Where are the Extraterrestrial Civilizations?

POSTED BY: second
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:24
VIEWED: 27776
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SECOND

Friday, February 5, 2021 4:55 PM

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5253

To cut to the chase, Robin is trying to explain the famous Fermi Paradox: why, after 60+ years of looking, and despite the periodic excitement around Tabby’s star and ‘Oumuamua and the like, have we not seen a single undisputed sign of an extraterrestrial civilization? Why all this nothing, even though the observable universe is vast, even though (as we now know) organic molecules and planets in Goldilocks zones are everywhere, and even though there have been billions of years for aliens someplace to get a technological head start on us, expanding across a galaxy to the point where they’re easily seen?

Robin proposes, plausibly I think, that if you give a technological civilization 10 million or so years — i.e., an eyeblink on cosmological timescales — then either

1) the civilization wipes itself out, or else

2) it reaches some relatively quiet steady state, or else

3) if it’s serious about spreading widely, then it “maxes out” the technology with which to do so, approaching the limits set by physical law.

In cases 1 or 2, the civilization will of course be hard for us to detect, unless it happens to be close by. But what about case 3? There, Robin says, the “civilization” should look from the outside like a sphere expanding at nearly the speed of light, transforming everything in its path.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, February 5, 2021 9:11 PM

50/50.

They could very well be among us right now. The stuff of Sci-Fi horror where the lizard people have all the powerful positions in the world and herd us like sheep.

If they were to have advanced to the point where making a trip here were even possible beyond just sending some probes for data, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to think they could shape shift or somehow otherwise mask their presence from us while hiding right out in the open. Until we had a chance to reverse engineer their technology, even just the means of carrying life here would seem like magic to us.

But there's no reason to buy into any of that like some of the crazies do. Humans suck enough to do what we do to ourselves without any outside influences.

Quote:
3) if it’s serious about spreading widely, then it “maxes out” the technology with which to do so, approaching the limits set by physical law.

In cases 1 or 2, the civilization will of course be hard for us to detect, unless it happens to be close by. But what about case 3? There, Robin says, the “civilization” should look from the outside like a sphere expanding at nearly the speed of light, transforming everything in its path.

I see no reason why there actually needs to be any limits set by physical law.

I'm in no way convinced that any of the theories or even laws we have in Science today are correct. Sure... we've learned to do a lot in a record amount of time for our species in the last 100 years, but you can make a lot of things "work" by accident, without knowing exactly why they do work. And we have a long history on the books about being wrong about nearly everything up to this point.

I can't find the video I watched a few weeks ago, but there seems to be quite a few of them by different creators now. Just do a search with "relativity" and "quantum mechanics" or "quantum physics". They're in the process of looking for a "missing link" theory to bridge everything, since what we think we know is apparently wrong.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

WISHIMAY

Thursday, February 11, 2021 5:11 AM

I dunno where they iz, but I could really use a ride outta here.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, February 11, 2021 8:41 AM

We know. You're so oppressed.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

WISHIMAY

Thursday, February 11, 2021 9:27 AM

There are just waaay too many stupid assholes on this planet, wouldn't you agree, Second?

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:52 PM

Woe is you.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

SECOND

Sunday, February 14, 2021 7:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
There are just waaay too many stupid assholes on this planet, wouldn't you agree, Second?

There is an article that takes an oblique look at that question: What Happens If China Makes First Contact?
https://web.archive.org/web/20210213215429/https://www.theatlantic.com
/magazine/archive/2017/12/what-happens-if-china-makes-first-contact/544131/

I added a few words to the conclusion of the article to make it clear what the role is for Trumptards:

Burdened by the enormous mass of Trumptards, America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, while China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose.

Secular humanists won’t be spared a sobering intellectual reckoning with first contact. Copernicus removed Earth from the center of the universe, and Darwin yanked humans down into the muck with the rest of the animal kingdom. But even within this framework, human beings, especially Trumptards, have continued to regard ourselves as nature’s pinnacle. We have continued treating “lower” creatures with great cruelty. We have marveled that existence itself was authored in such a way as to generate, from the simplest materials and axioms, beings like us. We have flattered ourselves that we are, in the words of Carl Sagan, “the universe’s way of knowing itself.” These are secular ways of saying Trumptards are made in the image of God, which is a joke, since Trumptards are made in the image of Trump.

We may be humbled to one day find ourselves joined, across the distance of stars, to a more ancient web of minds, fellow travelers in the long journey of time. We may receive from them an education in the real history of civilizations, young, old, and extinct. We may be introduced to galactic-scale artworks, borne of million-year traditions. We may be asked to participate in scientific observations that can be carried out only by multiple civilizations, separated by hundreds of light-years. Observations of this scope may disclose aspects of nature that we cannot now fathom. We may come to know a new metaphysics. If we’re lucky, we will come to know a new ethics. We’ll emerge from our existential shock feeling newly alive to our shared humanity. The first light to reach us in this dark forest may illuminate our home world too.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

6IXSTRINGJACK

Sunday, February 14, 2021 7:59 PM

Gross. lol

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

WISHIMAY

Monday, February 15, 2021 10:07 AM

Crawl back to RWED and talk to yourself and the other Nazi's some more, freak.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, February 15, 2021 10:27 AM

No such thing as Nazis in 2021, Nilbog.

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A government is a body of people usually, notably, governed by Mark Zuckerborg and Slack Dorsey.

Collection of links to Second's, Nilbog's and Marcos' death threats: https://cutt.ly/tkCvEX6

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