Mindscape 259 | Adam Frank on What Aliens Might Be Like

46 thoughts on “Mindscape 259 | Adam Frank on What Aliens Might Be Like”

1. 😂

2. Re: Sean's objection that advanced civilizations would not give off the kind of waste/heat signature that Adam asserts they would, I think Adam is right. At a certain point, it costs more to try and capture all that heat and redirect it to do work than the energy you would get out of it.

3. In terms of the probabilities, if extraterrestrials made contact with us, the odds are overwhelming that they would be older and more advanced. But if WE found life anywhere else, the odds are overwhelming it would be quite simple. That's just obvious if we assume that advanced, technological species are far less common than simpler ones.

4. this was fun. this was well done. perhaps he could be the first repeat repeat guest.

5. Sean some of us know the aliens much better than our neighbours.
   A few pointers:
   They share our DNA
   They seeded our planet.
   They look very much like us.
   They are one million earth years ahead of us.
   They’re not into conquest as that’s a thinking process of a less developed 3 & 4 Dimensional species.
   If you’d like to focus on the 7 Sisters Constellation (which is actually 9 Sisters as there’s 2 stars hidden from view)
   Maybe get the JWT should be pointed at this location.
   🌟

6. When I was about 7. Me and a girl one year older had a strong feeling to leave the school play grounds on a hot summer day. We saw a craft, it came down, we were paralyzed but told telepathically we would be OK. We floated at 45 degrees tilted backwards into the craft. I could only move my eyes, I was terrified, I don't remember what happened but we were missing for about 20 minutes.

7. Clear thinking Sean. Thanks you

8. The fact that asteroid 16 Psyche exists, with its ginormous metals motherlode untouched (?) would mean that there is nobody around this galaxy who finds it useful, except us.

9. It would be interesting to see Sean meeting an alien, Imagine the difficult conversation between an alien and a super smart human. 🤔🤓

10. For any intelligent civilization to exist for millions of years past the point of discovery of nuclear physics, they'd NEED to find a way to strip their kind of the ability to commit crimes against humanity. The easiest solution is to replace their biological kind with robots who can't oppose their programming and are incapable of being evil in the way we humans are. I find it impossible to consider a reality where any intelligent species can exist for a long time without annihilating itself in a nuclear war.
    Another major issue for any intelligent civilization is running out of natural resources. Eventually, nothing new can be mined out of the planet, and most of precious resources get lost under miles of rubbish, or end up at the bottom of oceans. This will happen to us eventually too, because humans can't be trusted to be responsible with managing the Earth's resources. Again, the only solution to this problem is to replace humans with robots that can be programmed to act in a way that will allow intelligence to thrive for millions of years.

11. didnt "like" the guy to begin with, but ended up being impressed and entertained.

12. 1:06:05 hahaha. Good one Sean. It's the most accurate line in this entire interview.

13. Hmm, I’d have said around 23:00 that that’s really not a great argument against the infrared visibility of Dyson spheres. You’re suggesting that even though I have access to essentially limitless, low entropy entropy with the capacity to do anything I want, I’m going to piss about essentially with some Stirling engines trying to capture 2/5 of sod all of the waste hear from my Dyson sphere? I mean, maybe if you’re suggesting I’m going to deliberately try to hide my Dyson sphere from prying eyes, ok… just maybe. But I’m still going to be advertising (a la Tabby’s Star) my presence just by dimming the output.

14. The whole Dyson's sphere idea always seems like the least promising pursuit to me. This whole idea feels like a hopeless projection of our own current tech into the future, like: how would we best harness a star with our current knowledge, extended into the (near) future with better engineering capabilities. I mean, we went from giant mega structures to swarms of smaller orbiting solar panels in like 50 years already. How can we possibly conceive how an advances civ with thousands of years under their tentacles would go about it? Finding any of the other tech signatures would not exactly surprise me, but this one really would.

15. Don’t forget to search in the really low frequency bands for alien bass players!

16. Dr Frank ridicules the UFO phenomena due to 'being to close to our development area. I don't know what he's read or experienced, because after seeing what looked like an intelligent floating plasma (looked extra hard to confirm it wasn't a drone or something, very close up, nothing solid to it… it wasn't a chinese lantern or something, again no body, and bobbed steadily along not rising by convection) and looking into what we have on the topic, it seems that what an uninitiated outsider tends to find/be fed is drastically different from the vast majority of what people actually report

17. Thank you, Sean, for your tireless efforts to advance the education of the common man. I am so disheartened by the negative comments and sarcastic snipes on your channel, and wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for your selflessness, extraordinary humility and devotion to the intellectual development and well-being of millions of people you will never know – now and in the future – whose lives are immeasurably improved by the existence of people like you. You are a standard bearer for all of us, and inspire so much hope in the collective group of us assembling around you and your work.

18. I know exactly what aliens are. Whats going on is aliens coming to earth is basically aliens going on a raping spree vacation. They fly to earth and rape humans and we call it probing. Think about it they fly here, slip us a date rape drug that makes us forget unless we go through hypnosis and they probe us (Rape) and then they fly home and go back to work.

19. ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOUR EXCEPT EUROPA . . . ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE!

20. Gonna catch it on Spotify ❤

21. Carroll: "With enough years of practice, I could figure it out." Right on.

22. Surprised Sean stooped to this level of discussion.

23. I realley wanted to enjoy this, but in the end, i just felt Sean was constantly frustrated by his guest, who just isnt as rigorous as Sean. Generally when Sean gives push back its because he has a different opinion, but still respects the opinion of his guest. Here the pushback seemed to come from a different place, not so much a difference of opinion, rather it was like Sean did not respect the intelligence of his guest, like his guest was making shit up or something.

    Anyway it was all very awkward, so could not finish it

24. I often wonder whether aliens might be the size of the moon or the size of an ant. And whether they might be liquid or gaseous. In which case how would we know they were life forms? Maybe they are made of neutrinos?

25. Fantastic episode

26. "Science shows you how to change your mind honorably."

    Earlier in the podcast, when Sean points out that a super-advanced technological civilization that has solved superintelligence should have ALSO solved mortality, and ought to have astronomical lifespans: "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… I don't like to think ab that".

27. 24:00 If you want to decrease your waste heat all the way down to near the temperature of the background radiation, doesn't your sphere need to be VERY large, as you still have to dissipate the entire output of your star?

28. A happy solution for the Fermi hypothesis. (I say hypothesis, because paradox is a misnomer.)
    
    Perhaps we observe no exo-life in the universe; primarily because either it is bacterial analogues for the most part, or the advanced life that attains technology is no longer here, for lack of a better term. Technological advancement is exponential, and while this is an N=1 sample, it is virtually impossible to conceive of it not being universally so, and thusly civilisations go from technology, like splitting the atom, and AGI straight to subliming, or transcendence so quickly, due to being so far along the exponential curve, they leave virtually no visible mark on the universe. Never needing Dyson spheres, or ram-scoops, etc..

29. I owned a 1980s Dodge Omni and am deeply offended by Dr. Frank's comment.

30. Hyperbole

31. 1:01:28 Science is about knowledge, evidence, annnnnnnnd profit margin. At least when it comes a lot of things these days… imagine how much more advanced we’d be as a civilization if the US Defense budget was spent on science/health/clean-energy instead of buying an arsenal that could wipe out the earth 10x over.

32. I meannnn hypothetically if there are more advanced civilizations out there. There could also be the possibility that we can’t detect them, at least not yet. We’re not even a type I civilization. And, take into consideration of how humans conduct scientific studies. Whether it’s studying other animal species, medical studies, etc.. Now imagine a civilization that has advanced to the point that they have the ability to generate life and conduct controlled experiments on planetary scales… Even if we’re the “ants.” We still have scientists that study ant colonies…

33. I have to disagree on the "no evidence in the fossil record" point. Thomas Holtz did a great lecture on this which I recommend, available on youtube.

34. I think when two alien civilizations meet, either they are in the same solar system or they are inorganic life forms.

35. 59:30: It's funny he asks how you get the properties of Darwinian evolution to work for these intelligent interstellar clouds. In the book, the characters ask the Black Cloud that, and it responds that its kind had no beginning. Someone says, "That's one in the eye for the exploding-universe boys". Because Hoyle didn't believe in the Big Bang. He thought the universe has existed for an eternity, so he had the revelations from the Black Cloud be Ls for his real-life opponents.

36. Interesting talk. I find it really hard to believe that an advanced civilization that visited Earth would not be detectable… glad you pushed back on that point.

37. I just want to hear their music.

38. What would be more amazing, that god exists or that we are totally alone in the universe?

39. Aliens be like: "What kind of ready-to-wear custom tailoring are available for me– options that will make people think, "That alien is smart! That alien is successful! That alien is an academic!"

40. Has anyone theorized that the "dark matter" could be life on planets that we aren't able to detect yet?

41. my pet theory as to why we haven't seen aliens is that in order to overcome light speed travel they are interdimensional – they don't exist in the physical anymore. but i also think the main reason is time, as pointed out when it comes to numbers like ten billion years a civilisation could be around for a million years then just vanish. and you have to bear in mind any civilisation that exists "now" relative to earth will be at least 4 years old for our nearest star and anywhere up to billions of years old for the furthest stars – they came and went while the light was heading our way.
    and i think when it comes to AI, i haven't heard anyone say "AI will be here when you come into work and your computer decided to do your job for you" at present AI needs a prompt – it isn't making autonomous decisions. true AI will START conversations.

42. I was a bit surprised you guys did not discuss the grabby aliens conjecture. A brief mention of filters and some of Seans questions are addressed by that statistical model. For example at 36:36 or so, the concept of expansive aliens (grabby) implies we would actually see these engineering constructs in the sky. At least the size of the full moon, etc. Obvious from our point of view now….only if we are behind the times a bit and the Aliens expand slower than light speed. The grabby thing shows that based on simple time data (evolution of universe and stars) we are here 10 to power 18 too early to be alone. Otherwise right on time for grabby statistics. If they expand at light speed we can’t see them until 1 billion years from now as we expand ourselves (or remain quiet). This countdown of time moves down the SLOWER they expand, such that we SHOULD see them now if they are pretty slow. At 37:28 he says engineering of structuring stars and galaxies “moving them around”, no one has taken these survey. Sean rightly pushed back at 38:36… we HAVE this data. Dark matter is the engineering of galactic structure, not understood however not “natural” either, so far it seems. Sean talks about anomalies in the data at 39:33….The anomalies have been collected already….galaxies that obey Einstein with zero dark matter have not been “engineered” (there are a bunch observed already), and structures that have few visible stars (Dark matter galaxies), have been “over engineered” (again a bunch of these weird things too). This interpretation falls within the statistical model that, they move slow and yes are HERE all around us already.. we just don’t understand the observations yet, only the gravitational signals or “movement” of structure. Further more, the grabby model states that as the universe expands we have limited time to stay connected and “grabby” on large scales…ie, the structures will be isolated. Taken with the vacuum decay conjecture (speed of light bubble of universe destruction will not be visible until it arrives, too late), it is further possible that this very real, scary, possibility, could be delt with by engineering an accelerated expansion…exactly as the one we have observed kicking in at a likely opportune moment in cosmic history where the engineers realized the potential problem. Again how is this achieved? Correlation to supmassive black holes increasing in mass was observed, could be a clue, as well as the Hubble tension likely contains a clue. For sure, the bottom line is this process is happening already, and the future will “protect” the galactic structure isolated “projects” from any vacuum decay.

43. If aliens visited us millions of year ago. We might see any geostationary satellites which would be still up there after millions of years.

44. I believe there is life on other planets but if it is as scary and weird as the deep-sea creatures we see on ROV videos, maybe we don't want them to "visit". If they treat other species anything like humans treat other intelligent species on this planet (rats, dolphins, elephants), we should hope they never visit. I would love to live long enough to see us discover an exoplanet full of biodiversity untouched by civilization and technological "progress". I don't think we should be exporting "intelligent" primates to any exoplanets. Let life on other planets evolve in peace. Starfleet's Prime Directive should be a guide.

45. What I never like about these discussions is that we assume that "because we can't do it, they can't either". The UFO topic may be silly to some but to those of us with the experience and frame of reference to look something spectacular and know immediately and without a doubt, what it isn't or what it can't be, it's a little less silly.
    Aside from that, I enjoy a little science-based speculation on what that something might be and of course, how.

46. We are going to become cyborgs and then synthetic. Robots are the future. So if we are visited certainly an advanced civilization would send nanobots first (since they'd be easier to get up towards the speed of light) and not come themselves in a big spaceship.

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