This is fun!
Assumption: wearing a pancake on your head can be fatal.
I think the fact I’m still alive is fairly good proof of this.
Assumption; you are silly silly people.
No wait, that one is true. 
Well that’s not completely true. We’ve peeked at some regions in the EM spetrum between 1662 kHz and 1420 MHz. Project Phoenix
will be replaced by the Allen Telescope Array
Mind you that would be microwave SETI. Optical SETI isn’t a new idea but is only recently being aggressively pursued. The Planetary Society is currently unding 4 groups.
Gravity waves as a means of communication might be possible but sine LIGO and the other are hoping to catch merging neutron stars and black hole births, I think that line of investigation is incredibly new.
Even moving past the methods of investigation, our reach to date has been out to at most 100-200 lys. Hardly a useful sample size, unless the galaxy is teaming with intelligent life.
I don’t really believe that. If there is a galactic society they could kick our asses in microseconds, so even if we are aggressive I doubt they’d mind. Besides, they would probably intervene to make us less aggressive isntead of ignoring us until we stop being aggressive.
Besides, we aren’t ‘that’ aggressive. I don’t think so at least, there are 192 nations on earth and there are a handful of military campaigns going on right now.
This also assumes aggression is universal or bad. For all we know aggression is a side effect of our evolution. We need to kill to live due to the way evolution made us, perhaps this is the core of aggression. If there are other societies maybe even their animals (assuming they have animals) use solar energy for fuel instead of killing each other. If so they may not even have the ability or desire to be aggressive since it would never be necessary. Then again maybe they are super aggressive, who knows.
I think long-term, complex and diverse evolution without predation is really really unlikely, without competition, it’s impossible.
It seems to me that most ppl are assuming that the evolutionary path that humans have followed, is the same one that every other being in the universe has travelled down.
The path and result we have reached so far is just one of an infinite set of possibilities and I see no reason to assume that most would necessarily result in a self centered and arrogant race such as Homo Sapiens. This is obviously possible as we have managed it, but isn’t it also conceivabe that this evolution is not common?
What I am suggesting is that beings that evolve along a similar path as ourselves are monitored (as it seems we have been) and are only given access to the reality of the universe when thay have achieved a required level of equanimity as a race.
cheers
Brownie
Got pushed around a lot in high school, did you?
No, not at all
Only a fool would think that. It’s logically impossible.
What about our species (not “race”) is any more self centred or arrogant than any other? All species of life have exactly the same purpose, goal, and motivation; to reproduce themselves.
There have been countless numbers of species that have lived and died on this planet for close to a billion years. You’ve noted the lack of a planet filled with self effacing, humble Alan Aldas.
Likely they were eaten.
Well damn it man tell us. What is this evidence that we’re being monitored? Unless the evidence of it, is that we have no evidence of it, so therefore it must be true.
Truth be told, I find the concept that humans are too evil to join the galactic community as unsatisfying as the concept that humans will be the salvation of the galactic community (i.e. because we have “the human spirirt” or some such crap). Either way, it suggest a lack of modesty, with the latter saying the universe needs us and the former saying we’re bad to the bone, baby.
Certainly it’s concievable that a species could settle down into completely peaceful existence once they’ve clawed their way to the top of the pile and then attained a sufficient level of intelligence and technology to accomplish it, but evolution itself can’t occur without some process of competitive selection.
Generally speaking, in evolution the meek don’t inherit the earth, they provide a tasty snack for the others who are seizing the earth. This isn’t just coincidence, it’s an essential part of the reason that evolution works.
This is based on the assumption that the aliens share 21st century western values, which probably isn’t likely since our entire value system is in some form or another tied into our evolutionary biology. Secondly, even though we are capable of being an evil race, we have done alot of good. Half the world’s nations are liberal democracies, billions of lives have been saved by agricultural technology and medical innovation which was invented by people who wanted to make a difference, and the list goes on. here in the US virtually all of our tax money goes to helping people out or protecting people instead of building churches and palaces for our leaders. The idea that we are some kind of evil race makes little sense to me. We have Hitlers and Stalins, but we also invent vaccines for mumps and find ways to increase crop yeilds to prevent starvation. Hell Maurice Hilleman saved more lives with his vaccines and medical research than Hitler and Stalin ended combined. At least 10x more lives than they ended. If there are aliens, they’d look at things like that just as much as our propensity for war.
If they’re smart aliens, they’ll ignore the whole body-count statistics thing and establish urgent relations with Earth. Why? Because we have chocolate.
I have read, of course I can’t remember where, that as a civilization becomes more advanced it gains the ability to be 100% efficient. That is to say that any radio communications that ‘they’ are using is only for their communications and they aren’t spraying their spam out in to the universe at large the way we do. IIRC, I have read that in conjunction with the Drake equation.
Wow, 100% efficient! Isn’t that sort of like perpetual motion? I can understand tight beam radio communication but the kind only detectable by the intended recipient? I mean if its Radio its radio right? We can detect Radio. We might not recognize it or understand it, we might night even be able to distinguish it from background radiation, but we could detect it.
I for one welcome our insect overlords…
Speculating on the existence of Alien Intelligence is a bit like speculating on the existence of God. Such speculations reveal more about the speculator’s desires and beliefs than they do about reality. In both cases we have no evidence to make any descision either way.
I’ve heard astronomers say that we are alone because of the very specific conditions necessary for life to be: A “sweet spot” not too far or close to a star, a large moon, a friendly gas giant to suck up life killing asteroids etc. etc. Other astronomers use the Copernican heuristic and the vast number of stars to say that complex alien life must exist. I say split the difference. Life, including intelligent technological life is probably out there, but it is vanishingly rare. Maybe one or two civilizations to a galaxy. Of course I could be completely wrong about this. Who knows?
In any event, if we do find an alien intelligence out there it’s going to be, well, alien. It may very well have completely different basic standards for dealing with reality itself, let alone ethics and politics. One book that deals with the difficulty of communicating with a truly alien intelligence is Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Check it out (and ignore both movies, which miss the point entirely).
No, not quite. It means either only ultra-tight beams such that leakage is minimal, or leaked but perfectly efficient coding, which is indistinguishable from noise.
Of course these are possible, but there would still be centuries-worth of imperfect leaky transmissions pinging around the galaxy and, again, asking me to believe that another entire civilisation is perfectly well aware of Earth’s life (via methane and oxygen spectrocopic signatures) and even intelligence (from military radar or that single 1974 Arecibo beam) but nobody and nothing in it directs any EM structure towards us is quite a stretch.
I don’t think 100% efficiency is even necessarily desirable in terms of electromagnetic communication - some things just work better/more easily when they are broadcast - imagine the hassle of setting up a wireless network connection if you first had to arrange for a tight beam to be set up. Can anyone think of a better method than broadcasting for providing a wide range of audible entertainment into an indefinite number of moving vehicles?
Ok, so the aliens might not have wireless computer networking, drive-time radio entertainment, moving vehicles etc - but all of these are just individual cases of a general rule - if you want to exchange data by means of electromagnetic radiation to an indefinite number of recipients at indefinite locations, broadcasting is arguably most efficient, overall -when all factors are considered.
(bolding mine)
Dude whats in those brownies?
What posible evidence can you offer to suggest that we have been monitored?
That other beings evolve on a similar path?
That they are monitored?
That there is something out there to monitor them and us?
That the monitors would value what you call equanimity?
That THEY could stop us from kicking their alien buts?
Is your OP qualitativly different than one that states I believe in Flying Pink Unicorns?
Can Tin Foil Hats be mentioned (in a friendly way) in this forum?
I don’t have any idea if alien intelligence is out there, but I fail to see any logic in your reasoning. In fact the nature of the OP seems to be more appropriate to IMHO or MPSIMS. You offer opinion and speculation I fail to see any fact for debate?