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SETI Is 50 Years Old; No Sign of ET
EagleHasLanded writes "The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is 50 years old next month, and still no sign of intelligent alien life. Paul Davies of the Beyond Center (also Chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup) says it's time to re-think and expand the search for ET."
It's already hard enough to live on this planet without being irritated by terrestrial life. What makes you think we'll find intellient life on other planets, if we can't even find it on our own?
Just remember the most irritating person you've ever come across? What if we come in contact with aliens, only to find out they're even worse? Maybe they don't have decent indoor plumbing on their planet, and put the used toilet paper in the trash cans instead of inside the toilet?
I'm thinking that we should stay hidden.
Looks like ET's spam filter is working just fine ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Better not: they'd know that SETI is useless and a waste of money.
Can you justify that statement?
They're using subspace communications, or ansible, or ultrawave.
or semaphore...
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Well, I'm trying to find signs of intelligent life on the Earth, and I haven't been very successful either.
The Search
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Better not: they'd know that SETI is useless and a waste of money.
Can you justify that statement?
Can you justify that it isn't?
Can you justify that it isn't?
It's more fun than the lottery. Your turn.
This is a classic variation of the old standard "I'm stupid, laugh" gag.
You might think you are making fun of the silly new age nonsense, but you aren't doing a very good job of it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
That's always so odd, since from a scientific stand point we still aren't really that much closer to really understanding things like quantum entanglement or the force which causes people to believe that they're subjective reality is more real than somebody else's subjective reality.
In other news, the Untied Ants of the Cupboard have checked the entire kitchen for the most common types of pheromone trails for the last 50 seconds and found nothing. Clearly, reports of mutilation and abduction by "Humans" is just wild fantasy.
The other animals would have eaten the food from the trees before the food reached the giraffe's height. So giraffes should be extinct.
Unless ... all giraffes are aliens pretending to eat food.
> We are the First Ones.
No, actually, we're the Last Ones Standing.
See, humanity was the first race to develop time travel, in the late thirty-seventh century by your calendar, during the Third Great Intergalactic War. We knew that if we didn't act it was only a matter of time before one of the other races would develop or get ahold of the technology and use it against us. So we went ahead and sterilized the other races' homeworlds in the distant past, before they developed any significant technology. War over. We win.
Once the word of what we'd done started getting out to the civilians, there was hell to pay, of course. But as far as I'm concerned there's no question. I don't have to worry that my grandkids will be wiped out because a Xenthasi Accelerator generates a supernova and wipes out their home star system, or that some Rtulmrachan Overlord will drop a galaxy-sized black hole in their immediate neighborhood, or that the Uiola will tear down our whole local group and re-use the matter to build the Largest Entertainment Mall in the Universe. We won.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
WHOOSH!
Our technology is too primitive, our cultures are backward. Our population is xenophobic and militaristic in varying degrees. One would have to be insane
to give cultures like that faster than light travel or even travel at near light speed. On its face it would seem we have nothing to offer these aliens, youd be wrong.
At first the idea of slaves but robots can do the job cheaper and faster.
Then the idea hit me...soldiers. If youre a wealthy interstellar civilization with enemies or just really bad pest problems...why not use humans,
they breed themselves, cheap to feed and lets humans see the galaxy. The aliens would not have to enslave humans, theyd just offer ultra
tech toys and cool ray guns and youd have plenty of volunteers.
That assumes there is anything out capable of even listening. Life, and consequently intelligence, could well be unique to this planet, for we have yet to even find an exoplanet with the right conditions. The sheer number of known variables that must coalesce before eukaryotes can exist is staggering, let alone thinking about those unknown factors. I have a sinking feeling life isn't quite as abundant as we presume it to be.
We should probably name this.
Let's call them... "Reapers."
Have you even seen what octopuses have done to Japanese schoolgirls?
Yeah. 'Nuff said.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
It costs more than a dollar.
How does rehashing the Mass Effect storyline get modded as +4 Insightful?
Whales are not as intelligent as you may have been led to believe
Whales (toothed whales in particular) are among the most intelligent animals known. A possible 2nd to humans even.
in fact quite the opposite
Very wrong! The simplest whales have about the same mental capacity as a dog (which is nowhere near dumb on the scale of animal intelligence).
...ask any marine biologist.
When you ask a marine biologist for information; make sure his last name isn't Costanza.
outside our world means we have given up on our world. Just enjoy your life, as technology is accelerating and soon we will move too fast and become a Black Hole which, by the way, are other civilizations enjoying the orgasm of technology and ending. The universe does not allow systems so knowledgeable that they can traverse space. A society powerful enough to travel would know all answers to everything instantly and that is its death knell. Its the Fermi paradox sorta. So looking for life is a belief system that is irrelevant like trying to beat our own lives. Might as well enjoy life, try to save the coral reefs.......
Don't you mean "[cetacean needed]"?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
When they start keeping us a pets and making us do tricks for their amusement, then we can talk.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Whales are not as intelligent as you may have been led to believe, in fact quite the opposite...ask any marine biologist."
Japanese marine biologists?
They think they are more tasty than intelligent.
Of course dolphins are more intelligent than us: we've achieved so much (wars, the wheel, and so on), while all the dolphins have done is muck about in the water having a good time.
I am officially gone from