Jill Tarter - Why aren't Aliens Already Here?

Kjell Doug one of the critiques of the kind of work you do searching for extraterrestrial intelligence is that if there were such we'd see evidence of it now when you first hear that argument it seems obviously wrong the universe is so big and everything but then you're confronted with some analysis which has to do with the growth of technology and when you build into that the exponential growth of technology and and just to carry forward what we've achieved ourselves in the last hundred years projected forward under the same reasonable exponential growth and then look at the time available in our own galaxy the life of Suns and stars and planets you begin to the argument begins to take a little weight that if there were even one extraterrestrial intelligent civilization that we'd see some kind of evidence for it now there are a whole series of counter arguments to that and back and forth the the exercise itself to me is is very probative of a deep understanding of what you do and the importance for you manage let's discuss it a little bit what are some of the arguments against the argument that I just gave you well many of the arguments can be classified as they're staying home living the good life because energy requirements don't make it financially or aesthetically or any other motivation to drive them to actually fulfill this colonization picture perhaps and and the colonization is is an exponential in itself may be the exponential saturates you can you can run numerical models and you'll find that even with a number of different seeds another of different places where this colonization begins and one colony gets more and more but there are still islands pockets that don't happen to get visited maybe we're one of those it the the I'm not really persuaded that we yet know enough to say they're not here so they were so let's not bother to search I think we need to be aware of thinking perhaps we know too much and making that statement that they're not here I think actually is a misrepresentation of what we know about our local universe we don't know that they're not here we can probably rule out big bright shiny things spacecraft but we can't rule out nanoprobes we can't rule out von Neumann machines that have been sent but haven't decided to draw attention to themselves and we can't rule out the possibility that extraterrestrials may have very different motivations and than we do so that when we posit colonizing civilizations that may be a reflection of what we would do if we had the capability now again the argument perhaps all it takes is one civilization to do that and it can be a compelling argument if you view all civilizations in the galaxy as independent of one another and again that's possible but perhaps there is a coordination between civilizations at least in particular areas you know one of the explanations for why no one is here is that the earth is sort of a wildlife preserve that we're under quarantine or that that there may be well someone out there but they are not making themselves known and that it's a very intentional lot - and when I talk with some colleagues from other countries they say maybe extraterrestrials don't act like Americans to assume that we want to make contact and maybe they're waiting for us to initiate contact you know the way we are doing our search in SETI is to look for transmissions from other civilizations it's a strategy that allows us potentially to succeed in the coming months the coming years but it's possible that everyone is simply holding back in waiting for someone else to take the initiative and so it may be that if we search for hundreds or thousands of years don't detect anything that's a time to start more active transmissions so you would wait that long before active transmissions on our part I would suggest on a very small scale we actually start at least some symbolic transmissions you know sometimes people say we shouldn't be transmitting because it's dangerous maybe other civilizations will want to come and take us over I don't think we're going to be very good slave labor you know our proteins are going to be incompatible with their so we don't have to worry about being lunch for et but I do think that even the symbolic transmission from 1974 from Arecibo radio telescope to show that we have the capability of transmitting with other civilizations in the galaxy the messages that we sent out on the Voyager and pioneer plaques were very important even though they're very unlikely to be detected because they start preparing us to think about what we would say if we actually do detect another civilization and we start really thinking about some of the challenges of making contact with other civilizations Phil Marcin a very wonderful physicist that we we lost recently had had a way of looking at this and he suggested that when we think of colonization we really think of going there grabbing land for king and country being very visible he suggested that perhaps there is only one great prohibitory prohibitory code in the galaxy which is that you do not send out self-replicating devices to turn everything into models of yourself because then you destroy the most important thing in the galaxy potential diversity that's it but ever but the argument is founded on that everyone has to subscribe to that philosophy because if someone any some civilization doesn't it it ruins the total it's not a majority have to do that it's everyone that's right and if there are many civilizations that are independent acting then why doesn't one of them get through that would be the question if you ask me but again it's possible that we need to be thinking about more advanced civilizations in different terms that maybe there is a cooperation between civilizations that even if some civilizations may be motivated to make that contact that there's some sort of prohibit prohibition so it's like a united federation and that if someone goes outside of that and if you want it erect if if you want to do that if you want to take the Star Trek yeah analogy further maybe they obey the prime directive right which is don't communicate with a less advanced civilization unless they make the first effort well certainly there is a a logic that we we we think is is an assumptive certainty that that all intelligence would have the technology that all technology becomes exponential the exponential technology continues and that there is a an innate sense if we if you make those steps that you must then you will explore and you I mean you have to all of those steps were assuming is necessary then when we project that forward and then do the analysis then that's why we wonder where are they and it may be that any one of those steps and it may be that some of those same characteristics of being an exploratory species may actually work against the lifetime of the civilization it may be that civilizations who are able to curb their desire to go outward and conquer other civilizations are the ones that may be around long enough to make contact by other more conservative means what about the argument did you hear some time about the civilizations when they get to a certain point in fact we're getting there that virtual reality becomes more exciting than real reality and and eventually then if we have intelligent civilizations out there we'll have them creating virtual worlds and virtual universes and there will be more simulations than there are the real thing and the then the key I would think the prize would be to go find the real ones and not destroy what's unique out them Murray gell-mann is is very well known for many things but he had once talked about the the simulation versus reality as being like the difference between maths and physics or the difference between masturbation and sex and and we we as a species and intelligent curious exploratory species do seem to prefer the sex part of it the reality so I hope that on your plaque and said that I would but it perhaps if the virtual reality is sufficiently rich and if we can make contact with other worlds through the Mershon in their virtual realities maybe that accomplishes the same thing but it's a much cheaper and much faster the sociologists at the National Science Foundation bill Bainbridge has suggested in fact we should think of interstellar messages as sending avatars to other worlds and those would be our ambassadors so we may accomplish it what could happen through a physical contact but we don't have to wait for the probe to get there and then send a response back over a much longer time so SETI is just second life for someone that's right that's right well what to me it is so exciting is that the more you push yourselves and your thinking the more you expand your horizons because whatever we're going to find the history and astronomy and cosmology just without any life-forms and so is so rich with surprise that it is it isn't be incredibly unlikely that if the area biggest surprise which is intelligence forms conforms to our way of thinking I mean one would should expect surprise in that area so the more we're thinking differently and forcing each other to to deal with this question of what they would be like why we don't see them and looking for alternatives will make us more receptive and more more communicative if and when we find something I'd hope so but we have a we do have a long history of still seeing ourselves as the pinnacle of an infinite descent and and maybe not being as open-minded as we should be and what are the implications of that well I think we met out the obvious implications as we miss opportunities we miss discoveries we we're so focused on finding a solution that fits our preconceived notion that we miss the totally orthogonal solution or reality and that is very serious at this time not just because of the the trauma in today's world that we find but because the desperate desire that we all feel to to want to know what's real into and to have a a so civilizations that are they're grounded in in what's fundamental in the universe I mean everybody strives for that and if there are ways of thinking that that inhibit that ability to apprehend reality that's a travesty well in fact we may be in the universe created by future biological highly technological civilization whose ends up putting their own purpose on the universe having we may be going into the next biological phase of the evolution of the cosmos where in fact intelligence does because in does manifest itself by what it does to the universe that is it has the ability to control the universe itself and we're in a universe already being controlled by another intelligence so there you are working the equipment that technologies for grandmas to assess and how we can be listening for extraterrestrial intelligence and meanwhile all around you there's this philosophical arguments going on there are no aliens and here are the reason or there how does it make you feel when you you're trying to do the the real work of getting the data and there are a lot of people arguing back and forth with a lot of theoretical stuff well I'm very comfortable with the position that we really shouldn't take our selves - seriously and be very dogmatic about what we know because we may be proven wrong and so I think it's really worth pursuing this opportunity we may be it's been suggested that there is another phase of evolution of the universe and that's the the bio chasm the place the time when intelligence which developed long before we got here has so expanded has followed the exponential has managed to manipulate energy sources so that it is now having an influence on the cosmos and so maybe it isn't gravity and and and dark energy that is determining the fate of the cosmos right now but in earlier intelligence who could in fact be considered God that's what some people might say or simply the next phase of evolution of this cosmos and I think we should not give up a search because we can make arguments that says no one else is out there or we are the first along a very narrow set of criteria if you would try to project a long time into the future the human race going on for tens or hundreds of thousands of years and if you could look back how important do you think the work that you and SETI do today would be viewed with that long view of history I think taking a long view and looking back we would see this period of time and and see the most essential aspect as being the period at which we go from trying to answer a fundamental question by asking the priests and the philosophers what they believe to try and answer the question by doing experiments and observations

Channel: Closer To Truth

Views: 100,773

Rating: 4.6249084 out of 5

Keywords: Jill Tarter, Closer To Truth, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Extraterrestrial Life, Aliens, SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Physics, Cosmology, Biology

Id: 8fLOxLXNsj4

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016