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Grabby Aliens (2021)

92 pointsby nochover 1 year ago

20 comments

GavinBover 1 year ago
This is a compelling theory, especially the implication that humans are early. I do wonder whether we should see the evidence of spheres of growing alien influence out in the stars, but instead we see a highly uniform universe in all directions.<p>This would indicate a few possibilities:<p>1. Expanding alien civilizations are relatively low impact and don&#x27;t collect all of the energy of stars in ways that are visible to our current telescopes.<p>2. We are a very early civilization, civs are fairly rare, and we&#x27;re relatively alone in the parts of the universe that we can see. Civs that are expanding in a grabby fashion started less recently in years than their distance in light years.<p>3. Aliens expand at close to the speed of light, so there are a lot out there but we won&#x27;t see them until they&#x27;re almost here.<p>4. Something that we have already noticed is actually evidence of grabby aliens, but it is happening in every direction so we assume that it is a natural phenomenon, because it is so uniform.<p>At the very least, it seems likely that we either we are alone in the galaxy, or expansion is very slow. The idea of &quot;expanding in a bubble of influence close to the speed of light&quot; seems implausible to me, just because of the vast amounts of energy required to accelerate and decelerate to relativistic speeds, not to mention protecting the cargo in transit--when you&#x27;re flying at .9c, almost every other piece of matter in the universe is flying towards you at you at .9c. Accelerating tiny nanomachine von Neumann probes might be a solution, but how would they decelerate enough to not be destroyed on arrival?<p>It&#x27;s all fascinating to think about, at least.
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bonzaidrinkingbover 1 year ago
This theory is itself grabby, and grabs itself at that.<p>&gt; Furthermore, we should believe that loud aliens exist, as that’s our most robust explanation for why humans have appeared so early in the history of the universe. But if loud aliens will soon fill the universe, and prevent new advanced life from appearing, that early deadline explains human earliness.<p>Even furthermore, we should believe that Big Foot Medusas exist, as that&#x27;s our most robust explanation for why humans have not seen these yet and are still alive. Since Big Foot Medusas turn everything alive into stone upon observation, and we are still here, it suggests we are early in our explorations and observations of Big Foot Medusas.<p>Anyway, a loud grabby alien civilization expanding is &quot;first come, first serve&quot;. Perhaps we have not seen grabby aliens, because the first grabby aliens became quiet, and make new grabby aliens impossible, or they finally became superrational and realized they need more than one civilizations to have an economy, cooperation, cosmodiversity, or competition: If aim is to win at tennis, you can&#x27;t play tennis alone.<p>As for earth specifically, it was probably already grabbed, and humans are the terraforming organisms put in service of the grabbies to make our planet habitable. Or the grabbies are in such a zeal to expand and get the most of our galaxy that they focus on planets that are close to the horizon, after which they will be moving away at faster than light speeds due to accelerating expansion of the universe. Only after that will they get around to Earth (first building a Dyson Sphere around the universe to harness its energy).
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foucover 1 year ago
What I found most interesting about this model was the implication that humans are possibly one of the earliest sentient spacefaring species to have appeared so far. Which explains why we haven&#x27;t seen any other signs of extraterrestrial intelligence yet.
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Animatsover 1 year ago
Actual article: [1]<p><i>&quot;We estimate that loud alien civilizations now control 40%–50% of universe volume, each will later control ∼ 10^5 to 3 × 10^7 galaxies, and we could meet them in ∼200 Myr–2 Gyr.&quot;</i> Those numbers seem inconsistent.<p><i>&quot;Ours is a model of grabby aliens, who by definition (a) expand the volumes they control at a common speed, (b) clearly change the look of their volumes (relative to uncontrolled volumes), (c) are born according to a power law in time except not within other GC volumes, and (d) do not die unless displaced by other GCs.&quot;</i><p>That&#x27;s an interesting set of assumptions. Kind of a 1960s science fiction model.<p>If we now have a reasonable understanding of physics, you get a different model. No FTL, radio works at light speed,<p>Technological civilizations may not last all that long. Human civilization is about 6,000 years old. Heavy industrial civilization is about 200 years old. Most mineral resources already are past the point where the easy stuff has been mined. The USGS tracks total worldwide mineral resources.[2] On a scale of years, things look good. On a scale of centuries, not good. On a scale of millennia...<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;1538-4357&#x2F;ac2369&#x2F;pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.3847&#x2F;1538-4357&#x2F;ac2369&#x2F;...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usgs.gov&#x2F;publications&#x2F;mineral-commodity-summaries-2024" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usgs.gov&#x2F;publications&#x2F;mineral-commodity-summarie...</a>
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qnleighover 1 year ago
I&#x27;m confused by the argument here; is the argument that &#x27;humanity could not arise once the universe has been taken over by grabby aliens, so a possible explanation of finding ourselves existing so early in the history of the universe is that this will be the only opportunity&#x27;?<p>But if the universe will soon be filled with gajillions of grabby aliens, who&#x27;s to say that we couldn&#x27;t have been born as grabby aliens instead of humans? In fact if there will be so many of them, isn&#x27;t the fact that we&#x27;re not grabby aliens ourselves evidence that there will be no grabby aliens?<p>I feel like there is some implicit assumption about &#x27;who you are likely to be born as&#x27; that I&#x27;m not getting here. Do I need to assume that I could only have been born as a human for the argument to go through?
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gcanyonover 1 year ago
In case anyone is interested in how grabby aliens (or we!) could travel the galaxy, Kurzgesagt has an excellent video on building a stellar engine to move our solar system at up to 50 light years per million years. Setting aside considerations of whether we&#x27;ll survive the next few decades as a technological civilization, let alone the next few millions of years, the Caplan engine would let us colonize a significant fraction of the galaxy within a billion years or so.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU</a>
simneover 1 year ago
I know two things.<p>1. We are now already using heat mask measures, even when we are very young civ in terms of Kardashev scale. We already use simple slit heat emitters in military tech (many Stealth planes have slit nozzles and for example, Leopard tanks also use slit exhaust for same reason).<p>2. Even we now know about possibility of laser heat, which could emit heat directly with very high focus.<p>In conclusion, idea is, to surround whole civ with heat mask blanket, and make all heat exhausts directly focused on directions, where no observer expected. BTW this could be evidence of mature Civilization, when see strange space objects, which looks like Black Hole in most directions and extremely bright in some &quot;featured&quot; directions.<p>Second, looks like our development now is very slow, because it should be on early stages (Kardashev scale), and old civ&#x27;s should know this.<p>And I now support theory, that we are fortunate to be far enough, so stronger civ&#x27;s are not interested in spending resources to limit our development.<p>I even consider might be exists some preservation pact between old Big civ&#x27;s, to avoid touch young civ&#x27;s, for some purposes like scientific, or arts. So yes, basically, I support Zoo theory.
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Arch485over 1 year ago
I might be missing something here, but why would alien (or any) civilizations continually expand at a constant rate?<p>While I&#x27;m not an expert, it appears that by observing life on Earth (not just humans), groups of living things do not expand linearly, and eventually hit an upper limit (this happens at all scales, from colonies of bacteria to entire civilizations).<p>Who&#x27;s to say that other &quot;loud&quot; aliens haven&#x27;t already expanded and begun spacefaring, but simply are not expanding out to where we are?
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gmusleraover 1 year ago
It feels like talking about religion. In a lot of them at the very least, there is an almighty, omniscient god, the alpha, the everyday, and the omega god, the one that maximizes knowledge, intelligence, power, whatever. And people following that religion know exactly how that entity thinks and behave. Because that entity should think like humans of the current culture does, no?<p>With aliens, with a different culture, civilization if that concept applies, language or not, and enough technology to make interstellar travel, and all of that for thousands to millions of years, those aliens that are far beyond our imagination, well, somewhat we know how they think and should behave, now knowing the technology they should have, the knowledge about the universe they should have, philosophy or whatever.<p>We don&#x27;t even know if it will be ever practical interstellar travel, because we didn&#x27;t reach that stage yet. In theory it should work... in theory I could climb stairs till reaching the moon too. People is too busy trying to figure out how advanced aliens should think, and didn&#x27;t stopped to analyze how they are thinking.
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Towaway69over 1 year ago
My thinking is that the universe is full with life and communicating life. However communication is only possible with the right technology.<p>What is that technology? Technology that can only be created by a harmonious society working together to share ideas and combine ideas from everyone in a non competitive manner.<p>In that way the universe ensures peace and harmony ensures knowing that warring civilisation aren&#x27;t able to leave their home base nor communicate with the universe.<p>It might sound slightly esoteric and spiritual but there many ways to societally live together in harmony with all humans.<p>After all not one individual can completely understand the universe, how can one nation hope to reach out to a non understandable universe.
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flenserboyover 1 year ago
Ecosystems on Earth might be a better way of thinking about this. Notice how we do not see one organism or type of organism squeeze out all the others, or work to take in all energy available to them; this is also true of human settlements, whether rural or urban. There is a clear diversity of energy extraction methods, &amp; singular dominance (think algae-clogged lakes) tends to lead to stagnation &amp; death. Mechanical expansion might look grabby (as in Von Neumann probes), but life expanding through the universe could instead follow biological &amp; human-settlement patterns.
dangover 1 year ago
Related:<p><i>Grabby Aliens: A Resolution to the Fermi Paradox</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33402628">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33402628</a> - Oct 2022 (334 comments)<p><i>Grabby Aliens</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26502232">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26502232</a> - March 2021 (176 comments)<p><i>A Simple Model of Grabby Aliens</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26045731">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26045731</a> - Feb 2021 (80 comments)
pavel_lishinover 1 year ago
&gt; <i>that early deadline explains human earliness.</i><p>I don&#x27;t buy these statistical arguments.<p>If only one sentient species is born before 20 billion years have passed since the big bang, and ten million sentient species are born after that time, yes - statistically, you&#x27;re more likely to be one of the later species.<p><i>But that early worm species still exists, and experiences its existence.</i><p>If they thought to themselves, &quot;obviously there&#x27;s others out there, it&#x27;s statistically certain!&quot;, then they are <i>wrong</i>.
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jojohohanonover 1 year ago
Why are we now?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ox.ac.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-blog&#x2F;why-are-we-now" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ox.ac.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-blog&#x2F;why-are-we-now</a><p>It’s early here, but it think the gist of it is using Bayes to quantify:<p>Given that the universe would seem to get more hospitable at older ages,<p>why are we alive now?<p>IIUC the most likely explanation is some secondary force (<i>aliens</i>) to modify the future hospitality.
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brazzyover 1 year ago
This kind of thing always has the same weakness: it&#x27;s extrapolating from a sample size of one. It of course tries to account for that by adding large error margins based on what we know, but for some of them it&#x27;s pure guesswork that could easily wrong.
not_the_fdaover 1 year ago
I think there is a great filter. The trait that makes a species grabby is also the trait that leads to its downfall. They end up destroying their home ecosystem before they can achieve inter-solarsystem travel, wiping themselves out.
mapmeldover 1 year ago
My go-to counterargument for this is that galaxies are really far apart (from us to Andromeda is 25x the diameter of the Milky Way). If you haven&#x27;t developed FTL travel, it&#x27;s a long haul with very little benefit on the way.
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eightysixfourover 1 year ago
&gt; While the current date is 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, the average star will last over <i>five trillion years.</i><p>That does not seem right. Isn&#x27;t the lifespan of a star between 100m and 100b years or so?
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ck2over 1 year ago
the fantastic PBS Space Time on the subject<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uTrFAY3LUNw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uTrFAY3LUNw</a>
pfdietzover 1 year ago
&gt; Advanced aliens really are out there<p>Stopped reading right there.
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