Hold a grain of sand at arms length......

Well there are two teeny tiny problems with this argument:

• The Fermi Paradox is not about why other civilizations can't hear/see us, it's about why we can't detect their existence.
• It is based on the assumption we're the first intelligent species in the galaxy to invent radio. A civilization with only a 200,000 year head start on us would already be piping their obnoxious hip hop all across the galaxy. Theoretically the SETI radio telescopes would be detecting at least some of that. In a galaxy this big it wouldn't be surprising for a civilization to have a billion year head start on us.

That being said, the combination of time and distance are such that it is possible civilizations are simply playing phone tag. Civilization A calls out for several hundred thousand years before they go extinct while Civilization B is still figuring out the mysteries of making a better flint knife. By the time civilization B is blasting evidence of their existence into space, civilization C is just learning how to harness fire.

 

One of my favorite short stories ever: They're Made Out Of Meat

 

Another one of my favorite short stories: Radio Silence

 

If you really wanna have your mind blown about what we know and don't know about the universe, based on our perceptive abilities, check out the Lex Fridman interview of Donald Hoffman. I put it in the Youtube thread. I'm only 7 minutes into it, and my little pea-brain is struggling to grasp the concepts that this guy is putting forward. TLDR: Our perceptive abilities exist for the sole purpose of allowing us to reproduce before we die. Everything we know and understand is limited by what natural selection has allowed us to perceive, given our function in life. Viewed in this light, its easy to see that what we can observe and understand of what is around us, is extremely limited.

 

This is basically exactly what I was saying from the other side of the observation.

Can a civilization last 100K, or 200K years with nuclear power? Can you develop human level intelligence part and parcel with ant-like selflessness? It would almost have to be a singular world government, which opens up cans of worms that can not be discussed here, but even to get to that point, we have been FRIGHTENINGLY close to nuclear annihilation on at least two occasions that are public knowledge. Google Stanislov Petrov 1983 if you want to have bad dreams tonight! How many more times have we been a finger-twitch away from oblivion that we don't know about?

Seems that SETI should stop looking for ET phoned home and start looking for ET blew himself the fuck up.

My own personal thought is that ET is ubiquitous, but mostly limited to sub-ice oceans on moons of gas giants. Gas giants maintain enough thermal & kinetic energy in their core to maintain a magnetic field that protects life on their moons from solar & cosmic radiation bombardment. There's probably basic life on Europa right now, and likely Titan & Enceladus as well... but Europa I'd bet the farm on it. To get a goldilocks planet here in this solar system that has a stable enough orbit and axis of rotation took a pretty damned unique event. An outside observer would consider the Earth/moon as a double planet. Theia crashing into protoEarth at the exact angle it did and depositing its heavy elements while knocking off enough of the protoEarth's lighter crust, yet enough heavy elements to coalesce into the Moon is very much a mathematical anomaly. That is what has allowed an Earth-sized goldilocks zone planet to maintain a magnetic field and thus an atmosphere AND the stable orbit our phase-locked moon provides. If we didn't have a moon, what is equator today could be pole in 10000 years. WAAAYYY too unstable for advanced life to evolve.

We're unique, to be sure, but with trillions of chances, Earth has surely happened elsewhere.

Sorry if this rambled. I had a rough day. I had to finish off a rabbit that one of my customers' dogs had mortally wounded, but not killed outright. I'm 2 OldFo & 7s in right now and probably should activate my keyboard's onboard breathalyser.

 

Ha! That one's better than the meat, which was pretty funny.

 

Yeah. Copper doesn't seem like the way to go for long term implants.

 

Ever seen the movie "Europa Report"?

 

I did. It's what you get when you cross Blair Witch Project with Space Odyssey 2001.

 

That’s why we invented things like telescopes. And microscopes. And computer processor… etc add nauseam. I listened to that podcast. I’m subscribed to LF’s podcast…. everyone he has in his shows are great. Even the people who attempt to make a case for Marxism badly (except for one). With that being said Donald Hoffman was great but he made a straw man case for the limits of human cognitive ability in regards to our need to understand. Since before we stopped needing to spend all day hunting and eating we’ve been looking up at the stars and wondering about what all this is. I believe that is an intrinsic part of who we are. do we have limitations? Yes… but we are now quite good at recognizing those limitations with the scientific method and establishing protocols and inventing things to push beyond those limits. obviously not everyone can step outside of themselves and try desperately to be as objective as possible, but some can. I fucking idolize minds like Isaac newton, Stephen hawking, Neil’s Bott, max plank.

 

That bad, huh?

 

I was just noodling.... no wine involved... if we could launch a space telescope and send it on its way, on a tangent away from earth, at a speed greater than the speed of light, it could theoretically observe the earth as it leaves, seeing the earth's past. As it got further and further away from the earth, it would be observing further back in earth's past. Crazy!

 

But if it is going faster than the speed of light, wouldn't it have to look in the other direction to see the light that it is catching up with?

 

Fack me.... I guess it would need to stop or slow down to sub-lightspeed periodically to observe. Maybe loop around another sun a few times.

 

This sounds more like acid/mushrooms than wine for sure.

 

No it wouldn’t, it would most likely be obverving earths future….hear me out…

Let’s say (optimistically) you’re traveling 10 to the 5th into space… light travels at 10 to the 9th. The light would be traveling past you faster than you’re traveling through space. Also time slows as you approach the speed of light for the outside world by your reference point and tada! Any light you observe from earth after you stop moving at speed will be in Earth’s FUTURE light cone. That’s not even taking into account any time dilation from gravitational lensing along your journey.

Feel free to explode your brain now

 

The problem with that is the speed of light is the same irrespective of your reference point

 

but the passage of time is not. It can stretch and squeeze based on your reference at speed or mass.

 

There is no spoon....

 

You guys lost me. Dorks.