A Framework for Thinking About Aliens

[MediumTex]

Gumby said earlier that there is nothing but useful information on this forum.  

This post may cause him to re-think that observation.

When people talk about whether intelligent alien life exists, they normally do it in a yes/no framework, as if once an alien species became sophisticated enough for space travel (or intergalactic communication) they would more or less remain at that level of sophistication indefinitely (or perhaps continue to advance).

Based upon this conceptual framework, the biggest challenge when thinking about the alien question often seems to be overcoming the vastness of the distances in space.

I would suggest that when thinking about the alien issue we also consider the vastness of time.

Here is what I mean: If the trajectory of human development is any indication, higher intelligence manifesting itself in complex societies is the product of two things: (i) intelligent life, either expressed consciously or unconsciously (I would consider ants to have a high level of unconscious intelligence), and (ii) the necessary resource inputs to translate the abstractions created by the higher intelligence into forms and tools that make up the expression of the complex society.

If the above process is more or less what any complex life form would follow through its life cycle (i.e., abstract intelligence manifesting itself through some type of complex society), then we are faced with the probability that over the vastness of time there have possibly been countless complex life forms throughout the universe that have come into existence, fully expressed themselves in a symbiotic relationship with their environment and then disappeared, exactly as so many species of life have done on our own planet.  

The implications of this idea are not good for those looking for alien contact.  Here's why: If we assume that any kind of intelligent life we would be interested in is likely to be sparsely distributed around the universe to begin with, and we also consider that through the continuum of time intelligent life is also likely to be a relatively brief phenomenon ("brief" meaning even millions of years), then we would have to be extraordinarily lucky to encounter a life form of the type we are hoping to find at the point in time we happen to be looking for it.

Let me provide an analogy to illustrate what I am saying.  Imagine there is a one million acre ranch and you hear a legend that every hundred years on a single weekend a headless cowboy rides directly across some part of the ranch on a gleaming white stallion.  You decide you want to go check it out for yourself and you set up camp on one part of the ranch for a weekend to see if you can see the headless cowboy.  Even if the headless cowboy story is true, what are the chances that you are going to be at the right part of the ranch at the right point in time to see it, given that you only have one weekend to make an observation?  When considering the vastness of cosmic time, humanity's observation window is little more than the weekend in my example.

Now consider a different analogy.  Let's say that the headless cowboy story involves a regular sized rodeo arena.  This is an area that you can stake out fully and anything that rides across it you will presumably see, except the frequency of the headless cowboy's ride is once every 10,000 years.  If you stake out the rodeo arena for a weekend what are the chances that you will see the headless cowboy?  If you staked out the rodeo arena for 100 years, what are the chances that you would see the headless cowboy?  My point here is that even if the distances in space weren't as vast as they are, the probability of finding the intelligent life we are looking for is still pretty small simply based upon the vastness of time (and assuming that intelligent life manifesting in complex societies is a relatively transitory phenomenon on the scale of cosmic time).

I think that one of the reasons that the vastness of time doesn't get enough attention when thinking about these things is that science fiction doesn't focus much on this issue.  Normally, science fiction will acknowledge the distances of space and provide some type of method for overcoming them (e.g., "hyper-drive").  When it comes to time, though, about the best science fiction can do is provide for time travel that takes you from one point in time to another, but there is normally no mechanism for scanning vast periods of time when looking for something like intelligent life.  Instead, when dealing with the time continuum issue, science fiction will normally presuppose that you already know what point in time you are looking for and then provide some means of getting you there.

To address the problem I am describing, we would need some way of scanning the entire volume of an object (I don't know if it would be a sphere or a cube or something else), where the bottom is the beginning of time and the top is the end of time (or you could make the top the present, which might make it a little shorter ), and the sides of the cube represent the size of the universe at each point in time.  Scanning that amount of data would be daunting and it still wouldn't account for possible future changes in the shape of the object as the universe expands and time presumably marches on.

It's certainly possible that there are intelligent alien life forms that transcend the bounds of time and/or space, in which case the analysis above wouldn't be problematic, but once we begin talking about this type of alien (or other) life it begins to resemble something much more akin to a deity or some other supernatural phenomena, which is a different discussion.

Even if the aliens have patiently waited around for us to become sophisticated enough to communicate with them (as in "2001: A Space Odyssey"), if the aliens were to check in on the earth (and other earth-like planets) every million years or so to see how our evolution was progressing, on the scale of cosmic time that would require them to be constantly checking in on a near infinite number of planets, assuming all the while that the aliens didn't have any of their own species survival challenges to deal with.

In other words, I think the probability of having contact with intelligent alien life is much smaller than is commonly imagined.

[MediumTex removes Isaac Asimov hat off and takes deep breath.]

[Lone Wolf]

You know, I really have a good time here.  Love the headless cowboy example.

The first interesting point is the idea that any species will have only a limited time in existence.  We've had civilization for just about 11,000 years.  Will we still have it in another million?  Another 100 million?  We really have no idea.  All we've got is a sample size of one.

If I was going to guess at this, though, I'd say humanity or human-created life (perhaps artificial life) will exist for millions and millions of years.  I think that our trajectory is one of a gradual shift toward a post-human future.  I predict that we'll become more and more intimately entwined with our devices and tools until one day, perhaps thousands (dozens??) of years from now you won't be able to tell us apart.  You saw a flash of this at the end of "2001" when humanity moved into a future well beyond our possible comprehension.

While I'd wager that I'll run out of runway before I can exist in a more durable body than the one I've got, there's a nonzero chance that my children (or their children) could have this possibility.  This chance only increases in likelihood the longer we go without wiping ourselves out as a species.  Once you have this more durable body, you've got the option of traveling the vast distances required to make future contact.

But your point about the vastness of time is right on point even if you buy into a semi-infinite trans-human future.  Consider that we've only displayed any evidence of civilization for 11,000 years.  We've only been producing radio waves since about the late 1800s.  If you picture our earliest transmissions as creating an ever-expanding "globe" of information that is heading out into the universe, nothing more than 120 of so light-years away could have possibly received any radio signals from the earth.

An alien being 11,000 light-years away observing the Earth through a "perfect telescope" would only just now be seeing the rise of Sumer and Babylonia.  It'd then be a minimum of 11,000 years before we'd actually see them if they could travel at the speed of light (and even wished to meet us.)  Distance and time are both mind-bogglingly huge and mind-bogglingly intertwined.

Personally, the whole idea of alien contact just makes me think "1492".  Imagine meeting up with some interplanetary Hernan Cortes, murderous and seething with smallpox (starpox?).  I'm quite content to have my species fly under the radar.

My wager is that intelligent life exists throughout the universe... and we have very little chance of meeting up with it for several thousand years (at minimum.)

[MediumTex]

If I was going to guess at this, though, I'd say humanity or human-created life (perhaps artificial life) will exist for millions and millions of years.  I think that our trajectory is one of a gradual shift toward a post-human future.  I predict that we'll become more and more intimately entwined with our devices and tools until one day, perhaps thousands (dozens??) of years from now you won't be able to tell us apart.  You saw a flash of this at the end of "2001" when humanity moved into a future well beyond our possible comprehension.

Here is something to consider:

In studying all life forms, what we find is those that are able to survive for the longest are well-adpated to their environment and exist in a symbiosis with their surroundings so that the normal course of their existence doesn't destroy their habitat.

In reviewing the scenario described above, I wonder where the need for effective integration into the surrounding habitat as a condition of survival comes into play.  It sounds like a vision of transcending habitat, which may be a bold vision of the future, or it may be techno-mythology that provides meaning and hope in the context of our current world but will never actually come to pass.

[Lone Wolf]

Here is something to consider:

In studying all life forms, what we find is those that are able to survive for the longest are well-adpated to their environment and exist in a symbiosis with their surroundings so that the normal course of their existence doesn't destroy their habitat.

In reviewing the scenario described above, I wonder where the need for effective integration into the surrounding habitat as a condition of survival comes into play.  It sounds like a vision of transcending habitat, which may be a bold vision of the future, or it may be techno-mythology that provides meaning and hope in the context of our current world but will never actually come to pass.

That's a good point.  Remember, though, that very, very few animals use tools at all.  Monkeys using spears is about the most impressive example that comes to mind for me.  Given that, there's a good chance for tool-wielding species that "your habitat is what you make of it."

In other words, I think that our changing technology and culture has replaced human evolution.  We're now relying on technology and culture to make sure we are "properly suited" in our environment.

It may be that our ability to integrate with our tools makes us eventually more able to more efficiently and thoroughly use the planet's resources.  The birth of strong AI would accelerate every form of technology, including energy.  A cost-effective breeder reactor would mean that with only a tiny fraction of the world's uranium supply you could easily outsize the power that is generated today via fossil fuels (by several orders of magnitude.)

As another small example, imagine something like travel.  As we become better and better at providing virtual experiences, the need to travel could be satisfied in other ways.  There's still a big gap between video-conferencing and a face-to-face meeting.  But will that gap always be there?  How small might it get?  I say vanishingly small, given enough time.

And it's not hard to believe that 30 years from now, Google might have digitized sights and sounds and scents the world over in petabytes and petabytes of detail.  The Google Art Project is an enormous tell.  You can see The Birth of Venus in detail that would make the museum curator jealous.  Why not digitize every square millimeter of the Colosseum and every passageway in King Tut's tomb?  As the quality of "virtual experiences" increases, you'd be able to "travel" to every end of the earth with only minimal energy consumption.

Believe me, we have plenty of opportunity to screw ourselves over or get a horrid run of bad luck, though.  I just find that less fun to talk about. 

[Gumby]

Technically NASA claims to have instruments that can detect the echoes of the big bang. So, I would imagine that if super-advanced alien life existed at some point over the past few billions of years there could be rippling effects leftover that are still detectible. Sort of like detecting the footprints and dust trails from that elusive cowboy.

It's also entirely possible — given the vastness of space — that at any given moment, there are a nearly infinite number of advanced civilizations peering through telescopes across the galaxies wondering the exact same thing. However, the challenges you describe make this all very difficult (or impossible) to observe and detect.

Of course, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

[KevinW]

Are you familiar with the Drake equation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation )?

[MediumTex]

Are you familiar with the Drake equation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation )?

Thanks for posting that.  I was not familiar with the theory, but it does seem to acknowledge that one of the reasons that we may be having trouble detecting intelligent life outside our world is that intelligent life is expressed over a relatively short duration and we may be looking in the right places but at the wrong times.

[KevinW]

Yeah that's in there.

The universe is so incomprehensibly huge that humans can't really conceptualize the implications of its size.  It's so big that just about anything you can imagine, is probably happening out there somewhere.  That page plugs conservative numbers into Drake's equation and gets a figure of 10 other intelligent civilizations we could communicate with in our galaxy.  And that's just one galaxy; there are estimated to be hundreds of billions of galaxies ( http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_a ... 1127a.html ).  So hundreds of billions of intelligent life forms.

[Gumby]

Yeah that's in there.

The universe is so incomprehensibly huge that humans can't really conceptualize the implications of its size.  It's so big that just about anything you can imagine, is probably happening out there somewhere.  That page plugs conservative numbers into Drake's equation and gets a figure of 10 other intelligent civilizations we could communicate with in our galaxy.  And that's just one galaxy; there are estimated to be hundreds of billions of galaxies ( http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_a ... 1127a.html ).  So hundreds of billions of intelligent life forms.

Yes, yes... and hundreds of billions may even be too conservative. There's no way to know. There may be many more galaxies beyond the observable horizon — traveling away from us faster than the light they emit can travel to us.