What is a scarier thought...?

joe macclennan said:
if aliens do not exist then we are the most intelligent species....that is scary
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There's a depressing thought. Luckily the odds of us being the only intelligent life are infinitesimally minute. Just think about all the unimaginably advanced societies that may have come and passed in the 14 billion or so years the universe has existed in this form. I only wish I could be an archaeologist in another thousand years or so.
 
GOD HERE said:
There's a depressing thought. Luckily the odds of us being the only intelligent life are infinitesimally minute. Just think about all the unimaginably advanced societies that may have come and passed in the 14 billion or so years the universe has existed in this form. I only wish I could be an archaeologist in another thousand years or so.
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To be fair, though, do you think a civilization could have advanced faster than ours did? I guess anything is possible, right? But ours took 4.5 billion years just to begin, and it was the result of a lot of different consistently successful circumstances. So I guess what I'm asking is, do you think it could have happened sooner? If so, the possibility of a civilization 1-4 billion years older than ours could exist. The issue I have with that is my own perception and frame of reference, it's gotta be biased, no doubt about it. I only have our species to go on, so it's difficult for me to envision something older. But you've gotta think.. something that old must be so much farther advanced than us.. why haven't they been here? Is the universe simply too big? No matter how advanced a species, it's simply untraversable?
 
GOD HERE said:
There's a depressing thought. Luckily the odds of us being the only intelligent life are infinitesimally minute. Just think about all the unimaginably advanced societies that may have come and passed in the 14 billion or so years the universe has existed in this form. I only wish I could be an archaeologist in another thousand years or so.
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Im really glad to see God chiming in here... Thought he might dodge this one.
 
The thing is, hypothetically, if aliens dont exist, then we could potentially colonize the whole universe.

If aliens do exist, and we plan on colonizing space, we might have to either live with aliens or search for a new planet all together.

Just some things to think about.

~PEACE~
 
Padawanbater2 said:
1. Aliens exist

2. Aliens do not exist

Why?
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Aliens not existing is much more scary. That means we are the only intelligent life in the cosmos, and life is therefor unbelievably fragile and rare...

joe macclennan said:
if aliens do not exist then we are the most intelligent species....that is scary
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Insightful and hilarious ;)

Padawanbater2 said:
To be fair, though, do you think a civilization could have advanced faster than ours did? I guess anything is possible, right? But ours took 4.5 billion years just to begin, and it was the result of a lot of different consistently successful circumstances. So I guess what I'm asking is, do you think it could have happened sooner? If so, the possibility of a civilization 1-4 billion years older than ours could exist. The issue I have with that is my own perception and frame of reference, it's gotta be biased, no doubt about it. I only have our species to go on, so it's difficult for me to envision something older. But you've gotta think.. something that old must be so much farther advanced than us.. why haven't they been here? Is the universe simply too big? No matter how advanced a species, it's simply untraversable?
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I think it is certainly possible that life started much sooner than it did on Earth. IIFC, stars started to form only a couple of billion years after the big bang almost 14 billion years ago; they exploded creating the heavier elements that made it possible for planets to form. So there could be civilizations billions of years more advanced than ours. I think a better question to ask is, why would they visit Earth? What would the incentive be? Chances are they'd see more incentive in contacting civilizations with technology greater than theirs, not lesser. If they were simply interested in locating developing civilizations less advanced, they would probably have planets much closer to them than our planet (consider how far the goldilocks planets are from us that we can detect). Consider, too, that knowledge and technology is not simply discovered/uncovered, it is generated from past units of knowledge. So, the more we know, the quicker knowledge is generated (consider the past 150 years has developed more tech than the previous 9850 years of recorded history combined). At a certain point, it could be generated close to the speed of light, the speed limit for everything. A species that is generating knowledge close to light speed would have an incredibly difficult time just keeping up with their own, rapidly advancing tech, much less traveling to an external source to only possibly garner more. I think our bias may be greater in the view that we think we are so special that everyone would want to come to us, instead of the more probable, why would anyone want to come visit us?
 
Padawanbater2 said:
To be fair, though, do you think a civilization could have advanced faster than ours did? I guess anything is possible, right? But ours took 4.5 billion years just to begin, and it was the result of a lot of different consistently successful circumstances. So I guess what I'm asking is, do you think it could have happened sooner? If so, the possibility of a civilization 1-4 billion years older than ours could exist. The issue I have with that is my own perception and frame of reference, it's gotta be biased, no doubt about it. I only have our species to go on, so it's difficult for me to envision something older. But you've gotta think.. something that old must be so much farther advanced than us.. why haven't they been here? Is the universe simply too big? No matter how advanced a species, it's simply untraversable?
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I'm convinced it could happen sooner, and that it did happen sooner than here on earth. There were tons of complete galaxies formed before our little solar system popped up. I think the oldest star we've observed is 13b years old, and actually fairly close to us. Planets like earth are a dime a dozen. It's inevitable a decent percent of the time because of the way planets form and orbit around stars, and the time involved. We can't really imagine what life or technology might be like that is billions of years ahead. It's fun to try though... And how do you know that they haven't been here? There could be ETs in front of your face without you knowing. They might be guiding us, or using us without us knowing. Plus, planets with life at human levels of evolution are no doubt in my mind as common as sand on a beach (maybe not THAT common). And besides possible technology, try to imagine what a lifeform could evolve into if it had 3x as long as us. There's no telling. The universe isn't too big to travel. I firmly believe that anything that can be conceived can be accomplished. And the more that is accomplished means the more that can be conceived.

If it took this long on earth to go from single celled organisms to this... then anything billions of years ahead of us could be like humans compared to single celled life in some ways.

But really, everything in existence... or at least the visible universe, is one. So really, we are the only one. The illusion of separation is good in a lot of cases though.
 
tyler.durden said:
Aliens not existing is much more scary. That means we are the only intelligent life in the cosmos, and life is therefor unbelievably fragile and rare...



Insightful and hilarious :wink:



I think it is certainly possible that life started much sooner than it did on Earth. IIFC, stars started to form only a couple of billion years after the big bang almost 14 billion years ago; they exploded creating the heavier elements that made it possible for planets to form. So there could be civilizations billions of years more advanced than ours. I think a better question to ask is, why would they visit Earth? What would the incentive be? Chances are they'd see more incentive in contacting civilizations with technology greater than theirs, not lesser. If they were simply interested in locating developing civilizations less advanced, they would probably have planets much closer to them than our planet (consider how far the goldilocks planets are from us that we can detect). Consider, too, that knowledge and technology is not simply discovered/uncovered, it is generated from past units of knowledge. So, the more we know, the quicker knowledge is generated (consider the past 150 years has developed more tech than the previous 9850 years of recorded history combined). At a certain point, it could be generated close to the speed of light, the speed limit for everything. A species that is generating knowledge close to light speed would have an incredibly difficult time just keeping up with their own, rapidly advancing tech, much less traveling to an external source to only possibly garner more. I think our bias may be greater in the view that we think we are so special that everyone would want to come to us, instead of the more probable, why would anyone want to come visit us?
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Good point about the more knowledge we get, the faster and faster it keeps piling up. Exponentially. That seems to be the way of the evolution of the whole universe at this point. I imagine it took very very long to accumulate whatever caused the big bang. Then it took billions of years just to get stars. Then some time to form planets. Some more to form planets suitable for life... then life forms. Then the life goes from there. Each main stage happens faster than the previous, and makes a bigger leap. Almost all of our technological advances have happened since the end of the ice age. We're at a fucked up point now though since we have the ability to destroy our entire species... And people care more about personal interests than working for the bigger picture...
 
Skuxx said:
Good point about the more knowledge we get, the faster and faster it keeps piling up. Exponentially. That seems to be the way of the evolution of the whole universe at this point. I imagine it took very very long to accumulate whatever caused the big bang. Then it took billions of years just to get stars. Then some time to form planets. Some more to form planets suitable for life... then life forms. Then the life goes from there. Each main stage happens faster than the previous, and makes a bigger leap. Almost all of our technological advances have happened since the end of the ice age. We're at a fucked up point now though since we have the ability to destroy our entire species... And people care more about personal interests than working for the bigger picture...
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Years ago, I came across an idea called The Nuclear Decision Threshold. The concept was that abiogenesis (biology emerging from complex chemistry) occurs whenever conditions are suitable, and a vast diversity of life springs forth and is shaped by a process of natural selection. At a certain level of complexity, a species becomes sentient, and instead of being subject to nature's whims, that species begins to control nature. They build knowledge until they reach their Nuclear Decision Threshold, i.e. controlling nuclear technology to either bring them efficiently into the future (rationality wins), or to create weapons with said technology and use them to wipe themselves out (rationality loses). I think we're in the tail end of that threshold: if we can make it another couple of centuries more, we'll have passed it. Some make it out of the threshold to control nature to greater and greater degrees and perhaps colonize their galaxy, and other civilizations blast the fuck out of each other over some stupid shit (most likely of a political or religious nature). That's why I think it is important to defend rationality, logic, reason and critical thinking wherever one can. Every little bit helps us tilt the odds in favor of making it through this crucial point in time in order survive ourselves and to build on into the future...
 
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