X-Message-Number: 14450 Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 06:20:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Scott Badger <> Subject: Re: if so, where are they? From: "Wilson" <> > What makes us believe that alien races would be > significantly more advanced than we are? Is our > solar system particularly new, in cosmological > terms? There could be a hundred million alien > civilizations out there, all of which are at > the "tentative spaceflight" level or earlier. > > --Wilson. Not likely. If intelligent life is common then we should be able to reasonably presume that a normal distribution exists wrt the level of technological development. Statistically, our best guess would be that we are somewhere near the center of that distribution with many civilizations far more advanced and many far less developed. The odds would be strongly against our being the least advanced or the most advanced. However, as Thomas indicates time is an important factor. I recently attended a NASA conference and asked one of the presenting atronomers the following: "Our sun is about 4.5 billion years old but not all such stars were born at the same time. In the evolution of the galaxy, how long ago did second generation stars like ours begin to develop?" He replied (paraphrasing), "Stars like ours started appearing a few billion years ago." When one considers where humans will be in technological terms in only a few hundred years, it's pretty mind-boggling to imagine a civilization billions of years older than us. So if ETI's developed, they've had plenty of time to get here. Certainly, at least one of those civilizations would have had the means and the motivation to visit. I recommend reading, "The Great Filter" by Robin Hanson. http://hanson.gmu.edu/greatfilter.html One of my favorite explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that sufficiently advanced sentients choose to upload themselves and explore virtual space rather than outer space. Imagine billions of super intelligent (implying super creative) entities developing fantastic cyber-realities available for you to explore. These mind-realms may be a much more appealing playground than the physical universe. Then again, it only takes one civilization that prefers to devote its time and resources to the colonization of real space. Though I realize that our sun MAY be an ET, or there may be nano-aliens everywhere, or they may exist in another dimension, or we may be part of a simulation ... these scenarios all seem a bit unparsimonious to me. I'm still left with the quite remarkable notion that we are probably alone. That's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. -- Scott __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14450