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My perspective was solidified when I learned about the Drake equation.
Given the sheer vastness of space, I'm inclined to believe it's inconceivable we're alone in the universe.
But at the same time, because of its vastness, I find it highly unlikely any civilization could ever construct some apparatus that could survive the harsh conditions of interstellar travel. And then could be found by intelligent life. And then have it recognized for what it is.
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We already know that none of the terms of the Drake Equation can be zero because we exist.
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obermd wrote: none of the terms of the Drake Equation can be zero because we exist.
Right, that's why I don't need any convincing that other civilizations exist.
What I was bringing up was contact probabilities. So the Drake equation still brings value to the discussion IMO.
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I just got done typing something very similar before reading your post. 
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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In my mind, the Drake equation is just an hypothesis. It's not meant to be a description of the way the Universe actually works.
I firmly believe in (and this is purely subjective on my part), "Where there's a will, there's a way." And in, "100 experiments can prove my theories true, but it only takes one counterexample to prove them wrong." I'm inclined to both believe it is inconceivable that we're alone in the universe and I am also inclined to take the Drake equation with a grain of salt. Just because Drake (whoever he was) wanted to be a poo-poo head and rain on everybody's parade, should not mean we should discount empirical evidence that may contradict it, when such evidence is found.
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Brian C Hart wrote: In my mind, the Drake equation is just an hypothesis. It's not meant to be a description of the way the Universe actually works.
Sure, it's little more than a thought experiment, that lets you play around plugging in wildly varying numbers and see how they affect the outcome.
Garbage in, garbage out.
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Quote: I think they used the Sun as a "gravity assist"
To travel between solar systems takes light many many years. The technology to do that for a ship, I think, would be way ahead of having to use something as archaic as Gravity Assist.
So alien life. I think that would be more of a case of wishful thinking. 
A Fine is a Tax for doing something wrong
A Tax is a Fine for doing something good.
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I disagree. The use of the Sun's gravity can not only be used for speeding up / slowing down relative to the Galactic center, but also for a course-correction (i.e., to get the ship pointing in a substantially different new direction without the use of too much fuel).
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Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof.
To date I have seen no convincing proof that ‘Oumuamua is anything but what it seems to be - a chunk of interstellar rock that happened to pass through our Solar System. I would be very interested in seeing incontrovertible evidence otherwise.
(And no, a Hydrogen "fart" as it left the Solar System is not incontrovertible evidence)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Just because we ourselves have not learned enough about the physics of how the Universe works in order to invent a means of casual interstellar travel does not mean some mind elsewhere in the Universe hasn't thought it up.
I speculate that the astrnomers who talk about Rama (oops I mean, 'Omuamua) farting Hydrogen gas stretch to find mundane explanations for actual alien starship behavior due to their refusal to believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe, or that just because we haven't come up with technology to conveniently cross interstellar distances doesn't mean that some other brain out there in the universe has not discovered such a method, and we are merely ignorant of how the Universe works to a degree that we cannot conceive of anything.
There is such a thing as "falsification bias," where people who strongly disbelieve a certain preposition will work tirelessly to prove it false -- which is a GOOD thing, don't get me wrong! But sometimes I think people work too hard to so, when obvious evidence in support of a theory is staring them straight in the face.
The opposite of confirmation bias could be considered as "disconfirmation bias" or "falsification bias." This describes a tendency to seek out evidence that contradicts one's preconceived notions or beliefs, rather than selectively interpreting information that supports them. In your example, if someone harbors a strong disbelief in the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and actively seeks out evidence that disproves this notion, they may be exhibiting disconfirmation bias. This bias could lead them to discount or ignore data that suggests the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life or the feasibility of interstellar travel.
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Brian C Hart wrote: Just because we ourselves have not learned enough about the physics of how the Universe works in order to invent a means of casual interstellar travel does not mean some mind elsewhere in the Universe hasn't thought it up.
True.
Throughout history, what was considered an "acceptable hypothesis" has changed. At one time, it was acceptable to claim that one's cake didn't rise because the neighbour's wife (a witch) put the "evil eye" on the cake. Today, such a hypothesis is unacceptable. An acceptable hypothesis would be forgetting one of the ingredients, or setting the oven to the wrong temperature.
While technological civilisations almost certainly exist elsewhere in the Universe, the evidence for their existence is such that I do not believe that "it's aliens" is currently an acceptable hypothesis. Were evidence to be found of the existence of aliens (signals, a Bussard ramjet, a Dyson sphere, a Ringworld  ), I would reevaluate.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I'll take Occams Razor for 100, please. A starship is far more complex than a rock.
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Wasn't Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke?
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Yes, and Ringworld was Larry Niven.
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I got the two mixed up
My OP was fixed.
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I've always figured we're not the only ones beholden to Einstein's cage.
I'm no physicist, much less an astrophysicist, but bear with me anyway. 
I don't know if you are familiar with Caballero's prediction that there are 4 hostile alien civilizations within our solar system. There may be 4 evil alien civilizations in the galaxy | Space[^]
It's not hard and fast here, but based on his work, I think it's more than likely that there's at least one, if any of it even remotely holds.
Why haven't we seen them in any way that can be verified? So far it's all Loch Ness style photographs and conspiracy theories. Nothing of substance.
Maybe we're just not that interesting, but we do have one of the few habitable planets in the region. That should at least attract an invasive alien species, if nobody else.
Plus we light up space with everything from radio to laser transmissions.
Here's what I think. There mostly likely is life out there. And we'll most likely never contact it. Nor they us. Because of Einstein's cage. If there's a workaround, nobody has found it.
My $0.02.
I'd love to hear your thoughts about that.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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honey the codewitch wrote: Caballero's prediction that there are 4 hostile alien civilizations within our solar system. There may be 4 evil alien civilizations in the galaxy | Space[^]
You (not Caballero) confused Solar System and Milky Way. The Solar System consists of our Sun, its planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and what-have-you. The Milky Way contains approximately 100 billion stars.
Just a few reasons off the top of my head why we have not detected any other technological species around other stars (or life, for that matter):
- The Sun is one of the oldest Population III stars (containing large amounts of heavy elements) in our part of space. Given that much of our early technology relied on heavy elements, and assuming that is true of all early technology, it is possible that we are the oldest (and so far, the only) technological species in our part of the galaxy.
- We have been sending electromagnetic radiation out for only a short period, and even now are increasing the efficiency of our usage - beams vs broadcasts, etc. It could be that other technological species have gone even further along this route, and it is therefore almost impossible to "eavesdrop" upon them.
- A species that has invasive tendencies doesn't survive long enough to become an interstellar civilisation. If it does, it doesn't survive long enough to complete an interstellar voyage (at sub-light speeds).
- The economics of interstellar voyages make it impractical, even for dedicated explorers. No sane species will fund a voyage whose payoff (if ever) will come centuries in the future.
Reasons 3 & 4 would not apply if a practical superluminal warp drive were invented.
As for discovery of non-technological life in other star systems, we can just barely detect planets around other stars, and can analyze their atmospheres only in special cases. I submit that our technology is not quite good enough to detect life on extra-Solar planets (though it will be in the next few decades).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: You (not Caballero) confused Solar System and Milky Way
I was going from my memory, which is often unreliable.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: We have been sending electromagnetic radiation out for only a short period, and even now are increasing the efficiency of our usage - beams vs broadcasts, etc. It could be that other technological species have gone even further along this route, and it is therefore almost impossible to "eavesdrop" upon them.
I forget who mentioned it a good while ago, but someone made a tremendous point: We've been broadcasting in the clear for a few decades, but our communications have since mostly been encrypted.
Once you bring in encryption, there is no discernable pattern. It all looks like random noise. Which is the intent.
If alien civilizations have been encrypting their communications (and there's few reasons to think they would not), analyzing whatever our radio-telescopes are picking up ain't gonna reveal anything.
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Quote: If alien civilizations have been encrypting their communications (and there's few reasons to think they would not), analyzing whatever our radio-telescopes are picking up ain't gonna reveal anything.
I am wondering whether you're making the assumption that radio telescopes receive the content of alien broadcasts, such as in the movie "Contact." Maybe they do. I myself am not a radio astronomer so I am not an expert in such things.
But even with encrypted transmissions you can still look at the spectrum and power spectrum of such emissions. If there is a lot of power in a small frequency range then that may be indicative of something. I mean, okay, spread spectrum is also in use, but only certain blocks of the EM spectrum are in use for communications/broadcasting, spread or not.
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Additionally, if the transmission is in binary (1 bit/time period), one will see that all data are multiples of a certain basic size (e.g. 00111010000... has blocks of lengths 2, 3, 1, 1, 4, ... bits). This is true even if the data are encrypted.
Other forms of encoding also have their characteristic patterns which can show that a message is being transmitted, even if we cannot read the message.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Greetngs Kind Regards
I communicated w/ Dr. Loeb only recently. He was kind enough to reply. He ends his e-mails w/ a nice portrait link below. On his theories re/ alien visitors I replied w/ that below but did not receive reply.
Abraham-Avi-Loeb.png[^]
Kind Distinguished Sir :
Thank You for your informative reply. At the risk of taking advantage of your kind generosity w/ ignorant fools such as myself way I please inquire your appraisal of even put forward the notion namely a race one million years advanced would not need a billion years to travel the great distances but can do so as easily as we w/ our crude technology travel across the globe.
PS I am impressed by the drawing. May I inquire the artist. Is it a self portrait.
Thank You Kindly
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Heh... they're probably seeking 'absolute truths'.
Your sequence reminds me of Rogue Trader where the ABC options of encountering a ship can be very similar.
I think to assume advanced beings haven't overcome what seems to be nature's fight/flight basic instinct is... an assumption.
For one, maybe they've never encountered anything that can digest or shoot them. Maybe they've never shot each other? I'd put that as pretty remote, but...
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Brian C Hart wrote: I agree with Harvard professor, Avi Loeb[^]
However he is far from an unbiased observer.
Astronomer Avi Loeb Says Aliens Have Visited, and He's Not Kidding | Scientific American[^]
Brian C Hart wrote: I think aliens are out there. And I think they used the Sun as a "gravity assist" vs. the center of the Galaxy
The first part however is far different than the second part.
The first presumes that one just does some hypothesizing based on some very, very large numbers. So with 200 billion trillion stars it would seem likely that there is at least some microbes out there.
The second part however requires that those aliens are doing a lot with science and technology for which there is no evidence.
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