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[Razorback]

The basic idea is this: From what we understand about life it seems like one of its main goals is to multiply and spread to whatever places it can. Looking at our civilization and technology, we see no reason why colonizing a whole galaxy would be impossible. It could be done in a couple million years, not very long on a cosmic scale.
But looking around we so no signs of such civilizations. Does that mean we are the first advanced civilization? Or does it mean that there's something stopping advanced civilizations from spreading out into space?

If life itself is very rare, that increases the odds of us being the first advanced civilization. If we find life on Mars or Europa. That's bad news, it means life isn't that rare.

If you're already familiar with Fermi's Paradox, what do you think is the most likely answer to why we seem to be alone in the universe?

 

[Atrus]

I think that life is perceptably rare in the universe simply because the universe is large, the universe has a long timespan, that life itself is rare and that interstellar space travelling civilizations are even more rare.

I don't really care about other life in space outside of allowing us to leapfrog ahead in some capacity as a species or contribute to it as a result of scientific study. I'd rather not be the Inca to some sort of interstellar Conquistadores in this narrative. The less we are in terms of Star Trek's Federation and more we become the Imperium of Man (less the Ecclesiarchy) then the better off we will be as a species in my view.

 

[Ichabod]

I think any civilization that has mastered faster than light travel would be so far advanced that, at best, they might consider us no more than a minor curiosity and observe us like a national geographic documentary maker watching ants in the rainforest. If they're malevolent...it's curtains for us.

 

[Cybrwzrd]

the universe is large

This is basically it. The ridiculous distances involved in interstellar space travel are basically beyond human comprehension. And there just aren't that many nearby stars. There are ~250 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and only like 12 (out of 138) stars within 20 light years distance that we have detected planets on.

 

[Mohonky]

The great filter is an interesting, yet scary concept.

Its possible intelligent species may inevitably harness power so great they destroy themselves before they are capable of becoming a spare faring species. It's quite easy to imagine especially given our current technology: we possess more than enough power to wipe our species from the face of the Earth or indeed damage it so badly life is unsustainable. Given our state of divide over matters of ideology, theology, culture etc, we are largely reliant on those in charge of the power to wield such weapons actually have the sensibility to not use them.

Despite our ability to destroy ourselves, we actually have really limited ability to survive the aftermath. At the moment, there is no 'Planet B' to start over.

Any species capable of such intelligence will likely face this cross road so its possible few ever actually make it, maybe some have but these intelligent species are so far away neither of us have existed long enough to cross paths.

Then maybe its just a practicality problem. At some point space travel becomes such a energency consuming exercise (think harvesting planets, not parts parts of) that its simply uneconomical to travel far enough that you encounter other life.

That we could be the only intelligent species capable of utilising technology out there either right now or in the future seems completelt irrational to me, theres just too much out there to think thay even if we are an extroadinary fluke, that this hasnt or wont occur again.

 

[Bolivar687]

It's a cute video but the title is a little misleading. The worst case scenario seems to be if we found only dead advanced civilizations, as the video states that would suggest a barrier is ahead of us, at which our civilization will end. However, making contact with another contemporary would be great news, as it suggests there is no such doomsday filter preventing us from spreading out.

I think another answer, already expressed above, is that it just takes less effort to better the planet you already have than it would to colonize other planets and solar systems. Moving lots of people and resources across space does not have the same return on investment as keeping things clean and finding innovative ways to support larger populations.

Personally, I ultimately believe we are alone. We have a planet full of biodiversity and a vast evolutionary timeline, of which we've only taken up an imperceptible sliver. If consciousness, creativity, civilization, and culture were natural convergence points for life, we wouldn't be the only species on our planet with any of them. Some say even if this was an accident, there's too many planets for it not have happened elsewhere. If that was the case, the same argument of scale brings us back to the Fermi paradox, we should have already heard from thousands of interstellar civilizations a million times over by now.

I don't like the teleological timeline assumed by the video, that planets start from dead chemicals and inevitably provide civilizations. The complexity paradigm is refuted by the reality that organisms lose unnecesary functions to evolve towards simplicity as well. Its kind of like the persistence of the pre-Darwinian assumption that organisms always get better. They don't get better, they don't get worse, they don't necessarily become more simple or complex, they just change. I know the dogma is that the world must have started from single celled organisms that eventually became more complex but that seems to be the point at which empiricism ends and scientists start getting into the business of telling creation stories.

 

[Makariel]

But looking around we so no signs of such civilizations. Does that mean we are the first advanced civilization? Or does it mean that there's something stopping advanced civilizations from spreading out into space?

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die."

(SCNR)

 

[Rocket Number 22]

I have every confidence that if aliens came to Earth we would be wiped off the face of the planet because a furry tried to fuck one of them.

Or something like this

 

[Mohonky]

I have every confidence that if aliens came to Earth we would be wiped off the face of the planet because a furry tried to fuck one of them.

Or something like this

Well we'd just plain be fucked. When was the last time humans visited a foreign country and left it untouched? Never, it always ended badly for the local population.

.....if a species was capable of getting to us, I dare say we'd be little more than a 'nuisance' to them.

 

[Cybrwzrd]

Well we'd just plain be fucked. When was the last time humans visited a foreign country and left it untouched? Never, it always ended badly for the local population.

.....if a species was capable of getting to us, I dare say we'd be little more than a 'nuisance' to them.

Ever read Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken"?

https://eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf

Its a damn interesting story. What if FTL travel is very basic science that we missed somehow, and our tech diverged in a way that makes our proficiency in killing inconceivable for an alien race? Humans are freaking scary when you think about the efforts we put into building up technology for wanton death and destruction.

 

[synchronicity]

Life is generally about consumption, taking what you need for your own preservation. The best we could hope for in an encounter is indifference - that we don't have anything they need or want.

Personally I feel there are likely virtually endless examples of life out there in the black, but I doubt we'd ever encounter any of those cases, as they're flashing in and out of existence as quickly as humanity likely will.

 

[BANGS]

This is basically it. The ridiculous distances involved in interstellar space travel are basically beyond human comprehension. And there just aren't that many nearby stars. There are ~250 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and only like 12 (out of 138) stars within 20 light years distance that we have detected planets on.

but how many parsecs is that?

 

[Cybrwzrd]

but how many parsecs is that?

Well, one parsec is 3.26 light years.

 

[BANGS]

Well, one parsec is 3.26 light years.

B-b-but Han Solo implied it measured time!

 

[Yoda]

The conclusions of the video felt a bit too simple for me.

Our tools for observing E.T. are primitive at best, our civilization is still rife with tribalism that incurs massive suffering on the majority of our species; would a civilization that has achieved the seemingly insurmountable feat of interstellar travel really consider us that advanced? Or would they look at us like we look at chimpanzees and muse at how we seem to be a bit better than our peers on this planet, but nothing truly special?

For all we know there could be millions of E.T. or there could be none, but the premise that because we've seen none we must have passed most of them comes across as arrogance to me.

 

[caffeware]

Things are out there. We are just looking at it the wrong way.

 

[HoodWinked]

i remember having a thought about human existence and that in the billions of years we've only had the ability to even communicate through satellites and radiowaves for a couple of decades and an analogy for this would be like a golf ball in a football field. but lets say another alien civilization existed (past/present/future) and they also tried to communicate so they'd have their own little golf ball. now for the two civilizations to make contact would be if these two golf balls somehow hit each other problem is the golf balls would only be chucked once and completely randomly. the chance that these ever hit would be so improbable thats its realistically zero.

 

[Badlucktroll]

I think that humanity could crack faster than light travel if we had to. If we HAD to leave earth and needed to get to another habitable world. They would have all the greatest minds in the world working on it, like the Manhattan Project on steroids.

 

[Nintendo Switch]

By far the best summary of the explanations of why we likely don’t find life is here...

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

It’s a must read if you haven’t and it’s a combination of all those reasons in the link.

Spoiler alert: FTL is likely impossible, but it’s not necessary to colonize an entire galaxy. Using our current speeds, and automation, we could colonize the entire Milky Way in the blink of an eye (a few million years, which is no time at all in the galactic sense).

The switch from nonalive to alive might be close to impossible and I think almost none of the planets in the Goldilocks zone even develop life, much less sentient technological life.

 

[Koala Driving a Ferrari]

This made me think of The Three Body Problem trilogy of novels (highly recommended) and the "dark forest" concept.

"The universe is full of life. Life in the universe functions on two axioms: 1. Life's goal is to survive, and 2. Resources are finite. Like hunters in a dark forest, life can never be certain of alien life's true intentions. The extreme distance between stars creates an insurmountable "chain of suspicion" where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike and destroy any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location, thus solving the Fermi paradox."

There could be a very good reason why no alien life appears to be actively seeking to communicate with others. The Three Body Problem completely made me reconsider my stance on the search for extra terrestrial intelligent life (and how we're advertising our own position in the cosmos like a giant neon billboard sign).

 

[Melon Husk]

The great filter is in all probability an illusion. Here be dragons and so on. The universe may well be full of life, but intelligent? I doubt it...

How many planets do you think there are where artificial combustion (increase in entropy) is possible?
Physical laws don't guide natural evolution towards intelligence – more complex organisms develop because they can fill a niche the smaller ones can't. The biosphere becomes a more efficient entropy machine.

edit: Re: FTL aliens

By far the best summary of the explanations of why we likely don’t find life is here...

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

It’s a must read if you haven’t and it’s a combination of all those reasons in the link.

Spoiler alert: FTL is likely impossible, but it’s not necessary to colonize an entire galaxy. Using our current speeds, and automation, we could colonize the entire Milky Way in the blink of an eye (a few million years, which is no time at all in the galactic sense).

The switch from nonalive to alive might be close to impossible and I think almost none of the planets in the Goldilocks zone even develop life, much less sentient technological life.

I agree.
Why would a superintelligent civilization have the need to colonize every piece of rock in the galaxy? I don't understand the motivation behind that. Intelligent species don't behave like locusts, you know.

There could be a very good reason why no alien life appears to be actively seeking to communicate with others. The Three Body Problem completely made me reconsider my stance on the search for extra terrestrial intelligent life (and how we're advertising our own position in the cosmos like a giant neon billboard sign).

If we're invoking sociology on alien relations: Extraterrestrial relations are a question mark. If we were are about equal, coexistence has its pros and cons. If they were vastly superior to us (whatever that means) they probably won't care about us. One can panic over integalactic highways but consider the probability of such an event for a moment. I'm more worried about inanimate space objects flinging about near Earth.

 

[Airola]

I think consciousness is what we should be studying more than try to look at other galaxies (not that studying galaxies wouldn't be important too).

For now, things of more of a "religious" nature have more evidence than any sort of biological alien life out there. For alien life, there is zero evidence. It's all just about "there should be life because the universe is so large with so many galaxies and planets" type of hypothetical thinking. There is currently no actual evidence of any of that. No evidence at all. Zero.

What comes to the religious experiences though - call them hallucinations or whatever else if you want - people have been experiencing weird stuff perhaps as long as people have existed, and people still continue experiencing weird stuff today all around the world - near death experiences, out of body experiences, sleep paralysis, visions.

One could argue though that there are also people who claim to have seen UFOs and all kinds of alien visitors. People say they have been captured and these aliens have done tests with the captured people. So if I'm going to count out of body experiences as evidence of "religious" things, shouldn't I also use these UFO sightings and stuff like that as evidence too? At least as much that I wouldn't try to claim there is more evidence for religious experiences than biological alien experiences?

Well, no, not really.

Actual physical UFO sightings suffer from The Fermi Paradox as well. If there are alien species that have managed to get here and have been interested in capturing some of us to be their test subjects, they should be advanced enough to locate us and to be able to travel amazing distances with amazing speed. And if that's possible, why don't we see more of them around? Why there isn't a single sign of them anywhere? Especially today with all the surveillance around and when everyone has a camera of some sort, there should be way more evidence of aliens and UFOs than what there is. Even one single UFO sighting should mean there are plenty of other UFOs out there. Just one verifiable UFO would mean there are so far advanced civilizations out there that we should see much more signs of them. And we should be seeing more signs the more advanced our monitoring systems become.

My answer is that some of the people who say they have seen aliens or say they have been captured are lying, some are just crazy, but some could be telling the truth in that they have really experienced something like that, but the thing is that they aren't physical and biological beings. The alien sightings and getting captured have been all about experiencing mind-related things. Maybe they are just hallucinations, or maybe they are hallucinations but these hallucinations can be "real" things too.

The fact is that some people who have gone through sleep paralysis have talked about very similar things than what people who have said they've been visited or captured by aliens have talked about. That tells experiences like that can be purely mind-based things. My own sleep paralysis experiences only consist of lots of whispers and noises and voices and semi out-of-body-experiences that have always ended with me beginning to float a bit higher than where I should be but suddenly feeling this horrifying realer than real feel of impending death which makes me try my best to snap out of it by trying to move myself one finger at a time. So no creepy figure visitations for me, but I believe in the accounts of experiences like that because I have personally experienced something different but still something that felt like a "metaphysical" experience.

Now, all of that could be just all about mind playing tricks and people having hallucinations, but currently that's something people regardless of time, year, gender, location and race have always experienced and still continue to experience. Besides, what evolutionary "purpose" there is for near-death experiences? I don't think that has helped people to survive, thus making it stay with us through evolution. People feeling calmness and a sense of peace and love and sometimes seeing this vision of going towards a light just seems to be a completely unnecessary thing for survival because it pretty much all of the times should only happen to people who die and do not survive. Only some rare people here and there have been lucky enough to even tell about it to anyone.

I feel like stuff like that is way under-represented in real scientific researches. Actual biological physical alien encounters suffer from The Fermi Paradox and are best explained by mind-related issues. I think that if scientists should try to figure out whether outer space alien life exists and be serious about it, they should also seriously try to figure out what mind and consciousness are and whether weird experiences dealing with mind and consciousness have more going on than what it seems. Currently the only even somewhat observable thing that is linked to any sort of "ufo aliens" is stuff related to mind and consiousness. A lot more focus should be steered towards that angle by serious scientists.

I think we are able to see get some measurable results of any type of "outer space alien life" only after we figure out how consciousness and mind work and start to look at anything related to that from outer space.

 

[Corrik]

B-b-but Han Solo implied it measured time!

I do not believe so. I believe he was measuring how he did the hyperspace routes so dangerously that he shaved distance off of the run.

Going entirely on memory regarding that.



That said, I feel there is a very close to 0% chance that we are the only inhabited planet. And a just a close chance that we are the only intelligent forms of life in the universe.

 

[Agent_Carnage]

There could be advanced civilizations out there but take no notice of us as we are like cave men to them. Think about Star Trek The Federation doesnt make First Contact with a group until they get FTL tech.

 

[jason10mm]

I do not believe so. I believe he was measuring how he did the hyperspace routes so dangerously that he shaved distance off of the run.

Going entirely on memory regarding that

Well, we are going to get a definitive answer to the kesel run in just a few months, don't worry

As for alien life, I suspect that A) the evidence is all around us, we just don't know how to detect or understand the signs, and B) species that gain the ability to travel outside their solar system have also mastered population control to the point where the expansionist/imperialist examples from humanity are no longer the norm.

 

[Nintendo Switch]

The cloverfield paradox is the resolution to the Fermi Paradox. Any civilization that becomes advanced enough to try to harness infinite energy by colliding together two bosons will trigger a response from an alien civilization that will destroy them and all parallel versions of them in all timelines.

By far the best summary of the explanations of why we likely don’t find life is here...

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

It’s a must read if you haven’t and it’s a combination of all those reasons in the link.

Spoiler alert: FTL is likely impossible, but it’s not necessary to colonize an entire galaxy. Using our current speeds, and automation, we could colonize the entire Milky Way in the blink of an eye (a few million years, which is no time at all in the galactic sense).

The switch from nonalive to alive might be close to impossible and I think almost none of the planets in the Goldilocks zone even develop life, much less sentient technological life.

 

[darkinstinct]

This is basically it. The ridiculous distances involved in interstellar space travel are basically beyond human comprehension. And there just aren't that many nearby stars. There are ~250 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, and only like 12 (out of 138) stars within 20 light years distance that we have detected planets on.

No, the universe is a mountain. You only have to get one of those big drills to get to the other side fast. It's all a conspiracy to keep us from finding out religion is a scam.

 

[Indrid Cold1]

An advanced Civ communicating with earth would fuck us up. It would be an Outside Context Problem.

"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."

God I miss Iain M. Banks.

 

[Kadayi]

Interesting video. However, I'm not sure about the great filter. I just think the universe is too damn big and it takes too damn long for even light to travel across it, coupled with a fairly recent rise in technological prominence to say with certainty that no one is out there. In the grand scheme of things, we have barely been sentient for a nanosecond.

Also, the crushing reality of actual space travel beyond our solar system is an immense hurdle to overcome. Firstly from the perspective of distance and secondly from that of survival. The material resources alone in building a colony ship of any size would be a massive endeavour, let alone to engage in a crapshoot of 'go to this solar system and see if you can survive'.

We'd also have to be well down the road of deliberate genetic manipulation to empower ourselves as a species to even think about a lot of these things and right now we are a long way off from that sort of thing happening. I don't see these as insurmountable problems, but I also don't envisage them being seriously addressed anytime soon. Our more immediate focus should be on developing clean energy, introducing global stability and population control and undoing the environmental damage we have caused so we are in a better position to reach out to our immediate neighbouring planets and undertake the necessary groundwork to go beyond our solar system.

 

[TheShadowLord]

finding life, rather there are hostile or not, is good news to me. Because then we would know that really exist

 

[joshcryer]

I think that how long the dinosaur eras were, without any indication of intelligence arising, gives us the answer, and it should be kind of obvious. Apex predators are apex for one of two reasons; they are super good at killing things with their built in physical traits, or they have intelligence to be able to win every fight by using tools and their brain. I think dinosaur-like creatures are more prone to dominate because of physical traits, and small mammals that are smart and sneaky are less likely to grow larger brains to evolve intelligence.

Take out the dinos, giving the small mammals a chance to succeed, and intelligence arises. Humans were once mice-like creatures around the end of the dino era. They would've remained snack food for eons if the meteor didn't take out the dinos. The small changes in intelligence capacity for a mouse-like creature to gain an edge was absolutely inconsequential when you had these fast ass predators that could eat your whole group in seconds.

I think multiple cell families is natural, and abundant in the universe, and I think dinos are what evolve and there's no pressure for intelligence to select into existence. When, not if, but when we find life in the galaxy, our million years distant ancestors, which probably won't even be biological, they'll find planets swarmed with dinos.

 

[Koala Driving a Ferrari]

I don't have really anything more to add at this point but I've really enjoyed reading all of your posts and perspectives. I'm glad that this kind of content can exist now in OT without getting drowned out by social politics and hysteria .

 

[NiiloPielinen]

Humans are freaking scary when you think about the efforts we put into building up technology for wanton death and destruction.

This reminded me of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Damned_Trilogy

 

[Ragnaroz]

Why are we completely abandoning the possibility of there being life that isn't carbon-based?

 

[Kadayi]

I think that how long the dinosaur eras were, without any indication of intelligence arising, gives us the answer, and it should be kind of obvious. Apex predators are apex for one of two reasons; they are super good at killing things with their built in physical traits, or they have intelligence to be able to win every fight by using tools and their brain. I think dinosaur-like creatures are more prone to dominate because of physical traits, and small mammals that are smart and sneaky are less likely to grow larger brains to evolve intelligence.

Take out the dinos, giving the small mammals a chance to succeed, and intelligence arises. Humans were once mice-like creatures around the end of the dino era. They would've remained snack food for eons if the meteor didn't take out the dinos. The small changes in intelligence capacity for a mouse-like creature to gain an edge was absolutely inconsequential when you had these fast ass predators that could eat your whole group in seconds.

I think multiple cell families is natural, and abundant in the universe, and I think dinos are what evolve and there's no pressure for intelligence to select into existence. When, not if, but when we find life in the galaxy, our million years distant ancestors, which probably won't even be biological, they'll find planets swarmed with dinos.

True enough. Sharks are pretty much unchanged over hundreds of thousands of years. They're perfect apex predators. There has to be a stimulus towards advancement beyond being top of the food chain.

 

[blu]

The Great Filter is a natural extension of the idea of filters, and those are a fact of development.

An overdeveloping group of organisms (or a species) without an external corrector is bound to end its own existence.