All by ourselves? The Great Filter and our attempts to find life.

The Universe should be full of alien civilizations. Why can’t we find any?

See full article...

 

[orwelldesign]

And Islam was once a paragon of the scientific world but that quickly decayed into current extremism where life is held to be ammunition and science only valued for its utility in arms creation.

There are plenty of moderate to liberal Moslems. They just don't make as much noise. It's the comparison between Westboro Baptist and the Episcopal church -- there's way more episcopalians than WBC, but those jerks made the news for all the wrong reasons. Episcopalians rarely make the news for their Episcopal beliefs -- because "this is our way, what's yours? Can I learn from you? If you'd like, I'll help you learn from me" is just not all that 'if it bleeds it leads'-y

So, too, Islamic extremism v Islamic moderates. They do exist. One of the best scientists I know is a devout Moslem -- and he's not extreme at all. But he is a practicing Moslem, prayer rug, 5x a day, etc. Double hajji, plus sponsors a family who's never been every year and has for the last 17.

That's one of the things I'd like to see, but I know I never will -- pretending a religion for tourism does not sit well with this churchgoing atheist.

 

[orwelldesign]

I wilk give the Mormons this much. Their approach to evangelism may be both the most extreme and the most quietly disturbing one I've ever heard of.

I didn't know it til later: that sort of getting the door slammed in your face missionary work? Its not actually designed to convert people. It's designed to foster us v. them. And it works fairly well.

 

[steelcobra]

I didn't know it til later: that sort of getting the door slammed in your face missionary work? Its not actually designed to convert people. It's designed to foster us v. them. And it works fairly well.

For them, for Evangelicals, for Cult groups, for Conspiracy Theorists...

 

[Chuckstar]

Oh, I’m genuinely not sure how I gave that impression — quite the opposite, actually. What I meant was: treat it as you would a scientific document. Approach it critically, question it thoroughly, and read it without prejudice or prior assumptions. In fact, in my earlier message I said: “Set aside expectations, ask the hardest questions you have, and challenge the Book to answer them.” That’s the mindset I’m encouraging — not blind acceptance, but deep inquiry.

I don’t challenge a paper to answer my questions. I challenge the paper. Going into the paper with questions represents bias. You formulate questions based on what the paper has presented, not the other way around. Otherwise, you re just finding what you want to find and not seeing what you don’t want to see.

 

[alinakipoglu]

I don’t challenge a paper to answer my questions. I challenge the paper. Going into the paper with questions represents bias. You formulate questions based on what the paper has presented, not the other way around. Otherwise, you re just finding what you want to find and not seeing what you don’t want to see.

I commend you, and I appreciate the nuance you're bringing up. That's exactly how reading the Quran works.

 

[llanitedave]

Because in the cold war the polities involved would see the attack coming.
When what you observe has a time lag of years or decades due to lightspeed limits and distance, the entire arsenal of the enemy would rain down on you before you even know they've started repositioning launchers.
This is why cold war doctrine from both sides was to always be incredibly visible to the other side - because both sides knew that MAD was what would happen if one side lost visibility of the other.



We have absolutely no reason to believe that we will be beyond the reach of planetkillers within 200, 2000, or 200000 years.
From what we currently know of the fundamental forces of the universe, nothing will be a defense against mass nor energy sufficient to turn a planet into hot gravel.

Banking on fairy tales more palatable because the dragons and unicorns have been given a chrome coating and the wizards supplied with ehite coats rather than robes is something I see a lot of every time this topic comes up.
Sure, it'd be nice to see a universe less limited than everything we know tells us that it is, and I personally love good sci-fi as well.

But that's all it is. Fiction.
Saying that we'll be safe against planetkillers 200 years from now is no less out there than asserting the rapture will come within that time span. Both assertions backed only by wishful thinking.

Planet-killers are useless when the population you want to destroy is distributed across millions of small icy bodies over a volume of billions of cubic astronomical units. This is, I think, the most likely further step in the evolution of a technological civilization that develops the ability to leave its home planet and harvest resources from asteroids and comets. The planet left behind will remain populated, but it won't share in the expansion and exploration of the larger space around it. And its destruction will not slow that expansion, once begun. This, I reiterate, is the fallacy behind the Dark Forest hypothesis. It is the galactic equivalent of a strange hybrid of "security through obscurity" plus "security through hyper-aggression." It might be able to cause a lot of damage, but in a populated galaxy (which is really the only realistic case for its existence) it's most likely to result in the eventual destruction of the species that chooses it. It can't destroy potential rivals without being detected, and once detected, is likely to trigger defensive reactions on the part of the neighbors of those attacked.

The only civilizations it could destroy are ones that have not expanded off their home planet, and are thus incapable of detecting it, but it can only discover these civilizations by venturing away from its dark forest and risking detection.

 

[Truth]

Maybe Fermi's Paradox doesn't apply yet because almost no searching has yet happened.

There is a real problem with this sentence in the article: "[Life] just has to be so deeply rare that we shouldn’t expect to see any evidence for it elsewhere, despite decades of searching."

The truth is that all of the searching we have done amounts to an extremely small amount, so tiny as to amount to almost nothing compared with the vastness of space. We can revisit Fermi one humans have made a serious, sustained and deeply funded search effort.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Oh, I’m genuinely not sure how I gave that impression — quite the opposite, actually. What I meant was: treat it as you would a scientific document. Approach it critically, question it thoroughly, and read it without prejudice or prior assumptions. In fact, in my earlier message I said: “Set aside expectations, ask the hardest questions you have, and challenge the Book to answer them.” That’s the mindset I’m encouraging — not blind acceptance, but deep inquiry.

It's not a scientific document. You might as well suggest approaching the Lord of the rings trilogy with the idea that it might describe reality.

Which is utterly horrifying. The whole point of fairy tales is that they are evidently not real.

There is no need for a fictional character - be they Gandalf, Dumbledore, or an equally fictional abrahamic godhead - to exhort the sane and rational to observe common sense.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I didn't know it til later: that sort of getting the door slammed in your face missionary work? Its not actually designed to convert people. It's designed to foster us v. them. And it works fairly well.

That, too, but I was thinking of their practice of initiating people into mormonism post mortem.

https://www.catholic.com/tract/mormonisms-baptism-for-the-dead

 

[alinakipoglu]

It's not a scientific document. You might as well suggest approaching the Lord of the rings trilogy with the idea that it might describe reality.

Which is utterly horrifying. The whole point of fairy tales is that they are evidently not real.

There is no need for a fictional character - be they Gandalf, Dumbledore, or an equally fictional abrahamic godhead - to exhort the sane and rational to observe common sense.

I didn’t say the Qur’an is a scientific document — not because it falls short of that standard, but because it’s far greater. My suggestion was simply about how to approach it, for those who are genuinely interested in reading it.

As for the rest of your response, the tone clearly aims to be disrespectful, which ironically says a lot about how little regard there is for the principles of scientific discussion. It’s also clear those arguments come from someone who neither understands the subject nor shows a desire to. So I don’t see much reason to engage and happy to leave it there.

 

[Chuckstar]

I didn’t say the Qur’an is a scientific document — not because it falls short of that standard, but because it’s far greater. My suggestion was simply about how to approach it, for those who are genuinely interested in reading it.

As for the rest of your response, the tone clearly aims to be disrespectful, which ironically says a lot about how little regard there is for the principles of scientific discussion. It’s also clear those arguments come from someone who neither understands the subject nor shows a desire to. So I don’t see much reason to engage and happy to leave it there.

A book of claimed revelations by a medieval conqueror is not in any way superior to scientific inquiry. And yes, we are all aware that you’ve pointed out that the way to read it is to read into it, rather than expecting it to provide answers at face value.

You’ve insulted all of us by bringing a religious text into a scientific discussion. Please don’t sea lion us by pretending to have respectful intent. Religious trolling is still trolling.

 

[butcherg]

A book of claimed revelations by a medieval conqueror is not in any way superior to scientific inquiry. And yes, we are all aware that you’ve pointed out that the way to read it is to read into it, rather than expecting it to provide answers at face value.

You’ve insulted all of us by bringing a religious text into a scientific discussion. Please don’t sea lion us by pretending to have respectful intent. Religious trolling is still trolling.

I wasn't insulted, so your 'insult' assertion is false. If you want to limit your consideration of what people have to say to (hopefully) rigorous scientific prose, that's your business.

 

[Chuckstar]

I wasn't insulted, so your 'insult' assertion is false. If you want to limit your consideration of what people have to say to (hopefully) rigorous scientific prose, that's your business.

My insult assertion is not false just because you didn’t feel the insult. .

Religious proselytizing is an insult to the person being proselytized to. It’s inherent. My responsibility to respect someone’s religion does not have to extend to respecting their attempt to gaslight me the same way they’ve been gaslit.

 

[Anonymous Chicken]

The planet left behind will remain populated, but it won't share in the expansion and exploration of the larger space around it. And its destruction will not slow that expansion, once begun. This, I reiterate, is the fallacy behind the Dark Forest hypothesis. It is the galactic equivalent of a strange hybrid of "security through obscurity" plus "security through hyper-aggression." It might be able to cause a lot of damage, but in a populated galaxy (which is really the only realistic case for its existence) it's most likely to result in the eventual destruction of the species that chooses it. It can't destroy potential rivals without being detected, and once detected, is likely to trigger defensive reactions on the part of the neighbors of those attacked.

Without seeking to defend Dark Forest in particular:

The distances involved would (assuming no FTL anything) make it quite difficult to respond to actions taken by other civs, or even to understand what is happening (in the absence of detailed reporting from one of them). A lag of probably well over 1000 years (even for "neighbors") for any information at all to reach you, and the same again before you can hope to communicate the other way (with information or with firepower) makes it seem like reasonable intervention is impossible.

Having witnessed an apparent destruction of a neighbor, what is a civ or collection of civs to do? They can't chat among themselves to coordinate a response. Do they even know who the aggressor was? It would take hopelessly long to go over and do a crime-scene investigation. Do they launch counterstrikes against suspected aggressors? No civ could know what any other would do.

I think that any decent civilization of mostly-peaceful happy lifeforms will have a very hard time providing themselves security guarantees.

 

[steelcobra]

Without seeking to defend Dark Forest in particular:

The distances involved would (assuming no FTL anything) make it quite difficult to respond to actions taken by other civs, or even to understand what is happening (in the absence of detailed reporting from one of them). A lag of probably well over 1000 years (even for "neighbors") for any information at all to reach you, and the same again before you can hope to communicate the other way (with information or with firepower) makes it seem like reasonable intervention is impossible.

Having witnessed an apparent destruction of a neighbor, what is a civ or collection of civs to do? They can't chat among themselves to coordinate a response. Do they even know who the aggressor was? It would take hopelessly long to go over and do a crime-scene investigation. Do they launch counterstrikes against suspected aggressors? No civ could know what any other would do.

I think that any decent civilization of mostly-peaceful happy lifeforms will have a very hard time providing themselves security guarantees.

I remember from Joe Haldeman's The Forever War that humanity spends a thousand years sending troops out in ever-increasingly time-dilated FTL jumps (including the MC, a soldier in the first and last battles of the war), with the war ending after the single-mind alien race's communications finally getting understood as "why did you attack me?"

 

[llanitedave]

Without seeking to defend Dark Forest in particular:

The distances involved would (assuming no FTL anything) make it quite difficult to respond to actions taken by other civs, or even to understand what is happening (in the absence of detailed reporting from one of them). A lag of probably well over 1000 years (even for "neighbors") for any information at all to reach you, and the same again before you can hope to communicate the other way (with information or with firepower) makes it seem like reasonable intervention is impossible.

Having witnessed an apparent destruction of a neighbor, what is a civ or collection of civs to do? They can't chat among themselves to coordinate a response. Do they even know who the aggressor was? It would take hopelessly long to go over and do a crime-scene investigation. Do they launch counterstrikes against suspected aggressors? No civ could know what any other would do.

I think that any decent civilization of mostly-peaceful happy lifeforms will have a very hard time providing themselves security guarantees.

A civilization that decides to send a planet-pulverizing energy beam towards a target planet 1000 light years away is making that decision from a position of deep and almost complete ignorance about the system they're targeting. The best information they have about this targeted species is 1000 years old when they launch the attack, if they've been sustaining this distance without extensive study of their prey (which would necessitate leaving the dark forest scenario and risking their own detection), then even this millenium-old information was woefully incomplete. It is then another 1000 years before the attack reaches its target, meaning the civilization they're attempting to destroy has had 2000 years of advancement since their decision to attack. They don't know what the capabilities of this target are, how well it has explored its surroundings, how widely distributed its influences and population is, or how capable they are of responding to an attack on their ancestral world.

I would expect a species that has the technological sophistication and advanced evolutionary history to project such monstrous power to at least have had time to absorb the simple wisdom of Sun Tzu:

"Know Your Enemy."

Failure to do so is merely stupid, and I wouldn't really expect an advanced spacefaring civilization to have got to that point by being stupid.

 

[alinakipoglu]

A book of claimed revelations by a medieval conqueror is not in any way superior to scientific inquiry. And yes, we are all aware that you’ve pointed out that the way to read it is to read into it, rather than expecting it to provide answers at face value.

You’ve insulted all of us by bringing a religious text into a scientific discussion. Please don’t sea lion us by pretending to have respectful intent. Religious trolling is still trolling.

Science is a pursuit of truth — wherever it may lead — and that requires us to set aside prejudice. It’s intellectually infinitely impoverished to dismiss a source of insight without honestly engaging with it.

The Quran invites readers to reason, to challenge, and to evaluate its message critically. It gives space for belief — but also for rejection — after consideration. Some of its content is, of course, religious in nature. But much of it speaks to broader existential themes that are often overlooked by those unfamiliar with the book.

In my experience, many first-time readers find it surprising: it’s not what they expected. Some things they assumed would be there aren’t — and other things they never anticipated are there. For me, its treatment of the question of our existence in the universe — and whether we’re alone — was deeply thought-provoking and, frankly, eye-opening.

That’s why I recommended it. Not to preach. Not even necessarily as a matter of faith — though faith would be a perfectly valid reason too — but because I found incredible value in its reflections and thought others might as well.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I didn’t say the Qur’an is a scientific document — not because it falls short of that standard, but because it’s far greater. My suggestion was simply about how to approach it, for those who are genuinely interested in reading it.

As for the rest of your response, the tone clearly aims to be disrespectful, which ironically says a lot about how little regard there is for the principles of scientific discussion. It’s also clear those arguments come from someone who neither understands the subject nor shows a desire to. So I don’t see much reason to engage and happy to leave it there.

There is no scientific or even rational discussion to be had with religious people because ANY stringent adherence to empirical observation and logic is eventually met with what you just demonstrated - an insistence that a fairy tale is a standard GREATER than that of science.
And the refusal to accept such being met with the strident accusation of "disrespectful" made by the fanatic.

And I thank you for demonstrating that religion is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of science you falsely claim to espouse here, by the very meaning of your own words.

Had I decided to be outright disrespectful in my prior comments rather than merely stating facts bluntly I would also have made the assertion that the comparison between the ancient fiction of the abrahamic religion and more modern fiction does not come off well for the Torah, Bible and Quran.

Because by any mores rooted in enlightenment and humanitarian values the sky wizard depicted in them would not be someone like Gandalf or Elminster. They would fill the role of Sauron or Cyric.

No religious text is required to admire the philosophy behind science and logic. One can acquire the same sans any baggage in the form of exhortations by the alleged prophet of a tyrannical sky wizard from dozens or hundreds of human authors applying only logic, reason, and core values of common sense and community.

 

[domikai]

Well. Sealion doesn't want to understand the difference between arguing from authority and empiricism. Tedious.

 

[butcherg]

My insult assertion is not false just because you didn’t feel the insult. .

Religious proselytizing is an insult to the person being proselytized to. It’s inherent. My responsibility to respect someone’s religion does not have to extend to respecting their attempt to gaslight me the same way they’ve been gaslit.

People say a lot of things to me, it's up to me to sort it out. Thanks for your concern.

 

[llanitedave]

There is no scientific or even rational discussion to be had with religious people because ANY stringent adherence to empirical observation and logic is eventually met with what you just demonstrated - an insistence that a fairy tale is a standard GREATER than that of science.
And the refusal to accept such being met with the strident accusation of "disrespectful" made by the fanatic.

And I thank you for demonstrating that religion is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of science you falsely claim to espouse here, by the very meaning of your own words.

Had I decided to be outright disrespectful in my prior comments rather than merely stating facts bluntly I would also have made the assertion that the comparison between the ancient fiction of the abrahamic religion and more modern fiction does not come off well for the Torah, Bible and Quran.

Because by any mores rooted in enlightenment and humanitarian values the sky wizard depicted in them would not be someone like Gandalf or Elminster. They would fill the role of Sauron or Cyric.

No religious text is required to admire the philosophy behind science and logic. One can acquire the same sans any baggage in the form of exhortations by the alleged prophet of a tyrannical sky wizard from dozens or hundreds of human authors applying only logic, reason, and core values of common sense and community.

As I recall, even the Valar of Middle Earth did not demand worship or sacrifice from their charges. Gandalf, the nearest thing to a Christ figure in the books, even hid his true nature from the people he associated with, and sought only to assist them in resisting the evil that was among them.

If I was ever to adopt a fictional religion, the Middle Earth pantheon would be far preferable to the Christian or Islamic one.

 

[domikai]

As I recall, even the Valar of Middle Earth did not demand worship or sacrifice from their charges. Gandalf, the nearest thing to a Christ figure in the books, even hid his true nature from the people he associated with, and sought only to assist them in resisting the evil that was among them.

If I was ever to adopt a fictional religion, the Middle Earth pantheon would be far preferable to the Christian or Islamic one.

As a kid I loved Tolkien's creation myth. It had a poetic beauty entirely lacking in the Abrahamic religious ones. The world as an instantiation of a collective act of musical creation hit the right notes for me.

 

[ackmondual]

I think the better question is "when is everybody?".

How long do we expect other spacefaring civilizations to be leaving traces that we can detect at our current technology level? Human civilization has gotten from nothing to spaceflight in, what, under 10k years? Right now we're leaving a transient footprint in the form of radio emissions, but how long will humans be communicating by blasting out radio in all directions? A thousand years? More? Less? If intelligent life developed on another nearby planet and followed a similar trajectory, but achieved intelligence a few thousand years earlier - on a timescale of billions - we'd have just missed them.

The "great filter" doesn't need to be much more than "after 100k years, any intelligent species has developed to a point where we couldn't detect them and they wouldn't think to interact with us".

From the dawn of humanity to when we first develop radio signals is a very long time. The time we first develop radio signals to potentially destroying ourselves (nukes, war, cold, you name it), is a sliver of that total time. "When" is certainly a VERY relevant factor.

It reminds me of that Star Trek: Voyager episode "blink of an eye" where hours on the ship = centuries on the planet they're studying. One person on the planet manages to send out a greeting, which Voyager receives. One crew member wants to reply to him, but... 1) Prime Directive, and 2) because of the time differential, the man has been long dead!

 

[ackmondual]

Mind-bogglingly so. You may think it is a long way down the spiral arm to the next star, but that's just peanuts compared to the Universe.

The Universe had an episode called "How Big? How Far? How Fast?", where it tries take the vast scales of pace, but explain it into ways that we humans, on earth could understand. For the how fast/far, traveling at conventional speeds would be like shooting a bullet out of a gun, but the bullet travels so slowly that a snail trudging along easily out paces it. For the how big, our sun eats up 99.5% of our solar system's mass. But there are stars that make the Sun look like a tiny fraction of that!

 

[eri-]

You , all too easily, assume that any intelligent life would be similar to us and therefore would have to roughly follow the same trjaectory as us in order to advance.

This is a logical flaw. There is no reason to assume Carbon based life is all there is.

There might very well be "energy based" life out there. For whom the challenges of a vast universe and all that, don't even exist. They could be right here, with us, as we discuss, undetectable to any of our technology, unthethered by our understanding of the universe.

The entire article is based on life mostly/always being "like us". This is unlikely to be true.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

You , all too easily, assume that any intelligent life would be similar to us and therefore would have to roughly follow the same trjaectory as us in order to advance.

This is a logical flaw. There is no reason to assume Carbon based life is all there is.

There might very well be "energy based" life out there. For whom the challenges of a vast universe and all that, don't even exist. They could be right here, with us, as we discuss, undetectable to any of our technology, unthethered by our understanding of the universe.

The entire article is based on life mostly/always being "like us". This is unlikely to be true.

The argument that Cthulhu, Hastur, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Eris, the C'Tan and beardy old Jehova may be hovering among us, unseen and undetectable isn't relevant.
The last thing we need is a new religion invented only to declare all we already know to be true about the universe invalid.

Energy doesn't behave the way you imagine. This we know for a fact. If you want to make the argument that somewhere life has managed to circumvent enough well observed laws of physics to be de facto godlike then fine. Make that case from a church pulpit or in a fantasy novel.

Meanwhile the universe we actually live in does not easily support such a claim. That's one of the things we actually can be reasonably certain about.

 

[Anonymous Chicken]

A civilization that decides to send a planet-pulverizing energy beam towards a target planet 1000 light years away is making that decision from a position of deep and almost complete ignorance about the system they're targeting. The best information they have about this targeted species is 1000 years old when they launch the attack, if they've been sustaining this distance without extensive study of their prey (which would necessitate leaving the dark forest scenario and risking their own detection), then even this millenium-old information was woefully incomplete. It is then another 1000 years before the attack reaches its target, meaning the civilization they're attempting to destroy has had 2000 years of advancement since their decision to attack. They don't know what the capabilities of this target are, how well it has explored its surroundings, how widely distributed its influences and population is, or how capable they are of responding to an attack on their ancestral world.

I would expect a species that has the technological sophistication and advanced evolutionary history to project such monstrous power to at least have had time to absorb the simple wisdom of Sun Tzu:

"Know Your Enemy."

Failure to do so is merely stupid, and I wouldn't really expect an advanced spacefaring civilization to have got to that point by being stupid.

IMO you are not being sufficiently imaginative. It seems to me that the very long time delays almost entirely invalidate how humans perceive warfare and defense. Its true that if you launch some large attack against another civ, you cannot know what condition they are in when you arrive. Its also true that you cannot control the forces you dispatch. But also nobody else knows anything either, they don't know where the attack came from, they can't retaliate in an effective way. The travel and communication delays are so long that entire wars over single star systems are resolved in less time than it takes to learn anything about what anyone else is up to.

I'm not sure Dark Forest is quite right (with life making itself apparent to careful observers regardless) but I am left seeing only insecurity and danger for any civ modeled on the scifi shows I am familiar with (edit: like scifi civs, but without FTL).

 

[Babblefish]

I would think Von Neumann machines would be far more likely to be detected before any intelligent organic life.

 

[cerberusTI]

A very powerful tone signal, especially in the cases where the objects to be painted are in space. In most cases (there are some use cases where data is modulated within the radar waveform), just a big pulse of information-less energy.

This would certainly need to be a directed communication at our level of technology.

I was in a hurry (and just got back from some last minute business travel), but I will get the AI to add another line to my graph from earlier. We could broadcast a signal, but if we do not intend to do so, we are basically invisible at a light year even in theory.


https://chatgpt.com/share/67e42127-3120-8012-aa04-3ea434746fed

 

[superstition2]

I wasn't claiming the speed of light stops spread of life, I was saying it bounds "a" civilization to one star system. You could however spawn new civilizations, according to that thought process, if very long travel time was for whatever reason not a problem.

And yet, it is feasible that it is a problem, hence my addition to your comment.

 

[llanitedave]

IMO you are not being sufficiently imaginative. It seems to me that the very long time delays almost entirely invalidate how humans perceive warfare and defense. Its true that if you launch some large attack against another civ, you cannot know what condition they are in when you arrive. Its also true that you cannot control the forces you dispatch. But also nobody else knows anything either, they don't know where the attack came from, they can't retaliate in an effective way. The travel and communication delays are so long that entire wars over single star systems are resolved in less time than it takes to learn anything about what anyone else is up to.

I'm not sure Dark Forest is quite right (with life making itself apparent to careful observers regardless) but I am left seeing only insecurity and danger for any civ modeled on the scifi shows I am familiar with (edit: like scifi civs, but without FTL).

The problem is that you cannot gain the knowledge about another civilization to plan an attack without taking the kind of actions that would reveal yourself. I can certainly imagine scenarios where a surprise attack would happen, but no one can guarantee that such an attack can be kept secret before it happens. The example given was of an attack launched from 1000 light years away for the crime of "suspicion of civilization." The attacker does not know the victim, and does not know whether and how much it puts itself in danger by launching the attack. If a spacefaring civilization evolves as I hypothesize (which is not your standard sci-fi TV trope), then within 2000 years after becoming detectable, there's an excellent chance that civilization would have colonized a rather large volume surrounding its home planet. Even if they didn't see the attack coming, and the home planet was destroyed, the colonies would still survive, and if they didn't know where the attack was coming from in advance, they'd easily be able to track it subsequently. That would put the attacking world at great risk of retaliation.
The irony is, that the only way such an attack could succeed is if the victim is incapable of ever becoming a threat. If the target civilization IS capable of threatening the attacker, then launching the attack would likely be unsuccessful and possibly catastrophic for the aggressor.

 

[llanitedave]

You , all too easily, assume that any intelligent life would be similar to us and therefore would have to roughly follow the same trjaectory as us in order to advance.

This is a logical flaw. There is no reason to assume Carbon based life is all there is.

There might very well be "energy based" life out there. For whom the challenges of a vast universe and all that, don't even exist. They could be right here, with us, as we discuss, undetectable to any of our technology, unthethered by our understanding of the universe.

The entire article is based on life mostly/always being "like us". This is unlikely to be true.

There are excellent reasons from chemistry and cosmology to conclude that any life that evolves the ability for space travel will be carbon-based. It's conceivable that this carbon-based species could invent self-replicating, sentient entities that are constructed of a different elemental mix (although this would undoubtedly continue to feature a substantial quantity of carbon), but those would still have originated via the actions of carbon-based creatures.

As for "energy based" life, that's already the case. Matter is essentially a way of organizing and storing energy. And life is a way of organizing entropy through material interactions. There will be no life of any origin that is not bound within matter.

 

[eri-]

The argument that Cthulhu, Hastur, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Eris, the C'Tan and beardy old Jehova may be hovering among us, unseen and undetectable isn't relevant.
The last thing we need is a new religion invented only to declare all we already know to be true about the universe invalid.

Energy doesn't behave the way you imagine. This we know for a fact. If you want to make the argument that somewhere life has managed to circumvent enough well observed laws of physics to be de facto godlike then fine. Make that case from a church pulpit or in a fantasy novel.

Meanwhile the universe we actually live in does not easily support such a claim. That's one of the things we actually can be reasonably certain about.

I hate your arrogance, both to me and in general. Your Ctulhu schtik was abssolutely uncalled for.

 

[eri-]

There are excellent reasons from chemistry and cosmology to conclude that any life that evolves the ability for space travel will be carbon-based. It's conceivable that this carbon-based species could invent self-replicating, sentient entities that are constructed of a different elemental mix (although this would undoubtedly continue to feature a substantial quantity of carbon), but those would still have originated via the actions of carbon-based creatures.

As for "energy based" life, that's already the case. Matter is essentially a way of organizing and storing energy. And life is a way of organizing entropy through material interactions. There will be no life of any origin that is not bound within matter.

I dislike how you, and some others, are so sure about it all .

We know nothing. Yet there is a lot of " we know more than enough" vibes coming from you and some others

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I hate your arrogance, both to me and in general. Your Ctulhu schtik was abssolutely uncalled for.

It really wasn't. NASA and about a dozen other agencies have employed the best and brightest people with actual expert knowledge in biology, chemistry and physics, and told them to come up with any sort of plausible life the observed laws of physics could allow for. The studies by them and other experts in how we can observe the universe working have bern at this for decades.

We do, in fact, know of several hard boundaries within which any form of life must lie.

Your assertion can only be true if parts of the universe beyond what we can see suddenly start operating by radically different principles of physics. That's Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos right there.

Or that there are lifeforms which by their very existence violate several fundamental laws of causality. The only conclusion of which is that they're dictionary-definition gods.

I suggest that if you want to hate something then ignorance should be your first target. In the real world no sane person gives a free fantasy precedens to knowledge.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

I dislike how you, and some others, are so sure about it all .

We know nothing. Yet there is a lot of " we know more than enough" vibes coming from you and some others

We actually do know a whole lot. You think physicists and biochemists educate themselves to become topic experts and get paid because they don't know what is real.

We know enough to tell you that anything such as you suggests would be entities only limited by their imaginations. Not by the observed laws of thermodynamics, entropy, or quantum mechanics.
I.e. your argument is that there are gods out there who do not conform to any of the limitations humanity has observed to be valid for about a billion lightyears in all directions.
That's as wild a claim as that of a person who claims that nothing exists beneath the earth's surface while talking to a group of miners.
And then gets butthurt and calls them arrogant when they see fit to correct said person.

Your argument that "we know nothing" only tells literally everyone who actually bothered learning that you know less than everyone else here. Yet you're fuming that your ignorance isn't afforded the same respect as actual observed and confirmed knowledge.

As eager an adherent of the Cult of Ignorance as could be wished for.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

There are excellent reasons from chemistry and cosmology to conclude that any life that evolves the ability for space travel will be carbon-based. It's conceivable that this carbon-based species could invent self-replicating, sentient entities that are constructed of a different elemental mix (although this would undoubtedly continue to feature a substantial quantity of carbon), but those would still have originated via the actions of carbon-based creatures.

As for "energy based" life, that's already the case. Matter is essentially a way of organizing and storing energy. And life is a way of organizing entropy through material interactions. There will be no life of any origin that is not bound within matter.

A bunch of chemists have tried to come up with silicon as the alternative but the math only maths if you then include some fairly hinky systems of electron transference.

And to be fair, some astrophysicists have suggested that in theory a plasma or dust cloud could find itself in a configuration which allows for logic gates...for about a picosecond.

One of the problems with many in the 'unknowable aliens' crowd is that they truly seem to think that physics is magic, that we know nothing, and that somewhere at the other end of the universe, energy and matter will not behave as we can predict in our neck of the woods.

 

[gnasher729]

The problem is that you cannot gain the knowledge about another civilization to plan an attack without taking the kind of actions that would reveal yourself. I can certainly imagine scenarios where a surprise attack would happen, but no one can guarantee that such an attack can be kept secret before it happens. The example given was of an attack launched from 1000 light years away for the crime of "suspicion of civilization." The attacker does not know the victim, and does not know whether and how much it puts itself in danger by launching the attack. If a spacefaring civilization evolves as I hypothesize (which is not your standard sci-fi TV trope), then within 2000 years after becoming detectable, there's an excellent chance that civilization would have colonized a rather large volume surrounding its home planet. Even if they didn't see the attack coming, and the home planet was destroyed, the colonies would still survive, and if they didn't know where the attack was coming from in advance, they'd easily be able to track it subsequently. That would put the attacking world at great risk of retaliation.
The irony is, that the only way such an attack could succeed is if the victim is incapable of ever becoming a threat. If the target civilization IS capable of threatening the attacker, then launching the attack would likely be unsuccessful and possibly catastrophic for the aggressor.

Bring an attack force close enough that it cannot be detected, so a decision to attack or not can be made at that point. So 1000 years after the attack force is sent out it sneakily returns or self destructs if the risk is too high. Probably best to spy and then return.

 

[llanitedave]

I dislike how you, and some others, are so sure about it all .

We know nothing. Yet there is a lot of " we know more than enough" vibes coming from you and some others

Speak for yourself. YOU know nothing. Your enthusiastic embrace of boundless ignorance leads you to believe in absurdities such as flat Earth, Adam and Eve, Covid denial, and anti-vaccine crap. You narcissistically believe your ignorance is just as valid as others knowledge. Just because YOU know nothing doesn't mean science does. Your ignorance is a matter of choice. Ignorance in science consists of the gaps remaining within the framework of knowledge that science has constructed.

We are ignorant of some of the structures and chemical processes that occur deep within the Earth's interior, and contribute to its magnetic field. We are not so ignorant, however, as to believe in a flat Earth. There are limits to our ignorance. Apparently not to yours.

Voltaire famously said “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Your embrace of willful ignorance allows you to confidently believe in absurdities, which make you a danger to yourself and others, and to the world at large.

 

[EnPeaSea]

I hate your arrogance, both to me and in general. Your Ctulhu schtik was abssolutely uncalled for.

Oh, R'lyeh?