of course a :ukkk: scientist would imagine that a sufficiently advanced civilization could only want to exploit and destroy other people they see as somehow lesser beings
I don't like Dark Forest theory, and we're unlikely to ever see alien life, so I don't really care all that much to change my mind... if aliens come they'll be cool space communists, and that's my headcanon
there needs to a civilization within reasonable range, since radio waves weaken exponentially (meaning that the further away a civilization is, the stronger^2 the signal needs to be)
the time that they emit radio must overlap with the amount of lightyears far away they are ago
the signal must not look like noise
we need to be listening in that direction and be explicitly looking for an alien signal
Nobody likes noisy neighbours.
If you want to contact me ring my doorbell. Don't blast Metallica loudly and expect me to understand that you ordered the songs to spell out 'can we borrow your lawnmower?'.
The universe is 13.7 billion years old.
Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and 1 billion years later the first life forms evolved.
The first Hominids evolved about 2 million years ago, modern Humans 300 thousand years ago. 12000 years ago we developed agriculture. Humans invented the radio in 1890, 132 years ago.
So humans have had the ability to transmit radio waves for 1% of the time we've had agriculture. Humans have had agricultural civilization for only 4% of our species existence. We as a aspecies have only existed for 0.086% of the time life has existed on earth. And life on earth itself has only been around for 26% of the universe's existance.
Even if we assume that life began at roughly the same point everywhere in the universe compared to earth( which is a huge assumption), that still leaves a huge margin for other civilizations on other planets to have evolved, progressed, and died out, long before we even evolved.
The odds that another planet developed sapient life which progressed to a technologically equivalent or superior level to humans at the same exact time that we did is incredibly unlikely, which I think is a far simpler explanation than the dark forest theory.
Edit: forgot to move the decimal over when converting to percentages lmao. Fixed now. Its still exceptionally unlikely, but the numbers I had were way off
that still leaves a huge margin for other civilizations on other planets to have evolved, progressed, and died out, long before we even evolved.
That's what Hawking argues, but his guess for why they're dying out is someone else nukes them when they detected.
The same math makes one wonder why aliens aren't here already.
There's billions of stars within a few thousand lightyears. If one of those stars was similar to earth, but cooled just 1% faster, they'd have had a million years to spread out or leave some kind of mark on the galactic neighborhood.
Our society is a dark forrest society. Even if we knew there were hostile aliens out there we would still be a bigger threat to ourselves than aliens would.
Have to also consider the very earth centric attitude of the Dark Forest theory assumptions.
Earth is all we've known, and it's so perfect (though we ruin it daily). It has the right atmospheric mixture. The right gravity. The right seasons and rotation. All becuase we originated here. And even then we have to live near water because our biology demands it.
So alien comes along, sees earth, probably recoils at it as we might to Venus. Our earth would have a terrible unbreathable atmospheric mixture, gravity too high or low. If they were explorers of some kind motivated as some of us are the emotive desire to discover, they might examine it a bit. If they were conquerers motivated as some of us are by desires of posession and domination, then they may still pass it by cause of the extreme difficulties in holding a location incompatible to their life form as a colonial state.
But, it makes good fiction. There was a book series call The Tripods. Had that situation where the aliens couldn't live in our atmosphere, invaded anyway.
You know now that I think of it, most of the alien invasion literature and movies are from the major colonial powers of the past couple centuries. US and UK. Since a lot of other country has had to live invasion and occupation it probably isn't a popular topic in fiction. But we do it as either a kind of subconcious self reflection, since it rarely seems to be actual self critique, or an ackowledgement we do it and what if the bigger bully comes around and does it to us?
of course a :ukkk: scientist would imagine that a sufficiently advanced civilization could only want to exploit and destroy other people they see as somehow lesser beings
I don't like Dark Forest theory, and we're unlikely to ever see alien life, so I don't really care all that much to change my mind... if aliens come they'll be cool space communists, and that's my headcanon
:posadas:
What's your preferred explanation for why we don't hear any alien broadcasts?
there's a few limiting factors
Nobody likes noisy neighbours. If you want to contact me ring my doorbell. Don't blast Metallica loudly and expect me to understand that you ordered the songs to spell out 'can we borrow your lawnmower?'.
I think it's because they are much more principled than me and believe that broadcasting is a form of posting, and thus counterproductive
sorry comrade, I just don't give this a lot of thought haha the other comments cover most of the counterarguments I like, much better than I could!
deleted by creator
The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and 1 billion years later the first life forms evolved. The first Hominids evolved about 2 million years ago, modern Humans 300 thousand years ago. 12000 years ago we developed agriculture. Humans invented the radio in 1890, 132 years ago.
So humans have had the ability to transmit radio waves for 1% of the time we've had agriculture. Humans have had agricultural civilization for only 4% of our species existence. We as a aspecies have only existed for 0.086% of the time life has existed on earth. And life on earth itself has only been around for 26% of the universe's existance.
Even if we assume that life began at roughly the same point everywhere in the universe compared to earth( which is a huge assumption), that still leaves a huge margin for other civilizations on other planets to have evolved, progressed, and died out, long before we even evolved.
The odds that another planet developed sapient life which progressed to a technologically equivalent or superior level to humans at the same exact time that we did is incredibly unlikely, which I think is a far simpler explanation than the dark forest theory.
Edit: forgot to move the decimal over when converting to percentages lmao. Fixed now. Its still exceptionally unlikely, but the numbers I had were way off
That's what Hawking argues, but his guess for why they're dying out is someone else nukes them when they detected.
The same math makes one wonder why aliens aren't here already. There's billions of stars within a few thousand lightyears. If one of those stars was similar to earth, but cooled just 1% faster, they'd have had a million years to spread out or leave some kind of mark on the galactic neighborhood.
Our society is a dark forrest society. Even if we knew there were hostile aliens out there we would still be a bigger threat to ourselves than aliens would.
if we met aliens our first response would be to try and borrow money and the communist aliens would think we're really stupid
Have to also consider the very earth centric attitude of the Dark Forest theory assumptions.
Earth is all we've known, and it's so perfect (though we ruin it daily). It has the right atmospheric mixture. The right gravity. The right seasons and rotation. All becuase we originated here. And even then we have to live near water because our biology demands it.
So alien comes along, sees earth, probably recoils at it as we might to Venus. Our earth would have a terrible unbreathable atmospheric mixture, gravity too high or low. If they were explorers of some kind motivated as some of us are the emotive desire to discover, they might examine it a bit. If they were conquerers motivated as some of us are by desires of posession and domination, then they may still pass it by cause of the extreme difficulties in holding a location incompatible to their life form as a colonial state.
But, it makes good fiction. There was a book series call The Tripods. Had that situation where the aliens couldn't live in our atmosphere, invaded anyway.
You know now that I think of it, most of the alien invasion literature and movies are from the major colonial powers of the past couple centuries. US and UK. Since a lot of other country has had to live invasion and occupation it probably isn't a popular topic in fiction. But we do it as either a kind of subconcious self reflection, since it rarely seems to be actual self critique, or an ackowledgement we do it and what if the bigger bully comes around and does it to us?