the demographic FATE of intelligent species: We're not mature enough to meet aliens, or are they too mature to want to see us?

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

We're not mature enough to meet aliens, or are they too mature to want to see us?

Meeting some Earthlings? Nah, thanks, I'll pass

Isn't it a young and stupid thing to assume that ETs want to meet us?

Just look around: lots of elderly humans here on Earth are no longer interested in meeting new people or seeing new things. They've seen enough, now all they want is to sit on their couch watching TV.

Millions-of-years-old alien civilizations might have become like those old-at-heart Earthlings. Meeting a dumb 200,000-years-young humanity is perhaps just a waste of time for them.

From the Daily Mail: "Humans are too stupid and religious to cope with extra-terrestrial life, claims expert"

...
‘If we have a more global consciousness about our situation on the planet, how fragile the planet is, maybe that’s a step in the evolution of our consciousness as a species.

‘There could be other intelligent life out there and it could be really different from us physically, mentally, socially and even morally.

‘They could maybe not even be biological, they could be robots.

‘Right now I don’t think as a species we are ready.

‘Of course some people are ready, but as a species I think it would be a big shock.'
...

My wild guess is that when we become mature enough to meet ETs, we won't be interested anymore.

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The demogra-fate hypothesis (outline)

If all else—your body and memories, stars, the universe itself—has a birth-death life cycle, can alien/human species exist forever? As they modernize, birthrates in 100+ countries have fallen below the replacement minimum of 2.1 births/woman. Sustained sub-2.1 fertility will make societies older and smaller. With India, South Africa, Mexico... crossing below the 2.1 threshold, will the entire species follow fast-aging and shrinking Japan, whose median age may top 60 well before 2100?

Enter our demogra-fate hypothesis: does population aging conclude the natural life cycle of all intelligent species in the universe?

Given no say on their own place/date of birth, high-tech species are just evolved wildflowers of the great cosmic desert. While sentient life may have arisen separately in lonely oases far across the cosmos, are aliens and humans that different in nature or destiny? Due to the unfathomable vastness of space, there should be quite a few of us. Even if only 01 civilization existed for every 10 galaxies, there would still be around 20 billion civilizations concurrently alive within our 200-billion-galaxy universe. Can 0.3-million-year-old humankind survive until the death of this Big Bang-started universe in tens of billions of years, in a Big Crunch/Chill/Rip scenario? Or do intelligent species—brainier but always part of wild nature—just blindly and purposelessly bloom and die, here one million years and gone the next? With no real say in their own death, like true desert wildflowers?

How, actually, do high-tech societies grow old and die naturally? Does banal aging-and-death await all cosmic civilizations that survive accidents or ecological suicide in younger years? Is population aging and decline on Earth the inevitable final stage of such a natural life cycle? Although galaxies apart, are those enlightened societies all helpless against nature's age-then-die law? Despite being conscious of such law, something no lower species is capable of? Much like humans being aware of yet helpless against their own bodies' aging and dying?

In deciphering intelligent life's (wild?) nature and (fleeting?) destiny in the universe, the demogra-fate hypothesis is empirically based. Population aging & decline has been widely spotted and measured in the very first alien civilization ever studied: our own. Until refuted by other cases of sentient life, shouldn't this most factually verifiable hypothesis be prioritized?

Cosmic civilizations are epic wildlife spectacles that run their own course over millions of years, and you—a fluky nanosecond of consciousness and curiosity—can do nothing but play tourist and enjoy your part of the action. Your dear species having an inexorable life cycle is hardcore fatalism, but so is your ephemeral alien body dying against the mind’s hope. Make peace with the unfeeling nature in and around you. Find beauty in your fleeting moment.