That is in fact one of the answers to Fermi's Question ("Where is everybody?")
I personally prefer the other answer to Fermi's paradox.
Guy (forget who) set a table for himself, turned on the stove, set water boiling, and then sat down at the table and waited for a lobster to come in and obligingly cook itself. He waited for several hours, but no lobster came. Because as it turns out, lobsters have better things to do with their time.
Similarly, aliens might not come to Earth, because they really just have better things to do with their time then bother with primitive species who can offer them nothing that they can't acquire in a billion other locations across the Galaxy.
...heh. Speaking of Fermi, I actually have an original sci-fi story that had a quartet of aliens accidentally crash-land near Milan, Italy, in 1935 (with the central conceit of the story being that it's almost entirely from the alien rather than human perspective). The first human scientist they meet was, of course, Enrico Fermi. The first contact scene was amusing.
The second man Enrico Fermi had a lined yellow-paper note book in his hand, and some kind of writing implement. Turning it so that Kailine and Lakshi could see the pad, he drew two dots on one line, three on the next, five on the one after that, then seven, then eleven, then thirteen, and finished whatever he was doing with seventeen. Then he offered the pad and writing implement to Kailine.
The elai woman took both, glancing over the dots. What do you think this is? She asked.
Prime numbers, Lakshi decided after a moment. I think he is trying to show us that his species has an understanding of prime numbers. Trying to prove their intelligence.
Kailine looked at Enrico Fermi, then at the paper. So you mean to tell me that this guy thinks that we think that these guys managed to develop automobiles and guns and whatnot, but havent figured out what prime numbers are?
Numbers do have the advantage of apparent universality - prime numbers as a series show order in a way that makes the associated symbolism obvious, which allows the first contact group to establish the meaning of at least some of their writing and beginning communication.
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The problems with Fermi's paradox is that it's assuming the original (grossly inaccurate) coefficients of the Drake Equation, all of which were based on the end result and not the process, and it ignores the whispers-on-the-ocean problem where detection and detectability are limited to very short ranges before transmissions vanish into the background. Drake estimated 100,000,000, which puts the expected number of civilizations close enough and advanced enough to be detected less than 5, including us.
However, just using Earth as a model and accounting for position in the process and not just the end result, the fi coefficient should be vastly lower, giving values should be closer to 500,000, with the expected number in detection range being 0.025. Again, including us.
Using our current information on extrasolar systems, we've found that the ne coefficient is also much lower than we expected, suggesting values more in the range of 50-100,000, bringing the expected number in detection range even further to 0.005 (again, including us) with no viable candidate systems for them to be on anyway.
It also assumes a flat cutoff above which a civilization is always detectable. However, using Earth as a model, this is also not true. In 1961, our planet was becoming more and more detectable, but since the 80's, improving electronics has reduced our necessary signal strength and now, despite using far more signals than ever before, they're primarily digital and of much lower power than the older signals, meaning we're detectable to a distance a quarter of what we used to be.
The most likely way we'll detect life isn't from signals or spheres but atmospheric spectra. We're already managing to figure out the atmospheric content of extrasolar planets, and life on a planetary scale has two atmospheric fingerprints. With the new space observatories under construction, we'll be able to accurately enough read an atmospheric spectrum to tell if photosynthesis is taking place there. We won't be able to tell if fossil carbon burning is happening, at least not yet, unless it's on a cataclysmic scale.
The problems with Fermi's paradox is that it's assuming the original (grossly inaccurate) coefficients of the Drake Equation, all of which were based on the end result and not the process, and it ignores the whispers-on-the-ocean problem where detection and detectability are limited to very short ranges before transmissions vanish into the background. Drake estimated 100,000,000, which puts the expected number of civilizations close enough and advanced enough to be detected less than 5, including us.
However, just using Earth as a model and accounting for position in the process and not just the end result, the fi coefficient should be vastly lower, giving values should be closer to 500,000, with the expected number in detection range being 0.025. Again, including us.
Using our current information on extrasolar systems, we've found that the ne coefficient is also much lower than we expected, suggesting values more in the range of 50-100,000, bringing the expected number in detection range even further to 0.005 (again, including us) with no viable candidate systems for them to be on anyway.
It also assumes a flat cutoff above which a civilization is always detectable. However, using Earth as a model, this is also not true. In 1961, our planet was becoming more and more detectable, but since the 80's, improving electronics has reduced our necessary signal strength and now, despite using far more signals than ever before, they're primarily digital and of much lower power than the older signals, meaning we're detectable to a distance a quarter of what we used to be.
The most likely way we'll detect life isn't from signals or spheres but atmospheric spectra. We're already managing to figure out the atmospheric content of extrasolar planets, and life on a planetary scale has two atmospheric fingerprints. With the new space observatories under construction, we'll be able to accurately enough read an atmospheric spectrum to tell if photosynthesis is taking place there. We won't be able to tell if fossil carbon burning is happening, at least not yet, unless it's on a cataclysmic scale.
While it's both fun and frightening to expect a marauding species of Neumann machines going from planet to planet, sterilizing all life (as I highlighted earlier), you have highlighted what I suspect to be the actual truth: We're too primitive to listen in on the really good conversations.
Honestly, let's face it, radio is not a very good medium for carrying information over vast interstellar distances. It degrades a lot, becoming weaker and weaker in all of the other noise floating around out there. Thus why I think SETI has been wasting its time sitting in chairs and listening to static. Even if there was a radio signal equivalent of I Love Alien Lucy in that mess, it's so ******n degraded, you'll never be able to pick it out. And as we've recently been making the transition to digital shows that there's only a small, finite window when radio signals can be detected from a planet. SETI has been literally throwing away money that could have been used to devise better methods to find life.
Which is why I also think the Optical SETI program is the better shot. It's good that they finally have the technology to do this, but hell... if the radio static listeners hadn't been wasting money, who knows, SETI might have been able to research and develop this technology a little bit earlier.
That is in fact one of the answers to Fermi's Question ("Where is everybody?") - the idea that any species advanced enough to engage in spaceflight will hit the bottleneck of nuclear warfare and/or the ability to utterly destroy their planetary ecosystem with industrial pollution. Only those species able to control their impulses can possibly survive this bottleneck. (It's interesting to note that according to this hypothesis, we haven't passed that point ourselves - we still might manage to wipe ourselves out, joining in the Great Silence.)
That doesn't really work as a hard rule though. It requires just enough self-control to not wipe themselves out, it doesn't really require them to be NICE. the premise of Fermi's question seems to be that the only reason for them to NOT wipe themselves out is being something akin to benevolent. But any race that has any sort of self control can accomplish that even if they aren't what we'd consider "enlightened".
For example: the Visitors. they have a strict monarchy and most would never even think of challenging the monarch. this is in part due to some sort of psionic control Anna has over her people, but still....
Although the Visitors apparently weren't that good at ecology, and their HW started to die AFTER they became space farers.
Honestly though, being good at recycling and waste control does not make a race enlightened. It might simply mean they're big on "efficiency" and would see humans as a lower life form due to being wasteful. :P
Which is why I also think the Optical SETI program is the better shot. It's good that they finally have the technology to do this, but hell... if the radio static listeners hadn't been wasting money, who knows, SETI might have been able to research and develop this technology a little bit earlier.
It may even be that star-faring civilizations use some form of superluminal communication between solar systems. At the minimum, a starship would be able to outrun an electromagnetic transmission anyway, so couriers would replace signals even if there was no "subspace radio".
Anyway, lasers are definitely better for deliberate communication, since they not only maintain signal strength over longer distances due to being tightly focused, but the coherent light waves are easier to distinguish from the incoherent natural light sources (like the sun that the transmitter is orbiting). The one caveat is that you have to know where your target is, since the beam has to be pointed precisely at it. You can't just send out a shout to the universe for all to hear--you have to point it at the targeted ship or planet, and if it's not where you think it is (e.g. ship is off course), then you're out of luck.
...heh. Speaking of Fermi, I actually have an original sci-fi story that had a quartet of aliens accidentally crash-land near Milan, Italy, in 1935 (with the central conceit of the story being that it's almost entirely from the alien rather than human perspective). The first human scientist they meet was, of course, Enrico Fermi. The first contact scene was amusing.
Yes, any species that can produce industrial technology is probably at least at a certain degree of intelligence. That does not however imply the intelligence of any particular individual. What if instead of Fermi it had been an illiterate vagrant who mistook the alien visitors for demons?
It may even be that star-faring civilizations use some form of superluminal communication between solar systems. At the minimum, a starship would be able to outrun an electromagnetic transmission anyway, so couriers would replace signals even if there was no "subspace radio".
Anyway, lasers are definitely better for deliberate communication, since they not only maintain signal strength over longer distances due to being tightly focused, but the coherent light waves are easier to distinguish from the incoherent natural light sources (like the sun that the transmitter is orbiting). The one caveat is that you have to know where your target is, since the beam has to be pointed precisely at it. You can't just send out a shout to the universe for all to hear--you have to point it at the targeted ship or planet, and if it's not where you think it is (e.g. ship is off course), then you're out of luck.
Good point on the laser and another reason why we haven't heard from them and never will. They'd have to point those lasers right at us in order to talk to us. But, as you know, there's no good reason for them to point them here.
Yes, any species that can produce industrial technology is probably at least at a certain degree of intelligence. That does not however imply the intelligence of any particular individual. What if instead of Fermi it had been an illiterate vagrant who mistook the alien visitors for demons?
Those actually showed up first (Italy had a huge illiteracy problem in the 30s), but the aliens on the crashed ship ignored them and didn't leave the ship, kind of hoping that they'd go away. Then the Italian army showed up and, primitive or not, the Italian artillery pieces and tanks could chew through the hull of their ship as long as they didn't have the power for shields (and they didn't). So they had to try diplomacy.
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I personally prefer the other answer to Fermi's paradox.
Guy (forget who) set a table for himself, turned on the stove, set water boiling, and then sat down at the table and waited for a lobster to come in and obligingly cook itself. He waited for several hours, but no lobster came. Because as it turns out, lobsters have better things to do with their time.
Similarly, aliens might not come to Earth, because they really just have better things to do with their time then bother with primitive species who can offer them nothing that they can't acquire in a billion other locations across the Galaxy.
...heh. Speaking of Fermi, I actually have an original sci-fi story that had a quartet of aliens accidentally crash-land near Milan, Italy, in 1935 (with the central conceit of the story being that it's almost entirely from the alien rather than human perspective). The first human scientist they meet was, of course, Enrico Fermi. The first contact scene was amusing.
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However, just using Earth as a model and accounting for position in the process and not just the end result, the fi coefficient should be vastly lower, giving values should be closer to 500,000, with the expected number in detection range being 0.025. Again, including us.
Using our current information on extrasolar systems, we've found that the ne coefficient is also much lower than we expected, suggesting values more in the range of 50-100,000, bringing the expected number in detection range even further to 0.005 (again, including us) with no viable candidate systems for them to be on anyway.
It also assumes a flat cutoff above which a civilization is always detectable. However, using Earth as a model, this is also not true. In 1961, our planet was becoming more and more detectable, but since the 80's, improving electronics has reduced our necessary signal strength and now, despite using far more signals than ever before, they're primarily digital and of much lower power than the older signals, meaning we're detectable to a distance a quarter of what we used to be.
The most likely way we'll detect life isn't from signals or spheres but atmospheric spectra. We're already managing to figure out the atmospheric content of extrasolar planets, and life on a planetary scale has two atmospheric fingerprints. With the new space observatories under construction, we'll be able to accurately enough read an atmospheric spectrum to tell if photosynthesis is taking place there. We won't be able to tell if fossil carbon burning is happening, at least not yet, unless it's on a cataclysmic scale.
While it's both fun and frightening to expect a marauding species of Neumann machines going from planet to planet, sterilizing all life (as I highlighted earlier), you have highlighted what I suspect to be the actual truth: We're too primitive to listen in on the really good conversations.
Honestly, let's face it, radio is not a very good medium for carrying information over vast interstellar distances. It degrades a lot, becoming weaker and weaker in all of the other noise floating around out there. Thus why I think SETI has been wasting its time sitting in chairs and listening to static. Even if there was a radio signal equivalent of I Love Alien Lucy in that mess, it's so ******n degraded, you'll never be able to pick it out. And as we've recently been making the transition to digital shows that there's only a small, finite window when radio signals can be detected from a planet. SETI has been literally throwing away money that could have been used to devise better methods to find life.
Which is why I also think the Optical SETI program is the better shot. It's good that they finally have the technology to do this, but hell... if the radio static listeners hadn't been wasting money, who knows, SETI might have been able to research and develop this technology a little bit earlier.
For example: the Visitors. they have a strict monarchy and most would never even think of challenging the monarch. this is in part due to some sort of psionic control Anna has over her people, but still....
Although the Visitors apparently weren't that good at ecology, and their HW started to die AFTER they became space farers.
Honestly though, being good at recycling and waste control does not make a race enlightened. It might simply mean they're big on "efficiency" and would see humans as a lower life form due to being wasteful. :P
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It may even be that star-faring civilizations use some form of superluminal communication between solar systems. At the minimum, a starship would be able to outrun an electromagnetic transmission anyway, so couriers would replace signals even if there was no "subspace radio".
Anyway, lasers are definitely better for deliberate communication, since they not only maintain signal strength over longer distances due to being tightly focused, but the coherent light waves are easier to distinguish from the incoherent natural light sources (like the sun that the transmitter is orbiting). The one caveat is that you have to know where your target is, since the beam has to be pointed precisely at it. You can't just send out a shout to the universe for all to hear--you have to point it at the targeted ship or planet, and if it's not where you think it is (e.g. ship is off course), then you're out of luck.
Yes, any species that can produce industrial technology is probably at least at a certain degree of intelligence. That does not however imply the intelligence of any particular individual. What if instead of Fermi it had been an illiterate vagrant who mistook the alien visitors for demons?
Good point on the laser and another reason why we haven't heard from them and never will. They'd have to point those lasers right at us in order to talk to us. But, as you know, there's no good reason for them to point them here.
Those actually showed up first (Italy had a huge illiteracy problem in the 30s), but the aliens on the crashed ship ignored them and didn't leave the ship, kind of hoping that they'd go away. Then the Italian army showed up and, primitive or not, the Italian artillery pieces and tanks could chew through the hull of their ship as long as they didn't have the power for shields (and they didn't). So they had to try diplomacy.