You've totally missed the point. It is not about them seeing us, but us seeing them. Just one of countless them. If all technological civilisations died out within a few hundred years and did not spread, that would be an answer.
Its easy to hate if you completely misunderstand something. First, lets agree that "paradox" is not the technically correct word.
It is not about physical visiting, and does not depend on the nature of the typical aliens. Earth could well be surrounded by numerous alien space probes, watching us from distant orbits, without us seeing them.
The idea is that the galaxy is so mind-numbingly big, and square that for stars in the observable universe, that even if only one in a billion stars gave rise to intelligent life and technology, the universe would be teeming with life. Even if 99% managed to stay silent, we would expect to see some.
But we see nothing. No radio pollution, no communication signals, no rocket exhausts. So advanced technological societies must be incredibly rare. That may mean they do not last long. For us to observe another civilisation at the same level as us, it would have to be very close. Maybe the galaxy has had thousands or millions of such civilisations, but they just don't last long.
Consider, we already have the technology for large interstellar probes. It is just a bit expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Soon we should have the technology to detect such nuclear rockets a vast distance away.
> the long harsh winter of Europe... led to major technological break throughs
Colder climates are associated with higher average intelligence, but not with historical breakthroughs. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus valley, Greece... not exactly snowbound. The cold places were sparsely populated with barbarians such as Mongols and vikings. Not known for science and technology until the last few centuries, starting with England.
in the U.S., having received a transfusion in Britain is a lifetime ban on donating blood, due to a certain prion disease that hit Britain pretty hard a few decades ago.
In Australia, just having lived in the UK back then will bet you a lifetime ban on donating blood. It has been twenty years and I'm fine..... MMMMooooooooooo!
presuming that all lifeforms will consist of the exact same elements that we do. Can't see any problem with that methodology.
Sounds like you cannot see the reasons for it either. It is a reasonable presumption that *most* life will use the same simple elements that earth-life does, and so that is what we should be looking for. There are other theoretical chemistries or more exotic bases for self-replicating things, but they would be far more difficult to begin.
Silicon chips don't self-assemble, even over billions of years and planets. Water has some very special properties not shared by other simple, common chemicals found in the universe. Carbon is a simple and common element that can make long chains. Organic life is built from the simplest and most common elements that can do the job. We should expect amino acids to be common where there is life. Possibly DNA, but not the same base pairs.
I know we only have a sample of one, but given that it is a result of billions of years of natural selection, it is likely to be the easiest, most common one. And the most common type of life is likely orders of magnitude more common than the next.
Take women in the work force. Assuming men and women are relatively equal then picking the top 1% of N samples will produce an inferior team than the top 0.5% of 2N samples.
There is a problem with your assumption. Even where men and women are almost equal on average, men can be strongly over-represented at both the top and bottom extremes. So picking the top 30% while excluding women may be very bad, while if you only want the top 1%, it may make little difference. Google has found this with hiring engineers, and is feeling guilt.
The power does not flow the other way, it flows the same way.
That's not an argument, it is a contradiction. Try reading again. thegarbs was quite clear. The houses being fed by a particular pole-top transformer are collectively generating more electricity than they are consuming. Presumably in the middle of a workday when few people are home.
You're discounting the possibility that moving from single-celled to multi-celled life IS the Great Filter.
I think you misread. I said that the move to "complex" life may be the most likely known possible great filter.
But "multi-celled" is definitely not it. Life went from single to multi-cell many times independently. "Complex" life refers to eukaryotes (plant & animal cells), as compared to bacteria.
The other problem is...
There is way more to it that that, AC. Go read if you are interested. All those obvious points have been addresses many times.
If you would be sure about the 90-95% efficiently then there would be no need to be "leaning towards" the infeasibility of doubling that efficiency, isn't it?
What do you call it when a human can't pass the Turing test?
The moon makes more sense because it is close enough
Distance does not matter much. Space travel is all about the delta-V, and getting to Mars is not so much harder than the Moon, since you can use aero-braking. Getting back from Mars is much harder than getting back from the moon, but that is because of the higher gravity far more than the distance.
Seems unlikely at this point. For the great filter to be ahead of us, they'd need evidence of complex civilizations
No, anything that eliminates the best candidate for the Great Filter being behind us (ie the development of complex life), increases the chance that the Great filter is ahead of us.
But there is no point worrying, as there is nothing we can do. If there was even a 1% chance of our greatest minds finding a way around a filter, it would not be the great filter.
The discovery of simple life would be minor bad news. Many scientists expect that simple life is common in the galaxy.
But it took a billion years for the first complex cells to appear, and this is our best chance at explaining why we don't see any other intelligent life out there, without concluding that they all destroyed themselves before they could spread between stars, or even send their machines.
We are getting very close to that point now, so we really want the Great Filter to be behind us. Finding complex life on Europa, even microscopic ones, would tell us we as a species are totally fucked.
In Unix, tar does not allow leading "/" or "../" in paths unless over-ridden with the "--absolute-names" option. Is Zip not the same? Seems kind of obvious, but apparently some library writers forgot.
I'd have thought rather than just looking for such characters in a pathname, the restriction would be enforced by a chroot or other mechanism. No?
Slashdot Mirror
the very best shave from a razor with twelve blades
Yes, we all got the reference before you explained it, thanks.
Its probably because interstellar travel given the distances is involved is nearly impossible to do
It is quite possible if you don't mind taking decades to nearby stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Such probes could report from most of the galaxy within a million years.
That's under 125 years ago.
You've totally missed the point. It is not about them seeing us, but us seeing them. Just one of countless them.
If all technological civilisations died out within a few hundred years and did not spread, that would be an answer.
I've always hated the Fermi Paradox .
Its easy to hate if you completely misunderstand something. First, lets agree that "paradox" is not the technically correct word.
It is not about physical visiting, and does not depend on the nature of the typical aliens. Earth could well be surrounded by numerous alien space probes, watching us from distant orbits, without us seeing them.
The idea is that the galaxy is so mind-numbingly big, and square that for stars in the observable universe, that even if only one in a billion stars gave rise to intelligent life and technology, the universe would be teeming with life. Even if 99% managed to stay silent, we would expect to see some.
But we see nothing. No radio pollution, no communication signals, no rocket exhausts. So advanced technological societies must be incredibly rare. That may mean they do not last long. For us to observe another civilisation at the same level as us, it would have to be very close. Maybe the galaxy has had thousands or millions of such civilisations, but they just don't last long.
Consider, we already have the technology for large interstellar probes. It is just a bit expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Soon we should have the technology to detect such nuclear rockets a vast distance away.
> the long harsh winter of Europe ... led to major technological break throughs
Colder climates are associated with higher average intelligence, but not with historical breakthroughs. ... not exactly snowbound.
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus valley, Greece
The cold places were sparsely populated with barbarians such as Mongols and vikings. Not known for science and technology until the last few centuries, starting with England.
And then there are the wild animals that die of starvation, freezing, disease, etc..
That was normal for humans too until recently. Until well into civilisation, made possible by farming, and using domesticated animals.
I realize that was probably a joke, but people say some crazy shit about PETA sometimes...
Sadly, a lot of the crazy shit is true.
in the U.S., having received a transfusion in Britain is a lifetime ban on donating blood, due to a certain prion disease that hit Britain pretty hard a few decades ago.
In Australia, just having lived in the UK back then will bet you a lifetime ban on donating blood.
It has been twenty years and I'm fine..... MMMMooooooooooo!
presuming that all lifeforms will consist of the exact same elements that we do.
Can't see any problem with that methodology.
Sounds like you cannot see the reasons for it either.
It is a reasonable presumption that *most* life will use the same simple elements that earth-life does, and so that is what we should be looking for.
There are other theoretical chemistries or more exotic bases for self-replicating things, but they would be far more difficult to begin.
Silicon chips don't self-assemble, even over billions of years and planets. Water has some very special properties not shared by other simple, common chemicals found in the universe. Carbon is a simple and common element that can make long chains. Organic life is built from the simplest and most common elements that can do the job. We should expect amino acids to be common where there is life. Possibly DNA, but not the same base pairs.
I know we only have a sample of one, but given that it is a result of billions of years of natural selection, it is likely to be the easiest, most common one.
And the most common type of life is likely orders of magnitude more common than the next.
Take women in the work force. Assuming men and women are relatively equal then picking the top 1% of N samples will produce an inferior team than the top 0.5% of 2N samples.
There is a problem with your assumption. Even where men and women are almost equal on average, men can be strongly over-represented at both the top and bottom extremes. So picking the top 30% while excluding women may be very bad, while if you only want the top 1%, it may make little difference. Google has found this with hiring engineers, and is feeling guilt.
Probably true. But sadly given the history of the CIA we can never be quite sure.
The exploding cigars for Castro story sounds hard to believe too.
The proposed Space Force will look quite silly, if they don't have any spacecraft. Kinda sorta like a navy without any ships.
or like the New Zealand Air Force.
I reach for my Jordan Peterson podcast.
they "found" some kiddie-porn oh his computer.
The message is clear: don't fuck with the CIA.
He is lucky he did not end up like Michael Hastings. yet.
I am Satoshi Nakamoto!
Its spent 6 months in hibernation, and is woken up now to prepare for the fly past that is still more than 6 months away?
Maybe it is running Windows 10, and has a few hundred megabytes of forced updates before it will boot? The bandwidth is poor out there. But the lag!
The power does not flow the other way, it flows the same way.
That's not an argument, it is a contradiction. Try reading again. thegarbs was quite clear.
The houses being fed by a particular pole-top transformer are collectively generating more electricity than they are consuming. Presumably in the middle of a workday when few people are home.
You're discounting the possibility that moving from single-celled to multi-celled life IS the Great Filter.
I think you misread. I said that the move to "complex" life may be the most likely known possible great filter.
But "multi-celled" is definitely not it. Life went from single to multi-cell many times independently. "Complex" life refers to eukaryotes (plant & animal cells), as compared to bacteria.
The other problem is ...
There is way more to it that that, AC. Go read if you are interested. All those obvious points have been addresses many times.
If you would be sure about the 90-95% efficiently then there would be no need to be "leaning towards" the infeasibility of doubling that efficiency, isn't it?
What do you call it when a human can't pass the Turing test?
The moon makes more sense because it is close enough
Distance does not matter much. Space travel is all about the delta-V, and getting to Mars is not so much harder than the Moon, since you can use aero-braking.
Getting back from Mars is much harder than getting back from the moon, but that is because of the higher gravity far more than the distance.
Seems unlikely at this point. For the great filter to be ahead of us, they'd need evidence of complex civilizations
No, anything that eliminates the best candidate for the Great Filter being behind us (ie the development of complex life), increases the chance that the Great filter is ahead of us.
But there is no point worrying, as there is nothing we can do. If there was even a 1% chance of our greatest minds finding a way around a filter, it would not be the great filter.
The discovery of simple life would be minor bad news. Many scientists expect that simple life is common in the galaxy.
But it took a billion years for the first complex cells to appear, and this is our best chance at explaining why we don't see any other intelligent life out there, without concluding that they all destroyed themselves before they could spread between stars, or even send their machines.
We are getting very close to that point now, so we really want the Great Filter to be behind us. Finding complex life on Europa, even microscopic ones, would tell us we as a species are totally fucked.
unless you live in Oceania
I do live in Oceania, mate. Bloody yanks.
... so I'm leaning towards a "no" answer.
Well that would be silly. Try re-parsing that sentence in a way than makes more sense. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Have some parentheses:
> In Unix, tar does not allow (leading "/") or ("../" in paths) .
In Unix, tar does not allow leading "/" or "../" in paths unless over-ridden with the "--absolute-names" option.
Is Zip not the same? Seems kind of obvious, but apparently some library writers forgot.
I'd have thought rather than just looking for such characters in a pathname, the restriction would be enforced by a chroot or other mechanism. No?