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Who What Now posted:So? His claims were at least made using observable evidence and not merely a random feeling they once had. What's your basis for belief that there is an interstellar traveling intelligent race out there? Aside from the interstellar part, though that could very well just be a matter of a theoretical breakthrough, the sheer immensity of the universe. Nigh infinite numbers of galaxies that we can see thus far from our most recent telescopes show us that the possibility of another intelligent lifeform is nearly endless. Considering the numbers in play, and the fact that we exist as a base, it's almost impossible for there not to be another intelligent life form out there. That's not to say that we'll ever have the capability of travelling to one another's planets, or even of communicating in any way, given the distances involved.
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Mar 21, 2016 14:32
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My Imaginary GF posted:What if they just communicate once, as if they were discovered by an indisputable lighthouse operating hundreds of thousands of lightyears away? I forsee this being the true First Contact.
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Mar 21, 2016 14:42
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I communicate with bacteria - I give them a message they can understand (plasmid transformation) - I select for individuals that have received the message - and then I collect their purified 'minds'.
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Mar 21, 2016 14:57
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Talmonis posted:Aside from the interstellar part, That was the most important part, though. That there is other life in the universe out there wasn't the part I was taking issue with.
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Mar 21, 2016 14:58
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McDowell posted:I communicate with bacteria - I give them a message they can understand (plasmid transformation) - I select for individuals that have received the message - and then I collect their purified 'minds'. I like cheese as well.
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Mar 21, 2016 16:21
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Potential BFF posted:I'm going to guess Contact got it right with mathematical, chemical, or physical constants serving as common concepts for communication. Yeah. I bet you're right and one of the first thing we try will be hydrogen's spectrum. The challenge is in making a sentence out of the signals. We tried that actually, with the Voyager Golden Record, and IIRC it was a real puzzle even for human scientists who knew what they were looking at. Potential BFF posted:It depends on the type of alien though, if they're space-folding whales or clouds of energy then it'd probably more difficult. If aliens show up in a ship and purposefully reveal themselves they probably want to communicate and since they managed to build a space ship they're probably sentient or a hive mind with a high level of sentience. There's plenty of arguments to be had over what sentience is but ants are basically little machines and I don't care to ask my coffee maker any questions. As for dolphins, while picking up and playing with a sponge is neat, I don't think they've made any breakthroughs in the field of hybrid rocketry lately so I don't see them offering any groundbreaking insights into much beyond balancing a ball on their nose in exchange for a fish. I mean yeah, I totally agree. But if we don't find ants/dolphins/coffee makers interesting enough to communicate with, why would space-folding whales care about us? Why put the effort in to understand our hydrogen spectrum pulse patterns? I mean it's all theoretical, but we're relying on the aliens both being able to solve the extremely difficult problem of inter-species communication, made even more difficult by not sharing evolutionary heritage, and hoping they find us more interesting than dolphins and ants. Obviously we would love to communicate, but I don't think it'll be up to us. I bet the bulk of "communication" would be in reverse-engineering. Love your av, btw.
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Mar 21, 2016 18:46
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Talmonis posted:I forsee this being the true First Contact. It's the most likely scenario, innit? That space/time is so vast that, while life is not unique, the distance between it is nigh-insurmountable.
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Mar 22, 2016 00:04
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Any intelligence sufficient to reach us from another star system is just as likely to ignore us or move on. Movies/fiction paint a picture of them destroying us, maybe if they just don't care. But the universe is pretty big so there is no point, always another place to go. The bigger problem is almost meta-physical in that we have no experience with other sentient life and we can't even know if communication in a meaningful way is possible. Is consciousness similar throughout the universe or are their perspectives beyond our comprehension?
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Mar 22, 2016 00:07
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS8rcW52VJk
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Mar 22, 2016 01:16
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbduDRH2m2M Second Contact. 
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Mar 22, 2016 03:29
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One thing a lot of people fail to consider when it comes to the topic of stuff like interstellar travel is the fact that there might, in fact, be hard limits to what can be done with technology. There is no law saying that organisms must be capable of interstellar travel. There seems to be this common assumption that literally anything is possible with enough time and technological advancement, but there is no reason to think this is true. People say stuff like "well, we also didn't know how to fly through the sky!" but the kind of obvious difference there is that we at least knew "things flying through the sky" is a thing that can technically happen and it was just an engineering problem for humans to do it. The same doesn't really apply to stuff like interstellar travel. Some sort of sub-light-speed, extremely inconvenient travel may be possible, but anything that would allow an organism to freely travel among the stars is no different than magic. I think that it is very possible that the huge advancement in our knowledge and technology in the past couple centuries is largely a result of there being a ton of "low hanging fruit" so to speak related to learning about stuff like electricity and the various technology that enabled. I'm sure that there's still a ton of new stuff for us to learn and invent as well, but that doesn't mean we'll somehow figure out how to make everything we currently believe to be impossible possible. If you look only at the time period since the "modern" scientific community has existed, it isn't really that common for something commonly believed to be completely upturned. Sure, we find out we were wrong about stuff, but there's a difference between (for example) "the properties of ____ are different than once believed" and "_____ doesn't even exist." We aren't going to learn some day that most of what we take for granted in fields like physics or medicine is completely wrong. All this being said, the existence of other life, including complex/intelligent life, is very likely. The same building blocks exist throughout the universe. So even if we haven't seen it, it's entirely reasonable to think that it probably exists. The same can't be said for any of them being capable of interstellar travel, though.
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Mar 22, 2016 05:59
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Ytlaya posted:One thing a lot of people fail to consider when it comes to the topic of stuff like interstellar travel is the fact that there might, in fact, be hard limits to what can be done with technology. There is no law saying that organisms must be capable of interstellar travel. There seems to be this common assumption that literally anything is possible with enough time and technological advancement, but there is no reason to think this is true. People say stuff like "well, we also didn't know how to fly through the sky!" but the kind of obvious difference there is that we at least knew "things flying through the sky" is a thing that can technically happen and it was just an engineering problem for humans to do it. The same doesn't really apply to stuff like interstellar travel. Some sort of sub-light-speed, extremely inconvenient travel may be possible, but anything that would allow an organism to freely travel among the stars is no different than magic. There is no hard limit preventing any species with our level of intelligence or greater, and access to our level of material resources or greater, from interstellar travel. People get this confused, thinking that interstellar travel must necessarily be faster-than-light travel, but it does not, any more than the vast time frames involved necessarily even matter. Your post betrays a significant anthropocentric and even present cultural bias.
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Mar 22, 2016 06:08
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It'll be robots and probes doing any flying around.
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Mar 22, 2016 06:10
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I agree with both of you. I doubt humanity will ever encounter intelligent life or that we'll ever expand anywhere beyond the bounds of Titan and that's if we're extremely lucky. FTL travel is also almost certainly impossible as well. If, however, by some fluke there is an intelligent species in a cool FTL ship and contact is made I think there'd be a baseline for communication and that they'd want to talk if they've revealed themselves to us. The likelihood of them just passing by and stumbling across the Earth by accident seems pretty low even compared to the other almost zero chances of FTL travel space aliens. I'm still going to assume that anything complex enough to build a space ship can see though, maybe not the exact same wavelengths as humans but there's no shortage of light in the universe.
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Mar 22, 2016 06:15
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SedanChair posted:I like cheese as well. You laugh but that makes complete sense - to the creator of the universe we would be like bacteria - small but useful and manageable.
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Mar 22, 2016 15:15
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McDowell posted:You laugh but that makes complete sense - to the creator of the universe we would be like bacteria - small but useful and manageable. If there is a thinking creator it is cruel and thinks of intelligent life merely as something to be used to it's own capricious whims. 
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Mar 22, 2016 17:00
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Considering we've no idea how a first contact might happen, no idea what we might face and no idea if we'll even recognize it, probably not?
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Mar 22, 2016 21:13
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First contact will likely be us finding some basic unicellular life on a rock in this solar system, there being a flurry of public attention surrounding this discovery, followed by society drifting back to the track it was already following as people got bored with this new revelation which fundamentally changes nothing in our daily dumb ape lives.
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Mar 23, 2016 00:03
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Who What Now posted:If there is a thinking creator it is cruel and thinks of intelligent life merely as something to be used to it's own capricious whims. You can choose to believe that - but in that case by resisting the Creator you are trying to fight entropy or whatever you want to call the process of the universe expending energy. I'm not done watching the Beyond Human Sessions and I hope those reading will check them out. Life on this Earth has purpose and is well-tended. This age is coming to an end and individuals must choose their house, so to speak. Transhumanism, the singularity, and other corruptions must be challenged. You have a flesh and blood life, a mind, and a time here on earth to develop. New vehicles brought into this world can become purely material things, slaves, robots (just the Czech word for the former). Overcome sensuality, become a vessel for God- or be used in one way or another by the shadows that prey on all humans. Edit: Fixed Phone posting typos Mc Do Well fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 02:42
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McDowell posted:You can choose to believe that - but in that case by resisting the Creator you are trying to fight entropy or whatever you want to call the process of the universe expending energy. I'm not done watching the Beyond Human Sessions and I hope those reading will check them out. Life on this Earth has purpose and is well-tended. This age is coming to an end and individuals must choose their house, so to speak. How great would it be if humans were replaced by those replicants from Blade Runner or the androids from Ex Machina. No more disease, sickness, religion, etc.
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Mar 23, 2016 03:21
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McDowell posted:You can choose to believe that - but in that case by resisting the Creator you are trying to fight entropy or whatever you want to call the process of the universe expending energy. I'm not done watching the Beyond Human Sessions and I hope those reading will check them out. Life on this Earth has purpose and is well-tended. This age is coming to an end and individuals must choose their house, so to speak. I've got a house for you to choose.
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Mar 23, 2016 03:28
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Immortan posted:How great would it be if humans were replaced by those replicants from Blade Runner or the androids from Ex Machina. No more disease, sickness, religion, etc. A counterfeit Earth like that would be completely without God's presence - the machines would serve a master wouldn't they? A counterfeit creator? Sounds like Hell - the kind of world Lucifer completely controls in opposition to God.
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Mar 23, 2016 12:27
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McDowell posted:You can choose to believe that - I can't, actually. There is no mechanism by which I can control the reactions going on inside my brain. Free will is a lie, albeit a very useful one. quote:Overcome sensuality, become a vessel for God- or be used in one way or another by the shadows that prey on all humans. If I'm merely here to be used without my consent what does it matter who or what is using me? In either case I'm still being preyed upon.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:35
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I get LSD in the desert cults. I don't get castration in Mexico followed by mass-suicide-to-board-a-UFO cults.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:53
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That's okay - the message and the mission isn't for everyone.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:52
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McDowell posted:That's okay - the message and the mission isn't for everyone. Why not? Is your God incapable of having a message that could reach everyone?
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Mar 23, 2016 15:58
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If the aliens aren't here to exterminate us to begin with they certainly will once they get a good look at the vile works of our wretched species
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Mar 23, 2016 16:05
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Who What Now posted:Why not? Is your God incapable of having a message that could reach everyone? No, God makes the means of truth available to every mind, but you have free will to seek it, ignore it, or misuse it. This world is dominated by the forces that reject serving God. While every human vehicle is capable of developing or hosting a mind-soul, not all of them do.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:55
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McDowell posted:No, God makes the means of truth available to every mind, but you have free will to seek it, ignore it, or misuse it. This world is dominated by the forces that reject serving God. While every human vehicle is capable of developing or hosting a mind-soul, not all of them do. I have free will? Really? To what degree? What does my free will apply to, and how is it freely exercised? Is it actually freely exercised if I'm unaware of all possible and impossible choices?
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Mar 23, 2016 18:44
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Who What Now posted:I have free will? Really? To what degree? What does my free will apply to, and how is it freely exercised? Is it actually freely exercised if I'm unaware of all possible and impossible choices? You can make up your own mind - I'm just here to pass along a message.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:53
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McDowell posted:You can make up your own mind - I'm just here to pass along a message. Can I? How am I supposed to do that when your message is vague and incomprehensible?
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Mar 23, 2016 19:06
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zeal posted:If the aliens aren't here to exterminate us to begin with they certainly will once they get a good look at the vile works of our wretched species What if the aliens see that we're a species of emotionally driven selfish monsters, see our global systems of oppression, our history and ongoing waging of genocidal wars, and then give us a high-five and welcome us to the club?
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Mar 23, 2016 20:39
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