Re: ET-Detection Chances Downgraded - The "Tech Window" Just Too Narrow

["Followup-To:" header set to talk.politics.misc.]
On 2024-08-13, 186282@ud0s4.net <186283@ud0s4.net> wrote:

https://phys.org/news/2024-08-dim-odds-alien-civilizations.html
>
Are there any advanced alien civilizations elsewhere in our
galaxy? We don't know. All we do know is that there is at
least one. Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about
finding others?
>
A new paper, appearing on the preprint server arXiv, argues
that we are unlikely to detect other technological civilizations
unless the ratio of the birth-to-death rate on other worlds,
shaped by its carrying capacity, falls within a relatively
narrow window. The authors refer to this as a "fine-tuning
problem"—the ratio must be just right in order to detect
other advanced civilizations. But a priori we have no idea
what that ratio is.
>
"The population of advanced civilizations out there is a
balance of the rate at which they emerge and die," said
David Kipping, an astrophysicist at Columbia University.
"This ratio is all that really matters, but we have
essentially no constraints on these terms.
>
. . .
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   TIMING is EVERYTHING here. We do radio waves ... but
   radio waves are already too damned SLOW for a lot of
   our communications needs. Radio waves thus have a
   limited use for The Future - and will be replaced
   with Something Else (entanglement-based ?) as soon
   as possible. So, basically, Earth civ will only be
   sending out lots of radio signals for maybe just
   150 years by and large.
>
   Note that high-power radio/TV is becoming a declining
   tech already ... replaced by net streaming mostly
   involving terrestrial fiber/microwave links. Once
   Old Radio is gone, Earth will go largely "silent".
   Hawking warned that this MAY be for the best ...
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   For any alien civ of roughly our IQ, expect that to
   be about the same - and note that newer civs that
   may be embedded near older civs might skip radio
   waves entirely, go directly to ready-made 'Chinese
   tech', so to speak. When we find jungle civs we
   don't give them short-wave sets, but cell/sat phones.
>
   So ... what does this say about us looking for alien
   civs using radio waves ? There'd be a EXTREMELY short
   interval where their tech matched our tech. Pretty
   much hopeless ... even worse if there aren't nearly
   as many alien civs out there as Star Trek envisioned.
>
   We DO know "Goldilocks" planets are pretty damned RARE
   in this neighborhood - welcome to the trashy arm of the
   galaxy. May be extremely rare EVERYWHERE and maybe only
   one in a thousand may develop ANY kind of life. As such,
   well, we really MAY be the only civ in this galaxy, or
   at least one of just a few. The sci-tech evolution of
   said civs might be WAY ahead, or WAY behind, ours also.
>
   Oh well, at least NOT much chance of Klingons ...
>
   (heh, heh - my spell-checker doesn't recognize
   the term "Klingons" even though it's been around
   widely since the mid-60s  :-)

I think the likelihood of other civilisations like us is quite rare.
There are to many things which needed to fall just right for us to be
here.  That doesn't necessarily mean that other civilisations would have
had to overcome the same improbable events (eukaryotes emerging, planet
which has water that isn't smashed by asteroids, a stable orbit, a
stable star), but the universe does seem quite hostile to life and Earth
is in a rare position.