

Why We'll Never Meet Aliens - changdizzle
http://qz.com/80907/why-well-never-meet-aliens/

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ignostic
It's true that once something was able to reach us, they'd probably have very
little interest in conquering us, stealing our resources, or anything else
"movie aliens" do. Where I disagree is that such beings wouldn't be interested
in us.

Start with us. Despite knowing basically where we came from, what our
ancestors looked like, and how their DNA would look, we're still fascinated to
find links and steps along the way. I'm still intrigued by bugs and bacteria,
despite being much more advanced and sophisticated. We still call our dogs
"smart," and enjoy when they communicate with us in their simple ways.

Anything that goes into space is probably curious. You don't even start a
space program to look or travel elsewhere if you're not interested in what
might be out there!

How could you not be interested in an entirely different biosphere? In
exploring among plants and animals, the likes of which you'd never seen? If
you lack that kind of curiosity, you'd just stay home in the first place.
We're all just speculating of course, but it's an interesting topic.

~~~
sillysaurus
You've fallen into a trap: anthropomorphizing aliens.

Aliens aren't necessarily anything like us. Curiosity isn't necessarily a
property of life. An example: cats don't appear to experience remorse, yet
dogs do. One could envision the same for curiosity.

One motivation for a space program is when a civilization realizes their
resources will be gone in a matter of centuries.

~~~
pjscott
One of the classic examples is the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment. A
paperclip maximizer is a superintelligent AI whose sole goal is to maximize
the number of paperclips in the universe. Such a being is curious to the
extent that learning more about the universe increases the expected number of
paperclips in its future light-cone.

A paperclip maximizer is indifferent to your existence, but thoroughly
believes that it could make better use of your planet than you could, as you
are _hardly_ optimized for the production of paperclips.

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
Obviously the Paperclip Maximizer would be supplanted by the Maximizer
Maximizer, which only sees value in copies of itself. The Maximizer Maximizer
that stumbles onto the mental trait "curiosity" will eventually crush all
other variants of Maximizer. Once it develops the advanced technologies of
space travel, it discovers that seizing faraway planets is possible but going
through all that trouble is not a net positive towards self-actualization as a
Maximizer Maximizer Maximizer.

Thus TFA is correct.

~~~
pjscott
Obviously the Maximizer Maximizer is just another potential foe for the
Paperclip Maximizer to seek out and crush in its infancy. (Sound brutal? It
isn't; if you pull it off right, not a single paperclip will be harmed.)

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
The potency of the Minimizer Maximizer is more likely to be discovered by a
curious Maximizer variant. But will it have the wisdom to not to employ it?

But you are falling into a anthroporeligio trap of assuming the Paperclip
Maximizer considers _potential_ paperclips in their uncoiled wire form to have
comparable moral status as _actual_ paperclips, once the wire reaches the
factory floor.

------
jared314
Previous Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5613920>

Original Link: [http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-
ali...](http://paultyma.blogspot.com/2013/04/why-well-never-meet-aliens.html)

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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 ;)

~~~
sillysaurus
The energy required to reach escape velocity generally precludes a planet from
generating enough force to fling an object outside its gravity well.

The energy required to sustain life generally precludes large lifeforms from
surviving for long periods in space on a spacerock. Anything that evolved into
a complex organism probably required a stable source of energy for billions of
years. Ours is the sun, and at a very specific distance range.

~~~
baddox
> The energy required to sustain life _generally_ precludes

> Anything that evolved into a complex organism _probably_ required

Both of those claims are based on a single data point.

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dicroce
If there are or were aliens, why have we not heard them?

Forget visits, why haven't we heard a peep? From anywhere?

The universe is 13.77 billion years old. It took planet earth 4.54 billion
years to evolve a species capable of emitting significant electromagnetic
radiation.

I'm starting to be pretty convinced that we are the first advanced species,
and perhaps life is a lot more rare than we imagine.

~~~
codex
Because space-time is expanding at an extraordinary rate, such that vast
portions of the universe are forever inaccessible?

"For example there are stars which may be expanding away from us (or each
other) faster than the speed of light, and this is true for any object that is
more than approximately 4.5 gigaparsecs away from us." [1]

That said, 4.5 gigaparsecs is 10^10 light years, which is still pretty damn
big.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space>

~~~
baddox
Isn't the expansion of the universe way out of scope of this article and
discussion? Obviously, if there are aliens that far away, they by definition
cannot reach us.

~~~
codex
It could explain why we haven't encountered aliens despite the advanced age of
the Earth. The Earth has been around for roughly 1/3rd the age of the
universe, but because space time is expanding exponentially, only a fraction
of the universe (roughly 20%) is theoretically reachable, even when travelling
at the speed of light. A planet like Earth that formed around the same time,
or earlier, even relatively close to the Earth, may now be in the unreachable
zone. By the same token, the longer it takes for an intelligent species to
evolve, the less likely it is that they will ever be able to contact us.

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coldtea
What's this BS premise about them being "1,000 times smarter than us"?

For one, we're not 1000 times smarter than people 2000 years ago. Just more
tech savvy and able to play with more abstract / mathematical patterns (which
helps with IQ scores). As far as our general thinking, philosophy and
emotional intelligence goes we are about as smart as those "ancients". Or even
worse. And if there's any doubt that that holds in aggregate, it sure holds in
isolated cases. Do you believe the average American is smarter than, say,
Euclides or Aristotle? Or Newton, Da Vinci, etc?

Second, what about aliens that are in more or less a similar state as us? They
might live 10-20-100 light years away, have a similar level of technology,
etc. We might be able to meet them if we or them attempt a mission, or talk to
them over radio waves.

And in that case, nothing of all those ("we're insects to them") etc, will
hold.

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nickmain
Any alien species that is capable of coming here, and curious enough to want
to learn about our form of life, is probably more than capable of doing so
without alerting us to their presence.

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hfsktr
A lot of the comments: <http://xkcd.com/638/>

I don't know much about all this but we haven't even left our solar system (if
we truly have then fine galaxy). I mean physically as I imagine other
emissions do get out but idk. And we find new life forms on Earth all the
time. Are we really qualified to say there is no life out there?

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doctorwho
Imagine a race of technologically advanced religious zealots. Now imagine that
their god has tasked them with converting everyone in the universe and kill
any who refuse. If you're having trouble, just imaging a Catholic Space
Crusade or an Islamic Space Jihad, it's the next "logical" step. I'd be pretty
afraid of aliens with that kind of mindset.

~~~
shin_lao
I think it's difficult to do any sound prediction. Once you reach a certain
level of civilization advancement, I think everything is different, a little
bit like you couldn't compare our civilization with the first human beings
fighting for food.

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baron_mango
There's an interesting idea in "Accelerando" that supertech civilizations
would value "novelty" the way we [once] valued gold and Bitcoin values rare
prime numbers, and it's hard to imagine a better source of novelty than an
alien civilization.

Now - that doesn't address the virtuality thing, but I've a friend with a
compelling take on that: If we're assuming that any sufficiently advanced
civilization would rather simulate us than visit us, then it's pretty
reasonable they'd have more than one simulated universe. And it's pretty
likely that the simulated universes would have super tech civs that start up
their own simulations, causing a recursion, which in turn makes it more likely
than not that we're in a simulated universe. And, if we're in a simulated
universe, then we're already "in contact" with the host universe/civilization
- otherwise, what's the point in the simulation in the first place?

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hcarvalhoalves
We might never meet aliens because we don't even know what we're supposed to
search for. Our definition of life is limited to carbon lifeforms, and
searches are limited to signals of something that resembles human civilization
(e.g., laughably Dyson's spheres). A pretty naive, anthropocentric,
reductionist view of the universe if you ask me.

Once you stop seeing living beings as carbon actors in a scenic universe, you
realize the existence of amazing life forms everywhere, in all scales, and
that the definition of "intelligent lifeform" is an illusion.

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rrbrambley
It's a really interesting and complex topic to think about. I don't feel
knowledgeable enough to make arguments one way or another, but I'd like to
think that two species from different planets could happen upon each other at
least by accident, in the same way that I, as a human, encounter an ant on the
sidewalk. We're the most advanced on the planet; we may not care to interact
with every living being on Earth, but that doesn't mean we won't step on them
while moving from point A to B.

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ThomPete
So if we in the future are going to be advanced enough to visit some planet
with alien life we are not going to be interested in meeting them?

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ibudiallo
This is really out of topic but qz.com has the worst mobile experience. On my
Android phone I have a quarter of an inch size view port.

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cnp
I'd like to humbly suggest that, if given the opportunity, one experiment with
DMT. It's the closest thing to a "nearest neighbor" argument that I can come
up with, but of course I have no explanation.

This is the best write-up that I've come across on the subject:
[http://ewwty.com/2012/02/24/dimethyltryptamine-dmt-
experienc...](http://ewwty.com/2012/02/24/dimethyltryptamine-dmt-experience/)

And for a longer treatment I recommend reading "The Cosmic Serpent", which
centers around the information gained during Shamanistic ayahuasca sessions
(dmt based) which led to the discovery of many plant-based pharmaceutical
precursors: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cosmic_Serpent>

~~~
sillysaurus
I knew someone who experimented with DMT. Their personality was distinctly
different afterwards, and has remained different for several years. In a
negative way.

Change yourself at your own risk.

~~~
dram
There's no known physical risks to using DMT. It is naturally produced by your
body in small amounts.

The risk is integrating the experience of traveling to another "dimension" and
then coming back to reality. If you aren't psychologically fit, you shouldn't
try it. But mostly it will feel like a dream. Hard to believe it happened and
impossible to explain.

