Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions for the Drake Equation
nationalgeographic.com
nationalgeographic.com
This is a known issue that archive.is (and its variants) block cloudflare [1][2]
There's issues about the estimate to place with zero observations from a sample (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_succession), but basically you'd have 0 or some very small number.
So why don't we just take it as 0, or ϵ?
The reason is because we doubt our observational ability. So then the question becomes "is the zero because nothing is out there, or because we can't observe it?"
I guess it's interesting to me because it's a salient case of where our confidence in inferential paradigms breaks down in a very obvious way. Either that, or we are uncomfortable with its implications. Or both.
Luckily with most physical processes, you can assume it's >0 and go about some estimations using your linked article (a very basic one is rule of 3[0]). This particular problem where 0 vs >0 is seems impossible to make an actual inference about until some piece of data tells us it's >0.
Both Nasa and Pentagon has publicly hinted about it since last year’s disclosure mandate from congress.
Bill Nelson, nasa’s current presiding officer has stated that they have high conviction of having spotted advanced extraterrestrial life on earth.
[Bill Nelson’s speech](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mMQBe_XMjNU)
[Who Bill Nelson is](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-administrator-bill-nelson/)
The fact that navy and airforce just ignores it shows you its not a 'thing'.
If those UFOs were actual generations leap ahead aircrafts, US army would be freaking out that chinese/russia have achieved air superiority - but why the fuck would chinese or russia show them the upper hand??
Why are those only spotted off US coast near US carriers?
If it were aliens why are they not avoiding the only place on earth where they get spotted, instead they insist flying around only there doing essentially nothing.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
They don’t ignore it, they have an active team in pentagon constantly researching this and have also launched an active taskforce to start tracking it [0]
> Why are they only spotted off US coast near US carriers
They are not, they have been both spotted and disclosed by US, China, Russia, France, you can look it up.
> If it were aliens why are they not avoiding the only place on earth where they get spotted
UAP sightings have been reported across the world since decades.
Neither the navy nor the airforce ignores it, They just are quite in public, does the navy scream on tv panicking every time, something military critical happens ?
[0](https://www.the-sun.com/news/4134917/pentagon-launch-ufo-tas...)
When trying to convince someone dont include a tabloid as your source. When I see it my brain automatically moves whole conversation into trashbin
You dont have to take the word of this tabloid, pick any news site you favor and read it from there, this was featured by all major sites.
If seeing a link’s fqdn makes your brain put an entire conversation into trashbin, then thats an issue of your brain, not the link. Do you always trash information featured across multiple sources just because you hate one source ?
Nvm tho, Its a waste of time, all the information is laid plane in sight, what you believe in, after that is on you.
Or, you know, they want to communicate.
In that model a randomly sampled universe is relatively young, resulting in probability that you are born in that universe very high, which in turn results in high probability of being the early civilisation in that universe.
But more down to earth, is just looking at how intelligence evolved on earth. The intelligence evolved on top of the primitive survival mechanism. Mechanisms that promote violence and cheating. Those are keeping us back like a chain and ball from evolving as a civilisation, as a matter of fact we already nearly wiped ourselves few times. We are at the brink or civilisation collapse due to global warming and yet do almost nothing about it.
If we are average civilisation then those are short lived violent affairs that tear themselves to pieces before they can self sustain, or make any impact on the universe to be noticed by others.
Two possibilities exist: either aliens can reach us or they cannot. If they cannot, it's sad. If they can, they are already so advanced that they need nothing from a small blue speck of dust in the vast Space that we call Earth.
Having said that intelligence and curiosity go hand in hand, hard to imagine them not being somewhat interested in the specs.
That said, if there were an intelligence at the scale of a planet (just a thought experiment, maybe like the "Planetary AC" in The Last Question by Isaac Asimov: https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html), i doubt they'd see us as much more than mold, which we'd find on a loaf of bread ourselves.
What's more common is just pure aggression or selfishness
On the other hand, ants are interesting, just for curiosity. We can certainly amuse and entertain, just like ants do, and we can afford leaving alone their nests, just because they don't really bother us.
But if we mean stepping on a single ant, not all the ants, then it's certainly possible aliens could kill a few humans inadvertently.
Just create big hermetic container, and put there minerals, bacteria and fungi. Heck, people even do it at home with big sealed glass bottles.
No need to bring living biome. Just bring spores, seeds, sperm and eggs.
But this is not the main point. It's still extremely expensive. Imagine that world GDP needs to be taken for few years just to build single ship. Who would agree to that in democratic society?
There is a kinship bond within members of the same species, although it isn't universal. As John Donne said, "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We're human and the Sentinelese are human, and even though we're not genociding them (mostly, I think, because they have nothing worth killing over otherwise they would have been dead a long time ago,) we're still genociding plenty of other fellow humans. We even avoid killing animals to extinction because humans share and suffer the consequences of living in a complex ecosystem with other beings. But we also cut the fins off of sharks for soup and throw them back into the water to drown.
But none of those connections would exist between aliens and humans. We're not one of them, nor do we share the same biome, so our deaths might well be entirely void of meaning or consequence for them. In a Dark Forest scenario, there's little to no advantage to contact or cooperation with an alien species, and every possible advantage in sending a GRB to fry anything that so much as looks like life before it has a chance to evolve into a threat.
>But none of those connections would exist between aliens and humans.
That's exactly why humans are more worth killing than aliens: we have conflict of interests with humans but not with aliens.
>We're not one of them, nor do we share the same biome, so our deaths might well be entirely void of meaning or consequence for them.
If the Sentinelese disappear, the biome will likely become only more rich.
at the very least it would be a strong reason to go build the biggest space shield and hold it between this planet and earth while we figure out the rest. Anything short of that would be incredibly naive.
See: lions, tigers, bears, wolves, bobcats, mountain lions, etc. anywhere that humans have a meaningful presence.
Your argument vastly underestimates size of the Space and the amount of goods in it.
I firmly believe that the third option will take place: "no one needs to bother". Why bother destroying some little tiny pale blue dot, if your sky is literally filled with them and you can't even count them?
We're so focused and enclosed our minds on our precious Earth, that we laughably think is so big and valuable.
The aspect to me, that doesn't involve the traditional alien race destroys humanity, is an idea I heard in an astrophysics podcast. It is still pretty terrifying although I guess more sad.
An advanced aliens visited the earth hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years ago, extracted all of the rare compound that allows for their ability to have such an advanced society capable of traveling such distances and just left. We are purposefully being ignored since it is known to the galaxy/universe that we have no way of effectively reaching or communicating with other advanced civilizations.
All of the useful material was extracted so no advanced alien civilizations even have a reason to come and visit.
Unless, of course, we turn out to be a delicious delicacy
Looking back historically, many of the European powers of the 1500s-1800s were literally millennia ahead of the people they colonised in terms of technological prowess.
In spite of this, indigenous ideas, beliefs and culture still had an influence on the Europeans (and if it weren't for the attitudes of the time that influence would be much greater and we'd be all the better for it).
I wouldn't be surprised if Aliens with advanced technology discovering Earth found the same thing.
I don't think this is true. India was colonized, and it had very comparable technology - perhaps 50 or 100 years behind. There are cases of very primative people being colonised of course, but often the capabilities of other civilisations are minimised in our history - for example north american natives are seen as hunter gatherers whereas there was extensive farming and land exploitation in many places in the USA - along with pottery and settled living.
We have hands-on experience as a species with technologically primitive societies being discovered by technologically advanced societies and going on to influence language and philosophy.
Given this, I don't think it's a given that an advanced alien race would look at us as not worth their time.
So the thinking is less that we're a threat to them now (if they can get here, we certainly are not), but some intelligent beings may look at how we have treated one another over the last few centuries/millennia and decide that they don't want us (or any self-replicating machines we happen to plop out) roaming/colonizing/populating/enslaving/murdering/reeducating the galaxy.
Becoming comfortable with death was a multi year process for me. But one thing that helped was considering the universe and how time is not treated the way the human mind does.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ancient_humanoid
The speech seemed very sad in a way.
Civilizations may be presumed to arise often enough. They sort more-or-less neatly into sedentary and expansionist bins. Statistically, the former are much older, and thus may be presumed to have, typically, access to much more mature technology. The latter are, statistically, young. Sooner or later any of the latter will seek to engulf one of the former, and be destroyed by its superior, mature tech--if not the first time, then the second, or nth time. Odds are, then, that an expansionist civilization has a fatal encounter with a sedentary before it gets to us, and is curtailed. This leaves the galaxy filled with ancient sedentary civilizations disinclined, by definition, to visit us, and random small, young, short-lived empires with curtailed reach.
They don't need to visit us, we should see some traces of activity from afar.
There is no reason to think that. Even a nuclear war of epic proportions would be a mere spark against the incandescent floodlights of the stars.
Additionally, our own technological advancement suggests that miniaturisation, nanotech, and efficiency are the direction long-term, not mega-projects.
In just a few years, telescopes in space with coordinated mirrors miles apart will have the resolution to see details at interstellar distance. Until then, anything going on even quite nearby would be vanishingly unlikely to be picked up.
But Bill Nelson, nasa’s current presiding officer stating that they have high conviction of having spotted advanced extraterrestrial life on earth.
Is good evidence
[Bill Nelson’s speech](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mMQBe_XMjNU)
[Who Bill Nelson is](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-administrator-bill-nelson/)
Not even close to passing the smell test. Even Lovecraft's benthic Deep Ones from Y'ha-nthlei [0] are a more plausible explanation. At least They have some reason to care about boats putt-putting around the continental shelf.
> Yeah, we're definitely alone.
And finding these alien cockroaches even if it take millions of years of travel, would still change everything. To see another life, you imagine ? We need to try. I know they re trying to build telescope with enough resolution to see seasonal color changes in tree leaves from here, that would be really cool.