Prove it, based on your knowledge of future technology and scientific discoveries.
You want me to prove that we won’t find intelligent life? That’s like asking me to prove that God doesn’t exist, isn’t it?
It would be enormously expensive to send out even one probe, assuming it was possible with available technology, and the senders would get exactly zero benefit from doing so.
Science-fiction aside, it isn’t easy to see why it woukd ever happen - let alone a sustained campaign of probes.
To my mind, it is entirely possible the universe is teeming with life, but we will never know about it.
I know what you mean, but we’re still talking about existing technology. The closest thing would be freezing someone but we still haven’t figured out how to avoid cellular crystallization.
That’s the thing about Von Neumann machines - you only need to make one.
No, I’m asking you to set a cap on the progress of human ingenuity.
Yes, assuming the tech exists, but why?
Some day we will go to Mars. We may, or may not, be able to return.
Who knows? We’re talking 500 years in the future here, maybe. It could be some kid’s doctoral thesis.
Erm, we’ve already sent probes out towards other star systems. And a little more than a century ago we didn’t even have fixed wing aircraft.
I think there are possible arguments for why a sentient species would not send probes, but cost is not one of them.
Yeah possible, of course.
Teeming with sentient life however, any more than a few thousand years development ahead of us…I think we would have seen some evidence of them. I think the paradox holds up here.
No, we’re not. Why would we be doing that?
The probes we sent were to observe our solar system and report back. That’s a clear benefit to us.
They left the solar system, but that was just a by-product of their task. By the time they actually reach another star, they will be so much intert junk.
The point is that sending out probes, assuming the laws of physics are as we imagine them to be, will be more or less pointless - the vast distances and huge times required to cover them pretty well insure a great disconnect between the senders and any possible recievers of information.
Sending out one or two probes would of course not have any paradox-enabling effect - you have to assume some sort of massive, sustained campaign of sending these things out by the millions, for a paradox to exist. It is difficult to imagine what the point would be. The senders will never receive answers.
Unless said sentient life forms were interested in sustained campaigns of probe-sending, which strikes me as a pretty big “if”. Most activities taken by the sentient beings we know of are undertaken with some sort of expectation of gain.
A further thought: there’s been life on Earth for ~4 billion years. That’s more than long enough for a meteor strike to have blasted some of Earth’s life into space and for it to have made the journey to another planetary system.
Well, one point at a time. Earlier you were saying it would be “enormously expensive to send out even one probe”. That’s what I was arguing against.
…or probes that hop from system to system and leave some record of their being there. Or self-replicating probes.
Well that logic should apply to us too, and yet we’ve sent probes out of the solar system at the absolute earliest opportunity. Yeah, they’re not very sophisticated, and they’ll probably collapse in a heap wherever they end up in X thousand years.
But it’s our first go at it. We’ve been doing this for mere decades.
I think what he’s asking is to your conviction that humanity, given an indefinite amount of time and unknown progression in technology and ingenuity will never reach the stars.
Such an absolutist view usually comes with some good arguments you must’ve arrived at?
It would be. Now multiply that by millions.
I suppose. But these would be even more pointless.
We haven’t sent probes out of the solar system for the purpose of exploring distant stars - we sent probes to explore our solar system, which happen, as a function of physics, to be on trajectories that take them out of the solar system. The reason we spend all that money was to explore our system, or as far as they could function, and report back.
My point is that there is no obvious return for the sender to send out probes for the express purpose of exploring the universe, as the senders will not get an answer. Maybe their distant descendants will.
Perhaps some species of intelligent life would consider such distant rewards worth it, but it is not entirely inconceivable that none would. For humans, exploration has generally been undertaken with the expectation of gain of some sort - if not cash money, at least scientific information or national glory.
I’d rather die than drink hot/warm milk, from any size container.
I guess I’m not boldly go material.
Besides, who knows how long people will live in the future?
Or maybe the omniscient AIs who’ll rule the planet in the year 2514 will take a longer view.
The distances are impossibly staggering to comprehend. This isn’t a journey across the Atlantic in three ships.
According to this newer article, the closest identified planet that might possibly contain life is 500 light years away. That’s 500 years traveling at the fastest speed possible, according to the theory of special relativity, although time dilation would shorten that time for the people on the ship. I doubt we will ever have the possibility to travel anywhere near the speed of light, although I have no proof for this. Some experts agree with me.
Or AIs could bear the long journey and using advanced biotechnology, seed a planet with life; be it using cloning, or some sort of DNA/embryo printer and artificial womb.
The possibilities are endless, and the technology, while sounding far-fetched now, isn’t all that improbable extrapolating into the future.