Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox

[Oxyaena]

The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum that has been the bane of
astrobiologists and Peter Nyikos for decades, "Where are the aliens?"
Just to clarify, the Fermi Paradox isn't actually a paradox, it's just a
logical statement on the lack of evidence we have for extraterrestrial
life-forms, although the evidence for the likelihood of aliens is
becoming larger every year.

Before I go on and present potential answers I want to clarify some
background issues so new readers can become familiar with the subject.
First off, the statistical likelihood that we are alone in the universe
is abysmally low, and more and more evidence continues to pile up to
suggest otherwise. For example, we continue to discover more and more
exoplanets (that is, planets that are outside of our solar system), and
we continue to discover among these exoplanets planets that lie within
the habitable zone of their star, that is the region of a planetary
system where liquid water can exist.

In our own solar system we find evidence that Mars was far more
hospitable in the past, and potentially even had life. Certain
planetoids in our solar system possess subsurface oceans, and even the
dwarf planet Ceres may possess life. To clarify, the life we are most
likely going to find in our own solar system (outside of Earth, for any
potential smart-ass reading this) are microbes, although according to
recent evidence Europa's oceans are oxygenated, and we may find more
complex life in its oceans.

On our own planet we find life in places we previously thought
impossible, bacteria can even be found inside rocks. We find life high
in the atmosphere (there may be life on Venus that also exists in the
atmosphere, according to some hypotheses anyways, because the Venusian
atmosphere is far hospitable than its surface), we find life in boiling
hot springs, we find life at the bottom of the ocean, the point is, life
is far more versatile than we previously believed, and this opens up
whole new realms of possibilities for extraterrestrial life-forms.

Now that's out of the way, let's begin with the "Rare Earth" hypothesis,
the "Rare Earth" hypothesis posits that life is actually common in the
universe, but most lifeforms you are going to find are microbes, and
that planets supporting complex, multicellular life (such as Earth) are
the exception rather than the rule. This is compelling for one simple
reason, we haven't found any other planets with life on it. However,
even if this hypothesis is true there are still trillions of planets in
the Milky Way alone, and therefore at the very least there are millions
of planets capable of supporting complex, multicellular life in the
Milky Way.

Another hypothesis is that there aren't any other lifeforms in the
universe, and I already discussed why that is unlikely. A more likely
hypothesis is that Earth is relatively unique in that life originated on
this planet relatively earlier than other planets, and therefore
intelligent life hasn't had time to evolve yet in other places, or at
the very least hasn't had time to spread throughout the galaxy,
therefore most planets with life on them are wilderness rather than
urban jungle.

Considering that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, and the
universe only settled down enough for life to develop some 4.5 Ga, ala
when our Solar System formed, this makes sense. There simply hasn't been
enough time for alien civilizations to spread through the galaxy.

Another hypothesis is that the aliens simply bombed themselves to
extinction, and that is why we haven't encountered any alien
civilization. If this is true this holds potentially nightmarish
potentials for our own future as a species. The people who posit this
suggest that most civilizations wipe themselves out, and only truly
peaceful, cooperative civilizations are able to reach the stars, and
they say that civilizations that are like this are very rare, which,
along with the vast distances of space, might explain why we haven't
encountered any alien civilizations. Humans certainly aren't a peaceful
species, primates are naturally aggressive, and humans are no different.
Our development of nukes may have actually been us signing off on our
own deaths, and as with capital punishment, this death is going to take
a long time.

Unless we as a species shape up (which I don't see happening), we may
end up going the way that many other potential civilizations have, that
is dead.

[Burkhard]

I'd add a few others. All these speculations project human preferences,
experiences and modes of thinking onto what would be radically different
life - inevitably, as this is the way in SF literature for us to make
sense of them. But that's what it is - a narrative technique for humans
writing for humans. There is no reason to think that if they exist, they
have the same preferences and interests that would make space
exploration even something they think about. Indeed, whatever drives
them might be so different that even using the word "interests" or
"desires" might be inapplicable. You need not just intelligent life that
is around long enough to build civilizations, you need lots of things
that are much more human-specific than that. Now, people already discuss
if human-type intelligence is somehow an inevitable result of evolution,
but all this is much more specific and less obviously advantageous, so
no reason to believe we find it elsewhere.

[jillery]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:38:33 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Where ever there is reproduction with variation and metabolism of
finite resources, there will be evolution and competition. So, just
as extraterrestrial organisms necessarily will follow other universal
physical laws, they also necessarily will follow evolutionary
principles to maximize their reproductivity within whatever
environment they find themselves.

Of course, this doesn't mean tool-making intelligences will
necessarily evolve elsewhere. OTOH only tool-making intelligences
will go out into space, so only they matter to the Fermi Paradox.
Darwinian-evolved tool-making intelligences will necessarily have some
features in common with humans, the least of which are an innate
desire to reproduce, and a willingness to apply available resources to
reproduction.

--
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Attributed to Voltaire

[zencycle]

On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 7:20:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>
> Unless we as a species shape up (which I don't see happening), we may
> end up going the way that many other potential civilizations have, that
> is dead.

That's a given.

[StanFast]

exhibiting a fascination with death.

[John Bode]

There are a few other constraints.

You're not going to know about life on other planets without relatively high technology -
spacecraft to travel, radios to talk, or powerful telescopes to pick up telltale signs of
ongoing organic chemistry in the light reflected off of planets.

We've been playing with radio waves for, what, about 150 years, little less? There may
have been a real chatterbox of a civilization right next door (cosmologically speaking)
that died out a thousand years ago - we just barely missed each other in time.

Alternately, there may be civilizations on planets on the opposite side of the galactic
core, but by the time those signals reach us (or our signals reach them) one or both of
us will be long gone.

Forget about space travel - until we develop true reactionless drives, we're not getting
out of the solar system. Any LGMs will be dealing with the same physical limitations we
do - they're not any more likely to get off their respective rocks than we are.

We make a *lot* of assumptions about what alien intelligence would look like, how it
would think, etc. We're looking for signs of intelligence that we'd recognize, but what
about an intelligence that doesn't match what we expect? What about something that
lives in a subterranean ocean - intelligent, but not aware of anything beyond the surface?
How would such a creature *know* there's anything out there to look for?

[StanFast]

Signals only spread so far.

[Oxyaena]

We *are* developing technology to do exactly that, or at least we're
developing a powerful enough telescope to detect potential biosignatures
in the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets within a certain
distance of Earth. That telescope is the James Webb Space Telescope, and
given that there are three (potentially five if you include unconfirmed
exoplanet candidates) potentially habitable exoplanets within Earth's
stellar neighborhood (*Proxima Centauri b* is 4.6 light years away,
*Ross 128 b* is around 16 light years away, and there's another one I
can't remember the name of), this telescope may just be what we need.

>
> We've been playing with radio waves for, what, about 150 years, little less? There may
> have been a real chatterbox of a civilization right next door (cosmologically speaking)
> that died out a thousand years ago - we just barely missed each other in time.
>

As I wrote above, most planets with life on them will be wilderness due
to the age of the universe and how often civilizations tend to destroy
themselves. One of the potential explanations to the Fermi Paradox is
that Earth developed life relatively early in the grand scheme of
things, since the universe has only been suitable for life to develop
since 4.5 Ga, aka when the Earth (and by extension the Solar System)
formed, which is potentially why we developed an intelligent
civilization when intelligent civilizations are rare in the universe, at
least as of now. Most planets with life on them are going to be wilderness.

If there are other intelligent civilizations, they wouldn't have had the
time to spread through the galaxy yet, and most potential civilizations
are likely going to wipe themselves out.

> Alternately, there may be civilizations on planets on the opposite side of the galactic
> core, but by the time those signals reach us (or our signals reach them) one or both of
> us will be long gone.

There was actually some rather ambiguous radio signals found coming from
an exoplanet some 500 or so light years away, the link is below.

http://www.science20.com/quantum_gravity/blog/a_better_than_5050_chance_kepler186f_has_technological_life-134555

Given that the radio signals were received from an exoplanet 490 light
years away, *if* it was indeed from an extraterrestrial civilization,
chances are that civilization has long since wiped themselves out, and
if they haven't, any potential radio clutter they receive from us will
not reach them for another 400 years or so (if we include the
early-to-mid twentieth century).

>
> Forget about space travel - until we develop true reactionless drives, we're not getting
> out of the solar system. Any LGMs will be dealing with the same physical limitations we
> do - they're not any more likely to get off their respective rocks than we are.
>

At the speed Voyager II is going, it will take Voyager II 30,000-40,000
years to reach the Proxima Centauri system (a potentially habitable
exoplanet, that is *Proxima Centauri b*, orbits Proxima Centauri, and is
the closest exoplanet to our solar system), by which point humanity (or
at least civilization) will most likely be long dead.

> We make a *lot* of assumptions about what alien intelligence would look like, how it
> would think, etc. We're looking for signs of intelligence that we'd recognize, but what
> about an intelligence that doesn't match what we expect? What about something that
> lives in a subterranean ocean - intelligent, but not aware of anything beyond the surface?
> How would such a creature *know* there's anything out there to look for?
>

While all of these are true, the fact that the only life we know of in
our universe is earthly life places several *practical* constraints on
what we are looking for, since that is what we (being earthly life
ourselves) are most familiar with, which several people have pointed out
may be the reason we haven't encountered any extraterrestrial lifeforms yet.

[Oxyaena]

Unfortunately that seems to be the case, our inevitable demise (unless
we shape things up) will most likely occur within the next few
centuries, I don't see our civilization surviving the next millennium,
humanity on the other hand might make it, albeit with an extremely
reduced population and with the surviving remnants of humanity isolated
from each other. If someone used all the nukes in the world it still
wouldn't be enough to wipe out life on earth, or humanity for that
matter, but civilization would be toast.

I don't see people in, say, Tibet or the Andes as being in danger from
direct nuclear attack, they will have to deal with nuclear fallout (in
the case of Tibet) and nuclear winter (both the Andes and Tibet will
have to deal with this, as will all the other survivors) but people in
remote regions like the two mentioned above have a better chance of
surviving than someone in a densely populated area like New York City,
Beijing, or London.

[Oxyaena]

Half of the speculation I offered doesn't apply only to humanity, or
even intelligent lifeforms, but to life in the galaxy at large, such as
the rare earth hypothesis. Even with the speculation I offer on
extraterrestrial civilizations and humanity both are ultimately alive,
subject to the same laws of evolution as everyone else, which includes
competition and aggression.

While the exact circumstances would undoubtedly vary, the laws of
evolution tend to be the same either way, therefore competition over
limited resources in the case of intelligent civilizations will still be
the case, regardless of where your species originates from, and with all
the advantages and disadvantages conflict and competition brings.

A species that evolved in the ocean for example will ultimately compete
over both similar *and* different things than a human would, such as
access to potential food sources (in the case of the ocean this would
include so-called "oases" of life in an otherwise bleak, empty ocean, on
Earth these so-called "oases" come about due to many factors, including
a higher than average concentration of plankton, and it isn't too much
of a stretch to say this applies to other worlds with oceans as well).

[JTEM is my hero]

Oxyaena wrote:

> The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum that has been the bane of
> astrobiologists and Peter Nyikos for decades

No it isn't.

Effectively it says that, "Assuming these assumptions
are right, they have to be wrong."

That's a contradiction, not a paradox.






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/83383029505

[jillery]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 21:56:14 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Imagine that. I'm surprised nobody mentioned that before.

[Oxyaena]

The reason I excel why others falter in regards to this is because I do
not let knee-jerk reactions color my knowledge of this subject, if
Burkhard and Bode had actually read the damn post instead of blindly
typing what came to their mind before reading it, not to mention
comprehending it, they too would've probably seen where I was coming from.

Just because something evolved on another planet doesn't mean that some
of the conditions aren't the same. Every species in this god-forsaken is
subject to the laws of evolution, and one of the main driving factors of
evolution is competition. Every civilization will need resources to
maintain itself, and evolving on a rock with finite resources is going
to mandate competition for those resources, potentially even aggression
if the stakes are dire enough.

Humanity is in trouble in the long run because the resources that fuel
our civilization are running out, and it is more profitable to continue
the status quo than to change anything. That is why efforts to combat
climate change are doomed to fail, because rational self-interest
ultimately comes first. You can see this with the Trump administration
and its self-destructive handling of climate change. Just because Trump,
being elderly, won't be alive to see the effects of climate change
doesn't mean his children or great-grandchildren won't.

The rich and powerful are in the short-term enriching themselves, but in
the long term are engaging in self-destructive behavior that will doom
the entire species, including the rich. This goes back to my original
point, since resources are drying up and the effects of climate change
will exacerbate it, not to mention dwindling land and the famines that
are going to come with climate change, I don't see our civilization
lasting another millennium, at best a few centuries, but definitely not
a millennium.

In order to become a spacefaring species a species needs to learn to
cooperate amongst themselves without aggression, a la being peaceful,
humanity isn't a peaceful species, it's not our fault, it's just the
nature of our biology. Primates in general are naturally aggressive, and
humans are no different. Even supposedly "peaceful" societies such as
the Hopi still engage in aggressive behavior, such as vicious verbal
sparring.

This may be the reason why we haven't encountered any alien
civilizations yet, because most of them wiped themselves out, and the
few that did manage to become spacefarers haven't spread across the
galaxy yet, as I wrote in my initial post intelligence in the universe
is relatively young, and there hasn't been enough time for a species to
spread across the galaxy.

[Oxyaena]

On 6/13/2018 12:33 AM, JTEM is my hero wrote:
> Oxyaena wrote:
>
>> The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum that has been the bane of
>> astrobiologists and Peter Nyikos for decades
>
> No it isn't.
>
> Effectively it says that, "Assuming these assumptions
> are right, they have to be wrong."
>
> That's a contradiction, not a paradox.
>

If you took your time to read the damn post (which obviously you didn't)
I point out that Fermi's Paradox isn't a true paradox in the paragraph
that fucking follows the sentence I wrote above.


>
>
>
>
>
> -- --
>
> http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/83383029505
>
>

[Burkhard]

No problems with any of that, it is only the opposite direction of the
inference that I was concerned with - can we assume that societies that
reach our level of tool making, or an even much more advanced one, will
typically think of space exploration? Humans dreamed about going to
space long before this was a technologically feasible idea - Lucian of
Samosata in the 2. century AD has his explorers (accidentally, to be
fair) travel into space, Johannes Kepler's "Somnium" is I think the
first full blow example of an early space travel SF novel, and also
shows how scientific curiosity feeds into (or is fed by) that dream. And
quite a number of the gods habitually reside there.

So for us, it seems natural to think in terms of space travel, but this
seems to me to be highly contingent, culturally mediated trait of the
specific form our intelligence took. Would it be as obvious for
creatures that live on the bottom of the sea, or in caves? The evolved
to smell more than to see, and with sensors directed downwards? They in
turn might marvel why we never really used our tools to colonize the sea
bed or drive deep into the earth etc.

So even that is still a very "anthropomorphic" approach, the are still a
lot like us in many ways. If what we think as "intelligence" is even
more contingent to our evolutionary history, I have a communication
problem, the "Lovecraft"problem if you like - our language evolved to
describe things we are familiar with, so new things we can only describe
by analogy to these. So when he tried to talk about much more radically
different beings/concepts, he had to resort to meta-descriptors" such as
"utterly alien", "The unspeakable", "build in non-euclidean geometries"
etc.

But think of insect societies (ant size or even much smaller) on a
really huge planet - would whatever they develop as science and tools
would be geared towards space travel, even as an aspiration? Would it
even be on their conceptual horizon? Or a species that evolved to
intentionally generate psychotropic drugs, and at a very early stage of
their scientific culture took an "inward term" - their Newton was more
like our Freud, and rather than having Vespucci et al., they celebrated
the best meditators who opened up new worlds in their minds - and the
technology then builds on this - they went virtual long before us, and
more radically - why go into space if you have infinite worlds in your
mind to explore?

That's essentially Iain Banks, who is better in moving beyond human
experience than most. And it still is based on our contingent
experience, in a way. But as I said, everything even more radical would
be difficult even to communicate.

The general point though is that not only would civilizations that
"could" have tools for space travel be a small subset of all
civilizations (and they a small subset of all intelligent species, which
are a subset of all life, which are a subset of all planets). At east
potentially, we might be an outlier in the mindset that leads us to
consider using these tools for space exploration.

> Darwinian-evolved tool-making intelligences will necessarily have some
> features in common with humans, the least of which are an innate
> desire to reproduce, and a willingness to apply available resources to
> reproduction.

OK the more boring issue first, accepting this all as true, would this
alone be enough though to develop this capacity for space exploration)
or even a purely theoretical interest in the world outside their planet?

The second issues, and that is in a way a different point, leads us into
deeper philosophical waters. Is it really true? How would a civilization
look that evolved from non-sexually reproducing species? That's where
the philosophy comes in - philosophers have asked "how is it like to be
a bat" to show how problematic that can be. "How is it like to be a
tree" is much more difficult. So I'm not sure (non-rhetorical)to what an
extend the familiar talk about, desires, believes etc would transfer to
such beings, especially when it comes to reproduction. If the only thing
you have to do is to stand in the wind a bit, and you have no emotional
bound to your "offspring" how would your world look like?

[Bill Rogers]

Stanislaw Lem was very good at imagining the extreme alienness of aliens and the difficulty of making any intelligible contact with them. His novel "Fiasco" is a good example.

[Burkhard]

I thought I did get what you were coming from in your original post, but
not now, to be honest - I merely added to the points that you made and
with which I agreed. That is, in addition to the reasons why a
civilization may fail to become space faring, there are likely to be
others, and in particular that depending on what forms their
intelligence takes, it may not put space exploration on their conceptual
horizon. So merely being able to do X, from an outsider evaluation, does
not need to mean that culture also does X

[Oxyaena]

Okay, I retract my statement, but the way you wrote it implied
otherwise. It's a simple matter of miscommunication, that is all. Back
to the point, I do see where you are coming from and I'm surprised I
didn't think of that myself, although the Fermi Paradox deals with
spacefaring civilizations, not all potential civilizations, so that's
probably the reason why I didn't cover what you wrote.

[Oxyaena]

That's a name I haven't heard in a while.

[Oxyaena]

This reminds me of a quote from the *Mass Effect* series, wherein
Legion, a member of a robotic race who hold the view that "no two
species is exactly alike, and to judge another species from one's own
point of view, even with benign anthropomorphism, is racist".

[JTEM is my hero]

Great. How does that make it the bane of
astrobiologists?

Did you not read your own words?






-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/174831721493

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 11:35:41 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

Bonehead English would be your friend, if there were a
remedial prerequisite available.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 13:41:29 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".

So we can add EM theory to the seemingly-infinite list of
"Things of Which Sparky Is Ignorant...?

[StanFast]

No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.

You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.

[John Bode]

Hold up.

We know how often civilizations tend to last on Earth - there's no reason to believe we
can extrapolate that to any extraterrestrial civilization. We can't make any assumptions
about how often extraterrestrial civilizations rise or fall. We can reasonably assume they
are finite, but whether that's due to the critters wiping themselves out or falling victim to
natural catastrophe we can't know.

We're working with a sample size of 1, here.

> One of the potential explanations to the Fermi Paradox is
> that Earth developed life relatively early in the grand scheme of
> things, since the universe has only been suitable for life to develop
> since 4.5 Ga, aka when the Earth (and by extension the Solar System)
> formed, which is potentially why we developed an intelligent
> civilization when intelligent civilizations are rare in the universe, at
> least as of now. Most planets with life on them are going to be wilderness.
>

That smells like a whole bunch of special pleading. It's simply more likely that intelligent
species are widely separated in both space and time throughout the universe, such that
the chances of any two being cable to contact each other are remote. We're looking
for very specific radio frequencies, in very specific directions, at a specific moment in
time. If there's a similarly intelligent species 1000 ly away that's *just now* sending out
the kind of signals we can detect, we won't know about it for another 1000 years (by
which time SETI as we know it will no longer exist).

> If there are other intelligent civilizations, they wouldn't have had the
> time to spread through the galaxy yet, and most potential civilizations
> are likely going to wipe themselves out.
>

Any intelligent species is going to face the same constraints on interstellar travel that we
do. I am willing to bet real money that any intelligent species out there are as firmly
shackled to their home star system as we are.

[jillery]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 12:26:45 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

The Fermi Paradox is an invitation to think about the question "Where
are they?" There are a number of reasons which completely rule out
visitors from other stars, ex. Earth is the only place life exists. To
assume any one of them moots the question and any discussion about it.

So for purposes of discussion, let's assume otherwise, that life
exists elsewhere, that travel between stars is possible, and that at
least one species has developed sufficient intelligence and resources
and motivation to do it. Then Fermi's question is a reasonable one,
because even a modest but continuous expansion means one intelligence
starting from anywhere in the galaxy could have covered the entire
volume of our galaxy in just a few millions of years.

So, in order to reasonably discuss Fermi's question, we necessarily
start out assuming certain things. Those same assumptions necessarily
exclude from consideration certain types of intelligences, not because
they are any less likely to evolve, but because they don't lead to
star-traveling species, ex. intelligences which don't make tools. My
impression there's no evolutionary advantage for autotrophs to make
tools.

This is not to say that toolmaking is sufficient to qualify a species
to travel to the stars (we are the best example of that), but only
that it's a necessary talent. And I contend that any species which
makes tools will necessarily have certain features in common with us.

And this is not to say that said species would be the same as us. It's
reasonable to assume some middle ground, between that unlikely extreme
and the other, that extraterrestrial species would have nothing in
common with us.

So yes, the Fermi Paradox necessarily considers only a subset of all
possible extraterrestrial life. Since you mentioned other
intelligences which would be unlikely star-travelers, that broadens
the discussion, to extraterrestrial intelligences we might encounter
on their native planets if we became star travelers. That is indeed a
much larger topic, but I wouldn't say that it's necessarily more
interesting.

Something I didn't mention before, but it's likely that the invention
of star travel would almost certainly bring with it a host of spinoff
benefits, mostly due to practically free energy. It's likely a
star-traveling intelligence, as a consequence of those benefits, would
view the universe and their place in it very differently than we do.
This might mitigate or even eliminate their necessary Darwinian
impulses to be fruitful and multiply.

[jillery]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 02:33:40 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

Even better, at least one meaning of "paradox" is
"self-contradicting", as defined in just about any dictionary.

[jillery]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:


>> >Signals only spread so far.
>>
>> Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
>> away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".
>>
>
>No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.
>
>You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
>The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.

THINK: What medium carries those signs of intelligent life?
THINK: If those signals travel only a discrete amount, what stops
them?

[StanFast]

go look up quanta and energy

[StanFast]

Next, look up photon.
Then calculate how many photons are produced by a light bulb.
Next calculate the surface area of an expanding sphere.
Have a nice day and thank me for freely tutoring you once again.

[jillery]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 06:00:51 -0700 (PDT), StanFast

<drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 6:55:03 AM UTC-6, StanFast wrote:
>> On Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 11:15:02 PM UTC-6, jillery wrote:
>> > On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), StanFast
>> > <drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > >> >Signals only spread so far.
>> > >>
>> > >> Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
>> > >> away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > >No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.
>> > >
>> > >You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
>> > >The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.
>> >
>> >
>> > THINK: What medium carries those signs of intelligent life?
>> > THINK: If those signals travel only a discrete amount, what stops
>> > them?
>> >
>>

>> go look up quanta and energy
>
>Next, look up photon.
>Then calculate how many photons are produced by a light bulb.
>Next calculate the surface area of an expanding sphere.
>Have a nice day and thank me for freely tutoring you once again.

First, stop and think.
Next, go look up Cosmic Microwave Background.
Next, go look up oldest observed galaxy.

Don't let the above distract you from thinking about extinction and
stasis.

[Oxyaena]

As I have pointed out many times before on this thread, a potential
answer to Fermi's Paradox is that there simply hasn't been enough time
for intelligence to develop elsewhere in the galaxy, let alone the
universe. The universe has only been stable enough for life to develop
for the past 5 Ga, and Earth has been around for most of the past 5 Ga,
with life on Earth existing for 4 billion years, a simple answer is that
Earth is relatively unique in developing life (and therefore
intelligence) relatively earlier than other life-bearing planets, so we
sort of beat them to the punch so to speak.

There simply hasn't been enough time for them to spread throughout the
galaxy yet, and we are already taking our first steps to doing so,
provided we don't blow ourselves up first. I think this hypothesis, in
tandem with the rare earth and "civilization common but relatively short
lived" hypotheses to be the most likely, considering that there are
billions of planets in our galaxy, with 4 out of 5 stars in our galaxy
bearing planets in the habitable zone of their stars, combined with the
bewildering variety of forms and adaptations life can take, as can be
seen by a quick glance at Wikipedia. Statistically speaking most
life-bearing planets are wilderness rather than urban jungle.

[Oxyaena]

True, but all civilizations need resources, and being shackled to a rock
with limited resources causes competition, perhaps even war if the
stakes are dire enough, this is true for any species. As I pointed out
to Burkhard all species are subject to the laws of evolution, which
includes competition as one of the main driving forces of evolution;
civilizations are no different.

I cannot claim to know how other civilizations evolve, but I can and
will argue that some (but not all) of the same factors that affect
humans affect other civilizations as well, such as the need for
resources, and the competition and potential conflict that brings, along
with all of its advantages or disadvantages. Obviously not all
intelligent life-forms will develop civilization, humans were
hunter-gatherers for over two million years before inventing
agriculture, and it took another seven or so thousand years before
writing was invented.

But among the intelligent species that do develop civilization, a need
for resources will arise, alongside the need for land and other things,
and conflict will also arise, not all obviously, some species may be
primed for cooperation rather than conflict, such as species with a
hive-mind mentality. Some of these species as a result of competition
over resources and land will industrialize, bringing to their
civilizations the same pros and cons we humans have faced since
industrialization, such as climate change and pollution.

You let knee-jerk reactions color your knowledge of this subject, you
automatically assume that every civilization will be completely
different from human civilization when that is not necessarily the case,
all civilizations are different from each other, but everyone of them
needs resources, that's a given, and some of them will be prone to
conflict over these resources, that's also a given, so therefore I
believe that I can extrapolate the conditions of at least some of these
civilizations based on the conditions afflicting Earth.Obviously even
for the civilizations with situations similar to Earth will it be
completely the same.

>
>> One of the potential explanations to the Fermi Paradox is
>> that Earth developed life relatively early in the grand scheme of
>> things, since the universe has only been suitable for life to develop
>> since 4.5 Ga, aka when the Earth (and by extension the Solar System)
>> formed, which is potentially why we developed an intelligent
>> civilization when intelligent civilizations are rare in the universe, at
>> least as of now. Most planets with life on them are going to be wilderness.
>>
>
> That smells like a whole bunch of special pleading. It's simply more likely that intelligent
> species are widely separated in both space and time throughout the universe, such that
> the chances of any two being cable to contact each other are remote. We're looking
> for very specific radio frequencies, in very specific directions, at a specific moment in
> time. If there's a similarly intelligent species 1000 ly away that's *just now* sending out
> the kind of signals we can detect, we won't know about it for another 1000 years (by
> which time SETI as we know it will no longer exist).

We are both arguing pretty much the same points, I think there is some
miscommunication involved. I`m not arguing that interstellar space
travel is likely, it clearly isn't, the distances involved are too
great, even with the speed *New Horizons* is currently going at it will
take 30 or so million years to reach the planet I mentioned.

>
>> If there are other intelligent civilizations, they wouldn't have had the
>> time to spread through the galaxy yet, and most potential civilizations
>> are likely going to wipe themselves out.
>>
>
> Any intelligent species is going to face the same constraints on interstellar travel that we
> do. I am willing to bet real money that any intelligent species out there are as firmly
> shackled to their home star system as we are.
>

Same here, but I will also bet good money many of them have wiped
themselves out or are going to.

[Oxyaena]

On 6/14/2018 1:09 AM, jillery wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 02:33:40 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> On 6/13/2018 12:33 AM, JTEM is my hero wrote:
>>> Oxyaena wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Fermi Paradox is a conundrum that has been the bane of
>>>> astrobiologists and Peter Nyikos for decades
>>>
>>> No it isn't.
>>>
>>> Effectively it says that, "Assuming these assumptions
>>> are right, they have to be wrong."
>>>
>>> That's a contradiction, not a paradox.
>>>
>>
>> If you took your time to read the damn post (which obviously you didn't)
>> I point out that Fermi's Paradox isn't a true paradox in the paragraph
>> that fucking follows the sentence I wrote above.
>
>
> Even better, at least one meaning of "paradox" is
> "self-contradicting", as defined in just about any dictionary.
>

Yeah, JTEM is a piece of shit, I think we can all agree on that. Also,
what he writes doesn't make any goddamn sense, nothing about the Fermi
Paradox says that if any of these assumptions are right, they are
somehow wrong? You know what, fuck it, I`m not going to waste my time
trying to comprehend the inane fecal matter coming from this
dunderhead's mouth.

[JTEM is my hero]

jillery wrote:

> Even better, at least one meaning of "paradox" is
> "self-contradicting"

Even better because now you're pretending that
Fermi was saying saying he was not, just to
avoid a legitimate discussion on an issue.

No "Astrobiologists" are stumped by the Fermi
brain fart. None. Zip, zero & nil. Nada.

Pick your battles more carefully. You might not
always look like an emotionally disturbed idiot.

You're welcome.





-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/174863780573

[JTEM is my hero]

Oxyaena wrote:

> Yeah, JTEM is

...right.

You're a nym shifting troll so convinced of
his own worthlessness that you resort to this
idiocy in an attempt to convince yourself that
you're not quite as stupid as you are.

The Fermi paradox does not influence astrobiology.

Period.

No you can't control me, you can't stop me from
pointing out you stupid premise here and yes that
does upset your disorder. And I don't care.

As a sometimes wise old bitch said of usenet; it's
not an outpatient clinic. If you need patience,
understanding & nurturing then you need to be
somewhere else and not here.




-- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/174863780573

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), the following

I'm right, Sparky. And I've never studied biology beyond the
required course in high school, back in '60-'61.

>You are looking for signs of intelligent life.

So? EM signals continue to spread, albeit at lower energy,
forever until stopped. The point, Sparky, was that your
complaint that "signals only spread so far", was both wrong
and irrelevant.

>The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.

Correct, as does the light from those galaxies 13+Bly away.
Do you imagine you have some sort of point?

>> So we can add EM theory to the seemingly-infinite list of
>> "Things of Which Sparky Is Ignorant...?

I guess we can...

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 05:49:55 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

>On Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 11:15:02 PM UTC-6, jillery wrote:
>> On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), StanFast
>> <drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >> >Signals only spread so far.
>> >>
>> >> Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
>> >> away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".
>> >>
>> >
>> >No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.
>> >
>> >You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
>> >The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.
>>
>>
>> THINK: What medium carries those signs of intelligent life?
>> THINK: If those signals travel only a discrete amount, what stops
>> them?

>go look up quanta and energy

So you've now demonstrated, once again, that you *can't*
think or read for comprehension.

Congratulations.

[StanFast]

The issue is detecting them. There are areas that won't be covered by them for such as they will not cover the entire expanding spheres surface area.

[jillery]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 10:17:25 -0700 (PDT), JTEM is my hero
<jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

> jillery wrote:
>
>> Even better, at least one meaning of "paradox" is
>> "self-contradicting"
>
>Even better because now you're pretending that
>Fermi was saying saying he was not, just to
>avoid a legitimate discussion on an issue.

Parse the above into a coherent sentence, if only for the novelty of
the experience.

>No "Astrobiologists" are stumped by the Fermi
>brain fart. None. Zip, zero & nil. Nada.

Nobody said they were "stumped". Don't you get tired of moving
goalposts around?

>Pick your battles more carefully. You might not
>always look like an emotionally disturbed idiot.

<PING> Dang it!

[jillery]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 12:05:28 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

>As I have pointed out many times before on this thread, a potential
>answer to Fermi's Paradox is that there simply hasn't been enough time
>for intelligence to develop elsewhere in the galaxy, let alone the
>universe. The universe has only been stable enough for life to develop
>for the past 5 Ga, and Earth has been around for most of the past 5 Ga,
>with life on Earth existing for 4 billion years, a simple answer is that
>Earth is relatively unique in developing life (and therefore
>intelligence) relatively earlier than other life-bearing planets, so we
>sort of beat them to the punch so to speak.
>
>There simply hasn't been enough time for them to spread throughout the
>galaxy yet, and we are already taking our first steps to doing so,
>provided we don't blow ourselves up first. I think this hypothesis, in
>tandem with the rare earth and "civilization common but relatively short
>lived" hypotheses to be the most likely, considering that there are
>billions of planets in our galaxy, with 4 out of 5 stars in our galaxy
>bearing planets in the habitable zone of their stars, combined with the
>bewildering variety of forms and adaptations life can take, as can be
>seen by a quick glance at Wikipedia. Statistically speaking most
>life-bearing planets are wilderness rather than urban jungle.

I used to make that argument, but not any more, for the following
reasons:

It's possible we are the first toolmaking intelligence in the
universe, but not very likely. Yes, some civilization has to be
first, by definition, but the Copernican Principle says it's more
likely we are somewhere one of the mundane inbetween.

Also, information was recently discovered which show galaxies and
stars and planets have been around longer than was previously thought.
For example, the oldest observed galaxy GN-Z11 is estimated to be 13.4
billion years old, born just a few hundred million years after the
origin of the universe. For example, exoplanet PSR B1620-26 b orbits
a star with an estimated age of 12.7 billion years.

It's assumed that a star-traveling civilization requires most of the
elements of the Periodic Table, which are created by stellar
nucleosynthesis. But we know that the largest stars go supernova in
just 10^6 years, and it's likely neutron stars were merging in the
first 10^9 years of the universe. So its likely there were planets
like the Earth around population I stars like the Sun not long after
that.

So even if it takes 4.5 billion years for a stellar system to evolve a
toolmaking civilization like ours, there has been plenty of time for
other, older civilizations to have reached our level. It's almost
certain many of them had done so billions of years before our Sun
created its first photon. We and the Solar System we live in are
relative latecomers to the cosmological party.

The big if is whether any of those older civilizations discovered star
travel before they killed themselves. Let's assume for argument's
sake that just one, stuck right at the very edge of our galaxy,
managed to do so. It would take only a very modest rate of expansion
for that one star-traveling civilization to reach the opposite edge of
the galaxy in just a few millions of years, a cosmological eyeblink,
something that a civilization which already discovered star travel
could easily do. So whatever the reason is for why there are no
extraterrestrial visitors, lack of time is not it.

IMO the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that the amount of space and
time between civilizations keeps them separate and untouchable. If
the length of civilizations on Earth is any guide, their lifetimes are
even less than a cosmological eyeblink, while the galaxy is very large
and long-lived. My impression is no two civilizations are ever close
enough long enough for them to detect each other before one of them
dies.

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 11:16:31 -0700 (PDT), zencycle
<funkma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 7:20:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>>

>> Unless we as a species shape up (which I don't see happening), we may
>> end up going the way that many other potential civilizations have, that
>> is dead.
>

>That's a given.

I don't see how it is a *given*.

Yes, there is a violent streak running through mankind but there is
also an extremely strong altruistic characteristic which has been
instrumental in achieving a level of cooperation and coexistence in
mankind that is far beyond anything found elsewhere in the animal
kingdom.

Whilst there is ongoing tension between those violent and altruistic
streaks, the cooperation and coexistence built on that altruism has
won hands down so far and I don't see any reason to think that will
change.

But maybe that's just because I'm a half-full-glass type of guy
whereas you and Oxyaena seem to be half-empty-glass type :)

[zencycle]

A photon will travel infinitely until it's blocked or absorbed. Yes, we are in fact being hit with photons from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, as well as other energy particles.

The issue isn't detecting energy from far sources, it's detecing coherent data. What you're confusing is that the level of energy dissipates to miniscule amounts. This doesn't mean it isn't there, it means we don't yet have the ability to detect it.

The only thing you've tutored anyone on is the fact that you really have no fucking clue about much of anything.

[zencycle]

On Tuesday, June 12, 2018 at 9:50:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:

> On 6/12/2018 2:16 PM, zencycle wrote:
> > On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 7:20:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >>
> >> Unless we as a species shape up (which I don't see happening), we may
> >> end up going the way that many other potential civilizations have, that
> >> is dead.
> >
> > That's a given.
> >

> Unfortunately that seems to be the case, our inevitable demise (unless
> we shape things up) will most likely occur within the next few
> centuries, I don't see our civilization surviving the next millennium,
> humanity on the other hand might make it, albeit with an extremely
> reduced population and with the surviving remnants of humanity isolated
> from each other.

Likely, I agree.

> If someone used all the nukes in the world it still
> wouldn't be enough to wipe out life on earth, or humanity for that
> matter, but civilization would be toast.
>
> I don't see people in, say, Tibet or the Andes as being in danger from
> direct nuclear attack, they will have to deal with nuclear fallout (in
> the case of Tibet) and nuclear winter (both the Andes and Tibet will
> have to deal with this, as will all the other survivors) but people in
> remote regions like the two mentioned above have a better chance of
> surviving than someone in a densely populated area like New York City,
> Beijing, or London.

That depends on a lot of factors, I'm considering the that a 'nuclear winter' might have a significantly greater effect than consensus suggests.
I'm also considering that small populations (societies) with sufficient resources to exist independently (i.e. without relying on other populations for essential resources) are also not sufficiently advanced to adapt to the drastic changes their environments will likely undergo.

[zencycle]

As I noted above, it isn't an issue of altruism vs greed as I see it. I agree there will likely be populations where humanity (in the philosophical sense) survives. However, cooperation and altruism won't feed you when your food sources are contaminated or eliminated by the destruction of the environment. This isn't only an issue of nuclear armageddon, but one of the ignorant and sometimes wanton destruction of our ecosystem as well.

You can call me a pessimist if you like, but I don't choose to live my life as one. I'm optimistic and hopeful that at some point, rationalism and selflessness will take the place of cult-worship and selfishness. I choose to see things in both my best hopes and worst fears. Unfortunately the general trend of our society (especially under the stewardship of the great charlatan) isn't one of rationalism and selflessness.

[StanFast]

No, that is wrong.
A signal was generated by a certain amount of energy.
That makes a certain amount of photons.
As the surface area expands in a sphere increasing in size going further in distance, the photons can no longer cover the surface area. Then a photon may not a certain area only once every five seconds, and it eventually in certain areas no photons arrive at all as you get farther and farther away from the signal source. Based on the energy amount, the signals Peter out, and photons will no longer arrive.
Iow, the signals only travel a certain distance, for the purposes of detection. Do the math on how large a spheres surface area gets as it gets larger. Do the math.
I am about ready to recommend you obtain a complimentary field trip to seti, so they can explain it to you. But at this point, I doubt even that will work.
For the purposes of detection, the signals only travel so far.

[Bob Casanova]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 14:42:43 -0700 (PDT), the following

The issue is your incorrect assertion that "signals only
spread so far".

>There are areas that won't be covered by them for such as they will not cover the entire expanding spheres surface area.

Really? Perhaps you'd like to show the calculations
describing the probability that any random point on that
expanding sphere will intercept at least one photon of the
signal.

And note that even if you *can* produce the calculations
your statement was still wrong.

[StanFast]

In context of alleged paradox which is not one at all:

for the purposes of detection, the signals only spread so far.

the signals only spread so far, for the purposes of detection.

in the paradox context:

the signals only spread so far

[Mark Isaak]

Violence (per se) is not the problem; selfishness is. It manifests in
two particularly problematic ways.

The first is the tragedy of the commons. Where there is an unregulated
common resource, people tend not to use it sustainably, because there's
no incentive to individuals for doing so. Sometimes the interested
parties work out policies for resource management, but not always, and
rarely if ever on a global scale. (International treaties banning CFCs
have worked very well, but it looks like someone's cheating now.)
Climate is essentially a commons, and lots of people are manifestly
interested in preventing its management for global good.

The second way is income inequality, which is equivalently power
inequality. People in power have more ways to rig the system to their
advantage, and they do so, and that gives them even more power and more
ways to rig the system, so the inequality keeps increasing. Throughout
history, income inequality always increases until a catastrophe happens.
This can be natural (plague), but often it involves violence, such as
conquest, revolution, or other total war. From a global perspective,
such catastrophes are not a big problem; the nations will recover. But
today they happen in a setting of globalization, such that a catastrophe
in one place affects the whole world.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly
understand who we are and where we come from, we will have failed."
- Carl Sagan

[zencycle]

It's correct, Seti is attempting to detect coherent information, not just energy.

> A signal was generated by a certain amount of energy.
> That makes a certain amount of photons.

This isn't about photons. It's about electromagnetic energy - think about wave/particle duality, SETI is working on the wave energy side. In order to detect a coherent signal, it needs to be evaluated as wave energy, not particle energy.

> As the surface area expands in a sphere increasing
> in size going further in distance, the photons can no
> longer cover the surface area. Then a photon may not a
> certain area only once every five seconds, and it eventually
> in certain areas no photons arrive at all as you get farther
> and farther away from the signal source. Based on the energy
> amount, the signals Peter out, and photons will no longer arrive.

Yes, photons will indeed arrive. Sure they will be dispersed, but they will continue until blocked or absorbed. Again, this isn't about the particle nature of energy, so it isn't really relevant. Wave energy is dispersed in an EM field

> I am about ready to recommend you obtain a complimentary field
> trip to seti, so they can explain it to you. But at this point,
> I doubt even that will work.

Trust me when I tell you, I know way more about it that you do. So far you've exhibited nothing but ignorance on the subject. Have you ever done a fourier transform on a modulated RF source? If you know what that means, you should be able to tell me what output you should expect (hint, to answer, you don't need to know the frequency of either the carrier or the modulation, or the modulation technique)

> For the purposes of detection, the signals only travel so far.

Wrong, this signal will travel infinitely. EM energy is as SETI is concerned in detected in watts per square centimeter. The farther the distance, the lower the energy will be, but it will never be zero. This is what you're getting stuck on - if there is a signal, it can be detected. It's a matter of know where to look, and having the proper signal to detect it.

[StanFast]

On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 2:25:02 PM UTC-6, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 6/15/18 3:48 AM, Martin Harran wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 11:16:31 -0700 (PDT), zencycle
> > <funkma...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 7:20:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Unless we as a species shape up (which I don't see happening), we may
> >>> end up going the way that many other potential civilizations have, that
> >>> is dead.
> >>
> >> That's a given.
> >
> > I don't see how it is a *given*.
> >
> > Yes, there is a violent streak running through mankind but there is
> > also an extremely strong altruistic characteristic which has been
> > instrumental in achieving a level of cooperation and coexistence in
> > mankind that is far beyond anything found elsewhere in the animal
> > kingdom.
> >
> > Whilst there is ongoing tension between those violent and altruistic
> > streaks, the cooperation and coexistence built on that altruism has
> > won hands down so far and I don't see any reason to think that will
> > change.
> >
> > But maybe that's just because I'm a half-full-glass type of guy
> > whereas you and Oxyaena seem to be half-empty-glass type :)
>
> Violence

you would not have just sent negative things about me to the reporter by chance?

[Oxyaena]

Yeah, there's not much hope for him. Arguing with Scumfest is like
hitting your head on a brick wall, the only thing that will result from
it is at best a headache, and at worst permanent brain damage. I`m
starting to wonder if Scumfest is a Poe.

[Oxyaena]

My point exactly.

[Oxyaena]

Life itself will survive, that's a given, no one is saying humanity will
wipe out all life. However, it will take tens to hundreds of thousands
of years for earth to recover from humanity's hubris, which seems to be
our species' fatal flaw, assuming we are above nature when the very
existence of our civilization rests on an *extremely* fragile balance. I
will concur that the problem isn't altruism vs greed, but a matter of
power.

Our leadership is definitely *not* concerned about the long term
survival of humanity at large, but rather short term selfishness and
greed. Most people aren't money-grubbing assholes, but a significant
portion of the people in power *are*, and that's the problem, we need
someone in power concerned about the future of our species, but no one
in this nation is, and our nation is by far the largest pollutor, so our
species is in trouble if we don't shape up, which no one is willing to
do, since it is cheaper to maintain the status quo than to actually
change anything.

I am willing to bet in the far future, when humanity has been reduced to
a few disparate tribal groups wandering around scarred, irradiated
wastelands, that they will all have myths telling of the "Great
Charlatan" as you call him.

[Oxyaena]

All a reporter needs to do in order to find out negative things about
you, Scumfest, is to read the shit you defecate all over this newsgroup.

[Oxyaena]

Hence why a likely reason that the galaxy isn't filled with spacefaring
sapients is because they destroy themselves before they can develop the
proper technology to travel through space. We seem to be headed that
direction ourselves. Humanity won't necessarily become extinct per se,
only civilization will, with humanity undergoing a severe population
collapse with the few surviving remnants of humanity isolated from each
other, thus undergoing their own separate evolutionary paths.

I presume this is the case for many potential civilizations, in order
for a species to develop a civilization in the first place they need to
be adaptable, able to adapt to almost any kind of scenario using only
their wits, it was how humans were able to colonize Eurasia during the
Ice Age. I doubt that even a nuclear apocalypse will fully wipe out an
intelligent, adaptable species such as ourselves, but will inflict
severe *and* permanent damage from which we may never recover,
especially in a globalized, post-industrial world such as ours. Previous
cases of societal collapse were regional at best, since even with highly
advanced pre-modern civilizations they weren't truly global, even Rome,
whose tentacles seemed to reach every corner of the known world, as far
south as the Congo and as far east as China, was really limited to the
Mediterranean and surrounding regions, which is why the Fall of the
Western Roman Empire, while tragic and severe, only affected Western
Europe and North Africa rather than the entirety of the known world.

In today's society, however, we are so inter-connected that a
catastrophe in one place will ultimately affect all places. One can see
this with the wave of refugees fleeing Syria and destabilizing the
regions they flee to, such as Europe, which is just one of many signs
that the end of our civilization is near. Trump and Daesh (the Arabic
name for ISIS), while severe, are ultimately the symptoms rather than
the cause, they are just proof that we signed our death warrant long ago
with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Similar events happen when
a society is on the road to collapse, Ancient Rome underwent similar
patterns, such as increasing wealth inequality, the fleeing of people to
relatively more stable regions, back then it was the so-called
barbarians fleeing the Huns, today it is Syrian refugees fleeing the
modern equivalent to the Huns, ISIS, ancient Rome also underwent
increased xenophobia in response to these migrants, as we are currently
undergoing, and this allowed demagogues to come into power, such as the
idiots responsible for the execution of the Roman general, and who was
possibly Rome's last hope, Valens.

However, while back then it took centuries for a civilization to fall,
nowadays, due to globalization, it only takes a few decades at minimum,
and a century at most. The latter part of the current century will be
very chaotic, and I fear by the end of this century the nukes will have
already flown, and another century from then the world will be very
different, the future will not be as we imagine it today, it will be
similar, at least at first, to the *Mad Max* franchise or the *Fallout*
series of video games, but as time goes on and the remaining resources
used up, we won't have bands of raiders but tribes, we won't have gangs
on motorcycles because the motorcycles will have long since ceased
working, but instead people on foot, we will lose writing since there
won't be any need for writing.

Let me paint a picture of the far future using analogues from a period
in ancient history I find the most fitting to what we are currently
experiencing and what will ultimately happen. The periods of history I
am mentioning are the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the following Greek
Dark Ages. The Late Bronze Age collapsed happened for a variety of
reasons, all intertwined, but most of them can be traced back to the
eruption of a volcano on Crete during the 1300s BCE, this caused a
period of regional cooling in the Eastern Mediterranean that led to
famine in the area, which also led to refugees fleeing the regions
impacted by the regions and destabilizing the regions they fled to
(seeing a pattern?). These people are now known as the "Sea Peoples",
based off of inscriptions from the Ancient Egyptian cities of Karnak and
Luxor describing a confederation of people arriving from the sea and
proceeding to lay waste to Egypt. Among them were the ancestors of the
Philistines as well as surviving Minoans, who were *from Crete*.

They didn't just target Egypt, other regions were targeted too. There is
a wide swath of destruction across the Near East during this time as
cities from Troy to Gaza were put to the torch and then abandoned.
Civilization continued in some areas, but everybody experienced some
sort of societal disruption. The Assyrian civilization survived, but by
the end of the Late Bronze Age Collapse they only retained control of
Assyria itself, most of Anatolia was a scorching wasteland, the Hitties
and Hurrians were no more, and the people that replaced them were
Semitic and Indo-European (the Hittites were also Indo-European, but the
Indo-European invaders weren't the Indo-Europeans who had settled
Anatolia in the first place) nomads who saw the chaos and decided that
there was some prime real estate they could claim as their own.

Greece on the other hand was totally destroyed. For a period of 50 years
Mycenaean Greece was put to the torch by either invading Dorians (a
group of Greeks who weren't Mycenaean) or the Sea Peoples, and their
government collapsed as a result. Fast forward a few decades, and all
that was left was either smoldering ruins or a severely reduced
population that reverted back to tribalism, even writing was abandoned
since there was no need to keep records anymore since their wasn't a
complex state to maintain and keep records of.

Writing wouldn't be introduced to Greece for another four centuries, and
where once there were kings there were tribal chieftains, where once
there were cities there were small hamlets. Where once there were
nations there were now clans. I think this is what will ultimately
happen to our civilization, there will be a period of disruption, but
once the flames peter out there won't be an America anymore, there won't
be a civilization anymore, there will only be the clan.

And it will be global in scope, and we may never recover from it due to
the state of our society. It is paradoxical that we have come so far,
yet once we lose it we may never recover it because in order to do so
requires infrastructure as well as a fucking population. You may know
how to build a generator to keep electricity, but you need fucking
resources to build that generator in the first place, and we won't have
the infrastructure capable of getting those resources, either that or
the resources will be long gone.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 20:45:59 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

I don't think people have changed much in the last several thousand
years and that many (most?) rulers in the past were just as short term
selfish and greedy. Yet throughout that period,far from the status quo
being maintained, cooperation between people and nations has
relentlessly increased leading to an improved quality of life for
those in the developed part of the world and, among those benefiting,
an equally relentlessly increasing concern and direct action on behalf
of those who have not yet experienced those improvements.

[Oxyaena]

I would beg to differ. The situation now is different than it was in the
past. We are a post-industrial society dealing with the effects of our
own hubris, that is, climate change and resource scarcity. Rulers may be
virtuous, but ultimately our fate has been sealed. You are
misunderstanding, this isn't a matter of greed, altruism *or*
cooperation, but one of resource scarcity and climate change. Throughout
history there has been intense competition for resources, and now, with
our resources drying up, sea level rising, the melting of the icecaps,
desertification, overgrazing, overpopulation, our pollution of the
earth, deforestation and plenty of other factors are coming to bite us
in the ass, and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.

The reason is simple, it is too late, we cannot reverse the effects of
climate change, all we can do is reap what we have sewn. As Isaak
pointed out, the biggest issue isn't an individual one, it
s a collective one, the tragedy of the commons. When a resource is in
the public domain there is little incentive for people to develop a
sustainable use, and by the time they realize what they have done it
will be too late. That is what happened with the Dust Bowl, and that is
what happen with resource scarcity and climate change.

We are beginning to realize what we have done, but it is too late to do
anything, and the fact that our nation is under the care of the God of
Charlatans isn't helping matters.

[jillery]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 10:09:46 -0700 (PDT), StanFast

<drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, June 15, 2018 at 9:00:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
>> On Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 9:05:03 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
>> > On Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 6:55:03 AM UTC-6, StanFast wrote:
>> > > On Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 11:15:02 PM UTC-6, jillery wrote:
>> > > > On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), StanFast
>> > > > <drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > >> >Signals only spread so far.
>> > > > >>
>> > > > >> Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
>> > > > >> away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".
>> > > > >>
>> > > > >
>> > > > >No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.
>> > > > >
>> > > > >You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
>> > > > >The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > THINK: What medium carries those signs of intelligent life?
>> > > > THINK: If those signals travel only a discrete amount, what stops
>> > > > them?
>> > > >
>> > > >

>> > > go look up quanta and energy
>> >
>> > Next, look up photon.
>> > Then calculate how many photons are produced by a light bulb.
>> > Next calculate the surface area of an expanding sphere.
>> > Have a nice day and thank me for freely tutoring you once again.
>>
>> A photon will travel infinitely until it's blocked or absorbed. Yes, we are in fact being hit with photons from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, as well as other energy particles.
>>
>> The issue isn't detecting energy from far sources, it's detecing coherent data.
>
>
>No, that is wrong.
>A signal was generated by a certain amount of energy.
>That makes a certain amount of photons.
>As the surface area expands in a sphere increasing in size going further in distance, the photons can no longer cover the surface area. Then a photon may not a certain area only once every five seconds, and it eventually in certain areas no photons arrive at all as you get farther and farther away from the signal source. Based on the energy amount, the signals Peter out, and photons will no longer arrive.
>Iow, the signals only travel a certain distance, for the purposes of detection. Do the math on how large a spheres surface area gets as it gets larger. Do the math.
>I am about ready to recommend you obtain a complimentary field trip to seti, so they can explain it to you. But at this point, I doubt even that will work.
>For the purposes of detection, the signals only travel so far.

Yes, signals can fall below ambient noise.
No, signals don't travel a discrete amount.

Yes, photons spread out over distance.
No, photons don't stop or disappear on their own.

There's a difference.

[jillery]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 20:39:47 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

There are times when I say to myself "nobody could be that stupid that
often". And then I recall Ken Ham and Kent Hovind.

[jillery]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 04:02:04 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

[...]

Your comments above are similar to Christian Apocalypse argumentation,
that the end is near and nothing can be done about it. Of course,
this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yes, there are lots of "bad
things" happening in the world, and if they continue, they will have
dire consequences. Yes, it's important to stay aware of these things.
No, these things don't have to continue, and no, their consequences
are not inevitable.

Problems continue when people pretend problems don't exist, out of
fear, and when people give up, in despair. When we see problems ahead
of time, we have the opportunity, the obligation, to intervene, and to
intervene intelligently.

[StanFast]

NO
THERE WILL BE NO PHOTONS ARRIVING
AS THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF THEM
TO COVER ALL THE AREAS
AS THEY TRAVEL OUTWARD AS AN EXPANDING SPHERE

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 12:07:24 -0700 (PDT), the following

That fact has been pointed out by others.

>for the purposes of detection, the signals only spread so far.

Correct, and if you'd made that statement I wouldn't have
corrected it.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 13:28:53 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by zencycle
<funkma...@hotmail.com>:

Valid point; I should not have mentioned photons at all,
even though the energy is propagated by photons.

>> As the surface area expands in a sphere increasing
>> in size going further in distance, the photons can no
>> longer cover the surface area. Then a photon may not a
>> certain area only once every five seconds, and it eventually
>> in certain areas no photons arrive at all as you get farther
>> and farther away from the signal source. Based on the energy
>> amount, the signals Peter out, and photons will no longer arrive.
>
>Yes, photons will indeed arrive. Sure they will be dispersed, but they will continue until blocked or absorbed. Again, this isn't about the particle nature of energy, so it isn't really relevant. Wave energy is dispersed in an EM field
>
>> I am about ready to recommend you obtain a complimentary field
>> trip to seti, so they can explain it to you. But at this point,
>> I doubt even that will work.
>
>Trust me when I tell you, I know way more about it that you do. So far you've exhibited nothing but ignorance on the subject. Have you ever done a fourier transform on a modulated RF source? If you know what that means, you should be able to tell me what output you should expect (hint, to answer, you don't need to know the frequency of either the carrier or the modulation, or the modulation technique)
>
>> For the purposes of detection, the signals only travel so far.
>
>Wrong, this signal will travel infinitely. EM energy is as SETI is concerned in detected in watts per square centimeter. The farther the distance, the lower the energy will be, but it will never be zero. This is what you're getting stuck on - if there is a signal, it can be detected. It's a matter of know where to look, and having the proper signal to detect it.
>
>
>>
>> What you're confusing is that the level of energy dissipates to miniscule amounts. This doesn't mean it isn't there, it means we don't yet have the ability to detect it.
>> >
>> > The only thing you've tutored anyone on is the fact that you really have no fucking clue about much of anything.
>

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 13:27:43 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

There is not *one single mention* of you in his post, or in
Martin's, zencycle's or Oxyaena's. Since you decided to snip
what he wrote and stick you oar in, here's his entire post
again:

[Begin]

[End]

So, Sparky, where in that is there anything about you, or
about some mythical "reporter"?

Maybe I was wrong and Panthera Tigris Altaica was right, and
you *do* need professional help.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 07:03:11 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

>NO

Yes.

>THERE WILL BE NO PHOTONS ARRIVING
>AS THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF THEM
>TO COVER ALL THE AREAS
>AS THEY TRAVEL OUTWARD AS AN EXPANDING SPHERE

Two problems with that blanket proclamation; you have not
defined the original power level of the signal, nor have you
shown why an omnidirectional signal would necessarily be
used. It's left as an exercise for the student to provide
such a power level, and to show the calculations relating
that power level to distance, both for an omnidirectional
signal and, more important, for a more-likely directional
signal. For the latter, provide the beam angle. Or several
possible ones.

Have fun!

[Paul J Gans]

Well said!

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[Edna Freon]

All "professional help" mean is that you pay for it.

Bill

[StanFast]

No photons arrive at all at a certain distance, as there are not enough of them to do so.

[JTEM is my hero]

jillery wrote:

> Parse the above into

You're legitimately mentally ill, trying your
hardest to obfuscate -- going so far as to
attribute meaning to Fermi that we all know
he never meant.



- --

http://jtem.tumblr.com/post/59272128411

[Öö Tiib]

On Saturday, 16 June 2018 11:05:03 UTC+3, Oxyaena wrote:
>
> Hence why a likely reason that the galaxy isn't filled with spacefaring
> sapients is because they destroy themselves before they can develop the
> proper technology to travel through space. We seem to be headed that
> direction ourselves. Humanity won't necessarily become extinct per se,
> only civilization will, with humanity undergoing a severe population
> collapse with the few surviving remnants of humanity isolated from each
> other, thus undergoing their own separate evolutionary paths.

We have all the options available to choose our way. Your pessimism about
humans can be because of arguing too much with trolls (who pretend to be
morons) and actual half-wits. I think you were trolling and pretending to
be moron few years ago yourself like that? In general most of humans are
quite nice and rational people.

Are there advanced space-faring civilizations? Does advanced civilization
use technologies that pointlessly waste energy and create lot of unneeded
noise? Do advanced civilizations want to communicate with primates who
choose "bigger rocket man" as their leader? How likely we are to detect
advanced civilizations that doesn't want to be detected by us? Can we be
under quarantine? We don't know. All we know is that we see seemingly
lifeless stars at distances that we can't reach.

[Oxyaena]

I think you'd like this webcomic:

http://www.angryflower.com/bibbal.html

[Oxyaena]

I`m probably just extremely pessimistic then.

[Oxyaena]

I think my brain just shot itself after reading the utter stupidity in
this comment. How many times have people told you that photons are going
to continue traveling regardless if they reach a certain distance or
not? I've honestly lost count, and I don't care enough to try. Hey,
Scumfest, how come we are detecting signals from quasars 12 billion
light years away? Wouldn't the photons have "stopped traveling" by then
because there isn't "enough of them"?

It honestly amazes me how people can be so ignorant, even after having
been explained why they are wrong multiple times. Are you even reading
what we write? Did you drop out of grade school? Are you just a troll
who gets off on acting stupid so you can get a rise out of people? Your
wilful ignorance transcends the bounds of human stupidity, it is
honestly astonishing.

[Bill Rogers]

But he's not really wrong. Photons from a 100 watt bulb 100 light years away from you will arrive at your (for example) one meter squared detector at the rate of one photon every 30 million years. For all practical purposes, that's
"not arriving at all." And I don't really see what the fuss is about. Of course there are signals weak enough that they cannot be detected above background beyond some large distance. No surprise there. Stanfast is not a particularly credible poster, but that doesn't mean everything he says is way wrong.

Here's the calculation from my post in Stanfast's other thread....

"So let's consider a light bulb that emits 10^21 photons/second, a generous estimate.

Let's consider a distance of 100 light years (I'm not sure whether the stars in Orion's Belt are the same distance from earth or just happen to look lined up that way, and it doesn't matter).

A light year is about 10^16 meters, So our distance is 10^18 meters. The surface area of a sphere that distance from the bulb is about 10^37 meters squared. Therefore an observer with a detector with a 1 m^2 surface area would be able to collect one photon every 10^16 seconds or one photon every 30 million years.

I tend to agree that a signal like that would get lost in the noise."

[StanFast]

but not to all areas. There will be areas that get none.
As the distance increases, most areas get none. For purposes of detection, the signals Peter out, so signals only travel so far.

Sure photons keep going, but not to most areas that could detect a signal, iow, the signals only travel so far.

Are you brain damaged or something?

[zencycle]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:15:03 AM UTC-4, Bill Rogers wrote:
>
> But he's not really wrong.

Yes, he is.

> Photons from a 100 watt bulb 100 light years away from you will arrive at > your (for example) one meter squared detector at the rate of one photon > > every 30 million years.

This is correct, and contradicts your support.

> For all practical purposes, that's
> "not arriving at all."

No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target eventually, regardless of the distance. What you two are confusing is that the dispersion of an un-focused signal will be extremely hard to detect. TO make any claim that a photon somehow disappears simply as a function of distance is completely wrong.

> And I don't really see what the fuss is about.
> Of course there are signals weak enough that
> they cannot be detected above background beyond some large distance.

This is correct, but in the thread dedicated to Bob Casanova
slow stan himself said that isn't' what he was claiming

> No surprise there. Stanfast is not a particularly credible poster, but
> that doesn't mean everything he says is way wrong.

I have yet to see it.

[StanFast]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:15:03 AM UTC-4, Bill Rogers wrote:
> >
> > But he's not really wrong.
>
> Yes, he is.
>
> > Photons from a 100 watt bulb 100 light years away from you will arrive at > your (for example) one meter squared detector at the rate of one photon > > every 30 million years.
>
> This is correct, and contradicts your support.
>
>
> > For all practical purposes, that's
> > "not arriving at all."
>
> No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target eventually, regardless of the distance.

you know how big space is?
And how could you prove the laser light would maintain coherence through any dust encountered?

[StanFast]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:

> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:15:03 AM UTC-4, Bill Rogers wrote:
> >
> > But he's not really wrong.
>
> Yes, he is.
>
> > Photons from a 100 watt bulb 100 light years away from you will arrive at > your (for example) one meter squared detector at the rate of one photon > > every 30 million years.
>
> This is correct, and contradicts your support.
>
>
> > For all practical purposes, that's
> > "not arriving at all."
>
> No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target eventually, regardless of the distance. What you two are confusing is that the dispersion of an un-focused signal will be extremely hard to detect. TO make any claim that a photon somehow disappears simply as a function of distance is completely wrong.
>
> > And I don't really see what the fuss is about.
> > Of course there are signals weak enough that
> > they cannot be detected above background beyond some large distance.
>
> This is correct, but in the thread dedicated to Bob Casanova
> slow stan himself said that isn't' what he was claiming
>

i am certainly not. You and your socks are claiming that
Probably because you are familiar with radio broadcasts working like that, the stronger signal comes through and the weaker one doesn't in competing signals in the same frequency

[zencycle]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 10:05:02 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> >
> > No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target eventually, regardless of the distance.
>
>
> you know how big space is?
> And how could you prove the laser light would maintain coherence through any dust encountered?

Gawd what an idiot.....

First off, in this hypothetical, there is nothing that occludes the signal. Second, it's been repeatedly pointed out to you that photons will travel infinitely until there is something to block or absorb them.

[zencycle]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 10:10:02 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> >
> > This is correct, but in the thread dedicated to Bob Casanova
> > slow stan himself said that isn't' what he was claiming
> >
> i am certainly not.

Yes, you did. In https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/3ofehqp5pmQ/eL1qTLm-BgAJ

the exchange was:

"
> > It's pretty clear that the point slow stanley is trying to make is that
> > there is so much noise generated by other sources that detection of
> > intelligent signals isn't possible.
>
> No, that is not it
"

[Mark Isaak]

On 6/16/18 9:43 PM, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 6/16/2018 4:18 PM, StanFast wrote:

>> [...]

>> No photons arrive at all at a certain distance, as there are not
>> enough of them to do so.
>
> I think my brain just shot itself after reading the utter stupidity in
> this comment. How many times have people told you that photons are going
> to continue traveling regardless if they reach a certain distance or

> not? [...]

Perhaps your experience with 100W bulbs is different from StanFast's.
You are probably thinking of a bulb open to the sky on a clear night.
But maybe StanFast is thinking of a bulb inside a windowless
interrogation room, where the photons will not travel 100 feet, much
less 100 light years.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 15:08:18 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Edna Freon <fre...@gmail.com>:

It also means "trained and certified". You may be willing to
accept an amateur auto mechanic as your cardiac surgeon, but
I'll pass.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 13:18:51 -0700 (PDT), the following

>> Correct, and if you'd made that statement I wouldn't have
>> corrected it.

>No photons arrive at all at a certain distance, as there are not enough of them to do so.

WRONG! Photons travel forever unless stopped, and the number
is irrelevant. Your inclusion above, "for the purposes of
detection", is what made your statement above correct; the
photons are still there, but below the level of detection
using current technology.

And here I thought you were beginning to show a glimmer of
understanding...

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 04:13:40 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Bill Rogers
<broger...@gmail.com>:

So the problem may be that he doesn't post what he's
thinking? Since it's been explained to him several times
that photons "just keep going", for him to state that "No

photons arrive at all at a certain distance, as there are

not enough of them to do so" indicates that either he
doesn't understand the explanations, that he isn't very good
at expressing himself, or that he's doggedly repeating a
false claim despite having been shown that it *is* false.
Given the opportunities he's had to ask for explanations,
and his demonstrated dishonesty in snipping explanations and
cites in other threads (such as the one about extinction),
I'm inclined to go with the latter.

>Here's the calculation from my post in Stanfast's other thread....
>
>"So let's consider a light bulb that emits 10^21 photons/second, a generous estimate.
>
>Let's consider a distance of 100 light years (I'm not sure whether the stars in Orion's Belt are the same distance from earth or just happen to look lined up that way, and it doesn't matter).
>
>A light year is about 10^16 meters, So our distance is 10^18 meters. The surface area of a sphere that distance from the bulb is about 10^37 meters squared. Therefore an observer with a detector with a 1 m^2 surface area would be able to collect one photon every 10^16 seconds or one photon every 30 million years.
>
>I tend to agree that a signal like that would get lost in the noise."

Yep. And as I noted in another response, if he'd simply
stated from the first that the signal didn't exist *for the
purposes of detection* (which he *did* post, and then argued
with me when I said he was correct!), I would, as stated to
him, not have corrected him.

[StanFast]

On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 8:40:02 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 10:05:02 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
> > On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> > >
> > > No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target eventually, regardless of the distance.
> >
> >
> > you know how big space is?
> > And how could you prove the laser light would maintain coherence through any dust encountered?
>
> Gawd what an idiot.....
>
> First off, in this hypothetical, there is nothing that occludes the signal.

make sure you aim for the parabolic reflector 500 million light years out.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 07:42:05 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by zencycle
<funkma...@hotmail.com>:

Forget it; he has no idea what he claimed. In fact, he
apparently has no idea what he *thinks*, if anything.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 07:07:06 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by StanFast
<drlmc...@gmail.com>:

>...You and your socks...

*A-a-a-a-nd* we're off into ParanoidLand again...

[StanFast]

absolutely wrong. Do you even know what a photon is?
I suspect you are just a brainless troll or strange look who keeps clicking send. If you weren't this old i would have your mom take away your keyboa rd. We're you in special ed as a young child?

[Wolffan]

On 17 Jun 2018, StanFast wrote
(in article<a0ba8ead-dd61-4117...@googlegroups.com>):

> On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:55:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> > On Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 7:15:03 AM UTC-4, Bill Rogers wrote:
> > >
> > > But he's not really wrong.
> >
> > Yes, he is.
> >
> > > Photons from a 100 watt bulb 100 light years away from you will arrive at
> > > > your (for example) one meter squared detector at the rate of one photon
> > > > > every 30 million years.
> >
> > This is correct, and contradicts your support.
> >
> >
> > > For all practical purposes, that's
> > > "not arriving at all."
> >
> > No. The photons from A laser aimed at target will reach that target
> > eventually, regardless of the distance. What you two are confusing is that
> > the dispersion of an un-focused signal will be extremely hard to detect. TO
> > make any claim that a photon somehow disappears simply as a function of
> > distance is completely wrong.
> >
> > > And I don't really see what the fuss is about.
> > > Of course there are signals weak enough that
> > > they cannot be detected above background beyond some large distance.
> >
> > This is correct, but in the thread dedicated to Bob Casanova
> > slow stan himself said that isn't' what he was claiming
>
> i am certainly not. You and your socks

which ‘socks’ would those be, thou moron?

[StanFast]

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1150518

[Oxyaena]

On 6/17/2018 12:23 PM, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 6/16/18 9:43 PM, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 6/16/2018 4:18 PM, StanFast wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> No photons arrive at all at a certain distance, as there are not
>>> enough of them to do so.
>>
>> I think my brain just shot itself after reading the utter stupidity in
>> this comment. How many times have people told you that photons are
>> going to continue traveling regardless if they reach a certain
>> distance or not? [...]
>
> Perhaps your experience with 100W bulbs is different from StanFast's.
> You are probably thinking of a bulb open to the sky on a clear night.
> But maybe StanFast is thinking of a bulb inside a windowless
> interrogation room, where the photons will not travel 100 feet, much
> less 100 light years.
>

I was going to write "unless absorbed by object in contact with photons"
but I thought what I had already wrote would be enough to get the
message across, but apparently Scumfest has experienced total brain
death, where not even the brain-stem functions anymore, it would explain
a lot.

[zencycle]

And if you think photons do _not_ travel until blocked or absorbed, it's pretty clear you don't know what a photon is.

Please cite a reference that proves a photon will simply dissipate to non-existence as a function of distance.

> I suspect you are just a brainless troll or strange look who keeps clicking send. If you weren't this old i would have your mom take away your keyboa rd. We're you in special ed as a young child?

That's funny coming from a guy whose mother obviously did his homework for him.

[jillery]

On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 00:33:52 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>

wrote:

>On 6/16/2018 9:54 AM, jillery wrote:
>> On Fri, 15 Jun 2018 20:39:47 -0400, Oxyaena <oxy...@invalid.invalid>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/15/2018 10:56 AM, zencycle wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 9:05:03 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
>>>>> On Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 6:55:03 AM UTC-6, StanFast wrote:
>>>>>> On Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 11:15:02 PM UTC-6, jillery wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 14:13:39 -0700 (PDT), StanFast
>>>>>>> <drlmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Signals only spread so far.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wrong. Again. Light (such as, say, the light from 13+Bly
>>>>>>>>> away) is also EM radiation; IOW, "signals".
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> No bob, you are guaranteed wrong. Stick to biology.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You are looking for signs of intelligent life.
>>>>>>>> The signals travel outward in all directions by a discrete amount. That has to cover an expanding sphere in size.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> THINK: What medium carries those signs of intelligent life?
>>>>>>> THINK: If those signals travel only a discrete amount, what stops
>>>>>>> them?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>

>>>>>> go look up quanta and energy
>>>>>
>>>>> Next, look up photon.
>>>>> Then calculate how many photons are produced by a light bulb.
>>>>> Next calculate the surface area of an expanding sphere.
>>>>> Have a nice day and thank me for freely tutoring you once again.
>>>>
>>>> A photon will travel infinitely until it's blocked or absorbed. Yes, we are in fact being hit with photons from the farthest reaches of the galaxy, as well as other energy particles.
>>>>
>>>> The issue isn't detecting energy from far sources, it's detecing coherent data. What you're confusing is that the level of energy dissipates to miniscule amounts. This doesn't mean it isn't there, it means we don't yet have the ability to detect it.
>>>>
>>>> The only thing you've tutored anyone on is the fact that you really have no fucking clue about much of anything.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yeah, there's not much hope for him. Arguing with Scumfest is like
>>> hitting your head on a brick wall, the only thing that will result from
>>> it is at best a headache, and at worst permanent brain damage. I`m
>>> starting to wonder if Scumfest is a Poe.
>>
>>
>> There are times when I say to myself "nobody could be that stupid that
>> often". And then I recall Ken Ham and Kent Hovind.
>>
>>
>
>I think you'd like this webcomic:
>
>http://www.angryflower.com/bibbal.html

Yeppers, some people are born clueless. Which is not to say that most
of the faithful are clueless. Perhaps the clueless ones are merely
the most vocal. Which is not to say that StanFast is among the
faithful.

[StanFast]

hint for the mentally impaired such as yourself: more than a single photon is emitted from a light bulb

[jillery]

On Sat, 16 Jun 2018 13:22:25 -0700 (PDT), JTEM IS A MAROON
<jte...@gmail.com> wrote:

> jillery wrote:
>
>> Parse the above into a coherent sentence, if only for the novelty of
>> the experience.
>
>You're legitimately mentally ill, trying your
>hardest to obfuscate -- going so far as to
>attribute meaning to Fermi that we all know
>he never meant.


So you're incapable of posting a coherent sentence. Is anybody
surprised.

[StanFast]

On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 7:20:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle

> Please cite a reference that proves a photon will simply dissipate to non-existence as a function of distance.
>

Strawman

[zencycle]

Which increases the likelyhood that a single photon will be detected at a distance - you really don't think while typing....

[zencycle]

You keep saying photons 'will never get that far'. I'm asking you to cite a reference that supports that. That isn't a strawman, I haven't posited a scenario makes a false assumption about your position. I'm asking you to provide evidence other than just vamping " I'm right, you're wrong".

[StanFast]

On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 9:45:02 AM UTC-6, zencycle wrote:
> On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 10:05:03 AM UTC-4, StanFast wrote:
> > On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 7:20:03 AM UTC-6, zencycle
> > > Please cite a reference that proves a photon will simply dissipate to non-existence as a function of distance.
> > >
> >
> >
> > Strawman
>
> You keep saying photons 'will never get that far'.

No, straw man again. A coherent signal for detection only travels so far. At a certain distance, a potential detection place, no photons would arrive at all, as there are not enough of them