A recent article in Science News, Can you hear me now?, explored issues around the ‘search for extra-terrestrial intelligence’ (SETI) program. I see a Taoist twist on this, but first here is the editor’s short take on this:
An intelligent ET would probably just stay home.
Apart from jokes about how hard it is to find intelligent life on Earth, let alone in the rest of the galaxy, the possible existence of extraterrestrial beings — and the lack of contact with them — poses a perplexing issue.Because the galaxy is several billion years older than the Earth, planets around distant stars have had plenty of time to produce civilizations that would by now possess technology millions of years beyond current human capability. Presumably those advanced aliens would have built vessels permitting easy interstellar travel and so should be conducting regular tours to their favorite Earthly vacation spots. But as the famously sagacious physicist Enrico Fermi long ago observed, alien life is conspicuous in its absence. “Where is everybody?” Fermi asked. Ever since, experts and amateurs alike have sought reasons why the best response to Fermi’s question is some-thing other than simply concluding that no aliens exist.
Of course, proving alien life’s existence would not require an actual visit from Klaatu and Gort or those Witch Mountain kids. A text message or even a Morse Code telegram would be evidence enough. But as Elizabeth Quill points out on Page 22, human strategies for finding such a signal have probably been attuned to the wrong medium: the electromagnetic waves, basically radio, that represent a transient phase in Earth’s communication technology. Seeking signs of ET by listening to radio waves is like trying to watch ESPN on a TV with rabbit ears.
So searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence are now attempting to imagine other ways that more advanced societies might advertise their presence. It may be, though, that they are not advertising at all and would prefer to conceal their existence from other civilizations. Because if anybody has developed high-speed interstellar spacecraft technology, the galaxy is a very dangerous place.
Imagine a ship only the mass of the space shuttle — at a mere 20 percent of the speed of light, its kinetic energy would exceed that of 15,000 hydrogen bombs. You wouldn’t want to invite a visitor to aim such a ship in your direction.
In fact, realizing the potential weaponry power of an inter-stellar spacecraft might be just enough to persuade a really intelligent civilization not to build one. And so the answer to Fermi’s question might be that everybody decided to stay safe at home. —Tom Siegfried, Editor in Chief
Okay, the first thing that comes to mind is how the Tao Te Ching ends(1)…
If there are any civilizations thousands or millions of years ahead of us, you’d think they would have found greater contentment, settled down, returned to a way of life more in step with nature. That means, above all, not one bent on ‘progress’, at least as we define it.
A civilization millions of years ahead of us would have matured enough to understand fully by now the illusion that entraps living creatures, and adjust accordingly. We, on the other hand, are like infants who have just learned enough to get around. We still have thousands (if not millions) of years left of Circumstances to bring us to maturity, as chapter 51 puts it.
(1) Actually it ends one chapter later with, among other things, He who knows has no wide learning; he who has wide learning does not know. I can’t help but feel we are just at the bare beginning of ‘getting it’, and that is how it should be. After all, our planet is young, relatively speaking, with a lot of evolution left to undergo. We are still at the stage of setting it up, i.e., If you would have a thing laid aside, You must first set it up, as chapter 36 put it.
You raise some good points to ponder. For me, they all boil down to symptoms of our species profound sense of disconnection. Thought puts up a wall of words and names between us and ‘them, that, those‘… everything else out there. The mind, and its beliefs, create an ‘objectivity prison’ which bars us from feeling the One. (i.e., When carrying on your head your perplexed bodily soul can you embrace in your arms the One and not let go?….
As a whole, we are ignorant of this core dynamic. Never realizing why we are struggling. And so, like fighting fire with fire, we ironically struggle all the more to reconnect through understanding, knowledge, communication, investigation, etc. Don’t get me wrong, struggling is fine. However struggling in ignorance will lead to difficulty.
I imagine that a hundred thousand years from now, we will realize where we are ‘coming from’ making us less intent on the ‘going to’. Perhaps truly advance civilizations have done so, and end up as the Tao Te Ching ends up, Bring it about that the people will return to the use of the knotted rope,…. How would earth people notice people on other planets if they had “return to the use of the knotted rope”?
After thinking about this some more I think of the SETI project and “The Long Now” (since you mentioned 10,000 years) as performance art. The actual monitoring of signals from space or the building of a clock that could survive for 10,000 years isn’t really important. The point may be to simply stimulate thought.
One of the interesting things to think about in the context of SETI is how you could possibly communicate with a completely alien species. Carl Sagan discusses this in some of his works. We’ve had enough problems dealing with ancient human languages and scripts, how could we possibly communicate with something completely alien? How is it that two humans can have a conversation and really understand each other? Anyone who has traveled has surely experienced difficulties communicating certain cultural concepts. Could you build up a universal language from fundamental physical constants and mathematics? Could a work such as the Tao Te Ching be translated into such a language 😉
On a similar note there has been a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence. There are still strong believers – search for “technological singularity” for some information. Why are some people so motivated by the concept of creating an artificial intelligence? Is it the same thing that motivates SETI? As I get older I hope that it’s all an exercise in understanding ourselves a little bit better.
Oh no, that’s not really my point, though it may be a byproduct of the reality I picture. Briefly….
We are to any civilization millions of years ahead of us, and the Homo Erectus is to us. Homo Erectus would be looking for our ‘smoke signals’ as signs of intelligent life. Our cell phones and what not would be to them as smoke signals are to us. Meaning, that technology would have become obsolete many thousands of years ago.
Also, the idea that a civilization millions of years ahead of us would still be so insecure and lonely as to reach out to make themselves known to others, or find other sentient life out there, is improbable. We are an profoundly young species and incredibly recent practitioners of technology (other than stone tool). We are as insecure as infants, both literally and figuratively. We want ‘mommy’. But, we left her (Mother Nature) when we started thinking we could beat her at her own game.
I expect every truly advance civilization out there would have gone through that insecure ‘looking for mommy’ phase. To imagine they would still be stuck there is simply project on our part. Just imagine where our species might ‘be’ a very short 10,000 years from now.
>If there are any civilizations thousands or millions
>of years ahead of us, you’d think they would have found
>greater contentment, settled down, returned to a way of
>life more in step with nature.
Are you guessing that there wouldn’t be any signals to detect as a result?
Even if assume that they have continued developing technologically and are using radio for communications, then it’s likely SETI will still only detect them if they want to be detected. Some radio engineers that I know think that SETI is completely flawed.
SETI addresses this in a FAQ:
“Are SETI researchers looking for the wrong type of signal? (I.e., why not spread spectrum?)
As described in the previous section, SETI researchers look for narrow-band signals, the type that are confined to a small (usually 1 Hz or less) spot on the dial. But if you have a cellular phone, you may be aware that a lot of communications on Earth are now done using a technique known as “spread spectrum.” The broadcast signal is dispersed over a wide range of frequencies. What if ET is also engaged in spread spectrum broadcasting? Would our searches pick up his call?
That depends. If the signal is strong enough, it might still be detected with current SETI equipment, although weak broadcasts will be missed. There’s little doubt that in the future, with greatly increased computer capability, our search will encompass these other types of communications. Nonetheless, it’s good to keep in mind that any civilization will realize that narrow-band broadcasts are the most efficient in terms of producing a detectable signal at the receiving end. If they wish to get in touch or, for example, simply have high-powered radars for finding incoming comets, they will generate the type of signals our experiments can find.”