[Zipperfish]

Lemmy wrote:

reminds me of the Einstein quotation:

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Well there you go--great minds think alike.

[Lemmy]

Zipperfish wrote:

Well there you go--great minds think alike.

Shucks. Einstein and I?

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

Given the age of the galaxy and making certain assumptions about the expansion velocity of a civilization, we really should have been contacted by some kind of intelligent life by now.

Why haven't we?

See, most people who ask that question assume that we're interesting enough to be contacted by a technologically advanced species.

What if the 10,000 planet theory is correct and we're just another unremarkable planet full of backwards bipeds who have yet to sort out our tribal conflicts and that advanced species has better things to do than drop in with us for coffee?

Or, what if they did stop in once and then decided we were'nt worth their time?

[saturn_656]

Read Arthur C. Clarke's "A Time Odyssey" series.

Quote:

In the Time Odyssey series, not-so-benevolent godlike aliens start an endless mission to regulate the development of sentient life in the Universe, in order to prevent all other species from harnessing too much of its energy, which would only accelerate the inevitable entropic death of the Universe, thus rendering sentient life impossible at the end of the universe. Consequently, these "Firstborn" are destroying other intelligent species. To preserve a record of these eradicated species, the Firstborn create a new alternate universe containing the species' homeworld in different time periods.

[Calbeck]

BartSimpson wrote:

What if the 10,000 planet theory is correct and we're just another unremarkable planet full of backwards bipeds who have yet to sort out our tribal conflicts and that advanced species has better things to do than drop in with us for coffee?

More likely, all ten thousand worlds are still at the stage where they haven't figured out how to make FTL travel possible or even necessarily worthwhile.

[Psudo]

Zipperfish wrote:

There's a thing called the Drake equation that estimates about 10,000 planets in the Mily Way evolved intelligent life.

Drake's Equation is based on a lot of very unknown variables, making it's results radically undependable. I've seen it, with different assumed values, predict 0.0001 intelligent species in the universe and billions in our galaxy.

Zipperfish wrote:

we really should have been contacted by some kind of intelligent life by now.

Even if there were 10,000 species in the Milky Way Galaxy, that's a circle of 50,000 light years radius. A = pi*r^2, gives an area of 7.85 billion square light years. With 10,000 species, we'd see one species in every 785,000 square light years as seen from galactic north. We can see planets that are, what, 15 light years away (area of 707 square light years)? That gives us 0.09% chance of seeing another species, even if we'd already checked everywhere it's possible for us to look.

The vastness of space allows for a great many intelligent species to never see any sign of each other.

Zipperfish wrote:

But lately I'm starting to wonder if it might be because intelligent species predicatbly destroy themselves before their civilization can expand into instellar space.

You can add a fractional constant to Drake's equation for that. It's already wildly speculative, so making up numbers isn't going to make it worse.

Zipperfish wrote:

how long before we have a weapon capable of wiping out most or all human life on the planet.

I think hydrogen bombs would work just fine for that.

Lemmy, quoting Einstein, wrote:

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Einstein was right in principle. If you think of the Cold War as WW3 and the War on Terrorism as WW4, we certainly stepped down the destructive power of our weapons. On the other hand, he was wrong in scale; the Cold War didn't knock us back to the stone age, as he insinuated, but only back to killing each other in dozens instead of hundreds of thousands.

Calbeck wrote:

More likely, all ten thousand worlds are still at the stage where they haven't figured out how to make FTL travel possible or even necessarily worthwhile.

That seems likely to me, but doesn't prevent remote communication. It seems reasonable that we should develop FTL communication before FTL travel since we figured out light-speed communication (telegraph/radio) about a century ago, and we've got some time to go before we get light-speed travel.

[Thanos]

Zipperfish wrote:

Given the age of the galaxy and making certain assumptions about the expansion velocity of a civilization, we really should have been contacted by some kind of intelligent life by now.

Contacted? Why? Without some sort of home-made FTL or warp tech we're not worth bothering with. But have we been observed and closely studied? Definitely. They probably decided that we're too morally disgusting and too dangerous to have anything to do with. And they'd be 100% correct with that conclusion, given all the awful shit we keep doing to each other and to our own home planet which is the only place we know of that's capable of sustaining us without artificial means. If I was one of them I wouldn't allow us to leave our own solar system either.

[DerbyX]

ASLplease wrote:

wow thats a strange comment. being against the sale of nuclear technology to china makes me against capitalism? I am sure others might see it the exact opposite. Where are you going with this kind of question?

Actually it was meant as a joke seeing as you quoted my joke to Bart and then puit in your comment for some unknown reason. To answer your question yes, interfering with a willing vendor selling to a willing buyer you are speaking out against capitalism since you are interfering with the free market. If I develop nuclear technology and want to sell to the highest bidder who are you to object?

Of course you realize we are taking reactors here right? Why the hell would we not want China to have cheap, safe, and clean energy? Hell I say we give them CANDU technology if it prevents another Chernobyl or lowers their emissions. That benefits everybody.

ASLplease wrote:

We don't rely on the oil sands for electricity. In fact, 85% of Alberta's electricity is from thermal coal. I'm sure that with thermal coal and hydro power, not even Ontario relies on the oil sands.

I meant money.

We stop getting all that cash from Alberta and get it instead from sales of nuke technology to China. Alberta gets a refund and everybody is happy.

[ASLplease]

that explains it!

[Psudo]

DerbyX wrote:

yes, interfering with a willing vendor selling to a willing buyer you are speaking out against capitalism since you are interfering with the free market. If I develop nuclear technology and want to sell to the highest bidder who are you to object?

Some capitalists think it's wrong to sell to non-capitalists. It advocates against capitalism, this view says, to put money into anti-capitalist economies; it's the same reason some capitalists won't donate to socialist charities. By that reasoning, trade with China is wrong even to a purist capitalist.

[DerbyX]

Psudo wrote:

DerbyX wrote:

yes, interfering with a willing vendor selling to a willing buyer you are speaking out against capitalism since you are interfering with the free market. If I develop nuclear technology and want to sell to the highest bidder who are you to object?

Some capitalists think it's wrong to sell to non-capitalists. It advocates against capitalism, this view says, to put money into anti-capitalist economies; it's the same reason some capitalists won't donate to socialist charities. By that reasoning, trade with China is wrong even to a purist capitalist.

Do you understand tongue in cheek?

Unfortunately the thread has been locked and deleted but your opinion was requested on a matter of ...... religion.

I wanted to show you something but alas the mods have spoken. Suffice to say the posts there did more to support every point I've made against you and then some, and this support came from one of your own.

[ASLplease]

whats the point in locking a thread if you are going to carry the debate into this thread......correction, you haven't carried the debate into this, you've carried your conclusions and opinions to this thread.

[DerbyX]

ASLplease wrote:

whats the point in locking a thread if you are going to carry the debate into this thread......correction, you haven't carried the debate into this, you've carried your conclusions and opinions to this thread.

No, this was his attempt to carry the debate defacto. It makes no sense for him to post what he did except a tweak.

[Psudo]

DerbyX wrote:

Do you understand tongue in cheek?

I'd be happier if I didn't, so sometimes I pretend I don't. I don't like "It's just a joke!" being used as an excuse for bad reasoning and deceptive rhetoric.

DerbyX wrote:

Unfortunately the thread has been locked and deleted but your opinion was requested on a matter of ...... religion.

I wanted to show you something but alas the mods have spoken. Suffice to say the posts there did more to support every point I've made against you and then some, and this support came from one of your own.

If you think you have a great point to make, send me a pm or an email. It won't bother the mods, and it won't bother me.