Obvious to me is the issue of timing. We tend to think of things on human scales of time - which are incredibly small compared to the age of the universe or even our own planet.
The fact that we haven't observed other civilizations is like a scene from American Dad the other night where Stan was looking for an ex-KGB agent by zooming in on different cities on the planet from a spy satellite and focusing on individual random people and comparing them to a snapshot he had.
Stan probably has a much, much, much better chance of finding his guy this way than we do of finding advanced alien civilization in the universe by pointing a radio telescope at different parts of the sky.
Why? Well without writing an entire dissertation on the matter, it seems that there would be a narrow window - relative to geologic or galactic time - during which a civilization would be communicating as we do now. We certainly don't know everything about physics, and I find it likely that more "advanced" forms of communication will eventually be discovered. The point being, even with let's say a 100,000 year window during which a civilization is "broadcasting" - we would have to be right now within that window of time during which we could receive signals from the distance from where they were then in the universe to where we are now - and we'd have to be pointing at the right place - and we'd have to be listening in the right way.
I don't know enough about it, but it seems that fairly low power transmissions such as used for communications would be easily attenuated or distorted by things moving around the universe in between them and us.
So basically, take all the directions in which there are or were stars, multiply that by the small window of time a civilization would be on a frequency that we're listening on, and possibly throw in a muck factor for attenuation and distortion and - well, it's a long shot.
I might add that it's a longer shot to believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe. The likelihood of that is so infinitessimally small that it's more likely I'll spontaneously grow wings by some random genetic mutations within the next 2 months after suggesting it.
It seems like every once in a while an article comes out debating the existence of intelligent alien life and you follow all the response threads and they go on and on…debating this point or that. Of course there is not enough data to make any significant conclusion, and someone writes another article about the same subject next year.
So to sumarize my understanding, the subtle difference this time is that the author hopes that we don’t find life on Mars for fear that there is a Great-mysterious-Filter, worse, that it may be in our future, and because of the Fermi paradox it will filter out our very right to existence. I think that’s basically what he is saying in a nut shell, aside from a nice level of detail he has added.
For now, let’s suppose he is right. In fact, I will go so far as to say that that very filter might be the technological singularity, what I’m calling an extinction singularity. That we might have gotten an early warning taste of it with MAD, which might still do us in. Or a further taste with Global Warming.
Then other possibilities such as natural or engineered virus, runaway nano-replication, planetary impact, gamma ray sterilization, future nanowar or some such (strike the alien invasion, unless your from Hollywood, I don't believe that senario is feasible, but what I say next can even help us deal with it, even if it comes to past).
So we have this idea about a Lunar Ark, Doomsday Ark, Life Boat Foundation, whatever, etc. Some way to bootstrap the human species back up again after a catastrophe or self-destructive/accidental event. Sounds like we need to build one… don’t you think? Singularity Insurance? Extinction Insurance?
Sounds like some sort of smarter version of us out there, an alien intelligence might have already built one. Now that we are beginning to understand our own DNA programming, we might need to begin a self directed re-engineering campaign.
Yes, I said it, we need to engineer out our evolutionary self destructive tendencies and keep the inventive, explorative, inquisitive traits intact, or at the very least learn how to switch them on and off.
Again maybe not, there is another possibility, maybe we need to digitize humanity. Turn ourselves inward, into internal virtual worlds, were our destructive behaviors can’t amount to any real harm (maybe thats already happening). I’m not going to turn this into a twilight zone and suggest we might already be in one of those, sorry too many matrix reruns.
Do you think maybe the smarter aliens might have re-engineered themselves too? Did they integrate themselves with AI’s they built, build nanomachine Microstarships, virally seeding out into the galaxy with fast-as-lightspeed receiver stations on the other side. So maybe they only transmit themselves now at certain star systems which have a galactic node installed and don’t bother transmitting anything to any other stars… hm that’s an idea! Would we recognize a nano civilization if we saw it? Could we ever recieve a digitally, redundant encoded alien being via light or radio waves, with instructions on how to rez it? I know bad episode of Species.
Well as you can see, one can go on and on about it, but that Extinction Insurance idea, that’s now beginning to sound almost as important as SETI, maybe we really should seriously start looking into that.
Tranhumans, Posthumans, AI-integrated world size group minds, who really knows what we are going to be when humanity makes it to the stars, it’s the journey that transforms us. We are the Fermi Paradox. What I mean is it defines us at this very moment. We are stuggling to understand if there is anything like us out there and we only have ourselves for a reference. So I personally hope we do find some kind of life on Mars, it gives me hope. I'm excited to be living in this time. And if we eventually destory ourselves, then we didn't have the right stuff, did we? But if we become something better or different, then maybe we will live long enough to know there are others out there and we are not alone. And at some point in their past they were thinking the same things. My thanks to the great Carl Sagan...Contact
For those who want to suppose more, I have a free book online... webmac.com I return you to regular programming.
There could be a filter ahead of us, but I still believe we are more in the same situation as the one of the ancient Inca civilization in the year 1200 before the arrival of the Spanish. This means that we have a clear interest to accelerate our infant steps of space colonization so as to at least be on several of the planets in our solar system. This would already make us stronger against a potent invader. In the same time, we should also prepare to fain alliances with other powers in order to create fears of retaliations to would be invaders. In fact not only is life likely to be plentiful but so is intelligent life and civilizations. Enrico Fermi was wrong when he said, “where are they” as much as a year 1200 Inca would have been wrong if saying, “where are they”. It just happens that we are lucky enough to have escaped contemporary encounter up to now. To understand why, one just has to realize that the universe is a really very big place and that the distances are enormous. It is also important to understand that other civilizations are asking themselves the same questions. On of those is simply “is it not to dangerous to take the risk to expand in someone else’s space region”. In fact, in our own history we have already witnessed such situations. The Roman Empire did not go under because of decay in the first place but because they started to encounter fear of expanding further in unknown and hostile territory. They retreated behind the Rhine river and never dared venture beyond the Sahara or across the Atlantic. In a similar way, we probably don’t know that there are already established force equilibriums between many rival civilizations out there. They are at peace, they are at war, but somehow they know limits to their space territories and thus don’t venture beyond. This is not a set situation but it means that infinite expansion and thus ultimately our encounter is not a valid data. They fight, make treaties, have fear, expand and refrain just like us. All in all, we just happen to have had the chance to be in one of the following situations. 1) We are at a no-man’s-land border area between two competing civilization and none of them dare to provoke the other by going further towards the other ones territory. This would place our solar system in a kind of border area. 2) They compete on positions that are different from ours and neglect us in the process. 3) They know we are there but have no interest in our planet. This would make us a kind of lost island in the middle of the Pacific. 4) They know we are there but as civilized beings, they observe evolved rules forbidding interacting with native civilizations. This would make us like the Adaman island people that are on Indian territory but are protected by preservation laws. 5) They don’t know we are there and watch out if they come. This is making us like the Incas. 6) They don’t know we are there and when they will find us, they will establish a reserve for us. This would make us like the Navajo Indians. 7) They know we are there but simply live in other physical conditions that are not present on our planet. This would mean they could be present on Titan because there is liquid methane but they fear our overheated planet where their methane made body fluids would evaporate. In the mean time, they effectively prevent any other civilization from entering our solar system by shooting them down. We are then like fish in a garden pound. 8) They know we are there but simply wait because they know that the nuclear age filter indeed wipes out most civilizations and that it will be simpler to install themselves once we have self-extinct. We are then like the lemmings of Lapland. 9) They don’t know we are there and we will soon have the fantastic bonanza of falling on a good intentioned helping civilization that will help us improve ourselves. We would be like Hawaiians that became Americans and received centuries of technology all at once. 10) They have been here, but went away a long time ago. We are then living in an abandoned village not even knowing it. Our most likely encounter would be with ancient alien relics like in the movie “Total recall”. 11) They know we are there but don’t have interest in us because we are so backwards and potentially aggressive; in more they have to obey rules that forbid native killing. We are like 1950 Borneo or Papua New Guinea. 12) They are there, but misguided by our recent technological progress we underestimate the difficulty (impossibility) of long distance travel. We would wrongly expect our present trend of improvements to go on indefinitely while in reality, we would be at the brink of tech-stagnation and further progress would simply not be possible for realistic long distance travel.
For sure, other possible scenarios or combination of scenarios can be found but these 12 give an idea of possible reasons why we think they aren’t there.
Of course, there remains the possibility that one of the filters is simply evolved intelligence to the point of that of humans. Perhaps monkey brain is frequent but the little extra that makes a human is just rare.
Or else it could be that the Lemming effect is universal and actually is the filter that the author fears. In that case, we will multiply on our planet to the point that we have consumed all our resources, find ourselves starving in all the senses, on food as well as on basic resources, die out for most of us and restart on a lower level of civilization until we finally go extinct like so many other species before us on this planet and thus so too on the others.
Although those scenarios are also possible, I doubt that and really believe, we are in one of the 12 others described above.
Actually, we are the Spaniards and not the Incans.
Everyone posting here seems to have the idea that if there is intelligent life, the rise of science is inevitable. It is not. It is very unlikely.
To see this, consider that science arose on earth only once, in Western culture. In no other culture did it arise -- yes, I know, the PC crowd will scream at me -- and even in the West it was a long process that could have been derailed for any number of reasons at any point along the way.
As Western culture (beginning with the Greeks) encountered other cultures, it never encountered a culture that was superior to it in science. No one else had axiomatized geometry, for example. My distant ancestors in northern Europe (the Vikings, etc.) had done nothing significant in science. The West's encounters with other cultures can be seen as models for our own future encounters with aliens. We will find that they won't have any science.
And why is science so unlikely? The rise of science has many cultural and intellectual barriers facing it. For example, to engage in science, a culture needs to be able to tolerate criticism of the supernatural explanations it gives for natural phenomena, and not many cultures are going to allow that. Even today, there are still plenty of people in the world who find it dismaying.
As for intellectual barriers, consider that in Plato's "Phaedo," Socrates asks how the number 10 can be bigger than 8 because of something smaller, namely the number 2. "How can something be bigger because of something smaller?" This barrier seems so insignificant to us that we find it hard to believe that there ever was such a barrier, yet many such barriers existed. There were so many that even the Greeks did not quite get science exactly right, and it took another two thousand years for it to emerge.
In short, the earth got lucky. Science somehow arose here, despite all the odds against its doing so. But on most planets, science won't arise. We will go to these planets and find Incans. We will find intelligent beings, yes, but we will not find any that will develop science.
The ancient greeks probably had interesting ideas about the special mindset necessary for the development of science and philosophy, in contrast to the sort of instrumental intelligence favored by darwinian processes. Here a fascinating study:
"Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society." http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/MNGT5590/dv.htm
On an analog concept in ancient china: "Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece." http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1993/04.05.36.html http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=1948
A very interesting essay of Yuri I. Manin on that topic is reprinted in: http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780821843314
Well the article mentions Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question to his colleagues, but it fails to mention that the question was actually answered. The answer by the other physicists was that the Aliens are already on Earth, and blending in with the rest of the people. They call themselves Hungarians. Their alien IQ seems to be proven by a very large number of prodigies who changed the world, which stands in contrast to the very small size of the Hungarian nation.
PS - You think the Neumann probe was some random accidental insight? Muhahahahaaa...
As a Hungarian living in Australia, I can confirm that yes, we are aliens. Our strange ways of thinking and weird sense of humour sets us apart. But the most important distinguishing factor is the extraordinary attractiveness of our females. ;-)
Re: "As a Hungarian living in Australia, I can confirm that yes, we are aliens. Our strange ways of thinking and weird sense of humour sets us apart. But the most important distinguishing factor is the extraordinary attractiveness of our females. ;-)"
Maybe you've identified the Great Filter: whenever an advanced species begins to seriously talk about issues like this, they end up turning into discussions about hot babes.. :) (sounding like Charlton Heston) "It's Free Porn! The Great Filter is Free Porn!!"
One thing that the writer seems to overlook is that if there is in fact life (or evidence of life) discovered on Mars, the news isn't all bad.
What if life evolved on Mars, and simply hit one of the "great filters" and didn't survive past some very primitive stages of evolution? If that's the case, then it could equally be evidence that the great filter is behind us and that we are still headed towards a good future. In fact, what if the usual case is for life to evolve to single celled organisms, but only to get wiped out and we are the rare exception?
Seems to me that life of Mars wouldn't really be evidence of either case being the norm. The sample set would be so small (1 success, 1 failure) if we found evidence of life, that we wouldn't be able to make any statistical realizations with the given data.
Different planets, different solar systems and different galaxies may all have different filters. Generalizing our earthly experience to the entire universe is rather foolish.
tfunk
1
Narrow window
The fact that we haven't observed other civilizations is like a scene from American Dad the other night where Stan was looking for an ex-KGB agent by zooming in on different cities on the planet from a spy satellite and focusing on individual random people and comparing them to a snapshot he had.
Stan probably has a much, much, much better chance of finding his guy this way than we do of finding advanced alien civilization in the universe by pointing a radio telescope at different parts of the sky.
Why? Well without writing an entire dissertation on the matter, it seems that there would be a narrow window - relative to geologic or galactic time - during which a civilization would be communicating as we do now. We certainly don't know everything about physics, and I find it likely that more "advanced" forms of communication will eventually be discovered. The point being, even with let's say a 100,000 year window during which a civilization is "broadcasting" - we would have to be right now within that window of time during which we could receive signals from the distance from where they were then in the universe to where we are now - and we'd have to be pointing at the right place - and we'd have to be listening in the right way.
I don't know enough about it, but it seems that fairly low power transmissions such as used for communications would be easily attenuated or distorted by things moving around the universe in between them and us.
So basically, take all the directions in which there are or were stars, multiply that by the small window of time a civilization would be on a frequency that we're listening on, and possibly throw in a muck factor for attenuation and distortion and - well, it's a long shot.
I might add that it's a longer shot to believe that we're the only intelligent life in the universe. The likelihood of that is so infinitessimally small that it's more likely I'll spontaneously grow wings by some random genetic mutations within the next 2 months after suggesting it.