Man, I will totally give you props for being a premature alien sympathizer SJW. I can just see the Berkeley protests now, with people shouting about human privilege and that space aliens deserve abortions.

Well for starters, we could broach the subject of consensual anal sex with the aliens. At the moment, they're behaving like frat bros on a cialis bender. NO RECTAL PROBES MEANS NO!

I know I'd look really sad wearing a hat with an alien vagina on it, holding a sign with an ET fist on it and the caption "America was built on xenodreamers," but personal dignity has never been my strong suit.

#friendsofguyusbaltar

It's an unspoken rule that ICE agents will overlook tremendously hot aliens. Baltar knew what was what with that blonde. No one gave him shit for doing a hot alien when he became president. You know that show was kind of prescient...

Alien life would probably be our doom for unforseen reasons.

One might be that life just evolved so differently in other places. There might be radically different Kingdoms of life, even down to a single-celled organism level.

We might bring back a rock or a sludge sample with thousands of new species that all behave in ways our bodies have no defense against. We'd probably also contaminate and spread plagues to every place with life that we come across, no matter how careful about it we try to be.

Humans are sloppy.

Even if we sent out robots to meet other aliens' robots, we'd probably mess up and give them some malware.

I'm self-hating enough to think a few millenia of serving as human footstools and diaperwipers to an Alien Imperium might improve our shit species but pessimistic enough to know it would just make us into even bigger cunts than we already are.

Or we are already part of an alien imperium (or a human one!) and are just kept at a low level of technological development to prevent rabble rousing.

No need, we do that to ourselves. Much like the Greek gods, the aliens despair at our stupidity.

Space alien lives matter.

Did you guys even watch the video?

It's not suggesting that the aliens we find would kill us, but that finding alien life similar to ourselves, but not more advanced than ourselves, suggests that it's very hard (or impossible) to escape our planet.

I'd also add 3) It assumes that there aren't galactic civilizations in the hundreds of quadrillions of galaxies out there which we can't observe, just because there aren't any obvious ones in the few galaxies we can see.

If this thought experiment can accept the unlikely possibility that humans are unique in the universe, then it should also be able to accept the possibility that our galaxy is an outlier, one of the few out there that DOESN'T have a great big Star Trek Federation as its hub. We might just have the bad fortune to be stuck living in a weird isolated backwater part of the cosmos. But at least that means we'll never get assimilated by the Borg.

We're the equivalent of a crazy and violent and racist trailer park meth-head screaming and shooting at the trees every two minutes.

Seriously, if we can't even not be racist against ourselves, how can we expect to not be racist against aliens?

1.) We do, unless you want to imply aliens have transcended spacetime and built their civilization without touching gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, or give off energy or generate entropy. Unless they literally live in a metaphysical state, we'd see them.

2.) I agree, they'd have to be insane to do that.

3.) Is a good point, because there is an alien civilization pushing out into space within easy sight of us, ours. We count and we got this galaxy covered.

1) You can't assume we'd be able to detect anything intelligently constructed in any other galaxies, or if we did, we'd recognize what it was. Our ability to detect anything beyond our solar system is EXTREMELY limited. By way of example, if we were in the NEXT STAR SYSTEM over, we wouldn't have even been able to detect earth was here until ~2015, and we'd probably think it was an ocean planet with a nitrogen atmosphere.

I've never liked the Fermi Paradox because there's a whole bunch of assumptions it takes for granted about technology and the motivation of aliens. WE wouldn't build generational ships and spread across the galaxy, so why would anybody else? How do we know that's a reasonably achievable technology in the first place? How do we know we're not on the cusp of maximum technology? How likely is it that an alien civilization exists within range of our broadcast bubble? How do we know they're technologically advanced enough to detect us within the bubble, let alone outside the bubble (which is basically impossible as far as we know, by the way). How do we know it's possible to create materials that would support truly large sized structures?

It seems incredibly unlikely that any civilizations would even be able to detect any others unless they're lucky enough to be relatively close and around the same level of development.

Incidentally, the fact that we don't observe aliens is damning evidence AGAINST the practicality of warp engines.

Not necessarily. Again, you’re making the assumption that either warp engines would be so cheap and easy to operate that any alien grad student could take their beater space civic on a trip to find undiscovered planets. Or that warp is super expensive to use but humans are just so damn interesting that someone would take on that expense to visit us.

Of course we are assuming that "life" is always cellular or carbon based in nature. If it is possible for life to exist in other forms, how would we recognize it? This has been explored by various science fiction authors (Herbert comes to mind) and I've always felt that it makes even more sense if you aren't into the idea of intelligent creation of any sort.

Also, there is the possibility that (in our galaxy at least) it simply took until now for intelligent life to happen. This doesn't mean that we are the first or the last, just that every intelligent species is, more or less, at the same step in their development.

"1) You can't assume we'd be able to detect anything intelligently constructed in any other galaxies, or if we did, we'd recognize what it was."

Yes I can, because I am not science illiterate.

I know that's a cold burn, but this game is weak.

No, you really can't.

If you're saying you could for sure detect a type III, then ok.

Less than that, you really have absolutely no reason to be so confident.

meme I do think you're actually science illiterate at least on this subject.

I'm not sure even a type 3 would be detectable by our current technology unless they're incredibly wasteful with energy.

crap, meant to say meme isn't science literate

derp

I am totally science illiterate, only bouncers say dumb shit like that not in jest, and only bouncers would believe it.

That being said, Isaac Arthur is not science illiterate, here is the video that murders this one in its sleep, as well as the argument that aliens are magic and can hide their use of the laws of physics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA

In a way, the argument that humans are too dumb to detect aliens that live in the same universe as us is very very reminiscent of the argument that aliens built the pyramids because we're just too dumb for that too.

I think it's less of a belief in humans than in aliens.

Now binge every Isaac Arthur video! It took me months.

But on this one specific subject you are quite ignorant of the actual facts and real science.

SolRo, you know not what you know or know not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA

I was trying to say it politely but you just wont get it through your skull;

WE CURRENTLY CANNOT DETECT NORMAL RADIO BROADCASTS FROM ANY USEFUL INTERSTELLAR DISTANCE AND YOU WATCHING SOME YOUTUBE VIDEOS DOESNT CHANGE THAT HARD FACT.

And the video you specifically link to glosses over that fact with gross generalizations and unreasonably optimistic assumptions.

That and you have to assume that aliens would even have radio broadcasts of any sort, and for that matter, would have been using the technology for long enough for it to reach us, assuming we didn't simply miss the window.

Or maybe we are the only species so far that is stupid enough to think that we can leave our rock and survive. Maybe the final frontier for the alien race is the molten core of their rock?

I agree. And I do think about that. Especially late at night...rrrrow.

Damn, should have read this before I replied to Nap.

Oh, for what it's worth I share your skepticism of the "humans are too dumb to detect aliens" line of reasoning. If there were a real high-emissions civilization or big obvious Dyson Spheres hanging around, I bet we'll get around to finding them pretty quick.

My own pet guess is that civilizations more advanced than ours typically control their emissions much better, just for efficiency. Even today we see broadcast media getting replaced by fiber and laser; at the massive scales of an interstellar civilization why release a ton of waste energy? Maybe that's what a lot of that dark matter is about. The lit-up parts of the universe might seem empty and far-apart because they're the "national parks" left fallow by an advanced dark matter cosmos.

How would we detect Dyson spheres?

It's not "humans are too dumb", It's "detecting anything but massive energy usage on a galactic scale isn't possible." Or, if it is possible, we certainly have no fucking clue how to do it.

I am just going to spam this until you all stop asking things this video addresses and blows out the water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPj5zI66LA

you're wrong and your video is stupid.