Aliens and FBI

[TheVat]

On 12/12/2022 at 12:06 PM, Moontanman said:

IMHO the Von Neumann probes are the most likely source for UFOs, if they are not of this planet, but such technology can equally be speculated to create actual biological beings once they arrive, even beings that look like us instead of the original creators of the probes. Once you start speculating about magical technology anything is possible as long as it doesn't violate actual physical laws of the universe. 

Good point.   Once you speculate on self-replicating probes there are so many possible speculative paths from that.  And VN  machines seem more practical especially in terms of collecting data in some unthinkably vast galactic survey.  

 

On 12/12/2022 at 12:06 PM, Moontanman said:

The habitats of planets could and probably would not match the habitats of other planets making them problematical to colonise. Even small differences in trace elements could make a planet uninhabitable. A change in levels of something like mercury could make a planet uninhabitable to us but not prevent life from evolving there. 

Yep.  And terraforming is really hard work and massive scale investment, even if arsenic, mercury, lead, toxic chemicals, dangerous microbes, allergens, are not a problem.  Alien biomes would likely have different protein structures and amino acids, so a colonist couldn't just start with "40 acres and a mule."  The reality of most planet based colonies would likely be sequestered spaces beneath sealed domes.  

We have all really stayed with the FBI topic, haven't we?   Hehe.

[Markus Hanke]

10 hours ago, mistermack said:

On the subject of pre-emptive strikes against hopefully all the aliens, the problem of multiple targets might be bigger than we can imagine.

Just aim at the central star then, instead of the individual targets. It will take a larger mass and higher speeds, but it’s still doable.

[mistermack]

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

ust aim at the central star then, instead of the individual targets. It will take a larger mass and higher speeds, but it’s still doable.

I think doable, conceiveable and imaginable are getting a bit blurred now. 😊

But even blasting the star would give no guarantee of full destruction of the aliens. Say they are a mere 10,000 years ahead of us, they will surely be able to fuse hydrogen in space. So the necessity to hang around a star for the cheap solar energy will be gone by then. You will be able to create a colony anywhere you like, in deep space. All you need is some hydrogen, and that's not exactly scarce or inaccessible. Plenty of it on our moon as water ice, also on comets and other moons and small planets. The gas giants are made of it, but it's probably inaccessible there.

But with fusion, you don't need a lot of hydrogen, so interstellar space is wide open to anyone who can fuse hydrogen on a space station. Give it 10,000 years and I'm sure that we humans will be doing that with ease, so aliens, if they exist and have a lead on us, will surely be able to spread well away from their original star. They won't need to find another suitable star or planet, a station will do fine. 

 

 

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I think doable, conceiveable and imaginable are getting a bit blurred now. 😊

Nope...

[Moontanman]

18 hours ago, mistermack said:

And yet I've seen fantastic quality pictures and video of Amur Leopards and Tigers. In stark contrast to Bigfoot and Yetis and Spacecraft and ghosts.

Are these photos by people who weren't looking for those animals and only stumbled across them by accident? 

7 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Just aim at the central star then, instead of the individual targets. It will take a larger mass and higher speeds, but it’s still doable.

So we're actually considering launching a projectile massive enough and fast enough to disrupt a star? The sun could absorb an object as massive as Jupiter with no realistic problems. 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Moontanman

[zapatos]

35 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

So we're actually considering launching a projectile massive enough and fast enough to disrupt a star? The sun could absorb an object as massive as Jupiter with no realistic problems. 

I think at relativistic speeds that is not true.

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

I think doable, conceiveable and imaginable are getting a bit blurred now. 😊

 

I think we are getting away from the concept of Dark Forest. It doesn't lay out the tactics of an attack, it only suggests that the strategy of eliminating your competitors is a sound idea.

[DanMP]

On 12/11/2022 at 8:26 AM, Markus Hanke said:

So it’s basically attack, hide, hope, or come out of hiding and show yourself. None of these are pretty, but it can be shown that pre-emptive attack will maximise your chances of survival in a game like this.

Pre-emptive attack?  How can you people even consider something like that?!? We don't deserve to survive, as a species, if we consider such a thing.

I didn't read all the posts, so maybe it was already written:  if inteligent aliens exist and they are capable of sending ships so far in the universe, they should be peaceful, because otherwise they would annihilate themselves before doing that.

Since we didn't receive/intercept any radio broadcast from an alien civilization, it probably means that there is no alien civilization near enough to be a real threat to us.

Anyway, if we want to increase our chances of survival we should first stop fighting each other and then use the saved money/resources to expand, at least/first in orbital stations, in our solar sistem. The movie/series "The Expanse" is a nice example of how we can expand. Unfortunately there is too much war/hate/injustice in it, as it is also right now on our planet.

[Phi for All]

34 minutes ago, DanMP said:

if inteligent aliens exist and they are capable of sending ships so far in the universe, they should be peaceful, because otherwise they would annihilate themselves before doing that.

You say this like it's a given, but it's easy to imagine alternative scenarios. 

37 minutes ago, DanMP said:

Anyway, if we want to increase our chances of survival we should first stop fighting each other and then use the saved money/resources to expand, at least/first in orbital stations, in our solar sistem. The movie/series "The Expanse" is a nice example of how we can expand. Unfortunately there is too much war/hate/injustice in it, as it is also right now on our planet.

This doesn't address the topic though. Sure, if we somehow moved away from private ownership, humans could be trusted with all the resources we'd encounter off planet, and have less reason to fight amongst ourselves (or hold Earth hostage from outer space). But that still doesn't address alien counterparts who have their own agendas.

 

[zapatos]

41 minutes ago, DanMP said:

Pre-emptive attack?  How can you people even consider something like that?!?

Primarily because we don't have a blind spot in our brains that disallows seeing this option.

43 minutes ago, DanMP said:

I didn't read all the posts

You probably should. This is not a discussion about ethics, morals, or guessing how aliens might view the universe they live in. It is a discussion about game theory.

[Moontanman]

5 hours ago, zapatos said:

I think at relativistic speeds that is not true.

So how much mass would have to be accelerated to relativistic speeds to disrupt the Sun? Jupiter mass object? 

[zapatos]

19 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

So how much mass would have to be accelerated to relativistic speeds to disrupt the Sun? Jupiter mass object? 

I saw a video that suggested you could do it with a mass the size of the earth. I can't do the math.

I think you could also potentially do it by replacing the sun's core with iron to shut down fusion. That would be a neat party trick.

[Moontanman]

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

I saw a video that suggested you could do it with a mass the size of the earth. I can't do the math.

I think you could also potentially do it by replacing the sun's core with iron to shut down fusion. That would be a neat party trick.

You forgot about a Dyson Beam. 

[Markus Hanke]

10 hours ago, Moontanman said:

So how much mass would have to be accelerated to relativistic speeds to disrupt the Sun? Jupiter mass object?

The mass can be small-ish, because it isn’t the mass itself the creates the destruction, but its kinetic energy from moving at high-relativistic speeds. The critical bit is getting the speed just right, because you wouldn’t want it to just punch through the target without expending its energy - the sun will be length-contracted into a flattened disk in the rest frame of the projectile.

15 hours ago, zapatos said:

I think we are getting away from the concept of Dark Forest. It doesn't lay out the tactics of an attack, it only suggests that the strategy of eliminating your competitors is a sound idea.

Exactly.

[mistermack]

22 hours ago, zapatos said:

It doesn't lay out the tactics of an attack, it only suggests that the strategy of eliminating your competitors is a sound idea.

Ideas that have no prospect of being put into practice in the real world are hardly sound. A sound idea in game terms is meaningless in real life, unless the game adheres to a real life standards. 

So I would say it's a sound idea for a meaningless game. But not a sound idea for reality. Just because you can imagine something happening, that doesn't move it into the 'sound' category.

[Markus Hanke]

37 minutes ago, mistermack said:

A sound idea in game terms is meaningless in real life, unless the game adheres to a real life standards. 

While this is true, the problem here is that what constitutes a “real-life standard” is relative to the technological development of the civilisation in question.

Back in 1800, the idea of travelling from New York to London in ~7 hours using a jet-powered, pressurised, heavier-than-air flying machine at altitudes of ~30.000ft would have been so ludicrous that you’d have been laughed out of town, had you brought it up. Nowadays it’s so trivial that no one even thinks about it anymore. 

And that’s just 200 years.

Now, what will the real-life standards of a civilisation that is - say - 2 million years ahead of us be like? Today, we can accelerate electrons and protons to energies on the order of ~TeV, which is very close to the speed of light. To do the same (proportionally) with a block of solid metal the size of the Empire State Building (and that’s probably all that is needed) requires nothing more than a scaling-up of already existing technology, as well as lots and lots of energy, and some kind of suitable guidance system to make sure you hit your target. Obviously ludicrous to us at present, but probably not ludicrous to someone 2 million years ahead of us in technological terms, who is able to harness the necessary amount of energy. I do not find this inconceivable at all. Besides, there might be other ways to bring about the desired result; the relativistic projectile was just the most straightforward method that came to mind, since it doesn’t require speculative technologies, just lots of lots of energy.

Also, real-life standards go both ways. If you look at the data we actually do have available, being the set of all the different species that have evolved on Earth, then it would seem to me that different species co-existing peacefully and cooperatively is most definitely not the norm we see (though there are examples of symbiotic relationships that are mutually beneficial). Rather, the overall real-life standard here seems to be one of competition over scarce resources, as well as predator-prey dynamics. I can only hope that the addition of higher intelligence changes this, but there are no guarantees of that being the case. So in the absence of more data, I would argue that the equation “intelligent”=“benevolent and peaceful” should be treated as suspect. It may hold - but then again, it may not. Until we know for sure, it may be a wise policy to not advertise our presence and exact location all too loudly. You never know who might be listening. 

[zapatos]

3 hours ago, mistermack said:

So I would say it's a sound idea for a meaningless game. But not a sound idea for reality. Just because you can imagine something happening, that doesn't move it into the 'sound' category.

Just because you CANNOT imagine something happening, that doesn't move it into the 'unsound' category.

I think you are stuck in a  21st century technological mindset. 

[TheVat]

Indifference strikes me as much more probable than overt aggression.   To use an analogy, I don't know anyone who is personally hostile to a low tech tribe living deep in a remote forest, but our desire for cheap lumber (or razing forest to grow crops) might result in their loss of viable habitat.  Without intending genocide, we could wipe them out with indifference and lack of creating a special preserve. 

The probability of advanced civs that dismantle rocky planets for resources seems low, but I agree that it's not zero.  Ten thousand years ago or earlier, Earth would have not shown any obvious signs of intelligent life to a casual observer or a planet-cracking robot, so any possible ethical reservations might have been moot.  Seems like it's very much a human 21st century mindset to consider another ET race as exploitative in this way.  

Another factor not much discussed is the loneliness factor.  If advanced civs are rare, would they want to go around wiping out possible future companions who would make the vast bleakness less lonely?  Yes, that depends on their character and emotional makeup.  

[Moontanman]

So we've gone from CiA agent says aliens are here to aliens might be here because of UFO sightings to visiting being too hard to launching relativistic objects made of solid metal, relativistic kill missiles, the size of the Empire State building to destroy other suns just in case they might be hostile? 

Things that make you go "WHAT?" 

[zapatos]

19 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

So we've gone from CiA agent says aliens are here to aliens might be here because of UFO sightings to visiting being too hard to launching relativistic objects made of solid metal, relativistic kill missiles, the size of the Empire State building to destroy other suns just in case they might be hostile? 

Things that make you go "WHAT?" 

Unlike people who claim aliens are here, now, this is just a mental exercise of what could happen with a civilization millions of years more advanced than us. No one is making any specific claims; only playing a game of "Would They? Could They? Should They?"

It is an attempt to have a discussion around the question "Where is everyone?"

Edited December 15, 2022 by zapatos

[mistermack]

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Besides, there might be other ways to bring about the desired result; the relativistic projectile was just the most straightforward method that came to mind, since it doesn’t require speculative technologies, just lots of lots of energy.

I'm not sure that the projectile is a runner at all. If you add energy to a star, you're surely delaying the day that it goes supernova, or swells up like our Sun will. You may be just turning back the clock, making the star effectively younger. 
I know we can't possibly forecast what might be possible in a million years time. (or not possible)

Your guess is as good as mine, probably better. But both are just shots in the dark. 

Maybe if astronomers were to witness an exploding star, that should not have exploded, that might be grounds for suspicion. 

I personally don't think that there's much of a motive for destroying aliens, or them destroying us. I think that there must be billions of uninhabited Earthlike planets out there to exploit, if that's what they want. And the way that technology accelerates, if they are ahead of us now, they will always be ahead of us, so there's no real need to fear that a less advanced culture might overtake us. 

Unless they live  and function at a much higher tempo, I guess. 

[Moontanman]

9 hours ago, zapatos said:

Unlike people who claim aliens are here, now, this is just a mental exercise of what could happen with a civilization millions of years more advanced than us. No one is making any specific claims; only playing a game of "Would They? Could They? Should They?"

It is an attempt to have a discussion around the question "Where is everyone?"

Shouldn't it have it's own thread? (yeah I got the dig, not what I have been claiming) 

[zapatos]

5 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Shouldn't it have it's own thread? (yeah I got the dig, not what I have been claiming) 

It wasn't a dig nor was I talking about you. Generally speaking I think others dismiss you too quickly due to the fact the topic is aliens, but I feel that you tend to make a distinction between those things that are phony and those that are genuinely unexplained.

[Markus Hanke]

13 hours ago, TheVat said:

Another factor not much discussed is the loneliness factor.  If advanced civs are rare, would they want to go around wiping out possible future companions who would make the vast bleakness less lonely?  Yes, that depends on their character and emotional makeup.

Very interesting point! +1

And what about the compatibility problem in all its facets - would a very advanced civilisation even be recognisable as such by other species, or would they just blend into their natural environment so well that it would be really difficult to detect their presence at all, even from close by?

We always imagine alien structures to look overtly like a piece of manufactured technology, but really, there’s no guarantee that this must be so. 

[DanMP]

On 12/14/2022 at 6:00 PM, zapatos said:

This is not a discussion about ethics, morals, or guessing how aliens might view the universe they live in. It is a discussion about game theory.

It was, but not anymore:

On 12/15/2022 at 3:27 PM, mistermack said:

Ideas that have no prospect of being put into practice in the real world are hardly sound. A sound idea in game terms is meaningless in real life, unless the game adheres to a real life standards. 

Mistermack, I gave you +1 for that.

 

23 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

While this is true, the problem here is that what constitutes a “real-life standard” is relative to the technological development of the civilisation in question.

Back in 1800, the idea of travelling from New York to London ...

Real-life standard is not only about technology, but also about ethics, morals, so your ideas have no prospect of being put into practice in the real world. As we evolved we became less prone to mass murder, because that is what you suggest (I wonder why moderators are allowing that). Here in Romania we have brown bears in some cities (not only in small villages), in search for food, and we are not allowed to eliminate them. How can you possible think that a civilized society would allow (and finance ...) mass murder in such a huge scale (planets, with all live on them; and even solar systems, by damaging the stars). This is insane. Please don't discuss such things in a science forum, unless you mention it in order for us to be prepared for such an attack. You didn't mention anything about how we can defend us. You only mentioned radio silence (but didn't elaborate). Instead you insisted on how to attack ...

Aliens are not an immediate danger. Sure, we can consider not to advertise our presence, but not necessarily to hide in caves and/or keep radio silence (no mobile phones, no GPS, etc.). If you are concerned about the survival of our species, you should consider/discuss how to avoid mutual annihilation, how to avoid/survive an asteroid impact and how to avoid being destroyed or enslaved by machines (A.I.).

[Moontanman]

10 hours ago, zapatos said:

It wasn't a dig nor was I talking about you. Generally speaking I think others dismiss you too quickly due to the fact the topic is aliens, but I feel that you tend to make a distinction between those things that are phony and those that are genuinely unexplained.

Thank you, I am just feeling a bit cranky of late.