Intelligent Life

Phage
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Having a billion or more years head start would tend to mean most of anyone out there is going to be older than us.

Or dead.
A billion is a whole lot of years.

I'm not sure if it was Niven, but, I think he proposed another alternative where an intelligent technological species elects to devolve back to dim animals because intelligence is too much of a hassle and dangerous too.

They could be ducks?

1Providence1
Isn't a hypothesis a "What if"?

Quite simply ... no. It 100% is not.

Phage

So...now what? They have a sadistic fascination with watching less advanced civilizations self destruct?

Neat.

Think about it, if you could go back and watch say, a particular battle, slaves being used to build monuments, Vikings raiding a village, would you? Or would you say, nahhhhh that stuff is messed up, I don't want to see that.

I think fascination of social order and society will over ride, also direct intervention is probably not advised since they would perceive you as God's or something, the only input you could have would be subtle at best.

reply to post by iRoyalty

Think about it
A billion years. A thousand primitives. All doing the same thing, over and over.
Pretty twisted if you like watching that kind of reruns.

reply to post by Phage

I told you before. One of its feet are both the, say it with me now, same.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire

You're following me, aren't you?
Just lurking...waiting...anticipating my asking that question.

reply to post by Phage


Okay, lets assume sentient beings are a rare thing to come across. This makes first hand observation of a developing race a RARE sight. Baring in mind if these are billion year old beings then they obviously don't have anyone alive who has a first hand account, just texts.

We are fascinated by tribes that have not been in contact with the world, their ways of life and amazing survival skills. Even if they're cannibals or something, that just makes them even more interesting to us.

Perhaps it's not safe to assume that they have the same curiosity as us, but you must recognise how rare the opportunity is to study a race in our stages of social evolution. I most certainly would never pass up a chance to go back, be invisible and study the slave trade, or the Mongol conquerors.

Tell me you wouldn't find it fascinating.

reply to post by iRoyalty

I most certainly would never pass up a change to go back, be invisible and study the slave trade, or the Mongol conquerors.

Well now you're talking about parallel development, another assumption. Ghengis Mxlplxtz and his hoards.
It's not out of the question but for a practical purposes it as likely that "they" would be completed disinterested in us as not.

Now, if intelligent life were a rare thing it would be a different matter but that accentuates the "ships in the night" scenario. The fewer intelligent species, the less likely they are to meet.

AliceBleachWhite

1Providence1

Isn't a hypothesis a "What if"?

The common error of the uneducated is to think that "hypothesis" out of nothing has any validity in comparison to a Scientific Hypothesis which are based on Evidence and observations through which predictions can then be made and tested.

It's the same thing with "Theory", where Scientific Theory is observed as law, until sufficiently challenged toward amendment/replacement.

Blind speculation and what ifs are the province of entertainment where consideration based on a foundation of interrelated data sets in where predictions can then be made and tested makes a difference.

Well I don't see any hypotheses in this thread that are "out of nothing."

reply to post by Phage


Okay fair enough, there are several assumptions at work there, so lets assume the other way.

Sentient life is abundant in this galaxy, even so, how much life is at our stage and how many have really gone through EXACTLY the same thing. Someone said earlier why do we have to assume that other life would be more advanced, I agree, perhaps there is life still in just tribal, or feudal kind of scenarios. Then of course there will be plenty of races that are more advanced.

Still, we would be rare for the stage of social and economic level we are at. Also I think it's safe to say that our history will be unique, and studying us will not be like these beings studying themselves, or repeating their own actions. Perhaps they are not as aggressive, natural herbivores, an a-sexual race. Either way, there will be elements of our society that they will never have come across and probably don't understand. Being a super evolved (or even perhaps not) they will want to understand these new things that they have never witnessed before.

reply to post by iRoyalty


A billion years from our current standing. Think about it. Whatever is science fiction now, it will be released long before the time is up. It wasn't but a short while ago Jules Verne posited a man on the moon.

Granted, journey to the centre of the earth and 20,000 leagues under the sea are a little off on the scientific aspect, but have still be realized in a sense. In the first case, the obvious problems were quickly dismissed but we did learn through scientific understanding whats in the Earth. In the second, subs have surely travelled the circumference of the Earth a few times over by now.

In other words, anything we can think up that can be done, will be done. So long as were not wiped out in a billion years. That leaves a realm of possibilities open.

Digital personalities, eternal life, cyborgs, cylons, borg, time travel, wormhole transport, vacation time shares in a black hole, Jedi knights, etc. (And sure some won't work, but most will. Like Jedi)

reply to post by 1Providence1





While I think the question, are we alone, is very important, I think we need to make sure our own house is in order before we board that ship and set sail.

The hope is and has always been that the people of earth, once they realized we are not alone, would face the new reality as a unified planet. The way things are going right now, I am not optimistic. What I see is various world governments trying to jockey for position on who would be the better Smithers.

chr0naut

Phage
What's the difference between a duck?

Ducks are not measured in what's, everyone knows that, sheesh!

The answer is that one's both the same.

We hold these tooths as self evident.

edit on 13/2/2014 by chr0naut because: This finely hand crafted reply was detected to contain manufacturing defects and so was covered by a product recall. It has since been replaced by an expanded post of equal value to iur valued customers.

so, we are duck people now?
an btw, there is no evidence of me.

reply to post by JadeStar

Math says otherwise. Most of the universe is older than us. The chances of meeting anyone at just our level are very, very small.

I'd say the chances of meeting anyone else at our level is a big, fat zero...considering we can only just about heft ourselves off this planet at our level, if they're the same, they'd not be travelling the stars either.

The chances of meeting other, older people are much more likely.

MysterX
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Math says otherwise. Most of the universe is older than us. The chances of meeting anyone at just our level are very, very small.

I'd say the chances of meeting anyone else at our level is a big, fat zero...considering we can only just about heft ourselves off this planet at our level, if they're the same, they'd not be travelling the stars either.

The chances of meeting other, older people are much more likely.

what about advanced aliens taking some of us to meet aliens at the same stage as we are? or bringing some of them to meet us?

Phage
reply to post by iRoyalty

 

I most certainly would never pass up a change to go back, be invisible and study the slave trade, or the Mongol conquerors.

Well now you're talking about parallel development, another assumption. Ghengis Mxlplxtz and his hoards.
It's not out of the question but for a practical purposes it as likely that "they" would be completed disinterested in us as not.

Now, if intelligent life were a rare thing it would be a different matter but that accentuates the "ships in the night" scenario. The fewer intelligent species, the less likely they are to meet.

But weren't you making assumptions about a hypothetical technologically superior ETI having gone through 'all the crap that we have and are going through', in order to get to their higher level?

One assumption is just as valid as the next.

For example, we can assume they trod a similar developmental path to our species, and that could be utterly wrong...or right, or somewhere inbetween.

They may have never invented war, finance, religion, heirarchy...they may have developed without any of the 'crap that we have gone through' whatsoever.

We can assume what we like, but we're only ever going to have a basis for that assumtion from a planetary species sample of exactly one - us.

Billions of worlds with perhaps billions of intelligent species can't be assumed to have followed anything remotely like the path we've trod.

taoistguy

MysterX
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Math says otherwise. Most of the universe is older than us. The chances of meeting anyone at just our level are very, very small.

I'd say the chances of meeting anyone else at our level is a big, fat zero...considering we can only just about heft ourselves off this planet at our level, if they're the same, they'd not be travelling the stars either.

The chances of meeting other, older people are much more likely.

what about advanced aliens taking some of us to meet aliens at the same stage as we are? or bringing some of them to meet us?

hehe..good point, but that wasn't the proposed scenario afaia...besides, we'd have to meet the older people first for that to happen.

reply to post by MysterX


not if it was accidental, like the dicovery of the americas when they were looking for india.

AliceBleachWhite

Phage
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Having a billion or more years head start would tend to mean most of anyone out there is going to be older than us.

Or dead.
A billion is a whole lot of years.

I'm not sure if it was Niven, but, I think he proposed another alternative where an intelligent technological species elects to devolve back to dim animals because intelligence is too much of a hassle and dangerous too.

They could be ducks?

I don't know.. Sounds like a "quack" alternative to me

Then again, humankind seems to doing just that at times so perhaps Niven (or whoever proposed it) is on to something....

Phage
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Several assumptions at play of course.
Why assume a single billion year old civilization? Why assume they get along?

I am not sure what your question is. Can you expand it?

Are you asking why assume more than one old civilization would get along?

There is no assumption but there are reasons to believe there aren't great interstellar space wars as portrayed in sci fi.

Time, Resources, Distance.

Time is a limiting factor for interactions. Would two or more civilizations within range of each other be sufficiently advanced enough to a) know they exist and b) feel they are a threat? (Saying yes to both of those makes more assumptions than what I postulated)

Resources are abundant in the Universe therefore why would there be hostility which would waste more resources than gain them? There's no reason for one species to invade another for resources. And doing so for any other reason would be a huge waste of both resources and time.

Distances between the stars are vast.


We could in theory populate EVERY habitable planet around every star in our local stellar neighborhood (that dot in the picture below contains about 120,000 star systems) in the next million or billion years and we'd barely have scratched the surface of the entire galaxy.

Nor would we need to: