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 Post subject: Extraterrestrial Intelligence
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2003 10:39 pm 
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How common is it in the universe?

If it is common, why haven't we detected any sign of it yet?


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 Post subject: Not really contributing anything here, but anyway....
PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2003 10:50 pm 
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A very interesting take on the reason for our lack of encounters with ETIs (I know "extraterrestrial" is one word, but I figure this way it'll be more recognizable in the context of things like SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] so please don't go all Pedant on my ass ;-) ) can be found in the short story Cockroaches, by Joseph Manzione. Alas, I could not find a fulltext version of it anywhere online, but I read it in the April 2001 edition of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. I won't describe it here so as not to spoil it for anyone who is able to find it (also because I don't have much time) but suffice to say that it has a truly interesting idea at its core, which I have not encountered elsewhere.

That is all for now, pointless and utterly ambiguous as it may have been. :P Perhaps if the mood strikes me I shall return with a more complete and spoilerish description, but I highly recommend finding and reading the story yourself.

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PostPosted: Tue Jul 15, 2003 11:11 pm 
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Who knows what level of technology they're at? How do we know we haven't encountered them, our brains just can't handle the means they used to do so?

One problem with ETI is we always assume they're on our level of intelligence at roughly, give or take a millenia at the same technological point too.

Wrong. Infinite possibility means infinite variability. We don't know how long it took civilization to develop on any planet but ours, if it did at all. We're hopelessly inadequate at looking for ETI the way we're doing it now.

Just some little things to note.

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:08 am 
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Kitsune1527 wrote:
One problem with ETI is we always assume they're on our level of intelligence at roughly, give or take a millenia at the same technological point too.


Errmm... not exactly. We assume they all know *math*. Things like prime numbers, boolean algebra, and so on.

To me, the Occam's Razor argument goes like this: H. sapiens, as a race, is right now more like a crying baby with hands oustretched for food, than an intelligent surveyor of the space we inhabit.

This is wonderfully evident by the fact that now we broadcast *everything*. War, love, sex, death, birth, learning, hatred, religion....

I think we look like the spaz at the front of the bus. Attention Deficit Disorder running rampant, and eating our own boogers.

Now why would you want to make contact with us?

*edit: Additionally, we've only had an engineering control of electricity for less than 200 years. Consider that we had fire for some tens of thousands of years before we got any further. There's some guy out there that registers the knowledge of man in a unit called "Jesus" where one Jesus is representative of all the knowledge that man had acquired from the beginning of recorded history up until the time of the purported death of Jesus. We've been geometrically increasing the number of "Jesus" units since then, so in another thousand years, I'm not ashamed to say that we are completely unable to fathom what technologies we will create.

Saying that a millienium is a "give-or-take" is kinda broad.

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:26 am 
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Isn't this the Fermi Paradox?

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:56 am 
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Yeah. Since there is neigh on an infinite amount of space for ETI to develop in there should logically be thousands if not millions of individual species.

As soon as we developed any sort of electronic detectors they should have been going off like crazy. Instead... nothing.


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 17, 2003 10:48 pm 
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"Sometimes, I think that the surest sign that intelligent life exists, is that none of it has tried to contact us"

- Calvin.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 18, 2003 10:07 am 
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Bill Watterson is so bloody clever.

Plus, it helps support my argument. Now, if Zoltan ("Zoltan!!") and his friends ever come out of the barn ("Is it painted red?" "No.." "Then it's *not* a *barn*!!") and tell us how they're doing it, that might be something.

I've often suggested (again, along the lines of Fermi theorems) that there are still forms or transports of energy we have yet to identify, although chances are rare they have gone unseen. Basically, we don't have the secret decoder ring to communicate with the ET community.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 3:31 pm 
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I have an electronic detector in my house. There are at least 8 strong emmitters in the area that this detector was specifically designed to detect. One is detected fairly well, another is detected poorly, and the others are detected either not at all, or almost not at all.

Yes, I'm bitching about my poor TV reception, but that's not the point.

Just because we have a detector, and someone is broadcasting, doesn't mean we can get it. Even if they are close. Heck, we might need a cable-box to unscramble the ET's transmissions.

However, I'm willing to bet that the first ET transmission we pick up isn't something profound. I bet it'll be as inane as 'I Love Lucy.' (dear god I hate that show)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 4:22 pm 
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That depnds Herbal. The regular junk we project into space is poor quality and excessively spread out. However the actually transmissions that are sent with the intention of reaching "something else" are much more concentrated and clear bits of information.

I for one think that if we did find intelligent alien life the first sign would be one of those sort of "hello" messages. The idea of them just showing up on our door step is highly unlikely. Think about it. We always send dozens of probes to a body before we actually send people. As was done with the moon and as we will probably do with Mars and Titan.

However the only reason anything would arrive unannounced is if they intend ed to take us by surprise.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 4:48 pm 
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"Your Majesty!! All off-planet communications have been jammed!" (sic)
"That can me only one thing...(dramatic pause) Invasion!"

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 Post subject: Issue of time.
PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 5:07 pm 
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Even if we did broadcast some kind of high-quality hello message, how long would it take for it to reach the closest star from our sun? It's a significant distance (I can't remember it off the top of my head) that with our existing technology would take many years to reach. Even is we somehow find something that can understand this signal by chance, how many more years would it take for a response to reach us?


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 9:01 pm 
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revolutio wrote:
As soon as we developed any sort of electronic detectors they should have been going off like crazy. Instead... nothing.


Here's an experiment.

Gather every piece of stereo equipment in your house, set them to playing completely different songs at low volume. All you get is a bunch of gibberish. (Much like the radio gibberish of a planet) Now if you turn on the TV and put it to a snowy channel and turn up the volume much higher than the stereos. That is what we are receiving. You couldn't pick out a signal if you tried. That's why I don't run SETI anymore. If there is anything out there the transmission would be much much too faint and garbled to pick out after traveling hundreds or thousands of light years.

Another bit that bugs me, why would they use Radio? We use Radio because it's one of the few light frequencies that isn't blocked by our atmosphere. But does our atmosphere need to be of the same composition as an alien planet?

Just because we can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 10:25 am 
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This question has bugged me for awhile:
How similar to Earth would an alien world have to be to produce sentient life?

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 11:11 am 
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Well considering we cannot yet define sentient very well much less understand what causes it to arise. We can't make very good guesses. As for life forms like those on Earth there is a very small range of temperatures in which they can exist. Between about 0 and 100 degrees celsius (maybe up to 200 if there were regions with less to spawn in).

Water is not as essential as many people think. Since many things have water in them or water can be derived from them all you really need is a ready supply of the compenents which most planets have. It is just a bitch to convert that, hence that is why scientists always are talking about water deposits.

Basically life tries to appear in every environment and, for the most part, it will find a way. Some environments, like ours, were more ideal for the evolution of life hence it came faster. You shouldn't expect every form of life to be similar to humans. In one book I read, a ficitional secenario was portrayed in which life developed on the surface of a pulsar. It would breed and multiply for a total of 14 seconds then it would be almost entirely wiped out only to start anew.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 1:24 pm 
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That's sorta what I was talkin' 'bout

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 6:46 pm 
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I think that ET is out there, but I have two ideas on as to why their not coming over and saying hi.

1. 'Arkansas Theory': In short, we are the Arkansas of the universe, many aliens know of us but try to stay away, why? Because were a bass ackwards pinheads, they come down to see what we've done (and to probe southerners and make crop circles) and are probably waiting till we get past beating each other senseless and electing retards to run major portions of the world before they say hi.

2. 'Evolutional Disparity': Although there may be infinite amounts of aliens in the universe we can't be entirely sure that the are as up to par with technology as we think they are, although there are certainly some incredibly more advanced than we are there are likely also aliens discovering radio, fighting their Vietnam, discovering fire, learning to make airplanes, invent spam, those sorts of things, there are probably races just a little more advanced than we are.
They're on their way on the slow boat, nothing fancy, just a rocket and few cryogenic capsules, pointed in the right direction.

What is interesting is that with the near infinite amount of space and with the infinite possibilites of aliens that come up you could very well imagine a critter in your head and it likely will be out there somewhere, although that means there could very well be a whole planet covered in cat people and elves for all we know, this also means there could be just as many planets covered in nasty ass critters that we just plain don't want to see.

And with that infinite variety thing, if that is true (it's probabaly not too far off) then there is likely a planet covered in tentacle covered slimy purple critters with an affinity for schoolgirls :wink:


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 8:26 pm 
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Hehe, I had heard the theory before but I had never heard it called the 'Arkansas Theory.' Two cool points for you.

Save up 18,000 cool points and you get a blow-up Michale Poe love doll.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2003 11:48 pm 
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Good thing you spelled his name wrong, or he mighta come out of hiding by now.

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 Post subject: Another random book plug.
PostPosted: Mon Jul 21, 2003 2:07 am 
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revolutio wrote:
You shouldn't expect every form of life to be similar to humans. In one book I read, a ficitional secenario was portrayed in which life developed on the surface of a pulsar. It would breed and multiply for a total of 14 seconds then it would be almost entirely wiped out only to start anew.

Sounds like Dragon's Egg and Starquake by the late Robert L. Forward. Though I don't recall the life forms described therein having proceeded at quite that feverish a pace, the idea is similar. Very nice books; they have stuck in my mind for years as few others have.

Also related in my mind is the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Blink of an Eye" which reminded me of the aforementioned novels to such an extent that I doubt the resemblance was entirely coincidental. Of course, the Star Trek version had all sorts of scientific inaccuracies and impossibilities woven in so as to be both palatable to the average viewer (who really seems to need aliens to be humanoid, for instance) and presentable within the one-hour-show format. (Please note that this commentary is not meant to bash on ST:V; lord knows there are enough people who do that without my joining in, however much I may prefer the other series. They did a good job with the limited palette they had to work with, given the above constraints.)

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