
Why We Haven’t Met Any Aliens - mindmirror
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/why_we_havent_met_any_aliens/
======
ekidd
This essay is analogous to a mathematical proof that begins "Assume A and not
A" and concludes: "and therefore P≠NP." It's not that I disagree with Miller's
conclusion, it's just his premise is a contradiction, and thus capable of
proving _anything._

First, the contradiction: Fermi's paradox says that intelligent species are
common, and that some fraction of intelligent species will engage in
interstellar colonization. By some simple reasoning, this implies that the
galaxy filled up with intelligent life a billion years ago. But the skies look
empty.

Using Fermi's paradox, we could "prove" that the universe is filled with
hostile, silent aliens that exterminate any species that discovers radio (as
in Saberhagen's "Berserker" novels), or that interstellar colonization is
impossible, or that intelligence is a self-defeating adaptation and we're
doomed to wipe ourselves out. This makes for fun science fiction, but you
can't use it to _prove_ anything.

The conclusion is a fun bit of Puritan moralizing (entertainment _bad_ , real
life _good_ ). And because we want to agree with the conclusion, we're tempted
to overlook the sloppy reasoning.

(And I'd love to say something about Miller's use of evolutionary psychology
to present plausible hypotheses without supporting evidence, but that's a
whole other can of worms.)

~~~
maratd
> we're tempted to overlook the sloppy reasoning.

Not in the slightest. This is a political opinion piece. There is a negative
political statement about nuclear weapons. Then about video games. Then about
consumerism, etc etc

You can use anything you perceive as self destructive to show how the aliens
wiped themselves out and we will too! That much is obvious without any attempt
at serious reasoning.

Fast food is destroying our country. Obesity! Aliens got too fat, wiped
themselves out, that's why there aren't any around. Replace fast food with any
other activity which offends commonly accepted political decency.

~~~
dextorious
"""Replace fast food with any other activity which offends commonly accepted
political decency."""

Obesity doesn't only offend "commonly accepted political decency" it also has
measurable, negative impact on a person's life span.

And I would venture to say that nuclear weapons and such have too.

~~~
maratd
> it also has measurable, negative impact on a person's life span.

Every activity has a "measurable, negative impact on a person's life span" so
long as the person doing the measuring is opposed to the activity. What was it
that Benjamin Disraeli said? There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies,
and statistics.

I find it curious that in the age of nuclear weapons, video games,
consumerism, hamburgers, drugs, alcohol, etc. our average life spans are
actually increasing.

~~~
dextorious
"""Every activity has a "measurable, negative impact on a person's life span"
so long as the person doing the measuring is opposed to the activity. What was
it that Benjamin Disraeli said? There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned
lies, and statistics."""

Obesity has a negative impact on life span because of BIAS??? I thought it was
because of scientifically proven processes, well understood by modern
medicine. Maybe it's just me.

"""I find it curious that in the age of nuclear weapons, video games,
consumerism, hamburgers, drugs, alcohol, etc. our average life spans are
actually increasing."""

That's because there's another kind of lie, Disraeli missed, the
"correlation/causation" kind of lie. If the average life spans actually
increase it's not because of the above, but because of better sanitation,
vaccines, and a few other important factors.

The lifespan of people doing drugs/alcohol/hamburgers etc is actually
decreased, compared to an imaginary control group.

And I'll go on a limb and say that the lifespan of people in 1945 Hiroshima
was also greatly reduced compared to any control group of the time that didn't
had a nuclear bomb dropped on them.

------
freshhawk
I really did not expect this much resistance on HN to a fairly classical
solution to the fermi paradox. Mostly it's spun in a more positive "retreat
into virtual reality" type situation but it's the same thing.

We have no idea how humans will react to the ability to sate every desire and
wish artifically. It's not just hyper-porn and the xbox 720, this would apply
to the desire for exploration, solving hard problems, building well
functioning societies, raising successful offspring, etc.

There also has to be something hilariously ironic about all of us on hacker
news insisting that people in the future will reject fulfilling technological
wastes of time in favour of productive activities that benefit themselves and
humanity. At this very moment a large percentage of the brightest minds in the
world are working on getting people to click on internet ads and building
products that monetize well but are honestly a net loss to humankind.

~~~
balbeit
But by having people click on those ads, the companies that are advertising
(which could be and are companies actively engaged in "physical" products) are
acquiring paying customers and thus have greater ability to fund their
products.

SpaceX, Boeing, GM, and Victoria Secret need revenue sources to create their
'non-virtual-reality' products, and marketing/advertising creates a revenue
source. If they had a net loss from advertising they simply wouldn't do it.

~~~
tdrgabi
You are right, in theory.

But I get this feeling, more and more, that big, world changing companies,
don't need ads revenue. The number of visits on the internet is less relevant
for them.

You picked some companies randomly, but out of them SpaceX and Boeing are not
selling stuff over the internet.

There is this hunch, that what we do, doesn't matter. It's mostly self
congratulatory _friend/social_ app. Yes, you might make some money out of it
from VC but it doesn't change the world.

~~~
mseebach
The companies that buy Boeings products very much are selling stuff over the
Internet.

~~~
tdrgabi
Yes. We could argue that people would still buy tickets even if they weren't
available online, since flying beats car / ship traveling even if you have to
walk to a store to buy your ticket.

~~~
mseebach
That's not the point.

Selling and advertising tickets online is at least as good as the offline
alternative at the same cost (presumably cheaper). Otherwise, why bother?

Thus, better/cheaper online advertising -> more tickets sold -> higher demand
for air planes.

------
azernik
I'm kind of peeved at how (in talking about how the human economy has become
so focused on entertainment as opposed to "real" economic activity) the author
cites "IBM, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Matsushita, Samsung, Micron Technology,
Intel, Hitachi, Toshiba and Fujitsu" as companies that are pushing out "fake",
"virtual" goods that do not contribute to human material success, and then
lists Victoria's Secret as a company that makes "real things". (Victoria's
Secret being, by the way a prime example of a company that bases its success
on manipulating evolved behavioral mechanisms. I don't think this is wrong in
the way the author does, but this does betray a certain internal
inconsistency.)

The antipathy to computing is incomprehensible - I would say that the ability
to have fast and high-bandwidth communications, computerized organization
(calendaring, e-mail storage, etc.) and the like is more likely to contribute
to human growth to the stars than (in the author's example) zippers.

~~~
majmun
and you forgot to mention most important, computer simulations witch are
virtual but contributes to real. if you are going to send colonization probe
to few ly distant planet you are have to have some badass simulation first.

------
jerf
There are so, so many things wrong with this line of arguing presented as The
Solution that I'll just present my two biggest. First, as a solution to the
Fermi paradox this must mean that _ALL_ the millions of species with
quintillions of individuals _MUST_ always prefer to retreat into virtual
reality _AND_ completely forget about reality.

Most putative solutions to the Fermi paradox have this problem. It isn't
enough to create a way to eliminate 99.999% of millions of civilizations,
because the result is still that the galaxy would have been colonized before
we achieved sentience. Self-loathing arguments are a particularly popular one,
but even striking a fashionable "humans suck" pose (and make no mistake that
this _is_ a fashionable signal to send) proves nothing else about the other
beings that could exist.

Secondly, it must mean that all species that so retreat must _so thoroughly_
retreat that they completely forget about the outside universe and have no
desires to increase their computational power for any reason, ever. This is a
much higher level of tech than we have now, and none of the quintillions-is-
probably-a-conservative-estimate must ever decide that hey, that juicy looking
star system over there could be converted to another hunk of VR simulation and
if I send over the hardware to do it, I can completely own the resulting VR
installation.

(Personally I favor the other end of the argument; life evolves easily,
_assuming Earth-like conditions_ , and the Rare Earth hypothesis doesn't
require very much hoop-jumping, new physics, or bizarre probability arguments,
it just requires serious consideration of the possibility that organic life-
as-we-more-or-less know it may really be the only solution, and may really not
be able to arise in very many places. If you dig into the prevailing wisdom
against that idea, you'll find it's more philosophically sourced than
scientifically sourced, there really are a lot of good reasons to think there
aren't that many available chemical regimes life could work in, and in general
it's probably the most scientifically-sound Fermi paradox answer. It's just
not philosophically fashionable.)

~~~
khafra
> the Rare Earth hypothesis

That's certainly the end of the Great Filter I'd prefer to be the significant
one. Let's hope for no microorganisms on Mars, Titan, or Europa!

------
brandall10
Let's imagine there are billions of planets out there (a true Sagan-esque
billions) which have spawned intelligences that have achieved interstellar
travel - ie. they have the ability to actively seek out and communicate with
others of similar ability. Perhaps like the United Federation of Planets in
Star Trek, except many, many of these, separated from others by various
degrees of intelligence or ability.

Let's imagine there are far more planets like ours that have life - let's
throw intelligence out, because that is defined by some relative standard -
which has not yet reached that capability. Why would we be interesting in the
scope of these far more advanced extraterrestrial societies?

Perhaps they don't reach out because it would be as fruitless as us trying to
communicate with ants. Perhaps they don't care to study us because we seem
about as interesting as primordial soup (ie. a nuclear holocaust might be a
trait of that). Perhaps intelligences like ours are well understood, well
classified in the genus of the universe, and we are about as ordinary as a
barnacle on the hull of a tug boat.

~~~
aamar
True, but if these super-advanced aliens are populating many planets, then
we'd presumably be able to detect them somehow, irrespective of whether they
care about us.

It may be electromagnetic leakage or Dyson spheres or any of a number of other
signs of artifice.

~~~
iso8859-1
Maybe our universe runs in their VM. I don't know how you can assume that we
would be able to detect anyone. If they are smarter than us, they'd know how
to hide.

~~~
aamar
If we run in their VM, then the Fermi paradox still applies--since physics is
consistent in this VM and seemingly leads frequently to life, why wouldn't we
see signs of it elsewhere in the galaxy?

If the "we're like ants/barnacles to them" theory is true, then they wouldn't
bother intentionally hiding from us, because we're no threat to them. If they
do it unintentionally, that would still be interesting: for example, it would
probably mean that civilizations do not in fact aggressively colonize the
galaxy.

------
luser001
Almost everything good and bad that humans have done is due to the drive of a
_SMALL_ number of (or single) individuals (American Decl. of Independence,
Soviet revolution, Indian freedom struggle, race to colonize the world, WW2,
9/11, Iraq invasion).

That is why it doesn't matter if 99.999% of the world is pre-occupied with one
mindvirus or other. It's the 1-in-100k person who really takes humanity to the
next level of greatness/depravity.

There will always be ambitious people for whom this world will be too small:
they will colonize the next planet.

~~~
wisty
The whole "great men made history" meme is kind of discredited. It's true to a
point, and it's certainly a lot more interesting (therefore easy to remember)
if you say that WWII was Hitler vs. Churchill and Stalin, but it's not
entirely correct.

In science, it might just be 1% of the top 1% who make the big breakthroughs -
how many times did one guy make more than one really huge breakthrough? I can
think of one big fuzzy-haired counterexample.

~~~
eru
Also you often have the same thing invented multiple times independently, at
the same time or in different times.

So if by some accident we missed a genius, she would probably be replaced by a
bunch of merely clever people.

------
DanielBMarkham
Everybody talks about bandwidth as if that's some terribly important metric,
but the real metric is _brain_ width. Vendors are fighting tooth and nail for
time on your brain.

And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does just
one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are gone.
Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth.
Information is not passive any more; it's _sticky_. As a consumer you are not
a entity who receives services from a webapp. You are a target for absorption
by way of total immersion. Potential vendors can either get on board with your
addiction or lose out to others who will. _This_ is why we buy Facebook,
Google, and game ads. Your brainwidth is already being sucked up. As vendors
we have to go where our potential markets already are.

If you want to talk about extrapolating history, our books are full of useful
examples. Time and time again people could not make the changes necessary for
society to evolve so they packed up their bags and moved. You can't move any
more, and lots of immersive content providers want to take your frustration
and turn it into your being plugged in all day.

Who wants to go live on the moon? We can do a lot more exciting things in our
own custom-designed universe. A couple hundred more years of this and we won't
be going anywhere besides LEO or doing much of anything except patting
ourselves on the back and telling ourselves how many important things we have
right here.

~~~
jseliger
_And they're doing very well. It's very rare to pick up a device that does
just one thing -- the days of the wristwatch and one-function cell-phone are
gone. Now everything you touch is competing to take up all your braindwidth.
Information is not passive any more; it's sticky. As a consumer you are not a
entity who receives services from a webapp._

This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, _want_ it
to be true. (I'm 28, wear a watch, and use a paper notebook
([http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-
th...](http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-the-first-
busted-moleskine/)) in addition to having an iPhone; but the iPhone only takes
up as much mental bandwidth as I let it).

My brain is not a passive entity that is "being sucked up." People either let
themselves be sucked up, or they don't.

EDIT: Also, if you want an interesting exploration of some of the trends
you're describing, see Neal Stephenson's "Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out,":
[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?pagewanted=all)
.

~~~
dextorious
"""This removes human agency, and it's only true if we, as individuals, want
it to be true. (I'm 28, wear a watch, and use a paper notebook
(<http://jseliger.com/2011/05/11/eight-years-of-writing-and-th...>) in
addition to having an iPhone; but the iPhone only takes up as much mental
bandwidth as I let it)."""

Yeah. So on top of owning an iPhone, you are also a hipster with a (trendy but
useless, considering the iPhone also tells the time) watch and a notebook
(it's even a Moleskine).

Way to prove the parent poster's point.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Seriously? A watch costs as little as $2 and goes on your wrist. You will
never need to reach into your pocket or bag for it. It will run for months, or
years, on a single battery. You will probably never drop it and break it.
Unless it's stupidly expensive, you will probably never be mugged for your
watch.

Anyway, Moleskine is nice but Miquel Rius notebooks have nicer grid paper
options. :)

~~~
dextorious
"""Seriously? A watch costs as little as $2 and goes on your wrist. You will
never need to reach into your pocket or bag for it. It will run for months, or
years, on a single battery. You will probably never drop it and break it.
Unless it's stupidly expensive, you will probably never be mugged for your
watch."""

My point was not that the watch itself was stealing his mental bandwidth, but
rather hipster culture.

~~~
jseliger
1) I don't know what you mean by a "hipster," or what a "hipster" is, other
than that you're using the term as a slur:
<http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html> . I also don't know what "hipster
culture" means or is.

2) The original poster who I'm responding to said, "the days of the wristwatch
and one-function cell-phone are gone [. . .]," so I'm not sure how one can be
simultaneously "trendy" and part of a declining trend (that is, watch-
wearing).

3) If you'd read the link, you'd know that I don't use Moleskine notebooks any
more because their quality variability appears to have increased over time.

~~~
dextorious
"""The original poster who I'm responding to said, "the days of the wristwatch
and one-function cell-phone are gone [. . .]," so I'm not sure how one can be
simultaneously "trendy" and part of a declining trend (that is, watch-
wearing)."""

Hipster culture is all about celebrating declining trends as trendy. It's
precisely because watch-wearing is a "declining trend" that makes the hipster
wear one to stand out. A hardcore hipster would probably sport a pocket watch,
but check this out:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/28/casio-f-9...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/28/casio-f-91w-watch-
design-hipsters-al-qaida)

""" If you'd read the link, you'd know that I don't use Moleskine notebooks
any more because their quality variability appears to have increased over
time."""

Spoken like a true hipster. As if a non-hipster cares to measure the "quality
variability of his notebooks".

Now, you might be totally ignorant of the hipster culture, I'll give you that.

But the prevalence of things like Moleskine notebooks are precisely because of
that demographic. Check:
[http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/02/24/122-moleskine-
not...](http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/02/24/122-moleskine-notebooks/)

------
PaulHoule
It's a fair guess that humanity will become extinct because of problems in the
narcissistic sector. It comes down to Baudrillard's "classical analysis of
Disneyland" and the fact that Jon Stewart and Glenn Beck are more emotionally
satisfying than actual political commentators. Put the postmodern factors
together and it gets hard to believe that humans will find political solutions
to the problems of the 21st century.

As for why we haven't met aliens, I think there are two more fundamental
causes.

(1) In 2011 we know that many stars have planets. This should be no big
surprise based on considerations of angular momentum. The trouble is that
Jupiter-sized planets tend to get sucked into the accretion disks of their
stars, and in the process they tend to destroy Earth-sized planets that exist
in the habitable zone. Planetary systems are common, but habitable terrestrial
planets are rare.

(2) Interstellar travel and communication is highly difficult. It's possible
that some civilization will manage an interstellar travel event among billions
of civilizations and billions of years. However, the percolation threshold for
a self-sustaining and growing interstellar civilization will never be reached.
(Civilizations won't establish an outpost around a secondary star and create
additional colonies)

A few years ago I did an analysis of interstellar war. The obvious mode of
attack is to launch a deadly bombardment against a planet before any possible
counterattack. One clear conclusion was that if you launched a missile that
traveled at 10% of the speed of light, it wouldn't matter much if that missile
were tipped with a hydrogen bomb or not -- you just can't get enough energy
from either nuclear fusion or fission to propel a starship at a reasonable
speed. (If you go slow, a 1000-year generation starship would need tons of
antimatter simply to keep warm.) Note that interstellar hydrogen would impact
such a starship at high velocities harder than radiation from a nuclear
reactor.

The corollary is that neither fusion energy nor fission energy is sufficient
for interstellar propulsion

~~~
zackzackzack
Fun off handed anecdote I heard today: a study found that people who watch Jon
Colbert were more up to date on news than those who watched Fox News. No idea
were it came from, could be bull shit, but not unbelievable to me.

------
aamar
The physicist David Deutsch makes the point that there is no real way to
distinguish a consistent, convincing virtual reality from reality itself.

Therefore, there is no real moral difference between richly populating such
virtual worlds (once we can construct them--we can't quite, yet) and
populating actual other planets. Nick Bostrom would say that even using the
word "actual" is probably wrong, since we're likely living in a simulation
already.

There's a simpler (maybe too obvious) answer to the Fermi Paradox: the window
of time in which it seems worthwhile to communicate with aliens or to settle
the galaxy is exceedingly brief.

~~~
lusr
I was of the impression that your conclusion was the same as that of the
author of the article? (And it's pretty much where I'd place my bets.)

~~~
aamar
I agree with the article that we're likely to eventually find virtual worlds
more interesting and fulfilling than outer space. I do not agree that we
should look down on these VRs or be alarmed or disappointed by this
possibility.

------
ck2
Finding earth (or another earth-like planet with people) would be like finding
a particular particle of sand on a beach.

The universe is mind numbingly big - try to imagine how big and then quadruple
that size and you are still wrong.

Just the observable universe is nearly 50 BILLION lightyears in each direction
(there could be more and it's expanding).

(remember the deficit/debt demonstrations of "million" vs "billion")

We are trying to observe the equal of the other side of the world with optical
and radio telescopes but essentially the best observations we can make out are
just at the range of the doorframe to our home.

What if there is other human-like life but it's a million lightyears away -
it's all but useless to us to even find out, they are long gone by the time
their light and radiowaves ever get to us (and visa-versa). Now realize the
nearest other galaxies are SEVERAL million lightyears away.

Try this on for size <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BjHvwSvpOw>

~~~
extension
We don't need to find a particular grain of sand, we just need to find a grain
of sand that's a particular shape or color. How rare such grains are is the
big question. Everything we know tells us that they should be everywhere, but
they aren't.

We can see for 93^h^h47 billion light years in all directions. That's a pretty
big ball-o-space. Plenty to observe.

And if we find ETI, even at distances that preclude ever interacting with
them, it will still be the most amazing thing to ever happen in all of human
history.

~~~
ck2
What if we are not just observing the wrong places but the wrong _time_.

Our observations are millions of years old.

~~~
extension
They are millions of light years away, but there is no absolute time frame in
which our observations could be called "old" or "new". You can choose to think
of far away things as "the past", if you like. But the point is, that doesn't
make it any less cool.

EDIT: Actually, I missed your point, which was that far away things have less
history in which intelligence could evolve. This is true, but the amount of
history we can observe is still staggeringly large. Far too big to eliminate
the paradox.

~~~
ck2
You only have to miss the right time period by several thousand years to miss
signs of (intelligent) life.

Someone remotely viewing earth with just a 10k year delay would not be able to
measure signs of human life.

They would see exactly what we see elsewhere - nice possibly life-supporting
planets, but no signs of any functionality.

Now realize we aren't just missing 10k years but 1000k years (at best).

------
nikcub
I think it is because the Drake equation[1] over-estimates the chances of
intelligent life forming.

A common average result for the Drake equation is 10,000 habitable planets
capable of sending signals in our universe. But if you look at the equation
and estimates they are a bit optimistic.

If you take fℓ from the equation, I don't think simply being of the right
composition in the habitable zone is enough. The Earth formed life because of
the moon, because we had been shiften off our axis which formed seasons,
because we were made of enough iron to form a magnetic field, and we just
happen to form a moon which protected the Earth from space debris and gave us
tides (in short, the moon and magnetic field are essential to life on Earth,
as well as the composition of the planet).

That is a lot of 'ifs' to add to the equation, which brings the chances of a
planet even in the habitable zone having the same life-bearing characteristics
as earth much, much lower. Even with thousands of planets in the habitable
zone the chances of finding one that has a magnetic field, the right
temperature, a moon, etc. are very very slim and when multiplied back into the
Drake equation brings the result back to lower than 1 - meaning we are a
complete fluke.

There is also the time portion of the equation. The Earth is 4.6B years old,
and we have been capable of sending signals for only 100 years of that time.
Even if our civilization survives for another 10,000 years it is still 10,000
years divided into 4.6B years - so even with the complete fluke of an Earth-
like planet being created in a habitable zone takes place, we are still 1 in
460,000 chance of being around at the same time. If Drake gives us 10,000
possible habitable planets with life, the 1 in 460,000 factor of time brings
it back to a lot less than 1 again.

I believe that Keppler will continue finding planets in the habitable zone,
but they will look more like Mars and Venus than anything like Earth.

I find it interesting that the Drake equation, created to show that there must
be other intelligent life, can today be used to show that we are very unique
when it is adapted with what we know today. [1]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#The_equation>

~~~
shasta
The problem with the Drake equation is the huge uncertainty in the factors. I
propose instead that we get someone at Microsoft to estimate the number of
piano movers in the universe and estimate from there.

------
gerggerg
Kind of a bummer. I was expecting the article to be about the density of the
universe and the speed of light and whatnot. Instead we've got alien porn to
blame. Which, if I know anything about aliens, should be reaching us in the
next decade or so.

...edit...

oooo, and I just thought of somethng. Or, they got so advanced that they
realized they probably shouldn't alert the rest of the damn galaxy to their
presence. Given how the human mind seems to be so accepting of things it
doesn't understand.

~~~
tewolde
Or they go so advanced they were able to intercept and snuff out all that
alien porn before it got to us.

Maybe even an intergalactic SOPA is in place!

------
narrator
My theory is that we haven't met aliens yet because the aliens have been to
earth sereptitiously, have taken some DNA samples, and have decided there's
nothing to be gained from making contact with us. They've told everyone else
in the universe that the planet is hostile and not particularly
technologically developed. They have also noted that it is not a threat just
as long as they don't get advanced space travel technology. The best way to
keep them from getting advanced space travel technology is to not communicate
with them and thus leave them to their own devices. Additionally, based on the
alien's models of planetary development, they have come to the conclusion that
our civilization will not develop decent space travel before it collapses due
to natural resource depletion.

The universe is a big place. There are probably trillions of habitable
planets. We're just not that special. Maybe one day, if we somehow become
"worth it", they'll stop by.

~~~
joshu
<http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html>

~~~
zdw
Parent's link is worth reading for a laugh.

------
firefoxman1
Has anyone thought about this...astronauts release their waste into space.
There's bacteria that gets frozen almost as soon as it leaves the ship/space
station right? Couldn't it stay preserved until it lands on a distant planet
that hasn't formed an atmosphere and be the seeds for life on infant planets?
I'm no physicist (or scientist, period), but it's just a question that's been
bugging me for a while.

~~~
frankil
Sort of like panspermia? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia>

~~~
firefoxman1
Woah thats really similar. That's the problem with the internet: it makes you
feel like nothing you think of is original. Thanks for the link btw.

~~~
calydon
Unless you're really special nothing you think of is original. I'm not saying
you're not special though. :)

~~~
firefoxman1
Hahaha thanks. I read somewhere that at the same time you think of a grand new
idea, 10 people somewhere in the world will also have the same idea. I doubt
that's always true, but it's pretty amazing nonetheless.

~~~
freshhawk
Heh, that is depressingly likely given the numbers. There must be a german
word for the appreciation of a clever/accurate but depressing idea.

~~~
noonespecial
Weltschmerz comes close.

~~~
freshhawk
That is an excellent word and concept, thank you.

But it lacks the appreciation of how interesting the depressing observation
is.

Weltschmerzfreude seems like it's just a contradiction (also I know almost no
german at all so it's likely just gibberish) but it doesn't sound bad.

------
ccc3
At some point in the article he states:

 _Evolution simply could never have anticipated..._

Evolution, by definition, doesn't anticipate anything. It's disappointing to
see a university professor writing on evolution who seemingly doesn't even
understand the evolutionary process.

~~~
redwood
I'm sorry but this is a way of speaking that doesn't necessarily imply he
believes in an evolution capable of cognition. It's a short hand for saying
"humans evolved in situations so unlike the situation they have today, that
the traits they evolved are no longer best-suited for survival in today's
world"

~~~
edanm
That same paragraph stuck out for me as well.

I would give the benefit of the doubt for the sentence the GP quoted, but then
the author actually tries to _justify_ the fact that evolution couldn't have
computed it even if it wanted to:

"Evolution simply could never have anticipated the novel environments, such as
modern society, that our social primate would come to inhabit. That would be a
computationally intractable problem, even for the new IBM Blue Gene/L
supercomputer that runs 280 trillion operations per second. Even long-term
weather prediction is easy when compared to fitness prediction"

Now that's just begging for people to completely misunderstand how evolution
works.

------
moocow01
Honestly if the human race discovered a less evolved colony on the moon, I
wouldn't want to know what we would end up doing to them. Most likely Nike
would figure out a way to put them in cages and force them to make shoes every
day. I think the reason why we fear aliens is because its a reflection of what
we know we would likely end up doing to a lesser lifeform.

Oddly enough, I think its an optimistic outcome if we play video games and
never meet aliens in that if they function like us, it will be either us
exploiting them or them exploiting us unless we amazingly are right on par
with each other. Sorry to be so pessimistic, its just that we have
consistently failed pretty hard as a race in how we treat other creatures and
the environment.

------
themgt
I think the most likely answer is either: a) Same reason we don't SMS other
species on earth - we're first, and if anyone else catches up it'll be a long
time from now

b) We can't begin to conceive of the sort of technological advances achieved
by other lifeforms. The fermi paradox rests on probabilities accumulated over
billions of years, but ignores how briefly human intelligence has existed -
the written word is only a few thousand years old. If your species advances to
the point of being able comprehend and control all of reality, is there much
point in having endlessly bigger LCDs powered by your awesome discworld, built
by your giant starfleet? Is our faith in the inevitability of endless growth
and expansion not itself a sort of primitive cargo cult?

If the entire process of going from advanced social being with primitive tools
and language to a post-physical singularity takes on average 50,000 years, the
drake equation need changing

~~~
simondlr
Good point, something that I have not contemplated before. It makes sense: If
we evolve to the point where we can control reality, why would we be concerned
with expanding and travelling the universe?

It is almost like saying: "You can do anything and become what you want to
become." What do you choose?

------
bluekeybox
The most useful hypothesis: we are the first, and the galaxy is ours for
taking. Now let's get back to work.

~~~
ballstothewalls
This is completely legitimate, right? There must be a most advanced
civilization. Why can't we be it?

~~~
eru
Yes, that's possible. It just goes against the Copernican Principle
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle>), and that's why many
people are not happy with that explanation.

~~~
rbanffy
Well... _Someone_ always wins the lottery.

You can also twist it around: if we were the first ones, what would we see?

One can also imagine the window between the dawn of technology and becoming
undetectable is short enough the odds of finding a peer are very small.

------
zalthor
Half way through the article I was in a bit of agreement with the writer about
how our need for immediate gratification is so easily satisfied by the virtual
supplements we get everyday and how it weighs us down overall as a society of
humans; but all of a sudden he moves to assumes that people who are classified
as religious fundamentalists, for some reason, seem to have figured it all
out! Clearly the author is contradicting himself here. It is very unlikely (I
would say impossible, but there's always an outlier somewhere) that someone
who happens to be a religious fundamentalist would also not have delusions of
"fitness-faking". What a terrible end to an article that could have been such
an awesome topic of discussion.

------
rsheridan6
Not credible, because if even a few people stay away from futuristic, all
consuming super-porn, and can convince their kids to do the same, then those
people will come to predominate, and the super-porn becomes irrelevant. There
are already people who would consciously eschew any form of entertainment that
would prevent reproduction - the Amish would ban it within their communities
for sure.

On the other hand, if just one person with control of an adequate supply of
nuclear weapons (or other super-weapons, possibly including ones that haven't
been imagined yet) decides to wipe out humanity, he stands a good chance of
succeeding. This seems much more plausible than mass suicide via
entertainment.

~~~
freshhawk
But is it likely that there would be enough people (with never a dip large
enough to spell disaster) who live on the razor thin edge of rejecting the
technology that leads to dead ends hundreds of years later but still push
forward the technology necessary for advancement? Is there a stable
organization that can do this?

I agree that violent distruction is more likely now, but I think that that is
probably an easier problem to solve than this one.

------
itmag
Some more options:

-Life is around but it's nowhere near our way of thinking and functioning. Maybe it's a gas cloud which takes a billion years to "think" a single thought. Who's to say that an alien lifeform's "neocortex" and utility function is going to be anything but incomprehensible to us? (Counter-argument: certain patterns repeat independently in nature, for instance I read somewhere that the design pattern for the eye has been created independently by evolution like 40 times).

-Life is around and we've already made contact with it (ie UFOs).

-Life is out there but it's consciously avoiding us (Prime Directive-style).

------
redwood
It's also possible that we were one of the first to develop intelligence,
within our light-sphere, that is _since_ the minimum time needed from the big
bang to develop intelligence (whatever that is). E.g. let's say you need 12
billion years just to get to the point where you might be able have the
environment needed to make planets. Then in our 2-billion year light sphere we
may be one of the first to develop intelligence. That is, if it's very rare to
develop intelligence.

------
dlikhten
The answer is much more simple. Let us assume that every 1000 solar systems
has one system with intelligent life on it.

#1 given normal known methods of space travel, it would take generations to
reach the nearest planet possibly containing life.

#2 given time, there is a VERY small possibility that when we arrive at that
planet it has intelligent life. Intelligent life may have died out, or it may
be currently evolving. Or by the time we reach it they may have up-and-left.

#3 The chances of crashing into another alien vessel in space is almost 0.
Infinitely improbable. Therefore to actually meet another alien vessel, aliens
must have traveled to the same planet at the same time as us. Given the vast
distances this is highly unlikely.

#4 We don't have "lifesign" scanners like in star trek. Determining that a
planet has advanced technology would mean going to the dark side and looking
for lights. If the culture is not yet advanced enough, then we won't find
enough of it to be visible from space.

#5 while talking about #4, atmospheric conditions may make it very difficult
to see anything on the surface.

#6 given all above, what is the probability that a race of aliens got to earth
(within the last 300 years)? Otherwise earth would look like a habitable
planet, but no sign of advanced intelligent life. I'd say I have a higher
chance of winning every lottery in the world on the same day.

------
exratione
A terrible article. So let's say something more interesting. There are several
important ideas intertwined together around the Fermi Paradox:

1) Fermi Paradox

Why haven't we seen any evidence in the observable universe of megascale
activities and exponential growth comparable to those that we know that our
descendants will be capable of, and fairly soon?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

2) The Outer Bounds of the Possible

Can we convert our entire future light cone into computronium? There seems to
be no physical laws to prevent that outcome, and absent being stopped soon,
the tiny fraction of our machine descendants to go all out for self-
replication and expansion will set this program in motion.

3) The Great Filter

Assuming we're in base reality and everything out there is running much as our
present physics understands it to run, are we past the barrier that stops
intelligences from converting the observable universe into computronium? Or
not?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter>

4) The Simulation Argument

Or are we simulations, alone in our virtual machine?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis>

\----

All these are linked via this rather depressing line of thought:

"A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous
computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows
that at least one of the following propositions is true:

\- The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is
very close to zero;

\- The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running
ancestor-simulations is very close to zero;

\- The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in
a simulation is very close to one.

If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching
posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among
the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any
relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are
free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation.
In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion
one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).

Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost
certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."

\----

The bottom line is that there appears to be a large gap in our understanding
of the evolution of intelligence in the universe. By all counts, our galaxy
should have many civilizations across its span, and by all counts if they're
anything like us, their most aggressive descendant factions will turn the
whole galaxy into computronium in a few tens of millions of years. But we
don't see even the first glimmers of any such thing.

~~~
HilbertSpace
Possible answer: First nearly every civilization that mastered, say, radio,
did it millions of years ago. Second, nearly every such civilization long ago
found much better means of communications than we know about. Third, they
realize that trying to communicate via radio is silly and use much better
means we don't know about. Net, they are out there and communicating, but we
don't hear them and they don't hear us or bother with us. To hear us, they
would have to be within 100 light years, and that's not far enough to cover
many candidate planets.

~~~
firefoxman1
But if they're so advanced, they probably still have radio receivers somewhere
though. They should be able to receive our signals and reply with some sort of
super advanced method that appears as radio waves so that we can receive them,
but that travel much faster so it doesn't take a thousand years to reach us.

~~~
freshhawk
I like the idea that these advanced civilizations are actually all around us
and just don't interact with us at all because we are too stupid/too
boring/not ready/etc.

~~~
firefoxman1
Yeah kind of like how bacteria don't know they're under a microscope.

~~~
freshhawk
Consider your analogy stolen for future use!

They're all down there thinking "why aren't there any alien bacteria sending
us some chemical messages already? It's clearly the best way to communicate"

~~~
rbanffy
H. G. Wells' analogy actually.

~~~
firefoxman1
I love Wells. In what book might I find such analogy?

~~~
rbanffy
War of the worlds. Right on the first page.

------
masmullin
Article assumes that humans aren't reproducing, when in-fact, there are more
humans today then yesterday, and will be more in the future than there are
today.

To advance as a species, we don't need everyone in the species to advance,
just a select few who take everyone with them as they discover new things.

------
nohat
He rather defeats his point at the last by pointing out that subcultures that
specifically deny artificial or damaging fitness indicators would then take
over. It seems unlikely that some few out of billions wouldn't make a
different choice, and pass that choice on to their children.

------
extension
There is this assumption that the ambition of humanity should be to physically
expand far into space. But why exactly? Spanning large distances isn't a very
interesting goal per se. We will learn a lot of cosmology and physics in the
process, but I would imagine that once you've seen a few thousand stars,
nebulae, and black holes up close, you've pretty much seen them all.

The idea of building a giant computer (or turning into one) seems a lot more
interesting. If that's what we're doing, then those people making social
networks and video games are on the right track. In this case, we probably
wouldn't expand physically until we run out of energy for computation, and our
own sun has enough of that to last us a long time.

~~~
iso8859-1
Exactly. Disappointing how a professor of psychology seems so intolerant.
Curiosity isn't a universal value; that seems to be the fallacy.

------
breathesalt
I thought Max Tegmark's commentary on why we haven't discovered
extraterrestrial life yet was reasonable:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GctnYAYcMhI>

Basically he purposes that there is either a barrier somewhere before our
point of biological progress or after; as he explains in the video, the
desired reality is that we have already surpassed that barrier. He reasons
that space travel is a simple engineering challenge compared to evolving
intelligent life on the cosmological scale, so there's less reason to believe
the barrier lies after our point of progress.

------
c3d
Detection at a distance is not that easy. The primitive analog radio signals
we used until about 1995 are easy to recognize, because they are so simple.
The digital, encoded, encrypted signals we use today are much more difficult
to distinguish from naturally occurring signals. They tend to be more
efficient and to vanish into noise much more quickly. So in our case, the time
window during which we were visible in space was about 25 to 30 years. We only
recently became capable of detecting the light of entire planets, what makes
us think we can detect their radio signals?

Regarding the more general problem: what about economics? Even if it is
technologically viable for us to go into space, it is remarkably expensive. We
couldn't sustain a Moon program, for all its scientific interest. So we need a
pretty big return on investment to do further space exploration.

To me, there are really only two options:

1) Speed of light can't be broken, and colonization only happens by losing any
practical contact with your descendants (a ping time of 1s is bad enough,
think about 100 years). This reduces its economic appeal to practically zero.
No return on investment at all. Not even intellectual satisfaction: you will
not even know in your lifetime if your expedition was a success. So why
bother?

2) Faster-than-light travel is possible, and relativity tells us it's
basically equivalent to time travel. Now, just try to imagine how well our own
economy would survive the availability of time travel... This is one thing
that Star Trek or Star Wars or Galactica never get right, it's a problem they
never consider because it's too hard to think about it. If you can jump or
warp or whatever, then to the best of our knowledge, you can travel back and
forth in time. How does a civilization survive this? I have no idea. A good
example of singularity.

One final thought: the Fermi paradox always start with the premise that we
don't see aliens. But most serious work on UFOs claims that a fraction of UFOs
can't be explained away. In short, some UFOs appear to be artificial, to
exhibit intelligent behavior, and to show technological capabilities well
beyond our own. I'm quite surprised to write this comment at a point where
there are 86 comments, and I'm the first one writing UFO. Taboo?

------
vonskippy
Why would intelligent life that can expand and conquer their part of the
universe use clunky ancient inefficient technology like radio waves.

We humans have had radio for about 100 years and already we're moving on.
Digital satellite radio, wired and fiber internet, cable tv, faxes (just
kidding), etc.

Imagine if we could travel from our star to another on a routine basis, would
we be using radio for anything?

The Universe could be teaming with life, but with our current planet bound
technology and meager 200-300 years of industrial/technological innovation,
how would we know?

Articles like this is why psychology is called a SOFT science.

------
sandee
"We have already shifted .., from physics to psychology as the value-driver
and resource-allocator. "

While not agreeing to the article broadly, i agree to the statement above.
Infact, i believe this is a desirable thing and we should see more of this in
future. Past 200 years were about discovering the physics of things. The next
200 years would be about the discovering the working of "mind" which makes
physics discoveries possible. Basically about neurological sciences , thought
process , perception and more. This trend has barely started and we have a
long way to go.

~~~
Jach
We may have a long way to go, but I don't think mind-science is being
preferred just yet. I'd be surprised to find out we've ever had or are
considering a $9bn project specifically to find out something narrow about the
brain. (If you believe some people it will take about a quadrillion dollars to
build a fully general AI but...) I also see no reason why it would take
another 200 years from now to understand the brain at least as well as we
currently understand fundamental physics. Especially since it's not like we're
starting from scratch, and especially because science progress doesn't work so
linearly.

------
peterwwillis
I think we haven't met any Aliens because we're selfish, paranoid, violent,
irrational, un-evolved monkeys with baseball caps and video games and nobody
wants to make friends people who happily destroy their environment [and
therefore themselves] because it's easier than cleaning up their mess. Our
major societies are full of petty, self-serving, closed-minded assholes and
i'm a perfect example of that.

The technology-enslavement theory is bunk because humans pretty much tend to
self-correct over time. We start destroying the environment, somebody notices,
we start pulling back on our rampant destruction enough to keep things
operating. An epidemic of fat kids goes on, people start complaining, and
schools begin the process of sort-of making their lunches healthier. If it got
so bad that we almost destroy ourselves from too much internet use somebody
would start complaining and we'd reign back on that too.

Probably the real reason we haven't met any is that they probably have
agreements that they don't come down and show themselves to new planets until
the new planet's peoples advance their space technology to an appropriate
level; ours is still kind of dark-ages technology. Maybe after the military
invests we can have a nice big boom in space travel.

~~~
freshhawk
> We start destroying the environment,

> somebody notices, we start pulling back

> on our rampant destruction enough to keep

> things operating

We did? That's great news. It must be recent though, so far i've only heard a
lot of talk and a few useless feel good activities for guilty first worlders
to distract themselves with like recycling their pop cans.

As far as self correction goes, the only thing any species has proved to be
good at long term is going extinct.

~~~
eru
Locally, rich countries are actually quite good at cleaning up. As an example,
compare England today with England 150 years ago.

~~~
freshhawk
Unfortunately that's mostly accomplished through economic means of displacing
the mess to poorer places. Our actual levels of consumption and destruction
globally has only increased.

~~~
eru
As another example: China is now starting to clean up. They won't be able to
displace the mess to poorer places, because the country is just so big that
there just aren't enough poorer places left to take all the mess. I am
confident the Chinese will be able to clean up their country.

~~~
freshhawk
I think they will as well. India will shortly have to address this seriously
and probably will.

That covers the types of pollution and over-consumption that are a visible and
immediate threat, like dumping toxic waste in rivers and highly toxic air
pollution.

There has been _no_ serious willingness to address the issues of the increase
in per-captia consumption of finite resources.

I was really taking issue with the statement that humans will be the first
species that does not reproduce and consume as much as it possibly can before
partial or complete extinction. That somehow humans will naturally reign in
their natural impulses before it becomes too dangerous. That statement is
based on zero evidence. We think we are the exception, humans are good at
that, individually and collectively. Here's hoping.

~~~
eru
Which resource(s) do you think we might run out of?

------
tewolde
This article is not about the fermi paradox, it is just a soap box to warn
against the misapplication of technology.

But back to the subject, I'm not sure if we are even smart enough to recognize
any intelligence that does not resemble our own.

So far our solution to the fermi paradox may be summarized as: "We must stick
them with quills! It's the only way!!"

------
RyanMcGreal
> Given simple life forms, evolution shows progressive trends toward larger
> bodies, brains, and social complexity.

Evolution does not _progress_ toward increased complexity. We have increased
complexity mainly due to the Drunkard's Walk effect of random mutation in a
space with a hard lower limit to complexity.

~~~
ufo
Yes, its not hard to find cases where evolution let to less complex forms:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate>

------
blueprint
If alien species limited themselves to entertainment for such a long time,
then where are the broadcasts from other solar systems?

On the other hand, recent studies apparently hint that things like electrical
and gravitational constants may not be the same everywhere, so maybe they
don't transmit their signals with light.

One more thing is that the argument that the age of the universe combined with
its propensity to make life means there must be some intelligent life can also
be applied to the probability that some intelligent life will wake up and save
themselves from such a bad fate, as the author hints in the last paragraph. It
doesn't mean all species get caught in that trap and never escape, it just
means it's harder to become a species that saved itself from the perils of
materialism, loss of social justice, and falsehood.

~~~
Yhippa
One reason I've read about is that when you consider humanity we were only
broadcasting radio communication for a sliver of our history before we started
using buried cables as a way to facilitate communication. The theory is that
other civilizations would figure out the same thing and there is a limited
window of time to intercept their radio communication.

~~~
blueprint
Makes sense, actually. Thanks :)

------
doktrin
This article struck me as a bit of shoddy reasoning together with odd
conjecture strung together for the purpose of moralistic finger-wagging.

On a purely subjective note, I don't see how escaping into virtual reality is
a "darker" fate than nuclear self-annihilation.

existence > non-existence

------
pwim
This is very similar to the idea Charles Stross presents in his 2005 novel
Accelerando which in turn used the idea of a Matrioshka Brain
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain>).

------
calydon
I thought the argument was brilliant and scary. A lot of you are getting
distracted by the headline. This article isn't really about aliens or the
search for ET life. It's about social decay - entertaining ourselves to death
AND virtual hedonistic narcissism resulting in extinction.

HOWEVER, the author, in his own narcissist fog, forgets to mention that this
is a fate that will befall only the wealthiest, the whitest (admit it) and the
wittiest (educated). This is not the future of the species, although leaving
the planet will not get any easier in time.

So really, why haven't we heard from the aliens? The answers are simple but
boring so we search for more interesting ones, interminably.

a) They are too far away

b) Life is extremely rare

~~~
paulhauggis
"whitest"

As more and more people of different races procreate, "white" will eventually
be nonexistent.

------
ctdonath
We haven't been around long enough. Consider that a healthy 100 year lifespan
now constitutes about a full 1% of recorded human history. Humanity is about
at the stage of a toddler saying "I can do that" with nary a clue as to what
that means.

------
balsam
I always felt that the Dafoe vehicle "The Last Temptation of Christ" was
scifi-ish in some obscure way. Thank you, the thing to do was to replace
"Heaven" with "Outer Space". Everything goes back into its skin.

------
loceng
This stage in behaviour will eventually subside as we discover and experience
the negative side-effects of such a facade of quality of life. Lack of
activity and obesity, lack of education for allowing socializing and deep
bonding, lack of real socializing and bonding / relationships with people; It
keeps us in our heads, and not grounded - not connected. As Carlota Per sees
it, we are heading towards a shift to wellness, and quality; Eliminating
planned obsolescence, etc., and this will include more time for and with
eachother.

------
AznHisoka
As the populations keeps growing, we will keep moving away the lifestyle our
minds and bodies are evolutionary suited for, causing more
depression/discontent. So, we're going to have no choice but create stronger
drugs, and ways to drown our discontent. That's why the entertainment industry
will always be recession-free. Without iPhone games, movies, video games, etc,
we'd all go crazy. We either need pointless distractions, or we need to fight
to survive.

------
chris_gogreen
"...an intelligent, exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the
galaxy in just a few million years. " They could not be stuck in a self
created virtual reality, an exponentially-reproducing society of aliens would
be forced to move out from their home planet, and forced to send radio signals
or communications. They could not have forgotten. Most likely they are just
too far from us.

------
dbreunig
"Given simple life forms, evolution shows progressive trends toward larger
bodies, brains, and social complexity."

He's drawing conclusions with a sample size of 1.

------
icegreentea
My friends and I sometimes joke around about a similar 'solution' to the Fermi
Paradox, where a civilization will advance until they figure out how to
simulate sex in the mind of an individual.

Though somewhat, if the conclusions of the article are correct (I don't think
they are), then those who will inherit the earth will be the ones least likely
to venture out and make contact.

------
TDL
The answer to this question is probably simpler than author's argument. We
haven't met any aliens because there aren't any out there.

------
Sandman
The article's last point strikes me as a bit odd. The religious
fundamentalists will be the ones who make scientific advances that are
necessary to travel across the universe and meet alien species? Judging from
the fundamentalists' past actions, allow me to stay sceptical about that.

------
evo_9
I think it's more likely we are already in a our own virtual reality in the
form of a history simulation (see: Holographic Universe Principle). To me this
explains why we haven't detected any other life-forms; after-all it's a living
history of our species.

------
EGreg
What are you talking about?

How about this ... the aliens reached the height of their civilization 3758435
years ago and since then they don't care about people like us. We are too
different from them and insignificant to communicate in ways we can recognize.

------
kyebosh
Maybe I missed the point of the article, but I thought it was a wonderful
gedanken on social psychology - technological veracity aside. Valid or not, it
illustrates (IMHO) some very interesting elements of our "advanced"
civilisations :)

------
biggfoot
Inter-planetary travel is probably to big a problem to say that if not for our
consumerism habits getting in the way we would have colonized some other
planet already.

------
iso8859-1
Immensely disappointing how he (professor of psychology) dismisses MDMA as
entertainment when it is shown to help treating PTSD.

------
methodin
Seems pretty egotistical to believe our concepts of communication are the only
and/or best in existence.

------
majmun
two other possible solution:

\- there are many advanced civilizations in our galaxy, and each tries to
colonize whole galaxy, but it takes much longer than 100 million years.
because of competition and other unknown reasons.

\- colonization is not done as we taught, we are not experienced in planetary
colonization.

------
phil
tl;dr: They're too busy playing World of Warcraft to fart around with
spaceships.

------
georgieporgie
Old (2006), Luddite-licious, and awfully full of presumed universality.

Of course we've transitioned into a virtual economy (though we haven't): the
virtual economy didn't exist, and neither did the ability to provide
intangible services to the degree that is possible now.

And of course an MIT engineer goes into video games, how many can NASA
possibly employ? How many engineers were designing boring old toasters and
dishwashers during the space race? Did we lament that?

~~~
rbanffy
> how many can NASA possibly employ?

If we are to develop easy space access, not nearly enough.

~~~
mediacrisis
I don't think its so much a lack of work with NASA so much as a lack of
funding.

------
_THE_PLAGUE
What a horrible article. Whoever wrote that was some sort of Amish anti-
technology fruitcake. Fuck him.

------
itmag
If we are in the Matrix, then it would not be strange if we could change our
physical reality with thought alone. There is no spoon, and all that.

Napoleon Hill talked about this in "Think and grow rich".

[http://knol.google.com/k/tom-butler-bowdon/think-and-grow-
ri...](http://knol.google.com/k/tom-butler-bowdon/think-and-grow-
rich/2l1paxxoh5qsf/17#)

Of course, such effects can always be explained by rational means...

