Not really the most convincing argument. There are professions that study ants. And I'm sure I'm not the only person on this forum that has a casual interest in observing ants.

Pretty sure aliens would still be interested in us even if we were as primitive as ants.

Eventually, I did find some cases in Science Fiction, and one in particular stands out as far as I am concerned: the alien entity named Rorschach and the smaller entities named Scramblers, in Firefall, by Peter Watts. If you are a (Hard) SF fan, you must read this one.

Another case I would mention off the top of my head would be the Formics, in Scott Orson's Card "Ender's Game" and sequels, but I think the whole idea was left mostly unexplored.

If you have other examples, please do mention them!

I think establishing communication with a more advanced civilization would be deeply disrupting to our culture. We would ascribe their cultural practices to their advancement, and get a bunch of people doing "alien cargo culting". Imagine they were strict vegetarians, or peaceful and kind meat eaters for that matter. It would completely disrupt our own evolution by injecting foreign memes into our culture.

You can also reverse the situation and suppose we are able to visit an alien planet where we find a rudimentary civilization which has customs that appear exotic to us. What would the experts recommend? The cynic would say we would go at war with them to take over their planet, but being realistic it is much more advantageous to study them without interfering. I think the evolution of conscious life in different conditions than our own planet must be of tremendous interest to other conscious life.

1°/ individual intelligence and technological innovation is not necessary an ultimate achivement that enables competitive advantage : human beings may be individually smart (compared to some other species) yet the collective intelligence of humanity is rather poor (which translates to the unability to solve collective problems such as sustainable management of our finite natural resources (e.g. oil) or of the consequences of our activity (e.g. biodiversity fall and climate change)). I suspect humanity will experience in a few decades a major regression (if not extinction) which could be interpreted as natural selection because of lack of collective intelligence. The same could also happen to other civilizations and maybe technological innovation the way we see it today is not necessary a ultimate achievement !

2°/ even if some other intelligent species would exist, maybe they would not have the same need to communicate, the same need or will to travel, the same need or will to innovate, etc.

3°/ even if some civilizations could be infinitely smart both individually and collectively and have enough genius to implement all engineering allowed by the laws of physics and have the will to implement it, maybe the laws of physics together with the nature/amount of natural resources on a typical planet do not enable such intergalactic space travels ! Sure, we were able to fly to the moon and we can make 5nm transistors while our ancestors would never have believed it could be done and it might make us dream that "everything is possible because genius and engineering have no limits", yet I would still be careful and such claims sounds more like religious faith than science. People need to understand the enormous distances we are talking about here and we need to remain humble that maybe it is and will remain forever an obstacle :)

So if you want to find aliens, look during a solar eclipse. It's a rare phenomenon and if there are alien tourists, they'll want to see it.

I'd presume an advanced culture that can traverse the galaxy has many resources. Like humanity, I'd assume that with abundance, entertainment would be prioritized.

We might be nothing more than a new source of fashion and novelty to them! They may like Rock & Roll, our food, our clothing, or even pogs.

We might even be boring to them for the moment, but they're hoping for a future payoff.

Or they could just look at us as a future source of diversity in their society. The different methods of creating sentient beings might be of great importance to a post-biological society (maybe there's charm in our resource inefficiency).

Determining the motivations of a post-singularity society is a difficult task. It's fun because it forces you to think beyond your current means. But I wouldn't consider it a productive endeavor.

It asks why there isn't more evidence of aliens anywhere we've ever looked, not about why aliens haven't come to ask us for our wisdom on philosophical matters. It's not asking why they haven't contacted us, it's asking why we can't see them, or any evidence of them. In other words, it's about the statistical likelihood of seeing evidence that should be commonplace, given the age of the universe.

He brings up the point that we might be too primitive to even notice them. Fair enough, but you could just as easily say that it's "pretentious" to say elves don't exist, because we might just be too primitive and narrow-minded to see that there is evidence of them everywhere. We have to start somewhere, and we're doing our best.

The Fermi paradox may have a built in assumption that aliens affect their world through technology, and even that they are scientifically advanced and curious enough to send probes or ships out to explore. An attack on that point would be fair. It's possible that the answer to the paradox is that humans are extremely rare in having developed any level of technology, science, or curiosity. But, that seems more pretentious to me than the alternative.

The computer running universe-simulations needs to be able to run fast. Regularities can be integrated quickly. Life not so much.

Life can make computers which can ask computations which can't be reduced.

Therefore as soon as a big enough computer is built somewhere in the universe, the whole simulation-time starts crawling to an halt because the inner computer use all the resources, and future times in the universe where there are many of those computers never get to be materialized.

Alternatively, solutions using time-travel allows to run simulations of longer simulation-time, by introducing a time-coherence force which prevent such computer (aka biological-numerical instabilities) to ever emerge.

There is another approach for it. Or what we know about the universe is basically true (and we can't travel faster than ligth, nor do something that, I don't know, turns all our galaxy into 2D or triggering the big rip) or if we keep advancing we could do something that threatens something that is very far away. In the latter case close enough civilizations may worry about what we do, and be in a dark forest universe (ok, here I'm assuming how they should think here too). But for that to have any meaning we should be in an universe where the speed of light is not the ultimate limit in any meaningful way, and so far we know, we don't.

I don’t at all think this is the issue with Fermi’s paradox. I think sentience is an interesting enough phenomenon that others with sentience will be interested. As soon as you understand the mind of the other, there’s a basic interest in meeting other minds.

The real issue is simply the vastness of time and space, and perhaps an underestimation of the difficulties involved in bridging those. Especially economic costs of space travel.

And it’s kind of like the point made in this clip about the silliness of Fermi’s paradox... it’s like assuming if no lobster shows up to your dinner party, lobsters don’t exist.

https://youtu.be/TK0vmOCHiDs

Asserting that nobody us studying is because we're uninteresting to every single alien creature is a baffling statement, given the odds. The odds are far greater in my opinion that we're alone or at least functionally alone, even though I must admit I hate the notion.

We also don't assume everyone builds megastructures or emits huge technosignatures, but it throws us off that apparently nobody does.

I've always thought of Fermi's paradox as ultimately a math problem, assuming a conservative amount of time between a civilization in one star system colonizing a neighboring star system, over billions of years every star system in the galaxy should be colonized by now.

The fact that we are not getting signals from the considerable number of stars that are within a reasonable distance is concerning. It does point to a great filter that we are not seeing or understanding. Or at least an enormous misconception about our universe.

I think we might consider that level of interest lucky. :-)

While all life, ants or not, may be universally worthy of study, is it worth that much sacrifice? Also, if the ants talk, exchanging messages would make more sense for study.

   > Why Do We Assume Extraterrestrials Might Want to Visit Us?

  (1) Our only way to study how an *intelligent* extraterrestrial would behave would be to study the behavior of other intelligent[0] beings.  Our data set consists of one species.  Enough of this species wants to visit an extraterrestrial civilization, and given no other examples, we assume it's probably the same.
  (2) Related to (1), we have exactly zero evidence of the existence of *any* extraterrestrial life, let alone life that understands that they live on "something in space", that there is other life on a planet orbiting a sun amongst an infinite number of stars, etc.

The first, and a more interesting question is: "Is there any life, intelligent or otherwise, outside of this planet?[1]" If we found, say, that samples from Mars or some other planet/asteroid had a diversity of different bacteria/single-celled organisms, etc, it would increase the probability that there is intelligent life out there "somewhere". If everything comes back empty, there's probably better things to focus research energy on.

[0] The title is missing that important piece. If they are unaware that life could exist they won't be all that interested in visiting. The mattresses (from the planet "where mattresses are grown") likely haven't pondered any of the big questions of life, the universe and... everything.

[1] Tricky problem: you sent something up from a planet teaming with all kinds of bacteria/life; I've read about how they sanitize/handle things but it still amazes me that they can say with any confidence that there was no cross-contamination, but IANARS.

If you assume that the real hurdle is there being any aliens, such that many advanced alien species are almost as likely to exist as one, then indeed the majority may not want to study us 'ants'... but it only takes one.

A similar argument applies to many other things, like nuclear weapons, or any other future superweapons.

It also applies to worries around AGI or artificial general intelligence. The majority of research facilities may sign on to and implement very good ethics around releasing the software, or halting it if X happens. But it only takes one.

More likely is the universe is massive, and the aliens have already visited. Millions or billions of years ago.

Perhaps the humans don't care about the ants, but the ants damn well can see signs of human activity.

Our significance as a species is actually irrelevant to the question of why we might or might not be visited. Even if we turn out to be somehow extraordinary, the aliens would have to visit first before they could know that.

No, it assumes that of all the incalculable advanced civilizations it hypothesizes to exist, at least some would be interested, not all, not the majority, not a significant number, but at least one in a million.

The first chronicles the development of sentient, space-capable spiders. The sequel follows the development of octopuses. I found both to be quick, easy reads - perfect for vacation or a rainy weekend. In both, the psychology of the species, and how humans can relate, is a plot point.

I think that most people (who think about such things) realize that extraterrestrials, if they exist, may well be more alien than we can even imagine.

But it's fun to imagine things, so we try anyway :)

Sort of like the premise of “They’re made of meat”: https://web.archive.org/web/20190501130711/http://www.terryb...

The Invaders divide sentient life into three tiers - species like themselves that evolve in gas giants, cetaceans, and vermin; we're in the third category.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Worlds

Very true. A lot of our behaviors and instincts are based on how we procreate and the environment we live in. For example if you live forever or don’t have the pressure to procreate you will have a totally different perspective on the universe.

Lifeforms that have developed differently most likely would have motivations we can’t even fathom to understand.

IMHO a prerequisite to the survival of civilization is the recognition that the interests of civilizations can be, and often are, at odds with the interests of genes, and so we are necessarily in active conflict with the genes that made us. The best example of this is birth control, which is an obvious existential threat to the reproductive fitness of our genes. So genes that build brains that have an instinctive revulsion to birth control will, all else being equal, reproduce better than genes that build brains that don't have this revulsion. In the absence of active intervention, the result will be overpopulation.

For a civilization to succeed long-term it has to recognize that it is necessarily in conflict with the genes that produced its individual members, because otherwise the genes will win.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00057-8

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-advanced-civilization-universe...

that, through the use of models and simulations, come to the conclusion that we are dang lucky to have evolved on the Earth at all.

While I don't know that I was ever a believer in the Earth being visited by ETs, I always thought that we wound find evidence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy any day now. For the reasons above, I'm less and less convinced of that with every passing year.

I think this is unlikely. It seems to me that some amount of curiosity would be a prerequisite for being able to make discoveries that lead to technological progress. Although I suppose it is possible such progress could be made through some kind of evolutionary mechanism as opposed to individual intellect.

This is true. But even if just a small fraction of civilizations engaged in interstellar expansion, they'd quickly subsume the galaxy on geological timescales. Darwin applies just as much across the stars as it does in a tide pool. As long as there's even a small amount of competition, it will push every player to aggressively expand.

The only way out is either 1) technological civilization almost never evolve anywhere. 2) Virtually every technological civilization winds up eschewing interstellar expansion. Or 3) a single player previously won the game, and used its dominant position to benevolently stop the game.

This makes a big assumption: that our inability to solve these problems is rooted in a lack of intelligence (collectively or individually). I don't think that's the case at all. Solutions to these problems are widely known, and most educated people support them, at least in theory.

The problem isn't with our intelligence, it's with our incentives. Climate change is a tragedy of the commons (as are other environmental degradation issues, such as loss of biodiversity). Each of us would benefit if everyone cooperated (a nice environment for each of us), but each of us also benefits when we individually defect (cheaper energy for our various needs). As a result, we predictably end up with the suboptimal outcome of (almost-)everybody-defects.

What's the way out of the dilemma? It's clearly not a matter of getting smarter. I don't think it's an issue we can solve with moral pleading either: we've been trying that for decades. But what if we could change the game and remove the incentives to defect? * We could implement a carbon tax, incentivizing firms and consumers to use carbon-neural energy sources. * We could subsidize clean energy, incentivizing the same. * We could invest as much money as possible in reducing the cost of clean energy sources, eventually removing the need for ongoing tax/subsidy policies.

If non-polluting energy sources are cheaper, more widely available, and easier to use than polluting sources, no one would ever choose the latter. No heightened intelligence required.

It’d be easier for it to travel great distances than organic life, it’d be possible for a variety of organic life to arrive at creating it, it may be hard for organic life to solve the control problem to limit it, etc.

This is already known not to be the case, the Breakthrough Starshot project is expensive, but merely expensive.

For as far as we know, they've observed us, and have long moved on, finding us entirely uninteresting, which seems to be the one explanation we love to overlook, but given we are humans with big egos, love to make ourselves out to be more important than we actually are.

It's possible we are one of those trillion species being simulated, and our pogs are currently being scrutinized.

Would extraterrestrials who communicate with pheremones, or touch, or don't communicate at all (ala "Blindsight") have any concept of music? If they can "hear", does their sensory range overlap ours? Is it compatible with our notion of musical scales? Does whatever passes for a nervous system operate at a similar timescale to ours?

Food and clothing seem like more of a stretch- even within earth's biosphere many substances humans can eat are poisonous to other animals, and vice versa. Vast differences in bodyplan would almost certainly make our clothing useless to an alien race, and the materials we use could easily be incompatible with their biology.

Even if aliens were substantially similar psychologically, minor changes in biology could result in completely different societies. What would our world look like with humans who reproduced asexually, or in triads? Where we produce our own food via photosynthesis or symbiosis? Where we didn't sleep, or different populations hibernated in their own cycles?

Overall I'm inclined to believe that cultural exchange with an intelligent extraterrestrial species would be harder and less productive than cultural exchange with parrots.

Space is vast. The strength of communication signals drops off quickly with distance. All life is subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

The Fermi paradox was proposed in 1950 during a time of rapid growth and empire. At that time, radio communications were powerful, and it seemed like they would only get more powerful as our civilization advanced. But that's not what happened. The key to better communication is not more power, but better noise reduction. Since WW2, our radio signals have become weaker and weaker and our receivers smaller as we transmit information more efficiently. Ideally we would transmit signals with the bare minimum amount of energy needed for them to be reliably received by the intended receiver. Any civilization that wants to not waste energy (read all of them) would do the same.

Because power drops off with distance, a more sensitive receiver is required to receive a message at a greater distance than the one intended, and this required improvement to sensitivity increases rapidly with greater distance.

Your cellphone communicates with an antenna approximately 2 meters in length with a maximum range of about 70 kilometers. An antenna of the same technological capability able to pick up your cellphone signal at 1 lightyear would need to be 2900 km in length. At 100 lightyears, you would need an antenna over 37,000 km long.

If you can bounce a signal off satellites, you can communicate with any point on earth - thus the most powerful radio transmissions we need to send for our own utility need to be detectable by a 4 meter dish 30000 km away in geostationary orbit. To detect such a transmission at 1 lightyear requires a receiver 203 km in diameter, at 100 lightyears a dish 2600 km in diameter. Beyond 2000 light years, you need a dish larger than Earth. If you need to communicate any further away than that, you're using highly directional beamed communication between planets which won't be detectable unless the receiver just happens to also be along that beam line.

Thus to detect a radio signal from another civilization using a telescope we could conceivably fit on our planet, one of the following must be true: the transmission must be from a relatively nearby world (0.16% of the milky way in range if they are our technological peers, less if they are more advanced than us), the transmission must use orders of magnitude more power than is necessary for communication (either they are using dramatically less advanced technology or intentional broadcast), or we need to detect highly focused beamed communication (either we get incredibly lucky or its an intentional message directed at us). It would be presumptuous to assume that aliens would set up a colony conveniently close to us, that in our mere 100 years of radio use have already greatly surpassed them, that they have maintained an active beacon for long enough that we would happen to see it, or that they would be trying to communicate with us specifically (especially given that any civilization more than a few dozen light years away would have no way of knowing that there is intelligent life on Earth.

There are of course other means of detecting life besides radio communication. Perhaps we may see pollutants in another world's atmosphere - but we have only directly detected a few thousand exoplanets thus far and observed the atmospheres of only a tiny fraction of those. Perhaps we could detect megastructures like dyson spheres - but to know what we are looking for requires a lot of assumptions about how they are built and we don't even know if they can be built. Really any sign of intelligence detectable over interstellar distances other than radio waves is purely speculative.

The assumption that evidence should be commonplace is poorly founded. Unless the universe were teeming with civilizations at a similar technology level to our own, we shouldn't expect to see anything at all.

I did not get your last sentence though. Could you elaborate?

Popular culture skews our expectations towards two-legged creatures flying on saucers, roughly our size, but forms of intelligent life can manifest in radically different ways at micro and macro levels.

Perhaps, what looks like a sand particle to us might be a complex microorganism, in a complex interconnected self-regulating network, with no physical artifacts of "civilisation". Those microorganisms would also be able to form "mega-structures" by mutating the environment around them, just not at the pace and scale we are accustomed to.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00945...

Our understanding of physics changes constantly!

Wormholes tho

Do you know that early in the development of trains people were sure it would be physically impossible for humans to travel over 30 mph or so? They thought something would happen with the air pressure or something.

Our understanding of physics changes.

You can make a pretty strong local change like flipping a coin, at any point in space-time without impacting the rest of the phases elsewhere too much, because the farther away in time and space from your modification, the more decoherent the phases would be and therefore their impact would be minimum.

And because the QM equations are time-reversible, you can propagate them backwards through time up to the origin of time. And you now have a new almost identical initial configuration, which when simulated forward will give rise to a universe that behave the same way until the time of the modification but then bifurcate.