Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
|
 sonamdrukpa
Wayfarer
Registered: 10/18/11
Posts: 880
Last seen: 2 hours, 21 minutes
|
 The Zoo Hypothesis 
#15767078 - 02/06/12 01:44 AM (3 months, 21 days ago) |
|
|
The Zoo Hypothesis is a proposed solution to Fermi's paradox, which was a slapdash thought experiment by Enrico Fermi that concluded that the likelihood of another interstellar civilization existing somewhere and being able to contact us was overwhelming. I'm not interested in the paradox right now, though, I'm interested in zoos - prohibitions on contact with or revealing your presence to Earth by these civilizations Fermi's argument thinks are likely to exist. Specifically, why would zoos get built?
Every time I can think of that a civilization has, while exploring, come across another civilization, they interact. It usually ends very badly (see: Smallpox), but it seems to me that there are firm reasons to want to contact another culture as opposed to hiding from it:
- Trade of physical goods
- Trade of intellectual and/or artistic goods
- Potential for new technological advances
- Potential for enslavement of the new civilization (if you're an evil fucker)
- General scientific exploration purposes
I get that a non-Earth civilization may be vastly different, but don't those things (economic growth and the study of science) seem like things that any society of conscious beings would pretty much have to value in order to be a society?
Now, I do understand the desire to stay away from contact:
- Wars happen all the time
- Disease get spread all the time
- Old power structures get thrown for a loop
- It's a lot of work "civilizing" those damn heathens
- Hippity-dippity reasons about letting societies grow naturally
But in reference to the Zoo Hypothesis, none of these seem to hold up to me - all but the last are consequences that require physical interaction to happen, and a civilization capable of spaceflight and exploration surely knows how to communicate over long distances, right? And there's always gonna be an incentive for some rogue individual to jack a spaceship and make his presence known.
This is a huge subject. What do y'all think? Does something I'm saying not quite seem right to you? Are UFO sightings evidence for or against this hypothesis (I could see multiple arguments there)? Is this a pointless hypothesis?
--------------------
|
Zunox1
Habitual Line Stepper
Registered: 05/03/07
Posts: 1,840
Loc: Arizona
Last seen: 10 hours, 28 minutes
|
|
There are way too many possibilities of why there has not been any contact made by other beings... Here's a few I've been able to come up with real quick. I'm not saying your theory isn't true either, I'm just saying there's a lot of possible reasons for almost any explanation.
1. There already has been contact
a. It ended poorly (here or otherwise). Maybe aliens have contacted other plants they've found as well (if there's that good of a chance, there can't be a great chance we're the first, can there?), and it ended poorly (smallpox, war, drugs). Maybe they came here before (ancient egypt  ) and it ended poorly (smallpox, war, mummies). Either way they might not want to come to this planet, just because they might not need our shitty technology/science (we haven't gotten to mars... we aren't gonna wow! them with much having come across galaxies). Maybe they just need resources - resources should be on plenty of safe, non-populated planets.
b. They haven't made it here, don't need anything here (yet?). Maybe there's a ton of planets with life/stuff on them, and they are just making their way over to ours (if you're going light-years, you'd probably want to not double-back  ). Maybe they're just waiting for us to get the right materials created (uranium, thorium stuff?), or they need a different atmosphere, and are letting us turn ours into theirs (global warming  ). The last couple are like in favor of your idea.
c. Maybe they're already here, among us  .
2. They really don't know we're here, or we haven't seen them coming yet.
The light we see from all the stars and whatnot is OLD right? Like however many light-years away... years old? Well maybe they haven't seen light from our planet that shows us thriving (dinosaurs, cavemen?) and thus have no interest. Maybe we haven't seen any light of them being around. While it's unlikely, maybe they left their planet headed towards the horse-head nebula (multi-lightyear-tall horse please???), and that just isn't the direction we are in (just using a random place, but you know: they left not headed towards earth...).
Just throwing out some random ideas I came up with real quick  .
--------------------
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
|
snoot
>:_
Registered: 01/30/05
Posts: 8,623
Loc: 45º parallel 
Last seen: 10 hours, 6 minutes
|
Re: The Zoo Hypothesis [Re: Zunox1] 1
#15773858 - 02/07/12 12:24 PM (3 months, 20 days ago) |
|
|
Perhaps we are part of a intergalactic reality show, it would ruin the comedy if the observers were to interfere or interject any of their galactic sillyness apon us.
--------------------
∞
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.
- Simone de Beauvoir -
doja designs
|
sonamdrukpa
Wayfarer
Registered: 10/18/11
Posts: 880
Last seen: 2 hours, 21 minutes
|
Re: The Zoo Hypothesis [Re: snoot]
#15773914 - 02/07/12 12:34 PM (3 months, 20 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
snoot said:
Perhaps we are part of a intergalactic reality show, it would ruin the comedy if the observers were to interfere or interject any of their galactic sillyness apon us.
--------------------
|
 Prisoner#1
Even Dumber ThanAdvertized!
Registered: 01/22/03
Posts: 152,729
Loc: Pvt. Pubfag NutSuck
|
Re: The Zoo Hypothesis [Re: snoot]
#15776234 - 02/07/12 08:00 PM (3 months, 19 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
snooki said:
Perhaps we are part of a intergalactic reality show, it would ruin the comedy if the observers were to interfere or interject any of their galactic sillyness apon us.
great... now I'm a jersey shore guido
--------------------
|
BuckeyesFan21
Stranger
Registered: 02/26/11
Posts: 25
Loc: Ohio
Last seen: 1 month, 19 days
|
|
Quote:
Prisoner#1 said:
Quote:
snooki said:
Perhaps we are part of a intergalactic reality show, it would ruin the comedy if the observers were to interfere or interject any of their galactic sillyness apon us.
great... now I'm a jersey shore guido
At least you'd most likely be considered one of the more intelligent, which is still only similar to.....Vinny?
| |
|
|
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Prisoner#1, c0sm0nautt
141 topic views. 1 members, 5 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Toggle Favorite | Print Topic ]
| | |
|
|
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit 
Reply 
