

Search for ET intelligence extends to near-infrared optical signals - tanglesome
http://www.kurzweilai.net/search-for-extraterrestrial-intelligence-extends-to-near-infrared-optical-signals

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drzaiusapelord
SETI is falling for its own kind of "god of the gaps." Oh, no aliens in this
radio spectrum? How about that? How about analyzing it differently. How about
we do the analysis on a bunch of desktops via a screensaver? Now near IR? SETI
comes off as such a useless endeavor, especially when you consider we couldn't
even detect a civilization like ours. We'd need something like a planet sized
antenna to pick up stray signals from even a trivial distance, by space terms.

Thankfully, its cheap and doesn't divert from worthy pursuits, but I wish
geeks were more interested in things like a radio telescope on the far side of
the moon, something that is almost never publicized or fanboyed, than OMG
ALIENZ!

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duaneb
> SETI comes off as such a useless endeavor, especially when you consider we
> couldn't even detect a civilization like ours.

This is easy to say BECAUSE of SETI. Data supporting the null hypothesis is
still useful.

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api
It's easy to say because radiation diminishes with the square of distance.
Someone would have to be blasting out a _ton_ of RF in our direction for us to
notice. I'm talking about gigawatts at a minimum, probably more like
terawatts. Who's going to blast thousands of gigawatts of RF into the cosmos
without knowing if anyone is ever going to hear it?

Then you have the question of whether or not this would be a good idea. Four
words: relativistic kinetic impact weapon. There would be no _rational_ reason
to do such a thing, but given what we know of our own species we cannot assume
rational motives for others. Intelligence seems to occur in predators more
than prey here on Earth, which also means it tends to be coincident with
aggressive and territorial behaviors. An intelligence might decide to
annihilate you because you are clearly an offense against their God
(territorial instincts turned into metaphysics, something humans do a lot).
It's likely that another intelligence might reach similar conclusions and lay
off the horn.

Combine the cost, lack of benefit, and possible danger, and mega-transmissions
that SETI might detect are just not that likely.

The only SETI I can see being successful are efforts to passively detect
large-scale artifacts of life or intelligence. These include telescopes
capable of detecting biosphere signatures (e.g. lots of free oxygen and
water), detection of hypothetical mega-engineering projects like Dyson swarms
or the (physically unavoidable) IR and EM emissions of a relativistic
interstellar spacecraft, etc. Either that or finding evidence within our own
solar system of current or past visitation, which is absolutely not something
we can rule out. We've really barely been anywhere, and there are many bodies
such as moons or asteroids where any such evidence might be preserved over
geologic time scales. A visit a billion years ago might still leave evidence
on a waterless, airless body, especially one far from the Sun. A visitor might
also have left things that are intended to be found -- it's a popular sci-fi
plot but also can't be ruled out and is more likely to actually be found than
a signal over SETI distances.

Side question: how big would an optical/infrared scope need to be to actually
_see_ an extrasolar Earth-sized planet? I'm guessing very big (or a large
array of them), but the payoff would be huge. Not only could we see the
effects of intelligence, but we could also detect non-intelligent life in
general this way.

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Houshalter
>There would be no rational reason to do such a thing

Have more imagination. We, as another intelligence species, could eventually
evolve into a threat or competition for resources. Such an ancient
civilization probably has long term plans for outlasting through the heat
death of the universe and beyond, they have a huge incentive to eliminate
others.

They might also have weird forms of morality and values so alien to us, we
can't even speculate about it. They might come to earth to enforce their weird
values on us, or just wipe us out and not deal with it.

Then there is Paperclip Maximizers:
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

Many people believe that most civilizations are eventually overtaken by AIs
which are likely programmed with simple utility functions. E.g. and AI
programmed with self preservation will make as many redundant copies of
itself, store as much mass and energy to preserve through the heat death of
the universe, destroy anything that has even a tiny probability of being a
threat to it, etc.

And you don't need relativistic weapons. A single self replicating nanobot
would probably be sufficient. They don't need to go to any effort, if there is
a tiny advantage to killing us then we are screwed.

The universe is a terrifying place and it's quite possible the only reason we
are alive is anthropic bias. Just by chance we happen to be far enough away
from other civilizations to evolve to the state we are now. But at any moment
another intelligence could expand into our space and wipe us out in the blink
of an eye.

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api
That's basically the sort of thing I was getting at: that motives are by no
means straightforwardly rational among humans, let alone aliens.

Your point about extremely long-sighted competition is interesting though, and
might be a rational motive if the universe were seen as fundamentally zero-
sum.

On anthropic bias: look up how many times we almost had a nuclear war. Makes
me wonder about quantum immortality. Maybe we're just in the universe where we
didn't incinerate ourselves.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortalit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality)

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deckofcrap
They already use genderless no form-factors. Its an option available to
everyone & more.

