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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

Weird to have these kinds of articles coming out at the same time the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public that we have evidence of non-human intelligence.

Also I really hope to god we are alone, if we are not then it seems far more likely we are in some kind of zoo or are going to be boxed out from advancement.

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I doubt the US govt is doing any such thing. There is no advantage for them in doing so even if extraterrestrial intelligence does exist. Space is too vast to allow for visitation or effective communication between planets never mind solar systems.

I'd expect that information to come first from arXiv or Nature. Or even maybe The Daily Mirror. Why would a governments be involved?

The research could be done using military equipment with strings attached. Alternatively, in US the researchers could be under some national security gag order by one of the agencies, no?

They are. Google the UAP act. Things are apparently about to get very weird.

UAP = unidentified anomalous phenomena

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-relea...

I've heard this for months, and the only thing is obvious is that there are a lot of crooks.

I mean, the recent Ezra Klein podcast with the journalist that is "researching" these phenomena and oral accounts is quite telling of the state of things.

Yes, you have heard this for months. It’s a progression that started in 2017. It’s a train moving very clearly in one direction and it’s not meandering or regressing, it’s advancing while most people aren’t paying attention. The UAP act this week basically assured disclosure in 2024 if it passes in the NDAA.

Haha, I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms before. “ I really hope we are alone because if we’re not, it’s gonna be so embarrassing for us.” :D

> the US government appears to be lining up an entire set of institutional infrastructure and laws to disclose to the public that we have evidence of non-human intelligence.

Could you please expand on this?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senators-move-require-relea...

https://thedebrief.org/the-uap-disclosure-act-of-2023-what-w...

There will be a public congressional hearing on this aired within the next two weeks.

As I understand it they plan to release their files on UFOs and other anomalies.

TBH it sounds to me like wishful thinking that those files will contain evidence of alien intelligence.

I don’t believe anything one way or the other, but the whistleblower who testified under oath to congress and prompted this legislation (among other whistleblowers still anonymous) he mentions non human intelligence and bodies. His name is David Grusch, you can google for some interviews with him if you’re interested.

If we have detected aliens, I'll be so incredibly disappointed if they're biological. That would violate my assumptions about the universe, and probably my hopes for it too. Biology seems as though it's a stepping stone to pure compute.

Detecting alien "techno signatures" should imagine industrialization in support of compute and nothing more. A lot of the stuff we currently manufacture and need would go away if we didn't have to support metabolisms, agriculture, and the long-distance transportation of bodies.

What are "we" if we're not biological? What is there to separate from the biological substrate into "pure compute" substrate?

> What are "we" [...]

A miniscule blip on the geological time scale. I'd imagine an AGI with a billion years to test the limits of physics would be greater than any god.

Yeah, I don't really disagree. I'm somewhat splitting philosophical hairs here, but "if we didn't have to support metabolisms" etc those lifeforms/artifacts would not be "us". In that sense, our biology isn't a "stepping stone" en route to something else, at least not in any way that's meaningful for humanity. We are our biology. "Pure compute" may come after us, but it won't be us.

But sure, I don't see any reason why any search for meaningful contact should be limited to biological forms, other than practical issues around budget and our own imaginations. Why limit it to biology + compute? That still seems anthropocentric to me. I'm sure theoretical physicists who take the occasional snort of DMT would have some wild ideas about other options :)

Edit: formatting.

It sounds like we have dead alien bodies. No, I never thought this was likely.

Are you talking about https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/14rp7w9/comment/jqy... ?

No, Grusch and the UAP act’s extensive citations of biological evidence.

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