
Why We'll Never Meet Aliens - zinxq
http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-aliens.html
======
ebbv
The idea that advanced aliens wouldn't bother talking to us / visiting us if
they could because we're too primitive is obviously wrong.

We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own
planet who are far less advanced than ourselves.

And it's obvious that if _we_ could travel around the galaxy and we detected
life forms on another planet, we would obviously go visit them and check them
out.

The issue is that, for it to have any hope of ever visiting or communicating
with us the intelligent life would have to be in our own galaxy. Which is a
lot less likely (going down from billions of billions to just billions of
stars.)

Even then the task is far from trivial. But I think it's a certainty that if
intelligent life does exist in our galaxy which is more advanced than
ourselves, it will obviously try to contact us.

Also based purely on what we know about life on earth intelligent life which
is capable of developing technology is exceedingly rare when compared to life
in general. It's not necessarily required that any planet which gives rise to
life ever eventually develops intelligent life. If not for the extinction of
the dinosaurs we'd never exist. So personally I tend to think it's most likely
there are other planets with life in the Milky Way, but possibly none with
intelligent life. And even less likely for it to be more advanced than us.

~~~
aegiso
> We still have tons of interest and even affection for animals on our own
> planet who are far less advanced than ourselves.

Actually, as far as our interactions with other life forms go, we either
ignore them (intestinal bacteria), keep them away (diseases), exterminate them
(pests), or harvest and devour them (farming), or kill them for sport
(hunting). The utterly insignificant fraction that become objects of our
affection are those that are extremely close to us on the evolutionary scale.
This wouldn't be the case with a civilization advanced enough to visit. Not
even close.

If someone somewhere discovered a new breed of cockroach, would you care?

~~~
nlh
I wouldn't, but I can assure you there are lots of scientists on this planet
who would care.

Your examples involve creatures that we already know about and have interacted
with and "integrated" into our lives (one way or another).

But I suppose the counter-example is "it depends who finds us" -- if it's an
intergalactic scientific exploration team of aliens, they'll probably be as
nice as can be. If it's an intergalactic mining company, maybe not so much.

The equivalent here would be the contrast between a scientific expedition to
explore new species in the Amazon Rainforest (i.e. people who would be benign
and take an interest in new species) vs. a bulldozing crew out to find more
land in those same rainforests ("Oh look, a bird. Ok boys chop down that
tree").

~~~
akiselev
Comparing a few (not "lots of" as you claim) specialists scattered around
societies around the world is not a good representation of civilizations
around the universe (or at least, we can't assume it to be).

As human as it is, most exploration has been grounded in financial and
egotistical needs, not scientific exploration. Maybe the civilization is just
as curious as we would be and thus would come for selfless reasons, but that's
a pretty big assumption.

------
bane
On top of all that, we're forgetting that aliens might not just be very
distant from us in space, but also in time. Implied in the Drake equation is
also the percent of technologically advanced intelligent life-bearing planets
in the universe, but technologically advanced intelligent life-bearing planets
that happen to have hit some technological threshold within the right time
frame to contact _us_. Once you start thinking of it that way, the
probabilities get freakishly small. A couple small evolutionary events and a
parallel Earth could have achieved sentient space-faring intelligence of some
sort a billion years ago. If they came to check us out we wouldn't be here.
Likewise, a couple mass extinction events on another parallel Earth could keep
space-faring intelligence on the back burner for another 2 billion years.

------
exratione
Never is a strong term.

But on the whole, not a viable collection of answers to the Fermi Paradox,
even with the usual qualification that it is most likely a machine phase
civilization that would come knocking rather than its biological ancestors.
All it takes is one faction within one species to decide on self-replicating
probes that can recreate its own biosphere at each stopover, and the whole
galaxy will be visited in a time that is very short compared to its lifespan.

That species will be us unless the Great Filter makes itself known sometime
within the next century or two; I haven't seen any compelling suggestions as
to what it might be at this point, however.

Further, the article fails to consider the value of data, which I think is the
most likely trade good for any sort of interstellar commerce. I think one
could make good information-theoretic and game theory arguments as to why you
really have to send an intelligent data extractor/compiler of some sort to a
very remote source in order to maximize the rate at which you can obtain the
data that's most valuable to you.

------
snowwrestler
> The bottom line is that if an alien race is capable of getting here, all the
> other technology they've requisitely developed in the meantime would make
> the trip unnecessary at best - and more than likely, simply meaningless.

This argument is structurally similar to the argument that God exists because
God is perfect, and a necessary attribute of perfection is existence. It begs
the question.

Personally I think the real reason we'll never meet aliens is that such travel
is physically impossible.

~~~
astine
"This argument is structurally similar to the argument that God exists because
God is perfect, and a necessary attribute of perfection is existence. It begs
the question."

No it doesn't. The hypothetical alien race remains hypothetical throughout the
argument. Not so with the Ontological Proof.

~~~
snowwrestler
What is each speaker trying to prove?

1) the idea that God exists

2) the idea that aliens will never come visit us

Both start their proof with an assertion that contains within its concept the
very conclusion that they are trying to prove.

Both attempt to leverage an opinion that is personally held ("I think God is
perfect", "I think alien science will obviate the need to visit") into an
objective statement that applies universally ("God exists","aliens will never
come visit").

------
webwielder
Another day, another instance of someone saying "Stephen Hawkings" or "Jony
Ives".

The biggest impediment in my mind to alien contact is time. Intelligent life
could have evolved any time in the past 13 billion years or any time in the
next googol years. The probability that we would cross temporal paths in our
few thousand years of viable existence seems low.

~~~
solistice
Thing is, we don't actually know what the half life of an intelligent species
is. Civilisations? Yes, in the case of ours, but simply taking our species as
the sample could get us a number that could be magnitudes off.

------
ansible
Well, most of the people in this comment thread haven't been reading good-
enough science fiction, including Paul.

First, go read Accelerando by Charles Stross:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html)

And for the bits you don't understand, you can also check out the woefully
incomplete but still helpful technical companion:

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accelerando_Technical_Companio...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accelerando_Technical_Companion)

Then you'll want to read up in general on molecular nanotechnology. K. Eric
Drexler has updated Engines of Creation, and its also free online:

<http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=503>

So if we get visited by "aliens" there's an even chance it will be some
runaway Von Neumann replicator seeds shot out from a nearby solar system, bent
on converting our entire solar system to computronium. Or if we're lucky, some
relatively benevolent replicator seeds merely intent on cataloging all the
myriad of life that has arisen around the galaxy without actually intending to
destroy said life.

There is just about zero chance than any recognizably biological (I prefer the
term "squishy") life coming to visit us, just because sending any sizable
chunk of matter across interstellar distances at any reasonable speed so so
damn expensive, even for Kardashev type 2 civilizations.

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

------
codex
This article seems to gloss over the hypothesis that aliens evolved under
evolutionary pressure, and are thus likely to want to reproduce and expand. So
no matter how advanced they may become technologically, they might still want
our resources and our planet, simply because they're reproducing themselves at
an exponential rate--especially if they've solved the immortality problem,
which is likely. Even with advanced birth control, aliens may still want to
have cute alien babies. They could chose to simulate their lives in a computer
instead, likely it's cheaper to acquire a real planet than simulate one.

~~~
asdfadfs
>>This article seems to gloss over the hypothesis that aliens evolved under
evolutionary pressure, and are thus likely to want to reproduce and expand.

Remember though that we've already seen that people in rich nations are not
driven to reproduce and expand like bunnies. Is there some evolutionary
pressure on you that drives you fuck woman and have children with them? Is the
impulse so strong that you cannot help yourself? We can have as much sex as we
want, but without the children because of birth control. Why would it be any
different for Aliens?

~~~
danielweber
> people in rich nations are not driven to reproduce

It may be true for many, even most. But you would need to expand it to _all_.
Otherwise those who do want to reproduce and spread will continue to do it.

Also, we may be in a lull. There may be some gene that either makes people not
want to reproduce, or makes people really want to reproduce. That gene is
about to experience a whole boatload of selective pressure.

------
LogicFailsMe
We do a lot of crazy crap in the name of invisible gods. What's to say an
alien race wouldn't get it in their heads that it's their sacred duty to their
chosen deity to fill every planet in the universe with their greatness,
exterminating all the impure in the process?

I have no problem believing the equivalent of the Daleks or the Ori might one
day demonstrate a variant of the replicator hypothesis at our expense.

Why must they have a coherent logical basis for all their behavior? We
certainly don't.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Right, or a coherent logical basis that _we_ would understand.

------
kamakazizuru
the largest logical fallacy among many that this article suffers from is that
alien species would necessarily need to be technologically advanced to reach
us. This probably comes from another flawed line of thought that aliens need
to be like us in some way (hence requiring things like figuring out how to
survive radiation, last for long periods without food and so on). This doesnt
really make sense since on earth itself there are species that can do things
we humans couldnt do (cockroaches can cope with tremendous amounts of
radiation for example, and bacteria that live near geysers etc - thrive at
extremely high temperatures). So why isn't it possible that an alien species
that just about figures out how to ride a rock in space and doesnt really need
all the advancement that we need to survive - comes floating by planet earth
and decides to check us out sometimes?! Don't back up a lack of imagination
with flawed logic ;)

~~~
soneca
I agree. There are complex organisms on Earth that can froze and defroze
themselves and continue to live.

What if one of those evolve to inteligence on a low gravity planet. It would
be much easier to travel through space.

------
unclebucknasty
How can we say definitively (or with any certainty) that there are relatively
advanced life forms everywhere, such that they are a dime a dozen? How do we
know that interstellar travelers wouldn't find us rare and interesting?

Curiosity more than anything is what drives our need to know. I think that's
what would drive such visitors. In fact, _because_ they would be more
technologically advanced and would likely have solved resource problems, etc.,
they would naturally have time to spend exploring and answering questions.

Finally, we can assume such explorers are more advanced than we, but not
necessarily by orders of magnitude. I think people have a tendancy to
attribute god-like qualities to them because they have solved some problems
that we have not.

But, the idea of splitting an atom was outlandish until a handful of dudes,
inspired by another dude's theory did it in a relatively short span. Similar
with other breakthroughs. At any given time, a single discovery can advance
our knowledge far beyond what we thought possible, and even moreso with the
accelerating pace of technology.

And, BTW, many of our own "resource problems" are completely solvable and
should not exist. For instance, we have an obesity problem in the U.S. while
millions starve elsewhere (and in the U.S.). It seems that our biggest
obstacles are a product of human nature. If anything, an alien species'
appearance might be indicative of an advancement in philosophy or
organizational behavior (ex. hive mentality vs. individual) moreso than a far
superior intelligence.

------
api
This is just a bunch of idle speculation.

We can't speculate on the motives of aliens at all. Look at how hard it is to
discern the motives of other humans, and now tell me you're going to discern
the motives of something biologically completely unlike us? You can't assume
they're rational motives either. Why should aliens be incapable of something
like religion, egotism, mass delusion, or hedonic desires?

As far as the feasibility of star travel: it's hard, but not impossible. The
thing that makes it hard really isn't the propulsion problem. You can go to
the stars using technology contemporary with the Beatles white album:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_\(nuclear_propulsion\))

A thermonuclear Orion could achieve around 10% the speed of light... according
to figures computed using 60s assumptions of vehicle mass. With very
lightweight materials and more efficient thermonuclear charges higher
fractions are certainly achievable. (Though the acceleration would be rough!)

What you can't do with 60s-70s tech is survive the trip. The biological,
structural, psychological, and engineering robustness challenges outweigh the
challenge of propelling yourself at meaningful fractions of the speed of
light. But those are all things that will yield to incremental progress.

(BTW: the same is true for Mars. The Apollo rig could have, with very minor
modifications, sent astronauts to Mars. They would have been dead when they
got there. The life support tech to keep a human in a can alive that long did
not exist. Propulsion isn't the hardest problem.)

The fact is that we simply don't know. We don't even know if there is other
_complex_ life in our galaxy, let alone what it might be capable of or what it
might do.

~~~
powertower
> You can't assume they're rational motives either. Why should aliens be
> incapable of something like religion, egotism, mass delusion, or hedonic
> desires?

I think the question would be if irrationality, egoism, delusion, and hedonism
allows (or prevents) a species to advanced to FTL travel.

They might also have an idea that the only life that should exist in this
universe is theirs. Or they might believe that connecting with all other
sentient beings is a primary goal in existence. Or they might be incredibly
altruistic and want to help and benefit all others.

Though the author's other points are all valid... There is no reason to invade
this planet for its resources when a few asteroids in their own solar system
contains everything they need.

~~~
api
People always thought that, but I don't find what's happening here
encouraging. It seems perfectly possible to compartmentalize to such a degree
that one can excel at engineering while maintaining alarmingly irrational
beliefs in other areas. I've known some brilliant engineers who were seven day
/ 6000 year creationists, for example.

------
chmike
Aliens would indeed not travel to us for earth's ressources. But our earth is
special by the existence of life. If life emergence is a random process, the
forms it can take may be as well. There would be alot to learn and gain from a
direct access to it. Science and knowlege is the ultimate ressource any
ciilization will run after, after energy and other limiting facors have been
mastered.

Another frequent mistake is that ET would travel direct from home to earth. As
far as we know FTL is impossible. So it makes better sense to travel by small
hops from one solar system to the next one. It could be more a ant like
colonization process. This would imply that ET visiting earth would irst build
one or more bases in our solar system and visit earth from there.

------
tokenadult
I found an online posting of a secondary school textbook reprint of Arthur C.
Clarke's essay "We'll Never Conquer Space,"

[http://www.olivenri.com/conquer_space_files/Conquer_space.pd...](http://www.olivenri.com/conquer_space_files/Conquer_space.pdf)

which lays out just how vast outer space is, and how time (with travel being
strictly limited by the speed of light) as much as distance limits the
feasibility of voyages between stars, especially back-and-forth voyages
between stars.

A blogger on a planetarium website

[http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/why-we-will-never-
conquer-s...](http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/why-we-will-never-conquer-
space.html)

and the maker of a Prezi based on Clarke's essay

<http://prezi.com/uxc2owcv5ekp/well-never-conquer-space/>

both emphasize that traveling to a nearby star is already a huge task.

The probable density in the universe of intelligent living things (the
"aliens" of the title of the submitted blog post) among all the many stars is
low. All those aliens run into the same hard physical laws we run into if they
attempt to make a voyage to another star. To the most relevant correct
approximation, our probability of meeting interstellar voyagers is even lower
than our probability of being interstellar voyagers, and our probability of
being interstellar voyagers during the lifetime of anyone now reading Hacker
News is nil. Remember, we have not even visited Mars, not even on the proposed
one-way trip,

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5390730>

and humankind has delayed in traveling to Mars far beyond my imagining (I
thought that the trip would be made in 1980s, and even dreamed of being on the
landing crew) because humankind has higher priorities and better claims on our
shared resources. So the submitted blog post title is correct, even if you
quibble about the blogger's reasoning (as I do). We won't meet the aliens,
because the aliens won't make a trip here before we all die.

------
lnanek2
Since we haven't met aliens yet, and interstellar travel would take ridiculous
amounts of time and energy, I don't think any of us alive will meet aliens.
It's like saying none of us will experience an ice age. Even if they do happen
regularly, it happens regularly on geologic time scales, so it isn't going to
happen in your life span. There might be so many stars out there that aliens
are bound to happen, but crossing stars takes so much time and energy it isn't
going to happen often.

------
mihaifm
The question is not "why would they want to visit us", but "why are they not
here", aka The Fermi Paradox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

Every issue related to the existence of aliens must answer that paradox first.
My favorite interpretation: we are the most advanced civilization in the
galaxy.

"Why would they want to visit us?" - this can have trivial answers: the same
reasons why we study ants today.

~~~
anywherenotes
I like this one the most: "It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy
itself"

There could simply be a technological ceiling. Once civilization reaches the
ceiling, it hits it's head on the ceiling, and falls down the stairs either
destroying itself or at very least losing most the progress.

------
FilterJoe
I liked the article but not the misleading title. A title like "Alien movies
have so many implausible ideas" would have been more accurate and not get
people so stuck on the one idea implied by the title.

Of all the implausible ideas in sci fi movies and books, the one which always
rubbed me most wrong is not mentioned: How military encounters would play out.
Consider:

Most naval battles in space are modeled after 2 dimensional naval war fare.
Not only is space 3D, but there is no reason to suppose technology geared
around combating vessels floating in water has any relevance to space combat.

However, the most important variable determining the outcome of first
encounters with (quite possibly) hostile alien races has nothing to do with
the military gear and tactics. It has to do with relative technology level.
Greg Bear's "Anvil of the Stars" which looks at it from this angle and here
are some notes I distilled:

In most sci fi movies and books, there are World-War-II-Naval-like space
battles with weapons/ships/shields at near parity. I have always thought this
to be highly implausible, and I thought the most interesting aspect of this
book was to consider three possible battle situations in space:

1) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly higher tech level. If they detect
you before you detect them, you are dead. Period. Your only possibility to win
such a battle is to detect them first and destroy them instantly - and your
chances of being able to do that are slim.

2) Your ship encounters a ship at a vastly lower tech level. Using the logic
above, all that matters is you being able to detect them before they detect
you. The technologies of stealth, electronic counter measures, detection, etc.
are therefore all extremely vital in order to never be defeated by aliens with
a lower tech level.

3) There is a possibility that you encounter an enemy close enough to your own
tech level that the battle could last more than a split second. It is only in
these instances that all the other things often written in other science
fiction stories might matter - amount and type of shielding, weapons systems,
quality of personnel, etc. But such battles are very unlikely, because
technological progress is so fast. Consider what it would be like for any of
today's industrialized nations with a substantial military to combat the most
powerful nation on earth from 200 years ago - there would be no contest at
all. The universe has been around for billions of years, so the chance of two
races encountering each other that are within a few hundred years of each
others' technology level is very low.

The above logic also applies to planetary defense as well, though with even
more emphasis on not being detected.

------
jblz
This article assumes a lot:

* The aliens who possess the technological ability to reach Earth are the ones who built it and evolved alongside it. Who's to say they didn't take it by force?

* FTL is something that must be developed through technology. (i.e. discounting the possibility of naturally occurring wormholes)

* The aliens have no inherent desire for exploration

Yes, I've watched too much Sci-fi :)

~~~
jblz
...also, if you're traveling FTL, then time travel isn't that much of a
stretch. So, ya.

------
summerdown2
Interestingly enough, this argument seems self defeating. Let's think what
he's saying:

a) Aliens who can get across space to us would be far in advance of us in all
dimensions of technology.

b) They would also be far smarter than us because technological evolution
would act much more than biological and therefore give them machine-brain
interfaces.

c) With their great science they would be able to know what we're like (so far
below them) and have no need to come here.

except as far as I can see, c) is overruled by b)

If aliens have got so far by technological evolution and use machines to
augument their bodies and minds, they're not really that far in advance of us
- they just have better tools. They wouldn't see us in that case as insects -
rather as cripples who just need a wheelchair. If they used their science to
augument our bodies and minds in the same way as they do with their own, we'd
be perfectly able to have conversations with them.

------
alan-crowe
They might not be trying to explore physical space, they might be trying to
explore chemical space. Chemical space?
[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/18/a_short_pept...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/04/18/a_short_peptide_and_a_small_molecule.php)

Consider the question of whether there is any alternative biochemical basis
for life. It is quite likely that even an alien super-intelligence finds the
question impossible. Sure, it can invent synthetic biologys that are
variations on its own biochemistry, but is there anything genuinely different
out there? Given the size of chemical space it is probably easier to travel
ten thousand light years to the nearest planet with life on it and look to see
if its basis is the same or different.

------
zeteo
This article is full of misconceptions. Let's address a few of the most
egregious ones.

>there are billions of stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of
galaxies. Humans are rather bad at fully understanding such large numbers.

There's no obstacle to working with large numbers once you understand powers
and logarithms (i.e. pre-calc). Very smart people have looked at the Drake
equation and it yields a very wide range of values [1].

>Christopher Columbus first landing on North America (not a good event for
native Americans)

The main reason Europeans were able to take over America was disease. The
Aztec effort to kick out the Spanish was hampered by smallpox [2], and
colonization of North America had to wait for over a century before the native
population was sufficiently depleted by disease to stop offering resistance.
[3] Needless to say, disease worked unintentionally and because both sides
were the same species.

> So, screw it, all movie alien races invented artificial gravity.

Or, you know, maybe they built ships with rotating crew habitats that simulate
gravity by centrifugal force. (I belive _2001_ does a pretty good job of
showing the concept.)

> If getting humans to another star system is a 100 on some "technology
> ability scale", we're a 2 which is not comparatively far ahead of say,
> poodles - who are probably at a 1.

First off, poodles are at a zero. Second, if 10% of world GDP was dedicated to
building an interstellar, multi-generation ark, we pretty much have the
technology to do it right now. The technological problem is to reduce the cost
to the point where the political will to do it can be summoned (probably
around 0.01% of GDP).

>Maybe they want to trade with us. Well, yeah, right. If you've gotten this
far it's obvious we have no tech that would interest them.

[4]

>How many years before we have a brain interface to Google? You'd know
everything.

We already have Google in our pockets. But instantly finding any quote by
Darwin doesn't mean I understand the theory of evolution.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Range_of_values>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuitl%C3%A1huac>

[3] See timeline in [http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-
Colum...](http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-
Columbus/dp/1400032059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366998666&sr=8-1&keywords=1491)

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage>

~~~
old-gregg
And this is the top rated comment? None of these "misconceptions" have much to
do with the main point OP is making: we think too small, and we pick the wrong
analogies and frameworks when we discuss an alien visit.

If anything, your post is yet another manifestation of this. It simply doesn't
matter what happened to native americans, when the entire Columbus story does
not apply.

And what do your comments about googles in pockets and drake equation have to
do with anything? Do you have anything to say about _actual point_ the OP is
making?

Ugh...

~~~
SiVal
My biggest quibble with the OP is that you can never say that there are no
black swans out there just because you've never seen one. No matter how
advanced the aliens might be, they wouldn't be able to predict everything they
would find here based on theory alone. What if their theory didn't include
something they hadn't yet encountered? They would have to see for themselves
by some means that, if quantum limits are what we think, could not all be
remotely viewed from light years away.

~~~
akiselev
We're not talking about the lottery here, we're not talking about the
probability that you will be hit by a bus or the chance you have of starting a
company and making it big.

We are talking about the vastness of an entire GALAXY and a level of
technological advancement that comes with consequences that no one can even
begin to imagine let alone predict. The entirety of human science fiction
doesn't even scratch the surface as to what is possible (and due to our own
biases and the need to entertain a television audience/readership is probably
far more tame and boring than what is really out there) at those levels.

You're talking about quantum limits but you have to realize, to make the vast
majority of science fiction watchable/readable, you have to almost entirely
throw out our knowledge of modern physics. For example, every real world
attempt at theorizing FTL travel has lead either to needing ridiculous amounts
of energy (equivalent to the mass of Jupiter for the original Alcubierre drive
which would be about a billion billion billion kilograms each of matter and
antimatter) or particles with properties which we have NEVER come close to
seeing (and by never, I mean not a shred of experimental evidence or even a
suggestion that it exists outside of a theoretical framework). If an alien
race has FTL, it's knowledge of the universe is well above ours and any
attempts we can make to predict the limits of their technology is useless. For
all we know, FTL travel might be as difficult as building your own solar
system from scratch.

In order for us to have an alien visit that is even close to any imagined
encounter in science fiction, many things that we can't speculate on would
have to work out. We're not talking one black swan, we're talking about an
unknowable number of factors and events that would have to work out just
right.

It's might be possible (we don't even know if FTL is possible), just like it
might be possible for wild pigs to evolve to fly without any artificial
intervention in a few thousand years, but it's so unlikely that it's worth
putting into the "Just not going to happen pile," all the while working to
prove yourself wrong :)

~~~
kamakazizuru
this argument - just as that of the OP fails in its assumption that some alien
species would need FTL To get here. maybe theyre just a species that lives for
millenia in earth years - and can manage without gravity or limited gravity.
You just dont know.

------
iamthepieman
Most of the comments here make an assumption that aliens would have similar
motivations as ourselves.

Is there a chance that another intelligent lifeform would share ANY mental or
emotional similarities with us? This assumes that they even have mental or
emotional capabilities in the first place.

An alien intelligence could express itself collectively like an advanced ant
colony or they could communicate in ways so different than us that we would
each appear like brute beasts to each other.

If a giant amoeba colony that developed intelligence by acting as individual
neurons in a collective brain we wouldn't even know unless its actions
betrayed higher level planning and thinking. This would require that its
motivations were at least marginally similar to our own.

~~~
danielweber
I have no problem believing that, if there is alien life, that many of them
are quite different.

I do have a problem believing that there is lots of alien life and _all_ of
them will come to this guy's "it makes sense to me so it must make sense to
advanced aliens" conclusions to say home.

~~~
iamthepieman
Agreed. The problem with reasoning about potentially unreasonable (at least to
us) lifeforms is self-evident.

------
givan
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations>

92.35% of human population is religious, in every religion there are gods that
can be easily associated with aliens.

Looking at some religios beliefs the coming of gods means all kind of things,
some religions interpret them as the end of the world, the return of christ
etc.

Aliens showing up will have a big impact on people beliefs, most of us will be
very scared, many will believe the end of the world version and panic.

The social impact of alien existence on our current society is huge and if
advanced aliens really discovered us then they sure know this and wait for our
society to get more mature to be ready to meet them.

------
pbreit
Of all the many reasons why our view of alien visitation is radically off-
target, that the trip would be meaningless probably doesn't even make the cut.
It's hard to imagine an advanced species would have advanced without
curiosity.

------
SiVal
I don't buy the idea that they wouldn't need to come here, because their
statistical models, based on remote observations of conditions, would be able
to predict everything they would find.

I think we've learned enough about complexity and sensitive dependence on
initial (and later) conditions to say that, unless we're wrong about
complexity, the outcome of all these historical accidents wouldn't be
predictable. They would still have to observe, meaning explore, to see what
ended up actually happening around the universe and, in addition, they would
never know for sure if they had already found all the Black Swans out there.

------
crucialfelix
The film and even more so the book Solaris describes an alien intelligence
that is far more interesting than the anthropomorphic forms that humans
fantasize about.

The "alien" in Solaris is a sentient ocean that covers the surface of the
planet. All kinds of structures form and dissolve on the surface. The being
can communicate with visitors by accessing their minds and seems to alter
reality itself to entertain their fantasies.

Whose to say that other lifeforms would be single units (like human egos), or
would operate on time scales that we can even comprehend ? Or operate
consciously only in 3 dimensions.

that said, there are probably more like us.

------
guard-of-terra
If aliens exist we should be able to notice consequences of their existence -
either accidental or intended.

Even if we miss the window of contact, galaxy should be teeming with shadows
of alien civilizations if only we know where to look.

------
millstone
> it's nearly comical to believe we're the only intelligent life in the
> universe

Why the obsession with life?

If our space ships landed on a distant planet containing an advanced
civilization of intelligent robots, would we shrug, say “no life here,” and
head home?

In fact, if you think about it, life is the _most boring_ thing we could
discover. We already know a lot about life, and how life may evolve, but we
know absolutely nothing about how civilizations and intelligence may come from
other substrates.

I hope we don’t find life, but something far weirder.

------
alan_cx
I look around at a "human" species on this planet I don't understand and don't
feel part of. Either I'm looking at a successful alien invasion, or I'm it.

------
tempaccount9473
If aliens aren't coming to this planet, clearly this is a market ripe for
disruption!

I'm now looking for a cofounder who will shake up the L2L (lifeform to
lifeform) market with a new disruptive social media platform for unmotivated
hypotetcial advanced beings to share pictures of intergalactic felines.

~~~
glurgh
'advanced' belies the sort of casual sentientism that is an embarrassment and
a blight on this site, the technology industry and entrepreneurship. It's also
irrational since it ignores a massive yet underserved market.

Opening line of the elevator pitch - 'It's like Google, but for goo'.

~~~
tempaccount9473
> Opening line of the elevator pitch - 'It's like Google, but for goo'.

Uh, we just pivoted to a Facebook for homogeneous omniscient beings of pure
energy.

------
tocomment
He's not addressing the idea of von neumann probes. Just a species or self-
replicating probe that spreads out in all directions using all resources.

Another option is an alien race seeing us as a potential competitor for
resources after millions of years more development and wanting to stop us now.

------
futhey
Life usually makes me feel silly for using the term `never`. As a rule, I
don't.

------
adventured
"It's easy to get lost in the numbers thrown around - there are billions of
stars and planets in our galaxy and billions of galaxies. Humans are rather
bad at fully understanding such large numbers."

Speak for yourself.

------
swayvil
They must take into account the effects of raw aether upon sailcloth!

------
sixQuarks
My theory is that once a life form gets advanced enough, their brains start
penetrating a hidden dimension that we know nothing about. This dimension is
so much richer than "our universe", that they never come back to this one.

~~~
gmaslov
It may have started to happen to us already -- I'm sure there are a few people
here who have gotten lost in the World of Warcraft dimension for a time.

~~~
sixQuarks
true - now think if WOW was a trillion times more immersive.

------
ttrreeww
Actually, there are increasing amount of evidence that implies we are related
to the aliens on a genetic level. See Sirius the documentary.

We literally are who we seek.

------
camus
if they are like us but more advanced, that's better. remember what happened
to american indians? ;)

