As time goes on, and we find no evidence of aliens, the dark forest model is more and more likely vs. the kindly lumberjack model. In the kindly lumberjack model, we're more likely to detect other civilizations.
Or not. The great thing about astronomical observations is that they can scan across millions of years in a few seconds. We look at thousands of other galaxies, some old and some ancient, but do not see massive extraterrestrial civilizations doing big things. That is pretty strong evidence that there aren't any lumberjacks chopping down stars for firewood.
it's that our notions of what would be useful to look for are to significant extent conditioned on our own level of technology.
There are axioms, for sure; but we are also axiomatically limited in our imagination to that which we have had insight into with so far.
Our surveys to date have focused almost exclusively on the presumption that an advanced civilization would emit (intentionally or as a byproduct) RF in a manner we can detect in the bands it is convenient for us to examine, and focus on from reasonable first principles.
But there are as many arbitrary assumptions or allowances for our convenience or technology in our surveys as there are motivated ones. Arguably more. (I would so argue.)
Not long ago I read that fascinating blow by blow of the zero-day demonstration of using Apple device discovery exploits to own iPhones, so long as you could get close to them.
As interesting to me as the actual exploit mechanics, was the patient walk through of the state of the art of frequency hopping band-sharing error-and-conflict-tolerant protocols matter of factly surrounding in my in my house.
Were I a HAM operator patiently looking for CQ, I might well miss the massive Zoom party going on on the local Wifi. It would be "noise."
I am not making a specific argument, just saying: our own technology continues to advance so quickly at our own time scale,
that the presumption that the universe we can see is "dark" is IMO not just naive but willfully so.
There is much in basic physics we still are struggling with and/or have no plausible model for yet.
So long as that is the case, we don't even know if we're in a forest, let along a dark one.
No. That is radio SETI. The search for life also looks includes Dyson-SETI, the search for megastructures, or other technosignatures, which can have nothing to do with RF.
(1) A galaxy without any supernovas, with all the dangerous stars pushed out of the galactic disk -> the lumberjack scenario. (2) A planet with gasses associated with industry -> technosignature. (3) Unexplained planetary phenomena, starlight doing things that suggest large orbiting megastructures (Dyson sphere territory). ... and the list goes on. Radio telescope SETI is one very small corner in the search for other civilizations.
That is not entirely true, currently it is 1 to 0 for the dark forest theory, as we have at least one data point: Our selves (as to aliens, we are aliens), and you surely don't want to gain our attention.
Oh, look, a new continent! Let's kill nearly everyone on it.
Oh, look, a new planet! ...
For the rape part you have what the UN been doing in Africa or central america.
Human nature hasn't hasn't changed, we just ran out of easy to settle real estate. And it's not cost effective to go after easily settled areas -- a couple of world wars showed how ugly that can get.
Once climate change starts changing things I'm sure we'll see yet more "colonization" and unpleasant behavior.
* spectroscopic analysis can show that our atmosphere is oxygen-rich, and this can be detected from a range of many light-years away * oxygen-rich atmospheres probably indicate life * we've had an oxygen-rich atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years
So, yes, radio wave emissions have only been going on for 100 years, but we've looked like a life-bearing planet for 100s of millions of years and nobody's taken a successful extinction shot at us that we know of.
Is it though? We only have one example of "life" and that is an oxygen based form. Supposing all forms of life are similar is something I consider unproven.
It might be more accurate to say an "unusual" planetary chemistry is indicative of an unusual process, which might include life. But then the question is: How many planets are there with unusual chemistry? I think we are far from observing this - the many planets we now suppose to exist are only just being discovered, starting with the largest, the hottest, and the nearest.
Are you sure? Someone's been chucking bloody big rocks at us for millions of years, on and off. Some of which appear to have caused some pretty spectacular extinctions.
Maybe the issue is that we think the aliens fly around in saucers when, in fact, they are just playing a gigantic game of pinball.
It really isn't a stretch to posit that an alien form with liquid-methane-based chemistry (instead of water-based) would want to stay far far away from places like Earth, just like we wouldn't like to sunbathe in Mercury. And the boring but most likely occam's razor of alien civilizations is that it isn't actually physically possible for a civilization to leave their home star.
In these "post-singularity" times it's hard to speculate.
I think it's unfair to cherry-pick one task attempted by a cost-aware electricity company, that didn't involve the majority of humanity, and judge humanity on that basis. The nations best and brightest where not called upon to hang power cables.
I just don't see a post-human future that is based on silicon: the manufacturing process is far too complex and poisonous to be viable as a self-replicating system and it doesn't last long either. I don't see a biological post-human civilization being feasible either: we've all but depleted all easily accessible natural resources, so any new civilization would have an uphill climb to surpass our technology.
People talk about Dyson spheres but for some reason no one mentions that space debris will puncture every material known to humankind because it's just flying so damn fast. Seems like a fairly obvious and fundamental physics issue IMHO; not exactly something that one can just wave away with theoretical future technology.
Maybe you know something I don't, but as far as I'm concerned, space colonization feels more like wishful thinking than something that could actually realistically happen.
> also quite a fundamental piece of technology
I don't think long-term cable maintenance is considered important; whether a technology exists, and whether it was provided (at cost) is different. In most cases the electricity companies where obligated to provide maintenance to small communities, without profit, so did it on a least effort basis.
> I just don't see a post-human future that is based on silicon: the manufacturing process is far too complex and poisonous to be viable as a self-replicating system
I didn't say anything about self-replication; but AI controlled hardware could be self-replicating/sustaining in exactly the way human society is. In the meanwhile, If a sufficiently flexible robot can be remotely controlled by human operators, what stops multiple robots maintaining each other?
Edit: Now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that’s close to the plot of a Neal Stephenson book I’ve read.
The 'Dark Forest' model suggests that we should be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible.
But I could also propose what I am calling the 'lumberjack model'. Suppose a lumberjack wishes to cut down all of trees in the forest--but being a sympathetic lumberjack, he avoids felling any trees with a birds nest in them. In that case, the birds should actively be as loud as possible and make their presence known to the lumberjack.
Both models are perfectly logical, but come to opposite conclusions--we simply have no idea whether aliens are more like the predators of the dark forest or the lumberjack.
As for Hanson's theory, it might be that the universe is one giant winner-takes-all system. But I suspect one could also come up with an equally valid theory that concludes something else--and we have no way to discern one over the other.
It's fun to speculate, I am just encouraging extreme caution I'm thinking we have any clue about any of this stuff.