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I think it's important to break the conversation clearly into two parts: Here's what could be true about aliens if we're largely correct about physics, and here's what could be true ignoring that constraint. The problem is people want to have really muddled conversations about that. The people having the second kind of conversation yelling at the people having the first kind of conversation is probably the most frustrating element of all, especially when they strike a morally superior pose which is, IMHO, entirely unjustified. If you want to ignore all current science and astrophysics when you discuss aliens... fine. Be my guest. No sarcasm. I have some beliefs on that front myself. BUT... you need to be aware that you're basically engaging in groundless speculation, and in particular, you have no grounds to be yelling at people about their groundless speculation. We can have a much more grounded discussion about what aliens could look like if we are largely correct about science. And there's no need to accuse people about being "arrogant" if they choose to have that discussion, because frankly, of the two, it's the more interesting one. The "well, what if we're wrong about everything?" may seem like fun for a moment, but there's no there there, really. What if we're wrong about everything? Well, what if we are? What if we're all just in an ancestor simulation... but the descendants running it are super-advanced honey bees running their ancestors and we just happen to be around? Well... what if? There's nowhere to go, or if you prefer, there's nowhere you can't go, which is actually the exact same thing. On the other hand, if we stick to biology and cosmology and relativity and science in general, we can have all sorts of interesting discussions. What about that result on Venus? That's a question rich enough to build a concrete career on. What would aliens look like in our real universe? How much more advanced could they be? Would they, in fact, build rather human-sized spaceships that are apparently capable of crossing the interstellar void, but not flying around in our atmosphere without crashing into things? Would they in fact need to keep kidnapping humans over and over for decades on end? Sensible discussions can be had on these matters if we start from a concrete base. The whole "But what if we're, like, wrong about everything and we're, like, actually soap bubbles floating in the wind?" discussion has nowhere interesting to go, because it creates just one big undifferentiated and indistiguishable mismash of what ifs. |
I do think we have to ground any interesting discussion by what is possible within the limits of science. Otherwise we're just talking fantasy.
For the most part, I do not think we should discuss the limits of engineering, that is what's practical or not, because we're nobody to say what is practical to a type II or type III civilization.
My dad's astronomy professor told the class it's impossible by the laws of physics to create a telescope that can see exoplanets. He went through the equations to show you could never build a telescope mirror to accomplish that. What he didn't think of is we found other ways to create bigger telescopes and we used gravitational lensing to zoom in on a distant star. Nothing in our understanding of physics changed to allow that, merely a change in how we looked at the problem. That's why it's so arrogant. We don't know everything about what is possible or not, and one day we might just see a way around limitations that seem absolute today. Our short history is filled with us doing that again and again.