Statistics say that at any given moment we're likely to be in the middle of something than at the end or beginning. The sky is an empty one. The moment we turned on our first radios, we should have been deafened by millions of years of transmissions. There are millions if not billions of words like Earth throughout the Galaxy. If each is at a random point along their development, then there should be hundreds of thousands at least as advanced as we are. That means there should be so many signals in the sky.
And beyond that, all it takes is one to be able to be capable of interstellar colonization. Just one. And under a million years, they have a presence at every star. So why isn't there? Why can't we see anyone else?
Because we're likely to be in the status quo, it must mean that the lack technologically advanced civilizations are the status quo. So what causes that? What will cut us down?
Something has to before we go interplanetary.
Michael Richardson
Attenuation is a fucking bitch.
Kevin Robinson
Even if the signal degrades to the point of not carrying enough information to be decoded, it'd still be enough to be recognizable as once having decodable information. That range is hundreds of light years.
Besides that, stellar manipulations would be easy to detect over thousands of light years. All it'd take is one species to go interstellar for that type of influence to be detected.
But there hasn't been any. If we imagine that in 1000 years, we colonize other planets, why hasn't it been done in 10 000 000 years?
It is extremely unlike that we'd be the first. Therefore we're likely to die beforehand.
Jayden Flores
>Even if the signal degrades to the point of not carrying enough information to be decoded, it'd still be enough to be recognizable as once having decodable information.
Not at all. Look at the signals we do get. They come from some of the most powerful objects in the universe.
>The Jansky (symbol Jy) is a non-SI unit of spectral flux density equivalent to 10 to the -26th power watts per square metre per hertz. As a yardstick, 10 to the -26th power watts per square metre (1 Jy) would be about the same energy received on Earth from a 100W light bulb (radiating in all directions) at a distance of more than 7 times that of the trip from Earth to Neptune. Only the Vela pulsar exceeds 1 Jy by any significant amount (5 Jy @ 400 MHz).
Now imagine humans trying to send out a comprehensible single to anything else in the galaxy.
Benjamin Brooks
...
Jaxson Perez
Yeah, but you're talking about extragalactic signals.
Even with 100 ly, that's millions of worlds. All it takes is one.
The Fermi paradox is a real thing. And the fact that it exists should scare the fuck out of everyone
Aiden Fisher
>The Fermi paradox is a real thing.
Only for brainlets and dreamers who don't really know much about attenuation.
Isaac Morris
>who don't really know much about attenuation. What I'm getting at is even with the volume of stars that at the farthest allow for the barest recognition of artificial signals, we should be seeing so much more. Do you know how many stars there are in 100 ly? How many planets?
Too many for them to be totally silent.
Zachary Hughes
Gamma ray bursts are advanced civilizations killing slightly less advanced galactic neighbors. We have about 3000 years till Tabby's star cooks us all.
Easton Rivera
It's far more simpler to have Berserker probes than to manufacture GRB.
Think about it. All you need metal and hydrogen to make a new probe. Asteroids have that in spades If you come across radio signals, you send a couple dozen fusion bombs to the surface. Competition dealt with.
Berserkers should be common as fuck. They're logical as hell for any forward minded species. Why haven't we been exterminated yet?
If a Berserker von Neumann probe existed, it should be in every system by now. Consider stats, we're likely the middle species. It only takes a million years to have a probe in every system in the galaxy. A million years ago we were Homo erectus. 8 million years ago we were chimps.
Plenty enough time for in between for other species to populate the galaxy with their probes.
It doesn't make any fucking sense
Daniel Barnes
Why the urge to exterminate?
Landon Robinson
Why did Europeans spread pox blankets to the Native Americans?
Oliver Lee
Because they were humans.
Nolan Kelly
Because they were competition. Even even 500 years ago they knew that the world was a closed system. Anything anyone else had was something you didn't.
The same applies to a galaxy level, to a universal level. The only logical thing is to exterminate any other species that isn't yours.
John Myers
How much of space you would have to already have conquered n order to fight even for a tiny insignificant spec of dust in a distant branch of the Galaxy?
Why do you assume any animals with consciousness would evolve from the same predator / violent root like we did?
Imagine if bonobos would've been the ones evolving consciousness... there is not a single record of them killing each other in wilderness or in containment.
Yet among chimps ( bonobos a bit more ) they resemble the most genes and behavior with modern humans.
Lucas Baker
Any species that would go interstellar would have an inexorable drive for expansion. Like humans do.
Here's a story about how humans are: There are no Neandertal skeletons across Gibraltar. Neandertals lived all across Europe, including Spain, but not North Africa. North Africa is visible from Gibraltar. All you'd need to do is make a raft and float over. Humans did. Humans made rafts and floated past the horizon. Look at Polynesia.
Humans expand and go farther than anyone other species yet alive.
Since we're the most sucessful, it must mean that drive is integral to success. Otherwise, if we didn't exist, Neandertals would live in Europe. Making their graves and cave paintings and never learning how to make computers or airplanes.
The human desire to expand and go further than anyone before is what made us rulers of the Earth.
Therefore we must assume that the rulers of any other planet have the same desire. Otherwise they wouldn't colonize interplanetarily. Let alone interstellarily.
If we ever go between star systems, we will exterminate all other competition because it is logical.
It must be done for our species to survive.
Henry Garcia
Yes but as bonus came the violent behavior.
By our understandings of natural selection, as I gave you an example earlier - It could've been something like the Bonobos.
If they would've ended up in our position - they would probably have left behind them a great civilization, where the basic urges of even the simplest did not contain murder.
And given they encounter someone like them in space - they would want to share everything to one another.
They would be the pushers of a intergalactic Federation.
While in your vision and it's indeed based by historical evidence - humans would push for military dominance.
But that never quite worked even on earth, when things were much simpler..
Zachary Rodriguez
Any aliens to exist in the universe not Human cannot be determined to do anything that a Human would do until observed directly.
A real alien civilization with interstellar travel most likely has more important shit to do like stopping entropy in the universe, or not letting their home planet go kill along with their home star.
Bentley Perez
>But that never quite worked even on earth, when things were much simpler..
Exactly.
Bonobos may have been closer to our ancestors, but they aren't like us. Somewhere along the lines, we became possessive and violent. Humans are sociologically monogamous and maybe even not physiological.
That shows that the WILL to conquer supercedes everything. We are much smarter than we need to be. Homo erectus lasted for over a million years. They were on every continent except for America, but they would have barring time.
Homo erectus were as smart as a hominid needed to be to conquer the world. Just fire and sharp sticks. That's it.
But we're smarter than that. Smarter and more violent.
Because we went further than even erectus did, it shows that any species to conquer their system, let alone the galaxy, must be more like us than erectus.
We're violent and greedy. That made us the best. And that must make any other species want to colonize too.
If they weren't greedy, why would they leave their system? Wouldn't one planet be enough?
If one planet isn't enough, then no amount of planets are enough.
We are intelligent and we are greedy. Other species must be the same or they would never leave their planet. That's a filter right there
Joseph Thompson
>A real alien civilization with interstellar travel most likely has more important shit to do like stopping entropy in the universe But wouldn't they get there faster by exterminating any life that is not their own? Any life outside their control?
Why risk letting a rogue life form change everything? Humans can't even let other humans govern our world. Since stats say that we're likely average than not average, it says that aliens are likely the same.
Any interstellar species would need to quell their own planet then seek to quell the other species they come across. Just like Columbus in America.
Xavier Wilson
>Committing genocide helps achieve stopping entropy in the universe. >You spend more time and resources trying to wage an omnicidal war across the universe than trying to prolong the universe for an eternity, then figuring out how to live for that eternity doing whatever you please. No that's stupid.
Dominic Clark
Let's start imagining few scenarios here:
If you would apply artificial selection to a wide group of primates on a exoplanet - wouldn't you lead the peaceful, progressive group to that path rather than letting natural selection pick the eccentric ones ( possibly ) ?
But in your scenarios for us - such a thing to happen would only be possible as a form of scientific experiment and very tightly controlled.
I think civilization is making us think outside of our set of natural behaviors for important things, seems like at least even now as it is fur us being naturally violent - the switch for nuclear weapons it's still behind some pretty intelligent teams that are trained to think rationally above anything else, there's even military tactic involved that's not ignorant to global / in future cosmic events / break-troughs.
Gene editing could potentially make us cure our primitive behavior which truncates too much of the quality of life as biology allows it to express.
Tyler Evans
You don't get it. All you need to do is seed the galaxy with Berserkers. That only costs as much as the initial probe. They replicate in each new system. You can blanket the galaxy in only a million years.
Every time you detect radio, you bombard the planet. Easy pickings.
Then your species can come in 10s of million of years. Easy pickings.
It's about limited resources. Why allow other species to grow when you can have just yours?
Preventing entropy comes from being able to share the knowledge of a thousand worlds.
Aliens mean a barrier of understanding. Resources being wasted on something you can never learn.
Wyatt Carter
If a species were monitoring us, they'd make us docile, like your bonobos.
Because we're violent and almost use fucking world destroying nukes on ourselves, it's obvious we are not being influenced by ETs.
If another race were guiding us, they'd make sure we'd never rise up against another species.
Right now, if we had interstellar tech, we'd be a jihad across space. Any world we'd come across, we'd massacre and colonize.
Humans are unrepentant colonists and that is the perfect proof to show that we were never influenced in our development.
Otherwise, we might compete with our "overlords" manipulating our genesis
Nicholas Wilson
trips of ultimate truth
Leo Gutierrez
Intelligence user. Intelligence.
Yes, there are likely billions of Earth like planets in the galaxy. However, there have been billions of life forms on Earth, and only through random and great catastrophy have Humans existed. Human like intelligence is NOT the end state of evolution. It is NOT gaurenteed to happen. Calling our closest cousins (Chimps) retarded is an insult to people with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Anyone who can put together a sentence with proper Noun Verb grammar is smarter than a Chimp. Neanderthals and other hominids were no better.
Selection pressure is to survive. Chimps and Ravens and Dolphins survice just fine without symbolic reasoning. Dinosaurs survived for Millions of Years, and never needed to evolve intelligence. Insects have been around for a billion years, they have complex cultural systems, but never needed intelligence. Humanity is the fluke.
