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Aliens Are Probably Everywhere, Just Not Anywhere Nearby
rossgneumann writes If there's intelligent life in the cosmos, it's probably nowhere we can get to anytime soon. At least that's the finding of the astrobiologist who, for the first time in decades, has rendered a major update to the key formula scientists use to seek out interstellar life. That'd be the Drake equation, which was developed over half a century ago to determine where life might lurk in the universe. Using the new Kepler data, astrobiologist Amri Wandel did some calculations to estimate the density of life-bearing worlds in our corner of the universe.
I've always felt that the Drake Equation is not worthy of the term 'equation' since its just a simple probabilistic estimate from multiplying a ton of other probabilities and instances together. Consider for instance, the Schrödinger equation, which has a differential formulation that provides solutions to so many physical situations that arise in quantum mechanics, or Maxwell's equations, which explain all of electrodynamics, including light, and were the inspiration for Einstein's theory of special relativity.
The situation is very simple: The probability of all life being extinguished on Earth in the next 2 ish billion years is 100%. If we want to survive beyond that we need to get off planet. Earh is 4.5 billion year old. Talk of cost is ridiculous: I can fly from UK to US for less than one day's wages (on a good day) and I'm just a regular guy. 500 years ago it took the lifetime's savings of a wealthy man to make the same journey. It is ALL about energy. Once we have a reliable means of providing it on a sun-scale then we can do anything we want. We evolved to an understanding of relativity and quantum mechanics in a few million years, why the hell shouldn't we make a few more steps, given the same time again?
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Thought experiments are not inherently meant to not give "real answers". Galileo used a thought experiment to prove Aristotle's theory of gravity wrong. Aristotle held that heavy objects fell faster than light ones. Galileo asked us to imagine a heavy object tied to a light object by a rope. Based on Aristotle's hypothesis, tying a light object to a heavy one would make the heavy one fall slower; as the light object would naturally fall more slowly than the heavy one, it would 'hold the heavy object back' in its fall. However, also based on Aristotle's hypothesis, tying a light object to a heavy object would make the heavy object fall faster, as its mass had now been increased by the mass of the light object. Given the fact that assuming the same premise ("Heavier objects fall faster than light ones") lead to opposite conclusions, Galileo reasoned that the premise had to be false, on the basis of the foregoing thought experiment.
The prime directive does definitely apply to us. Until we become a type 1 civilization its pretty unlikely this will change, assuming there is any kind of benevolent interspecies "Federation". A lot of that (depending on the technological level of the members of that Federation) depends on where we are too, In a Star Trek sense, our experience would be much different if we lived in Federation space and the prime directive was in force on our planet (though that might not stop them from dressing up as us or using cloaking devices and studying us) than if we lived somewhere in something like the TOS version of the Klingon Empire. There are also wild card races that just don't care about everyone else's rules, like the Borg. I imagine if a type 0 planet were under attack by the Borg in federation space, the prime directive would be more out the window than it usually is when Kirk takes moral issue with it or it's implications and breaks the rules.
The fact that we are in a small galactic cluster, per typical cluster, suggests its small size has protected us from being visited or invaded. If we had evolved in a medium or large cluster, the most likely case otherwise due to density, then perhaps we'd have encountered ET's by now. ET's are less likely to visit & colonize sparse clusters because it's too far to travel for too few resources.
Copernican Principle and Anthropic Principle would suggest that some factor is involved to "keep us out" of denser clusters, where probability would otherwise place us. The boondocks are protecting us. Nobody is bothering us because we are stellar rednecks hidden in the difficult-to-reach woods.
Table-ized A.I.
Perhaps we could also work on a spaceship that instead of propelling itself through the universe, remained stationary and moved the universe around it.
A lot of people seem so incredulous at the very notion that as far as intelligent life goes (that is, an organism capable of questioning its surroundings and its very existence), human beings are "it". Many suggest that it should be mathematically improbable for such a thing, and yet in reality, we only have a sample size of 1,and have absolutely no way to know how likely such life may actually be anywhere else. Neither, of course, do we have any particular reason to conclude that we *are* actually alone in the universe, but the reality is that if such life didn't actually exist anywhere else, absolutely nothing in our world would be changed by such a revelation, if it were possible to ever know that for certain.
If uniqueness can exist in a domain like mathematics, where actual infinities can be encountered and explained, it seems vastly more likely that in a universe that is quite clearly of finite age, uniqueness would be that much more common.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'