If you only have a sample size of one, I’d say that is pretty weak sauce.
And if we are going to use a sample size of one, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that any species who thinks and acts like we do is going to wipe themselves out long before they advanced to the point to where they can traverse the universe.
In order for them to achieve that point, they would have to think and act completely different than we do.
Weaker than a sample size of zero?
So, you are absolutely sure that we will wipe ourselves out?
I don’t think it’s quite that safe to assume that.
The difference between a sample size of one and a sample size of zero is infinitesimal. Especially when you have no idea how big the sample itself is.
Lol. Just look at the trajectory of humans since the industrial age. You really think we have a chance?
/Cfcs
/Leaded gasoline just to name a few.
Game theory has generally shown that working to one another’s mutual benefit is generally the strongest/dominant strategy in simulations.
And if we look at the vector of progress, among humans, as our ability to swap ideas and validate ideas has improved, we’ve reduced negative activities (war, slavery, murder, etc.) and we’ve strengthened our focus on things like preserving the landscape, finding more sustainable ways to do the same thing as we do today, etc.
If you track that vector forward by a few hundred, the safest expectation would probably be Gene Roddenberry’s Great Directive. But, unlike in Star Trek where they can’t help themselves from trying to interfere, we’d expect fairly strong adherence. As @Stranger_On_A_Train notes, we’re basically just ants. And, as such, there’s not much compulsion to interfere. Who cares what ants do?
The type of extraordinary claims that most
demand extraordinary evidence are those that require overturning our understanding of physical laws.
If you’re going to claim (for example) the existence of extraterrestrials that can’t be seen or detected by other human senses or technology, based on handwaving without rigorous proofs, you’ll be laughed at.
Homeopathy is an example of a “discipline” that’s never overcome that problem.
‘‘I worry that, especially as the millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive.’’
‘‘The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.’’
You mean increasing prosperity, lower poverty, less violence and war?
Yes, I do. You apparently think the chance is 0%. I have my worries, but I’m not as confident as you in the extinction of the human race.
You mean to name a few (is 2 a few?) things that we have addressed and solved?
If you’d said global warming or nuclear war, then at least I’d join in concerns about things that are still a concern.
But we would have to have something of value to them, or be an actual worry to them. Human societies always have one thing in common: consonant biology. Other humans are a concern because they might start misceginating with our people. The commonality is a major factor in how unfamiliar societies relate to each other.
Space aliens will almost certainly have different biology from us, so that lack of consonance would likely be a benefit to us. Chances are any interactions would be very limited, and social concerns like unsanctioned schtupping would not arise.
My feeling has always been that “they” will not be coming to us and grandly announcing themselves. If FTL of some sort is feasible, we will have to meet them on the level field of comparable technology.
I mean, just open Celestia, travel out a hundred light years, turn around and see if you can find your way back. We are an invisible point of light on the trailing edge of nowheresville, not even worth a hyperspace bypass.
I don’t think that example is fair to Sagan I read the Henry Hasse short story in Asimov’s collection of sci-fi of the 30s and IIRC it was based on the popular misconception at the time that atoms really were very much like miniature solar systems. Sagan was surely well aware that this is nonsense, and this is clearly not what he was referring to. ISTM he was invoking the much more abstract metaphysical idea that at some irreducible and impenetrable level of elementary particle there exist entire universes in an infinite regression, and that our own universe is just such a particle in a regression of infinitely larger ones.
This is pretty whimsical and almost certainly not subject to examination by any known scientific method, but is no more crazy than Everett’s “many worlds” hypothesis, which is not the same thing but equally unprovable.
Curious what you are basing this certainty on?
Bryson made some errors, but the book was certainly mostly right.
I thought this was pretty neat… when the new director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center was sworn in last week, she placed her hand on one of Sagan’s books.
And the proof that it was indeed extraterrestrial would be the “extraordinary” part separating that evidences from the run of the mill radio emissions in the universe.
Extraordinary doesn’t necessarily mean “sensationalistic”, after all.
The fundamental problem with trying to figure out how aliens would think, is that it’s a human doing the thinking. Fundamentally, we will always end up making an analogy with some mode of human thought, even if only to use it in contrast to how the aliens think.
A truly, fundamentally alien way of thinking is, almost by definition, impossible for any human to come up with. The day we meet an actual alien, we’ll either discover we have something in common, or we will be entirely blown away by something they say that literally no human ever even thought about before.
I have not comprehensively read the book but despite claims of having his research vetted by experts in every field he touches on, in even a cursory skim of a few chapters I found at least one error per page, many of them fundamental conceptual misstatements or citing quantities that were off by orders of magnitude in topics from planetology to evolutionary biology. I grew so frustrated in reading errors that could have been easily corrected by checking an encyclopaedia or reviewed by someone with even a general science education that I just gave up on it and put it back on the shelf.
Stranger
I found the idea strange, haunting and evocative.
A few of the professors in medical school were fond of saying “Half the stuff we teach you will be wrong. We just don’t know which half”.
As it turns out, most of what we learned still seems useful. A few ideas have been discredited. A lot more about some things is now known.
Of course Sagan wrote decades ago, made some errors, and our understanding of some things has improved. But these improvements were made by people standing on the shoulders of giants. Like Sagan - one of the clearest scientific communicators I can think of. Some people instead criticize trivial points, proving little. “If I could not see as far as other people, it was because giants were standing on my shoulders”.
I don’t think that Cosmos is a bad book. In fact, I think it’s a rather good book for introducing a young person to many basic ideas of science. (Although it’s not as good as Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie, which is the book that made me decide to become as scientist.) It’s just got a few silly things in it that distract from the best parts of the book. One of those things is the idea of infinite regression.
I mean, yes, but if aliens ever manage to reach here on their own, we’ll probably have a few things in common. First of all, they’ll have both a theoretical and applied concept of math, physics and chemistry - the universal languages. Second of all, they’ll be tool users. And third of all, because a single creature can’t build a starship by themselves, they’ll probably be social animals of some sort.
It’s not a lot, but it’s something.