This is going to be a weird episode of this very new podcast.
But if you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, then you have tasted the fruit of reasoning from uncertainty.
However, cryptocurrency’s epistemic terrain has gotten to be much too easy travel. So come with me to give that conceptual flexibility you learned from embracing decentralized networks a workout by exploring another kind of conceptual terrain: embracing communion with interstellar intelligences.
Hopefully, I can convince you that doing so will chart a path to a better world, for everyone, right here, right now.
In 2021, George Mason University professor Robin Hanson published a paper, “If Loud Aliens Explain Human Earliness, Quiet Aliens Are Also Rare.” Since then, he’s been making the argument that we can — based on what little we know about the universe so far — make a model that estimates the population of interstellar colonizers across all time and space.
As we’ll see in the episode, that doesn’t mean it enables the estimation of all interstellar life. That doesn’t matter though. What matters is that his model and the discussions around it make conceptualizing life, the universe and everything considerably more tractable. At least it did for me.
The journey here is about concepts. The key concepts in discussing how to think about interstellar life. That’s the power of what Hanson opened up here.
Most discussions you see of UFOs will try to show you evidence that we’ve been visited. I’ve looked at basically all the evidence in the public domain, and I find much of it compelling.
But you know what’s really compelling? Thinking it all through. So that’s what I’m going to try to do here. This isn’t about the very sketchy and impossible to reproduce facts. This is about the ideas they have led us to.
I very much have a point of view, but I also think this episode should help any open-minded person to refine their own, as well.
This episode draws on a lot of material besides Hanson’s paper. Not that many of the clips in this episode were edited for clarity (often to cut out some jargon-filled asides that weren’t really additive to the point in the episode).
For more on the sources of many of the clips or topics I discuss in the episode, see below:
Grabby Aliens — website devoted to the topic.
How Far To Grabby Aliens? Part 1
It’s time to take UFOs seriously. Seriously. (Vox)(paywalled, but you can find it on the Wayback Machine)
Three Body Problem Trilogy: Simply Brilliant Astounding modern classic Sci-fi book series
“The Apologists,” Tade Thompson (Clarkesworld)
See the videos cited in this episode on the blog post for this episode on FrontStageExit.com.
Music in the episode:
“Bitcoins going up” by SunoMusicShowYouTube
All from Pixabay Music
Thanks for listening! Let me know what you think!
