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Language: en
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do you think there is intelligent life
however you would like to define
intelligent life out there in the
universe my guess is that there is not
intelligent life in the observable
universe other than us simply on the
basis of the the fact that the likely
number of other intelligent species in
the observable universe there's two
likely numbers zero or billions and if
there had been billions we would have
noticed already - for there to be
literally like a small number like you
know Star Trek there's you know a dozen
intelligent civilizations in our galaxy
but not a billion that that's weird that
that's sort of bizarre to me it's easy
for me to imagine that there are zero
others
because there's just a big bottleneck to
making multicellular life or
technological life or whatever it's very
hard for me to imagine that there's a
whole bunch out there that have somehow
remained hidden from us the question I'd
like to ask is what would intelligent
life look like the what I mean by that
question in a war that's going is what
if intelligent life is just fundamental
it's in some very big ways different
than our the one that has on earth that
there's all kinds of intelligent life
that operates at different scales of
both size and temporal right that's a
great possibility because I think we
should be humble about what intelligence
is what life is we don't even agree on
what life is much less what intelligent
life is right so that that's not even
for humility saying there could be
intelligent life of a very different
character right like you could imagine
that dolphins are intelligent but never
invent space travel because they live in
the ocean and they don't have thumbs
right so they never invent technology
you never events melting maybe the
universe is full of intelligent species
that just don't make technology right
that that's compatible with the data I
think
and and I think maybe maybe what you're
pointing at is even more out there
versions of intelligence you know
intelligence in inter molecular clouds
or on the surface of a neutron star or
in between the galaxies and giant things
where the equivalent of a heartbeat is
100 million years on the one hand yes we
should be very open-minded about those
things on the other hand we all all of
us share the same laws of physics there
might be something about the laws of
physics even though we don't currently
know exactly what that thing would be
that makes meters and years the right
length and time scales for intelligent
life
maybe not but Ania were made of atoms
atoms have a certain size we orbit stars
or stars have a certain lifetime it's
not impossible to me that there's a
sweet spot for intelligent life that we
find ourselves in so I'm open-minded
either way I won't mind either being
humble there's all sorts of different
kinds of life or no there's a reason we
just don't know it yet why life like
ours is the kind of life that's out
there
yeah I'm of two minds too but I often
wonder if our brains is just designed to
quite obviously to operate and see the
world in these timescales and we're
almost blind and and the tools we've
created for detecting things are blind
yeah which is the kind of observation
needed to see intelligent life and other
skills well I'm totally open to that but
so here's another argument I would make
you know we have looked for intelligent
life but we've looked at for it in the
dumbest way we can rise by turning radio
telescopes to the sky and why in the
world would a super advanced
civilization randomly beam out radio
signals wastefully in all directions
into the universe that just doesn't make
any sense especially because in order to
think that you would actually contact
another civilization you would have to
do it forever you have to keep doing it
for millions of years that sounds like a
waste of resources if you thought that
there were other solar systems with
planets around them where maybe
intelligent life didn't yet exist but
might someday
you wouldn't try to talk to it with
radio waves she would send a spacecraft
out there and you would park it
around there and it would be like from
our point of view be like 2001 or
there's an you know an monolith monolith
so there could be an artifact in fact
the other way works also right there
could be artifacts in our solar system
that are have been put there by other
technologically advanced civilizations
and that's how we will eventually
contact them and we had just haven't
explored the solar system well enough
yet to find them the reason why we don't
think about that is because we're young
and impatient right like it would take
more than my lifetime to actually send
something to another star system and
wait for it and then come back so but if
if we start thinking on hundreds of
thousands of years or million year
timescales that's clearly the right
thing to do
you