Society is made up of individuals though. If they're hiding from us for 'our benefit' then eventually that has to translate to net benefit for individuals.
Nothing would probably benefit everyone, there is always going to be some people left out. Unless of course they are all powerful and all knowing. Which is where I start seeing issues, how much more impressive is their technology?
A corporation usually only has a theoretical value, based upon its share price. If we all had super-batteries, then the stock of oil companies and their actual net-worth would hit bankruptcy very quickly.
Someone has to make the "super-batteries", if aliens aren't handing them out, then they'd be teaching manufacturing industry to make them, was kind of my point there, and that industry would be who benefited from the new technology how-to, since they got the factories to build it. If the aliens are just handing them out, making industries pointless, putting possibly millions out of work. We are completely dependent on their hand out then. How giving are they though? Would their technology support us indefinitely, self sufficiently? We can only guess.
It's a little more complex than that. Most ethical systems assume you have a moral duty to assist another if you can. That it is, in other words, unethical, if not downright evil, to not help when you can. Hence when a third world nation has a drought and famine, no one stands up and says, "We should let them die." No skin off my nose. I'm alright jack. Am I my brother's keeper? These viewpoints are not held up as laudable by the majority of people.
Here is the thing I wonder, and probably a lot of where I'm coming from. They are not us. We have a limited capacity to understand how the future plays out, and ethical systems, that are probably rather simplistic, to a species, that understands how "the world works", far better than we do. I agree, no human, wants to say let them die, but step outside of our world, and peer into it, like you had too many fish in the bowl, they might not see the need for the same solutions as we do.
As for the Prime Directive and its flaws, it possibly could only be flaws because our ethics, aren't as good as we think. And even then, ethics is a bit ambiguous, do we do good now? or good for later? do we save the individuals? or the group. Its not hard to come up with conflicts in ethical choices. Also, I rewatched it, I'd say personally, not really arguing for the categories presented, I'd be somewhere between this Prime Directive, protecting us from the chaos of their presence, which on a side note, shares the same reasons I don't think God would ever show up, and the conspiracy theory. A cover up. If they are here, they are having an impact on something, perhaps merely just the air flow from a fly over, or something vastly farther up the chain of command. It might not be protecting us they desire, they might just not want to be known as roaming about. Either way, I can't imagine them exposing themselves anytime soon.
Point being assuming they are ethical, and do good, given their level of knowledge of how the world works, as witnessed through their ability to travel in ways we pretend to be in movies, their ethics and morals, are going to be leaps and bounds more complex than ours. We're barely out of the 'don't do that' phase, and getting into the, why you shouldn't part. To judge their actions as ethical or not, is probably like a first year med student, telling the world renowned expert doctor, how it should be done.
@DanHibiki As you said we look for "Radio Frequencies" what if another civilization uses something outside the entire radio spectrum, something we have not detected yet.
There are actually a few possibilities I could see on these fronts. One of them might be an issue in terms of costs as mentioned, but related to that is the problem of making worlds that could sustain the right kind of life. IE unless we're talking domes we probably couldn't colonize any other worlds or moons in our solar system. Combine the expenses and it would get trickier, not to mention logistics. One thing is that there's a key that's often forgotten, logistics. Let's ignore the scientific ability, let's look at a governments desire for such a thing. Sure, space programs to get away from utter DOOOOM might exist but in general unless overpopulation is hitting record levels or a special unique ore or other material is found on another planet the needs to do such a thing would be more scientific curiosity or general expansion rather than a need. That means that resources to do so would be tricky to acquire and even harder to maintain, since early colonies would also likely be fairly dependent on the 'mother planet' for acquiring equipment.
This leads to a governmental problem, most governments would be uneasy about doing all this without some kind of return. Think of how much people complain about taxes NOW, and this is where the government is at least doing some tangible things and you can usually see the results directly and a fuckup won't risk wiping out all of you and yours. Colonies could get killed or deal with massive problems if the wrong equipment or insufficient supplies of one type or another are sent, especially food and medical gear. Combine that with general logistics and unless we find say metal that can produce a room temperature superconductor or crystals that can give us cold fusion equivalent energy with incredible safety there isn't a practical means for colonizing the world by any government unless they're trying to establish an escape hatch.
I might even argue the whole interest thing too, look at how many people in the US seem to be in favor of cutting the space program, nevermind that such a thing provides a lot of useful technical data, patents, etc. It also helps get people interested in science and even offers some great potential for what we can do in the future. People always like to joke about where their flying cars or personal jetpacks are, why don't we have space colonies, etc. There is interest in the end result but little interest in funding the means to reach that point. But meh, I'm also looking at this from the perspective of a human, another race might also have special biological requirements, or even religious issues that might make space travel a problem or at least make colonization difficult.
I think other there are other civilisations out there and I think they know of our existence. However, I think they intentionally avoid us out of fear, resentment or disgust. Now I hate to be "that" guy but, really, why would any advanced civilisation want anything to do with our species? They probably have predication algorithms so precise, that we've been identified as a Critical Danger species, unfit for galactic relations and our little section of space has been quarantined until we eventually cause our own genocide. Our species is probably labelled with the same Threat Level that we would expect the Giger Aliens to be labelled with.
Great episode! I don't know why people are complaining about this having nothing to do with games. I'm happy with interesting off topic episodes like this, as long as you keep you rotten views on religion and science out of it (I'm still trying to get over that one).
@WarGiver
Because things outside of the radio frequency range are terrible as a form of communication.
Long wave just plain sucks, and and higher frequency starts functioning like matter, which also sucks for communication, and not just because it will kill you.
Now a form of quantum communication might be something interesting and useful for an FTL capable society, however it's far more likely that they just plain didn't pass the Star Trek test and killed themselves off in a nuclear war before we could hear them.
I'm kind of curious why reproduction never came up. I mean this theory about how the galaxy would be flooded seems extremely reasonable in a technology perspective. But the kind of population it would take to colonize the galaxy would have to be enormous not including the resources need for the life forms. To colonize a planet is to flood it with your species while still living off the resources sent to you or provided from the planets. If they find a livable planet to be able to provide the resources they need to survive for each form of life, (in human terms food and water) it would still take time to grow on it. I mean I'm looking at life forms and their intelligence also providing emotions and connections to the same species so while it seems great to provide this colonization in the galaxy were is the logical reason to give up your life to go live on a planet with hardly any of your other species. The two reasons i see these civilization moving are, 1-the population is too great to provide for everyone on the planet, 2- for the sake of knowledge that these civilizations seek out. I'm just throwing my thoughts out after seeing this I should probably research my points more. there is just so much thrown out of these equation because people view these expansions from a technology stand point and nothing else.
Communications well I have to think about Broadband communications. So far we are looking at Radio waves for a signal. What if those signals are broadband method. If we are missing Most of the signal because we looking in just a few radio spectrum at a time?
As for visiting us there is the idea they have and it jump started our Civilization. The Ancient astronauts idea is that visitors taught our ancestors basic math and agriculture. For whatever reason they discontinued having open communications. Perhaps because being what we are we got greedy and wanted the power of the Gods for ourselves? Leading to tales of Atlantis?
If we proven to be to hostile it might be the reverse of the Prime Directive. They could be just outside our solar system waiting for us to do something stupid then come in and clean up. Say some moron let loose or uses Weapon grade virus. That would be easy for them to come in being another form of life they would have to use there advance tech to Immunization themselves to almost all microbes anyway why not one more. Heck could be a good story Aliens cause wars on a primitive world then wait to take over. This could be why UFO sightings boomed during and after WWII.
There are some believes that some of history greatest pandemics were caused by non earth bacteria or virus. Population control (They are over due) Culling of the herds? Or attempt to remove a thread before moving in to a new home? Duh duh duh!
@Riekorie: From an economic perspective, an individual's consumption demands are technically infinite. You can see that by comparing some upper-crust American family to some poor peasants in resource poor Somalia. What one considers reasonable - a multi-acre track home with expensive furniture and steak for dinner every night - would be enough to sate the other for weeks or months in terms of cost. So even lower population density doesn't guarantee you won't have a space-faring civilization that branches ever outward.
I'm personally of the opinion that the Fermi Paradox is one of environment. We're on the outer rim of the Galaxy, which means we're not constantly bombarded by the kind of stellar activity you see closer into to the center of the Milky way. This might mean life just isn't possible at the Galaxy's "urban core". Or it could mean that life in the core is so radically different from ours that survival this far out isn't practical. Imagine a race of photosynthetic beings that need constant light from their bipolar solar system to remain active and cognizant. Or a lifeform composed of silicate or a molten metal which requires 1000 degree temperatures or massive pressure to keep from falling apart and dying. Why would such a creature come all the way out to the ass end of the galaxy, where it's four light years between habitable environments?
>> The locations within the Milky Way that have the highest stellar density are the central core and the interior of globular clusters. A typical mass density for a globular cluster is 70 MSun pc−3, which is 500 times the mass density near the Sun.
So the areas with the greatest material density (and - presumably - the highest probability for stars and planets and therefore life) are also going to be the least like an Earth-atmosphere. By extension, we can also assume that any life arising in such a radically different climate will make use of alternative technologies to suit their alternative needs. Thus, looking for radio waves amidst the noisy mess that is the Galactic core is extra futile given that some hypothetical organisms that subsist in some radioactive habitat aren't going to use a technique that simply wouldn't work for them.
@Riekorie: From an economic perspective, an individual's consumption demands are technically infinite. You can see that by comparing some upper-crust American family to some poor peasants in resource poor Somalia. What one considers reasonable - a multi-acre track home with expensive furniture and steak for dinner every night - would be enough to sate the other for weeks or months in terms of cost. So even lower population density doesn't guarantee you won't have a space-faring civilization that branches ever outward.
I'm personally of the opinion that the Fermi Paradox is one of environment. We're on the outer rim of the Galaxy, which means we're not constantly bombarded by the kind of stellar activity you see closer into to the center of the Milky way. This might mean life just isn't possible at the Galaxy's "urban core". Or it could mean that life in the core is so radically different from ours that survival this far out isn't practical. Imagine a race of photosynthetic beings that need constant light from their bipolar solar system to remain active and cognizant. Or a lifeform composed of silicate or a molten metal which requires 1000 degree temperatures or massive pressure to keep from falling apart and dying. Why would such a creature come all the way out to the ass end of the galaxy, where it's four light years between habitable environments?
>> The locations within the Milky Way that have the highest stellar density are the central core and the interior of globular clusters. A typical mass density for a globular cluster is 70 MSun pc−3, which is 500 times the mass density near the Sun.
So the areas with the greatest material density (and - presumably - the highest probability for stars and planets and therefore life) are also going to be the least like an Earth-atmosphere. By extension, we can also assume that any life arising in such a radically different climate will make use of alternative technologies to suit their alternative needs. Thus, looking for radio waves amidst the noisy mess that is the Galactic core is extra futile given that some hypothetical organisms that subsist in some radioactive habitat aren't going to use a technique that simply wouldn't work for them.
One question to the EC crew if they are so kind to answer. How did you arrive to the 18,000 light years figure? What assumptions where used to estimate it? You have the number of civilizations but how did you derive the "lower bound" of distance from that. Did you assume a uniform spread of the civilizations? Because 7 or 8 may be clustered and are difficult to predict in simple calculation as there are little statistical bases to predict anything, as maybe not all galactic environments are necessarily apt to hold life.
Where I stand. no there is no need for a X-Com like program. Drake's equation is too highly speculative for me. How you assign that "100%" of planets that develop life, is very arguable, as is the "90%" that arrive to the use of EM waves for communication. Hell even the "50%" of develop intelligent life can be seen too optimistic (out of millions of living organisms an incredibly small amount that veered towards "intelligence" and the use of tools for the development of the species, so it is arguable that a certain level of intelligence, much lower than that needed to develop language or the traits expected of "high intelligence" is enough). Those numbers are so wild speculations that every number that comes out of that equation I take it with a grain of salt. I doubt that in any near future (the next couple thousand years) there will be any contact.
@kurokotetsu
That's why all of those are "guesstimates". I'm sure people were smart enough to realize that any of those numbers probably weren't really even close, much less accurate. And really with how humongous the galaxy is, and with how quiet it seems, seven civilizations doesn't seem so wildly out there either. But you're right it that there's no real way to actually know for sure how many planets out there even support intelligent life, much less a civilization that managed to make it to technology on our level or above. But that's what these past two videos were, interesting topics of discussion we can have with other people and think about, not a college lecture. I know they had to make a disclaimer in their Brazil games episode that not everything they say was 100% accurate, or that they could even be dead wrong. But they shouldn't have to do that with EVERY video they put out. They know, and we SHOULD know what is speculation and guesses on their part, and what they know for sure.
That said, XCOM does seem really...unnecessary. If they're so technologically advanced that they can travel across light years and light years of space, probably doesn't quite care enough about our dinky little planet to genocide it just to have more living space. Heck, I'd imagine they'd be able to create an artificial living economy/ecosystem to sustain themselves.
@digitaru
I'm aware that they are not 100% accurate. I know most people are aware of that too. But I don't really like the Drake Equation because of that. You can plug almost any number based on "estimates" and "guesses" and you can come up with ridiculously different answers. It is not a very helpful tool for any real guesswork. There are number ranging from this 7 (an incredibly low estimate really) to 100,000,000 civilizations capable of communication. It is ridiculous. The margin of error is so huge it tells us next to nothing. I really don't like the application of the Drake Equation until data is far better. Any estimate is as useless as the next. It may be an interesting topic, the possibility of contact, but Drake's Equation gives us very little in reality.
Also, if someone with more knowledge of astrophysics can tell me how many of the stars are Population I (with a lot of "metals") that are being studied with possible planets, or even how many of the stars in the Milky Way are in this category, and how old are the oldest of this population (if the Sun is one of the oldest, then at most intelligent civilizations may be around our level, not that much more advanced). It may affect seriously the study of alien civilizations. Population III and II probably had too little amount of heavy elements to form any planets that can sustain life (even the exotic kinds of life need heavy elements, like silicon, or carbon or oxygen, some even rarer elements like mercury, but from what I've seen none postulate life mainly composed of hydrogen and helium) so if anyone can provide taht data it may help the discussion.
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Good episode. Don't listen to the nay-sayers, this is a great topic.
I think time travel, i.e. going to the past would yeild a memory wipe since you couldn't remember something that hasn't happened yet. Which is why we have time travelers in the present, they just don't know it yet. Even then there's tricks like, if you wen't back to a different season, the earth might be on the other side of the sun, or it will rotate and move beneath you dropping you in the skies of Bangladesh.
Whops wrong discussion.
@kurokotetsu
Fair enough, but really, unless we have people on those planets studying the land, or even just have satellites monitoring every planet in the galaxy, the next best thing to the drake equation would be to just flat out guess EVERYTHING. Which honestly, it's amazing we even have a formulaic equation for this in the first place. As flimsy as it is, we'd probably have a better formula than the drake equation if someone did or is coming up with one. We just don't have enough evidence of anything outside of our own solar system to make any sort of concrete conclusions on the subject.
My main problem with this, and it can be found in almost any discussion of extraterrestrial life, is the idea of a natural progression; that life moves "towards" something. Life wants to live, it's as simple as that, and whatever adaptations make for better living in a particular situation are selected for. Sometimes that means stronger bones, denser muscles, bigger brains, but more often than not, it means reduction and simplification. Look at it this way, there are plenty of species on this planet, and many of those are what we might consider "intelligent," but only one hurls things into space. Out of some 8.7 million species, just one. To add to that, we don't even know if intelligence, as we possess it, is a viable evolutionary strategy. Sure, the human race has never been stronger, but our civilization is unsustainable. All in all, I suspect that life on other worlds lives in puddles, not in skyscrapers.
The problem with the Drake Equation is that it's deterministic, rather than probabalistic.
We assign a reasonable value to each component in the drake equation, but the issue is that we should not expect the expected result to occur. This is a common fallacy in human reasoning: if you flip a coin 10 times, you will be surprised if you do not get 5 heads and 5 tails, but the the standard deviation of the results mean that it is highly unlikely you will always get 5 heads and 5 tails.
In the case of the development of the galaxy, we're only in 1 galaxy, so we only have 1 trial. We should not be surprised to find the years needed for inter-planetary communication higher, even if they are still within the bounds of a reasonable standard deviation.
What if the time required for a civilization to colonize the galaxy is a 100 million years, plus or minus 10 billion years? THIS would absolutely answer the Fermi paradox and it's not as outlandish as you might think. Consider that it may require not the development of 1 species, but the development of several symbiotic species for a planet to develop the practices of storing and developing the energy necessary for us to emit frequencies. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel discussed this when looking at a tribe of Papa New Gineans, humans who have never evolved technologically beyond a tribal life-style. What he found was that the absense of any native cereal grains or the draft animals used to develop them precluded the possibility of their technoilogical development.
What if our planet produced technologically advanced life so quickly because in the course of this planet's genetic development, our RNA bowled a strike? Our planet has been combining and recombining DNA strands for THREE POINT SIX BILLION YEARS! What if this is the EARLIEST amount of time we should expect it to take for a planet to create the positive symbosis between specieis (inteligent life, energy-storing life, and energy-developing life) necessary for technological development to occur?
The last hypothesis, that we're just looking for the wrong thing, reminds me of Solaris. Not the 2002 Cronenberg version. It's way too human-centric. The Tarkovsky version is better, but I was really thinking of the novel by Stanislas Lem. If live were anything even close to how Lem describes Solaris (AND he never actually indicates that he considers Solaris to be an instance of life, which he refuses to define directly) we're not getting any close to finding anything like that.
One great mystery is: how does our species measure to others, ethically, if it is true that we are not the only sentient species in time and space? So far, we have nothing to compare ourselves to. But what represents us better: Shakespeare and Mozart and Wu Cheng'en or petty theft and the banking crisis?
But, more importantly, where is my coffee mug? I'm sure I left it somewhere near my desk...
eje211, Soderbergh directed the 2002 Solaris, not Cronenberg.
Maybe the beings currently out there don't exist on the same plane. Maybe instead of traveling the huge gulfs of space, which seem limitless, they instead travel between planes or dimensions or whatever else. Maybe the earth isn't unique, but it is the first civilization to achieve sentience. Any number of reasons could be there... but throwing out a bunch of fictional numbers doesn't actually tell us anything. Until we get more concrete facts to actually input, we don't really have the capability of estimating if other intelligent life does exist out there. Not there some good ideas haven't been mentioned, like different forms of communication being used... which could lead to forming something new that might be able to detect these new forms of communication... but it all still seems like grasping at straws.
We have been visited time and time again it seems. Those religious stories people often blow off as "bs" seem to almost always involve some strange entities coming from "the heavens" (the sky) but you have probably heard all that on ancient aliens already.
The "government can't keep a secret" thing is a bit annoying. Time and time again people that worked for nasa or various government agencies have discussed and "exposed" such things and many end up dead but people just see them as crazies or frauds. It's not that the government can't keep secrets, it's that they know exactly how to deal with leaks. Usually they turn it into something funny or fun for the public by putting extreme focus on the surface idea but never delving into the details.
Now let's talk about goverments, why do so many human cultures develop a structured society? Is it just in our genetics? Evolution is based on random mutations being favored by nature if they form a niche or basically help that species survive in some way, naturally human cultures should have developed and evolved in massively unique ways but we don't. We have "races" but nothing as diverse as you see with other groups of animals such as fish or canines or felines.
Why do cultures that should have had no way to communicate have similar stories or depictions of dragons or powerful serpent gods? Why do so many old (and some surviving) power structures seem based on the idea of genetics, the idea that leadership should be passed down from father to son or mother to daughter? Why do they often reference their power coming from "the dragon' or "the serpent" like, for example, the English royalty?
I think our species was visited, maybe even breed by, an otherworldly race or entity. It seems they (or it) set up power structures to control the species, perhaps we were meant as a slave race or a tool for terraform, are we not still altering our atmosphere, even when it threatens our own future? You can blame fox news and evil corporations all you want but they are aware of the same research, smart enough to know it's not "liberal BS" and they have to breath the same air as the rest of us so at a certain point the almighty dollar doesn't seem like a real motivator. Maybe we were genetically programmed or influenced in some way to continue pumping these chemicals into the atmosphere by burning anything we can find.
Our modern governments could have been our natural evolution from the artificial power structure they gave us.
It seemed to happen long ago and had such a confusing and profound effect that cultures around the world used what we call "religion" to try and make sense of whatever madness they or their ancestors witnessed. Those stories were altered over time and adapted into what we now have as modern religions, a remake of a remake of a remake of true events so the original story is sort of lost along the way but still there when you look for it.
If this is the case then it seems the otherworlders either died or left long ago and we have been going through our programming ever since.
I know it sounds crazy but you have to admit it makes a lot of sense. We even have a suspicious base near our planet that's been there so long we accept it as perfectly natural, it's called the moon. I don't have time to get into all of it but basically there's evidence to suggest that it's hollow (not conspiracy theorists but scientific research) and it's orbit and the way it always has the same side facing us seem pretty strange, like something carefully structured. I don't want to drag this on much longer but just look up "Moon Rising" if you are interested, it's pretty much just the footnotes but it's something to sink your teeth into, just remember to do your own research and never just believe something because you see it on some documentary, although to much of it can be verified for it to just be ignored.
In the same vein of the argument "Any culture technologically advanced enough for interstellar travel could wipe us out with ease and there's nothing we could do about it" is the argument "Any culture technologically advanced enough to genetically engineer a species, complete with genetic history stretching back eons to alter the atmosphere over the course of their 10s of thousand of year civilization advancement, is also advanced enough to fuck up our atmosphere on their own in a much shorter time."
I know it sounds crazy but you have to admit it makes a lot of sense. We even have a suspicious base near our planet that's been there so long we accept it as perfectly natural, it's called the moon. I don't have time to get into all of it but basically there's evidence to suggest that it's hollow (not conspiracy theorists but scientific research) and it's orbit and the way it always has the same side facing us seem pretty strange, like something carefully structured.
Also holy crap there is nothing suspicious about tidal locking. It is a very well understood phenomenon.
What a shock, I am called crazy by people that have done no research into the theory. Did I say tital locking is suspicious? Did I say it's not well understood? Doesn't this tell you something about yourselves when you so quickly attack me and go as far as to lie about what I said to discredit me? If what I said had no merit, why does it seem to scare you people so much? If I said the sun was hollow you guys would brush it off as silly nonsense (because it would be) but as soon as I talk about the moon in this way you guys just jump at the chance to cut me down.
No Tofy, it doesn't work that way. That's like saying any species that can go to space and create what we have would surely have found a cure for fatal cellular mutation (cancer) yet here we are. Don't assume technological advancement is a linear progression. Also a sudden change in the atmosphere would likely kill off most if not all life on earth while our slow progression would likely give countless species enough time to adapt to the new environment, although we may die out which again begs the question of why we are so keen on polluting our own air when we have nothing to gain from it. You can say "we are stupid" but that contradicts your own logic, we are technologically advanced enough to go to space and split the atom, we should know how to deal with the energy crisis and preserve our atmosphere.
Saying they should just be able to zap and "poof" atmosphere changes, shows a lack of education on the subject of our ecosystem and the complexities of technological development. Technology and science is not magic.
It seems obvious that even here you people will bully and attack anyone that presents a new idea. I see the penny arcade community hasn't changed a bit. Just like everywhere else in the world the second somebody steps out of line you guys make sure to beat them back in. You have no understanding of most of these concepts but somebody tells you that "tidal locking" isn't fascinating or interesting so you don't explore it at all and even go as far as to bully anyone that does show curiosity.
People act sad and confused when kids or young people go on shooting sprees, acting like it's out of nowhere yet every day you people work to make sure anyone different either pretends to be normal or kills themselves before they do any harm to the status quo. Such a thing can drive people to madness, then when they do you all act like you feel so bad when really your just worried that someone may blame your precious video games.
"Don't mess with my little world. I read the books, I believe what I am supposed to, now please let me have my food and my big gulp and my video games. Please sir, let me have my little room in my little house, please don't bother me here, I'll do what you say if you just leave me alone here"
If I had some popular video series you guys would have no issue but because I'm some "freak" on the message board you talk down to me and cut me down.
Dude, we're all freaks on a message board.
I didn't say there's nothing interesting or fascinating about tidal locking. I said there's nothing suspicious about it.
And they wouldn't need to zap and poof our atmosphere. They could just build their own pile of coal burning atmosphere fucking plants that do it even more efficiently than our wasteful power extracting ones. Accomplishing it in the same span of time as humans could, but without having to wait for us to develop it and do tons of additional ecological damage.
Right, again tube you ignore that there is evidence to support that it is hollow but whatever, people call the "hollow earth" theory crazy even though we continue to discover new massive underground caverns. Time and time again people like you try to break things down and twist them in order to discredit them. You have nothing to gain by cutting me down, you have nothing to support your claim (as I do) yet you continue.
Tofy, suspicious is a matter of opinion. Tell me what movie you enjoy, I will tell you that your wrong and that there is nothing enjoyable about it and you are just crazy. If it's so natural and normal why doesn't the earth have the same relation to the sun? Why does the earth rotate freely while in orbit but not our moon? Why did Nasa blur out suspicious images on the moon satalite images? Why do people still act like Nasa is a beacon of scientific good when it's founding involved the acquisition of nazi scientists?
What plants affect the atmosphere in the same way we do as quickly as we do? I'm not saying this is fact, as you people keep implying, it's a theory. Another theory is that we are here to breed and spread (as we always have quite naturally) to be harvested as some form of food, or maybe we were meant as a work force but due to some change of plans were left behind to fend for ourselves on this planet. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see that we are extremely out of place on this planet compared to other creatures. No other species murders it's own kind for pleasure alone with no economic, social, or survival benefit.
I am just saying it's worth exploring and that the moon seems to be a big clue to look towards. But nope, I'm "crazy" because what I am saying isn't mainstream belief yet. As soon as a bunch of celebrities (TV, radio, or internet) start saying the same things people like Tube here will pretend they were on board all along. Time and time again the human race proves to me that my empathy is misplaced. It seems I live in a world where we are only allowed to discus "aliens" if we stick to the mainstream theories on what they might be like, that happens to include the faith based idea that we have never been visited outside of some crashed spaceship in the desert.
Unlike sheep or cattle, the human race doesn't require fences (most of the time) because we keep ourselves in line. Anytime somebody tries to present an interesting but different idea people like you just jump on them almost as if it's instinctive.
Here you are, nothing to add other than "you're crazy" and your supposed to be authority on this site. A bully that can't become a cop apparently settles for being a chat place admin.
BTW Tofy you said earlier something about genetically engineering a species, making it sound like an impossible technological feat. Buddy, look up corn. It was genetically engineered by native americans, no tech needed. Just imagine what a species with technology could do, look at what we can do already. I really mean no offense but if you educated yourself on some of these subjects before just attacking my theory you might find something that interests you. I'm not trying to get you to agree with me, I'm just presenting my theory, I expected some attacks and ignorance but not on this level.
Ok, I think that's enough off topic ramblings from you. I'm sure there's a conspiracy site somewhere that will welcome your discourse on hollow moons, hollow earths and other eminently disprovable horseshit. They are not welcome here.
@Driscol I'd just like to talk for a moment about some of the claims in your original post, specifically the biology stuff. Now, I can't speak anthropologically or psychologically about human development, but biologically, humans are really diverse, I mean, just take a look:
And our differences aren't just cosmetic; different populations of humans have developed different traits to deal with specific environmental pressures. As for comparing us to cats and dogs, well, that's apples and oranges. Felidae and Canidae are both taxonomic families; it would be more accurate to compare cats, dogs, and the great apes, both living and extinct.
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Someone has to make the "super-batteries", if aliens aren't handing them out, then they'd be teaching manufacturing industry to make them, was kind of my point there, and that industry would be who benefited from the new technology how-to, since they got the factories to build it. If the aliens are just handing them out, making industries pointless, putting possibly millions out of work. We are completely dependent on their hand out then. How giving are they though? Would their technology support us indefinitely, self sufficiently? We can only guess.
Here is the thing I wonder, and probably a lot of where I'm coming from. They are not us. We have a limited capacity to understand how the future plays out, and ethical systems, that are probably rather simplistic, to a species, that understands how "the world works", far better than we do. I agree, no human, wants to say let them die, but step outside of our world, and peer into it, like you had too many fish in the bowl, they might not see the need for the same solutions as we do.
As for the Prime Directive and its flaws, it possibly could only be flaws because our ethics, aren't as good as we think. And even then, ethics is a bit ambiguous, do we do good now? or good for later? do we save the individuals? or the group. Its not hard to come up with conflicts in ethical choices. Also, I rewatched it, I'd say personally, not really arguing for the categories presented, I'd be somewhere between this Prime Directive, protecting us from the chaos of their presence, which on a side note, shares the same reasons I don't think God would ever show up, and the conspiracy theory. A cover up. If they are here, they are having an impact on something, perhaps merely just the air flow from a fly over, or something vastly farther up the chain of command. It might not be protecting us they desire, they might just not want to be known as roaming about. Either way, I can't imagine them exposing themselves anytime soon.
Point being assuming they are ethical, and do good, given their level of knowledge of how the world works, as witnessed through their ability to travel in ways we pretend to be in movies, their ethics and morals, are going to be leaps and bounds more complex than ours. We're barely out of the 'don't do that' phase, and getting into the, why you shouldn't part. To judge their actions as ethical or not, is probably like a first year med student, telling the world renowned expert doctor, how it should be done.
This leads to a governmental problem, most governments would be uneasy about doing all this without some kind of return. Think of how much people complain about taxes NOW, and this is where the government is at least doing some tangible things and you can usually see the results directly and a fuckup won't risk wiping out all of you and yours. Colonies could get killed or deal with massive problems if the wrong equipment or insufficient supplies of one type or another are sent, especially food and medical gear. Combine that with general logistics and unless we find say metal that can produce a room temperature superconductor or crystals that can give us cold fusion equivalent energy with incredible safety there isn't a practical means for colonizing the world by any government unless they're trying to establish an escape hatch.
I might even argue the whole interest thing too, look at how many people in the US seem to be in favor of cutting the space program, nevermind that such a thing provides a lot of useful technical data, patents, etc. It also helps get people interested in science and even offers some great potential for what we can do in the future. People always like to joke about where their flying cars or personal jetpacks are, why don't we have space colonies, etc. There is interest in the end result but little interest in funding the means to reach that point. But meh, I'm also looking at this from the perspective of a human, another race might also have special biological requirements, or even religious issues that might make space travel a problem or at least make colonization difficult.
Because things outside of the radio frequency range are terrible as a form of communication.
Long wave just plain sucks, and and higher frequency starts functioning like matter, which also sucks for communication, and not just because it will kill you.
Now a form of quantum communication might be something interesting and useful for an FTL capable society, however it's far more likely that they just plain didn't pass the Star Trek test and killed themselves off in a nuclear war before we could hear them.
As for visiting us there is the idea they have and it jump started our Civilization. The Ancient astronauts idea is that visitors taught our ancestors basic math and agriculture. For whatever reason they discontinued having open communications. Perhaps because being what we are we got greedy and wanted the power of the Gods for ourselves? Leading to tales of Atlantis?
If we proven to be to hostile it might be the reverse of the Prime Directive. They could be just outside our solar system waiting for us to do something stupid then come in and clean up. Say some moron let loose or uses Weapon grade virus. That would be easy for them to come in being another form of life they would have to use there advance tech to Immunization themselves to almost all microbes anyway why not one more. Heck could be a good story Aliens cause wars on a primitive world then wait to take over. This could be why UFO sightings boomed during and after WWII.
There are some believes that some of history greatest pandemics were caused by non earth bacteria or virus. Population control (They are over due) Culling of the herds? Or attempt to remove a thread before moving in to a new home? Duh duh duh!
I'm personally of the opinion that the Fermi Paradox is one of environment. We're on the outer rim of the Galaxy, which means we're not constantly bombarded by the kind of stellar activity you see closer into to the center of the Milky way. This might mean life just isn't possible at the Galaxy's "urban core". Or it could mean that life in the core is so radically different from ours that survival this far out isn't practical. Imagine a race of photosynthetic beings that need constant light from their bipolar solar system to remain active and cognizant. Or a lifeform composed of silicate or a molten metal which requires 1000 degree temperatures or massive pressure to keep from falling apart and dying. Why would such a creature come all the way out to the ass end of the galaxy, where it's four light years between habitable environments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_density
>> The locations within the Milky Way that have the highest stellar density are the central core and the interior of globular clusters. A typical mass density for a globular cluster is 70 MSun pc−3, which is 500 times the mass density near the Sun.
So the areas with the greatest material density (and - presumably - the highest probability for stars and planets and therefore life) are also going to be the least like an Earth-atmosphere. By extension, we can also assume that any life arising in such a radically different climate will make use of alternative technologies to suit their alternative needs. Thus, looking for radio waves amidst the noisy mess that is the Galactic core is extra futile given that some hypothetical organisms that subsist in some radioactive habitat aren't going to use a technique that simply wouldn't work for them.
I'm personally of the opinion that the Fermi Paradox is one of environment. We're on the outer rim of the Galaxy, which means we're not constantly bombarded by the kind of stellar activity you see closer into to the center of the Milky way. This might mean life just isn't possible at the Galaxy's "urban core". Or it could mean that life in the core is so radically different from ours that survival this far out isn't practical. Imagine a race of photosynthetic beings that need constant light from their bipolar solar system to remain active and cognizant. Or a lifeform composed of silicate or a molten metal which requires 1000 degree temperatures or massive pressure to keep from falling apart and dying. Why would such a creature come all the way out to the ass end of the galaxy, where it's four light years between habitable environments?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_density
>> The locations within the Milky Way that have the highest stellar density are the central core and the interior of globular clusters. A typical mass density for a globular cluster is 70 MSun pc−3, which is 500 times the mass density near the Sun.
So the areas with the greatest material density (and - presumably - the highest probability for stars and planets and therefore life) are also going to be the least like an Earth-atmosphere. By extension, we can also assume that any life arising in such a radically different climate will make use of alternative technologies to suit their alternative needs. Thus, looking for radio waves amidst the noisy mess that is the Galactic core is extra futile given that some hypothetical organisms that subsist in some radioactive habitat aren't going to use a technique that simply wouldn't work for them.
Where I stand. no there is no need for a X-Com like program. Drake's equation is too highly speculative for me. How you assign that "100%" of planets that develop life, is very arguable, as is the "90%" that arrive to the use of EM waves for communication. Hell even the "50%" of develop intelligent life can be seen too optimistic (out of millions of living organisms an incredibly small amount that veered towards "intelligence" and the use of tools for the development of the species, so it is arguable that a certain level of intelligence, much lower than that needed to develop language or the traits expected of "high intelligence" is enough). Those numbers are so wild speculations that every number that comes out of that equation I take it with a grain of salt. I doubt that in any near future (the next couple thousand years) there will be any contact.
That's why all of those are "guesstimates". I'm sure people were smart enough to realize that any of those numbers probably weren't really even close, much less accurate. And really with how humongous the galaxy is, and with how quiet it seems, seven civilizations doesn't seem so wildly out there either. But you're right it that there's no real way to actually know for sure how many planets out there even support intelligent life, much less a civilization that managed to make it to technology on our level or above. But that's what these past two videos were, interesting topics of discussion we can have with other people and think about, not a college lecture. I know they had to make a disclaimer in their Brazil games episode that not everything they say was 100% accurate, or that they could even be dead wrong. But they shouldn't have to do that with EVERY video they put out. They know, and we SHOULD know what is speculation and guesses on their part, and what they know for sure.
That said, XCOM does seem really...unnecessary. If they're so technologically advanced that they can travel across light years and light years of space, probably doesn't quite care enough about our dinky little planet to genocide it just to have more living space. Heck, I'd imagine they'd be able to create an artificial living economy/ecosystem to sustain themselves.
SWEET HOLY-ASDFAJSDFLJSDK GET THAT CHRYSSALID AWAY FROM ME
I'm aware that they are not 100% accurate. I know most people are aware of that too. But I don't really like the Drake Equation because of that. You can plug almost any number based on "estimates" and "guesses" and you can come up with ridiculously different answers. It is not a very helpful tool for any real guesswork. There are number ranging from this 7 (an incredibly low estimate really) to 100,000,000 civilizations capable of communication. It is ridiculous. The margin of error is so huge it tells us next to nothing. I really don't like the application of the Drake Equation until data is far better. Any estimate is as useless as the next. It may be an interesting topic, the possibility of contact, but Drake's Equation gives us very little in reality.
Also, if someone with more knowledge of astrophysics can tell me how many of the stars are Population I (with a lot of "metals") that are being studied with possible planets, or even how many of the stars in the Milky Way are in this category, and how old are the oldest of this population (if the Sun is one of the oldest, then at most intelligent civilizations may be around our level, not that much more advanced). It may affect seriously the study of alien civilizations. Population III and II probably had too little amount of heavy elements to form any planets that can sustain life (even the exotic kinds of life need heavy elements, like silicon, or carbon or oxygen, some even rarer elements like mercury, but from what I've seen none postulate life mainly composed of hydrogen and helium) so if anyone can provide taht data it may help the discussion.
Whops wrong discussion.
Fair enough, but really, unless we have people on those planets studying the land, or even just have satellites monitoring every planet in the galaxy, the next best thing to the drake equation would be to just flat out guess EVERYTHING. Which honestly, it's amazing we even have a formulaic equation for this in the first place. As flimsy as it is, we'd probably have a better formula than the drake equation if someone did or is coming up with one. We just don't have enough evidence of anything outside of our own solar system to make any sort of concrete conclusions on the subject.
We assign a reasonable value to each component in the drake equation, but the issue is that we should not expect the expected result to occur. This is a common fallacy in human reasoning: if you flip a coin 10 times, you will be surprised if you do not get 5 heads and 5 tails, but the the standard deviation of the results mean that it is highly unlikely you will always get 5 heads and 5 tails.
In the case of the development of the galaxy, we're only in 1 galaxy, so we only have 1 trial. We should not be surprised to find the years needed for inter-planetary communication higher, even if they are still within the bounds of a reasonable standard deviation.
What if the time required for a civilization to colonize the galaxy is a 100 million years, plus or minus 10 billion years? THIS would absolutely answer the Fermi paradox and it's not as outlandish as you might think. Consider that it may require not the development of 1 species, but the development of several symbiotic species for a planet to develop the practices of storing and developing the energy necessary for us to emit frequencies. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel discussed this when looking at a tribe of Papa New Gineans, humans who have never evolved technologically beyond a tribal life-style. What he found was that the absense of any native cereal grains or the draft animals used to develop them precluded the possibility of their technoilogical development.
What if our planet produced technologically advanced life so quickly because in the course of this planet's genetic development, our RNA bowled a strike? Our planet has been combining and recombining DNA strands for THREE POINT SIX BILLION YEARS! What if this is the EARLIEST amount of time we should expect it to take for a planet to create the positive symbosis between specieis (inteligent life, energy-storing life, and energy-developing life) necessary for technological development to occur?
One great mystery is: how does our species measure to others, ethically, if it is true that we are not the only sentient species in time and space? So far, we have nothing to compare ourselves to. But what represents us better: Shakespeare and Mozart and Wu Cheng'en or petty theft and the banking crisis?
But, more importantly, where is my coffee mug? I'm sure I left it somewhere near my desk...
Maybe the beings currently out there don't exist on the same plane. Maybe instead of traveling the huge gulfs of space, which seem limitless, they instead travel between planes or dimensions or whatever else. Maybe the earth isn't unique, but it is the first civilization to achieve sentience. Any number of reasons could be there... but throwing out a bunch of fictional numbers doesn't actually tell us anything. Until we get more concrete facts to actually input, we don't really have the capability of estimating if other intelligent life does exist out there. Not there some good ideas haven't been mentioned, like different forms of communication being used... which could lead to forming something new that might be able to detect these new forms of communication... but it all still seems like grasping at straws.
The "government can't keep a secret" thing is a bit annoying. Time and time again people that worked for nasa or various government agencies have discussed and "exposed" such things and many end up dead but people just see them as crazies or frauds. It's not that the government can't keep secrets, it's that they know exactly how to deal with leaks. Usually they turn it into something funny or fun for the public by putting extreme focus on the surface idea but never delving into the details.
Now let's talk about goverments, why do so many human cultures develop a structured society? Is it just in our genetics? Evolution is based on random mutations being favored by nature if they form a niche or basically help that species survive in some way, naturally human cultures should have developed and evolved in massively unique ways but we don't. We have "races" but nothing as diverse as you see with other groups of animals such as fish or canines or felines.
Why do cultures that should have had no way to communicate have similar stories or depictions of dragons or powerful serpent gods? Why do so many old (and some surviving) power structures seem based on the idea of genetics, the idea that leadership should be passed down from father to son or mother to daughter? Why do they often reference their power coming from "the dragon' or "the serpent" like, for example, the English royalty?
I think our species was visited, maybe even breed by, an otherworldly race or entity. It seems they (or it) set up power structures to control the species, perhaps we were meant as a slave race or a tool for terraform, are we not still altering our atmosphere, even when it threatens our own future? You can blame fox news and evil corporations all you want but they are aware of the same research, smart enough to know it's not "liberal BS" and they have to breath the same air as the rest of us so at a certain point the almighty dollar doesn't seem like a real motivator. Maybe we were genetically programmed or influenced in some way to continue pumping these chemicals into the atmosphere by burning anything we can find.
Our modern governments could have been our natural evolution from the artificial power structure they gave us.
It seemed to happen long ago and had such a confusing and profound effect that cultures around the world used what we call "religion" to try and make sense of whatever madness they or their ancestors witnessed. Those stories were altered over time and adapted into what we now have as modern religions, a remake of a remake of a remake of true events so the original story is sort of lost along the way but still there when you look for it.
If this is the case then it seems the otherworlders either died or left long ago and we have been going through our programming ever since.
I know it sounds crazy but you have to admit it makes a lot of sense. We even have a suspicious base near our planet that's been there so long we accept it as perfectly natural, it's called the moon. I don't have time to get into all of it but basically there's evidence to suggest that it's hollow (not conspiracy theorists but scientific research) and it's orbit and the way it always has the same side facing us seem pretty strange, like something carefully structured. I don't want to drag this on much longer but just look up "Moon Rising" if you are interested, it's pretty much just the footnotes but it's something to sink your teeth into, just remember to do your own research and never just believe something because you see it on some documentary, although to much of it can be verified for it to just be ignored.
Also holy crap there is nothing suspicious about tidal locking. It is a very well understood phenomenon.
No Tofy, it doesn't work that way. That's like saying any species that can go to space and create what we have would surely have found a cure for fatal cellular mutation (cancer) yet here we are. Don't assume technological advancement is a linear progression. Also a sudden change in the atmosphere would likely kill off most if not all life on earth while our slow progression would likely give countless species enough time to adapt to the new environment, although we may die out which again begs the question of why we are so keen on polluting our own air when we have nothing to gain from it. You can say "we are stupid" but that contradicts your own logic, we are technologically advanced enough to go to space and split the atom, we should know how to deal with the energy crisis and preserve our atmosphere.
Saying they should just be able to zap and "poof" atmosphere changes, shows a lack of education on the subject of our ecosystem and the complexities of technological development. Technology and science is not magic.
People act sad and confused when kids or young people go on shooting sprees, acting like it's out of nowhere yet every day you people work to make sure anyone different either pretends to be normal or kills themselves before they do any harm to the status quo. Such a thing can drive people to madness, then when they do you all act like you feel so bad when really your just worried that someone may blame your precious video games.
"Don't mess with my little world. I read the books, I believe what I am supposed to, now please let me have my food and my big gulp and my video games. Please sir, let me have my little room in my little house, please don't bother me here, I'll do what you say if you just leave me alone here"
If I had some popular video series you guys would have no issue but because I'm some "freak" on the message board you talk down to me and cut me down.
I didn't say there's nothing interesting or fascinating about tidal locking. I said there's nothing suspicious about it.
And they wouldn't need to zap and poof our atmosphere. They could just build their own pile of coal burning atmosphere fucking plants that do it even more efficiently than our wasteful power extracting ones. Accomplishing it in the same span of time as humans could, but without having to wait for us to develop it and do tons of additional ecological damage.
Tofy, suspicious is a matter of opinion. Tell me what movie you enjoy, I will tell you that your wrong and that there is nothing enjoyable about it and you are just crazy. If it's so natural and normal why doesn't the earth have the same relation to the sun? Why does the earth rotate freely while in orbit but not our moon? Why did Nasa blur out suspicious images on the moon satalite images? Why do people still act like Nasa is a beacon of scientific good when it's founding involved the acquisition of nazi scientists?
What plants affect the atmosphere in the same way we do as quickly as we do? I'm not saying this is fact, as you people keep implying, it's a theory. Another theory is that we are here to breed and spread (as we always have quite naturally) to be harvested as some form of food, or maybe we were meant as a work force but due to some change of plans were left behind to fend for ourselves on this planet. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see that we are extremely out of place on this planet compared to other creatures. No other species murders it's own kind for pleasure alone with no economic, social, or survival benefit.
I am just saying it's worth exploring and that the moon seems to be a big clue to look towards. But nope, I'm "crazy" because what I am saying isn't mainstream belief yet. As soon as a bunch of celebrities (TV, radio, or internet) start saying the same things people like Tube here will pretend they were on board all along. Time and time again the human race proves to me that my empathy is misplaced. It seems I live in a world where we are only allowed to discus "aliens" if we stick to the mainstream theories on what they might be like, that happens to include the faith based idea that we have never been visited outside of some crashed spaceship in the desert.
Here you are, nothing to add other than "you're crazy" and your supposed to be authority on this site. A bully that can't become a cop apparently settles for being a chat place admin.
http://iwant.on.ca/FavPhotographers/leibovitz-wiltchamberlainwillieshoemaker.jpg
And our differences aren't just cosmetic; different populations of humans have developed different traits to deal with specific environmental pressures. As for comparing us to cats and dogs, well, that's apples and oranges. Felidae and Canidae are both taxonomic families; it would be more accurate to compare cats, dogs, and the great apes, both living and extinct.