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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Stephen Webb
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March 15 - April 8, 2019
For strong signals, letters were used (with Z being stronger than A). On the night of 15 August 1977, Jerry Ehman spotted the characters “6EQUJ5” on channel 2. This signal started from roughly background level, rose to level U, then decreased back to background level in 37 seconds. This was exactly what an extraterrestrial signal might look like; Ehman circled the characters and wrote “Wow!” in the margin.
Wow
Another intriguing candidate is GCRT J1745-3009, a radio source that emitted five bursts of low frequency radiation in October 2002. Each burst was equally bright, lasted about ten minutes, and occurred every 77 minutes. A similar burst was observed a year later. Six months after that, astronomers observed a weaker burst. There has been nothing since.
Wow
taking a conservative viewpoint, we can probably rule out the existence of a KIII civilization anywhere in our Galaxy, a KII civilization in our particular part of the Galaxy and a KI civilization within a 100 light years or so: if they were there, we would surely have heard from them. Billions of channels and—so far—nothing on.
Wow. Our development base on exploitation on resources.
In Nature, we often find that objects with a large value of some property are rare, while objects with a smaller value of that property are common. Thus bright stars of spectral class O are few in number, while dim M-class stars are widespread. Strong radio sources such as quasars are rare, while weak radio sources like stellar coronas are common.
O
I do not search; I find. Pablo Picasso
O. Already within.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Smith assumes that there is a maximum distance within which a signal can be detected. Beyond that horizon the signal becomes so weak as to be undetectable.
O. Distance of signal?
Another commonly presented argument is that super-intelligent ETCs refrain from communication with us in order to protect us from developing an inferiority complex; they are waiting until we can provide worthwhile contributions to the conversations taking place in the Galactic Club.
The symbols they used would, of course, be different—but that’s a trivial difference. Instead of superficial differences we want to know whether they develop the prime number theorem; the min–max theorem; the four-color theorem. If their evolutionary history were completely different from our own, then perhaps they wouldn’t develop the theorems that humans have done.
Exactly
Or perhaps it’s possible to develop a mathematical system based upon the concepts of shape and size, rather than number and set as humans have done. Or perhaps the brains of extraterrestrials are so much more powerful than ours they can run numerical simulations in their heads (or whatever serves as their heads).
I can imagine a race of super-intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures developing a mathematical system without the Pythagorean theorem (would they even know about right angles?),
Wow
Whatever information the Voynich Manuscript contains, we know it was written by a human being in the not too distant past. So the author had the same sensory inputs as the rest of us; a cultural background that is recognizable, if not identical to our own; human emotions that drove him (or her) in exactly the same way they drive us. And yet he (or she) wrote a book we can’t decipher. If such a situation can occur with a member of our own species, what chance do we have of understanding a message from an ETC?
Wow.Voynich Manuscript
They are interested in learning about the basic building blocks of the universe and the ways in which they can interact. The way they go about this is to smash particles together, at high energies, and then see what happens. It’s a crude way of studying the physical world, but it’s remarkably effective. However, some people believe that the high energies involved in such experiments could initiate some sort of global disaster. If particle physics experiments can indeed produce doomsday, and if an intelligent species’ natural curiosity about the universe leads them inexorably to build such
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Wow. Doomsday experiments
The surface biosphere would be converted from the rich, varied environment we see today into a sea of ravenous nanobots plus waste sludge. This is the gray goo problem.
As Asimov was fond of pointing out, when man invented the sword he also invented the hand guard so that one’s fingers didn’t slither down the blade when one thrust at an opponent. The engineers who develop nanotechnology are certain to develop sophisticated safeguards.
Wow. Not necessarily though
Cooper argues that we can reasonably assume two things about any civilization that has reached a point where it is engaging in space travel. First, the civilization will consist of many individuals. (Why should we expect alien numbers to be legion? Well, Cooper argues that it’s hugely expensive to escape the gravitational field of a planet large enough to possess an atmosphere. In humanity’s case it wasn’t until billions of individuals were available that sufficient resources could be brought to bear on the problem, and Cooper argues that the same will be true of ETCs.
Wow
Cooper argues that, when one looks at these developments on a cosmic timescale, alien civilizations will learn to master their biology and their space environment at the same instant.)
It seems certain that within a few decades the billions of individuals here on Earth will have the capacity, if they so wish, to create artificial life. And any population of several billion will contain individuals who are insane, hateful or vengeful: we have plenty of such people among us right now. The difference is that in a few years those people will be able to create pathogens that target those possessing the “wrong” number of X chromosomes, “too high” a production of melanin, or otherwise “undesirable” genetic traits.
Cooper offers this as a possible resolution of the paradox: any spacefaring civilization will possess a knowledge of how to destroy its own type of life, and it’s likely that one individual from the billions that make up the civilization will—for whatever reason—apply that knowledge.
Wow.its possible but how probable
Since the Industrial Revolution, humanity’s insatiable demand for energy has been met mainly by extracting fossil fuels—coal, petroleum, natural gas—and burning them. Had humanity not discovered vast reserves of these energy-dense materials then our present civilization would likely be quite different: scientific and technological innovation would no doubt have continued, but progress would surely have been much slower and our choices would have been constrained.
Energy and resources. Exploitation and development and expansion.
Fossil fuels were formed through the decomposition of buried dead organisms. Oil and natural gas comes from organisms that lived in rivers or oceans and were buried under layers of silt; over millions of years this organic material was “cooked” under pressure to create the deposits we tap into today. Coal formed in a similar way, except that the original material was trees, ferns and plants.
Fossils
No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works and Days
Wow. So true
If he was there at the beginning of this interval, then the Wall must have existed for of its lifespan, and of its lifespan remained. In other words, the Wall would last 3 times as long as it already had existed. If he was there at the end of this interval, then the Wall must have existed for of its lifespan, and only was left. In other words, the Wall would last only as long as it already had existed. The Wall was 8 years old when Gott saw it. He therefore predicted, in the summer of 1969, that there was a 50 % chance of the Wall lasting a further to 24 years ( years to years).
Wow
Gott says the argument he used to estimate the lifetime of the Berlin Wall can be applied to almost anything.
Gott
The presence of Lagash’s moon has to be deduced because the moon isn’t visible: the presence of six suns means darkness never falls on Lagash. The planet never has night. Nightfall describes what happens on Lagash when a rare alignment of the moon and the six stars produces an eclipse, and the beings of Lagash for the first time see the night sky. It’s a wonderful story.
Book. Nightfall
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. Albert Camus
Wow
Perhaps the physical make-up of our universe is such that this is the fate of any intelligent species. If that’s the case then it would explain why we haven’t heard from ETCs: they are all stuck at more or less the same level of scientific understanding—and thus technological competence—as we are. They know about quarks and cosmic inflation and dark energy, but they don’t know how it all fits together any more than we do. They wonder whether anybody is out there, but they have the same limited lack the capacity to broadcast their existence to the wider universe as we do. It’s a frustrating
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Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly. Stephen King
Wow
Lampton’s take on the Fermi paradox, therefore, is that all technologically based societies eventually make a transition: pre-transition societies are motivated by colonization, conquest and trade; post-transition societies are driven by information.
Wow
If such a societal transition occurs on a short timescale compared to the colonization timescale—and if we extrapolate current trends here on Earth that would appear to be likely—then the paradox disappears.
Note that the transition to which Lampton refers is essentially instantaneous on astronomical timescales, but it isn’t a change of kind: a post-transition society might have different motivations to its pre-transition forebear, but its essence wouldn’t change.
perhaps intelligent species evolve to a non-physical state that transcends the limitations of spacetime. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End describes humanity’s transition from our present rather immature state to a merger with the galactic “overmind” (some sort of spiritual union, the precise nature of which is never made clear). According to this suggestion, we don’t hear from ETCs because they’ve evolved beyond our secular existence.
Wow
intelligent species eventually evolve telepathic abilities and can communicate directly, from mind to mind, even over interstellar distances. Not for them the difficulties of radio communication. Perhaps they even travel using the power of the mind—as with the jaunt in Bester’s novel The Stars My Destination. If this were true, ETCs might not bother trying to communicate with those of us who live a psi-challenged existence.
If brane cosmology turns out to be a true description of the universe then it’s possible that there are other branes—other worlds—sitting literally parallel to our own, stacked together like slices of bread in a loaf. These universes could be just a millimeter away from each other in the higher dimensions, but matter and radiation would be stuck to each of the branes; only through gravity can branes affect one another.
Wow
In 2002 Karl Schroeder, a Canadian SF writer, published a novel called Permanence which contains dozens of interesting scientific and philosophical speculations—including, as Milan Ćirković later emphasized, a possible solution to the Fermi paradox. Ćirković called it an “adaptationist” solution.
Adaptationist
And just as sighted fish can lose eyesight if the selective advantage of possessing eyesight disappears, so too might intelligence and consciousness wither as the environment in which it finds itself changes.
For Schroeder, intelligence isn’t a prerequisite for toolmaking or civilization. He has one of his protagonists state that: “consciousness appears to be a phase. No species we have studied has retained what we could call self-awareness for its entire history. Certainly none has evolved into some state above consciousness.”
O
Some day, we’ll become … able to maintain a technological infrastructure without needing to think about it. Without need to think, at all … .”
Wow
In Permanence, then, intelligence is impermanent. The communicating lifetime, , of an ETC is limited not through apocalypse but through selection pressures. It isn’t that intelligent species destroy themselves before communicating; it’s that they better adapt to their environments and, in doing so, lose the capacity to communicate over interstellar distances.
Wow
All things must change, To something new, to something strange. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos
If ETCs persist over long reaches of time then we need to explore their likely evolution. As the famous physicist Niels Bohr once remarked, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. It’s probably impossible to predict how a billion years of biological evolution will pan out. However, one might argue that biological evolution becomes increasingly irrelevant once a civilization reaches a certain level of technical sophistication: cultural evolution vastly outpaces biological evolution.
Wow. Cultural evolution outpaces biological evolution when civilization reaches a certain technological sophistication.
Dick highlights the following fields as being most relevant in this regard: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and space travel.
Main
The Intelligence Principle implies that given enough time—and ETCs will have had enough time—biologically based intelligence will create artificial intelligence. The products of biological evolution will be replaced by, or will merge with, their machine progeny. Stapledonian thinking suggests that we might live in a postbiological universe.
Main
One implication is that we might be looking in the wrong place: postbiologicals, freed from the shackles of a corporeal existence, need not remain planet-bound. The SETI focus on Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars might be misplaced. A second implication is that postbiologicals might be more interested in receiving signals from biologicals than in trying to communicate with them. A third is that the huge differences between postbiologicals and biologicals—differences in age, abilities, physicality and much else—might lead to a qualitative difference between our minds and theirs:
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Wow.postbiology
(George R. R. Martin once wrote a wonderful, haunting story called A Song For Lya, in which the prime motivation of one extraterrestrial culture was love. Do read it.)
A song for lya
whatever wonderful technologies an ETC possesses, we can be fairly sure large quantities of energy will be involved—and the more advanced and widespread the technology, the more energy will be needed.
Richard Feynman once remarked, “there’s plenty of room at the bottom”; in other words, there’s more to explore at small scales than at large scales. Indeed, there are 35 orders of magnitude between the human scale of 1 m and the smallest possible scale defined by quantum physics—the Planck scale; there are “only” 26 orders of magnitude between the human scale and the size of the observable universe.
Wow
And then there’s the speculation that truly advanced civilizations might use time dilation effects around a black hole in order to survive into the indefinite future (whereas the less advanced civilizations survive only as long as their host star—humankind, for example, has at most only a couple of billion years before the Sun devours all life on Earth).
Wow
The motives and goals of a super-intelligent post-Singularity creature might be unknowable to us—but so, presumably, would the motives and goals of any “traditional” KIII civilizations that might exist. Yet we are happy to think about how to detect such KIII civilizations. In fact, we might have more chance of understanding the post-Singularity beings on Earth than we would of understanding extraterrestrials, because in some sense those entities would be us.
Wow
Unless the super-intelligences felt they had to destroy us (why would they bother?), we could go on living as we’ve always done. We might bear the same relation to the super-intelligent beings as bacteria do to us—but so what? Two billion years ago bacteria were the dominant form of life on Earth, and by many measures (species longevity, total biomass, ability to withstand global catastrophe, and so on) they still are. The existence of humans doesn’t affect bacteria. In the same way, the existence of super-intelligent beings need not necessarily affect humanity; they could do their weird
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Wow .true
