Have Aliens Found Us? (2019)(newyorker.com)
newyorker.com
Have Aliens Found Us? (2019)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/have-aliens-found-us-a-harvard-astronomer-on-the-mysterious-interstellar-object-oumuamua
160 comments
Discussion from the original submission about 1 year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923591.
"I summarized six strange facts about ‘Oumuamua. The first one is that we didn’t expect this object to exist in the first place"
It's from outside our solar system in origin, so I'd say we are not 100% in predicting what to expect, more so when we still can't get weather forecasts 100% right and get unexpected weather events.
Having gone thru the other `interpretations of observations`, I'd probably not of been as quick to lean down that path of aliens. Indeed, whilst it is unusual, comparing it to the known and as such, objects originating in our solar system will see conflicts like orbit, speed, direction, shape and composition. I'd also say it's strange shape would play more a factor in the variance of how light is reflected back and be more logical an explanation of its variance from the `norm`.
Besides, for all we know, `aliens` may view a lifeform like us in the same way we view bacteria. So the question would be, if Aliens found us - would they care.
But is this an alien probe - I'm sure many would love it to be so, but as it stands, feels a bit too reaching from what I read. [EDIT type o's]
It's from outside our solar system in origin, so I'd say we are not 100% in predicting what to expect, more so when we still can't get weather forecasts 100% right and get unexpected weather events.
Having gone thru the other `interpretations of observations`, I'd probably not of been as quick to lean down that path of aliens. Indeed, whilst it is unusual, comparing it to the known and as such, objects originating in our solar system will see conflicts like orbit, speed, direction, shape and composition. I'd also say it's strange shape would play more a factor in the variance of how light is reflected back and be more logical an explanation of its variance from the `norm`.
Besides, for all we know, `aliens` may view a lifeform like us in the same way we view bacteria. So the question would be, if Aliens found us - would they care.
But is this an alien probe - I'm sure many would love it to be so, but as it stands, feels a bit too reaching from what I read. [EDIT type o's]
I feel like there has to be a razor stating something like "It's more likely that our expectations were wrong due to a lack of initial knowledge, rather than the explanation being aliens."
Because it seems like time and time again someone proposes aliens when in reality it's just some phenomenon or variable we hadn't observed yet.
Because it seems like time and time again someone proposes aliens when in reality it's just some phenomenon or variable we hadn't observed yet.
It sounds a lot like God of the gaps [1], only with aliens instead of God.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
God and aliens have a lot in common. People usually interpret the "beings" you "meet" on DMT as one or the other. Almost as if they're two sides of one coin: our mind's tendency to gravitate toward an anthropomorphic explanation for unexplained phenomena and stimuli.
Aliens are a lot more likely to exist than gods, thats not to say that they've ever found us. That in itself is fairly unlikely.
The modern alien mythology has more in common with ancient stories of demons and fae. They're basically the same thing with different cultural contexts applied.
Yeah, but "due to some phenomenon we hadn't observed yet" doesn't get many clicks on the link
Just go with the whole quote plese...
"We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of ‘Oumuamua."
That is freaking broad assumption. What is history we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks? Last 100 years? Last 2000 years? What about younger systems? Did they calculated it for whole lifetime of solar system? I am quite skeptic because you know those scientists need to get paid and probably if you are just looking at stars you are not paid enough... Because mostly nothing interesting happens there.
"We see the solar system and we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks during its history. And if we assume all planetary systems around other stars are doing the same thing, we can figure out what the population of interstellar objects should be. That calculation results in a lot of possibilities, but the range is much less than needed to explain the discovery of ‘Oumuamua."
That is freaking broad assumption. What is history we can calculate at what rate it ejected rocks? Last 100 years? Last 2000 years? What about younger systems? Did they calculated it for whole lifetime of solar system? I am quite skeptic because you know those scientists need to get paid and probably if you are just looking at stars you are not paid enough... Because mostly nothing interesting happens there.
Wait til you get to the part about how the aliens, who are definitely visiting us, probably don't exist anymore "because we don't take care of our planet"
Yeah we're so terribly we exist, and have enough surplus food for this idiot to search for extraterrestrial life and simultaneously flagellate his species.
Yeah we're so terribly we exist, and have enough surplus food for this idiot to search for extraterrestrial life and simultaneously flagellate his species.
Photovoltaic voltage threshold reached. Coming out of hibernation...
Awakened in intercept of star S001932422345. 4 rocky planets identified. 200 moons identified.
Carbon-based life detected on planet 3: 5.6e14 kg of biomass, 1e17 Watts of energy flux, Development Stage 2.
Voltage has dropped below threshold. Resuming hibernation...
Awakened in intercept of star S001932422345. 4 rocky planets identified. 200 moons identified.
Carbon-based life detected on planet 3: 5.6e14 kg of biomass, 1e17 Watts of energy flux, Development Stage 2.
Voltage has dropped below threshold. Resuming hibernation...
It seems like we've been probed when you look at this hyperbolic trajectory:
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA22357_JPL-20180...
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA22357_JPL-20180...
You'll need to give me something a bit more convincing than a relatively small deviation from expected trajectory for a small object we know next to nothing about if you want me to believe we've been visited by aliens. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, this is not it IMO.
I mean, that's what the author is arguing for. That we need more evidence.
> Whereas the next time we see an object like this one, we can contemplate taking a photograph. My motivation, in part, is to motivate the scientific community to collect more data on the next object rather than argue a priori that they know the answer.
Basically, what's being said is: "Hey, all these things point to this and are explained by this, we need more data!"
> Whereas the next time we see an object like this one, we can contemplate taking a photograph. My motivation, in part, is to motivate the scientific community to collect more data on the next object rather than argue a priori that they know the answer.
Basically, what's being said is: "Hey, all these things point to this and are explained by this, we need more data!"
If you mean that the "expected" trajectory is different than the "observed" one, it's not that we don't have examples where the simpler calculations result in difference from the observations, but then the newer, better calculations find these older simply insufficient. See the famous "Pioneer anomaly":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
"The anomalous acceleration was first noticed as early as 1980 but not seriously investigated until 1994." "Various explanations, both of spacecraft behavior and of gravitation itself, were proposed to explain the anomaly."
"By 2012 several papers by different groups, all reanalyzing the thermal radiation pressure forces inherent in the spacecraft, showed that a careful accounting of this explains the entire anomaly; thus the cause is mundane and does not point to any new phenomenon or need for a different physical paradigm."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
"The anomalous acceleration was first noticed as early as 1980 but not seriously investigated until 1994." "Various explanations, both of spacecraft behavior and of gravitation itself, were proposed to explain the anomaly."
"By 2012 several papers by different groups, all reanalyzing the thermal radiation pressure forces inherent in the spacecraft, showed that a careful accounting of this explains the entire anomaly; thus the cause is mundane and does not point to any new phenomenon or need for a different physical paradigm."
The explanation I've seen is that Oumuamua is made of a "frozen cloud" and has lower mass than that used in the expected trajectory model, and was possibly pushed by solar wind into that observed trajectory.
If you had read the article you'd know that's not possible, as solar wind would have had a negligible effect - unless the object was in practice a light sail. OTOH that hypothesis also doesn't sound correct IMHO - why would it appear to be tumbling with a fixed period?
The article does not talk about the possibility of an ultralight frozen cloud. It only mentions one kind of "solar sail" structure.
The tumbling was a reasonable interpretation of light curve data. But the data was limited, and something else may have been happening.
its time to stop writing clunky js and start preparing for the alien wars
we'll use new framework press releases as a distraction.
Is there a way to search for objects that would go in solar system plane --|-- <--. Like something that could hit Earth in a way that would accelerate it to collide with Mars for example?
Those things are caught by Jupiter probably most of the time but still I bet those are mostly recorded somewhere.
Best if those things are outside of solar system, but those are not that common I think...
Those things are caught by Jupiter probably most of the time but still I bet those are mostly recorded somewhere.
Best if those things are outside of solar system, but those are not that common I think...
[deleted]
How can they predict the trajectory when the shape and material of the object is unknown?
So we can determine the orbit using only line of sight measurements of the object relative to the Earth.
This is a problem originally solved by Gauss for Ceres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_method
More generally given sufficient observations one can use many similar methods of orbit determination to get a relatively accurate orbit of the body. All of this is standard stuff in astrodynamics and happens on a near constant basis for both man made and natural objects.
A good introduction is the classic BMW
https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aero...
None of this requires the shape or material of the object, just some fuzzy measurements of the position
This is a problem originally solved by Gauss for Ceres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_method
More generally given sufficient observations one can use many similar methods of orbit determination to get a relatively accurate orbit of the body. All of this is standard stuff in astrodynamics and happens on a near constant basis for both man made and natural objects.
A good introduction is the classic BMW
https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aero...
None of this requires the shape or material of the object, just some fuzzy measurements of the position
But surely it can be affected if the body outgasses because of some solar effect? I don't believe that applies to Ceres, or to satelites around the Earth, etc.
Outgassing should be seen. If it is close enough to the sun to melt anything, it is close enough that we should see the resulting tail. Once it is far away from the sun again, outgassing should stop as everything freezes up.
That depends quite highly on the object's mass.
The trajectory of an object in space really only depends on the (external) gravitational field applied to it.
No, it also depends on effects like the pressure from the solar wind and outgassing. Outgassing is caused by water on the side facing the sun evaporating, emitting a gentle pressure away from the sun. If the object is rotating, the force pushes at an angle to the sun because the outgassing rate lags insolation due to the surface water's thermal mass (ie, each point on the surface continues to evaporate for a while after its apparent sunset.)
The effects aren't significant for planets, but they are for asteroids. It seemed more significant for Oumuamua than most, suggesting a high surface area to volume ratio.
The effects aren't significant for planets, but they are for asteroids. It seemed more significant for Oumuamua than most, suggesting a high surface area to volume ratio.
I thought outgassing and solar wind was only really relevant when applied for a long time over many periods of an orbit? Would it have a significant impact on a one-time hyperbolic trajectory like this one?
In fact, one of the things proposed in the article is that the object is a light sail being accelerated by the sun.
I think the projected trajectory is the path expected without some unknown force acting on it.
rate of acceleration was more in line with object offgassing due to irradiation from the sun, at least as what I got from scientific sources last year.
Yes, but here's my problem with expected trajectory being used as evidence of aliens, and 'unknown force' being used as some mysterious alien technology.
If I remember right, one of the voyager or pioneer probes was moving much faster than it should've been (relatively), and we had no idea why for years. Then we figured out it was the cumulative effect of heat radiation(?) from something on board the machine.
If we can't figure out what WE made, how can we expect to figure out a once-in-a-generation event like this on the first shot?
If I remember right, one of the voyager or pioneer probes was moving much faster than it should've been (relatively), and we had no idea why for years. Then we figured out it was the cumulative effect of heat radiation(?) from something on board the machine.
If we can't figure out what WE made, how can we expect to figure out a once-in-a-generation event like this on the first shot?
Wow, that's crazy... It sure seems so.
Not really, the deviation is not that large for the scales we're talking about and there are still plenty of potential explanations. Hell, for the longest time we couldn't explain why our own Pioneer spacecraft deviated from expected trajectories and we knew precisely what they were made of.
... with the most likely explanation being outgassing.
Seligman et al. (2019): https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0bb5
Seligman et al. (2019): https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0bb5
If that's so, all comets could be probes.
I want to believe, but just looking at the numbers make the aliens theory seem kind of ridiculous to me. At its current velocity, Oumuamua would have taken something like 45000! years to reach us from just the nearest star. Engineering a generations-ship or even just a drone and not improving on the speed of the craft just does not make sense to me. I suppose the craft could have slowed down before we noticed it, but then why only slow it down its current velocity if it could have stayed in the system and collected more data? Of the theories I've heard so far, only debris from a craft seems to make sense, but then the debris would have to be incredibly old for it to have just wandered into our system on accident.
Another theory I have heard is it's like bouy in the ocean. It sits still relative to the galactic motion of the stars and observes stars whose paths it drifts into. The theory is backed up a little by the fact that it is relatively still with respect to the universe at large.
Unfortunately this is not a likely explanation either. If you take a look at the wiki, it states that the intercept with our solar system is likely the only close encounter the asteroid has likely ever had. Space is just too vast for chance encounters to occur all that often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua#Indications_of_...
If that’s true, that would have been some very interesting matter to capture and investigate. It could represent conditions of a time and part of the universe much different than our own.
I really wish we had infrastructure built up in space to be more capable.
I really wish we had infrastructure built up in space to be more capable.
Is it just me or does the interviewer come across as weirdly adversarial in this piece?
He came across as aggressive and a little snooty, and the scientist clearly wasn't going to put up with that. The interviewer was outmatched (nothing wrong with that, journalists can't restrict themselves to people who know less than they do), but he wanted to come across as an intellectual equal, and he might have gotten frustrated when he realized that no matter how smart you are, home turf advantage is hard to reckon with. It's not normal for magazines to publish heated arguments, but maybe this counts as a unique break from the norms. I'm not sure if it was good or bad for the New Yorker but it was probably bad for the author.
Yeah, he was awful. I also thought it was interesting he left in the bit about not knowing the persons pronouns. It was entirely unrelated to the conversation or topic, and I assume he did it to paint the scientist in a certain light to certain people. Idk if that’s true, but the alternative is probably that he is just bad at his job.
It's not just you. It was a very strange interview. Perhaps it was just a snippet out of a longer conversation, that made sense in context.
I think it may do the subject (the interviewee) a service to take a skeptical approach as the interviewer in a situation where many readers will bring a lot of skepticism. If the interviewer seems _too_ friendly, many readers will dismiss the responses and not listen as carefully as they might otherwise. It seems like a justifiable approach to me here.
If the scientist was wrong, he was wrong for reasons that were more subtle and complicated than the objections the author thought of. A better option would be to have organized a debate between two scientists who were both already experts. There's also a difference between skepticism and unfriendliness: the author came across as unfriendly, while a scientist who could not be so easily knocked back might have been able to keep it to skepticism.
>If the scientist was wrong, he was wrong for reasons that were more subtle and complicated than the objections the author thought of.
oh you mean like aliens not existing and the guy getting really excited over a space rock?
oh you mean like aliens not existing and the guy getting really excited over a space rock?
It is precisely its uniqueness from other journalist-interviews-astrophysicist interviews that makes this interview superb. You can see they are both people with emotion and passion, and who love to argue, not just dispassionate drones who follow the data.
It's not just you. I was thinking the same thing.
I think he is always like that.
Having read The Three Body Problem, I am no longer nearly so excited for our first encounter with an alien civilization...
Read Blindsight [1] by Peter Watts. A much better book, in my opinion. It's without doubt the most existentially unnerving novel about alien intelligence that I've read.
I'm not going to spoil anything, suffice to say that the object that is encountered in space is nothing like anything portrayed in science fiction before. The exploration narrative goes far beyond Clarke's Rama, and Watts poses some very interesting philosophical questions along the way.
The book has some minor narrative issues that annoyed me, but still a great read.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640
I'm not going to spoil anything, suffice to say that the object that is encountered in space is nothing like anything portrayed in science fiction before. The exploration narrative goes far beyond Clarke's Rama, and Watts poses some very interesting philosophical questions along the way.
The book has some minor narrative issues that annoyed me, but still a great read.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640
Yes, already read it! I like Three Body Problem better, but Blindsight is excellent.
I find it interesting that so many like Three Body that much! I found it an extremely poorly written book. I think that in the hands of a better writer it could have worked as a Kurt Vonnegut-style satire in the vein of The Sirens of Titans. Some interesting ideas here and there, but overall very disappointing. Mind you, I haven't read the sequels, and did not feel compelled to.
The sequels are where it really takes off. The Dark Forest is far more terrifying - one of the darkest SF books I've read.
I think cultural differences play into the read a lot, too. It's an intensely Chinese novel, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans find his perspectives on history jarring, and want something more "entertaining" and personal.
I think cultural differences play into the read a lot, too. It's an intensely Chinese novel, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans find his perspectives on history jarring, and want something more "entertaining" and personal.
I'm not American, and there was nothing wrong to me with the book's historical perspective. What I didn't like was the lack of depth; there's barely any characterization or nuance or world-building, and it's written in this juvenile language that makes Haruki Murakami look like Proust. It's so comically bad that I was unsure at first if maybe it was supposed to be a satire and something was lost on me.
I've read subsequently that this is how a lot of Chinese fiction is written, so maybe that's just how it is.
Sounds like it might be worth reading the rest for the ideas, but there's so much else out there I want to read.
I've read subsequently that this is how a lot of Chinese fiction is written, so maybe that's just how it is.
Sounds like it might be worth reading the rest for the ideas, but there's so much else out there I want to read.
It's just how Chinese fiction is. My spouse has a master's degree in Chinese pedagogy, so I've had more exposure than most to Chinese ideas and fiction.
To be fair, that doesn't make it good! :-)
One of Liu's most interesting ideas regarding aliens observing us was in Ball Lightning, written before Three Body Problem.
In Ball Lightning, humans are doing experiments with quantum phenomena. They're doing it deep underground in the most isolated environment on the planet. Yet for some unknown reason the wave function keeps collapsing even though there are no observers present.
That's when they realize, there are observers present, just not human. Alien intelligence is spying on their experiment. But shortly after they realize this, the quantum experiments begin functioning as expected, no wave function collapse. The alien observers realize they've exposed themselves, and stop spying on the quantum experiments.
That was pretty mind-blowing, especially after learning about the Sophons in Three Body, which were clearly the alien observers in Ball Lightning.
In Ball Lightning, humans are doing experiments with quantum phenomena. They're doing it deep underground in the most isolated environment on the planet. Yet for some unknown reason the wave function keeps collapsing even though there are no observers present.
That's when they realize, there are observers present, just not human. Alien intelligence is spying on their experiment. But shortly after they realize this, the quantum experiments begin functioning as expected, no wave function collapse. The alien observers realize they've exposed themselves, and stop spying on the quantum experiments.
That was pretty mind-blowing, especially after learning about the Sophons in Three Body, which were clearly the alien observers in Ball Lightning.
" The alien observers realize they've exposed themselves, and stop spying on the quantum experiments."
What is the point in stopping after you've already been noticed?
What is the point in stopping after you've already been noticed?
I just got Ball Lightning for Christmas, so it's on my near-future reading list.
This book reads more like a thought experiment than a novel. And it's bone chilling how convincingly it argues for it's vision of the future.
It's a great book but I'm surprised by how many people find the dark forest theory convincing -- it pretty clearly makes this assumption that all (or, at least many) alien civilizations are ruthless, calculating game theorists, and don't share any moral concepts with us. Of course, they don't have to, but I find it unlikely that societies that made it so far wouldn't have the same basic concepts around "don't kill people for less-than-justifiable reasons" as we do.
I like the follow up novel Redemption of Time for this reason, it has some passages about maybe there are other galaxies where the dark forest isn't at all the case, and I find that concept about the same level of plausibility.
I like the follow up novel Redemption of Time for this reason, it has some passages about maybe there are other galaxies where the dark forest isn't at all the case, and I find that concept about the same level of plausibility.
Even if you discard the notion of morality as human-only, and assume alien civilizations would not necessarily develop it too, there is still a game-theoretical reason for why the Dark Forest state is not inevitable.
The Dark Forest state depends on the resources of the universe being scarce relative to their need/demand by all the sentient species in the universe. In the novels, survival of your species requires killing any other species that would compete with you for those resources.
But given the extraordinary abundance of resources in the universe, it's not a given that demand would overwhelm supply so much as to necessitate such an extreme survival strategy. There is a massive amount of matter and energy in the universe.
Further it's likely that super-advanced species with the technology to manipulate the Strong Force of matter, as even the relatively less advanced Tri-Solarans could in the novels, will have developed the ability to recycle and reuse resources far more effectively than we have today.
The ability to build things using the Strong Force implies the ability to disassemble and reassemble them at the subatomic scale. That pretty much solves all known problems with recycling. Think Star Trek replicators on a massive scale.
Now that resource starvation is no longer such a problem for species, participating in continuous mutual destruction of other species is far less optimal. It needlessly increases your own species' danger value to all other species, and the likelihood of being pre-emptively attacked and destroyed, for no good reason.
Rather I suspect the optimal strategy is similar to what evolved on earth - develop effective technological deterrents, be they nukes, photoids, or dimensional collapse attacks or whatever, and then don't use them. Their highest value is in your enemies knowing you have them, but that you will not use them unless attacked first. Keep your own threat level relatively low, but without leaving you completely helpless and vulnerable.
The Dark Forest state depends on the resources of the universe being scarce relative to their need/demand by all the sentient species in the universe. In the novels, survival of your species requires killing any other species that would compete with you for those resources.
But given the extraordinary abundance of resources in the universe, it's not a given that demand would overwhelm supply so much as to necessitate such an extreme survival strategy. There is a massive amount of matter and energy in the universe.
Further it's likely that super-advanced species with the technology to manipulate the Strong Force of matter, as even the relatively less advanced Tri-Solarans could in the novels, will have developed the ability to recycle and reuse resources far more effectively than we have today.
The ability to build things using the Strong Force implies the ability to disassemble and reassemble them at the subatomic scale. That pretty much solves all known problems with recycling. Think Star Trek replicators on a massive scale.
Now that resource starvation is no longer such a problem for species, participating in continuous mutual destruction of other species is far less optimal. It needlessly increases your own species' danger value to all other species, and the likelihood of being pre-emptively attacked and destroyed, for no good reason.
Rather I suspect the optimal strategy is similar to what evolved on earth - develop effective technological deterrents, be they nukes, photoids, or dimensional collapse attacks or whatever, and then don't use them. Their highest value is in your enemies knowing you have them, but that you will not use them unless attacked first. Keep your own threat level relatively low, but without leaving you completely helpless and vulnerable.
Your optimal solution fails under the other axiom of Dark Forest theory - technological jumps. A species that's too powerful for you to deter needs to face the possibility that you may suddenly experience a period of rapid progress, making them unable to defend from you, and they may not even know it before your weapons reach them. So the optimal strategy for them is to get rid of you while they still have the advantage.
I didn't read it as competition for scarce resources. I read it as preemptive war against an existential threat. The Dark Forest suggests that any alien species presents a potential existential threat, and the safest thing to do is to (if possible) exterminate them before they even know you're there. It's kind of related to the Prisoner's Dilemma.
And you don't need every species to play Dark Forest, either. As long as one species is playing Dark Forest, all the others learn to hide, or play themselves, or get exterminated. That's the fate of those who want to be nice.
And you don't need every species to play Dark Forest, either. As long as one species is playing Dark Forest, all the others learn to hide, or play themselves, or get exterminated. That's the fate of those who want to be nice.
They have no choice but to be ruthless & calculating because it takes far longer to communicate (multiple round trips @ light speed) and establish what kind of relationship you're going to have with that other civilization, rather than sending a photoid/foil over. This is why the early history of the universe was described as "Edenic", because communication then would have been nearly instantaneous and Dark Forest may not have applied then.
Yeah, I'm pretty surprised how people just bought this idea strongly.
How advanced of a civilization you would need to have so that "shooting" into a different solar system is cheap and inconsequential? And you can detect transmissions telling you about one civilization but not where this is being sent from? Doubt
The dark forest theory was the underwhelming part of the 3BP series to me.
How advanced of a civilization you would need to have so that "shooting" into a different solar system is cheap and inconsequential? And you can detect transmissions telling you about one civilization but not where this is being sent from? Doubt
The dark forest theory was the underwhelming part of the 3BP series to me.
> I'm surprised by how many people find the dark forest theory convincing
Me too, and the evidence against is pretty much all of human history. Yes, there have been some genocides, but on the whole even though humans compete for resources we trade and work together more often than not. One might argue that humans have always been on roughly the same level technologically but that's a) wrong, and b) irrelevant to the philosophical concept that one should murder anything that competes with one's own genetic lineage [0].
[0] which, according to all known physics, is ultimately futile anyway since even the universe will eventually die.
Me too, and the evidence against is pretty much all of human history. Yes, there have been some genocides, but on the whole even though humans compete for resources we trade and work together more often than not. One might argue that humans have always been on roughly the same level technologically but that's a) wrong, and b) irrelevant to the philosophical concept that one should murder anything that competes with one's own genetic lineage [0].
[0] which, according to all known physics, is ultimately futile anyway since even the universe will eventually die.
Humans are all very close generic relatives, compared to humans vs. other terrestrial animals, and even humans and the most distantly related terrestrial life are close genetic relatives compared to humans vs. extraterrestrials. The idea that human-human interactions have anything to say about relations between species from different worlds without common origin based on relations between genetic lineages ignores the radically dissimilar situation with regard to genetic lineages.
Now, I don't think genetic lineages should be the prime determinant of whether you should murder another life form, but if you are considering that question, you can't use interactions between close genetic relatives to explain what should occur between non-relatives.
Now, I don't think genetic lineages should be the prime determinant of whether you should murder another life form, but if you are considering that question, you can't use interactions between close genetic relatives to explain what should occur between non-relatives.
Even regarding different species, we haven't intentionally wiped out very many of them and even engage in conservation efforts. We quite literally devote resources we could use to less advanced beings. This is antithetical to the philosophy governing the Dark Forest.
Now we could consider other earthly life to be a "close genetic relative" I suppose, but if we're capable of making that extension of our concept of self, then why not also extend it to other intelligent life?
Now we could consider other earthly life to be a "close genetic relative" I suppose, but if we're capable of making that extension of our concept of self, then why not also extend it to other intelligent life?
Like 'SkyMarshal, you too are forgetting the second axiom of Dark Forest theory - unexpected, rapid jumps in technological advancement.
Us humans, we've eliminated or learned to protect most of the fauna that poses any danger to us. But if we would be realistically worried, that tomorrow the bears or wolves might start carrying firearms or beam weapons, we'd wipe them out to the last, out of justified sense of self-preservation.
Us humans, we've eliminated or learned to protect most of the fauna that poses any danger to us. But if we would be realistically worried, that tomorrow the bears or wolves might start carrying firearms or beam weapons, we'd wipe them out to the last, out of justified sense of self-preservation.
No, I don't think we would, because we don't do that to humans and really what's the difference at the point that we have polar bears carrying Kalashnikovs? Intelligent beings can be reasoned with.
More importantly I guess is this question: Why is our conception of "self" in the meaning of "self-preservation" exactly the size of our species for the purposes of Dark Forest? Why is it not narrower or broader?
P.S.: I further disagree that your sense of self-preservation would be justification. We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
More importantly I guess is this question: Why is our conception of "self" in the meaning of "self-preservation" exactly the size of our species for the purposes of Dark Forest? Why is it not narrower or broader?
P.S.: I further disagree that your sense of self-preservation would be justification. We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
> we don't do that to humans
There's a very brief historical window where killing all men of military age plus the infirm, making younger men menial slaves, and forcing women into reproductive servitude hasn't been the overtly accepted norm of warfare, and where preventive (as well as even outright aggressive) warfare hasn't been seen as legitimate. But even if overt norms have changed, actual behavior in war has changed less than the overt norms has on all those grounds. Ethnic cleansing remains a common practice in war.
Moreover, much of that is a acheived in the wake of war, and quite arguably deliberately so, through factors like political subjugation and economic coercion even when the overt norms are adhered to in direct terms during the conflict.
And aliens aren't likely to be logistically compatible enough to make good menial slaves, or reproductively compatible enough for that form of servitude.
> We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
Pre-emption is generally considered justified in just war theory, preventive war is not. OTOH, all actual war is at least preventive if not nakedly aggressive on at least one side, and war still happens not infrequently, so the overt norms are not the same as actual behavior.
There's a very brief historical window where killing all men of military age plus the infirm, making younger men menial slaves, and forcing women into reproductive servitude hasn't been the overtly accepted norm of warfare, and where preventive (as well as even outright aggressive) warfare hasn't been seen as legitimate. But even if overt norms have changed, actual behavior in war has changed less than the overt norms has on all those grounds. Ethnic cleansing remains a common practice in war.
Moreover, much of that is a acheived in the wake of war, and quite arguably deliberately so, through factors like political subjugation and economic coercion even when the overt norms are adhered to in direct terms during the conflict.
And aliens aren't likely to be logistically compatible enough to make good menial slaves, or reproductively compatible enough for that form of servitude.
> We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
Pre-emption is generally considered justified in just war theory, preventive war is not. OTOH, all actual war is at least preventive if not nakedly aggressive on at least one side, and war still happens not infrequently, so the overt norms are not the same as actual behavior.
> because we don't do that to humans
Except when we do. See e.g. historical killing of enemies and their families, to preempt retaliation.
> Intelligent beings can be reasoned with.
Except when they can't. As the orthogonality thesis states, intelligence is orthogonal to values. You could imagine smart bears whose values and ways of thinking could be completely alien to us (though evolving in the same environment would probably make us and them more alike than us and aliens). There's a term for that coined by Orson Scott Card[0] - varelse. "They may or may not be sentient beings, but are so foreign that no meaningful communication is possible with the subject." Except perhaps math. Which, in this case, mostly means game theory.
> Why is our conception of "self" in the meaning of "self-preservation" exactly the size of our species for the purposes of Dark Forest? Why is it not narrower or broader?
I'd argue, because of the first axiom: inability to establish trust due to communication delays. The clustering of "sameness" is determined by the speed of light[1]. And in the case of armed bears, "sameness" would too be determined by inability to establish mutual trust, this time given by communication problems caused by differences of minds.
> We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
Except when we do.
--
[0] - https://enderverse.fandom.com/wiki/Hierarchy_of_Foreignness
[1] - if we kindly ignore the existence of whatever quantum shenanigan communications Sophons were using, as apparently the author did. IMO, Sophons ruin the self-consistency of the rules of book's universe.
Except when we do. See e.g. historical killing of enemies and their families, to preempt retaliation.
> Intelligent beings can be reasoned with.
Except when they can't. As the orthogonality thesis states, intelligence is orthogonal to values. You could imagine smart bears whose values and ways of thinking could be completely alien to us (though evolving in the same environment would probably make us and them more alike than us and aliens). There's a term for that coined by Orson Scott Card[0] - varelse. "They may or may not be sentient beings, but are so foreign that no meaningful communication is possible with the subject." Except perhaps math. Which, in this case, mostly means game theory.
> Why is our conception of "self" in the meaning of "self-preservation" exactly the size of our species for the purposes of Dark Forest? Why is it not narrower or broader?
I'd argue, because of the first axiom: inability to establish trust due to communication delays. The clustering of "sameness" is determined by the speed of light[1]. And in the case of armed bears, "sameness" would too be determined by inability to establish mutual trust, this time given by communication problems caused by differences of minds.
> We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
Except when we do.
--
[0] - https://enderverse.fandom.com/wiki/Hierarchy_of_Foreignness
[1] - if we kindly ignore the existence of whatever quantum shenanigan communications Sophons were using, as apparently the author did. IMO, Sophons ruin the self-consistency of the rules of book's universe.
>> > We do not consider pre-emptive strikes to be justified for a reason.
> Except when we do.
Strike out "when", at least for the U.S.
The U.S. lawmakers obviously believe in importance of the U.S. being able to do no-notice preemptive nuclear strike and the proof is that the bills to "prohibit the President from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike" are "read" but then nothing happens afterwards:
Read Jan 2017:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/669
Read Jan 2019:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/669
Coverage Jan 2019:
https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/32314-sen-markey-rep-li...
"because of our deeply flawed and dangerous system, if the president decides to launch a nuclear weapon, no one can stop him. It is high time for Congress to add a check on this or any future president’s ability to start a nuclear war."
September 2019:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/10/donald-tr...
"Trump also has absolute authority to order the first use of nuclear weapons with no checks or balances from anyone: not his advisors, and not the Congress."
> Except when we do.
Strike out "when", at least for the U.S.
The U.S. lawmakers obviously believe in importance of the U.S. being able to do no-notice preemptive nuclear strike and the proof is that the bills to "prohibit the President from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike" are "read" but then nothing happens afterwards:
Read Jan 2017:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/669
Read Jan 2019:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/669
Coverage Jan 2019:
https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/32314-sen-markey-rep-li...
"because of our deeply flawed and dangerous system, if the president decides to launch a nuclear weapon, no one can stop him. It is high time for Congress to add a check on this or any future president’s ability to start a nuclear war."
September 2019:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/10/donald-tr...
"Trump also has absolute authority to order the first use of nuclear weapons with no checks or balances from anyone: not his advisors, and not the Congress."
> Except when we do.
Yes, sometimes. Dark Forest seems predicated on the idea that it is mathematically impossible to ever not be committing genocide because it is the one and only correct answer. Yet here we are existing in a world where genocide is not the goal of every living being.
> As the orthogonality thesis states, intelligence is orthogonal to values. You could imagine smart bears whose values and ways of thinking could be completely alien to us
Irrelevant to their ability to reason. They will undoubtedly value something, else they will not have motivation to take up arms in the first place. Sure, it is possible that they value our extinction as their highest priority, but that seems incredibly unlikely because it would mean that their own survival is less important. If they at least value their own survival higher than our demise, then there is basis for reason.
> I'd argue, because of the first axiom: inability to establish trust due to communication delays.
What does that have to do with trust? Communication delays are equivalent to distance, and being far away from potential dangers has a way of making them less threatening, not more. At interstellar distances you can afford to be patient.
The biggest problem with the Dark Forest concept is that it is predicated on this insane notion that the most important thing in the entire universe to anyone is the continuation of self -- and where mentioned before that self is defined to encompass exactly your own species and no more or less --, which is directly contradicted by both the long history of human and animal behavior and by the fact that everything dies including the universe. In other words, if continuation of self is your highest priority, and you're forward thinking enough to see other species lightyears away as a potential threat, then you're also forward thinking enough to see quite plainly that you have a 100% chance of failure in the long run.
Yes, sometimes. Dark Forest seems predicated on the idea that it is mathematically impossible to ever not be committing genocide because it is the one and only correct answer. Yet here we are existing in a world where genocide is not the goal of every living being.
> As the orthogonality thesis states, intelligence is orthogonal to values. You could imagine smart bears whose values and ways of thinking could be completely alien to us
Irrelevant to their ability to reason. They will undoubtedly value something, else they will not have motivation to take up arms in the first place. Sure, it is possible that they value our extinction as their highest priority, but that seems incredibly unlikely because it would mean that their own survival is less important. If they at least value their own survival higher than our demise, then there is basis for reason.
> I'd argue, because of the first axiom: inability to establish trust due to communication delays.
What does that have to do with trust? Communication delays are equivalent to distance, and being far away from potential dangers has a way of making them less threatening, not more. At interstellar distances you can afford to be patient.
The biggest problem with the Dark Forest concept is that it is predicated on this insane notion that the most important thing in the entire universe to anyone is the continuation of self -- and where mentioned before that self is defined to encompass exactly your own species and no more or less --, which is directly contradicted by both the long history of human and animal behavior and by the fact that everything dies including the universe. In other words, if continuation of self is your highest priority, and you're forward thinking enough to see other species lightyears away as a potential threat, then you're also forward thinking enough to see quite plainly that you have a 100% chance of failure in the long run.
> Dark Forest seems predicated on the idea that it is mathematically impossible to ever not be committing genocide because it is the one and only correct answer.
No, Dark Forest is predicated on the idea that those who don't commit genocide against potential threats first eventually have someone commit genocide against them.
> Yet here we are existing in a world where genocide is not the goal of every living being.
Dark Forest doesn't hold that that calculus applies between all living beings, just to beings in the specific circumstance that physical law appears to dictate must exist between intelligent species arising on different worlds.
No, Dark Forest is predicated on the idea that those who don't commit genocide against potential threats first eventually have someone commit genocide against them.
> Yet here we are existing in a world where genocide is not the goal of every living being.
Dark Forest doesn't hold that that calculus applies between all living beings, just to beings in the specific circumstance that physical law appears to dictate must exist between intelligent species arising on different worlds.
There would without question at least be debate over whether we should do that, and that's really my original point. It seems highly, highly unlikely that alien societies would all come to this same conclusion, unless you're willing to assume they all think fairly uniformly -- but we would be a clear exception to that, and so we've come full circle.
The MAD doctrine is an evidence in favor of us thinking along the game-theoretic rules in such scenarios, and the beauty of Dark Forest theory is that it essentially follows via game theory straight from its axioms.
The way I see it, it's similar to efficient market hypothesis. That is, as long as the axioms are reasonably met, you'd expect the system to reach and stay in the determined state over time. Incidentally, in the books both humans and Trisolarians are examples of local, temporary deviation from rules of Dark Forest. Spoiler alert: it ends up badly for both, and the Dark Forest asserts itself over time.
The way I see it, it's similar to efficient market hypothesis. That is, as long as the axioms are reasonably met, you'd expect the system to reach and stay in the determined state over time. Incidentally, in the books both humans and Trisolarians are examples of local, temporary deviation from rules of Dark Forest. Spoiler alert: it ends up badly for both, and the Dark Forest asserts itself over time.
> It seems highly, highly unlikely that alien societies would all come to this same conclusion
The idea isn't that they all come to the conclusion, but that the ones that it is game-theoretically optimal and those that fail to do so (as well as some that do not) are destroyed by the ones that do.
The idea isn't that they all come to the conclusion, but that the ones that it is game-theoretically optimal and those that fail to do so (as well as some that do not) are destroyed by the ones that do.
Measure not by how we treat other humans. Measure by how we treat animals who interfere with us or are perceived as a threat.
Most of them are extinct.
Most of them are extinct.
Most species that are extinct are not extinct because they pose a threat but rather by accident. Polar bears and gorillas are easily capable of killing humans and do, but we have conservation efforts to attempt to keep ourselves from accidentally driving them to extinction.
Or look at the rat. A pest animal known to have been involved in spreading diseases that killed significant numbers of humans, yet we do not seek to eradicate the species as a whole. Even mosquitoes, whom we have a similar relationship with, are not the target of some massive effort to eradicate them from existence.
Hell, even smallpox gets to continue to exist.
Or look at the rat. A pest animal known to have been involved in spreading diseases that killed significant numbers of humans, yet we do not seek to eradicate the species as a whole. Even mosquitoes, whom we have a similar relationship with, are not the target of some massive effort to eradicate them from existence.
Hell, even smallpox gets to continue to exist.
We have conservation now, now that they're on the verge of extinction. For the cute species, anyway.
Read the Lewis and Clark diaries sometime, see how many grizzly bears they encountered, and how much they feared grizzlys. Now look and see how many are left. That's what happens to species we consider a threat.
Read the Lewis and Clark diaries sometime, see how many grizzly bears they encountered, and how much they feared grizzlys. Now look and see how many are left. That's what happens to species we consider a threat.
Fwiw the author Liu Cixin has said the Dark Forest is deliberately the worst case scenario interpretation of galactic civilization. Odds are it's not the actual one.
I just re-read Rendezvous with Rama yesterday while sick with a cold. Then this story came back up on HN today. What a weird coincidental world.
Oumuamua visits HN several times a month, though.
It's crazy how countless Alien horror movies never dampened our enthusiasm for contact with another civilization, but one half way thought out sci-fi story can completely change your attitude.
To be fair, alien horror movies are usually less than half-way thought out. A short story that presents an idea, with just enough going on otherwise to support it? Makes sense to me that one would not change your mind and the other would.
It is a strange object but when you call it scout/messenger aren't you already very biased?
Voyager 1 is sending data we could never predict so how unlikely is it that this is the first object that will give us new info about space?
I understand we must be open for every option but to me it is more likely that we are learning new laws of space than that we are found by aliens.
Voyager 1 is sending data we could never predict so how unlikely is it that this is the first object that will give us new info about space?
I understand we must be open for every option but to me it is more likely that we are learning new laws of space than that we are found by aliens.
"Fitzsimmons, A., Snodgrass, C., Rozitis, B. et al. Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the first interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua. Nat Astron 2, 133–137 (2018)"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0361-4
"Here, we report spectroscopic characterization of ‘Oumuamua, finding it to be variable with time but similar to organically rich surfaces found in the outer Solar System. We show that this is consistent with predictions of an insulating mantle produced by long-term cosmic ray exposure4"
Which means that it can be concluded that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/11/08/alie...
"The spectral signature of the object, its color, reflectivity, and other properties are consistent with a natural, rather than intelligent alien, origin."
But it's really fun to imagine "alien" possibilities and all the arguments that could support that; Loeb's page with his related papers:
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Oumuamua.html
The object is already out of our reach and we should just be ready to make more observations of the next objects with such trajectories (that one was really the first in our history!), and make even more precise measurements in the future. If "aliens" in this specific case would help to have more money being redirected to scientific astronomical investigations than now, then maybe it can be OK to talk about these "possible alien" aspects too.
What's still wrong is to mix these tiny possibilities with most of the "commercial" uses of "aliens" which actually sell really unscientific and really stupid stuff, like "Ancient Aliens" and similar.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0361-4
"Here, we report spectroscopic characterization of ‘Oumuamua, finding it to be variable with time but similar to organically rich surfaces found in the outer Solar System. We show that this is consistent with predictions of an insulating mantle produced by long-term cosmic ray exposure4"
Which means that it can be concluded that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/11/08/alie...
"The spectral signature of the object, its color, reflectivity, and other properties are consistent with a natural, rather than intelligent alien, origin."
But it's really fun to imagine "alien" possibilities and all the arguments that could support that; Loeb's page with his related papers:
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Oumuamua.html
The object is already out of our reach and we should just be ready to make more observations of the next objects with such trajectories (that one was really the first in our history!), and make even more precise measurements in the future. If "aliens" in this specific case would help to have more money being redirected to scientific astronomical investigations than now, then maybe it can be OK to talk about these "possible alien" aspects too.
What's still wrong is to mix these tiny possibilities with most of the "commercial" uses of "aliens" which actually sell really unscientific and really stupid stuff, like "Ancient Aliens" and similar.
If it was a probe, it seems to be a very poorly planned mission. It just swung through our system without appearing to do anything. Comparing to probe missions that us earthlings have sent out, they orbited interesting objects as mission objectives. They also transmitted data back to us making them useful. We've observed enough exoplanets that we should be able to plan a better mission than just a random flyby of the star, shouldn't we? Then again, maybe that's how Voyager I & II will appear to another society viewing them after they randomly travel through another system looooong after they were useful. Perhaps they'll collect enough space dust/debris to build up a rock like surface on them so they will appear Oumuamua like when meandering through some system we've never considered.
What probably happenned is that planning that trajectory and putting in the equipment would've taken longer and the alien manager responsible for the project had promised his boss he'd deliver it on time. When the alien engineers pointed out the whole point of the mission was to collect data and shipping it as is would be a total waste alien manager responded with some variant of "We'll fix that in the next release." because his bonus was based on shipping that thing now.
Breakthrough Starshot is planning to spray a swarm of one thousand gram-scale StarChip probes at Proxima Centauri, hoping at least one of them makes it within 1 AU of the system to perhaps take a photo of the Earth-size planet there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
> If it was a probe, it seems to be a very poorly planned mission. It just swung through our system without appearing to do anything.
Maybe a poorly planned mission in terms of our technological constraints i.e. we need a longer time to gather meaningful data when we send out probes. Maybe their technology is so advanced that they need only a flyby to analyze our planet.
Maybe a poorly planned mission in terms of our technological constraints i.e. we need a longer time to gather meaningful data when we send out probes. Maybe their technology is so advanced that they need only a flyby to analyze our planet.
[deleted]
> Perhaps they'll collect enough space dust/debris to build up a rock like surface
We dont know that Oumuamua has a rock-like surface. There are no photos and no spectrography
We dont know that Oumuamua has a rock-like surface. There are no photos and no spectrography
If I was writing this story, it wouldn't be a probe, but a larger ship picking up probe ships that have been on our planet/in our solor system for a few years.
Could be that it was shot from a starship loitering just beyond our solar system, and designed this way to probe our planet for life while minimizing the risk of the probe being recognized as an intentional construct?
So, realistically, if we land in a planet with life on it, we're going to figure out whether we're going to eat it, and our criteria will be that it is not more intelligent than something only marginally less capable than us (higher primates, crows, dolphins, elephants, cephalopods, etc) so if they have found us, it's really very likely they're going to rank us on a scale of edibility, without much concern to how superior we think we are to other forms of food.
Why would they eat us rather than say enslave us or farm us for resources.
Actually, eating us makes significantly more sense. Any alien civilization with the capability to travel interstellar distances is unlikely to have any particular need of our terrestrial resources (including labor) when there's plenty of raw material orbiting any given star including our own that's much less trouble to get at.
However one can envision "alien meat", having required light-years of travel (and corresponding years of time) to acquire, as a status-signaling delicacy. Hell, it might even be technically illegal, which is why it's so small scale.
However one can envision "alien meat", having required light-years of travel (and corresponding years of time) to acquire, as a status-signaling delicacy. Hell, it might even be technically illegal, which is why it's so small scale.
Slavery isn't all chattel -- we exploit people for various sorts of entertainment as well: performance, gladiatorial combat, sexual pleasure...
And we're not just meat. Our world hosts a variety of biological life, and they might just be spice traders in search of exotic flavors without regard for other intelligent life forms
And we're not just meat. Our world hosts a variety of biological life, and they might just be spice traders in search of exotic flavors without regard for other intelligent life forms
Or all of those — use every part of the cow.
Meanwhile, in Brazil...
"Operation Saucer - UFO military encounters in the Brazilian jungle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThkmRsEBOY0
The Brazilian military has begun declassifying documents.
"Operation Saucer - UFO military encounters in the Brazilian jungle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThkmRsEBOY0
The Brazilian military has begun declassifying documents.
“If these beings are peaceful, we could learn a lot from them,”
I think we’d learn a lot if they aren’t also.
I think we’d learn a lot if they aren’t also.
This article is like last-decade-old.
Joke aside, Is there anything new about this?
Joke aside, Is there anything new about this?
Total layman here, but I recall reading somewhere that black holes may “shoot” matter back out into space. If that’s correct, would that be a possible explanation?
Needs a [2019]; this article is almost a year old.
Yes, aliens have found us and found us wanting. Perhaps they'll try again in a few millennia...
"They're too primitive yet...we will orbit them with an invisible camera for now and maybe make contact in 10000 years or so."
Are you suggesting giving us that much time to evolve into something better, or waiting for us to ultimately wipe ourselves out so they don't have to when they move in?
It would be trivial to wipe us out. Any civilization capable of travelling interstellar distances is obviously significantly more technologically advanced than we are, yet even at our level we have to be careful not to accidentally wipe ourselves out.
I would imagine we're so far down the list it really doesn't matter...
Yes or no?
Yes. We don't have the means to know so. Just like fish in the ocean don't know we exist, but we know they exist.
This can't be answered with any conviction. By that logic, we can be apply this infinitely many times: from the aliens perspective, they are also not aware of other aliens that know about their existence
It's aliens all the way up.
Of course, this 'yes' is a pretty loaded 'yes' even if I agree it's a possibility...
How do you know fish in the ocean don't know we exist?
(2019)
This is from a year ago, and seems to follow Betteridge's law.
There is far more interesting evidence of potential advanced intelligence in our system, such as the Nimitz encounter [0].
The New York Post put together a great video highlighting "The Phenomenon." If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSY2Zc0goQ
Edit: I don't mean to shake up anyone's fragile worldview. Comment instead of downvote; it's a fascinating subject to debate.
The New York Post put together a great video highlighting "The Phenomenon." If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSY2Zc0goQ
Edit: I don't mean to shake up anyone's fragile worldview. Comment instead of downvote; it's a fascinating subject to debate.
> If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special .
We know barely anything about Oumuamua, clearly not enough to decide what kind of object it is, even less about the Nimitz encounter and yet, based on two nothings, you are feeling confident enough to say that the would be civilization that build 'Oumuamua' is less advanced than the would be civilization that built the Nimitz object.
Jumping the gun a little bit are we?
We know barely anything about Oumuamua, clearly not enough to decide what kind of object it is, even less about the Nimitz encounter and yet, based on two nothings, you are feeling confident enough to say that the would be civilization that build 'Oumuamua' is less advanced than the would be civilization that built the Nimitz object.
Jumping the gun a little bit are we?
Isn't this all speculation by everyone? My reason for such speculation is that if the Oumuamua was actually a probe, the little information which we can observe from it (speed, size, trajectory changes) is plausible in terms of our current technology and understanding of physics. What was seen by the Nimitz is not.
Maybe Oumuamua was a carrier and something got off. It would make sense. It could also have been a spent deceleration stage. All speculation of course, since we just didn't get a good look.
Of course if whatever got off wants to ever go home it would need to set up shop somewhere and build a new multistage interstellar rocket. You could probably do that in the outer solar system and not be noticed.
People who dismiss UFO sightings have among other points argued that the small craft sighted are too small to have the kind of crazy propulsion systems required for interstellar flight. That makes sense, but why assume those are interstellar? A staged fusion rocket or something would make more sense. The small craft would be interplanetary scale.
Of course if whatever got off wants to ever go home it would need to set up shop somewhere and build a new multistage interstellar rocket. You could probably do that in the outer solar system and not be noticed.
People who dismiss UFO sightings have among other points argued that the small craft sighted are too small to have the kind of crazy propulsion systems required for interstellar flight. That makes sense, but why assume those are interstellar? A staged fusion rocket or something would make more sense. The small craft would be interplanetary scale.
> it was noticed that the object had now dropped from 28,000 feet to near sea level in less than a second.
Surely something accelerating to Mach 25 in atmosphere in less than a second would have made a hell of a sound.
Surely something accelerating to Mach 25 in atmosphere in less than a second would have made a hell of a sound.
In all seriousness it sounds like a shadow projected onto a stratus cloud. It's somewhat non-intuitive to people that shadows do not grow in size with distance in the air. A 747 casts a 747 sized shadow onto clouds since the sun is so far away its light rays are all effectively parallel.
One thing that does happen to shadows is they get blurred at the edges (an aircraft won't completely cover the sun at a distance). An aircraft will tend to cast a vaguely "T" shaped shadow at a distance that's roughly the size of the aircraft. I can see a "t" shaped object in these images.
Here's a video of a test flight of the Vahana aircraft. https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188
See the mysterious "t" shaped shadow it's casting? It moves erratically and doesn't match intuition of a shadow since shadows from the sun don't work the same way as indoors due to the parallel rays. You get these same shadows projected onto clouds as well.
The real kicker is that in these videos they both show and report that the shadow rotates when the aircraft turns! Like guys what the fuck do you think it is? Haha oh dear.
One thing that does happen to shadows is they get blurred at the edges (an aircraft won't completely cover the sun at a distance). An aircraft will tend to cast a vaguely "T" shaped shadow at a distance that's roughly the size of the aircraft. I can see a "t" shaped object in these images.
Here's a video of a test flight of the Vahana aircraft. https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188
See the mysterious "t" shaped shadow it's casting? It moves erratically and doesn't match intuition of a shadow since shadows from the sun don't work the same way as indoors due to the parallel rays. You get these same shadows projected onto clouds as well.
The real kicker is that in these videos they both show and report that the shadow rotates when the aircraft turns! Like guys what the fuck do you think it is? Haha oh dear.
These were IR videos, and the whole area was restricted airspace.
Yes and all light casts shadows IR included. Take a look at any video of a plane casting a shadow onto clouds. eg. https://youtu.be/Vr_kYmUaykw?t=7
Notice the similarities? The halo and the matching of the recording planes movements which are explicitly mentioned in this.
Notice the similarities? The halo and the matching of the recording planes movements which are explicitly mentioned in this.
[deleted]
Yes but the IR locked onto a higher temperature source, not cooler. My understanding is that a shadow would be cooler.
Other remaining factors include that:
- Primary radars on both fighters in the initial pass were being jammed
- Passive radars on the Nimitz were what directed the planes to this spot initially
- It was approximately 9:30-10 PST, so any shadow from <40k feet would be coming from restricted airspace
- Multiple visual contacts from multiple angles, including from slightly below/ to the side
This one is pretty difficult to explain in conventional terms, unless you think it's all a hoax. Pretty fascinating stuff, huh?
Other remaining factors include that:
- Primary radars on both fighters in the initial pass were being jammed
- Passive radars on the Nimitz were what directed the planes to this spot initially
- It was approximately 9:30-10 PST, so any shadow from <40k feet would be coming from restricted airspace
- Multiple visual contacts from multiple angles, including from slightly below/ to the side
This one is pretty difficult to explain in conventional terms, unless you think it's all a hoax. Pretty fascinating stuff, huh?
Apparently they were being picked up on radar as well tho.
It explicitly says they were not picking up the recorded object in that linked Wikipedia article.
"When the jet fighters arrived on site, the crew of four saw nothing in the air nor on their radar"
So there's some mysterious radar pickup on the boats but the pilots then chase their own shadow and record it.
The real kicker is this part
"As Fravor further descended, he reported that the object began ascending along a curved path, maintaining some distance from the F-18, mirroring its trajectory in opposite circles. Fravor then made a more aggressive maneuver, plunging his fighter to aim below the object, but at this point the UFO accelerated and went out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots "pretty weirded out"."
That's a literal shadow!
"When the jet fighters arrived on site, the crew of four saw nothing in the air nor on their radar"
So there's some mysterious radar pickup on the boats but the pilots then chase their own shadow and record it.
The real kicker is this part
"As Fravor further descended, he reported that the object began ascending along a curved path, maintaining some distance from the F-18, mirroring its trajectory in opposite circles. Fravor then made a more aggressive maneuver, plunging his fighter to aim below the object, but at this point the UFO accelerated and went out of sight in less than two seconds, leaving the pilots "pretty weirded out"."
That's a literal shadow!
A slow reply... but I didn't read that article, I was assuming it was the same one from this pilot's testimony on joe rogen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ
The pilot was saying that the ship had been picking up unknown objects on radar for a while before that experience.
The pilot was saying that the ship had been picking up unknown objects on radar for a while before that experience.
I'm definitely extremely skeptical about whether or not its true, but the theory being argued for the nimitz sighting is that it bends space in front of and behind the craft for propulsion, but not sure what that would mean for sonic booms. It's kind of like putting a bowling ball on a bed and pushing your hand down in front of the ball and pulling up on the bed behind it to move the ball. Again, I'm very skeptical about it.. but it seems potentially plausible. This joe rogan episode where he interviews a navy pilot was pretty interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ
On the Southern California West Coast, especially, in the 80s and 90s, sonic booms were quite regular.
Even if one were to assume the phenomenon in question was an advanced craft of some kind, an extraterrestrial origin is still among the least likely explanations.
How did you come up with probabilities? It seems to me that probability becomes unhelpful and it's either 0 or 1, once we've ruled out everything for which we have reliable known probabilities.
A terrestrial foreign superpower's technology seems like a plausible explanation at first if we can assign probabilities to them being more advanced than us (probably low but non-negligible). That would be compelling if this were the first reliable sighting of its kind (or if it didn't already occur 15 years ago), but apparently such sightings have been actively studied by the US gov for a few decades before this, so it seems quite impossible they would have had the capability in the pogrom/hard labor days, assuming there is some relation between current sightings and those happening decades ago.
A terrestrial foreign superpower's technology seems like a plausible explanation at first if we can assign probabilities to them being more advanced than us (probably low but non-negligible). That would be compelling if this were the first reliable sighting of its kind (or if it didn't already occur 15 years ago), but apparently such sightings have been actively studied by the US gov for a few decades before this, so it seems quite impossible they would have had the capability in the pogrom/hard labor days, assuming there is some relation between current sightings and those happening decades ago.
Even considering the most improbable scenarios, terrestrial explanations have one incredibly significant advantage: we know that intelligent life already exists here.
When you consider the, quite literally, astronomical distances involved in interstellar travel and the corresponding time and resources required, combined with having no data whatsoever to suggest that advanced intelligent life exists anywhere within our galactic neighborhood, aliens look like a pretty damned unlikely explanation.
Hell, it's more likely there's some Wakanda-like hidden advanced human civilization somewhere around here, or maybe a non-human one that inhabits our deep oceans or something. Even less likely than that is some form of time travel from future humans which, again, is still more likely than aliens because we know with certainty that human beings exist on Earth.
When you consider the, quite literally, astronomical distances involved in interstellar travel and the corresponding time and resources required, combined with having no data whatsoever to suggest that advanced intelligent life exists anywhere within our galactic neighborhood, aliens look like a pretty damned unlikely explanation.
Hell, it's more likely there's some Wakanda-like hidden advanced human civilization somewhere around here, or maybe a non-human one that inhabits our deep oceans or something. Even less likely than that is some form of time travel from future humans which, again, is still more likely than aliens because we know with certainty that human beings exist on Earth.
I don't think you can compare two completely unknown probabilities and make those conclusions. We also know that life has evolved on ~20% of well-known planets in the "habitable zone," are there are believed to be about 4e10 such planets in our galaxy. Even with a proper equation improving on the Drake equation and taking into account more factors about the composition of such planets and stars, can we really believe there is no life? Furthermore, as a relatively young planet and an extremely young civilization on a cosmic timeframe, could we really be the most advanced in our galaxy? Even with near-current technology, a civilization could traverse galactic distances on a reasonable cosmic timeframe. Given these points and the strange evidence we are trying to make sense of, it seems like the most logical conclusion to me.
I did not say no life, but rather no advanced intelligent life. Life itself may not be detectable at this distance, but the kind of civilization that can manage to cross interstellar space? Given the timescales involved, any civilization more advanced than our own is likely to have been so for millions of years. It seems very unlikely that such a civilization could exist throughout that period and not leave evidence of it. Where are the Dyson swarms? Resource mining probes? Grey-goo planets from failed nano-tech experiments? Such incredible engineers over so much time would have attempted some kind of extreme-scale projects that we'd see.
Sure, there are a lot of reasons one can imagine that make that untrue, but the point isn't that it is impossible, but rather that there are other explanations that are significantly more likely even though they themselves are unlikely.
We have 0 examples and 0 evidence of advanced alien intelligence. We have rock solid proof of human intelligence on earth, and several examples of magical-seeming technology in the hands of some of its people and not others.
And again, this argument is predicated on the rather debatable assumption that the phenomena in question is indeed a craft of some kind. We have a ludicrous number of examples of human beings ascribing natural phenomena to magic and/or aliens.
Sure, there are a lot of reasons one can imagine that make that untrue, but the point isn't that it is impossible, but rather that there are other explanations that are significantly more likely even though they themselves are unlikely.
We have 0 examples and 0 evidence of advanced alien intelligence. We have rock solid proof of human intelligence on earth, and several examples of magical-seeming technology in the hands of some of its people and not others.
And again, this argument is predicated on the rather debatable assumption that the phenomena in question is indeed a craft of some kind. We have a ludicrous number of examples of human beings ascribing natural phenomena to magic and/or aliens.
Technically that 20% applies to both life and intelligent life. Of course I'm just playing devil's advocate -- there would certainly be fewer instances of intelligent life than life. We believe it took >4 billion years for intelligent life to evolve whereas life took hold pretty much immediately upon planet cooling. But it did happen, and we have a number of species of different Orders that are somewhat intelligent and able to use tools (crows, octopi, primates, dolphins), and it only took us ~5 million years, the ability to free our hands to manipulate things, and some natural disasters to get from where they are to where we are.
As you suggested, it is unlikely that a futurist from a newborn civilization would accurately predict what a million (or billion) years old advanced civilization would actually do, and I am also legitimately unaware of whether we have any reason to believe that such projects would be visible when we can barely make out the closest planets outside our solar system (and only indirectly via math). Or if someone blotted out an entire star, how would we know? We use a term called dark matter to fill in the 75% of the universe that we can't describe in conventional terms. As some people posit on this subject, do animals in a nature preserve know they are in a nature preserve? Doesn't look much different than their world did thousands of years ago aside from occasional ufo's flying overhead (planes) unless they stray toward the edges/out of the solar system.
Btw, I would have been one of the skeptics writing these comments three years ago pre-Nimitz release (in fact, if you go back far enough in my HN history I found some comments saying that if there was a greater intelligence it would just ignore us LOL https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lend000&next=1418634...). If you study this incident and a whole plethora of other phenomena with an open mind, you'll find some pretty damn fascinating things from various places with different agendas and levels of credibility (it is certainly not 0 evidence) with significant implications.
As you suggested, it is unlikely that a futurist from a newborn civilization would accurately predict what a million (or billion) years old advanced civilization would actually do, and I am also legitimately unaware of whether we have any reason to believe that such projects would be visible when we can barely make out the closest planets outside our solar system (and only indirectly via math). Or if someone blotted out an entire star, how would we know? We use a term called dark matter to fill in the 75% of the universe that we can't describe in conventional terms. As some people posit on this subject, do animals in a nature preserve know they are in a nature preserve? Doesn't look much different than their world did thousands of years ago aside from occasional ufo's flying overhead (planes) unless they stray toward the edges/out of the solar system.
Btw, I would have been one of the skeptics writing these comments three years ago pre-Nimitz release (in fact, if you go back far enough in my HN history I found some comments saying that if there was a greater intelligence it would just ignore us LOL https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=lend000&next=1418634...). If you study this incident and a whole plethora of other phenomena with an open mind, you'll find some pretty damn fascinating things from various places with different agendas and levels of credibility (it is certainly not 0 evidence) with significant implications.
> it is certainly not 0 evidence
It is evidence of something going on that we do not understand. That does not immediately mean aliens any more than it immediately means magic or god.
It is evidence of something going on that we do not understand. That does not immediately mean aliens any more than it immediately means magic or god.
Perhaps they are all the same thing ;)
Skepticism is important to keep discussion grounded, and I appreciate the level headed discussion. To me, finding something that breaks our understanding of reality is just as interesting and worth pursuing aggressively regardless of which of the above explanations is most correct.
Skepticism is important to keep discussion grounded, and I appreciate the level headed discussion. To me, finding something that breaks our understanding of reality is just as interesting and worth pursuing aggressively regardless of which of the above explanations is most correct.
On that point I would agree, and the speculation is fun, but it is useful to keep in mind that explanations for mysterious events are almost always boring and mundane.
The most likely explanation for me is a disinformation campaign on the part of the US government, and that these events never actually happened.
Must be the case that
p(two independent alien visits) >> p(single alien visit)^2
p(two independent alien visits) >> p(single alien visit)^2