Ancient Aliens

[YellowSubmarine]

All of the above badly fail Occam's razor. That's why it's a paradox:

You can't fail the Occam's razor, it's not a rule that's always true, just a rule to use when you have no other. Every scientific discovery we have ever made has failed the Occam's razor at the time. Badly. If they didn't, there would be no use for science.

No matter how unlikely those scenarios are, each of them is decreasing the probability of the limited choice that either aliens aren't there or we would have met them. It is a false dichotomy – all the insignificant scenarios add up to something significant enough to not be ignored as an option.

There are millions of reasons why we wouldn't meet aliens even if they were all over the place, from insufficient telescope resolution to looking at the wrong places to pure chance.

One thing that would seem reasonable to expect is that if two civilizations became aware of each other, one of them would go extinct or one of them will push the other ahead, either by giving them technology directly or at least by inspiring them, thus transforming them into a more advanced one. The latter option might mean that the two civilizations merge, at least technologically.

That's kinda cool and funny, because under those assumptions there is a uncanny similarity between the expectation to be born in a civilization that has met aliens and a civilization that is in its middle age. Not only both assumptions are a result of your expectation to be average (and be outran by those aliens that you'd be meeting), but actually meeting them could transform you from a toddler stage to a middle aged one in a few centuries.

Both even seem logically equivalent, which means that we should expect to be extinct in a few hundred thousand years for much the same reason we expect that aliens are rare.

Valid conclusions actually, as long as the probability of experiencing each moment in the history of the universe is the same or very similar. What if the universe becomes more unlikely with each day, though? Say, for example that the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics is “true” and most “timelines” suffer from some kind of catastrophic event that leave the interesting ones more and more unlikely? Anything like this would be completely unobservable and unmeasurable by us, and I'm not completely convinced that it would be the more complex option that necessarily violates Occam's razor – we know nothing about the universe as an object, and we most likely never will.

100 million years is more than enough time to colonize the galaxy with ships only able of 0,1 lightspeed.

What are the energy requirements for that? Is the time necessary to rebuild the civilization at the next star system taken into account, which at 0.1 lightspeed is probably a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the travel time, and speeding it up would further increase the energy requirements for the trip?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If I could get rid of any two "laws" frequently cited on the Internet, they would definitely be Godwin's Law, and yes, Occam's Fucking Razor. "This explanation is complex, therefore it is wrong!" It encourages the absolute worst varieties of intellectual laziness.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

All of the above badly fail Occam's razor. That's why it's a paradox:

You can't fail the Occam's razor, it's not a rule that's always true, just a rule to use when you have no other. Every scientific discovery we have ever made has failed the Occam's razor at the time. Badly. If they didn't, there would be no use for science.

No matter how unlikely those scenarios are, each of them is decreasing the probability of the limited choice that either aliens aren't there or we would have met them. It is a false dichotomy – all the insignificant scenarios add up to something significant enough to not be ignored as an option.

Occam's razor is a scientifical law, not an 'internet law'.
Is says that the simplest explanation is likely - aka most often, correct.
And "every scientific discovery we have ever made" did not fail Occam's razor badly. NOT EVEN CLOSE - in most cases, the scientific breakthrough presented a simpler way to account for the observed phenomena.

In the case of Fermi's paradox, the simplest explanation is that abiogenesis is very rare, followed by evolution of intelligence is very rare.

You want to believe very improbable "explanations" based on truck loads of assumptions?
Be my guest. Doesn't change the fact of them being improbable.

There are millions of reasons why we wouldn't meet aliens even if they were all over the place, from insufficient telescope resolution to looking at the wrong places to pure chance.

Only if ALL - EVERY SINGLE ONE - of the aliens are hiding, are at most at our stage of evolution, etc. Your statement is implied assumptions central.

Valid conclusions actually, as long as the probability of experiencing each moment in the history of the universe is the same or very similar. What if the universe becomes more unlikely with each day, though? Say, for example that the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics is “true” and most “timelines” suffer from some kind of catastrophic event that leave the interesting ones more and more unlikely?

Really? You actually go all the way to these assumptions? You could just as well say 'the sun will not rise tomorrow', because 'the sun will rise tomorrow' is merely an inference, not 100% correct.

The VERY small likelihood of such statements makes them a waste of time.
These assumptions are supposed to have anything resembling validity? More like being practically impossible - the chance of them being true being so small as to be only a mathematical abstraction.

100 million years is more than enough time to colonize the galaxy with ships only able of 0,1 lightspeed.

What are the energy requirements for that? Is the time necessary to rebuild the civilization at the next star system taken into account, which at 0.1 lightspeed is probably a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the travel time, and speeding it up would further increase the energy requirements for the trip?

As said:
"100 million years is MORE than enough time to colonize the galaxy with ships only able of 0,1 lightspeed - 100 times more, to be exact."

The galaxy is ~100.000 lightyears across. At 0,1 lightspeed, traversable in 1 million years. Leaving 99 MILLION years for civilisation-building in the new colonies.
As said, MORE than enough time.

As for the energy requirements, today we have the technology to accelerate to 0,05 lightspeed and decelerate to 0: fission fragment rockets, powering a starship of ~normal size (achievable if we were mining the asteroids).

If I could get rid of any two "laws" frequently cited on the Internet, they would definitely be Godwin's Law, and yes, Occam's Fucking Razor. "This explanation is complex, therefore it is wrong!" It encourages the absolute worst varieties of intellectual laziness.

I guess Karl Popper and many other philosophers of science, philosophers, scientists were 'intelectually lazy', eh?

And Occam's razor is ~"This explanation is MORE complex, therefore it is LIKELY wrong!"

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If I could get rid of any two "laws" frequently cited on the Internet, they would definitely be Godwin's Law, and yes, Occam's Fucking Razor. "This explanation is complex, therefore it is wrong!" It encourages the absolute worst varieties of intellectual laziness.

I guess Karl Popper and many other philosophers of science, philosophers, scientists were 'intelectually lazy', eh?

And Occam's razor is "This explanation is MORE complex, therefore it is LIKELY wrong!"

The problem is people who don't know what they're talking about falling back on mental "crutches" like those. "You mentioned Hitler/Nazis! You are automatically wrong!" "You gave a complex explanation! You are automatically wrong!" It's irritating as all hell.

 

[sojourner]

Occam's razor is a scientifical law

No, it's not. It's more of a statement of common sense.

And "scientifical?" really? that's not even a word.

 

[Reverend]

I have to agree with Rob. Occam's razor is so very often misused it's not even funny. And I say misused because as a general principle of logic, it's basically sound, but those that use it most often usually fail to understand what it actually means or in what context it is meant to be applied and just use it to prop up a straw man argument or try to shift the burden of proof.

They also fail to appreciate that it's a philosophy and not a fundamental law of the universe.

I ask you, what is the simplest explanation for where babies come form? An efficient and discrete avian based delivery system, or a series of complicated biochemical interactions based on billions of years of cellular evolution through an essentially random and chaotic process of natural selection? The stork idea is certainly simpler, but does invoking Occam's razor make it correct? Of course not.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Nothing wrong with Occam's Razor.

Now, the Fermi Paradox is a different matter, as it boils down to "either aliens don't exist or they would have been proved to have come to Earth." A way of thinking that itself falls victim to Occam's Razor once you start thinking about it...

 

[RAMA]

If I did not know better, I would assume you were one of those people completely clueless about how big the universe really is. Hell, just on our tiny planet how long did Native Americans go before they saw any evidence of other people from other continents? Some time. When we multiply that scale by a nearly unfathomable number and couple that with the fact that we have only taken one or two figurative steps into space, the answer to your question is rather obvious.

I was making the point that if the assumptions being made were commonplace (life->complex life->intelligent life->space exploration->FTL travel) then we'd see it everywhere because it's had ~15 billion years to develop. The Milky Way alone would have many thousands if not millions of intelligent species. That we have seen absolutely no evidence of this indicates that intelligent, technologically advanced, spacefaring life is either quite rare or not contemporaneous.

Hell, life in general could exist on a few million planets in the milky way while we have yet to look at or detect any one of them. Who is to say how common place it is for intelligent life to develop FTL (making the rather larger assumption that such a thing is possible)?

I agree that your question would apply if the claim was that life which can travel faster than light is common place and that such travel is so much faster than the speed of light that they could travel to any point in the universe (or galaxy if we confine things to the Milky Way) in a short period of time at relatively low cost/expenditure. But even in such a case, would the FTL races have time or desire to visit everyone? What if there are billions of different planets in the universe with life? Would they get to them all? How many races have FTL ability? 1/100th? 1/1000th? Fewer? And this is all assuming such technology does exist.

I simply proceed from an assumption of space travel that doesn't break the known laws of physics..that even includes using wormholes, which would require more power than we know of to open or travel through.

RAMA

 

[RAMA]

I was making the point that if the assumptions being made were commonplace (life->complex life->intelligent life->space exploration->FTL travel) then we'd see it everywhere because it's had ~15 billion years to develop. The Milky Way alone would have many thousands if not millions of intelligent species. That we have seen absolutely no evidence of this indicates that intelligent, technologically advanced, spacefaring life is either quite rare or not contemporaneous.

Hell, life in general could exist on a few million planets in the milky way while we have yet to look at or detect any one of them. Who is to say how common place it is for intelligent life to develop FTL (making the rather larger assumption that such a thing is possible)?

I agree that your question would apply if the claim was that life which can travel faster than light is common place and that such travel is so much faster than the speed of light that they could travel to any point in the universe (or galaxy if we confine things to the Milky Way) in a short period of time at relatively low cost/expenditure. But even in such a case, would the FTL races have time or desire to visit everyone? What if there are billions of different planets in the universe with life? Would they get to them all? How many races have FTL ability? 1/100th? 1/1000th? Fewer? And this is all assuming such technology does exist.

Oh, but to hear some tell it, any civilization that gets near our level of development will inevitably reach the Singularity, which promises technologies we can't even imagine. At a minimum, there should be Von Neumann probes everywhere, since those are so easy and cheap to build.

Or they have other concerns...if they aren't lonely, if they don't need our resoruces, what are they doing? In a multi-species race for nearly unlimited resources of a black hole at galactic center? Exploring time/multiverses? Exploring endless permutations of a superintelligent AI lifespan?

Sadly, there is no evidence. On the other hand, as exponentially advancing as our technology is, we may also be sadly inadequate to the task of knowing for, oh at least a few decades if not longer..

RAMA

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Occam's razor is a scientifical law

No, it's not. It's more of a statement of common sense.

And "scientifical?" really? that's not even a word.

Yes, it is. It's a probabilistic scientifical law.

And 'scientifical' is a word - despite your failed attempt to grab at irrelevant semantic straws.

I ask you, what is the simplest explanation for where babies come form? An efficient and discrete avian based delivery system, or a series of complicated biochemical interactions based on billions of years of cellular evolution through an essentially random and chaotic process of natural selection? The stork idea is certainly simpler, but does invoking Occam's razor make it correct? Of course not.

Your 'avian delivery system' fails to coherently explain where babies come from - by a large margin (so, how do these birds get those children?). As such, it's not a viable explanation - not even close.

 

[sojourner]

Occam's razor is a scientifical law

No, it's not. It's more of a statement of common sense.

And "scientifical?" really? that's not even a word.

Yes, it is. It's a probabilistic scientifical law.

No, it's not a law. It's a guide.

In science, Occam's razor is used as a heuristic (general guiding rule or an observation) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[9][10] In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic, and certainly not a scientific result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

Not a scientific law.

And 'scientifical' is a word - despite your failed attempt to grab at irrelevant semantic straws.

Your right, it is a word. An antiquated form of scientific. Pretty much deprecated to the point of non-use. Are you trying to bring it back like Sexy?

 

[Reverend]

I ask you, what is the simplest explanation for where babies come form? An efficient and discrete avian based delivery system, or a series of complicated biochemical interactions based on billions of years of cellular evolution through an essentially random and chaotic process of natural selection? The stork idea is certainly simpler, but does invoking Occam's razor make it correct? Of course not.

Your 'avian delivery system' fails to coherently explain where babies come from - by a large margin (so, how do these birds get those children?). As such, it's not a viable explanation - not even close.

Magic...or aliens.

 

[Deckerd]

Nobody's going to sign up for a gig like that. Wasting the best of your life in a tin can?

As opposed to wasting the best of your life doing a meaningless job in a cubicle (if you're relatively lucky)?
Or in a tin can at sea?
Or going on vacation in a tin can at sea?

You are joking of course.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Hell, life in general could exist on a few million planets in the milky way while we have yet to look at or detect any one of them. Who is to say how common place it is for intelligent life to develop FTL (making the rather larger assumption that such a thing is possible)?

I agree that your question would apply if the claim was that life which can travel faster than light is common place and that such travel is so much faster than the speed of light that they could travel to any point in the universe (or galaxy if we confine things to the Milky Way) in a short period of time at relatively low cost/expenditure. But even in such a case, would the FTL races have time or desire to visit everyone? What if there are billions of different planets in the universe with life? Would they get to them all? How many races have FTL ability? 1/100th? 1/1000th? Fewer? And this is all assuming such technology does exist.

Oh, but to hear some tell it, any civilization that gets near our level of development will inevitably reach the Singularity, which promises technologies we can't even imagine. At a minimum, there should be Von Neumann probes everywhere, since those are so easy and cheap to build.

Or they have other concerns...if they aren't lonely, if they don't need our resoruces, what are they doing? In a multi-species race for nearly unlimited resources of a black hole at galactic center? Exploring time/multiverses? Exploring endless permutations of a superintelligent AI lifespan?

Sadly, there is no evidence. On the other hand, as exponentially advancing as our technology is, we may also be sadly inadequate to the task of knowing for, oh at least a few decades if not longer..

RAMA

It's just as likely they are busy not existing.

 

[Gov Kodos]

The alien plan:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbb6pZLfzU[/yt]

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Occam's razor is a scientifical law, not an 'internet law'.

It's neither.

It's simply a principle - not a law - used in reasoning. Don't assume a more complex explanation where a simpler one is sufficient to explain the observed evidence.

The only reason a simpler explanation is more likely to be true is that it involves fewer assumptions that are not in evidence and therefore contains fewer opportunities for error at the start.

In any given situation, however, the conclusion reached via Occam's Razor may be wrong and a more complex explanation may be right. There's no law or any "law-like proposition" involved here.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Oh, but to hear some tell it, any civilization that gets near our level of development will inevitably reach the Singularity, which promises technologies we can't even imagine. At a minimum, there should be Von Neumann probes everywhere, since those are so easy and cheap to build.

Or they have other concerns...if they aren't lonely, if they don't need our resoruces, what are they doing? In a multi-species race for nearly unlimited resources of a black hole at galactic center? Exploring time/multiverses? Exploring endless permutations of a superintelligent AI lifespan?

Sadly, there is no evidence. On the other hand, as exponentially advancing as our technology is, we may also be sadly inadequate to the task of knowing for, oh at least a few decades if not longer..

RAMA

It's just as likely they are busy not existing.

More likely, actually. Occam's Razor and all that.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Or they have other concerns...if they aren't lonely, if they don't need our resoruces, what are they doing? In a multi-species race for nearly unlimited resources of a black hole at galactic center? Exploring time/multiverses? Exploring endless permutations of a superintelligent AI lifespan?

Sadly, there is no evidence. On the other hand, as exponentially advancing as our technology is, we may also be sadly inadequate to the task of knowing for, oh at least a few decades if not longer..

RAMA

It's just as likely they are busy not existing.

More likely, actually. Occam's Razor and all that.

I was trying to be charitable.

 

[Lonemagpie]

The alien plan:

Sadly their plan is becoming outdated, as Andy Murray being the first Brit to even make it to the final since 1938 hints...

Is it wrong of me that this sketch was all I could think of all weekend? And is it sad of me that I recognise the saucer sound effect from The Dalek Invasion Of Earth?

 

[Relayer1]

Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if I'm repeating this but :

Allowing even low estimates for the number of galaxies / suns / planets in the 'Goldilocks Zone' / life starting / intelligence makes it probable that intelligent life evolved elsewhere. Factor in FTL travel (which is a stretch) and you could still get theoretical visitors.

None of this, however, takes into account the staggering timescale or 'deep time' since the Big Bang. The chances of one of the aforementioned 'visitors' civilisations existing at the same time as ours is very very small indeed.