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Comment by flextheruler | Hacker News Reader

What are the theoretical risks to sending out these beacons… our we at all, as a species, significantly increasing the chance of another life form more advanced than us discovering us by doing this?

If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life form it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.

Deep space probing without the ability to exert any sort of defense if discovered seems risky. I know the chances are low but what’s the ROI on sending this stuff out without being remotely prepared for contact. I think another comment was saying the data we’ve collected has mostly just been used to confirm preexisting theories. If that’s all we’re getting out of it I’m apprehensive.

I’m just a layman but I’d feel much better if we can establish control, knowledge and dominance of our solar system and its celestial bodies first.

I’m genuinely asking not a conspiracy theorist.

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If an alien species can spot something as tiny as Voyager but doesn't notice our activity on Earth which is just a stone's throw away, I doubt they're a threat.

If an alien species finds Voyager in 10,000 years and tracks it back to our planet, they'll find some interesting remains of our civilization.

More like 10,000,000,000 years at least. The closest star is 4.26 light years away. At current speeds (~65000 km/h) it’ll take 40,767,123 years to reach. _IF_ it’s going in the right direction.

It’s doubtful they’ll even find the sun in its current phase

You're off by a couple of magnitudes. Voyager travels the distance of one light year in about 18 000 years.

That suggests aliens won't find Voyager until it reaches their star system. If that's the case they probably aren't an interstellar species, and they'll never find us, or visit us. I was assuming they'd detect it while travelling through space.

They could invent Tele transportation and Time Machine which essentially the same thing.

Why so pessimistic.

The numbers are against us.

> If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life form it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.

This is such a very human thing to say. Why are you humans always projecting your own insecurities onto others like that? We've been among you for millennia now and the only ones destroying your species are you yourselves.

You answered your own question, there, Berty.

Pffft... Says the species that abducts and anal probes their cosmic neighbors!

Most cosmic neighbors have evolved to enjoy a good firm anal probe by way of introduction. We are the weird ones, yet again, in our distaste for getting thoroughly probed.

The chance of another live form discovering us due to the Voyager probes is ~0. Atmospheric changes and EM emissions from Earth are both detectable from far longer ranges.

One of the theories floated is if an advanced civilisation made it to us, they would most likely be so advanced they would see us no differently as we would view ants and not even consider us if they needed any resources from our planet.

Another thought is the fact that no advanced civilisation has ever made it to earth is proof that any intelligent species is destined to destroy itself before it can evolve far enough to travel the stars.

Both outcomes are pretty bleak

> Another thought is the fact that no advanced civilisation has ever made it to earth is proof that any intelligent species is destined to destroy itself before it can evolve far enough to travel the stars.

Looking like our planet might prove this one to be pretty close to accurate at least in our case, within the next hundred years or so. If not from nuclear war then from running extremely low of key resources on the planet and suffering a massive conventional war over the remaining resources.

Freshwater alone seems like it can cause it. We already have major cities almost entirely running out of fresh water (see Mexico City this year). Western US came worrying close with Lake Mead's water level a couple years ago too, but thankfully it eventually started raining enough to replenish it again.

> Looking like our planet might prove this one to be pretty close to accurate at least in our case

Sorry, but modern Doomerism needs at least a dozen more orders of magnitude on its confidence that we'll all die before it can claim any part in Fermi's paradox.

Or it could be that inflation never ended and there’s a rapidly increasing number of vacuum collapse bubbles inside it, like ours, in which case approximately every civilisation is the first to exist in their bubble.

From what I understand space is full of errant radio signals that are not generated by us, the beacons we send to voyager or it to us is most likely indistinguishable from the multitude of others in the same region.

I think the idea of an alien race attacking us is sort of a catch 22 because if they’re able to attack us (technologically speaking), then they wouldn’t perceive us as a threat because we would be insignificant in comparison to their power.

"From what I understand space is full of errant radio signals that are not generated by us"

But stars and other natural sources emit a different radio signal than all the things we have on earth, that we transmit into space.

If the could decode it, the Golden Record [1] onboard Voyager will point them directly at us, if anyone ever finds it. I doubt that's going to happen, simply because of how small the spacecraft is and how insanely large the universe is.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

How do I put this gently?

Your species is already extinct.

Your species is really just waiting to find out what caused that extinction.

That cause, almost certainly, will have been its own actions in its own local environment.

Essentially, your species will almost certainly have shit in its own backyard, and eventually its mouth, to death.

It will likely do so within the next 100,000 years.

The odds of Voyager, or any, emission or artifact made by your species being encountered by another life form capable of all of receiving it, recognizing it, understanding it, and responding to it in any manner within that timeframe is, essentially, zero. Not precisely zero, but near enough.

The odds of that species having malevolent intent and arriving in time to do anything but engage in archaeology? Now you’re reaching actual zero.

Worrying about this particular existential risk isn’t just premature, it’s prenatal.

Species go extinct but also evolve. In 100000 years today’s civilizations might fall but there would still be some carbon based lifeforms. Perhaps tiny, furry humans; maybe with a dislike for digging up fossil fuels.

Kind of definitionally if it goes extinct it’s done evolving. And sure, plenty of carbon-based life forms — currently all known life forms — will survive, and hopefully whatever does is smart enough to learn from our own-goals. It may even be another primate or another hominid… what it won’t be is us.

Note that on a cosmic scale, hominid, primate, or even carbon based might count as us. On a human scale, after 100000 years it wouldn’t be us in any case.

Civilizations will collapse, but self-eradication might be quite difficult.

Get our reproduction cycle to be based on advanced tech. Then let society collapse so it doesn't have the tech anymore. Will take a few generations still.

I think we're vastly more likely to destroy ourselves with resource depletion as opposed to the paranoid "dark forest" outcome from three body problem. I wouldn't be surprised if we get to "oh, hey. What's up?" as far as alien communication and that's it.

What resource’s depletion do you imagine is going to do us in?

I’m somewhat skeptical of climate change causing a civilization ending process, yet I find that vastly more likely than us running out of something.

Breathable air, drinkable water, arable land -- something like that which is probably preceded by severe climate change and ecological collapse.

They know we are here. Currently in Cosmic terms we are at the level of Sentinel Island. A natural reserve to be left alone....

>I know the chances are low but what’s the ROI on sending this stuff out without being remotely prepared for contact.

In response to the alien threat, this council of nations has chosen to activate the XCOM project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPvbF7bG7lk

My way of thinking about it is that a civilization capable of interstellar travel has enough energy and resources (which is probably the same) to terraform any “free” planet to their liking. For all we know, space is mostly devoid of any life. So you can build intergalactic empire for 100,000 years and still not encounter anyone. I see no point for such advanced species to conquer someone. The Dark Forest is an interesting concept but seems unlikely.

> [are] we at all, as a species, significantly increasing the chance of another life form more advanced than us discovering us by doing this?

This topic is explored in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek%3A_The_Motion_Pictur...

> If we come into contact with a significantly advanced life form it would certainly lead to ineffable destruction.

I would expect an advanced form of life to be nice. Maybe humans will aspire to that some day too.

I'd also expect an advanced form of life to have discovered game theory and analyzed potential interaction with other civilizations as a sequential game with imperfect information (I'm assuming no FTL so nobody has current knowledge of anyone else's capabilities).

The results are pretty scary. PBS Space Time had an episode on this recently [1] which goes into more detail. Briefly, if you put survival of your planet over all else, "destroy aliens as soon as you become aware of them" has a better outcome for you than "contact them" or "ignore them".

It's the speed of light limit that is the problem with the "contact them" option. If they are not nice and go for destroying you, which they do by sending some heavy masses at you at relativistic speeds, you don't find out about until it is too late to launch a counter attack so there's no "mutual assured destruction" deterrent like the one that has kept us from using civilization ending weapons on Earth.

The Space Time episode does go into possible reasons that advanced aliens might not value their own survival so highly that the risk of them being destroyed by not picking "destroy" is outweighed by the benefits of contact or ignoring others.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U

> I'd also expect an advanced form of life to have discovered game theory and analyzed potential interaction with other civilizations as a sequential game with imperfect information

Noteworthy: all that is known is not necessarily utilized (optimally, and often ~at all).

> PBS Space Time had an episode on this recently [1] which goes into more detail. Briefly, if you put survival of your planet over all else, "destroy aliens as soon as you become aware of them" has a better outcome for you than "contact them" or "ignore them".

This demonstrates how inescapable faith is, as a cognitive & cultural phenomenon - science is absolutely overflowing with it, but cannot see it due to ideological blindness.

> It's the speed of light limit that is the problem with the "contact them" option.

The speed of light limit that is problem with the "contact them" option.

FTFY

> If they are not nice and go for destroying you, which they do by sending some heavy masses at you at relativistic speeds, you don't find out about until it is too late to launch a counter attack so there's no "mutual assured destruction" deterrent like the one that has kept us from using civilization ending weapons on Earth.

This seems fine, but it is but one theory among many theoretical possibilities. I do not disagree at all that we should put more thought into whether advertising our presence is a good idea.

Imho, humanity would be well served by allocating a larger percentage of our compute to these sorts of conversations!

Why does 'advancement' imply genocidal results?

Anthropomorphism.

Because of the founding sin of American continent, from where said probe was sent during the very overtly genocidical 20th century.

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