The Fermi Paradox -- Where is everybody?
- Thread starter pharmakos
- Start date
-
Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
- 16,305
- -2,234
It's pretty obvious that you did the research between this post and your last, so thanks for that. But don't do this BS where you blindly accuse the other person of the thing you're accused of, because I most definitely have done a lot of reading on this before I started running my mouth
pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
- 16,305
- -2,234
And wow dude, calm down, I never even said you were WRONG about anything, all I said was "you're right but there's soooooo much more to it than this one thought you just had dude, try reading some if you think this is interesting"
And you got all butthurt
I'm starting to understand why so many people have you on ignore
Lumi
Vyemm Raider
- 4,310
- 3,038
Those with more than half a brain know. Since we know cells can only come from pre-existing cells, life itself cannot have possibly originated from within the universe since life cannot arise from inanimate matter through natural processes.
Mist
REEEEeyore
- 31,198
- 23,373
- 4,107
- 4,043
Some people like me. Some don't. On the "adulting" forums I would never joke around. But this is in general, so I likely get too irritating. You and I have had interesting exchanges in the past, so I would prefer it if you didn't put me on ignore
- 4,107
- 4,043
Ars usually does a good read. So the study says ... 36, in our galaxy. But then it says this is kind of a let down result.
Is it?? I mean: 36. And that's not slime molds we're talking about.
arstechnica.com
Is it?? I mean: 36. And that's not slime molds we're talking about.
The trouble with counting aliens
New study: there might only be 36 communicating extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.
arstechnica.com
- 1
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
- 46,381
- 98,536
Cad
scientia potentia est
- 25,426
- 49,042
- 1
- 1
- 1
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
- 6,933
- 20,748
Well, it's that and the fact that he claims to be a teacher while performing regular shifts down at the ol' ER doing open heart surgery.
But yeah, that too.
ShakyJake
<Donor>
- 7,912
- 19,957
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 8,311
- 10,287
He's good, but he's waaaaay toooo looooong wiiiiinded. So yes, his 15 min videos could be done in less than 5, usually.
- 2
pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
- 16,305
- -2,234
i don't post in political threads and he doesn't post in game threads, i forgot that part of his story lol
- 4,107
- 4,043
Are you saying we can't know anything about what we don't know anything about?
If what you say is true, how come shoe stores always seem to have my exact size shoe?
- 1
iannis
Musty Nester
- 31,351
- 17,656
He s talking about a mix of what Arthur called inward looking aliens, adaptation, and perfection of technology.
Three ideas that are not new, but maybe combining them in this way is insightful.
It doesn't answer the Fermi paradox. He basically answering "why don't we see Dyson spheres" with "because they are so inefficient that no one build s them." He does to a step further than that, to be fair, and promote an argument for why they are ineffecient. Why don't we see evidence of aliens? Because they do not want us to and have perfected their technology to be wasteless. But again... All of them? Th eres a problem with that, too. One of them is a fairly central tenant of modern physics, that no system is wasteless. We might be wrong, but as far as we know you're not allowed to just ignore entropy. And signs of that should be visible if there were a civilization that had harnessed an entire solar system. The nearer the approach to kardshev-3 the more undeniable.
but that argument existed about a day after Dyson supposed a swarm was possible. I mean at this point you might as well say "because they've enclosed our heliosphere in a giant holographic projector, because they know we're here and just want us to fuck off. Voyager will bump into it in 2143 and at that point the gig is up." Which i'm pretty sure is a plot in one of the Vernor Vinge novels. IF you can build a dyson sphere, if you allow that assumption, then a project like knowledge quarantine is less ambitious.
It's a fine argument and might be true. It's more of a philosophical argument though. I'm a fan of it in a different form, that the stable size of civilization is self limiting. Attainment in technological progress would be one factor among many, I would think. You don't get Kardashev 2 because while it is possible in principle, in reality it is selected against very strongly. So strongly that the nontrivial chances of it happening are on timescales longer than the projected lifespan of the universe... same reason all the air molecules don't just randomly pop over to one cubic foot volume in your room for a minute and then pop back to where they were. Kardashev is a very very 50's kind of idea. Or 90's. Remember Moores Law of computing and how we're supposed to have 50 godzillion hertz megacomputers in our wristwatches by now? That kind of thinking is necessary and wonderful, but it is only one mode. We could not have gotten to the moon without that kind of thinking.
Three ideas that are not new, but maybe combining them in this way is insightful.
It doesn't answer the Fermi paradox. He basically answering "why don't we see Dyson spheres" with "because they are so inefficient that no one build s them." He does to a step further than that, to be fair, and promote an argument for why they are ineffecient. Why don't we see evidence of aliens? Because they do not want us to and have perfected their technology to be wasteless. But again... All of them? Th eres a problem with that, too. One of them is a fairly central tenant of modern physics, that no system is wasteless. We might be wrong, but as far as we know you're not allowed to just ignore entropy. And signs of that should be visible if there were a civilization that had harnessed an entire solar system. The nearer the approach to kardshev-3 the more undeniable.
but that argument existed about a day after Dyson supposed a swarm was possible. I mean at this point you might as well say "because they've enclosed our heliosphere in a giant holographic projector, because they know we're here and just want us to fuck off. Voyager will bump into it in 2143 and at that point the gig is up." Which i'm pretty sure is a plot in one of the Vernor Vinge novels. IF you can build a dyson sphere, if you allow that assumption, then a project like knowledge quarantine is less ambitious.
It's a fine argument and might be true. It's more of a philosophical argument though. I'm a fan of it in a different form, that the stable size of civilization is self limiting. Attainment in technological progress would be one factor among many, I would think. You don't get Kardashev 2 because while it is possible in principle, in reality it is selected against very strongly. So strongly that the nontrivial chances of it happening are on timescales longer than the projected lifespan of the universe... same reason all the air molecules don't just randomly pop over to one cubic foot volume in your room for a minute and then pop back to where they were. Kardashev is a very very 50's kind of idea. Or 90's. Remember Moores Law of computing and how we're supposed to have 50 godzillion hertz megacomputers in our wristwatches by now? That kind of thinking is necessary and wonderful, but it is only one mode. We could not have gotten to the moon without that kind of thinking.
Last edited:
- 1
Harkon
Vyemm Raider
- 1,549
- 4,090
All I have to do is look at BLM today and realize how fucking hard it is to get into actual interstellar space.
You can beat all the odds get to "Intelligent" status and still fucking destroy yourself easily. Fermi was right, shits hard real hard and we probably wont make it thanks to Communism and Islam with their backers; not to mention the universe throwing random rocks at us...
Going to take Herculean efforts to work against that... but there's always some hope I suppose.
You can beat all the odds get to "Intelligent" status and still fucking destroy yourself easily. Fermi was right, shits hard real hard and we probably wont make it thanks to Communism and Islam with their backers; not to mention the universe throwing random rocks at us...
Going to take Herculean efforts to work against that... but there's always some hope I suppose.
- 1
- 1