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[PATV] Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 24: Funding XCOM (Part 2)
Great episodes, both part 1 and 2. I've never heard of the Drake equation or the Fermi paradox before, but they lined up quite nicely with my thoughts about extraterrestrial sentient life. Good work, EC.
This episode made me rethink the plot of a major game. Actually, it makes Mass Effect a whole lot more scary than before.
Because the Reapers are the answer the Mass Effect universe found to the galaxy being so quiet. Even though the Mass Effect universe is full of alien life, the answer they found to the question: "Why isn't every solar system colonized?" was simply: They were at some point (Prothean ruins) but the Reapers came and cleaned everything up.
On a lighter note: XKCD had its own, very convincing solution to the Fermi Paradox:
I vote, they would/are protecting us from finding out. Can you imagine the chaos such a thing would bring on society? It would change everything. I also wonder, what if they are far more advanced, yet a much younger species? What if we are faced with a history of bad decisions, ego crushing enlightenment that, we aren't all that. And here they show up, in their fancy space ship, rubbing it in.
Assuming they aren't already here, we might have a chance, perhaps if they are to invade, they'd be so far from home, with no resources or backup, we'd stand a chance. Otherwise, no way. Fighting back would only make us look like a barking dog on a chain. Amusing, but not much else.
Then again, considering the alien mind control, and constant alien voices in my head telling me they are already here, I already know the answer, and I'll tell the world... but who'll will believe me? Brilliant cover up?
#nedreow ...oddly enough, that is something that Independence Day actually covered: the one thing that Earth has that the rest of the solar system doesn't is arable land and non-mineral natural resources. A civilization that just consumes without regard for the consequences...
...probably would have died out long before they figured out interstellar travel. But it's still possible!
Yes this is the other big solution to the Fermi Paradox: That alien life hasn't revealed itself because its is logical to destroy all other aliens that you find but also to avoid detection yourself.
The logic is simple, any race that has the ability to travel interstellar is likely to have the ablity to push ships to fractions of the speed of light has the ablity to attack you with relativistic weapons (same principle of mass driver weapons but with even greater speed/energy). Since such weapons are impossible to counter such a race is automatelly a major threat.
At this point the prisoner's dilemma creeps in since you cannot understand or trust the other alien species it is logical to take the risk and destroy them even if they plan to do the same to you.
The result of this is that we can't find any alien out there because they wipe each other out and at the same time try to be as quite as possible to avoid another alien race doing the same to them.
OR is the government only pretending to be incompetent.
No, they are doing far too well (or bad) at being incompetent. The most I could see is that they are playing up the "leaks" by leaking bad information and thereby discrediting the real information.
If someone broadcast 10 news stories and 9 were fake, would you believe the 1 real story? I would not.
I don't know if anyone has ever presented this theory, but who says that the universe is quiet? It's not. In fact, there is a constant, never ending signal permeating all of observable space. We discovered it in 1964 and have attributed it to the Big Bang. It's the cosmic microwave background radiation, and it is totally a radio signal from space that has, as far as we can tell, always been there and stretches across the observable universe.
Of course, if the background radiation is the result of alien communication above our ability to understand, we'd probably have to reconsider that whole Big Bang idea, too.
Now I feel silly for addressing failures of the equation from the previous episode. They were all addressed in this one instead.
Still, you didn't really discuss whether XCOM should be funded beyond stating that aliens who can get to earth would probably have no trouble overpowering an earth army.
I still have to repeat my assertion from last week:
We know how to use Wikipedia.
Incidentally, one note: while specifically building an anti-alien system is obviously a stupid idea, the truth of the matter is that an asteroid deflection system has dual use as an anti-alien-invasion system. Quite frankly, I suspect that nuclear missiles are probably about as bad as weapons tend to get - I mean, I can envision worse weapons, but quite frankly they're probably way too dangerous to USE, and, realistically speaking, a 10 MT nuclear missile is probably more than sufficient to destroy just about any ship that anyone realistically would have or build. So I actually suspect that really, interstellar invasions are utterly impractical as you could just shower their ships in nukes and there's really not much you can do to stop that. Yeah, you could shoot down the nukes... but only one has to get within a pretty big distance of you to take you out. Given that ships capable of interstellar travel are probably pretty darned expensive, I doubt you could successfully invade a post-nuclear civilization intent on defending itself. You might be able to wipe them out with a bio weapon or similar, but actual invasion? Doubtful.
I'm still wondering where alien psychology factors into this. It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made based off human psychology i.e. what we would do, without regard to the possibility that aliens think in ways that are completely alien to us. Does evolution guarantee a ubiquitous pattern of thought even when the conditions of evolution are completely different?
I have a different approach on the matter, even if this sounds totally crazy. But let's just assume a "thinking out of the box" scenario here.
What if other "alien" races don't have a physical body? The concept of the soul is not something uncommon on Earth, so imagine that other civilizations already "transcended" past the physical and live as an ethereal cloud that can travel at any speed they want, wherever they want without the fear of being harmed? And we cannot see them nor communicate with them since we ourselves must first "transcend" the body?
Yes, I know how this sounds, but do take into consideration that "life" as we know it doesn't have to look this way everywhere in the universe. Perhaps a mistake most scientists do is that they are looking for something living, like humans or animals, while the alien species might as well be a pack of sentient rocks that are connected all via a telepathic net and have their own "internet" in which they just spend all day playing their version of WoW, LoL or other MMO game.
I know it sounds ridiculous. But do remember that people once thought Earth was flat. There might be stuff out there that is so beyond our minds that we don't even see it while looking at it.
I think we should be funding some kind of XCOM type program, not because aliens are coming but simply because we badly need some strong reason to push the limits of our science and technology, and specifically to drive our space exploration.
The way we should run XCOM is as a kind of pressure-cooker/mind game. We form a secret project, the truth of which is not even known to governments. We tell everyone who works there and knows about it that aliens are coming. Maybe tell them there really is a Stargate or something. Anyway, we get them believing this, to impress upon them the importance of achieving stuff. Then we throw money at the project until we have quantum doodads and hyperdrive and whatever else seems to be a good idea.
The perceived threat of invasion (and indeed extinction) should ensure that as a species we get our goddamn priorities straight.
I vote, they would/are protecting us from finding out.
Unfortunately there's a massive problem with the Prime Directive arguement. Due to all the advances in AI, genetics, cybernetics, et all that they've made and we haven't, they are almost certainly smarter than us. On THEIR scale of 1-10, we might only measure a 7.5. If they value a 7.5 species like ourselves, then they're also likely to value all the other 7.1-7.48 species on our world which WE are wiping out. (Dolphins, Apes, etc.) Beyond a certain point the value of protecting the other species outweighs the value of protecting just us, and they come and stamp on us and/or tell us in no uncertain terms to stop.
Can you imagine the chaos such a thing would bring on society?
<cough> Possibly you mean your society? In some parts of the world, life is pretty shitty for many humans. What's the point of 'protecting' a naitive that isn't going to live long enough to learn to speak? It really is rather egotistical to imagine that aliens are willing to protect (basically) rich white folk at the expense of the other 90% of humanity.
realistically speaking, a 10 MT nuclear missile is probably more than sufficient to destroy just about any ship that anyone realistically would have or build.
I'm not sure you quite appreciate the maths here. Imagine the imapct of a 500ton probe moving at just 1/10th C. That's pretty much 20 gigatons right there, and that's something we'll probably be able to build within a hundred years time. We might need a little longer for terminal guidence though. I really don't think any missile system we have or could build in the next decade could stop such a weapon, even if we were able to see it coming in the first place; which we probably wouldn't.
A better counter arguement is that while planets are vaulnerable to strikes, space-habitats are not. It's possible to wipe out Earth, Luna, Mars and Venus in a coordinated strike, but 100,000,000 O'Neill cylinders or asteroid-colinies scattered about?
What if other "alien" races don't have a physical body? The concept of the soul is not something uncommon on Earth
It's very likely aliens will include some kind of software AI that can switch between bodies, or run on multiple bodies at once. (AI is better thought of as a kingdom of life, not just a single species.) You also have a point about alien civilisations getting distracted by their version of WOW. But I think any arguement that begins, "What if pixie dust!" is fundimentally a rather silly arguement.
Fascinating. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the whole thing, and I'm startled I've never run up against these conclusions before.
Hm. The whole "Choosing to stay" thing could make a lot of sense, if they can't find a stable population worth of people willing to effectively be their own microcosm of civilization for a couple million years, onboard a spaceship. to suppose that such a thing would be the case is a pretty big leap, considering how "bleh" people at large seem to be on colonization here on earth. this is assuming, of course, that FTL of some sort doesn't exist, and there's not a lot of reason to assume it does.
Further alternatives suggest that there just isn't a way to keep a ship that large going for so long, or maybe that by the time a colony ship arrives, its parent world is already dead. what is the lifespan of a star?
Quick check shows that suns bloating up and rendering planets uninhabitable would take far longer than the colonization estimates. hm. perhaps just civil unrest or running out of resources. Imagine a perpetually colonial civilization, existing entirely to build more colony ships before the resources on the most recent world runs out. Their population and needs for survival are such that continuous habitation is unfeasible, so they have to dedicate themselves to forever moving on, stripping worlds bare as they go, perhaps searching for alternatives while the prospect of such existing grows bleaker with every world they consume.
...Damn. I totally want to write this short story. back soon.
You ask where the Drake Equation breaks down.
I don't think this is really a problem, because as a tool, it's entirely useless beyond mere playful thought.
The Drake Equation is probably valid and would be useful given well grounded statistics, but otherwise its just garbage in -> garbage out.
Up until variable number 4, we have real statistics to plug in, but for the remaining variables we can only guess, and we have no way of validating our guesses. We have no data on which to base any prior assumptions. All we really know is that life has evolved once in the lifespan of the universe. A single observation doesn't tell you anything about a distribution. How would you determine expectation and variance?
I know this is getting technical on a subject thats meant to be light hearted, but it needs to be pointed out that using the Drake Equation is not scientific until we actually have some knowledge of other planets that harbour life.
oddly enough, that is something that Independence Day actually covered: the one thing that Earth has that the rest of the solar system doesn't is arable land and non-mineral natural resources.
Traveling to another star system in any sort of economical way is an infinitely more demanding task than just growing your own damn trees, or fish, or whatever. At that level of technology, constructing huge orbital hydroponic farms or whatever you need should be utterly trivial by comparison. Aliens coming to Earth to exploit our arable land is like you building a boat so you can sail to Australia and buy a pizza.
Incidentally, one note: while specifically building an anti-alien system is obviously a stupid idea, the truth of the matter is that an asteroid deflection system has dual use as an anti-alien-invasion system. Quite frankly, I suspect that nuclear missiles are probably about as bad as weapons tend to get - I mean, I can envision worse weapons, but quite frankly they're probably way too dangerous to USE, and, realistically speaking, a 10 MT nuclear missile is probably more than sufficient to destroy just about any ship that anyone realistically would have or build.
These guys crossed the interstellar void, are by definition capable of at least a solid chunk of lightspeed, and you think you're going to hit them with chemical rockets that will be visible for hours or days as they accelerate toward their targets? You may as well throw spears at them while you're at it.
This sort of scenario is utterly one-sided in favor of the attacker, if only because planets can't maneuver. Depending upon how fast the attackers can accelerate their projectiles and how long they're willing to wait for a hit, they can strike from any arbitrary range they like. At that point all they have to do is throw something that you can't plausibly shoot down and they win. Maybe a few thousand missiles coming in at half the speed of light. Or maybe just one big object that they let you see coming.
"Dear humans, we just finished pushing an asteroid one-fifth the size of your moon onto a collision course with your planet. Yeah that's right, unless you guys somehow invent the Death Star in the next ten years, you're fucked even if we all drop dead right now. We'll push it onto a different course, sure, but not until the Secretary General is polishing my snorblax on the floor of the UN live on TV. Oh yeah also aliens exist and you're at war with them. Surprise. LOL."
Carl Sagan added a very interesting idea to the Drake Equation: "The number of intelligent civilizations that destroy themselves". For that, his estimate was something akin to 1 in 1 million intelligent civilizations that have the capacity for travel outside their Solar System who do not destroy themselves and are actually capable of surpassing the point where communication among the civilization falls apart, the civilization is unable to deal with their technology, and soon they destroy themselves with it. Here on Earth, the evidence to support this idea comes from the consistent wars throughout our history and the massive stockpile of thermonuclear weapons that could destroy each and every person in the timespan of a lazy afternoon.
Meh. Truth is, even if we went apeshit with our nuclear stockpiles right now we wouldn't go extinct. Billions would die, but billions would live. This is a fun read, in a horrifying sort of way.
By the time a species has the ability to travel to other habitable planets will they even need to?
Would it not be a possibility that it is much easier to harvest nearby bodies of mass and convert them to space stations large enough to remove the need to travel millions of light years away. Planets will present new environmental dangers while a space station would not be home to anything not put there by design and would be a safer alternative. Not to talk about the removal of the need for such long travels outside of resource gathering.
Planet colonizing might not be more than a way to keep "a traditional style of life" which would slow down planetary expansions a lot.
Or maybe they haven't said anything because we haven't said anything and all the aliens in the universe just think we are that rude neighbor that never talks to anybody. Probably because we have so many cats on our planet
By the time a species has the ability to travel to other habitable planets will they even need to?
Would it not be a possibility that it is much easier to harvest nearby bodies of mass and convert them to space stations large enough to remove the need to travel millions of light years away. Planets will present new environmental dangers while a space station would not be home to anything not put there by design and would be a safer alternative. Not to talk about the removal of the need for such long travels outside of resource gathering.
Planet colonizing might not be more than a way to keep "a traditional style of life" which would slow down planetary expansions a lot.
Or maybe they haven't said anything because we haven't said anything and all the aliens in the universe just think we are that rude neighbor that never talks to anybody. Probably because we have so many cats on our planet
Another hypothesis - they exist, and they are keeping their existence quiet because they have seen stuff like Twilight and frankly don't want to deal with us.
"Aliens coming to Earth to exploit our arable land is like you building a boat so you can sail to Australia and buy a pizza."
Pretty much says it all.
As someone else has mentioned, really only Mass Effect has dealt with the Fermi paradox in any sort of manner (whether intentional or not).
I think a far more plausible answer is that most civilizations kill themselves at some point. As technology advances, it is easier and easier for a small group of people (or even an individual) to inflict more and more damage. I imagine in the next hundreds of years it'd be possible for a single person in a lab in their basement to develop a virus that would wipe out the human race. Now all you need to do then is throw in a little bit of crazy and determination, and you've got doomsday without a single shot fired.
From what I see in human history and our pop-culture explorations of our own condition, it seems that, barring some radical change in global civilization, once the existence of a sufficient number of colonies is realized, there will be conflict. Now, I have full faith in humanity that one day we will be able to travel the stars in ways seen only in science fiction now, and that we will one day figure out how to colonize other planets, even if that just means putting a "moon base" on them to simulate an Earth-like atmosphere inside. However, the idea of a civilization lasting only as long as it is able to refrain from destroying itself I think becomes emphasized that farther apart we are and the less immediate and frequent our contact is. Then again, war will be fought with gigantic spaceships and mecha-suits that it will be one hell of a way for a civilization to go!
Here's something for the Extra Credits guys to chew on. The reason why we haven't had any alien life forms visit? Video games. As technology progresses, the ability to simulate our world becomes more and more lifelike, until it is indistinguishable from reality. It's possible that Alien Civilizations have WALL-E'd out and turned inward instead of outward. They may even leave the physical world entirely, totally integrating themselves into their self-made virtual worlds. Instead of colonizing the stars, they are playing the most lifelike form of EVE Online ever, or whatever else they desire, in their heads.
I recently saw, what I believe to be, a major flaw in the Drake Equation.
Once you get to the technology factoring we're assuming a lot. We're basing how technologies progress based off how they progressed here on Earth.
But let's consider this: One of the main reasons we've had such a booming industrial and technological age recently is because we're able to harness fossil fuels. Imagine if we were on a planet without coal or oil. Technological advances wouldn't just stop but I'm confident in saying that such a society wouldn't experience advances as fast pace as we are.
Consider how lucky we are to have access to fossil fuels. Hypothetically let's say the mass extinction event that gave way for mammals to evolve never happened. In this scenario let's be generous and say some sort of intelligence comparable to our own would eventually present itself. What would they harness to kickstart their industrial age? I'm not that versed in geology so there might be carbon based energy deposits in the form of coal from ancient forests, but it definitely wouldn't be as common as it was for us.
Do carbon based (coal/oil) energy have periods that render them useless in terms of energy usage? Or is there a very exact (and for our species, lucky) time frame that allows a civilization to use those sources of energy?
What do you think? Adding a few more parameters to adjust for things like energy types could drastically alter the Drake Equation to yield much less inspiring results.
There's always the premise of the Stargate series. That the deities in a lot of our mythologies and religions are actually just aliens. I don't know why that concept isn't taken more seriously. What else would an alien be seen as? Hell, Cortez was seen as a deity and he was just a white dude.
@ryan.george
i think you are overstating just how important fossil fuels to our tech age. Really the only important thing is the ability to produce electricity to power our stuff. When you factor in that many of the first power plants were water powered, and we had already been harvesting wind power for centuries (as grind mills) the lack of fossil fuels would probably just be a minor stumbling block.
@wesalicious
Frankly I think you might be understating just how much fossil fuels have been use to reach, say, the ability for us to transmit electromagnetic (radio) frequencies.
I do agree that many of our power plants were (and still are) hydro-powered, but before we started burning coal we were using steam engines. And there's just no comparison in energy output when you factor steam power vs burning fossil fuels. The same goes for wind mills. Old school wind energy was enough to grind grain, less effective for lighting up a city street light.
In order for us to build water powered hydro plants we used fossil fuel burning factories to produce the building materials in mass. On top of that, transmitting energy (electricity) without oil-based wires (the wire coating) is, I imagine, a very hard thing to do.
Let me go on the record and say that a lot of these statements are assumptions. While I'm fairly confident in them, they could be totally incorrect claims for a number of reasons.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short piece entitled "We Will Never Conquer Space" in which he has a rather interesting view of interstellar colonization. He looks at the realities of an empire stretching over such vast distances, pointing out that stars are on average 5 light years apart, our fastest communications would have a 5 year delay, therefore our colonies wouldn't really be colonies, but independent worlds. Quantum entanglement could theoretically change things, but it seems there isn't much incentive to obey a central government when, travelling at light speed, the nearest intervening force is 5 years away.I think this would effect the Fermi Paradox in such a way that every degree of separation you achieve, the less incentive the world has to continue the expansion.
Planetary colonization seems like retro-future thinking. "We colonized our world with boats, so we'll probably colonize other worlds with...space boats?" Why? Who's to say we'll even have physical bodies by then? Maybe we'll unlock the ability to generate entire universes before we achieve the (completely arbitrary) feat of traveling vast distances at high speed in space boats.
Lets put it another way. Suppose we have the technology to upload our minds in realtime, then spit them out a million billion miles away in the form of a nanobot hologram, which is also able to intercept sensory feedback and send it back to us as though, for all intents and purposes, we were actually there.
Why the hell would we need to go to all the trouble of physically GOING there?
If we discovered aliens and could just mutually beam 1:1 nano-holograms to one another that were indistinguishable from the real thing, what would be the point of physically venturing out to meet one another? None.
I don't think an XCOM would be realisticly efficient. As for pushing the limits of our weaponry, we are doing quite well by killing each others. The space race was fuelled by competition, and as soon as the competition downed the technology regressed. If we are to progress we have to keep a few superpowers/alliances competing, and remember that Bedouin saying : "I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins, then my cousins and I against strangers". If some alien power comes in on us, then we will naturally put our ressources together to fend them off.
I think that all alien live forms that nearly colonize the entire galaxy basically become godlike they probably leave to make their own universe or just hang around the galaxy and our puny human minds simply can’t understand such life forms that’s the most logical theory in my opinion.
@1280295 The distinction doesn't have a difference. The universe is much the same in all directions. What holds true in this galaxy should hold true in all of them. If life can develop and has any tendency to colonize, most of the universe should be colonized by intelligent life in the estimated time it takes to colonize any given galaxy.
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Would an alien civilization that meets us attack us?
And if so, why?
After all is much easier to mine from asteroids or small planets like Pluto than from a large planet like Earth.
Great episodes, both part 1 and 2. I've never heard of the Drake equation or the Fermi paradox before, but they lined up quite nicely with my thoughts about extraterrestrial sentient life. Good work, EC.
Because the Reapers are the answer the Mass Effect universe found to the galaxy being so quiet. Even though the Mass Effect universe is full of alien life, the answer they found to the question: "Why isn't every solar system colonized?" was simply: They were at some point (Prothean ruins) but the Reapers came and cleaned everything up.
On a lighter note: XKCD had its own, very convincing solution to the Fermi Paradox:
http://xkcd.com/962/
Assuming they aren't already here, we might have a chance, perhaps if they are to invade, they'd be so far from home, with no resources or backup, we'd stand a chance. Otherwise, no way. Fighting back would only make us look like a barking dog on a chain. Amusing, but not much else.
Then again, considering the alien mind control, and constant alien voices in my head telling me they are already here, I already know the answer, and I'll tell the world... but who'll will believe me? Brilliant cover up?
...probably would have died out long before they figured out interstellar travel. But it's still possible!
Yes this is the other big solution to the Fermi Paradox: That alien life hasn't revealed itself because its is logical to destroy all other aliens that you find but also to avoid detection yourself.
The logic is simple, any race that has the ability to travel interstellar is likely to have the ablity to push ships to fractions of the speed of light has the ablity to attack you with relativistic weapons (same principle of mass driver weapons but with even greater speed/energy). Since such weapons are impossible to counter such a race is automatelly a major threat.
At this point the prisoner's dilemma creeps in since you cannot understand or trust the other alien species it is logical to take the risk and destroy them even if they plan to do the same to you.
The result of this is that we can't find any alien out there because they wipe each other out and at the same time try to be as quite as possible to avoid another alien race doing the same to them.
See here for more details about this line of thought:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#id--The_Fermi_Paradox
No, they are doing far too well (or bad) at being incompetent. The most I could see is that they are playing up the "leaks" by leaking bad information and thereby discrediting the real information.
If someone broadcast 10 news stories and 9 were fake, would you believe the 1 real story? I would not.
Of course, if the background radiation is the result of alien communication above our ability to understand, we'd probably have to reconsider that whole Big Bang idea, too.
As I looked at the stars
If one was a sun bearing a world like ours.
The math says they're there
But their song goes unheard.
That they've made no waves seems simply absurd.
If fate holds our ending
As far as we'd aim,
Then I must defy you to say the sky's tame.
But if Earths aren't so common,
Then it's not all bad news.
A world I'd prefer would be so hard to choose.
Now I feel silly for addressing failures of the equation from the previous episode. They were all addressed in this one instead.
Still, you didn't really discuss whether XCOM should be funded beyond stating that aliens who can get to earth would probably have no trouble overpowering an earth army.
We know how to use Wikipedia.
Incidentally, one note: while specifically building an anti-alien system is obviously a stupid idea, the truth of the matter is that an asteroid deflection system has dual use as an anti-alien-invasion system. Quite frankly, I suspect that nuclear missiles are probably about as bad as weapons tend to get - I mean, I can envision worse weapons, but quite frankly they're probably way too dangerous to USE, and, realistically speaking, a 10 MT nuclear missile is probably more than sufficient to destroy just about any ship that anyone realistically would have or build. So I actually suspect that really, interstellar invasions are utterly impractical as you could just shower their ships in nukes and there's really not much you can do to stop that. Yeah, you could shoot down the nukes... but only one has to get within a pretty big distance of you to take you out. Given that ships capable of interstellar travel are probably pretty darned expensive, I doubt you could successfully invade a post-nuclear civilization intent on defending itself. You might be able to wipe them out with a bio weapon or similar, but actual invasion? Doubtful.
What if other "alien" races don't have a physical body? The concept of the soul is not something uncommon on Earth, so imagine that other civilizations already "transcended" past the physical and live as an ethereal cloud that can travel at any speed they want, wherever they want without the fear of being harmed? And we cannot see them nor communicate with them since we ourselves must first "transcend" the body?
Yes, I know how this sounds, but do take into consideration that "life" as we know it doesn't have to look this way everywhere in the universe. Perhaps a mistake most scientists do is that they are looking for something living, like humans or animals, while the alien species might as well be a pack of sentient rocks that are connected all via a telepathic net and have their own "internet" in which they just spend all day playing their version of WoW, LoL or other MMO game.
I know it sounds ridiculous. But do remember that people once thought Earth was flat. There might be stuff out there that is so beyond our minds that we don't even see it while looking at it.
The way we should run XCOM is as a kind of pressure-cooker/mind game. We form a secret project, the truth of which is not even known to governments. We tell everyone who works there and knows about it that aliens are coming. Maybe tell them there really is a Stargate or something. Anyway, we get them believing this, to impress upon them the importance of achieving stuff. Then we throw money at the project until we have quantum doodads and hyperdrive and whatever else seems to be a good idea.
The perceived threat of invasion (and indeed extinction) should ensure that as a species we get our goddamn priorities straight.
Unfortunately there's a massive problem with the Prime Directive arguement. Due to all the advances in AI, genetics, cybernetics, et all that they've made and we haven't, they are almost certainly smarter than us. On THEIR scale of 1-10, we might only measure a 7.5. If they value a 7.5 species like ourselves, then they're also likely to value all the other 7.1-7.48 species on our world which WE are wiping out. (Dolphins, Apes, etc.) Beyond a certain point the value of protecting the other species outweighs the value of protecting just us, and they come and stamp on us and/or tell us in no uncertain terms to stop.
<cough> Possibly you mean your society? In some parts of the world, life is pretty shitty for many humans. What's the point of 'protecting' a naitive that isn't going to live long enough to learn to speak? It really is rather egotistical to imagine that aliens are willing to protect (basically) rich white folk at the expense of the other 90% of humanity.
I'm not sure you quite appreciate the maths here. Imagine the imapct of a 500ton probe moving at just 1/10th C. That's pretty much 20 gigatons right there, and that's something we'll probably be able to build within a hundred years time. We might need a little longer for terminal guidence though. I really don't think any missile system we have or could build in the next decade could stop such a weapon, even if we were able to see it coming in the first place; which we probably wouldn't.
A better counter arguement is that while planets are vaulnerable to strikes, space-habitats are not. It's possible to wipe out Earth, Luna, Mars and Venus in a coordinated strike, but 100,000,000 O'Neill cylinders or asteroid-colinies scattered about?
It's very likely aliens will include some kind of software AI that can switch between bodies, or run on multiple bodies at once. (AI is better thought of as a kingdom of life, not just a single species.) You also have a point about alien civilisations getting distracted by their version of WOW. But I think any arguement that begins, "What if pixie dust!" is fundimentally a rather silly arguement.
Hm. The whole "Choosing to stay" thing could make a lot of sense, if they can't find a stable population worth of people willing to effectively be their own microcosm of civilization for a couple million years, onboard a spaceship. to suppose that such a thing would be the case is a pretty big leap, considering how "bleh" people at large seem to be on colonization here on earth. this is assuming, of course, that FTL of some sort doesn't exist, and there's not a lot of reason to assume it does.
Further alternatives suggest that there just isn't a way to keep a ship that large going for so long, or maybe that by the time a colony ship arrives, its parent world is already dead. what is the lifespan of a star?
Quick check shows that suns bloating up and rendering planets uninhabitable would take far longer than the colonization estimates. hm. perhaps just civil unrest or running out of resources. Imagine a perpetually colonial civilization, existing entirely to build more colony ships before the resources on the most recent world runs out. Their population and needs for survival are such that continuous habitation is unfeasible, so they have to dedicate themselves to forever moving on, stripping worlds bare as they go, perhaps searching for alternatives while the prospect of such existing grows bleaker with every world they consume.
...Damn. I totally want to write this short story. back soon.
I don't think this is really a problem, because as a tool, it's entirely useless beyond mere playful thought.
The Drake Equation is probably valid and would be useful given well grounded statistics, but otherwise its just garbage in -> garbage out.
Up until variable number 4, we have real statistics to plug in, but for the remaining variables we can only guess, and we have no way of validating our guesses. We have no data on which to base any prior assumptions. All we really know is that life has evolved once in the lifespan of the universe. A single observation doesn't tell you anything about a distribution. How would you determine expectation and variance?
I know this is getting technical on a subject thats meant to be light hearted, but it needs to be pointed out that using the Drake Equation is not scientific until we actually have some knowledge of other planets that harbour life.
Traveling to another star system in any sort of economical way is an infinitely more demanding task than just growing your own damn trees, or fish, or whatever. At that level of technology, constructing huge orbital hydroponic farms or whatever you need should be utterly trivial by comparison. Aliens coming to Earth to exploit our arable land is like you building a boat so you can sail to Australia and buy a pizza.
These guys crossed the interstellar void, are by definition capable of at least a solid chunk of lightspeed, and you think you're going to hit them with chemical rockets that will be visible for hours or days as they accelerate toward their targets? You may as well throw spears at them while you're at it.
This sort of scenario is utterly one-sided in favor of the attacker, if only because planets can't maneuver. Depending upon how fast the attackers can accelerate their projectiles and how long they're willing to wait for a hit, they can strike from any arbitrary range they like. At that point all they have to do is throw something that you can't plausibly shoot down and they win. Maybe a few thousand missiles coming in at half the speed of light. Or maybe just one big object that they let you see coming.
"Dear humans, we just finished pushing an asteroid one-fifth the size of your moon onto a collision course with your planet. Yeah that's right, unless you guys somehow invent the Death Star in the next ten years, you're fucked even if we all drop dead right now. We'll push it onto a different course, sure, but not until the Secretary General is polishing my snorblax on the floor of the UN live on TV. Oh yeah also aliens exist and you're at war with them. Surprise. LOL."
War over.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html
Would it not be a possibility that it is much easier to harvest nearby bodies of mass and convert them to space stations large enough to remove the need to travel millions of light years away. Planets will present new environmental dangers while a space station would not be home to anything not put there by design and would be a safer alternative. Not to talk about the removal of the need for such long travels outside of resource gathering.
Planet colonizing might not be more than a way to keep "a traditional style of life" which would slow down planetary expansions a lot.
Or maybe they haven't said anything because we haven't said anything and all the aliens in the universe just think we are that rude neighbor that never talks to anybody. Probably because we have so many cats on our planet
Would it not be a possibility that it is much easier to harvest nearby bodies of mass and convert them to space stations large enough to remove the need to travel millions of light years away. Planets will present new environmental dangers while a space station would not be home to anything not put there by design and would be a safer alternative. Not to talk about the removal of the need for such long travels outside of resource gathering.
Planet colonizing might not be more than a way to keep "a traditional style of life" which would slow down planetary expansions a lot.
Or maybe they haven't said anything because we haven't said anything and all the aliens in the universe just think we are that rude neighbor that never talks to anybody. Probably because we have so many cats on our planet
"Aliens coming to Earth to exploit our arable land is like you building a boat so you can sail to Australia and buy a pizza."
Pretty much says it all.
As someone else has mentioned, really only Mass Effect has dealt with the Fermi paradox in any sort of manner (whether intentional or not).
I think a far more plausible answer is that most civilizations kill themselves at some point. As technology advances, it is easier and easier for a small group of people (or even an individual) to inflict more and more damage. I imagine in the next hundreds of years it'd be possible for a single person in a lab in their basement to develop a virus that would wipe out the human race. Now all you need to do then is throw in a little bit of crazy and determination, and you've got doomsday without a single shot fired.
Once you get to the technology factoring we're assuming a lot. We're basing how technologies progress based off how they progressed here on Earth.
But let's consider this: One of the main reasons we've had such a booming industrial and technological age recently is because we're able to harness fossil fuels. Imagine if we were on a planet without coal or oil. Technological advances wouldn't just stop but I'm confident in saying that such a society wouldn't experience advances as fast pace as we are.
Consider how lucky we are to have access to fossil fuels. Hypothetically let's say the mass extinction event that gave way for mammals to evolve never happened. In this scenario let's be generous and say some sort of intelligence comparable to our own would eventually present itself. What would they harness to kickstart their industrial age? I'm not that versed in geology so there might be carbon based energy deposits in the form of coal from ancient forests, but it definitely wouldn't be as common as it was for us.
Do carbon based (coal/oil) energy have periods that render them useless in terms of energy usage? Or is there a very exact (and for our species, lucky) time frame that allows a civilization to use those sources of energy?
What do you think? Adding a few more parameters to adjust for things like energy types could drastically alter the Drake Equation to yield much less inspiring results.
i think you are overstating just how important fossil fuels to our tech age. Really the only important thing is the ability to produce electricity to power our stuff. When you factor in that many of the first power plants were water powered, and we had already been harvesting wind power for centuries (as grind mills) the lack of fossil fuels would probably just be a minor stumbling block.
Frankly I think you might be understating just how much fossil fuels have been use to reach, say, the ability for us to transmit electromagnetic (radio) frequencies.
I do agree that many of our power plants were (and still are) hydro-powered, but before we started burning coal we were using steam engines. And there's just no comparison in energy output when you factor steam power vs burning fossil fuels. The same goes for wind mills. Old school wind energy was enough to grind grain, less effective for lighting up a city street light.
In order for us to build water powered hydro plants we used fossil fuel burning factories to produce the building materials in mass. On top of that, transmitting energy (electricity) without oil-based wires (the wire coating) is, I imagine, a very hard thing to do.
Let me go on the record and say that a lot of these statements are assumptions. While I'm fairly confident in them, they could be totally incorrect claims for a number of reasons.
Lets put it another way. Suppose we have the technology to upload our minds in realtime, then spit them out a million billion miles away in the form of a nanobot hologram, which is also able to intercept sensory feedback and send it back to us as though, for all intents and purposes, we were actually there.
Why the hell would we need to go to all the trouble of physically GOING there?
If we discovered aliens and could just mutually beam 1:1 nano-holograms to one another that were indistinguishable from the real thing, what would be the point of physically venturing out to meet one another? None.