[michael_leachim]

Do ants comprehend humans? No they don't. Ants can comprehend only other ants. By this logic we can interact only with civs that are similar or same as us.

How much detectable technological signature we emit for others to detect? I am not a physicist but I guess that would be next to nothing for any considerable space distance.

So every other civ that is tractable to us is not detectable (just like us!) Any other civ that in theory can be detectable is incomprehensible just like humans are intractable to ants.

Even if we exist as a civ in current state for a million years (which we won't given out history) our signature will still be negligible for likes of us to detect.

The rest is just empty talking for the talking sake.

[nh23423fefe]

> Do ants comprehend humans? No they don't. Ants can comprehend only other ants. By this logic we can interact only with civs that are similar or same as us.

Is this logic? Or just 2 unrelated claims concatenated.

Why can't ants comprehend beetles if they are "similar or same"

[michael_leachim]

> Why can't ants comprehend beetles if they are "similar or same"

this one is tricky how do we define similarity? ants to ants is easy because we can assume they are the same or the difference is negligible.

[nh23423fefe]

you cant assume this and leverage it for anything. youve said, x comprehends x, and then tried to substitute y for one of the x's and continue confabulating. all youve done is word games, not put forward an argument about comprehension.

[michael_leachim]

> Why can't ants comprehend beetles if they are "similar or same"

could you elaborate please? i can’t say that i understand your statement

[tsimionescu]

The point is that ants don't comprehend any other animals, neither those more nor those less complex than them, nor even those as complex as them (beetles). In contrast, we have at least some comprehension of all other animals on Earth that we've found. So, there is a fundamental difference between us and ants that makes the analogy not likely to hold.

It's far more plausible we could have some comprehension of even a very advanced civilization than not. For us to not be able to comprehend them, they would have to entirely be using physics we don't understand at all. Not physics we know + physics we don't, but only physics we don't know about. Which, given how much of low energy physics we understand to great deals of precision, seems extraordinarily unlikely.

[michael_leachim]

> The point is that ants don't comprehend any other animals, neither those more nor those less complex than them, nor even those as complex as them (beetles). In contrast, we have at least some comprehension of all other animals on Earth that we've found. So, there is a fundamental difference between us and ants that makes the analogy not likely to hold.

it is really important to establish some sort of vocab to ensure that we are talking about the same thing here.

By comprehend I mean you, as an ant, "understand" a bug in a sense that you can predict its movements, eat it, force it to go away, or breed the thing if you find its symbiotically useful, in a sense you have internal world model of a thing, comprehend.

hence, ant in a strict sense, does not comprehend humans, it doesn't have world model of us, as a thing. most that it can do, it can see us as a force of nature that somehow happens to it.

on the other hand, we understand it almost perfectly, we can play with them, be benevolent, or malevolent toward their entire "civilization" we can joke with then playing with their communications, we don't get everything but we understand the gist of it.

> It's far more plausible we could have some comprehension of even a very advanced civilization than not. For us to not be able to comprehend them, they would have to entirely be using physics we don't understand at all. Not physics we know + physics we don't, but only physics we don't know about. Which, given how much of low energy physics we understand to great deals of precision, seems extraordinarily unlikely.

no, just no. it is pure speculation, we think too much of ourselves.

[tsimionescu]

> By comprehend I mean you, as an ant, "understand" a bug in a sense that you can predict its movements, eat it, force it to go away, or breed the thing if you find its symbiotically useful, in a sense you have internal world model of a thing, comprehend.

By that definition, many mammals and birds, if not even the vast majority, actually understand us then, thus proving that simpler lifeforms can understand much more complex ones. Probably some of the bigger fish, reptiles and amphibians too.

The difference between ants and us is more one of simple scale. If we had been the size of ants, we also wouldn't have been able to do anything against a gorilla, even with a lot of current technologies. And yes, if it turns out there exist aliens the size of planets or solar systems, we won't have any realistic way of defending against them if they are aggressive. But that still won't mean we couldn't comprehend some of what they do, at least enough to realize they are an intelligent life form.

The bigger problem would of course be if they are (a) not made of any form of matter we recognize (imagine dark matter aliens, though that doesn't seem plausible in our current physical models), or (b) live at entirely different time scales than us, say having "neurons" that fire once in a thousand years, or once per planck time.

[bryanrasmussen]

Ants and Beetles exist at the same level of scale. They compete for similar resources.

It doesn't actually make much sense in context.

[astrange]

> Do ants comprehend humans? No they don't. Ants can comprehend only other ants. By this logic we can interact only with civs that are similar or same as us.

That doesn't follow. Just because you can represent intelligence as a number doesn't mean it actually is one. Plus ants don't make any effort to understand us.

[TheOtherHobbes]

And we don't make much of an effort to understand ants, because they're not very interesting.

Let's say we start leaving some scent trails around a nest in the hope of starting a conversations.

Will the ants see that as "communication from an advanced civilisation"?

Even if they do - unlikely, but let's pretend - will they be able to use that communication to power up ant civilisation to the highly advanced and superior technological level that defines the Internet and Hacker News?

It's far more likely that beyond a certain point civs become invisible, because they're doing things less mature civs literally can't imagine.

And this applies even if we share a physical space with them. We could be surrounded by technology and completely unable to recognise it. It would be invisible to us, except maybe - maybe - the very occasional fleeting anomaly.

Because we're looking for radio scent trails, and the galactic civ is using Something Else Entirely which we not only don't have the words or the math for, but the brain space to begin to imagine it.

[hackerlight]

Not next to nothing. Life on earth emits detectable signatures light years away. Not just electromagnetic I'm talking composition of our atmosphere. And primarily not human activity but algae.

[michael_leachim]

come on, light years are several orders of magnitude less than something that we could detect, cosmos is a wast wast space

[hackerlight]

Right, human technology can detect up to hundreds of light years[1], but presumably advanced alien technology can go further. See for example[2]. Hard to say how far.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/webb-discovers-meth...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc

[michael_leachim]

> hundreds of light years

that is next to nothing, observable universe is 93 billion light-years around 0.1 stars per cubic light-year (Google response) universe is humongous and very very sparse, our current limit is light speed.

> advanced alien technology

that goes against my second claim, lol, they (if they exist) are capable of observing and understanding us, we can't observe them and, quite likely, we are unable to understand them.

every other civ that is as primitive as we are is bound by the same light speed constraint

[hackerlight]

Don't think we disagree about much. Have a great day!

[NoZebra120vClip]

Relevant Babylon 5:

G'Kar demonstrates the alien nature of Sigma 957: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZW8Deq8vE

[gwd]

> Do ants comprehend humans? No they don't. Ants can comprehend only other ants. By this logic we can interact only with civs that are similar or same as us.

Do ants comprehend microbes? They don't, but we comprehend (or at least apprehend) ants and microbes, which makes us qualitatively different than ants.

And is it really true that ants can't tell the difference between a forest and a house? That everything to them looks like a similar level of "wild"? I find that rather hard to believe. Ants are afraid of predators and will bite creatures which they perceive (whatever "perceive" means at the ant level) to be attacking their nest.

It may be possible for there to be an alien civilization so different in capabilities, goals, and mindset that we comprehend them no better than ants comprehend us. But I have a hard time believing that they would be so different from us that we wouldn't even be able to notice their presence if we were looking right at something they'd made or used somehow.

> How much detectable technological signature we emit for others to detect? I am not a physicist but I guess that would be next to nothing for any considerable space distance.

The basic argument is that once humans became a "colonizing" species, pretty quickly anywhere which could be lived in by humans was lived in by humans; and that once we became a species with a significant ability to transform our environment, you can't go far without finding evidence of that transformation.

Extrapolating out, we expect that our own civilization will begin to colonize the stars at some point; and then at some point our technology will become good enough to transform the galactic environment to suit our desires.

Doing the math any spacefaring civilization with what we'd consider basic level of travel could colonize the entire galaxy in 100m years or so; and so far we've had 100x that long since the universe began. So if life capable of becoming a star-faring civilization were common, we'd expect to find the galaxy already widely colonized; and we'd expect such a civilization to transform the galactic landscape as dramatically as we humans have transformed the Earth's landscape.

The lack of such a galactic civilization is what needs explaining. Where does our intuition from the extension of our own growth on planet Earth not match up to reality?

- Maybe there is a galaxy-wide civilization but either they don't see the value in transforming the environment? Or maybe there are fundamental limits to technology of which we're not aware, such that no galaxy-wide civilization would ever be able to transform the environment?

- Maybe there are loads of civilizations like ours, but they never go galactic; a Great Barrier that has stopped them and will stop us as well. But why? Are there fundamental limits of technology that make it universally impractical (which we'll hit up against soon)? Is it inevitable (or highly probable) that such civilizations become inward-focused, and spend all their time in simulations instead? Or do most civilizations end up falling prey to Moloch [1] and destroy themselves before they manage to go galactic?

- Or, maybe there's loads of life on other planets, but none of them ever become technological: that is, the Great Barrier is becoming capable of scientific discovery, and it's behind us. In 100 million years or so we'll be the first galactic civilization which everyone else finds.

- Or, maybe simple life like bacteria is common, but complex life is rare; or maybe life at all is rare.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

[michael_leachim]

> It may be possible for there to be an alien civilization so different in capabilities, goals, and mindset that we comprehend them no better than ants comprehend us. But I have a hard time believing that they would be so different from us that we wouldn't even be able to notice their presence if we were looking right at something they'd made or used somehow.

that is the second part of my answer, as soon as you can be noticeable you stop being comprehensible by those whose means of communications are less evolved.

you either can have a peer to peer communication, which is blocked by our capability (and currently speed of light)

or you are unable to comprehend more advanced means of communication.

again to my analogy, ant can see human impact on the planet, but it can't comprehend that it is human impact and not some different form of nature landscape.

> Maybe there is a galaxy-wide civilization but either they don't see the value in transforming the environment? Or maybe there are fundamental limits to technology of which we're not aware, such that no galaxy-wide civilization would ever be able to transform the environment?

if we are speculating here, I think civilizations akin to to ours are extremely common, there is no reason to think that we are special. We are just weak enough to not to be able to connect due to our technological limits.

I also think that advanced civs are pretty common, it is just we are unable to understand and detect them so we think the cosmos is empty.