the smartest in any culture will rule. — Janus

And, like all true Scotsman, those who rule get to decide what is "smart".

Nothing you said there contradicts anything I have said. Are you claiming that indigenous cultures were not constrained by natural processes, or that fossil fuels have not enabled us to overcome (at least in the short term) some of those constraints?

And, like all true Scotsman, those who rule get to decide what is "smart". — Banno

Those who get to rule are those who play the game best. That is, in the political context, the definition of 'smart'. Do you have an alternative definition?

Those who get to rule are those who play the game best. — Janus

Yep. Playing chess against someone who gets to change the rules to suit themselves.

What's obnoxious is their then claiming that whatever they decide is "natural".

Yep. Playing chess against someone who gets to change the rules to suit themselves.

What's obnoxious is their then claiming that whatever they decide is "natural". — Banno

The nature of the game is that there are no fixed rules, just as in the natural environment with the interactions between predator and prey. The idea that human life is like chess, or even should be like chess, with fixed rules, is kind of laughable.

The fact is that what transpires is, by definition, "natural", because human culture and "civilization" is just as much a natural ecological phenomenon as any other. And note that none of this is said with the intention that it should constitute any kind of ethical justification; on the largest stage it is not a really matter of justification at all, but of power.

That's just an artefact of capitalist culture. — Banno

Various hominid species spread out from Africa over the past two million years. Life has a tendency to spread where it can. At some point, life from the ocean spread onto land once it became possible.

If we're sticking to science fiction, The Federation in Star Trek sought to explore and unite with friendly species, the Borg sought to assimilate, the Klingons and Romulans liked conquest and empire, The Dominion wanted to subjugate and control the solids because of past persecution toward shape-shifters, and the Tri-Solarians in the Three-Body Problem trilogy were looking for a better home.

There could be different reasons for wanting to expand. Ray Kurzweil imagines a post-singularity society where the goal is to wake up the universe by turning dumb matter into computronium. And Elon Musk thinks Mars should become a backup home for Earth so we don't have all our eggs in one basket. That logic could someday be expanded outside the solar system.

It might be that we're pond scum to the advanced aliens, and they ignore us for the meatier energy sources elsewhere. It could be that we can't detect them with our primitive technology. But there should be intermediates between the scum like us and the god-like aliens which would be a bit more detectable. And we haven't seen any evidence for them either. I also don't see why when/if we become sufficiently advanced that we'd lose interest in learning about ETs, unless our descendants just stop being curious, because their VR games are so incredibly compelling, or the machines are happy to just harness us as batteries neural-networks.

There's another possibility. When you multiply all the probabilities together, you arrive at a low enough number that makes us rare in the universe. Not alone, but separated by enough time and space that we wouldn't see evidence of the nearest civilization. Maybe even the leap to multi-cellular life is a fairly low probability event amongst all the simpler life out there. We don't know, but we do know we're the only species in our planet's 3.5 billion years of life that has produced detectable radio signals and sent probes into space. If that's par for the course on planets with multicellular life, then a once ever 3.5 billion years is a pretty large time gap.

We also don't know how long a civilization with nukes, computers and climate changing abilities lasts. We might be gone by the time a detectable alien signal makes it's way here.

But there should be intermediates between the scum like us and the god-like aliens ... — Marchesk

Why?

... which would be a bit more detectable. And we haven't seen any evidence for them either.

 
Suppose, as I point out in wall-of-text # (iv), we can't recognize "any evidence for them" - we can't surmise validly from our own intellectual / technological deficits that we're alone even locally in this constellation or galaxy.

Why? — 180 Proof

Because it takes time to go from pond scum to up-right standing monoliths. There should be aliens running the gamut between us and the advanced ones. Unless there's a reason they get wiped out or subsumed.

Suppose, as I point out in wall-of-text # (iv), we can't recognize "any evidence for them" - we can't surmise validly from our own intellectual / technological deficits that we're alone even locally in this constellation or galaxy. — 180 Proof

For the god-like ones, sure. But for ones closer to pond scum?

Keep in mind that the most significant difference between science fiction  (no matter how "hard") and scientifically plausible speculation is the Copernican/Mediocrity Principle: the latter doesn't make for as great stories, no matter how sublime its scale, as the former because scifi is always anthropocentric enough to interest (flatter) its audience. 

Because it takes time to go from pond scum to up-right standing monoliths. There should be aliens running the gamut between us and the advanced ones. Unless there's a reason they get wiped out or subsumed. — Marchesk

Yeah, ETIs probably went "dark and silent" many many millennia ago just like Earth is now gradually transitioning from broadcast radio to fiber optic transmission barely a century after Bell, Edison & Marconi. (Assuming they started with EM broadcasting and then improved their IT like we are doing now.)

Anyway, I address this very point in my wall-of-text post #(V) copy & pasted below.

(v)

... we won't ever discover (signs of) extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) because - given the age of the Milky Way galaxy and the estimated quantity of Earth-like planets in that volume compared to how long it took for technoscientific civilization to develop on earth - it seems more likely than not that non-extinct ETIs have already either (A) migrated from planets / moons to engineered asteroid-habitats in highly eccentric solar orbits through interstellar space (not unlike Pluto) and/or (B) migrated from biotic to abiotic to nano/femto-scale substrates many thousands or millions of years ago; and in neither scenario - à la 'Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature' - does (a) interstellar signalling have any utility or (b) EM leakage seems unlikely to be strong - coherent - enough to reach terrestrial instruments (or the Oort Cloud for that matter!) before having been dispersed by distance & scattered by interstellar dust into noise that's indistinguishable from cosmic background radiation.

We are a Johnny/Janie-come-lately species on the galactic scene ... — 180 Proof

by which I mean, we've probably missed out on 99.99% of 13.8 billion years of ETI shenanigans - e.g. rise and fall of alien spacefaring civilizations - with only a terrestrial-based/sub-orbital observation window of a century.

Thousands to millions of years ago ETI passed through their - like our - "noisy phase" and then their Machines took to space just as ours have only just begun to - another point I raise in my wall-of-text post #(II-III) - having no operational need to "broadcast" and thereby "run silent".

Yeah the forest is dark TO US because we just - in the lifetime of the forest - have opened our eyes and are still learning to see that what our terrestrial-myopia registers as darkness sees us not (yet) seeing them. A speculative step further - they await our AGI machines to "wake up" and talk to because biological intelligences aren't worth communicating with (re: wall-of-text #(II, VI)).

For the god-like ones, sure. But for ones closer to pond scum? — Marchesk

The ones "closer to pond scum", like us, are either extinct or non-spacefaring as their machines do the spacefaring for them. And ETI Machines, I'm saying, have no operational need to communicate with us - though maybe they will with our spacefaring (AGI) machines, if and when they "wake up".

And, like all true Scotsman, those who rule get to decide what is "smart".

Let's not be racist here.

Yeah, ETIs probably went "dark and silent" many many millennia ago just like Earth is due to transitioning from broadcast radio to fiber optic transmission barely a century after Bell, Edison & Marconi. (Assuming they started with EM broadcasting and then improved their IT like we are doing now.)

Anyway, I address this very point in my wall-of-text post #(V) copy & pasted below. — 180 Proof

Unless the laws of physics are fundamentally different from what our research so far suggests, the available useable energy in the universe is finite, and every star that isn't fully enclosed by structures or otherwise exploited is a waste of that resource. And that would be visible, even to us.

So no Kardashev Type II "Dyson Spheres"... or other (detectable) stellar megastructures. Okay, I agree (so does Freeman Dyson et al, btw). It doesn't follow from this failed prediction, however, that "we are alone" ... Besides, harnessing artificial (micro) singularities seems more plausible (plus controllable, modular, and even mobile) than bottling-up a star, and thus - as far as such speculations go - suggests that you're tethering your space helmet to a false dichotomy.

But why would you ignore all the ready-made fusion reactors that are already around, their output for the most part wasted?

Even if you have other ways to generate energy, the fundamental calculation remains the same, unless we bring in completely new physics. You want to collect as much matter and useable energy as possible before it disappears over your light horizon.

Perhaps there'd be some civilisations that don't care. But then there'd also be some that would.

Maybe. Low-hanging fruit first. Trial and error. R&D. New tech (or new physics - certainly new to us). Eventually optimize, improve on nature. Thousands to millions of years ago. (re: c12 billion year old Milky Way!) To wit:

'Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature.' ~Schroeder's Law — 180 Proof

Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature.' — 180 Proof

a small portion of the rest of the iceberg, in snowclones.

Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God. (Shermer's last law)
Any sufficiently advanced act of benevolence is indistinguishable from malevolence (referring to artificial intelligence)
The following two variants are very similar, and combine the third law with Hanlon's razor
i) Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice (Clark's law)
ii) Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice (Grey's law)
Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook or the viewpoints of even the most extreme crank are indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced satire (Poe's law)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
Any sufficiently advanced idea is distinguishable from mere magical incantation provided the former is presented as a mathematical proof, verifiable by sufficiently competent mathematicians
Any sufficiently crappy research is indistinguishable from fraud (Andrew Gelman)

A contrapositive of the third law is
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (Gehm's corollary)

The third law has been reversed for fictional universes involving magic:

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!" or "Any sufficiently arcane magic is indistinguishable from technology."

A rebuttal to the ambiguous "sufficiently advanced" part has been offered by another science fiction author:
"Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it."

Finally, "To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained."

:sweat:

Freeman Dyson 1923-2020

"The biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be the discovery of extraterrestrial life. We have been searching for it for 50 years and found nothing. That proves life is rarer than we hoped, but does not prove that the universe is lifeless. We are only now developing the tools to make our searches efficient and far-reaching, as optical and radio detection and data processing move forward." (2006)

I think we've seen enough now to conclude it's probably just us. If advanced alien life existed even in tiny numbers, the universe is old enough for them to have colonized galaxies over and over again. And we would have seen this, at least in nearby galaxies in our supercluster.

The galaxies we see should look like a bulldozer went through them: no advanced race is going to let all that energy go to waste if there's a feasible way to capture it, and there is: swarms of solar panels. We should be seeing galaxies going dark (and glowing in the IR) as waves of colonization ripple through them and swarms of energy collectors blanket stars.

Instead, this looks like a virgin universe, untouched by anything. And that just shouldn't be, not 14 billion years after the Big Bang.

If advanced alien life existed even in tiny numbers, the universe is old enough for them to have colonized galaxies over and over again. And we would have seen this, at least in nearby galaxies in our supercluster. — RogueAI

This 'expansionist-territorial, terrestrial' assumption (re: interstellar to galaxy-wide "colonization") is as completely unwarranted as the assumption that terrestrial astronometric technologies have ever been - or currently are - developed enough to detect (i.e. differentiate from background cosmological noise) non-natural signals which are signatures of spacefaring-capable civilizations. So explain why this objection is wrong.

The reason behind the suggestion/advice to remain silent is fear of a violent encounter with aliens. That's all very good but take a moment to consider the stage in our, human, civilization where we've developed a desire for contact with aliens. It can be said, not without adequate justification, that we've outgrown the colonial mindset and no nation is currently engaged in conquering other lands in an expansionist attitude. Humanity has, in a way, matured enough to see that the right attitude of one civilization towards another is a friendly one. Biology informs us that not only humans in all its variety but also other life-forms are critical to earth's biosphere; it's likely then that our civilization too is integral to the galactic biosphere and just as we've discovered we're better off preserving/protecting our planet's biosphere and other civilizations, aliens too will feel the same way about our civilization just as we should about theirs.

In short, the desire to contact aliens is born at a stage in a civilization that has, on balance, a friendly disposition. So, the idea that we should be wary of aliens, though sensible in some respects, may not be completely accurate.

One thing to consider in the solution of Fermi's paradox is the so-called Great Filter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

The above was Robin Hanson's formulation back in the 60's.

See also a modern analysis by Nick Bostrom, "Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing".

https://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

The basic idea being that there is a built-in limitation in the universe, that puts constraints to how far a civilization is allowed to go: at some point it either destroys itself, from within, or is destroyed by some external reason, from without.

The Bostrom piece is mostly about late filters though, or rather how certain finds would make late filters statistically more likely.

Great filters themselves don't imply a limit to civilization.

It can be said, not without adequate justification, that we've outgrown the colonial mindset and no nation is currently engaged in conquering other lands in an expansionist attitude. — TheMadFool

The existence of nuclear and economic superpowers and their role in organizations like the UN and Nato have a lot to do with that. It's not so easy to conquer another nation these days and get away with it.

The existence of nuclear and economic superpowers and their role in organizations like the UN and Nato have a lot to do with that. It's not so easy to conquer another nation these days and get away with it. — Marchesk

Indeed mutual fear has a role but it's just half the story: forget about humans and their civilizations, advanced societies, those actually engaged in SETI, are evincing a tendency towards the rights of animals, incontrovertibly the weaker party, which I consider an indication that power and the projection of it is not all there is to having brains big enough to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

This 'expansionist-territorial, terrestrial' assumption (re: interstellar to galaxy-wide "colonization") is as completely unwarranted as the assumption that terrestrial astronometric technologies has ever been - or currently are - developed enough to detect (i.e. differentiate from background cosmological noise) non-natural signals which are signatures of spacefaring-capable civilizations. So explain why this objection is wrong. — 180 Proof

Right, and also the assumption that we will ever have the energy resources and technological means to send anyone, much less significant numbers of people, to other habitable planets (even if we can find them), and the belief that those we will purportedly send there will necessarily be able to survive and reproduce, is truly the irrationally imaginative stuff of science fiction; a kind of religiously adhered to fantasy.

It's a way of maintaining denial about the ever-increasing problems habitat destruction, species extinction and pollution due to over-population, general anthropocentric thinking, consumerist constant growth economics and the inevitable attendant over-consumption.

Of course we also have the human tendency to doggedly maintain the illusion of control, which doesn't help at all.

:up:

is truly the irrationally imaginative stuff of science fiction; a kind of religiously adhered to fantasy. — Janus

I get that you're pessimistic about humanity's chances of survival, but what, exactly, is religions about the idea?

This 'expansionist-territorial, terrestrial' assumption (re: interstellar to galaxy-wide "colonization") is as completely unwarranted as the assumption that terrestrial astronometric technologies have ever been - or currently are - developed enough to detect (i.e. differentiate from background cosmological noise) non-natural signals which are signatures of spacefaring-capable civilizations. So explain why this objection is wrong.

OK, any species that has evolved in this universe will prioritize self-preservation and the survival of the species above practically all else, and will seek to minimize existential threats and maximize defenses. If a species didn't think this way, they would never have made it to the top of the evolutionary heap.

Protecting yourself/family/friends/members of the species requires energy. The more, the better. You can never have too much energy on hand (or computing power, for that matter). Therefore, alien races will collect and store energy, if they can feasibly do so. And they can feasibly do so. Putting swarms of energy collectors around stars doesn't seem like it would require anything tremendously complicated. We're already covering the Earth with them. In a hundred years, there will be a ton of collectors in space, if we make it that long. In a thousand years, the space in this system will be full of artificial habitats and energy collectors. You won't even be able to see the sun.

I don't see any assumption in anything I said that is unreasonable.

I get that you're pessimistic about humanity's chances of survival, but what, exactly, is religions about the idea? — Echarmion

I'm not pessimistic about humanity's survival. I think human beings will be around (in vastly diminished numbers) for as long as the planet remains humanly habitable.

The fantastic religious belief I referred to is the faith that science and technology, our great human ingenuity, will solve all the currently looming problems, and that we will manage to keep growing economically while the population continues to increase, by exploiting the resources of the wider universe before we have totally used up the resources of the earth.

The fantastic religious belief I referred to is the faith that science and technology, our great human ingenuity, will solve all the currently looming problems, and that we will manage to keep growing economically while the population continues to increase, by exploiting the resources of the wider universe before we have totally used up the resources of the earth. — Janus

But what's fantastic or religious about that? You may disagree, or assigne a lower likelihood to it, but it's not, in principle, different from any other of the "revolutions" humanity has already been through.