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the no-aliens ever makes you fear for our future?


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#1 Luna

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Posted 19 March 2010 - 11:17 PM


Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/

#2 brokenportal

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Posted 19 March 2010 - 11:43 PM

Nick Bostrom goes over this in concepts about great filters. From what I gather hes saying basically that if they arent here by now, there must be a great filter involving a variety of concepts like kill themselves off, run out of resources, never evolved, etc.. that prevents them from being known to us. I dont buy it though, I think there are workable reasons why we dont have to conclude there is a great filter. Or as Popper would say, I think its falsifiable.

This question here reminds me of two idiosyncratic questions that have crossed my mind lately. One is, lets say hypothetically uploading happens soon, and they can just, take your brain power, put it in a robot shell, and you feel virtually the same. How would you view your body then seeing it lay there? Would there be a very intense sentimental withdrawl feeling after that? Or not so much? I think a persons answer to that, besides being interesting to think about, might say a lot about them.

The other philosophical question that crossed my mind recently that I was thinking of asking people is, lets say the stars started fading away over the course of the next month, and you were outside every night noticing this happen more and more, all on crystal clear cloudless nights. What might you think is going on? This question is more of a thinking exercise, more for perspective generation than anything.

#3 niner

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 12:13 AM

Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/

I don't worry about it in the least. We discussed this issue here, and there were some good replies. I think that Bostrom's thesis is fatally flawed.

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#4 niner

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 12:24 AM

This question here reminds me of two idiosyncratic questions that have crossed my mind lately. One is, lets say hypothetically uploading happens soon, and they can just, take your brain power, put it in a robot shell, and you feel virtually the same. How would you view your body then seeing it lay there? Would there be a very intense sentimental withdrawl feeling after that? Or not so much? I think a persons answer to that, besides being interesting to think about, might say a lot about them.

The other philosophical question that crossed my mind recently that I was thinking of asking people is, lets say the stars started fading away over the course of the next month, and you were outside every night noticing this happen more and more, all on crystal clear cloudless nights. What might you think is going on? This question is more of a thinking exercise, more for perspective generation than anything.

Great questions, Eric. Even if you might think you wouldn't like living in a robot brain, consider how freeing it would be to have all your irrational fears, now-harmful evolutionary programming, and false notions removed. If you were suddenly free of all that in your new brain, and incredibly smarter and more creative to boot, you probably wouldn't give your decrepit broken-down old body a second thought. Also, at that level of technological development, your robot-body wouldn't just be a Roomba. It would be more like a really incredibly good-looking human, or whatever you wanted it to be. Imagine not only looking great, but feeling great, with the capacity to experience infinitely more pleasure, wonder, and other positive emotions than you ever did as a human. I don't think many people would look back.

If the stars started going out, Fox News would blame it on the Democrats.

#5 Solarclimax

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 12:27 AM

Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/


Firstly, if a "they" actually exists there could be nearly endless amounts of reasons why "they" appear to us as something yet to be discovered

Secondly, assuming "they" whoever they may be didn't make it, doesn't mean others won't

Just because an intelligent human doesn't make it to the water hole in time to save their life, does that mean the same fate awaits all the less developed (intelligent) creatures ?

#6 Forever21

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 01:32 AM

Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/


This is open to endless speculation.

1. They traveled here, many of them, many times, again and again billions and millions of years ago, and saw nobody.

2. The last ones who visited are still on their way home. The next ones are on the way and will arrive in 2.5 million years.

3. The ones who visit, don't look close enough or are not looking for us. They look at the systems of our Milky Way, scan for lifeforms LIKE THEM, and don't pick up human signals.

4. The probes that were sent to our neighboring star system did a lousy job scanning for us.

5. Our kind is so common in the universe like ants, that the few REAL intelligent beings who detected us, ignored us.

6. The Universe is so vast, interstellar travel takes a long, long, long time. Think 100,000-1 million years just around their neighborhood.

7. High speed interstellar travel is too risky that their civilization banned this travel on unmapped, undiscovered space territories. They must physically travel the piece of area of the Universe and build space highways for warp drives which they are doing right now but Solar System's turn is not in the next 50 million years.

8. The last time they were here, this planet was a dump. They dropped their 'seed' which evolve into us.

9. They travel here but don't communicate. Maybe just shy or don't want to. Maybe they're more interested in our Pacific Ocean and want to drink all of it next time their ships travel and pass around this side of the neighborhood.

9. We are alone in the Universe. Life is rare, no, a cosmic accident that only happened once.

8. Life is rare. Hard to survive. Most suffer extinction. Its near impossible for others like us to visit us or us to visit them.

9. The others just dont space travel. Perhaps they have a regional cult or control authorities that prevent them. Perhaps they have intelligence but physically challenged to travel because they are water lifeforms and have bodies of dolphins.

10. They travel and perhaps are right here right now but they are lifeforms with non-biological, non-chemical bodies and don't know how to communicate with maggots like us.

11. We are alone in THIS Universe. The others are in different Universes and don't know about the other Universes or are aware of them but don't know how to travel to them.

12. Just bad timing. There were galactic empires a long long time ago, in lands so far far away but they all died off billions of years ago. Then we arrived on the scene all alone. Then millions of years after we're gone, galactic empires will happen again in the Universe.

13. The whole existence is an illusion. Maybe a dream. We live in a cosmic virtual reality. Other lifeforms are not part of the design. Or maybe we're characters in an intelligent being's mind.

14. Somebody out there detected us but immediately turned off their instruments. Thinking, perhaps erroneously, about the risk of us having the technology to go invade their planet and exploit their natural resources. Which is insane. We would never do something like that.

Edited by Forever21, 20 March 2010 - 01:46 AM.


#7 niner

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 01:44 AM

Good list, Forever21. I'll add another:

15. The ultimate evolutionary form of all life is pure intelligence, existing not as isolated bits of matter but at a deeper level of physics, without spatial boundary. They are already here because they are everywhere at once.

#8 Kolos

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 02:11 PM

Great questions, Eric. Even if you might think you wouldn't like living in a robot brain, consider how freeing it would be to have all your irrational fears, now-harmful evolutionary programming, and false notions removed. If you were suddenly free of all that in your new brain, and incredibly smarter and more creative to boot, you probably wouldn't give your decrepit broken-down old body a second thought.


Actually most humans would oppose mind uploading or similar technologies if it mean their "evolutionary programming" would be removed, sure it would be nice to control your instincts but critics would say "wait, so you can just switch off conscience, empathy and everything that makes us humans when you like? That would destroy our civilization we should ban this technology before it's too late!" so most probably things like that would be limited to psychiatric treatment, perhaps also military use but for normal people some special permission would be needed even for minor changes.
Similar with "robot" body, assuming we would still have a need to use them there would be probably some serious limitations to things like strength, agility, senses enhancement etc. Many things might be possible in the future but also many things would be most probably banned for different reasons.

#9 Marios Kyriazis

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 04:12 PM

Good list, Forever21. I'll add another:

15. The ultimate evolutionary form of all life is pure intelligence, existing not as isolated bits of matter but at a deeper level of physics, without spatial boundary. They are already here because they are everywhere at once.


I like the list, it must be one of the most complete lists about the subject ever devised! It is worth publishing it somewhere. As for item 15, I agree with you but please explain: if the aim of life is to attain pure intelligence, why then do we have to die, loose all we have learned and have to start all over again, as babies with minimal intelligence? Wouldn't it be better to live forever and develop our intelligence in the process?

#10 Forever21

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 05:51 PM

<br />Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/<br />

<br /><br /><br />


To answer the question, the no alien contact makes me feel relieved. Many wonder if we're alone in the universe. I hope we are.

#11 khakiman

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Posted 20 March 2010 - 09:07 PM

If I had to guess I would say there's at least 10 different species of aliens in contact with humans, and probably dozens more monitoring from above. Probably some kind of galactic council that forbids direct contact. Some may be completely hostile and are working behind the scenes with humans to produce fear so they can use it to empower themselves. Far more likely than us being the only blue planet with intelligent life. Is it a coincidence that the pyramids point to the first star in orions belt? Every chemical for life is available in abundance there. Don't worry you're still a special unique snowflake, but all we know of the cosmos is what we can see with a telescope. If we were on another planet all we would know about humans on Earth is that a dot passes in front of the star Sol every 365 days. That's if it was close enough for us to detect and in the right spot of the sky. Even if we were the only species in the Milky way there's still hundreds of billions of other galaxies. Just don't bring any of this up to a fundamentalist christian (I am Christian myself), or you will hear about how the Earth is 6000 years old. The more that a religious group tests your loyalty with wacked out claims, the more they are using you as part of their corrupt hive. Jesus of Nazareth would tell a parable about how disgusting the whole thing has become.

Edited by khakiman, 20 March 2010 - 09:10 PM.


#12 SpawnMoreOverlords

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 10:42 AM

why no aliens ? what about the mass sightings of UFO events (with thousands of witnesses). happened before

Edited by SpawnMoreOverlords, 21 March 2010 - 10:43 AM.


#13 caston

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 02:30 PM

16. The human race it self may be extra terrestrial in origin. An advanced race started highly advanced civilsations here on earth with genetically engineered slaves that were tough as guts but dumb as bricks. Slowly genetic material from the ruling classes drifted to the slaves through horizontal gene transfer and on the odd occasional (but becoming more common with each passing day in our history until it happened every minute) even sex. Every system of slavery and control of people and the money supply originated from this start and through every atrocity in human history we have been fighting to make the entire planet more closely resemble the civilsation that started us.

#14 advancedatheist

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 02:44 PM

I hereby nominate humans as our galaxy's elder race, the First Ones; and Earth as the capital of the Galactic Empire, ruled from the throne in Liechtenstein; and Liechtenstein's prince, Hans Adam II, as the first Galactic Emperor.

Why Liechtenstein? It will become super-wealthy from the money invested there by wealthy cryonicists.

And why Liechtenstein's prince? He has a cool name, like a character from Dune; and I can imagine him caressing a globe of Arrakis in his private quarters while muttering that he who controls the Spice, controls the universe.

#15 niner

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 02:59 PM

Great questions, Eric. Even if you might think you wouldn't like living in a robot brain, consider how freeing it would be to have all your irrational fears, now-harmful evolutionary programming, and false notions removed. If you were suddenly free of all that in your new brain, and incredibly smarter and more creative to boot, you probably wouldn't give your decrepit broken-down old body a second thought.


Actually most humans would oppose mind uploading or similar technologies if it mean their "evolutionary programming" would be removed, sure it would be nice to control your instincts but critics would say "wait, so you can just switch off conscience, empathy and everything that makes us humans when you like? That would destroy our civilization we should ban this technology before it's too late!" so most probably things like that would be limited to psychiatric treatment, perhaps also military use but for normal people some special permission would be needed even for minor changes.
Similar with "robot" body, assuming we would still have a need to use them there would be probably some serious limitations to things like strength, agility, senses enhancement etc. Many things might be possible in the future but also many things would be most probably banned for different reasons.

Umm, I don't think anyone will want to get rid of conscience and empathy. Those are helpful, not harmful. I was thinking about more primitive things.

#16 brokenportal

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 06:24 PM

Great questions, Eric. Even if you might think you wouldn't like living in a robot brain, consider how freeing it would be to have all your irrational fears, now-harmful evolutionary programming, and false notions removed. If you were suddenly free of all that in your new brain, and incredibly smarter and more creative to boot, you probably wouldn't give your decrepit broken-down old body a second thought. Also, at that level of technological development, your robot-body wouldn't just be a Roomba. It would be more like a really incredibly good-looking human, or whatever you wanted it to be. Imagine not only looking great, but feeling great, with the capacity to experience infinitely more pleasure, wonder, and other positive emotions than you ever did as a human. I don't think many people would look back.


So then, this is a little grotesque to think about, but also kind of not, lets say your in your robot body, you designed it, your look virtually the same, you feel virtually the same, maybe a little tinny, maybe a little extra iron in your blood, your muscle tension and strength is about the same, (but incapable of muscle max out and pull and what not) and your tasked with taking your body to whereever it might end up. So hypothetically, (somebody else would probably do it) your walking there, with your body on a cart in front of you, its that rare moment where you just got rid of it and its the last time youll probably see it, the thoughts about it are hitting you for the first time really. I wonder if there might be a feeling of panic, maybe almost shock. And or, I wonder if there would be a feeling of like, a weight being untied from around your neck that has been there from birth. I wonder if people might instantly lose the sense of physical self and think of themselves only in terms of their thoughts? How might that effect vain people who have always judged their self worth on the tone of their muscles and the chisel in their jaw?

If the stars started going out, Fox News would blame it on the Democrats.


That should be fine, because I imagine Fox journalists and anchors and all will likely be in Zoos in the future. Dolphin in exibit swimming around, cage with monkey flinging poo, condos with all glass walls with Fox people flinging poo, rhinos head butting in cage, etc...

#17 niner

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 06:35 PM

So then, this is a little grotesque to think about, but also kind of not, lets say your in your robot body, you designed it, your look virtually the same, you feel virtually the same, maybe a little tinny, maybe a little extra iron in your blood, your muscle tension and strength is about the same, (but incapable of muscle max out and pull and what not) and your tasked with taking your body to whereever it might end up. So hypothetically, (somebody else would probably do it) your walking there, with your body on a cart in front of you, its that rare moment where you just got rid of it and its the last time youll probably see it, the thoughts about it are hitting you for the first time really. I wonder if there might be a feeling of panic, maybe almost shock. And or, I wonder if there would be a feeling of like, a weight being untied from around your neck that has been there from birth. I wonder if people might instantly lose the sense of physical self and think of themselves only in terms of their thoughts? How might that effect vain people who have always judged their self worth on the tone of their muscles and the chisel in their jaw?

The way I imagine this scenario is that I would feel absolutely great; better than I ever felt before with a wetware body. My mind would be clear and sharp, lucid and happy. For what it's worth, my body would look great, too; far better than the old one ever did. As I wheel my old body off to the Soylent factory, I would marvel at how broken down and crappy it looks, but be thankful that it got me here.

On a smaller scale, if you had a bad tooth replaced by an implant, or an injured, crippled hand replaced by a brand new one, how attached would you be to the old part? You might want the old tooth for the Tooth Fairy. I don't think there's a hand fairy.

#18 Shannon Vyff

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 06:47 PM

When I was a kid I was convinced that aliens visited me. I thought they were interested in why humans were as violent as they were and had not developed into an advanced race-and that they could only observe as policy. As I got older I thought they could be humans from the future time traveling to avert disasters --still older I finally hit high school and started reading actual theories others had on whether or not there is alien life. Over the past 15 years I've seen a lot of arguments, with new interesting ones coming out every year. Forever21's list is great for example :) My stance now is that I like to think there is life out there somewhere, but I'm disappointed in their emotional intelligence or empathy to end suffering in others if they do just observe us from afar or check in every few thousand years. So, I go with the extreme distances theory, life evolved here on Earth over 4.5 billion years. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old-but is 165 billion light years across. So, say it took longer or just as long for other civilizations to evolve- and even if they are a billion years advanced from where we are now, they still may not have been able to travel fast enough to get out of their own galaxy... maybe we'll still meet up some day ;)

#19 Kolos

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 07:13 PM

Umm, I don't think anyone will want to get rid of conscience and empathy. Those are helpful, not harmful.

It depends from your perspective, for a soldier it might be actually harmful.

I was thinking about more primitive things.

What do you mean by primitive?

#20 niner

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 07:33 PM

Umm, I don't think anyone will want to get rid of conscience and empathy. Those are helpful, not harmful.

It depends from your perspective, for a soldier it might be actually harmful.

The military is already pouring resources into autonomous and semi-autonomous battlefield robotics. By the time we are even close to uploading, there will already be very sophisticated fighting robots, so if we have wars at all at that point in time, it may not be necessary for humans to be "soldiers" in the classic sense. That doesn't mean that some people might not want to.

I was thinking about more primitive things.

What do you mean by primitive?

Some of our fear responses that came from hundreds of millions of years ago; our amygdala-driven selves. The sorts of things that political spin-meisters use to get you to vote against your self interest, like our fear of "the other", or our primitive tribalism.

Edited by niner, 21 March 2010 - 07:35 PM.


#21 Mind

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 09:03 PM

Here is my reply from another very similar thread about the Fermi Paradox:

Ah yes, the Fermi paradox again. Such a fun topic, as the human mind tends to wonder (and wander). In the end, it always turns into the age-old philosophical questions. Why are we hear? Are we alone?

It is fun to speculate, and I have for many years. Then last Fall, while discussing this topic with George Dvorsky at John Smart's after Convergence party, I realized something about the universe and infinity. It was triggered by my memory of reading about Hotel Infinity. It is about Cantor's set theory and countable and uncountable infinite sets. I am unsure if there is a rigorous mathematical connection that can be drawn between the abstract mathematical theory and the size/age of the universe but it occurred to me that if the universe is infinite in space and time, we might never encounter an alien intelligence (post singularity or not) no matter how long we live, AND even if there are infinite such civilizations.

So, I find it more rewarding to actually participate in the effort to discover and research, than to speculate so far into philosophical issues. We could spend hours thinking about it, or putting more effort into building the satellites, robots, space ships, and telescopes to find the evidence of alien civilizations. It is similar in the anti-aging meme. We can spend an inordinate amount of time speculating about post-aging, post-singularity civilization (at least a little is necessary) or we can actually make it happen. I am happy to see that a lot of members are participating as evidenced by the recent very successful fundraiser for Laser Ablation. Great job everyone.


I am not sure if I adequately described my most likely very poor allegory to Cantor's set theory. If "EVERYTHING" (all space and time) is an uncountably infinite set, and all different life forms that exist represent a countably infinite set, then we could continue expanding infinitely into the universe and never encounter another alien life form - even though an infinite number of them might exist.

#22 brokenportal

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 09:16 PM

Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/


This is open to endless speculation.

1. They traveled here, many of them, many times, again and again billions and millions of years ago, and saw nobody.

2. The last ones who visited are still on their way home. The next ones are on the way and will arrive in 2.5 million years.

3. The ones who visit, don't look close enough or are not looking for us. They look at the systems of our Milky Way, scan for lifeforms LIKE THEM, and don't pick up human signals.

4. The probes that were sent to our neighboring star system did a lousy job scanning for us.

5. Our kind is so common in the universe like ants, that the few REAL intelligent beings who detected us, ignored us.

6. The Universe is so vast, interstellar travel takes a long, long, long time. Think 100,000-1 million years just around their neighborhood.

7. High speed interstellar travel is too risky that their civilization banned this travel on unmapped, undiscovered space territories. They must physically travel the piece of area of the Universe and build space highways for warp drives which they are doing right now but Solar System's turn is not in the next 50 million years.

8. The last time they were here, this planet was a dump. They dropped their 'seed' which evolve into us.

9. They travel here but don't communicate. Maybe just shy or don't want to. Maybe they're more interested in our Pacific Ocean and want to drink all of it next time their ships travel and pass around this side of the neighborhood.

9. We are alone in the Universe. Life is rare, no, a cosmic accident that only happened once.

8. Life is rare. Hard to survive. Most suffer extinction. Its near impossible for others like us to visit us or us to visit them.

9. The others just dont space travel. Perhaps they have a regional cult or control authorities that prevent them. Perhaps they have intelligence but physically challenged to travel because they are water lifeforms and have bodies of dolphins.

10. They travel and perhaps are right here right now but they are lifeforms with non-biological, non-chemical bodies and don't know how to communicate with maggots like us.

11. We are alone in THIS Universe. The others are in different Universes and don't know about the other Universes or are aware of them but don't know how to travel to them.

12. Just bad timing. There were galactic empires a long long time ago, in lands so far far away but they all died off billions of years ago. Then we arrived on the scene all alone. Then millions of years after we're gone, galactic empires will happen again in the Universe.

13. The whole existence is an illusion. Maybe a dream. We live in a cosmic virtual reality. Other lifeforms are not part of the design. Or maybe we're characters in an intelligent being's mind.

14. Somebody out there detected us but immediately turned off their instruments. Thinking, perhaps erroneously, about the risk of us having the technology to go invade their planet and exploit their natural resources. Which is insane. We would never do something like that.



This list seems like it would be interesting and useful to continue a little more officially. Maybe through imminst.org/wiki or a topic of its own.

#23 Kolos

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Posted 21 March 2010 - 11:07 PM

The military is already pouring resources into autonomous and semi-autonomous battlefield robotics. By the time we are even close to uploading, there will already be very sophisticated fighting robots, so if we have wars at all at that point in time, it may not be necessary for humans to be "soldiers" in the classic sense. That doesn't mean that some people might not want to.

Well I would imagine human controlled machines (not necessarily anthropomorphic) rather than some self-conscious robots that might become dangerous for their creators or are too dumb to complete a mission.
Anyway you can still imagine some people switching their emotions of to do things they normally would only dream about, some of them quite insane. It would be rare but media would make a big sensation whenever something like that happens which might result in certain limitations.

Some of our fear responses that came from hundreds of millions of years ago; our amygdala-driven selves. The sorts of things that political spin-meisters use to get you to vote against your self interest, like our fear of "the other", or our primitive tribalism.


When you observe a rat, you might notice that it will panic just from the smell of a cat even if he had no contact with cats in his whole life.
But humans are more complicated than that and things you mention are more connected with Social conditioning rather than genes alone and if you want to remove "primitive tribalism" you might make people completely indifferent to other people etc. To really change someone for the better or worse you might have to manipulate his memories, I'm sure some people would prefer to remove some things they are not really proud of or even add things that never happened but many people would absolutely hate this idea and this fear wouldn't be completely irrational, just imagine what a hacker could do with such power - I think they used this motive in the first Ghost in the Shell movie.
You might also manipulate with (simulated) chemistry of our brain but you wouldn't achieve much more than we already do with medicine or drugs.

#24 Luna

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Posted 22 March 2010 - 08:12 PM

<br />Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/<br />

<br /><br /><br />


To answer the question, the no alien contact makes me feel relieved. Many wonder if we're alone in the universe. I hope we are.


why would you hope we are alone?

I would only see it as a possible comfort that the future is very unknown still, which isn't as comforting as having super immortal alien races who can reverse entropy and control gravity to prove us wrong about so many annoying theories.

Edited by Luna, 22 March 2010 - 08:13 PM.


#25 Luna

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Posted 22 March 2010 - 08:22 PM

When I was a kid I was convinced that aliens visited me. I thought they were interested in why humans were as violent as they were and had not developed into an advanced race-and that they could only observe as policy. As I got older I thought they could be humans from the future time traveling to avert disasters --still older I finally hit high school and started reading actual theories others had on whether or not there is alien life. Over the past 15 years I've seen a lot of arguments, with new interesting ones coming out every year. Forever21's list is great for example :) My stance now is that I like to think there is life out there somewhere, but I'm disappointed in their emotional intelligence or empathy to end suffering in others if they do just observe us from afar or check in every few thousand years. So, I go with the extreme distances theory, life evolved here on Earth over 4.5 billion years. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old-but is 165 billion light years across. So, say it took longer or just as long for other civilizations to evolve- and even if they are a billion years advanced from where we are now, they still may not have been able to travel fast enough to get out of their own galaxy... maybe we'll still meet up some day :)


Them being too far away is also quite scary, does it mean the universe can't be controlled as we hope and we are doomed anyways? HOPE NOT! uff..

Universe being X light years in size only? I dunno, that's also scary.

I always find this scary thoughts that we might just be like molecules in some cell of some bigger person's machine :/ ;-;

#26 Forever21

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Posted 22 March 2010 - 08:29 PM

<br />Like, where are they? how come no one is there? does it mean we are doomed to fail too? feels like it :/<br />

<br /><br /><br />


To answer the question, the no alien contact makes me feel relieved. Many wonder if we're alone in the universe. I hope we are.


why would you hope we are alone?

I would only see it as a possible comfort that the future is very unknown still, which isn't as comforting as having super immortal alien races who can reverse entropy and control gravity to prove us wrong about so many annoying theories.



The existence of such beings poses a risk. A high risk, too high to even imagine.

#27 niner

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 12:37 AM

When I was a kid I was convinced that aliens visited me. I thought they were interested in why humans were as violent as they were and had not developed into an advanced race-and that they could only observe as policy. As I got older I thought they could be humans from the future time traveling to avert disasters --still older I finally hit high school and started reading actual theories others had on whether or not there is alien life. Over the past 15 years I've seen a lot of arguments, with new interesting ones coming out every year. Forever21's list is great for example :) My stance now is that I like to think there is life out there somewhere, but I'm disappointed in their emotional intelligence or empathy to end suffering in others if they do just observe us from afar or check in every few thousand years. So, I go with the extreme distances theory, life evolved here on Earth over 4.5 billion years. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old-but is 165 billion light years across. So, say it took longer or just as long for other civilizations to evolve- and even if they are a billion years advanced from where we are now, they still may not have been able to travel fast enough to get out of their own galaxy... maybe we'll still meet up some day :)

Them being too far away is also quite scary, does it mean the universe can't be controlled as we hope and we are doomed anyways? HOPE NOT! uff..

Universe being X light years in size only? I dunno, that's also scary.

I always find this scary thoughts that we might just be like molecules in some cell of some bigger person's machine :/ ;-;

Why is it scary that the universe is big, or not infinite? That doesn't mean we're doomed. We can have a fine life right here in our own little galaxy. You seem to have some free-floating anxiety... everything is scaring you. Is something troubling you?

#28 full_circle

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 02:32 AM

wow what unexpected topic! :)
anyways plz pardon my random comment: i believe fingerprint of our creator is left in all of us. in molecular scale? in nano scale? in sub-atomic scale? wish i knew...

#29 A941

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 03:13 AM

Maybe they are not here for the same reason i dont want to go to Saudi Arabia :)

#30 Luna

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Posted 23 March 2010 - 07:01 AM

When I was a kid I was convinced that aliens visited me. I thought they were interested in why humans were as violent as they were and had not developed into an advanced race-and that they could only observe as policy. As I got older I thought they could be humans from the future time traveling to avert disasters --still older I finally hit high school and started reading actual theories others had on whether or not there is alien life. Over the past 15 years I've seen a lot of arguments, with new interesting ones coming out every year. Forever21's list is great for example :) My stance now is that I like to think there is life out there somewhere, but I'm disappointed in their emotional intelligence or empathy to end suffering in others if they do just observe us from afar or check in every few thousand years. So, I go with the extreme distances theory, life evolved here on Earth over 4.5 billion years. The Universe is 13.7 billion years old-but is 165 billion light years across. So, say it took longer or just as long for other civilizations to evolve- and even if they are a billion years advanced from where we are now, they still may not have been able to travel fast enough to get out of their own galaxy... maybe we'll still meet up some day :)

Them being too far away is also quite scary, does it mean the universe can't be controlled as we hope and we are doomed anyways? HOPE NOT! uff..

Universe being X light years in size only? I dunno, that's also scary.

I always find this scary thoughts that we might just be like molecules in some cell of some bigger person's machine :/ ;-;

Why is it scary that the universe is big, or not infinite? That doesn't mean we're doomed. We can have a fine life right here in our own little galaxy. You seem to have some free-floating anxiety... everything is scaring you. Is something troubling you?


Oh no! It's just that I think if theories like the big bang, that the universe started from a singularity and is not infinite in size, that could mean a lot of bad things for us.
It might even mean good things but so far physicists aren't known for good things for keeping things going indefinitely.

Life in our galaxy? well, that's the things, galaxies aren't immortal, does it mean anything about our ability?

Physicists are all too happy putting a doomsday in the "fate of the universe". Energy always seems limited in one way or another. Yeah, I think the universe is pretty scary and not just because of the far future.
We are on ONE planet, on our planet we can't control earthquake or barely able to predict the weather properly.

Oh and by all logic, nothing is supposed to be, that gives you a chill but at the same time it's maybe the only thing that gives some hope that we might be able to do something.
Then again, we need to survive aging, trama, disease and all that first.. Yep, the idea of trying to stay alive is pretty scary (not the staying alive part, but the how obviously) when you're thinking long term. When you are thinking short term you'll figure you probably can't pass that anyways but hey,, I hope we can (that and the long and the very very long and so on, terms).

It's not like I am *ALWAYS* thinking about those stuff and always anxious, but when I am thinking of life extension I seem to find way too many problems, on all fields.




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