Do you believe there is other Intelligent Life in the Universe

[Wolf Kanno]

75218

[Loony BoB]

I figure there probably is. My main doubts is whether FTL travel will ever be possible and therefore the possibility of meeting intelligent life elsewhere is all but impossible because of that unless we can find a way to become effectively immortal.

[Darkhero]

There's a very good chance there is. FTL travel is not impossible, but whether or not a civilization can survive long enough to develop it remains to be seen.

[Mr. Carnelian]

I wasn't aware there was already intelligent life.

Oooh, salty.

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Time will tell, hopefully.

[Slothy]

I wasn't aware there was already intelligent life.

Cats and Dogs?

[Zora]

Probably--the universe is a big place. That said, the reason why they don't see us is probably: a.) there's no reason to suppose they have space travel, radio towers, or any other technology we have, b.) they're probably too far away anyway.

[Vincent, Thunder God]

I watched some interesting videos on this recently - this guy suggested (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WtgmT5CYU8) that, if we had an advanced enough AI-controlled ship, it could maybe carry human embryos to another planet if 1% of light speed could be achieved. But if the planet couldn't support life right away, the ship would also have to have the means of fixing that, and probably need to carry a lot of materials the whole way too. Not to mention a way of raising the embryos.

He also has a video speculating (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNos25hIJc) as to why we might not have heard from advanced alien life if it exists.

[Bubba]

Considering the hundreds of billions of other galaxies in the universe then it's pretty much guaranteed there is life elsewhere. Even if they are way more advanced than us we're still gonna be pretty difficult to locate considering how many other options they have to choose from.

So yeah, it's pretty much certain though we'll probably never ever know about them.

[Aulayna]

75219

[Wolf Kanno]

75219


75220

[Chibi Youkai]

Yep, it's out there somewhere, and if they ftl travel, they're hopefully smart enough to stay away from us. Can't imagine we're the model of a well adjusted global population.

[Wolf Kanno]

I guess a follow up question I should ask for everyone who said yes is whether you believe intelligence to build a technologically/cultural driven society is inevitable as long as there is life on a planet? Does evolution always result in intelligent beings?

[Fynn]

I think that’s a very difficult question to answer considering that the only empirical data we have to go on comes from exactly one planet. Not exactly enough to corroborate data.

[Slothy]

I'd say it's not inevitable honestly. It'd be the height of hubris to consider human intelligence to be some epitome of evolution after all. Now intelligence is useful for survival to be sure, and societies are also generally great for survival as well. But an intelligent society that builds technology and explores the universe the way we do? It might not happen that often. I mean to the best of our knowledge we're the only life to ever go that route barring a few now extinct evolutionary cousins and siblings. And we haven't even been here that long. Maybe a hundred thousand years out of hundreds of millions of years that were sure life previously existed on earth. There's also the fact that supporting the sort of intelligence we possess is a massive energy sink. It takes all kinds of food, time to develop (there are reasons we're utterly useless when we're born and for years after but most other animals aren't). I could imagine places where there just might not be enough raw materials and energy input into an ecosystem to support that kind of evolution.

So out of hundreds of millions of years on a planet replete with life and energy from both the sun and the earth itself, we're the only ones who became this intelligent and it comes with a lot of vulnerabilities that every other species that we know has come close never overcame and they became extinct. I'd honestly have to guess that when it comes to survival, we got lucky and made it through all the awkward phases where the downsides of our intelligence could have easily outweighed the benefits and we easily could have died out.

Now given the sheer size of the universe I'd bet money on there being a lot of species out there that are intelligent and capable of scientific pursuits and technological invention. But I would also guess that they're among the rarer forms of life out there all things considered. There are simply a lot of barriers to developing that kind of intelligence and evolution really doesn't give a shit how intelligent you are. Natural selection only drives the development of traits that help life survive and thrive. It doesn't tend to give a shit if the thing letting you survive is intelligence, sheer size and brutality, or laser eyes. Survival is survival no matter how you get there.

[Chibi Youkai]

The idea of us being the most benevolent is fairly terrifying. We're pretty good at destroying each other, and finding ever-increasingly creative ways to do so.

[Zora]

I guess a follow up question I should ask for everyone who said yes is whether you believe intelligence to build a technologically/cultural driven society is inevitable as long as there is life on a planet? Does evolution always result in intelligent beings?

This is a question that bugs me a lot too, but I'd answer no.

here's the thing, there's a legitimate question as to whether or not evolution "ends up" at intelligence in the human sense. Evolution is a blind process, and while natural selection gives the impression of some sort of purposeful process, all natural selection cares about is how well an individual succeeds at four f's, and well, intelligence doesn't seem necessary for that. And even supposing evolution itself wasn't an issue, there's a question of why we'd assume they discover the same technology we did. We're in the process of phasing out radio technology, is it that farfetched to assume another civilization on a completely isolated trajectory might skip radio technology altogether? I don't think it's that crazy of a thought.

[Sephex]

Who knows? It's not important to me. If there are aliens they are so advanced that they don't want anything to do with us. Hey you want to go hang out with a ton of ants? That's probably how they would feel about it.

Seriously, this is real life. A space faring race would have way more important things to do than bother with a low intelligence, volitale, and ugly race that we have going on this planet right now.

[Psychotic]

Yes. I also don't really believe the "humans are the real monsters!" trope. Yes, there's some truly atrocious things happening every day but how many days have you woken up to a peaceful and stable life? Admittedly this is a biased sample of affluent people who live in the west, but it's still worth something. Humanity is underrated.

[Foo]

Yes. I also don't really believe the "humans are the real monsters!" trope.

75239

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!

[Slothy]

Honestly, there's no real reason to assume that because a species may have achieved interstellar travel that they must be more enlightened, or moral, or whatever way you choose to describe it, than we are. I mean you could argue some relative stability on a planet would be required to get to that level of technology the way we did, but even if they were a race at peace with themselves, there's always rampant xenophobia for them to fall back on. Who's to say that they would even recognize a species like ours as life at all (or at least a comparable form of life), let alone as intelligent, sentient beings? They may believe their species is the only life with value and just start a genocide from one end of the cosmos to the other.

[Fox]

We're in the process of phasing out radio technology, is it that farfetched to assume another civilization on a completely isolated trajectory might skip radio technology altogether? I don't think it's that crazy of a thought.

And even if they didn't skip radio technology, we've had it for about a century and the time of the radio is already coming to a close. If other civilisations develop at a similar rate we could have received radio signals from hundreds of civilisations that we simply missed because we didn't have the capability to receive them when they arrived.


I guess a follow up question I should ask for everyone who said yes is whether you believe intelligence to build a technologically/cultural driven society is inevitable as long as there is life on a planet? Does evolution always result in intelligent beings?

Well, of the 8.7 million estimated species on Earth, so far only one of them has developed a technological/cultural society. Only a handful demonstrate anything like what we would call 'Intelligence'. And it took 5 mass extinctions before we reached this point. So I wouldn't say I think it's inevitable, no. But I do think that - given enough time - at least one species dominating through intelligence is fairly likely. However that time period is probably truly immense.

While I do think there is probably other intelligent life in the universe, a combination life friendly planets like Earth being rarer than we generally imagine, and development into intelligent life being less likely than we imagine, I expect the number of worlds that harbour meaningful life is very small. Planets capable of supporting very simple life that can cope with extreme conditions are probably common, but as soon as that life becomes multi-cellular I expect that number plummets to a truly tiny fraction.

[Noct]

I think there is.

We just don't see it because space is an incredibly big place. We have trouble monitoring our own solar system; monitoring the entire galaxy for signs of intelligent life is simply beyond us. Plus even if they do have FTL travel, there is no guarantee they are anywhere close enough to us for it to make a difference. Traveling at twice the speed of light doesn't mean much when you have tens of thousands of light years to cross.

And if FTL travel does exist, it could easily force them to rely on something other than radio waves and pulses of light for communication. They could easily have a satellite in the Oort Cloud broadcasting as loudly as possible without us knowing it's there because we are not listening for the right signals.

We also might just be in a dead zone, where civilizations don't generally flourish much and life-spawning planets are unusually rare. So aliens out there, but they don't bother to come here because they have no reason to even bother looking.

There are any number of reasons why there might be a lack of detecting alien life beyond it not being out there.

[Sephex]

Yes. I also don't really believe the "humans are the real monsters!" trope. Yes, there's some truly atrocious things happening every day but how many days have you woken up to a peaceful and stable life? Admittedly this is a biased sample of affluent people who live in the west, but it's still worth something. Humanity is underrated.

I respectfully disagree. Humanity is worthless garbage. The moment we go extinct the entire universe will breathe a sigh of relief.

[Bubba]

I really don’t understand how FTL travel could ever work. Travelling that speed would just kill you, surely. You can’t account for random space debris in your way and unless you’ve got some ultra-high def 4K force field on the front, you’re doomed.

I think Holly from Red Dwarf said it best

”Look, we’re travelling faster than the speed of light. That means by the time we see something, we’ve already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000 it’s still brown trousers time.”

75241

[Noct]

I really don’t understand how FTL travel could ever work. Travelling that speed would just kill you, surely. You can’t account for random space debris in your way and unless you’ve got some ultra-high def 4K force field on the front, you’re doomed.

Space debris wouldn't be your biggest worry by far. At FTL speeds, colliding with light would be lethal. Jumping to FTL without some kind of photon shielding would be instantly and explosively messy. Any FTL travel would likely require either warping space and time in such a way as to avoid light and debris, travel through other physical dimensions, or forming some kind of field to protect against photon collisions.

The photon shielding would be interesting; properly designed, it could "catch" photons and effectively form a shield of light around the ship that serves to protect it from debris and other light. The result of this would be any ship leaving FTL travel would be particularly bright as the photons peeled off it once it exited. From a distance, this might even resemble a wheel of light in space, depending on the width of the protection field compared to the width of the ship.

Of course, colliding with some kind of large gravitational field would likely be instantly lethal no matter how much shielding you have. They would need some very advanced gravity sensors to avoid it.