[Q&A+] Impossible Space Question, Human-Born Great Filter, Steering The SGL Telescope | Q&A 378

All right, I will I apologize here and posting nonsense be a giant I am going to send good thoughts, good vibes and if there’s anything that I can do to help, I mean I don’t have a lot of money, but if there’s something I can do, I will do my best and most importantly, I will spend some time looking at his Creations I know you wouldn’t spit that out unless you know that your colleague, your friend either way is a good person so I will do my very best and maybe I should stop talking and you might be able to provide more information and videos. I’m so sorry everyone and I’m gonna stop now and take a few minutes and step out of my yard and not give the squirrels a hard time and just spend a few moments sending good energy out for him.

Fingers crossed

In regards to life as we gage it. Yes, before watching this I was like 100% sure they’re around and no by that I mean intelligent life. However I am still 98.7% confident that there is actual other life growing,breeding and somewhat intelligent, maybe not to a human standard but I’m sorry our standards are judgemental conscious, self-aware, and egotistical. Take out the egotistical, and I am confident in my numbers that there are other living things out there. We just haven’t found yet. ❤️

How come you never mention Arthur C Clarke. “Childhoods End” was THE book that launched my SCI-FI career.

I think if we go out a little ways beyond the solar system we will encounter some sort of galactic police yellow tape that says “do not enter”. 😆

Starship Troopers blew my mind. I was 12. After that I couldn’t get enough SCIFI.

Knowing that you don't know feels so much more valid than pretending that you do. Being alone, being quite likely the only eyes that look up and work to understand, We give the universe the only meaning it will have. Perhaps our own meaning is only to witness. Born on the early cusp of the '60s it was collections of Azimov non-fic essays that made me what I became. While Bradbury and Heinlein fought it out for my soul. We are each only here for a finite time. Make it count.

I have always loved Science, but consuming Science Fiction, in all its' forms, let me start conversations within my mind about the nature of reality, and the reality of nature. They were foundational, LOL.

pore guy who got cancer(I don't remember who you said)

with what you were saying with the robot uprising it is somewhat already here but instead it is the AI slop uprising

I posted my comments on YouTube. Oops. 😑

You have definitely changed my thinking on whether we are alone. I don't believe we're the only "intelligent species" in the universe, but I think we might well be the only ones in the galaxy at least, which is a thought I would have never lent any credence before 😅

In relation to the great test. Everone seems to assume that the aliens would want to come and say hi. If I was an alien, I would look at Earth from a distance, see the wars and conflics then decided to watch us without showing themselves until we iether blew ourselves up or stopped being so agressive. That is why we never see them and not because they may not exist.

Yes, you’ve influenced my thinking — as does everything I read and listen to. But I still lean toward the idea that life exists elsewhere. Scientifically, though, we have to say we’re alone until evidence shows otherwise — which is a frightening thought.

Regarding whether we're alone in the universe, I started believing we're not, but it was based on let's say unreliable narrators. That changed to "maybe?" as I read more information, and since listening to your many talks on the subject I would say I'm agnostic, but practically speaking I doubt other beings like us exist.

Whether we are alone in the universe makes one presumption that I think most people miss. If there were or will be alien civilizations in the universe, but not when we are around, it makes a difference. Not only is the universe rather large (an understatement), but it is also pretty old (another understatement). If there was alien life a billion years ago, even if it evolved into sentient life, and even if that sentient life became civilized, and even if that civilized life developed spaceflight capability, if it died out in the ensuing billion years, we might never know it. Add the factor of the universe's size, and you are left with a somewhat different question: if there ever was alien life in the universe, could we know it, given the universe's size and age? I think the answer is not likely. For humans to find alien life, it would take either an abundance of that life within a relatively small slice of time AND space, or it would have to be ubiquitous. I doubt that life is omnipresent in the universe. The question, as posed, is: is there alien life in the universe? - is just too broad to be meaningful to me. I am dismissing microbial life as not what people imagine. Then there is the question of detecting radio signals from an extinct alien civilization - but even then, those radio waves would have to reach us after we started monitoring the radio bands, AND within the time span of when they would be detectable to us. Again, I am dubious. Rather than alien life, if we ever do reach the stars, I think we would quickly diverge into distinct species due to differing environmental conditions, mutations, and the isolation of remote colonies. Then, just maybe, in some distant future, a Captain Kirk could find and boink a green alien(ish) beauty... or a green alien(ish) Captain Kirk could find and boink a human beauty. Not holding my breath on that, but it seems more likely than finding a space-faring alien civilization in the few millions of years we optimistically might continue to exist.

I don't agree that we are alone in the universe. The universe, even just the observable universe, is far too big to believe that. The question of whether we are alone in the Milky Way Galaxy is tougher. I believe we are likely the first technological society in our section of this galaxy, perhaps in the entire Milky Way. There could be civilizations at our level that are only a few hundred light-years away whose radio waves haven't had a chance to reach us yet. There could be lots of planets with life throughout our galaxy that don't have technological life (yet). We can't even be sure there isn't alien life in our solar system. As for why we don't have Von Neuman probes throughout the solar system, it's not like we have conducted an exhaustive search. Remember, the monolith on the Moon wasn't found until 2001. However, in that universe, we never stopped going to the Moon and had multiple permanent bases there. If only Pan Am hadn't gone bankrupt. :(

Alone? You're super wrong.

The main thing that bugs me about the "alone in the universe" line is the "universe" part. I think it's perfectly credible that we're alone in the GALAXY. If (as I think is the case) the Fermi paradox is the main reason you think we're alone, I would counter that there is no reason to expect that intergalactic communication (much less travel) will ever be possible. And not, like, we might not figure out the technology, but more just, as far as we can tell it's just not compatible with the laws of physics. But if Von Neumann probes had fully colonised another galaxy, there would be no way for them to ever reach us, so their absence here gives us no information at all about life in other galaxies. I don't know whether you "convinced" me about this, I think I had always had a soft spot for rare earth. I think over the decade or so I've been following your content I've probably firmed up on. I think you've made me much more confident to say that my default position is skepticism that we will ever find or make contact with intelligent alien life. (And by "ever" I mean "within the lifespan of the human race". And also, as a good Bayesian, my creedance on that is obviously very low but nonzero). But then, I also disagree with the way you express it - I think you often "round up to infinity" in a way that doesn't really work in reality. Not all intelligent, spacefaring life will become totalising expansionists on a galactic scale, it's just that it only needs to happen once for it to be everywhere (or at least, everywhere it can physically get to from where it started, which I strongly argue is "single galaxy"). For sure, that puts some kind of statistical ceiling on how many times life has appeared in the Milky Way over the last, say, eight billion years or so, but clearly that ceiling is significantly larger than one. I don't know if you're just being flippant when you package that as "I think we're alone in the universe", but it does stick in my craw a little bit, even though I think I agree with you on almost all of the reasoning!

Concerning life elsewhere, my opinion, is just that the distances are so overwhelming and also our detection methods are still very primitive. There's a lot to uncover (and discover). And we live in a very specific time frame of the Galaxy, let alone the observable Universe. If we don't mess it up, we will find it, eventually.

Concerning the "poll". You haven't convinced me we are the only life in the universe, unless you think bacteria don't count as life. I think the preponderance of evidence in astrobiology is that simple life could be common. However, we don't know how "rare" the Earth might be in its ability to keep life going for the nearly 4 billion years it took to get from protocells to trilobites. Maybe complex life is rare. I think technological life is probably very rare and we might be the only technological life in the galaxy, at least right now. I also think most of our notions about von Neumann probes colonizing the galaxy etc. are probably hugely overestimating what is technologically doable. The smarter machines get, the more complex they are and the more fragile they become, so I'm not convinced that just because something is a machine it will work for thousands of years on an interstellar voyage. You would need to send something that is a self-sustaining repair machine ecosystem which includes mining and smelting and metalworking and electronics fab industries all traveling together.... maybe a whole swarm of specialist probes. So my vote is for rare technology. But rare Earth (for complex life) might be true if you need things like plate tectonics and a big moon. We will probably have to wait for the Habitable Worlds Observatory to get evidence relevant to this question. I don't, however, believe that simpler life such as bacteria are unique to the Earth.

My thought on the Fermi Paradox is that the universe is just too big. Not researched or expert knowledge I admit. It's just, the universe is huge. Perhaps any civilization that tried to expand quickly learned that scattering didn't work. That...or we're alone. :)

OMGOMGOMG. Fraser, when I was 10, my dad walked into my room, held out a book and said "Hey. I think you'll really like this." I looked at the cover and saw a kid (like a kid, not a teen!) in a space suit and a weird animal in front of a rocket ship. I disappeared into those pages. First chapter book I ever read, and it was like 300 pages. I remember worrying so much for Mother Thing and if she'd make it. Since it's been 40 years it might be time for a reread.

Love David Mitchell here - point well made 😂👏