Where are the aliens? Fermi Paradox.

[Ouroboros]

You may be right. It should be possible to discuss them in scientific terms I would have thought. 

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Delasaurus said:

Well they are historical texts that do have a long standing and following. Not made up yesterday on the internet by a suedo author. They've been around for a very long time.

No, there is no moving present in the idea that past, present and future are one and the same. The present is always the present and combined moment of all three.

We must respect the code of conduct so, to take a safe example, the works of Nostradumus have been around for a long time as well and some very creative translating is needed to make them even slightly remarkable... Equally the celestial machanics of Ptolemy survived for a long time, as did the physics of Aristotle, both having a faithful following in well known circles. But they are wrong. Personally I don't care how old or venerated an idea might be. Absolutely anything, good, bad or indifferent grows old over time and will survive if not questioned. The great thing about science is that it does question itself, in perpetuity. In fact as science has aged it has, it seems to me, developed an ever-better grasp of its own ways. This has come about through the discipline of History of Science. There is a clear desire amongst scientists to break either the Standard Model or General Relativity in order to make progress.

I don't think it's the best tool for all purposes but I do think it provides the best framework within which to consider the possibility/probability/possible nature of alien life.

Olly

[Moonshane]

I think that's exactly the point Olly. The current scientific theories, models, prognoses, facts or whatever are all current until something 'better' that is supported by evidence comes along. It's a bit like walking in the Lakes. You get to the top of a hill and guess what's on the horizon? Another flipping hill.

[Delasaurus]

4 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Could you tell us what these texts are please? 

Sorry I can't for reasons that Moonshane has pointed out. All I can say is that there are parts of the text which mathematically make very interesting reading and are very close to Einsteins theory of relativity. And as I previously said he was apparently a scholar of these texts.

[Alien 13]

I do think that the Universe with the added benefit of an intelligent species is a game changer, we can make compounds and materials that could never exist with natural processes alone. It might be that all intelligent organic life is just a stepping stone to new life forms based on technology, evolution (natural selection) after all works just as well be it stone tools or computers.

Alan

[ollypenrice]

The 'bouncing universe' is hardly a new idea and surely has the same academic credentials as the heat death or big crunch universes?

Olly

[Delasaurus]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

The 'bouncing universe' is hardly a new idea and surely has the same academic credentials as the heat death or big crunch universes?

Olly

What they are saying is that due to the 5th dimension, parallel worlds are created. Which is quite an important aspect over the normal bang, crunch theory, which only deals with a single world.

The other aspect is that it deals with cyclical birth , birth, death, rebirth which is pertinent to some other texts, that model life.

'The branes were then flung apart, with one carrying our universe and the other the parallel universe that is a mirror image of our own. '

Which when you think about it, is a close resemblance to particles that appear where they shouldn't and particles that should be there when they aren't.

[Ouroboros]

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

I do think that the Universe with the added benefit of an intelligent species is a game changer, we can make compounds and materials that could never exist with natural processes alone. It might be that all intelligent organic life is just a stepping stone to new life forms based on technology, evolution (natural selection) after all works just as well be it stone tools or computers.

Alan

Yes, or genetically modified organisms or life forms designed and built from scratch.  It has been suggested that if we ever come across intelligent alien species they will most likely be cyborgs, robots, synthetic intelligences. 

[Ouroboros]

Intelligence is a peculiar thing isn't it!  Is it inherently limited or is there no upper limit? 

[Alien 13]

9 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Intelligence is a peculiar thing isn't it!  Is it inherently limited or is there no upper limit? 

Intelligence develops tools, I expect in us humans its stayed constant for many thousands of years but now we have books, computers and the internet so that ability to change/discover things has grown exponentially.

Alan

[Ouroboros]

53 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

Intelligence develops tools, I expect in us humans its stayed constant for many thousands of years but now we have books, computers and the internet so that ability to change/discover things has grown exponentially.

Alan

Those things are just ever better tools. I'm not sure our basic thinking power has improved much for thousands of years. 

[Delasaurus]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

Intelligence is a peculiar thing isn't it!  Is it inherently limited or is there no upper limit? 

It's limited by the capacity and lifetime required to apply it...thus, us old gits go backward in intelligence until we hit senile delinquency, and return as baby's once more...the birth,life,death cycle. Where the foolishness of youth returns again but to graze on the field of wisdom and fall into one's own black hole of truth!

[Stub Mandrel]

I can't see how a mirror image can exist with quantum uncertainty.

Every religion since Ug Caveman has 'cycles of birth, death and rebirth'...

[Ouroboros]

2 minutes ago, Delasaurus said:

It's limited by the capacity and lifetime required to apply it...thus, us old gits go backward in intelligence until we hit senile delinquency, and return as baby's once more...the birth,life,death cycle. Where the foolishness of youth returns again but to graze on the field of wisdom and fall into one's own black hole of truth!

That was not the sort of thing I had in mind.  We always assume don't we that alien intelligences could be more intelligent than us. But if evolution by natural selection effectively stops at some point, as it may have done for humans, so will the evolution of intelligence. 

It's possible that we might synthetically enhance our intelligence ..... and that is where my question kicks in. Is there a limit to the power of intelligence?  

[Delasaurus]

1 hour ago, Ouroboros said:

That was not the sort of thing I had in mind.  We always assume don't we that alien intelligences could be more intelligent than us. But if evolution by natural selection effectively stops at some point, as it may have done for humans, so will the evolution of intelligence. 

It's possible that we might synthetically enhance our intelligence ..... and that is where my question kicks in. Is there a limit to the power of intelligence?  

Well I suppose, the problem is, as I've said before, that apart from the Turing test and IQ tests, there is no real benchmark or definitive for intelligence. Culturally, we have praised cleverness and intelligence, we are sent to schools and universities to celebrate our cleverness and we get badges and certificates that proclaim how clever we are. Now if we take my own personal story with that of autism, then supposedly my intelligence is that to the effect of being very below average intelligence. However, in certain areas I seem to excell, in math as a kid I could give you the answer before the teacher had finished writing the equation up. In other areas I find it difficult to express certain ideas which causes a profound amount of difficulty in communicating ideas etc.. So to many folk I appear as being a bit of a [removed word] or eccentric or both!  My brain functions in other ways to most peoples. But on the other hand I possess a ticket giving me a benchmark brain score putting me in the top 2%.

So what does that all mean relating to intelligence? Obviously by some of the returned comments in these threads...not a lot!  It shows that I could be praised that I have conformed to the social benchmark  of cleverness.  But on the other hand, ask me to do simple tasks that other people find no difficulty in doing whatsoever and I'm stumped! Common sense of Laurel and Hardy! I don't mind admitting it.

So within the standard benchmark of IQ tests, I should theoretically fail miserably. So I think that gives us some idea about the core values that define what is intelligent and what is not. I don't think high IQ's are particularly admirable. And I think the IQ test is a ridiculous means of establishing intelligence. Intelligence is much more than just being able to solve a set of problems in a certain time. It is about many factors way beyound logic such as judgement, ethics and morality.

If we write a computer programme, that allows for the code to be 'clever' in some way and be able to communicate in a way that is self-defined by the code, aka, the latest Google project, which apparently they had to shut down, then is it the machine that is being clever or intelligent or was it the programmer?

AI is a very interesting subject, does it inhance our intelligence or does it deny it? I think us humanbeings are generally pretty lazy creatures, we will take the shortest path possible, the path of least resistance if you like, when they can. So if AI becomes ingrained in our daily lives such as making stock market predictions and medical diagnosis, then the mind (in time) will begin to accept the given knowledge as fact. Google says we got the nastiest disease going..when in reality we have a cold!

In other words because the (synthetic intelligence) of the computer says it's true it must be true. And that is slowly creeping in to our lives. The ability to reason and challenge and the necessity to sensibly challenge will gradually drop off no doubt. So if that is the synthetic intelligence your refering to, then the answer is that it must surely limit our powers of reasoning and intelligence rather than enhance and increase our intellect.

Is there a limit to the power of intelligence? That's an awesome question! I suppose if we manage to get the seeds of AI right in the sense that it can self-duplicate the learning algorithm and apply it, then theoretically there should be no upper limit. My understanding is that most AI robots tend to rely on a central storage of knowledge that they can call upon. The danger is in the quality of the data they are calling up. To my mind that is not intelligence, that is simply being able to retrieve (albeit, dubious information from the Cloud without quantification) via a comprehensive trigger mechanism. Which once again appears to be intelligence. We might find that we need to redifine the Turing test.

Surely, the algorithmic code must be able to 'learn' from its own environment in order for it to perpetuate it's own intelligence if it's going to be of any real value?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Delasaurus]

Found this, might be of interest regarding survival of organisms tested in space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_microorganisms_tested_in_outer_space

[kirkster501]

Maybe the special relativity theory could yet to be proved flawed and in actual fact, if they wanted to, aliens could indeed travel at immense velocities faster than light.  We've only known about relativity for 100 years. This would add even more to the argument why aren't they here?

 

 

[Ouroboros]

Exactly. Same goes for time travel. If it's possible why aren't we constantly bumping into people/aliens from the future? Of course there's always the cop out which is that aliens don't choose to reveal themselves. 

And while we're on this .... you don't need to travel faster than the speed of light to make interstellar travel viable within the lifetimes of individuals. Traveling near light speed slows time for the traveller. At light speed no time passes at all for the traveller. You've just got to have the energy to reach such speeds!  

[Stu]

20 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

You've just got to have the energy to reach such speeds!  

.....and slow down again!!!!!  

[Ouroboros]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

.....and slow down again!!!!!  

As one alien said to the other as they set out at 0.99 c across the galaxy. "Duh! I knew there was something we'd forgotten to work out how to do." 

[leibek]

about the panspermia theorie we are the aliens with a higher technology someday we gonna be a multiplanetery species we gonna spread life every where  its matter of time,find  other life forms in Deep space will be a priority we are the explorers above all,exoplanetery is the future.robotics too.

long life and prosper.

thanks..

[Ravenous]

On ‎24‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 09:25, Stu said:

.....and slow down again!!!!!  

And dissipate the energy of atoms and dust hitting your front end at near-light speed... And deal with the heat from the microwave background being blue-shifted to relatively intense ultra violet... And.....(probably a million other problems)

[Pig]

The answer is we simply do not know ..... and anyone who claims intelligent life only exists here on Earth is sticking there neck out somewhat. Scientific theories change all the time and will continue to do so.

[laowhoo]

There's a lot here, but yeah, Fermi scribbled a quick back-of-an-envelope calculation much as did Laffer on a napkin to prove trickle-down economics, and even though no serious economist would consider it legit a copy of the napkin now resides in the Smithsonian. Question is, what parameters? Nevermind the difference that the slightest change to the cosmological constant would make for baryonic matter to even form, it seems that any change to/omission of any parameter would be disastrous (for us). (Yeah, I'm a weak-anthropic principle guy for statistics.) Crick said that statistically DNA should never have formed; geologists think that it was only the 10k feet high "churning tides" induced by our early moon that could have precipitated DNA formation; experiments with organic compounds from interstellar dust will form more and more complex amino acids under high pressures and heat (read meteorites and panspermia), and; check out the BBC's "Secret Life of Chaos" wherein the input of a very few parameters (logarithmic?) into a computer simulation will through several iterations produce a couple of foot-ballers running, catching, falling and resuming their play. Honestly, I gotta think Stephen Wright was right when he said that a conclusion is something you come to when you've stopped thinking. But it's the biases that confound me. If MY government suddenly said (as they allowed recently w/ that 2004 navy pilot sighting) that they had physical evidence of a UFO, I'd ask, "Oh yeah? Isotopes notwithstanding, show me something that isn't on our periodic table." And even then...

I'd like to ask a legitimate question. Why is SETI/Shostak's work considered maybe at least somewhat legit? Because he's a radio astronomer? So it's more about the method than anything else, to the disparaging of untold others (other methods, countless sightings, what have you)? And why does SETI even exist, other than to give an "acceptable" platform to our erstwhile countless experiences as a species? Honestly, shouldn't SETI be as ridiculed as the observers usually are? That's laughable.

But there is a way to meet "them." Ayahuasca. After Strassman concluded his DMT studies, he contacted David Deutsch to ask what, if anything, would be necessary to communicate across possible alternate dimensions/universes, so compelling were the unexplainable shared experiences of his subjects. Deutsch, to his "scientific" credit (and I do love David), answered, "a computer larger than this universe." Anybody seriously interested should at least read Jacques Vallee, but read his credentials first. Shostak wishes he were him.

 

[Pig]

Text removed, posted in the wrong topic ?