what I've seen in my own life.

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

Charles Pellegrino/George Zebrowski covers this in _The Killing Star_ (1995). They reason as follows:

  1. Any species will place its own survival before that of a different species.
  2. Any species that has made it to the top on its planet of origin will be 
     intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
  3. They will assume that the first two rules apply to us.

So any starfaring species might well destroy another starfaring species -- immediately. In _The Killing Star_ the aliens do so at the first opportunity with high-powered relativistic bombardment. The power that they use dwarfs that generated by asteroid impacts and past mass extictions. They blanket the entire hemisphere of planets with relativistic projectiles! The earth is taken out entirely in just two shots.

http://sites.inka.de/mips/reviews/TheKillingStar.html

shawndrost• 18 years ago

About 2: they might simply be capable of aggression or ruthlessness, ie highly elastic. I would argue that is a better description of humans, and more speculatively, a more likely route towards species success.

ericb3• 18 years ago

It's an interesting theory, but advanced civilization is built on collaboration, not defection (aggression). Most things that lead to advances in civilization are based on collaboration: science, openness, sharing knowledge, rule of law, free trade, contracts.

I would argue the exact opposite--any species that makes it to the top of the food chain will likely have collaboration ingrained in their nature, and the more advanced, the greater their collaborative nature will be.

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

Yes, but we tend to collaborate with members of our own species and enslave/butcher/experiment on other species. Even our relationships with dogs and other family pets can be highly unequal and sometimes downright disturbing. (Treating them as chattel, "putting them to sleep" when it's more convenient to do so.) So this counts against your position in two ways: 1) our only data point indicates that interspecies collaboration is likely to be less than cozy 2) others might observe our treatment of other species and use that to evaluate our potential for hostility.

Also, our record with regards to polluting our own environment doesn't recommend us highly as "good citizens of the galaxy." (This was brought up as a possibility in David Brin's Sundiver series.)

And this isn't even considering the vast differences in culture and even basic mental models there will likely be. It's far from a sure bet that this openness will extend to us.

Also, one can readily imagine how a "innocuous" act from the point of view of one species might be considered a greivous crime by another. (The Ender's Game books are one example.)

LPTS• 18 years ago

Most advances are first military advances.

Canned food, sanitation, nuclear power, computers, all first developed in a wartime capacity

Tichy2• 18 years ago

I'd like to believe in friendly aliens, but I changed my expectations since I read "Collapse". I don't recall if there were in fact any friendly encounters, but for the most part I remember from the book that newly discovered human populations were destroyed by the explorers from other countries.

There is also at least one example of a pacifist society that was completely butchered when they were discovered by less pacifist people, even though they gave those people a friendly welcome.

ericb3• 18 years ago

I have a sci-fi inspired theory that as a civilization advances, it modifies itself such that it's mental processing speed and speed of communication become faster. At a certain point, species at other speeds have less to offer and communicating would be impractical as emitting a signal at our speed would involve what would seem like eons of effort to them. Due to the speed discrepancies, they'd mainly prefer talking to themselves.

One way or another, the "sends radio waves into space hoping for contact" phase is probably very short. The possibilities for what phases come next are not all bad, but whatever the "usual" is, it probably doesn't involve sending radio waves out anymore. It's possible the next step is to evolve into something that wouldn't like talking to us very much. Maybe that's not bad.

ph0rque4• 18 years ago

Charles Stross explores a very similar thesis in Accelerando (http://www.accelerando.org): the civilization needs such intensive bandwidth to continue functioning "normally" that the distance between galaxies is too large to support both the bandwidth required and intergalaxical expansion (it's been awhile since I read it, so correct me if the details are fuzzy).

andrewl• 18 years ago

ericb, your comment about mental processing speed and speed of communication makes me think you would enjoy "The Mote In God's Eye", by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I thought their concept of an alien race was quite original.

(Anybody else reading this, human or alien, may also enjoy the book.)

ph0rque4• 18 years ago

I think there's another possibility: advanced civilizations exist, but since they're not malevolent (if they were, we wouldn't exist by now), their ethics prohibit "disturbing" us in the slightest bit, including via the knowledge that there are others out there. So they take care to camouflage themselves when they visit.

sdurkin4• 18 years ago

Why? What possible reason could a benevolent race have for not helping us?

rms3• 18 years ago

They are so far above us that they don't notice our existence.

ph0rque4• 18 years ago

They've observed how we treat each other, and don't want to give us enough power to somehow destroy or harm them?

sdurkin4• 18 years ago

If we are the only ones, I find that incredibly scary. We are incredibly more precious than we thought. The fate of all intelligent life rests on this one tiny speck.

I, for one, hope that we aren't the only ones, because if we fail, then its all over. If there are more, intelligence will be able to carry on.

argongas• 18 years ago

I think that finding extraterrestrial life would challenge many of the worlds popular religions. Take Christianity for example. How will Christians interpret Genesis after the discovery of life on other planets? Was Christ sent to other planets as well?

run4yourlives• 18 years ago

Most Christians who've actually thought of their faith, (admittedly, that's few and far between) have most certainly already reconciled their beliefs with this subject. Off the top of my head, I'd imagine a reconciled Christian would say:

1. Aliens are not in the Bible, but nothing says they don't exist. 2. The Bible is God's message to man, and surely the Aliens will have their own message from the same God. (Actually, considering the similarities of Earth's religions, wouldn't that be something?) I digress.

Point being, the search for God will continue forever. It's part of human nature, and is ultimately an unknowable equation. Even with a thousand known species, people will ask why we are, and that can often lead to "because you were made to be".

I think it's foolish to expect a mass awakening on the discovery of ET. It's not going to happen. You'll have a few that will alter their beliefs, a few that will go wacko (thinking crazy white haired dude from Contact here) and everyone else will just ponder it for a while and carry on.

jfoutz• 18 years ago

I'm not sure if Marconi or Tesla could detect WiMax signals. Of course, that's only 100 years, no telling what a thousand or a million years of tech could hide in the EM spectrum.

Also, stuff like nanopond makes me want to think self replication is easier than he's making it out to be.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

Possible filters:

1. The singularity. (Though that begs the question: Why wouldn't robots be observable? Perhaps they exist at a largely "virtual" level, as code, even as they replace life.)

2. Dysgenics, aka, Idiocracy. At some point, it may be evolutionarily advantageous to not become more advanced. This is certainly true at present, on average, though the distribution of intelligence is becoming bimodal. The actual filter might ultimately involve a great genocide by Morlock-esque creatures.

3. Gamma ray bursts. Could wipe out millions of civilizations all at once.

4. Ice nine. This is the author's suggestion, basically. Some sudden discovery that wipes out humanity too quickly for us to recover.

....certainly, the author is correct in observing that there are no intelligent aliens, nor could they hide themselves unless they purposefully disabled every radio transmitter for the duration of their hiding.

ED: The wiki article is actually pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

JacobAldridge• 18 years ago

Nick mentions Environment Disaster as a possible existential risk, but perhaps the environment is a more mundane and yet still 'Great Filter' that befalls expansionist civilisations.

What if the resources required to leave the home planet (including here the resources required for generations of technological steps to reach that point) are more than an Earth-like planet can sustain? In other words, of necessity or as close to it as probability allows, intelligent life must destroy the sustainability of its home planet before it achieves the technology capable of leaving it.

Of course, by leaving it I'm talking on the scale required to explore and interact with neighbouring solar systems, not just sending Voyager 1 out there with a picture on its side.

cousin_it• 18 years ago

They became smaller. Found a galaxy in every atom and started colonizing them. Life on the micro-level is fun because the speed of light is relatively huge.

They became faster. Foreseeing the heat depth of the universe, they invented a way to squeeze an eternity of subjective time into a second of real time, and stayed there. Or turned around in time. Or started oscillating back and forth in the same time interval.

They invented wish control, eliminated the survival instinct and went extinct.

They contacted God and ascended.

jcl• 18 years ago

They became dumber, could no longer understand the technology that was keeping them alive, and died out.

Really, the only reason we are as intelligent as we are is because intelligence turned out to be helpful for survival. But that same intelligence lets us defeat our own survival instincts (which is why we have obesity, drug addiction, and porn). This suggests that for continued survival, either our instincts must become stronger than our intellects or our intellects must become weaker than our instincts -- both of which lead to the same place: exhaustion of resources before we actually accomplish anything.

(Disclaimer: I recently rented "Idiocracy".)

1gor• 18 years ago

http://www.exitmundi.nl is a great collection of the Great Filter candidates.

michael_dorfman• 18 years ago

If we're going to posit extraterrestrial life, I'd view the fact that they've stayed hidden from us as a de facto sign of intelligence. "Smart enough to stay the fuck away" sounds like a good start, to me.

as• 18 years ago

That was Bill Watterson's theory.

chmike2• 18 years ago

The only real paradox on this matter is that UFOs are systematically out ruled as the expected manifestation of ETs.

There is apparently a prejudice on what an ET manifestation should or might be. If there is no match, people mistakenly conclude that ET don't exist instead of calling back into question their assumptions on what an ET manifestation should be.

Most reasoning about ET naively project humans constrains or interests on them as well as our rationale. This is quite naive.

The author suggest filters, I suggest barriers.

The most important barrier is interstellar travel which requires to be able to collect energy somehow during the travel (i.e. from dark matter) or the be able to completely freeze any activity and energy spending on board during the travel (i.e. as do plant seed) and using the destination sun as energy source to trigger to reactivation.

When a civilization has reached this stage, he most probably has become independent of the need to be on firm ground like an earth or so. He will be much more comfortable in a fully artificial, customized and big enough space ship. What I mean to say is that their constrains may be totally different than what we may expect based on our experience.

From this perspective I assume the real value (St Graal) is scientific and engineering knowledge and mastering, and for this, if avoiding direct contact and obvious manifestation can simplify the task, they'll do it.

We have no idea on their constrains, their knowledge and how humans are positioned regarding it.

There are enough facts and data on UFOs however to learn and deduce things about their technology. (i.e. electro magnetic propulsion, very intense magnetic fields, supra conductive vehicle shell at room temperature and above, protecting against magnetic field, etc...). These are not just speculations, there are hard facts justifying them. (i.e light polarization due to intense EM field around the UFO made visible on a photograph), etc.

Apparently very few people really take the time to investigate objectively and in detail the data at hand and the hard facts.

ph0rque4• 18 years ago

> The most important barrier is interstellar travel which requires to be able to collect energy somehow during the travel (i.e. from dark matter) or the be able to completely freeze any activity and energy spending on board during the travel (i.e. as do plant seed) and using the destination sun as energy source to trigger to reactivation.

There is also the possibility of wormhole travel/other spacetime exotics...

chmike2• 18 years ago

Yes. But their existence, and validity as traveling technique, are still to be proved.

The plant seed, or bacteria spore, analogy invalidates the claim that inter stellar travel is impossible for living bodies. Inter stellar travel is thus possible, even without energy source available on the way.

We also have to call back in question our assumptions on how a contact would happen and how the ET would look like.

The abduction data is on this aspect very interesting because no one could have predicted such a contact scenario. Note that I don't pretend it's true, but the thing is that there is a striking piece of evidence on this subject which out rules the theory of false memory. It is the Betty Hill star map that Joachim Koch recognized as to be our solar system. This interpretation makes much more sense than other interpretation for multiple reasons and the killing detail in it is that Betty has drawn in 1962 a ring around Jupiter and the ring was only discovered by Voyager 1 in 1979 !

Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.

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