Extraterrestrials

Do extraterrestrials exist? 
If they exist, why haven't they contacted us? 

I think most reasonable people would say that life probably exists on other planets, extraterrestrial life, obviously. Usually, religious people say that we are alone in the Universe, because the bible does not mention any extraterrestrials. The odd part is that they often say that the Universe is perfect for life, while they are also saying that almost 100% of the Universe is lifeless, this seems a bit contradictory to me.

I think that wherever there is water (in liquid form), there will be life, so, we will probably find life in the oceans of Europa, if we ever go there. The life there will probably be primitive and not very interesting, at least not interesting from my point of view, but biologists will be ecstatic. Anyway, I would not be surprised at all if we find primitive life on other planets. I'm more interested in intelligent life.

How frequent are technological civilizations in the Universe? 

There is the Drake equation, but it has many unknowns, I think a reasonable number for technological civilizations at any given time is a few per galaxy, I'd say two or three technological civilizations per galaxy at any given time. Maybe there are more or maybe there are fewer, maybe at any given time there is only one technological civilization per galaxy (statistically), or even less, like one per two galaxies or even fewer. I don't really know, but there are about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. There are probably more than 300 billion planets in the galaxy, because one star can have many planets, like our own Sun. Anyway, if we take that number, 300 billion planets and we ask how many are good for life, it's a bit difficult to get the answer.

I think that the center of the galaxy is no place for a technological civilization to evolve, but I may be wrong. With that in mind, I'd say that there are about 100 billion planets outside the center of the galaxy. This is a very big number. Even if we say that there are one in a billion chances for a planet to sustain intelligent life at any time, we would get 100 planets with intelligent life. I should remind you that the chances to win at the lottery 6/49 are about one in 14 million for every ticket. To me, it would be incredible if we were the only technological civilization in our galaxy.I think the main problem is that it takes such a long time for a technological civilization to arise, 4.5 billion years in our case (the age of the Earth). Anything could happen during that time, the planet could be utterly destroyed in the meantime, as it has almost been in its beginnings, when the Moon was formed.

Civilizations often die, because of diverse causes, sometimes they even destroy themselves. While a civilization is on one planet, it's somewhat easy for it to die. Only when a civilization expands to other planets, the chances of survival increase drastically, it's not good to "keep all your eggs in one basket". So, quite probably, after a civilization has expanded to other planets, it may live for an unlimited amount of time. If this is correct, as time goes by, there will be more and more technological civilizations in any galaxy, so, the galaxies should be full of technological civilizations after a hundred billion years, we are at the beginning, as it takes billions of years for the right kind of planets to appear and billions of years for life to evolve towards a technological civilization, the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old.

How would extraterrestrials look like? 

I think ET would be very different from us, although evolution often produces the same answer for the same problem, it's called "convergent evolution" and you can see it in dolphins and sharks or in the wolf and thylacine (extinct). I think that most species that create technological civilizations will have a few things in common, like the ability to grasp things in their hands or equivalent organs. Also, fire is very important for technology, so I think that ET will be a terrestrial animal, it's difficult to discover fire under water.

I think that ET will usually evolve as a predator, just because predators are generally more intelligent than their prey, just look at a wolf and a sheep, you need a better brain to hunt an animal than to eat grass, just because grass is not trying to escape. Humans have also evolved as predators, this is why our brains grew so much, because we needed skills to hunt and make better tools/weapons. This is probably one reason why we are so violent. Species that create technological civilizations will probably start by being violent too, but I think that they get to a point where the only choice is between destroying themselves or becoming civilized, as we are getting to that point and we will have to make that choice.

Should we fear extraterrestrials? 

I don't think we should fear extraterrestrials, just because they have no reason to destroy us. Some people give the example of Europeans and more primitive cultures, where the Europeans destroyed them. Europeans wanted things from those primitives, like gold, land, slaves etc. I don't believe that we have anything that extraterrestrials could want. If they are able to travel here, they are able to synthesize any metal they want, they have robots that are far better slaves than we would be. Plus, as the people from Planetary Resources said, we could exploit more platinum from one asteroid than all the platinum that we have ever exploited from Earth, it would be far easier for them to just exploit asteroids or a planet like Mercury, which is full of metals.  

I don't believe they would want to colonize our planet, as they could terraform a planet or they could just build a planet from scratch. We would not pose any threat to them, therefore, there would be no reason for them to be violent with us. One further reason is that if a species has managed to travel between stars, it has become civilized, otherwise, it would have destroyed itself by now.

Why haven't they contacted us?

I think that the only possible reason why we have not encountered extraterrestrials is that Einstein was right and the speed of light is the maximum possible speed. We have ample proof for that, like the LHC, which uses enormous amounts of energy to accelerate particles to 99.999999% of the speed of light.

If we imagine for a moment that a technological civilization is 10 thousand light-years from us (which is very close, by the way, as our galaxy has a diameter of 100 thousand light-years), it would take them 10 thousand years to reach us if they traveled at the speed of light, thus, I think it's easy to see why they have not visited us yet. Furthermore, it would take our radio signals 10 thousand years to get there, so, by the time our radio signals get there, humanity might be long gone, as the first radio signals have left the Earth about 100 years ago.

Why haven't we received their radio signals? 

This is probably the most difficult question about extraterrestrials. There is the SETI program, which is listening for radio signals coming from outer space, but we have not yet detected radio signals coming from an intelligent extraterrestrial source. We would detect ourselves from a distance of about 155 light-years, if we were sending signals for as long as that, this is very little. Furthermore, as technology becomes more advanced, we are leaking fewer and fewer radio signals into space, so, a more advanced civilization should leak far fewer radio signals than we do. Yet another problem is that we are searching only one frequency at a time and ET is probably communicating by broadband, which means many frequencies at once. Even if we were in the middle of a conversation between extraterrestrial civilizations, we would not know it.

It may be that our equipment is not sensitive enough, or maybe the extraterrestrials are not using radio waves. I think that civilizations are sending radio signals into space for a short period of time, before other (more advanced) technologies replace them, or maybe they are sending the radio signals directly to the planet, without them escaping into space. Maybe they are using lasers for transferring most information, maybe they are using cables, or maybe they are using something completely different than what we have. We can only hope that some advanced civilization has sent very strong signals towards us, we may one day detect that.

Beauty

An important thing is that people like symmetry and don't like asymmetry, therefore, the monsters in the movies are often asymmetrical. So we will never consider a lopsided human as being beautiful.

Then, we find attractive those people who are in full breeding period, namely adolescents and young people. Generally, we aren't attracted to old people or children. Well, children are considered beautiful, it must be so for survival.

Basically, people are programmed to believe that young and healthy people are beautiful, the reason is obvious: genes and evolution. Females must select a male with good genes for their child to have high chances of survival and reproduction otherwise they consume time and resources for nothing.

Well, it's more complicated than that. If there were females who considered unhealthy males as being beautiful, their genes did not go too far, just because their children inherited the problematic genes, namely, the genes for bad selection and the unhealthy genes from the male. So, genes for selecting healthy partners are more successful than genes for selecting unhealthy partners. Complicated, right? :)

The interesting thing is that they have discovered mathematical formulas for beauty. The most beautiful woman in the world was recently chosen. Unsurprisingly, she respects the mathematical formulas for beauty. Although I prefer brunettes, not blondes, she is beautiful.

From Leonardo da Vinci onwards, they have tried to find the mathematical equations for the ideal body.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216144141.htm
http://www.intmath.com/blog/is-she-beautiful-the-new-golden-ratio/4149
http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php

Sexual selection

Females are selecting males for slaughter. Of course, it's not intentionally, it's just that females which are selecting males for slaughter give their genes better chances of survival, by combining them with the genes of the best males around. They can obviously select themselves which male has the best genes, but it's even better if the selection is automatic, like them dying because of being conspicuous and predators catching them. You can well imagine that peacocks are very conspicuous. 

Imagine that there are two groups of birds from one species. One group is monogamous, in the other there are far more females than males, so they are polygamous. The reason why there are more females than males in the second group is that they have selected conspicuous males and they have mostly died because of predators. Which group would be more successful? It really depends. The first group has the advantage of having more offspring, because the male helps in their rearing, let's say that the first group has two times more offspring than the second group. The second group has the advantage that males are highly selected, so only the best genes survive from males, therefore, their offspring have higher chances of survival. You may imagine that there are ten times more males in the first group than in the second. One male can easily copulate with ten females.

If the female offspring from the polygamous birds have two times more chances of survival than the female offspring from the monogamous birds, than we have an equilibrium, the populations remain stable. If they have three times more chances of survival than the monogamous group, over time they will take over and all their species will be polygamous, with conspicuous males. If they don't have at least two times more chances of survival, then the monogamous group will take over in time, their males being inconspicuous. 

In nature we can observe both strategies. The pigeon, for example, is monogamous. Some pigeons may well be colourful, thus, conspicuous, but their ancestor, the rock dove, is pretty inconspicuous. On the other side, we have the famous peafowl, which are polygamous, because the peahens are selecting peacocks for slaughter, so there will obviously be more females than males, therefore, polygamy is necessary. Another lovely example is the mandarin duck, compare the male with the female.

You can well imagine that a conspicuous bird is attacked all the time and if it manages to survive, that's a far more impressive achievement than the survival of an inconspicuous bird. Basically, it needs to be healthy, fast, strong, etc. These are great qualities for females too, this is why they are selecting those males for slaughter, because only the best survive and give them the best genes, thus, the next generation of females has bigger chances of survival than the generation of females from those who select inconspicuous males.

The difference between men and women

Women are an interesting subject. Some people say that women cannot be understood and that is probably correct, but I'll try to do that nonetheless. One big reason why women can't be understood is because they don't know what they want or why they do some things, which is to say, they don't understand themselves. 

I've talked about this in my previous post, but I need to reiterate. Women can have a small number of children, while men can have an unlimited number of children. A woman can know for sure that her child is hers, while men can never know for sure, at least they could not know for sure until the invention of paternity tests and DNA tests. I'm talking about instincts, this is not rational, having DNA tests does not change our instincts. A pregnant woman can't survive in nature by herself, she needs a man or a group of people to take care of her, to protect her from predators and to bring food. 

Why am I saying all this? It's because you need to understand how women have evolved to be able to understand some of their actions. First of all, because they can have few children, they are generally more selective than men. You can imagine two women in some remote tribe, one which selects a man with good genes, a healthy and strong man, which can take care of her. The other woman is not so selective and ends up with a man with bad genes, not too bright, not too strong, can't really take care of himself. You can well imagine that the first woman has children with better genes, with bigger chances of survival and reproduction, plus, the man is able to take care of her and her children, therefore, they survive. The second woman has children with bad genes, with less chances of survival, plus, her man is not able to take good care of her and her children, therefore, some children may die of starvation or diseases from malnourishment. So, basically, you only see people descended from the selective women, because their genes for selective behaviour had bigger chances of being spread through the population by way of their descendants. This selection obviously happens each generation. So, this is why women are so selective. Women need to spend a lot of energy and time for their small number of children. 

Men, on the other hand, can have an unlimited number of children, so they are not so selective. If there is one man which obviously has the best genes, a lot of women would want him. This is why men are so competitive, they want to show everyone that they are the best, because women tend to select the men with the best genes. Moreover, there would be no problem if all the women had descendants from the man with the best genes. You can see this behaviour in other species too, like stags that fight each other, to show who is the best (who has the best genes).

Men tend to want to have sex with a lot of women. Again, let's imagine that there are two men, one which is faithful to one woman and never cheats on her and one man which has a harem of women and a lot of them will bear his children. Let's presume that their children have the same chances of survival. You may as well imagine the exponential growth. To make it easier, we will presume that the faithful man will have 4 children, 2 of them inherit the faithful gene, the man with the harem will have 20 children, 10 of them inherit the unfaithful gene. If the conditions continue in the next generation, the faithful genes will go into 4 children, the unfaithful genes will go into 100 children, in another generation, the faithful genes will go into 8 children, the unfaithful genes will go into 1000 children. I think you can see where this is going, this is going to the point where the unfaithful genes are far more successful. The calculations take into account the fact that there are 50% chances for one gene to go into one child. Obviously, I've considered those genes to be dominant. This is the reason why men generally want more women, because the unfaithful genes are more successful and there are bigger chances for those genes to be in any man. 

So, hopefully you now see why women are so selective and men are not so selective. You may see why men are more competitive than women. In my previous post, I talked about the reasons why women don't like to be considered whores. I will not reiterate that part. What is important is the behaviour of women. If a woman likes a man, she will not tell him that (generally). There are a lot of subtleties to flirting. Usually, the sign that someone likes you is that he/she is staring at you. Men usually take the first step, I think it's because they don't really have a reputation to uphold. Nobody likes to be rejected, but someone's got to do it. Anyway, with women it's very strange, as someone said it, when a woman says "no" it means "maybe" and when she says "maybe" it means "yes". 

So, what do women want? They generally want a handsome, rich, famous man, because these men are a sort of alpha males, it signifies to women that they have the best genes. This is why a lot of women would like to be with famous actors or singers. 

What do men want? Well, I think that if it would be possible, most men would want a harem full of beautiful women. The fact that Muslims dream of a paradise with 72 virgins is not that strange. But why do men want virgins? It's simple, really, because men can't be sure their children are theirs (instincts), but selecting a virgin gives men better chances for their future child to be theirs. In nature, suspicion is selected, because if you raise only children that are not your own, your genes are not perpetuated. This is why, for example, if a male lion suspects that some cubs are not his, he will kill them.

whores

I saw an interesting question one day: why is it that when women have sex with a lot of men they are considered whores but when men have sex with lots of women they are considered virile?

I think it's a matter of instinct, namely, of natural programming and evolution. A woman knows for sure that her baby is hers, a man can never know for sure that the child is his, that's why men don't like to be married to women who have been with many men. Well, now there are DNA and paternity tests, but we still have instincts.

On the other hand, men like to have many women, again evolution, it's the perpetuation of genes, the alpha male thing, this is why harems existed in ancient times, those men who had a harem were envied by everyone and the harem was well guarded with eunuchs.

There have never been, to my knowledge, women with harems of men. In the case of women it's simpler, women tend to want a male with good genes, quality is important to them, not quantity, this is the reason why they are so selective, they can have a small number of children, which cost a lot of energy. Men can have an unlimited number of children, so they are not very selective, many men would hump anything that moves.

This question follows: why do women consider other women with multiple partners as being sluts? I think it's because of the possibility that their men will go to the promiscuous women. Women are also naturally programmed to be jealous, like men, the reason is that women needed men to guard them against predators, to bring food, etc. Remember that humans have evolved under natural conditions, where a single pregnant woman had no chance of survival.

Can we refute religion without science?

I wondered if I had lived thousands of years ago when science was very primitive, would I have been able to refute religion logically? Obviously, I would not have heard about evolution, the Big Bang, perhaps I would have thought that the Earth is flat, after the tradition of the time, I would not know what causes lightning and other natural phenomena. Obviously science fights religion, because religion arises from ignorance and knowledge fights ignorance, but was it possible to do that without science?

I think I could have been an atheist in antiquity, if I had used logic. Epicurus, who lived 2300 years ago, showed very clearly and easily that the god of the bible contradicts itself, with the phrase "if God is omnipotent and benevolent, then why is there evil". Buddha, using observation and logic, understood that all things are impermanent, that everything is ephemeral. The idea of ​​eternity is absurd and self-contradictory, it's just an avoidance of answers, nothing is eternal.

If I were asked "who created everything?" I suppose I would have said that something must exist without a cause, the universe exists, therefore the universe does not have a cause, why would I postulate something else without evidence? Of course, I would not know about the Big Bang.

If I were asked "how can complex beings exist without a creator?" I would not have known the answer, but I would have known that a creator does not solve the problem at all, it complicates it even more, because the creator is itself a complex being, and if all complex beings need a creator, then the creator needs another creator which leads to infinite regression. Speaking of infinite regression, eternity is similar to it.

If I were asked "what causes natural phenomena?" I would also not have had an answer, but I think I would have realized that to attribute them to supernatural forces is superstition. For example, why isn't there lightning in winter? What stops the lightning gods from doing their work in cold weather? Or the rainbow, why is it always in the direction opposite to the Sun? Why is the Sun predictable? You can predict the seasons, day and night, etc. A god would be more unpredictable, so there isn't a Sun god. 

Of course, it's difficult to know if I would have been an atheist at that time, but I think it was possible, the only requirement would be to use my brain and think logically.

Who really created the Universe?

I had a revelation last night. The Invisible Pink Unicorn showed itself to me and we had a nice chat. First of all, I will call him/her "it", because I have not checked its sexual organs and I don't want to discriminate anyone. 

Obviously, I asked a lot of questions. I asked if it created the Universe and it said "of course". It told me that the god of the bible and all the other gods don't exist. I asked it why doesn't it show itself to everyone and it told me that it's shy. Plus, it told me that it doesn't want to be venerated, it's not vain, it told me that usually beings with an inferiority complex want to be venerated.

I asked it why did it create the Universe and it told me that it was bored and wanted to play. I asked if it created us and it said no, it said that we evolved by a gradual process of evolution by natural selection. It also said that only an incompetent creator would intervene in its creation, like a mechanic who needs to repair a car all the time. When the Invisible Pink Unicorn created the Universe by the Big Bang, it knew that intelligent beings would eventually arise, it did not need to interfere at all. I asked it who or what created it and it told me that it's eternal and I obviously asked why did it wait an eternity before creating our Universe and it told me that it did not wait, it has created innumerable universes before ours and has played a lot during all this time.

I asked why do diseases exist and evil and it told me that it made a few mistakes, but it's trying to improve the process of creation of universes, it will continue to create universes until it gets it right. I asked why doesn't it help us get rid of diseases and evil and it said that it tries not to interfere with the experiment, but it has occasionally given advice to improve the world, as it's sad to see what's happening, but people don't seem to be listening to its advice.

I asked it if there is life after death and it said that there is, after death all people and other animals will live in peace on an infinite plain with lots of grass, flowers, butterflies and especially oat and barley, it said it loves to eat oat and barley, and we will all eat grass, oat and barley, no more eating each other, no more violence. So I asked what will happen to evil people and it said that it will spank their naked ass in front of everyone for every bad deed, it also said that an eternity of torture is cruel and mindless and punishment exists to improve behaviour, not for revenge. I also asked if we won't get bored after some billions of years and it said that it has invented an infinite number of games for us to play the rest of eternity. 

Obviously, I wanted some real proof and I asked it for that and it told me to go on a field of grass and in the middle of it, it will give me recommendations to improve the world, but I have to be alone. Plus, a candle has mysteriously lit up, I can show it to everyone as proof that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists. Even more, a poster with a pink unicorn has magically appeared on my wall and the unicorn cries when I do bad deeds and smiles when I do good deeds, but this behaviour occurs only when nobody is around, except me.

So, today I went on a field and it gave me the recommendations on a piece of paper. The recommendations are as follows: 
1. Do not provoke unnecessary suffering to other people or other animals, try to bring them joy. 
2. Do not multiply like rabbits, because you are not rabbits, use contraception. 
3. Do not destroy the environment, nature is sacred. 
4. Be reasonable. 
5. "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. "- Buddha (inspired by the Invisible Pink Unicorn)
6. Do not consume more than you need, do not eat more than you need, live modestly. The greatest wealth is knowledge, understanding and wisdom. 
7. Do not be racist, homophobic, misogynist, nationalist, namely, do not discriminate. The differences between people are insignificant compared to the similarities between them. 
8. Be curious, try to discover how everything works in the universe. 
9. Be humble, you are insignificant, you live for a moment on a speck of dust in a vast Universe. 
10. Enjoy life.

This is a joke, in case you have not guessed it already. I have not lost my mind (yet), but I believe that this shows the absurdity of religion quite nicely.