
Where are the aliens? Where are the dragons? - MrQuincle
http://annevanrossum.com/2014/07/05/where-are-the-aliens-where-are-the-dragons/
======
lifeisstillgood
What?! Wild arsed speculation that should embarrass a 14 year old! "maybe
alien civilisations use FTL radios, maybe if we had evolved fireproof throats
we could be dragons.?"

Edit Flag revoked. But I would like to ask MrQuintle, who on the face of it
should be a dyed in the wool HN type, why he posted it. What did I miss? There
appears to be some ML link that I assume is how you came across it but - why
post it. It does seem utter tripe.

~~~
lnanek2
I think the story is kind of worthless and stupid too, but you can try to hand
wave your way to getting something out of it.

E.g. there are so many planets, there must be life and other intelligent
species on some of them, but we can't detect them. What are the possibilities
for this that require the fewest unfounded assumptions? Well, one of them is
that they simply don't communicate in ways we are looking for, so they aren't
generating the radio signals we look for. FTL is stupid, but the idea that
they aren't using radio is almost common sense.

Similarly, dragons are stupid, but the idea that evolution might tend to come
up with solutions that prevent intelligence is reasonable. Running a big brain
takes a lot of resources, it may be rare for situations where having a brain
instead of twice as much muscle is selected for by the environment, for
example. So that would also substantially decrease the amount of intelligent
species.

~~~
MrQuincle
Hi there. I admit that's not anything scientific. :-) I just entertained to
give some interesting variants of these ideas.

And I am not an expert in the question of superluminal communication, be it on
Birgit Dopfer's experiment or using ordinary subluminal speeds through
wormholes. But to consider that the absence of alien artifacts or
communication might require us to look for gaps in our knowledge w.r.t.
physics is a fun one, you've to admit. :-)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
If you are Anne, hi. Please don't take it too personally. What were you
speculating on? It seems too trivial to say maybe aliens have some other means
of communication. Are there parameters we can use to close down the problem?

Grumpy, yes. Too quick to judge, yes, but still interested (although in UK
timezone so tired)

~~~
MrQuincle
Hi, lifeiststillgood. Yes I am Anne and I don't mind grumpy people so much. We
all have our days! :-)

If quantum entanglement is used - in the way we understand now - a
subluminal/luminal carrier is required. Sending these signals is power
intensive, so it is likely to be the case that modulating an existing source
might be cheaper. Not so much a parameter that helps us much further though.

Of course, it is important to take sparsity into account. It is very unlikely
that a fixed signal originating from one point in the sky is the most
efficient manner of communication. Sparsity is becoming quite an important
concept in machine learning and I think SETI research might benefit from it.
But, I've to say, I don't have experience with advances made in SETI research,
so maybe they have advanced beyond the standard machine learning methods. :-)
I'm just an ordinary roboticist.

~~~
MrQuincle
I found some articles in this direction:

\- [http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.3966](http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.3966), Searching
for Cost-Optimized Interstellar Beacons and Messaging with Cost-Optimized
Interstellar Beacons, by James Benford (short pulses rather than a continuous
signal).

\-
[http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w59f2wk.pdf](http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w59f2wk.pdf),
Design of interstellar digital communication links: Some insights from
communication engineering, by David Messerschmitt (optimization as a
coordination tool with aliens).

------
eloff
FTL communication of any kind disrupts causality as we understand it. It's
likely not possible.

The article is wild speculation, but so is everything regarding aliens. Even
educated guesses are really just wild speculation because there are too many
unknowns. We don't even know how many worlds can support life, how many forms
life can take, how often life might evolve intelligence, etc.

I wonder sometimes if maybe there's a easter egg hidden in physics. If there
were an easy way to convert matter to energy that we have yet to discover, we
will likely destroy ourselves once we discover it. All it would take is one
psycho with the right resources to unleash a kind of devastation that would
make nuclear weapons look like fireworks. There might be no intelligent life
out there because discovering the kind of energy resource that allows for easy
interstellar travel might also make it too easy to kill ourselves.

Another possibility is the end game of intelligent life is not travelling
around 21st century style, but digitizing our consciousness and living in a
virtual world. Why travel to the stars when it makes more sense to turtle up
in a giant computer and enjoy life? Something like a Dyson sphere.

Another possibility is the aliens are out there, they've just perfected the
invisibility cloaks we're currently working on. Star Trek style, they're
monitoring us unseen so as not to interfere with our civilization.

It's fun to think about, but it's all wild speculation at this point.

~~~
gress
The whole point of mentioning FTL communication is to challenge the idea that
we understand enough.

Our current understanding of causality makes us believe that FTL communication
is 'likely not possible'.

If FTL communication is possible, it just means that our understanding of
causality is wrong, and if that is the case it was never 'likely not
possible'.

------
beloch
Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of novels (Dragonriders of Pern) based around
fire breathing alien dragons. Their method of producing fire was to digest
phosphine rich rocks in a dedicated stomach and then emit phosphine gas which
would spontaneously combust when expelled and mixed with air. In short, fire
breath without the need for fire in the belly.

~~~
MrQuincle
Nice!

------
gweinberg
Almost anything is possible. I think a major constraint to evolving
intelligent life is the fact that it requires large heads, which make birth
difficult. The marsupial solution of giving birth to very small underdeveloped
babies and completing development in an external pouch soleves this problem
nicely. Also, hopping motion is more efficient than our clumsy walking, and
leaves the upper limbs free to develop into hands for tool use. So I think
it's likely that most intelligent life forms in the universe are basically
kangaroos.

That doesn't answer the question of where they are, though.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm trying to figure out if there is a good reason for the mammalian birth
canal to go through the pelvis, without much luck. If that routing is not
advantageous, birthing problems would only come up when it happened to be
prevalent on that planet.

~~~
Joyfield
Spawning only a few babies as "we" do it is important to only spawn healthy
babies. The first test is the "great swim" of the sperm. The second is the
health of the mother in the next 9 month and the "last" one is surviving
birth. This making only the fittest/suitable survive.

And that is why "routing" it something hard makes sense.

------
ivraatiems
I don't think this is a worthless or uninteresting article - but I think the
author is missing the point.

WE are the dragons. Us. Human beings. We're the evolutionary exception, the
ultimate apex predator, and so on.

