{"id":29394,"date":"2016-08-26T08:47:59","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T15:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/%e2%80%8bthe-language-of-aliens-will-always-be-indecipherable"},"modified":"2017-06-04T14:20:35","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T21:20:35","slug":"%e2%80%8bthe-language-of-aliens-will-always-be-indecipherable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/%e2%80%8bthe-language-of-aliens-will-always-be-indecipherable","title":{"rendered":"\u200bThe Language of Aliens Will Always Be Indecipherable"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

My new Vice Motherboard story on the Fermi Paradox, Jethro\u2019s Window, and why we\u2019ll never discover intelligent aliens:<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the sad solution to Fermi\u2019s Paradox: We\u2019ve never discovered other life forms because language and communication methods in the Singularity<\/a> evolve so rapidly that even in one minute, an entire civilization can become transformed and totally unintelligible. In an expanding universe that is at least 13.6 billion<\/a> years old, this transformation might never end. What this means is we will never have more than a few seconds to understand or even notice our millions of neighbors. The nature of the universe\u2014the nature of communication in a universe where intelligence exponentially grows\u2014is to keep us forever unaware and alone.<\/p>\n

The only time we may discover other intelligent life forms is that 100 or so years during Jethro\u2019s Window, and then it requires the miracle of another species in a similar evolutionary time table, right then, looking for us too. Given the universe is so gargantuan and many billions of years old, even with millions of alien species out there, we\u2019ll never find them. We\u2019ll never know them. It\u2019s an unfortunate mathematical certainty.<\/p>\n

Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, author of <\/em>The Transhumanist Wager<\/em><\/a>, and a 2016 US Presidential <\/em>candidate<\/em><\/a>of the Transhumanist Party. He writes an occasional <\/em>column<\/em><\/a>for Motherboard in which he ruminates on the future beyond human ability.<\/em><\/p>\n

Topics: opinion<\/a>, columns<\/a>, fermi paradox<\/a>, aliens<\/a>, Extraterrestrial Life<\/a>, Futures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My new Vice Motherboard story on the Fermi Paradox, Jethro\u2019s Window, and why we\u2019ll never discover intelligent aliens: Here\u2019s the sad solution to Fermi\u2019s Paradox: We\u2019ve never discovered other life forms because language and communication methods in the Singularity evolve so rapidly that even in one minute, an entire civilization can become transformed and totally [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,12,5,2229,64,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-existential-risks","category-geopolitics","category-mathematics","category-singularity","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29394"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66426,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29394\/revisions\/66426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}