Musings about the world around me, the world I create in my mind, and the world I am escaping to in a game.

When, and if we ever discover life outside of Earth it is going to be extremely monumental. It will be a turning point in human history, thinking, and most definitely religion. At the moment we have not discovered life outside yet obviously, and has anyone ever thought about the wake up call this is going to bring when we do?

Think about it... whether we find intelligent alien life, or microsopic bacterial, all the worlds religion and faith in those old religions will be questioned. This cannot be denied. And more than likely, new religions and revisions of old ones will surely be created. For example, How else will the christian religion be able to explain itself once life outside Earth is found? Earth is suppose to be special and unique and alone among a sea (heh) of planets and stars devoid of life... according to the bible.

And when, if, we do find life outside Earth... this is going to give humans a new way to view themselves. We will truly see we are just a species thriving and carving our own niche in our own ecosystem and soon, the universal ecosystem. In a new way, humans will bond. Maybe I'm being too optimistic here, but racism and hostility between groups of humans will cease, or atleast be greatly reduced in the event of finding intelligent alien life.

It will be us versus them. The aliens. We are humans. Not blacks, whites, latinos, asians, so on and so forth. Humans goddamnit.

We will be divided in a new way... not by the color of our skin or upbringing, but how we view the approach we take to an intelligent alien species. Do we offer peace? Do we trade technology? Do we try to develop a friendship and mutual understanding? Do we declare war? Do we eliminate them out of fear?

What do you think we would, or should do in the event of discovering alien life?

I personally think we should develop a watch and learn mentality. We should try communicating with them and try opening up a line of understanding between us and them. I am certain that, as long as this intelligent species in question, "speaks" or has a language of some sort, we could possibly trade "rosetta stones" between eachother.

Let me know what you think.


Comments (Page 6)
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on Apr 26, 2009

Unfortunately, an infinate universe doesn't make sense at all. To have an infinite universe that requires for time to also be infinite. But if nothing ever had a beginning, and is therefore infinite, than every single possibility that could happen would have already happened. Every single option has a set probability. No matter how unlikely, even if the chance of the event happening is 1 in a google (a 1 followed by 100 zeros) then if time was infinite, it would have happened at some point, and the universe just isn't strange enough for that.

on Apr 26, 2009

Survivor454
Unfortunately, an infinate universe doesn't make sense at all. To have an infinite universe that requires for time to also be infinite. But if nothing ever had a beginning, and is therefore infinite, than every single possibility that could happen would have already happened. Every single option has a set probability. No matter how unlikely, even if the chance of the event happening is 1 in a google (a 1 followed by 100 zeros) then if time was infinite, it would have happened at some point, and the universe just isn't strange enough for that.

I agree, its unlikely, but it is still possible. Its called the eteranal expansion theory, proposed by Andrei Linde in 1986. It has to do with parts of the Universe breaking of in "blisters" which could concievably happen forever. The thing is we can only see thing 15 billion light years away. Plus this theory expains the Flatness and horizon problems. (which i dont want to get into.)

on Apr 26, 2009

Regarding evidence and all the planets we've "looked at" and found nothing on.

 

Incorrect.  The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million years old news.  What we see on a planet in there is nothing.  That's exactly what we'd see here on Earth if we were looking from over there.  The Hubble telescope isn't even remotely close to being powerful enough to see humanoids on the surface of a planet in the next galaxy over.  We can't even see that much on Pluto with the thing.  We can't see animals and plants with infrared either, same problem.  It's too far away, there's too much background radiation to see such details, and even if we could we'd be 2.5 million years out of date.

 

We don't have any evidence one way or the other because it's flat beyond us.  Life would have to be in the same solar system to have a shot in hell of detecting anything but a space faring race.  Spotting even that just on the nearest solar system would require freakish luck, like they happen to detonate a nuclear powered city size space ship while the telescope is looking at it...

on Apr 26, 2009

The last point is based on an argument presented by Ray Kurzweil. No doubt you have head somewhere about the "technological singularity."

Homo-Sapiens to "anything" evolving either by technology or natural mutations can easily dismiss the singularity paradox.

Where do we stop and MUST we.

About 4.5 million years allowed us to obtain quite clear photo-realistic pictures of Super-Novas blasts occuring regularily at, what we postulate, the edge of this Universe.

How long did the Dinosaurs rule before being struck to extinction by a meteor to slowly disappear within about 200,000+ years. Let me type this amount once more; 200,000! Egyptians built Pyramids, Americans went to the Moon, Semi-Primates hunted Mammoths.

*FROM* our period of historical existence.

Now, step outside this extremely limited perspective.

1-- Zap yourselves outbound 5,000LYs away (right next door in galactic terms, btw) from here. And *only* 2 millions years ago.

2-- Zap again, but 5,000LYs further & 500,000 years into our own future.

Could there be a Kurzweil's singularity step in any of these TWO particular situations?

Or within many more circumstances?

Proved, again.

on Apr 27, 2009

Zyx I don't understand what you're trying to say.  I think you disagree with Kurzweil, but I can't understand your english/grammar.  What point are you trying to make?  The singularity hypothesis basically argues that any society with scarce resources and competition will continue to develop better and more efficient ways to exploit all possible resources.. thus, we see the trend towards human augmentation.  Up until the point where there is simply no way to gain further information on a topic, we will continue to work towards gaining that knowledge for the advances it will give to resource exploitation and thus competitive success.  With technological improvements improving the rate at which we make discoveries, there is an inherent double exponential rate at which advancements are made.  Certainly there is some hard limit to what is possible, but we won't know that limit until the singularity is reached.

 

In any case, it takes millions and millions of years to achieve a society that can augment itself in any way.. Certain gorillas can, using sticks.  A few other species can in very limited ways.  However, once a society reaches the point where it can augment itself (homo-sapiens), it is a very VERY short time on a universal scale before they either wipe themselves out or achieve singularity (or both, perhaps).  IF there is life elsewhere in the universe, it is quite likely to be something in the very primitive stages (millions of years) leading up to augmentation, at which point it won't be making anything more detectable than certain gasses in a planetary atmosphere.  Once life has achieved singularity, that life knows all that can be known from its vantage point in the universe.  If at that point it knows faster than light travel it will quickly expand, and once out of its original solar system it would be very hard if not impossible for it to be destroyed by natural means.  On the other hand, if it didn't develop FTL travel, it would more or less be stuck in its solar system.  Even with near light speed travel it is, as you say, thousands of years to get even a microscopic distance (galaxy is 160,000 light years across, or 160,000 years of travel time at the speed of light). 

 

You did make an interesting point, if perhaps by accident.  Our sun is only ~5 billion years old, meaning it is relatively young.  It is quite possible that older stars gave rise to habitable planets fully billions of years ago.  Either we are extremely unique, FTL travel is impossible, or existing post singularity societies simply don't want us to know about them.  ALl I'm trying to say is that there is almost 0% chance that there is other life nearby that is at the point of augmentation but that has not yet achieved singularity.. thee 10,000 - 15,000 year window is just so ridiculously small on a universal scale.. there is practically no chance of there ever being "contact" in the traditional sense with an alien society.  No star wars, no SINS, no anything that involves multiple pre-singularity alien races.  The exception would be seeded planets, but that is a whole other discussion.

 

 

on Apr 27, 2009

Certainly there is some hard limit to what is possible, but we won't know that limit until the singularity is reached.

What Kurzweil did was to create a limited set of conditions upon which the singularity status itself is the final result, i have to contradict such an assumption if only because evolutionary genetic mutations always reset that fixed target beyond his limit.

Take only Medical discoveries of late... human life-spans based on cellular clocking decay as they were "assumed" between just the 15th century and now. We're able to cure soooo much more that it's no surprise our scientific goals spun towards the genome. That strict code *could* be manipulated, ya know. Even cloning is controversial.

Knowing this... how variable can any singularity parameters become?

...thee 10,000 - 15,000 year window is just so ridiculously small on a universal scale..

Yep, but it is still a huge amount if Alien X has a life-span of 25,000 years -- is able to continually push the edge of THEIR own singularity factors -- have been "lucky enough" to receive more than 5 senses through whatever local evolutionary mutations -- can actually travel beyond FTL -- are coming from our past or will develop faster than us in our future -- mastered intra-dimensional accessibility... etc.

Forget your usual Klingons & Giger xenomorphic crabby-eggs dropper here and be open-minded about the incredibly high number of variations of evolutionary scales.

Darwin's theory consequences, no less.

on Apr 27, 2009

I've seen space ponies!

 

Man, that was some serious stuff...

on Apr 27, 2009

Fuzzy Logic
I've seen space ponies!

 

Man, that was some serious stuff...

LOL?

on Apr 27, 2009

Zyx it sounds like you're talking about the singularity as a knowable state of knowledge that is basically considered the limit of what we believe we can know and could be able to do with enough resources, time, and research.  This is not the singularity.  Instead, it is the point at which the rate of knowledge accumulation approaches infinity.  When a society reaches singularity, it gains all possible knowledge in an incredibly short period of time.  Not "most knowledge," or "up to the limits of what we currently think is possible," but all knowledge that can possibly be gained, period.  The only limitations to the knowledge gained in that incredibly short period of time comes from certain possible "hard limits" beyond which it is simply impossible to gain knowledge from their particular place and time in the universe.  Certain effects are only present under extreme conditions, such as the density singularity at the center of large black holes, meaning knowledge about specific aspects of those effects may be limited to proximity to the events causing them.  Likewise, it may be impossible to gain certain kinds of information that existed prior to the big bang.  I obviously don't and can't know if these are real hard limits, but they are examples that could possibly be hard limits to knowledge, even for a post singularity society.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)

 

I think you're mistaking technological singularity as an identifiable level of technological expertise.  It is not.  It is more or less along the lines of the mathematical limit, that is.. as time (on the x axis) increases, the cumulative amount of knowledge held by the human race increases double exponentially (on the y axis) such that there is a limit T that the function approaches.  The limit T is the time at which cumulative knowledge approaches infinity.  Obviously there is not an infinite amount of knowledge to be gained, so our knowledge function doesn't truly hit a limit, only an extremely sharp climb at time T that quickly levels out once any hard limits to our knowledge are hit.  I would like to argue that post singularity societies will be virtually unrecognizable to pre singularity societies, but the very nature of the singularity makes it impossible to know what life is like on the other side (hence the coining of the term singularity).  However, it is very possible to consider the knowledge we are aware of know and extrapolate the possibilities for such a society.  Just consider if all of the most cutting edge science and technology that we know is possible (even if it hasn't been done yet) was commonplace, and beyond that accessible to everyone.  Such a society would be vastly superior to our own, and that is likely barely scratching the surface of what a post singularity society would be like.

on Apr 27, 2009

Yep, but it is still a huge amount if Alien X has a life-span of 25,000 years -- is able to continually push the edge of THEIR own singularity factors -- have been "lucky enough" to receive more than 5 senses through whatever local evolutionary mutations -- can actually travel beyond FTL -- are coming from our past or will develop faster than us in our future -- mastered intra-dimensional accessibility... etc.

 

As for this, anything that can be known will be known by any post singularity society, limited (possibly) by the kinds of factors I described above.  Lifespan has nothing to do with it.. this isn't about individuals, but species and beyond that life (or evolving matter) itself.  FTL travel will be known by any post singularity society.. there is no "barrier to push", only "before knowing everything" (pre singularity) and after knowing everything (post singularity).  The period of "pushing the boundary" takes place just prior to singularity and occurs over an extremely short period.. humanity's period is likely to last 10,000 to 15,000 years as I said before, and it is nearly over.  "Senses" are a misnomer to begin with, as they allow us insight into the phenomenological world.  That is to say, there is a noumenological world that creates observable phenomena, and our senses allow us to percieve those phenomena.  The only kinds of life that could exist outside of the phenomenological universe would have to exist in some location that has absolutely zero interaction with any matter or energy in our phenomenological universe.  Otherwise, knowledge about those interactions would be studied and understood by a post singularity society (dark matter is a good example of a weakly interacting phenomena.. matter that appears to interact with other matter based only on gravitational influence).  We can study those weak interactions and learn all that there is possible to know about dark matter from our vantage point in the universe.  Likewise, if there is some matter and energy in the universe that is undetectable "dark matter and energy," any beings made of that matter would be limited by their vantage point in the universe and only be able to observe interactions with normal matter through gravity.  Further, it is only possible to understand phenomena scientifically.  Noumena are inscrutible and have the potential to create new or different phenomena at any time. 

 

To put it in simpler terms, the way we observe the universe is like looking at ripples on water.  We can observe patterns in the ripples, identify their origin, and learn how they interact with each other.  We can predict what happens when two ripples collide, and we can have a very solid understanding of the pond we are looking at based on those ripples.  However, we never can see what is causing the ripples.. is it raining?  Are rocks being thrown into the water?  The ripples are phenomenological in this example, the causes are noumenological.  The "thing in itself" cannot be known, and as such it can create phenomena not yet observed or predicted.  Many, many philosophers have addressed this issue.

 

In any case, senses let us observe the phenomenological.  Post singularity societies will understand all phenomena completely, regardless of what senses they started with.  We already observe much that was outside of our phenomenological realm only decades ago.. the electromagnetic spectrum beyond visible light for example.  Any pehenomena that interacts at all with the observable phenomenological universe will in turn be observed, studied, and known.  Anything phenomena that does not interact at all with our phenomenological universe will never be known and, by definition, will never interact with us.  No "aliens from an alternate dimension" or anything like that.. if there is an "alternate dimension" that is accessible by us, as a post singularity society we will know it and have as much access to it as is possible.  Same thing goes for time travel.  More or less, all post singularity societies know exactly the same things and have access to exactly the same technology... that is, everything that can be known and everything that can be done.  With limits again as I described above.

on Apr 27, 2009

Gliese 581, barely 20LYs away from us.

That's too hot to support life as it is now (at least that's what one site said) but another planet in its system could contain water...

And yes, there are other alien lifeforms out there, no brainer...

on Apr 27, 2009

I misinterpreted the "scope" in terms of accessibility to specific knowledge according to what *we* know, given.

The technological limits of Earth are based on the conditions we live in and observe.

I'll issue an hypothesis if you don't mind to compare two clear situations.

1- Water is essential to life. (or not, btw)

2- Energy helps Industrialization.

3- Space faring civilization(s) would need basic resources and an extremely high level of technologies.

4- Somewhere in the vast unknown, somebody fills (or already filled) up 1 to 3 above.

5- The singularity paradox for both situations comes from the *lack* of specific steps that aren't common to both Aliens.

 

We enjoyed the edge of mastering the Atom... but Alien X didn't even bother since they are located on a planet that *naturally* produces that much energy continually. They pack their gears and aim for the nearest worm-hole (lucky shot again) in a *more* technologically advanced device that can detect, explore, land on other planets within their earlier mentioned life-spans. They don't even have to feed on their ways, since (lucky shot, once more) they have a different biological configuration. They have a 2,500 grams Brain (human adult clocks at 1400 on average), attached to four radar "eyes" that work on the wider spectrum shift, their listening sense isn't limited to our hertz bands either... etc.

What more do they need or lack? To compete with us.

Reproduction? Not really, their evolutionary patterns fixed that long ago. Immortals by our standards, in fact.

Not even Kurzweil's singularity can match that in ANY given period of time outside our limited scale.

on Apr 27, 2009

lol @ Moosetek

"It just means that, while the Bible is fully and completely true (within it's intended scope) - that does not mean that the Bible details and explains every truth that there is to be known."

The Bible said the earth was flat (see Job, Daniel, Matthew and Isaiah).

The Bible also said that Noah walked with God, but Job said that no man walked with God. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

on Apr 27, 2009

I have to disagree with one bit. A lack of FTL travel will not confine us to our solar system. True, it will take an excruciatingly long time to travel places. But it is possible to travel close to the speed of light, just not beyond it. But the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes, and so the travel time would not be felt as badly by the passengers of said vessel. This would of course put them out of touch with anyone not traveling at the speed they are, but it would allow us to travel beyong our own solar system as we would not have to worry about the people on the spacecraft aging and dying. Also, we could spread out as slow as needed, allowing new generations to take up the mantle and spread more. Unless some form of FTL communication is possible (which may be easier to accomplish than FTL travel) than it would be hard to communicate around this new terrioty of humans. But it is still possible. Humanitys need to expand will make this possible one day.

on Apr 27, 2009

What we should do: Leave them alone. Star Trek's Federation had orders not to interfere with newly discovered humans... And for a good reason. It will likely end up toppling their society or some other major ecological or societal disaster if we interfere. This of course assumes they are less technologically advanced.

However, being the nutty screwups that we are, here is what we will do: Exploit them for profit. The first intelligent species we encounter had better be more advanced than us. Otherwise they will face extinction.

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