Why We Haven't Met Any Aliens (2006)
seedmagazine.com
seedmagazine.com
Is there a point to leaving the world intact for your grandchildren?
The problem with your question, is that the consequences are far off in the future. So the likelihood of affecting policy decisions is just about nil.
The beginnings of social rather than biological evolution on earth are fantastically recent on a geological scale. 10,000 years, give or take. And it's only been in the last 100 that anything that we've had anything that would be detectable from space.
On the sorts of timescale that the universe functions on, we simply have a tiny, tiny sample of what a technological society looks like in the one instance that we are aware of. It's such a recent thing that we can scarcely predict what it will look like in 1000 years, much less 100,000 or 1,000,000 and even 100,000 years would be a small sample to start generalizing upon.
In other words, we have no idea what we're looking for when we're looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. The odds of finding another society that is exactly in this first 100 year sliver we're at are vanishingly small.
I see no evidence that Christian and Muslim children are less prone to addiction. The high-minded Puritan work ethic attracts some, sure, but "the family values of the religious right" are in reality just a thinly-veiled excuse to be the mean, hateful, narcissistic, exclusive bastards they already are (why yes, I do have issues from my upbringing, thanks for asking, but it's still true).
In any case, the essay says that we haven't met aliens because they wiped themselves out in an evolutionary dead-end, but then the religious assholes' descendants (sorry, the super-duper-moral humans) will be the future of humanity meeting other such dipshits. Which is it?
In any case, to sum up, there's no there there. If you haven't read the article yet, it's really not worth it; if it's too late, I'm sorry.
This doesn't quite explain the lack of communication signals. But if nobody can colonize the galaxy, then there would be less sources of signals.
BTW, the Wikipedia article on the Fermi Paradox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) does a very good job of detailing all the possible explanations.
I would argue the opposite. Human level intelligence isn't necessary for survival, so why should one assume that it's bound to be common when its not even the case on Earth now or in it's history? What percentage of life that has ever existed on earth could you consider to have an intelligence on par or better than ours? Obviously less that a hundredth of 1%. If evolution is the law of life, then I doubt that intelligent life in the universe is as common as is assumed
It's not hard to imagine that happening - or more likely, the fraction of civilization that is capable of advancing society fails to reproduce, and the part that does reproduce isn't able to advance society.
Once we are able to create viable new societies, societies themselves can evolve out of this trap. We may need space colonization before this can happen, however.
It's interesting that we generally suppose either we'll achieve some super-greatness as a species or die out in some horrible cataclysm.
How species-centric.
As the author notes, a long, slow, fizzle into nothingness seems much more highly probable than some dramatic ending.
As an exercise, what do the democracies and the people in them spend their money on? Not space exploration. Not even war -- the last "real" earth-shaking war was well over 50 years ago. Lately it's all been bush wars. We spend more and more energy and money on ourselves. It's not the species, it's the comfort of each individual.
What do people value and celebrate? Adventure and discovery by moving out into the Solar System? Heck, there's already a serious movement among scientists to eliminate or seriously limit human exploration. You see, we could contaminate the places we visit.
I could continue with examples, but it's seemed obvious to me for many years that, as far as moving towards the conquest of space or self-destruction, we're doing a lot of plugging in, turning on, and patting ourselves on the back about it. But not a lot of exploration. Not only do we not live in a culture of risk-taking exploration, we actively view our presence in the universe as an evil and do all we can to avoid making any kind of permanent mark at all.
I fear over the long term we will succeed at this.
On cosmic timescales, is there that much of a difference? Let's say it took us 10,000 years for humans to become a decadent machine-coddled idiocracy that one day forgets to turn off the sexbots long enough to reproduce. That would still be just a blip on cosmic timescales.
Seeing that as being dramatically different than blowing ourselves up Dr. Strangelove style is also taking a very human-centric viewpoint.
Let the government take care of the weak and protect and preserve, that's what it's mainly for in a society, and leave the adventurism to the adventurous. Obama's steps seem consistent with this.
There are tons of individualists who would love to explore space and contaminates environment they touch.
Generally, democracies have nothing to do with spending money on oursleves, but free market does. All that mean is that the average individual have very high-time preference.
Meanwhile those individuals with very low-time preferences want to aim for the stars. The market can provide for them, too in the form of private space industries.
Do I view our presence in the universe as an evil? Naw. That's for scary folks who hate their own humanity.
You're some average Joe tinkering in his basement. Somehow or another you manage to invent true field propulsion -- direct conversion of electricity into electromotive force. Point the antenna, turn a knob, and you get a push.
Let's assume for purposes of making a better story that you are anti-government, eccentric, cranky, and ill-tempered.
What would happen? Could you buy some kind of second-hand pressure suits and go into space? Would that be legal? How about land on the moon? Does the treaty dealing with the moon allow individuals to visit? To set up occupation? I think the rules are the same as Antarctica-- individuals can't visit except as a science mission.
How about Mars? Could you build a big space barge and move to one of the ice-soaked canyons on Mars? Finally, what if microbial life were on Mars and the moon. Would it be possible for groups to sue to prevent you from moving somewhere?
There are a lot of interesting details here that most people don't know, such as the ability for folks in the United States to build their own airplanes and fly them without a license under certain conditions. Or the ability of governments to control their citizens even when those citizens are no longer reside inside their borders. Or the growing opposition to humans living on planets that already have life on them.
Nevertheless, when humans are exploring space the principles and policies of planetary protection, developed by COSPAR in accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, still apply. Implementation guidelines include documenting and minimizing contamination of the exploration targets, control at the most stringent levels for locations in which Earth life might grow, and protection of humans from exposure to untested planetary materials. Preventing harmful contamination of the Earth must be of the highest priority for all missions.
The more interesting questions are: who will be living there? why? and how?
Why is it so hard to think that we could be the first?
Also equally curious, why MUST they look different? Maybe they're already here and they look just like us.
Drake's equation suggests there are millions of intelligent species in the universe (assume 1,000,000). Thus, the chances of us really being the first is only 1 in a million. Taking into account that the Earth was a relatively late bloomer (the universe was around for ~10 Billion years before there was any life on Earth ...) it becomes far less likely.
Similarly, the chances of evolution creating two identical 'solutions' to very different environments (or hell, even nearly identical environments) is practically nil. Even if you buy panspermia (which is perfectly reasonable ...), there were still billions of years of evolution between then and now, and we should be unrecognizable from something we 'branched' from ~4 billion years ago.
And I do think it's fairly safe to assume that we're not perfectly adapted to everything, that quite a lot of how we work (and therefor look) is down to chance turnings during our evolution.
A Singularity will likely only hasten the process (there will be nothing else to do).
I think we have more important stuff to invest our intellects in than space exploration. All our current technology depends almost exclusively on cheap energy derived from fossil fuels. Human actions are damaging the complex processes that maintain live.
If we don't fix this problems I still think hedonistic technology is a better investment than space exploration. Well at least for the average folk it's not like we can send every human in to space.
And, shortly afterward, they stopped eating lunch with him.