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


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