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The "Great Silence"

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For anyone whos ever asked why no whitehouse lawn scenario, this is a must read
Indeed ive read it twice now and highly recommend it
 
I find the same problem over and over again in these studies. A lot of effort goes into calculating the probabilities that there is intelligent life and then the question is asked "So why aren't they here?". If you didn't catch the problem, it's the loaded question which carries with it the implied answer that they've never been here. To justify that answer, it's the same old routine. Ignore evidence that is contrary to their thesis and apply the "absence of evidence equals evidence of absence" filter ( another flawed argument ) to draw a conclusion. By wrapping it all up in scientific jargon and numbers and presenting it as science against alien visitation, it is accepted as "scientific". However, if this were a pro UFO paper it would be cited as pseudoscience without anyone blinking an eye. The question we should be asking isn't why aren't they here, but why are they here. Or at least, why have they been here in the not too distant past.
 
I'll let David respond

I’ve heard that you have a list of over a hundred possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox. Could you talk about that?
The Fermi Paradox is the perplexing question of why we’ve seen no indications that advanced civilizations ever sailed the interstellar sea. Alas, usually, whenever this comes up, all the smart guys—from Paul Davies and Michio Kaku to Stephen Hawking—tend to pick one explanation and say, “This is it, obviously!” I don’t see the purpose served by that. I mean, why leap to conclusions in the only scientific topic without any subject matter?

It’s far, far better and more useful to catalog these things, and so in my 1983 paper, I compiled about 70 explanations—(in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society—you can fetch it at davidbrin.com)—summarizing the dizzying array of explanations that have been proposed for The Great Silence. There have been about 30 or 40 more, since then. But all suffer from various flaws.

My favorite, that might reduce the numbers a whole lot, without being horribly pessimistic, is the water worlds hypothesis. It turns out that our Earth skates the very inner edge of our sun’s continuously habitable—or “Goldilocks”—zone. And that may be anomalous. Circling so close to our sun, we might have an anomalously oxygen-rich atmosphere, and an unusually high 32 percent continental mass. In which case, creatures like us, with hands and fire and all that, could be rare. When we do build starships and head out there, perhaps we’ll find life worlds like Polynesia. Intelligent life forms, but they’re all dolphins, whales, squid, who could never build their own starships.
What a perfect universe for us! Lots of interesting neighbors but nobody could boss us around. We’ll be the voyagers, the Star Trekkers, and so on. Alas, most “Fermi explanations” are nowhere near as nice.

What do you think about the current approach to SETI, and is there anything you’d do differently?
Some recent research shows that the SETI Institute’s search strategy—using the Paul Allen radio telescope array to look for extra-terrestrial intelligent life—is brilliant, it’s clever . . . and designed entirely wrong to detect the kinds of messages alien cultures might send.
If ETs want to contact new tech races, they’re not likely to waste time and resources on gigantic beacons. They’ll know the thousand—or ten thousand, or fifty thousand—life worlds around them that have oxygen atmospheres. But the odds that any one of those has a shiny new civilization will be very small, at any one time. So they’ll just send a ping to each of them, once every hundred years—or maybe once a year—saying, “Is there anybody there yet?” Because that’s cheap to do.
Another option that I talk about in Existence is dispatching probes. Now, any one physical probe is going to be vastly more expensive than sending a radio ping. It’s costly to accelerate even a small package or bottle to ten percent of light speed with a laser. But once it arrives in the destination system, it can then wait for millions of years till—say—a tech civilization arises nearby. In contrast, a brief radio signal is cheap, but you have to keep sending them over and over across those millions of years.
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I think at heart hes a contact optimist, but his paper was well balanced and presented arguments for both sides
 
For the record i am 100 percent in the we are not alone camp.

That the universe is teeming with sophonts and some of it/them are visiting us

The paper asks why the silence, which in and of itself assumes there is someone being silent.

For those of us satisfied they are here, the next significant question is why the great silence ?

I'm firmly convinced the answers to some of those questions will bring us closer to understanding the core enigma itself.

The paper has some interesting speculation, from nursery worlds to keipur and morris's suggestion the "club" might choose not to contact beginners because this would vitiate the novice's usefulness as eventual members of the network.
Making us information consumers too early would spoil us as information providers whose unique experience would add richness to galactic culture.

Ive expanded that hypothesis to my own transbiological hypothesis as well.
That is that letting us experience our native biological existance un molested is essential to creation of the experiential data itself, which in turn is what gives it its richness/value to a post biological collective
 
So basically we are still not close to finding out anything. Back to square one or we could carry on crossing stuff of lists and crossing our fingers twiddling our thumbs.
 
Why the silence?

Well, what's the first thing an outsider meets when entering any national space, on ground or in the air?: Military.

E.g. we have documented cases like the Belgian case where the jet-pilots tried to get a missile-lock on the UFOs. Perhaps not to shoot down the UFO, but how would the UFO know that?

I think it's a tragedy if our military forces have signalled to possible visitors that visitors are targets by default, and that visitors see us as a threat they should stay away from at a safe distance. The mil. and the Cold War are guilty of the situation.

Disclaimer: If E.T. visitation is real, that is.. I haven't seen proof though there's lots of evidence.
 
nameless said:
So basically we are still not close to finding out anything. Back to square one or we could carry on crossing stuff of lists and crossing our fingers twiddling our thumbs.
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I've been milling about the same question for the past few days. My take after reading some of this is basically, contact will evolve naturally between species, if it's meant to be. Of course that doesn't mean we can't try to catch them in the act of whatever they're doing.

JimiH: Exactly. The more advanced our military weaponry gets, the more distance we place between us and our visitors.
 
RobDel said:
JimiH: Exactly. The more advanced our military weaponry gets, the more distance we place between us and our visitors.
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It may go the other way as well, as others have mentioned in other threads, the increase in sightings does seen to be connected to our step into the nuclear age (though there could be other reasons.) Also it could be these "advanced" civilizations may have very well gone through the same thing, possibly teetering on the edge before finding their way.

They didn't seen to find us as interesting when we were in the musket/flintlock age. I don't know what their mission statement is but I'm not so sure that step one starts with disengagement. If it is, I hope that bought a good long book with them. Like war and peace.
 
I can't fault any military from doing what it was put in place to do, protect its citizens. I would think that any intelligent race would know this. Even the lowest of creatures will protect themselves if they perceive a threat.

I don't think the solution is to advise all military to let their guard down if they see a foreign ship over their territory. Our description of what "advanced" is would be likely laughable to any supposedly advanced beings. If you possess stealth and the ability to transfer between different realities you pretty much own the advantage.

I agree Mike, we are not alone. I think that the process of "letting " as opposed to "controlling" is in fact the basis for what we have going on right now. We are part of a shielded existence IMHO, and this is entirely for our benefit.

I am more strongly in the camp that "they" are existing in our realm unseen,unless they are either allowed to be seen or choose to be. I think the data in looking at the stars speaks for itself.
 
starise said:
I can't fault any military from doing what it was put in place to do, protect its citizens. I would think that any intelligent race would know this. Even the lowest of creatures will protect themselves if they perceive a threat.

I don't think the solution is to advise all military to let their guard down if they see a foreign ship over their territory. Our description of what "advanced" is would be likely laughable to any supposedly advanced beings. If you possess stealth and the ability to transfer between different realities you pretty much own the advantage.

I agree Mike, we are not alone. I think that the process of "letting " as opposed to "controlling" is in fact the basis for what we have going on right now. We are part of a shielded existence IMHO, and this is entirely for our benefit.

I am more strongly in the camp that "they" are existing in our realm unseen,unless they are either allowed to be seen or choose to be. I think the data in looking at the stars speaks for itself.
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You have to wonder if a military is more interested in protecting- or rather obtaining said technology by blowing it out of the sky. We haven't seen any hostile intentions in regards to past encounters.. access to exotic technology could be a reason to "lock on target."
 
starise said:
I agree Mike, we are not alone. I think that the process of "letting " as opposed to "controlling" is in fact the basis for what we have going on right now. We are part of a shielded existence IMHO, and this is entirely for our benefit.

I am more strongly in the camp that "they" are existing in our realm unseen,unless they are either allowed to be seen or choose to be. I think the data in looking at the stars speaks for itself.
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I'm not so confident as to think that lack of any signal from space would indicate that it's devoid of intelligent life, there could be other reasons why they are blowing us off, or maybe the scientists manning ceti don't see the forest for the trees (I don't think this would be the cause though) but I pretty much concur with your feeling. As I've mentioned before if there is any life forms out there that has more or less to gain from our behavior, it is someone who shares the same space with us, not so much someone from the other side of the galaxy.
 
fundamentally we have to change how information in ufo field work is collated and maximise our attempts at gathering information globally. I was very heartened by a MUFON lady guest on the paracast who seemed to be looking around the simple nuts n bolts aspects too.

I think the sooner we start to develop as humans outside our paradigm the closer we get to answering questions we have been puzzling over for decades and not getting anywhere.

Maybe its not so much us waiting for a call from ET as ET is waiting for us to evolve enough to be able to speak with it. The sooner we take a more humble and less arrogant view in regards to our technological and cultural species mindset the better.

Seeing as the majority of the world is fighting each other over colour, creed, money and power and more people are motivated to just subsist, with technological advances only going to serve as metaphor or sooner show us the state of our cultural condition, we havent made much real progress as a species, progress that wasnt some materialist ego driven power struggle.
or to put it more simply;
 
nameless said:
... fundamentally we have to change how information in ufo field work is collated and maximise our attempts at gathering information globally ...
... The sooner we take a more humble and less arrogant view in regards to our technological and cultural species mindset the better.
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Good points ... great tune, and although I agree with the spirit of the above, I think it's also important not to underestimate ourselves. Certainly we don't want to be "arrogant" about our accomplishments and abilities, but at the same time, we don't want to fall victim to superstition and religion by resigning ourselves to thinking these mysteries are all beyond our comprehension. Personally, provided we are given enough accurate information in the proper context, I don't think that there is much that is beyond our comprehension. All the evidence suggests that everything in the universe boils down to a combination of a few basic building blocks. Apart from how many of these blocks there are and how they are organized, there isn't much more to figure out. Sure there are things so complex that we haven't mapped them all out yet, but that's not the point. A billion Lego blocks are still a billion Lego blocks. It's not beyond our comprehension. Whatever UFOs are made of is a material that has physical properties and that means they are made out of some combination of the same building blocks that make up everything else. Not knowing that combination doesn't make UFOs beyond our comprehension. It just means that how they are engineered isn't part of our knowledge base ( yet ).
 
Just for the record I haven't read the article yet, I plan on doing so when I have more time, but reading through the comments I wanted to at least partially address the idea that the cosmos must be empty, simply because we haven't heard anything yet. The idea itself is patently ridiculous, a good comparison that I've heard would be taking a drinking glass, dipping it into the ocean and noting that because your glass doesn't contain any whales or dolphins, that must mean they don't exist. In essence our sample size is so miniscule compared to the vastness of space that drawing any conclusions from the fact that we haven't heard from aliens yet is just plain silly. We've only been transmitting radio waves on a large scale for something like 75-80 years, so any potential civilization would have to be within 75-80 light years to pick up our signal at this point. When you combine that with the fact that we've only been listening for something like 40-50 years, it's no surprise that we haven't heard from anything yet. The cosmos itself is so vast that it's almost impossible to fully comprehend, I don't think there's any chance at all that we're the only intelligent life in the universe, much less the only life period.

Another thing to keep in mind is that radio was invented in 1895 and like I said earlier we've only had large, long range broadcasts for the past 75-80 years, which is a miniscule blip when compared with the time that there has been some form of life on this planet. How many civilizations out there could potentially be in their equivalent versions of the Roman Empire, or the Dark Ages? As long as it took us to develop technology on this planet there may be factors on other planets that would make it take even longer. We'll likely never know until we figure out a better method than simply waiting around to be contacted via radio signals. In any case, it's way too early to draw any solid conclusions, give it time. I'm fairly certain (even though it is admittedly only a guess based on several different factors) that there's another civilization out there somewhere, floating through the vast darkness of the cosmos, wondering why they haven't heard from us yet, it's just a matter of time before one of us is paying attention at the exact right moment in order to find out that we are not alone.
 
spookymulder said:
I'm not so confident as to think that lack of any signal from space would indicate that it's devoid of intelligent life, there could be other reasons why they are blowing us off, or maybe the scientists manning ceti don't see the forest for the trees (I don't think this would be the cause though) but I pretty much concur with your feeling. As I've mentioned before if there is any life forms out there that has more or less to gain from our behavior, it is someone who shares the same space with us, not so much someone from the other side of the galaxy.
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Judging by how we treat out own planet - and our own species - I wouldn't blame any intelligent life out there for wanting to avoid contact with us. I tend to see humanity as some sort of space-herpes that's highly contagious and will only lay waste to whatever foreign bodies we meet, whether it's a planet or another species.

I also question the logic of sending out some sort of "Hey there, we're just now discovering space and this is out absolute best technology" greeting to whatever other forms of space-herpes are out there. It's kind of like me placing a sign on my front yard that states, "I leave all of my doors and windows unlocked and my best weapon is a slingshot," all in the hopes that someone might be nice and drop off a care package. It's entirely possible other advanced forms of life have laid waste to their own natural resources and are looking for other places to pillage. If we treat our own planet as if we're a bunch of murderous parasites, other species might not treat us or our planet any differently. While I would hope that advanced technology would bring advanced care and compassion, there's no guarantee that is a reality. We may be looking for Spock but we're just as likely to meet Borg.
 
Another aspect thats worth considering is the Synthetic Intellect aspect.

What is a Von Neumann Probe?

Paul Davies, a British-born theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and Co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, says in his new book The Eerie Silence that any aliens exploring the universe will be AI-empowered machines. Not only are machines better able to endure extended exposure to the conditions of space, but they have the potential to develop intelligence far beyond the capacity of the human brain.
"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."​
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If indeed this is the model we are dealing with, it may well explain the silence, to a Synthetic intellect our biological reality may well place us well down the ladder of importance.

To such entitys who may have experienced 1000's of years of contiguous mental uptime, we never mature. we are born as children and on average get to dance around the sun less than 100 times before poof, and we are gone, all the information lost.

Even after we develop the technology to upload our minds onto synthetic substrates, it may be 1000's of years before we have minds deemed old enough to be considered up to scratch.

A species that measures its seniority in terms of individual minds that have existed for 10's of thousands of years, may well look down its (simulated) nose at such as us. Mayfly sentients still trapped in phase one of sentience and its biological limits
 
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