General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAdvanced Extraterrestrials as an Approximation to God (recced by Laurence Tribe this morning)
Tribe's tweet, minutes ago:
Link to tweet
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/advanced-extraterrestrials-as-an-approximation-to-god/
Meeting a piece of advanced technological equipment developed by an extraterrestrial intelligence might resemble an imaginary encounter of ancient cave people with a modern cell phone. At first, they would interpret it as a shiny rock, not recognizing it as a communication device. The same thing might have happened in reaction to the first detection of an interstellar visitor to the solar system, Oumuamua, which showed six peculiar properties but was nevertheless interpreted as a rock by mainstream astronomers.
Because it would likely be relatively small, most advanced equipment could only be recognized in the darkness of space when it comes close enough to our nearest lamppost, the sun. We can search for technological keys under this lamppost, but most of them will stay unnoticed if they pass far away. More fundamentally, one may wonder whether we are able to recognize technologies that were not already developed by us. After all, these technologies might feature subtle purposeslike the cell phone communication signals that a cave person would miss.
Is there something we might be missing already here and now? When looking around us, the most mysterious phenomenon we encounter routinely is the sophistication of complex life. Some scientists wondered whether life itself was seeded on Earth by an alien civilization in a process called directed panspermia. One can imagine a probe that brought the seeds of life in the form of microbes or instead a 3-D printer that produced these seeds out of the raw materials on Earth based on a prescribed blueprint. The universal left-handedness (chirality) of all life-forms on Earth without exception can be interpreted as stemming from a single panspermia event, be it natural (through a rock arriving from space) or artificial in origin . Even in this context, our imagination of what aliens might do will improve once we are able to produce synthetic life in the laboratory.
-snip-
If life was seeded artificially on Earth, one may wonder whether the seeders are checking on the outcome. And if so, the fact that we have not heard from them may indicate that they are disappointed. The experiment may have failed, or we are simply too slow to mature. Well, this may not come as a surprise given the irresponsible way we behave sometimes. Perhaps if we only knew that someone is looking over our shoulders, we would do better. It is not too late for us to find out, by using the best telescopes at our disposal.
As Tribe pointed out, this is both intriguing and humbling.
And the humbling aspect of it is one that's often overlooked. As I've sometimes noted, our current understanding of the universe is actually equivalent to the knowledge small marine creatures in a tide pool have of the entire ocean and ecosystem. That knowledge is still important and crucial to our survival, but it's important not to assume we have some godlike scientific knowledge already.
tblue37
(65,343 posts)modrepub
(3,495 posts)I've alway had a problem with the way the probability of intelligent life has been calculated. One assumption is that there is a linear "progression" towards the development of a life form that is capable of communication like humans. The "progression" seems at odds with basic evolution theory where randomness and chance are more important than any type of progression other than moving from simple to more complex life forms. The time it took for Earth to develop humans and humans to evolve to a point where we are curious and capable of exploring space may not be indicative of other worlds. It may be other worlds are on other timelines that don't match ours. If a species' existence is finite (~100,000yrs on average) then the chance of overlapping development over billions of years seems pretty remote to me. Intelligent extra terrestrials may have existed before us and after us but not at the same time as us.
highplainsdem
(48,976 posts)triron
(22,003 posts)Why not an advanced Type 2 (capable of harnessing the entire energy of a star system) or
Type 3 (same as type 2 but an entire galaxy) lasting even longer becoming even a type 4 or
type 5 civilization. Source: https://futurism.com/the-kardashev-scale-type-i-ii-iii-iv-v-civilization.
modrepub
(3,495 posts)They are a large group of animals with a distinct characteristics, which link them together on the evolutionary chain. Not a big biology person but I believe the dinosaur's common charactoristic is three openings in their skull. The human tree (Homo) is collectively several millions of years old but our specific species (homo sapiens sapiens) may have only existed over a hundred thousand years of which only the last couple hundred have we been really able to severely manipulate our environment.
There's a lot of randomness in evolution that we don't seem to acknowledge. We seem to believe that our rise is the culmination of the evolutionary process. That's probably not correct. Successful evolution is just being able to reproduce offspring who are able to continue to reproduce into the future. It's not producing an organism capable of interstellar communication and travel. That aspect of our evolution (and any other extraterrestrial life) is probably purely random.
triron
(22,003 posts)And the more current unexplained UFO sightings/encounters.
nolabear
(41,963 posts)And theres a typo in the first paragraph, in case the creators are checking.
Iggo
(47,552 posts)0rganism
(23,953 posts)recently finished re-watching the SG-1 series myself. maybe Laurence Tribe can finally convince MGM to give us a real follow-up to that show.
trev
(1,480 posts)The majority of humans already believe this. The Watchers are called "gods."
Hasn't made a difference yet.