Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations

[MechAg94]

.......it would look pretty damned modern.

That bad?   

[AJ Dual]

Maybe the advanced civilizations out there are based on dark matter . . . 

It's actually a distinct possibility. Dark Matter and Dark Energy seem to be the lions share of "stuff" in the Universe. We may be like insects skating on the surface of a pond. What we see, stars, galaxies, the vast structure of the Universe might not even be the "interesting part".

An analogy would be to think about how computing was usually depicted in Sci Fi, bigger and bigger and bigger. Few, if any saw how computing or the Internet is just slowly sublimating into smaller devices, our phones, our TV's, watches, our fridge. Even on the data center side, even while they're enormous, individual servers are getting smaller and smaller.   At first, we didn't have "servers", mainframes, minis etc. then finally PC-like servers as we think of them now. Then the servers became rack mount, then U1 rack-mount, then blades, and now servers are virtualized. One powerful server running many virtual servers in software that all believe and act as if they were real individual computers.

Yes, like any analogy, it breaks down if pushed too far, but the point stands that much of our computing technology is now smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and many of the servers they connect to, from certain viewpoints, don't even physically exist anymore. So we already have some small hints that an advanced civilization may not need mega-engineering. To them Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds etc. is as silly and impractical as it would be for us to build vacuum tube mainframes the size of cities.

Imagine some new dark energy discovery, they finally find the particles, determine the energies and directions they're coming from... and there's evidence of engineering and artifice all around us in every direction we looked. 

My gut feeling is that the races who've "made it", change so radically, that they operate beyond a need for mega-engineering like Dyson Spheres, or climbing the Kardashev scale to type II and III civilizations. They may operate on similar scales, but in paradigms we really can't detect. Even assuming that they have a strong altruistic and outreach drive to contact other civilizations, what would it accomplish? It would be like us time-travelling to the neolithic age, and magnanimously handing them an iPad.  Would they even understand it? We'd probably just scare the hell out of them, and without the infrastructure of WiFi, or power outlets how useful would it be?

I suppose to continue the analogy, we could carefully design an indestructible solar-powered iPad embedded in a block of Lexan, and ensure it had the most dumbed-down UI ever, and it showed the neolithic humans videos of how to knap better flint tools, or jump-start writing and cave paintings.

But then, how do you know they'll use it as such? What if the Shaman appropriates the magic picture stone as a hat? Maybe it's the best berry smasher they've ever seen? Or the flat surface of the indistructable caveman-outreach iPad makes it great for scraping animal hides... 

[Ron]

Sounds like there is a whole unseen aspect and structure to reality that we can only barely perceive. 

[roo_ster]

Sounds like there is a whole unseen aspect and structure to reality that we can only barely perceive. 

Meh, my vote is on lack of understanding on our part and dark matter is playing the part of a placeholder or phlogiston or Ptolomy's epicycles so the math comes out right.  Would not be the first time we plugged an equation to make it work.

I find it hard to envision a universe where "we" are the only ones who "advanced" this far in terms of technology and civilization.  This, given the "billions and billions" of planetary systems and the chemistry involved.

Why is that difficult to envision? What would make such a thing so unlikely?

Folk want to believe in something greater outside themselves and in an explanation as to why we are here at all.  We have torn down Christianity as that answer in the public sphere and many folks are replacing it with ET wishes, New Agery, left wing politics, vegetarianism, environmentalism, the singularity, so on and so forth.

[HeroHog]

I'm doing my part and have been for years through SETI, the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far I have racked up the following:

Total credit   468,954
Recent average credit   1,764.25
SETI@home classic work units   179
SETI@home classic CPU time   2,727 hours

The basis for the BOINC credit system is the cobblestone, named after Jeff Cobb of SETI@home. By definition, 200 cobblestones are awarded for one day of work on a computer that can meet either of two benchmarks:
1,000 double-precision MFLOPS based on the Whetstone benchmark
1,000 VAX MIPS based on the Dhrystone benchmark

This certifies that HeroHog has participated in the SETI@home project since 11 June 2004, and has contributed 468,954 Cobblestones of computation (405.18 quadrillion floating-point operations) to SETI@home's search for extraterrestrial life.

I currently have 2 laptops in 24/7 work on the SETI project and my (and my wife's after today) laptop working in the spare cycles when we are not actively using them. It's free and there are a lot of other programs available through BOINC that you can use over your broadband connection and that won't cost you a dime or effect your normal computer usage. Check it out!

[230RN]

Hey, I've got a SETI Certificate, too!

Quote from roo_ster

Quote from: fistful on April 27, 2015, 11:11:53 AM

Quote from: 230RN on April 27, 2015, 10:01:50 AM
I find it hard to envision a universe where "we" are the only ones who "advanced" this far in terms of technology and civilization.  This, given the "billions and billions" of planetary systems and the chemistry involved.

-------------------------------
Why is that difficult to envision? What would make such a thing so unlikely?

Folk want to believe in something greater outside themselves and in an explanation as to why we are here at all.  We have torn down Christianity as that answer in the public sphere and many folks are replacing it with ET wishes, New Agery, left wing politics, vegetarianism, environmentalism, the singularity, so on and so forth.

Wow, I got the quotey-quotes right!

Although I admit to throwing out the "many mansions" bone to the Biblicites, my original statement really had nothing to do with religion, nor did it have anything to do with "wishing" for something "greater than myself."

It was intended strictly as a probabilistic statement --to be flip about it, "The probability of zero is zero.".

I started to compose an answer in my head involving sampling theory and probablistic inferences from samples, and finally said the hell with it.  I've got other things to do, and if I wanted to write a textbook on inferential statistics, I would.

The long and the short of my remark was that until you examine every single member of a population -- in this case, "billions and billions" of galaxies and stars --you can only deal with inferences from a sample.  That is, until then, "the probability of zero is zero" and until then, you are still talking probabilities only.

Or, to be really flip about it, "you can't prove a negative," at least until your sample size equals the total number of individuals in the population.  Until then, the possibility of high civilizations out there still exists, and to imagine that the coincidences that led to life on earth is a unique occurrence in the universe is fairly far-fetched, even if the probability of each "coincidence" is tiny.  

When multiplying a sequence of these small probabilities, until one of those terms is actually a genuine, real, honest to g-d zero, you are still left with a non-zero probability.  The first non-zero digit may be down in the 200th or 2000th decimal place, but it still ain't zero.

Had nothing to do with theology or any wish for a cosmic "father figure" greater than ourselves.

Or a mother figure, for that matter.

Terry

[MechAg94]

Regarding the "missing mass" of the universe, could it be that we just grossly underestimate the amount of mass that is out there?  At one time, they seemed to think that most stars didn't have planets since we couldn't see them from here.  They developed the method to detect planets and are now finding them all over the place, many quite large.  There was an article recently about dwarf planets outside the orbit of pluto that we can hardly see since they are so distant from the sun.  What if nearly every star has lots of those?  I have also heard of the cloud of comets that is supposed to be out on the edge of the system.  How many are in that cloud and how big?  We can't see them.  What if comets and other stuff in interstellar space is common?  How do they factor all that in when they estimate the amount of matter in the universe and assume some "dark matter"?

It seems to me that there are quite a few things we will never know for sure until we actually get out there. 

[Firethorn]

A couple of months, maybe a year ago, the notion was presented to me by a UFO enthusiast that the President has "inside knowledge" that the "aliens" are about to attack the earth.  As a consequence, he has generated every reason possible to get Americans to purchase arms and ammuniton to defend against this exothreat.  The easiest way to do this was to place a strong fear of "gun control" in our minds --thus becoming the whimsical "greatest gun salesman of all time."

Assuming an invasion of 'Signs' type aliens where small arms would actually be effective, it'd probably be cheaper, faster, and easier to simply have the DoD buy a rifle for every citizen of the USA, possibly by simply shifting to a different(but very similar) rifle, such as the M16 to M4 shift, while ordering all the old rifles to be stockpiled in a reserve.  Then, when the aliens invade you hand them out.

[lupinus]

Assuming an invasion of 'Signs' type aliens where small arms would actually be effective, it'd probably be cheaper, faster, and easier to simply have the DoD buy a rifle for every citizen of the USA, possibly by simply shifting to a different(but very similar) rifle, such as the M16 to M4 shift, while ordering all the old rifles to be stockpiled in a reserve.  Then, when the aliens invade you hand them out.

But then you would have to admit contrails really are chemtrails, and try to convince folks it's just prepping the atmosphere to make it easier to fight the aliens.

[Ben]

Rifles? Jiminey Christmas, you guys have zero experience with alien invasions, don't you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbigjiKLoU

[MechAg94]

Rifles? Jiminey Christmas, you guys have zero experience with alien invasions, don't you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSbigjiKLoU

Spontaneous Combustion scene?

[Ben]

Spontaneous Combustion scene?

Yeah, I know. The one with the right name had crappy audio.

[AJ Dual]

Had nothing to do with theology or any wish for a cosmic "father figure" greater than ourselves.

Or a mother figure, for that matter.

Terry

Whether it's actually a conscious thought or not, what I think really bothers religious types who sniff at SETI as those in search of a "secular God", or that it's just a bunch of people hoping ETI's somehow disprove organized religion, is that at least SETI is more or less putting it's money where it's mouth is in terms of requiring actual proof/evidence, in the way religion does not, and finally just falls back on circular arguments about faith.

[Ron]

Whether it's actually a conscious thought or not, what I think really bothers religious types who sniff at SETI as those in search of a "secular God", or that it's just a bunch of people hoping ETI's somehow disprove organized religion, is that at least SETI is more or less putting it's money where it's mouth is in terms of requiring actual proof/evidence, in the way religion does not, and finally just falls back on circular arguments about faith.

LOL, SETI is trying to use science to buttress what they believe by faith or intuition. They haven't looked at the data and determined that there is life. They believe there is life out there despite what has been observed so far!  

The amount of speculation and hope not to mention the acceptance of unsubstantiated presuppositions displayed by those searching for ET is nothing more than the secular outworking of the human religious imperative designed into us.

Facts are meaningless in themselves. Facts are only valuable when they have been given meaning by being subsumed in myth. We have a post modern/Marxist mythology that has taken over our institutions of higher learning and for lack of a better term "scientism" is the new mythology being used to organize "facts" in the realm of hard science. They are two sides of the same coin in many ways. If some "facts" don't fit the new mythology they are marginalized.

If you don't like the word myth you may use the word narrative. Ultimately that is all we humans do, tell stories, to ourselves and others. The ones in power end up being the chief story tellers.  

Humans pretend to know a lot more than they really actually know. Holding up scientists as somehow superior to religious folks is a real lark, thanks for the giggle.

The wish not to believe can influence as strongly as the wish to believe. 

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our tho ughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?
G.K. Chesterton

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance. - Kahneman, Daniel

The first principle is you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool. ~ Richard Feynman

[roo_ster]

Whether it's actually a conscious thought or not, what I think really bothers religious types who sniff at SETI as those in search of a "secular God", or that it's just a bunch of people hoping ETI's somehow disprove organized religion, is that at least SETI is more or less putting it's money where it's mouth is in terms of requiring actual proof/evidence, in the way religion does not, and finally just falls back on circular arguments about faith.

There is documentary evidence, some from those hostile to him and his objectives, for the existence of Jesus.  There is more such evidence for Jesus than there is for many historical figures who are accepted, uncontroversially, as actually having existed and had an impact on history.  There is zero evidence of ETs.

Tell me again, which proposition requires more faith:
1. The proposition that has documentary evidence as to its existence.
2. The proposition that has no documentary evidence as to its existence.

What were you saying about evidence, again?

[230RN]

LOL, SETI is trying to use science to buttress what they believe by faith or intuition. They haven't looked at the data and determined that there is life. They believe there is life out there despite what has been observed so far!

I can't speak for SETI, and it's hard to get one's head around this, but for myself, it's not that I believe there's life (ET or ETI) out there.  It's that it's hard for me to believe there isn't, "given the 'billions and billions' of planetary systems and the chemistry involved.  Oh, and the incredibly long time periods involved for carbon atoms to link up in wierd ways."  <Terry said that.

Yes, even given the "impossibility" of actually establishing communication (or commerce) with ETIs under today's technology, it doesn't hurt or cost much for SETI to engage thousands of home computers to analyze the data we have to see if there's something buried in the noise.  It's not like they're attempting to build megabuck or megawatt receivers or transmitters, at least the last I heard.

And "what has been observed so far" is only a sample.  As I said, until you examine every member of a population, "the probability of zero is zero."

So we (or they, SETI) keep listening, sampling, and analyzing.  (I don't know what happened with the so-called "Wow!" event, maybe it was just a fluke.)

Just don't characterize it as a baseless hope or leap of faith.  It's a matter of scientific curiosity, at least for me.  And it's cheap, compared to other major scientific inquiries.

Terry

PS ETA  The only reason I disengaged from SETI was I didn't want to leave my machine running all the time.

REF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal

[Ron]

I can't speak for SETI, and it's hard to get one's head around this, but for myself, it's not that I believe there's life (ET or ETI) out there.  It's that it's hard for me to believe there isn't, "given the 'billions and billions' of planetary systems and the chemistry involved.  Oh, and the incredibly long time periods involved for carbon atoms to link up in weird ways."  <Terry said that.

The unsupported presupposition is that abiogenesis is the source of life on earth.

Finding life outside of earth fits the naturalistic/materialistic narrative so it makes sense logically to search the cosmos for life.

I guess abiogenesis must be true as it is the consensus opinion of the authorities. 

It's all a rather sophisticated mythology, life springing up from non-life in billions of places across the universe. Order arising from disorder, complex systems arising from chaos.

Of course none of this has ever been observed.   

[HeroHog]

It cost me a little electricity and I am ALWAYS on my laptop these days so WTH, ya know? Besides, I wanna be famous for finding our future alien overlords one day! 

[Ron]

It cost me a little electricity and I am ALWAYS on my laptop these days so WTH, ya know? Besides, I wanna be famous for finding our future alien overlords one day! 

Despite my ramblings above I'm all in favor of scanning the universe for life and whatever else it may reveal to us.

[Firethorn]

I guess abiogenesis must be true as it is the consensus opinion of the authorities. 

I wouldn't be so sure; it certainly wasn't presented all that strongly when I was in school, you get a lot of 'we don't knows', and 'it might of gone this way', 'we've demonstrated this step we think is critical is possible with theorized early earth conditions', etc...