[uxcn]

I think it's likely intelligent life outside our planet just doesn't, or won't, have any interest in us outside the infinitesimal possibility of a threat.

Consider everything less intelligent than us on our planet... If anything tried to communicate with us, would we even bother trying to figure out what it was trying to say? Would we try to communicate back?

Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium?

[TheOtherHobbes]

Traditionally, no human considers an octopus intelligent unless it can predict soccer results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus

Paul aside, we've been ignoring evidence that animals are sentient for centuries now.

So yes - as a general principle, there's a term missing from the Drake equation to cover recognisable similarity, technological equivalence, and mutual interest.

Two civs probably need to be within half a millennium or so of technological development (human time) to have any possibility of communicating.

Considering how old the universe is, it's quite likely civs pass each other by all the time, because larger development differentials aren't visible - literally in one direction, and because of perceived triviality in the other.

Imagine an ant colony in a city, looking for other ant nests, while the city, all the other cities, and the rest of the civ that built the cities can't be imagined by the ants. So even though they're in the middle of a busy civilisation, it's invisible to them.

[trentlott]

Ant 1: "Man, how do we get all these strange food deposits without plants?"

Ant 2: "Who knows? That's just the way the universe is."

Man 1: "Man, how do we have all these strange gravity deposits without matter?"

[orly_bookz]

Creepy.

[uxcn]

Two civs probably need to be within half a millennium or so of technological development (human time) to have any possibility of communicating.

Intelligence seems to expand polynomially or exponentially by a lot of measures though (e.g. technology). The closest analogy for us compared to another civilization that could actually receive our radio communication I think would be chimpanzees using sticks to eat termites.

If I had to guess, I'd guess there's probably some kind of technological asymptote, but considering the scale of the universe (more importantly its complexity) I think we are probably nowhere near it.

[totalZero]

Yeah, I'd care about that octopus. I would want to study it and see what else it does.

Prime numbers are a consequential concept. Maybe that octopus knows about another consequential concept that we haven't been thinking about for many hundreds of years.

Also, maybe the smartest thing to do if an unknown entity tries to contact you, is to play dumb.

[uxcn]

Yeah, I'd care about that octopus. I would want to study it and see what else it does.

Sure, I mean intelligent life is interesting to us because it's novel. If there is other intelligent life in the galaxy (universe), it probably implies that intelligent life is relatively common. So, more (less) intelligent life would be extremely inconsequential to them. Why waste resources studying something already well understood?

[x1798DE]

That seems remarkably incurious. There are like, tens of thousands of species of bee on earth, and there are tons of people who are out there looking into cataloguing them, studying their behavior, etc.

I suspect that if life is common enough that we're boring to most other forms of intelligent life, we'd probably find at least one or two other species that are interested in us, and if it's rare enough that there's only one or two other species out there, then chances are we're interesting enough that some of their folks would want to visit us and find out our deal.

[uxcn]

I personally think life is probably common in the universe. We've only been able to prove exoplanets exist within the last few decades, but the evidence is already that there are a number of planets that are hospitable to life (our kind at least). We've only just started scratching the surface and we've already found things like Tabby's Star [1].

Obviously I think there's a point to us trying to communicate with whatever is out there, I just think we shouldn't be surprised by the lack of response.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIC_8462852

[totalZero]

I'm not saying I'd have an emotional attachment to the octopus.

My point is that intelligent life may have discovered something we don't know already, even if it's dumber than us.

[watermoose]

> Suppose an octopus stacked rocks in piles of prime numbers (not including unity). Would we care beyond possibly putting it on display in an aquarium?

Considering that a lot of research is done on animal communication, I think that's a poor example.

[trentlott]

It would just be considered a mating ritual, with some reference to the fact that numerical artifacts in uncommunicative life aren't uncommon (sunflower spirals and Fibonacci).

Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.

[CodeMage]

> Then we'd start studying its anatomy for its prime calculator.

Well, that explains all the stories about people being anally probed during alien abductions.

[uxcn]

This is a really good point. There has been a lot of research into this area lately, as well as animal intelligence in general.

My point is still that life less intelligent than us has nothing to communicate to us that we would care to respond to.