True, although the Fermi Paradox still sort of applies here, e.g., even if the galaxy were teeming with aliens zipping all over the galaxy in their warp-capable spacecraft, the odds of them charting a course right past our fairly uninteresting solar system seem low.

This is likely not helped by the fact that we are more than halfway out to the edge of the galaxy, in one of the Milky Way's spiral arms; since we're not near the galactic centre, there are less possible travel paths that pass by us (if we just assume arbitrary random travel between any two points.)

So even if it is happening right now in abundance, and even if we can detect its occurrence, are any of those paths close enough to us to be detected?

> Funny that the sci-fi got it backwards.

Sci-fi got it both ways.

Even in the eponymous "warp drive" sci-fi: Star Trek, The Federation's Prime Directive states that uncontacted civilisations are not to be contacted until they are capable of initiating contact themselves.

Usually this is by that civilisation achieving warp drive capabilities (which would allow that species to meet other species) but it can also happen with a species achieving subspace (faster-than-light) communications (which would allow that species to overhear or talk with other species).

> we will clearly be able to detect warp signatures far before we would be able to build a machine capable of producing them

We’re in the crystal-radio stage of gravitometrics.

Not even that, spark gaps and coherers :)

And we can't really detect radio signatures yet, not farther than closest stars. Perhaps when we get solar gravitational lens telescopes.

Excuse my ignorance about the term, what does “crystal-radio stage of gravitometrics” mean in this context?

Primitive. (Primitive radios used a crystal for tuning. We have since gotten a lot better at tuning radios...)

To be pedantic, the crystal is the rectifier in a crystal radio. Tuning was (or is, since there are still people out there playing with these things) still usually done via a normal tuned LC circuit.

But yeah, we've gotten a lot better at rectifying too.

But we do use crystals for generating a stable frequency reference, which is then used in tuning.

That's not what is meant by "crystal radio".

Yes, absolutely. I was referring to the part about "still usually done via a normal tuned LC circuit". Sorry for any confusion.

I don't think warp drives would be different from other kinds of waves expanding in space - their strength would normally decrease at least the square of the distance simply because their energy wouldn't have a direction. And if the energy did have a direction, the odds of it being aimed at earth would be small.

For that reason, only warp drive harnessing star-equivalent energy levels would be visible at distance of stars and so-on. I mean, Fermi's observation comes down to "there's no intelligent-being signature at the star-levels of energy we can see". But that could be because: intelligent beings are rare or because harnessing star-levels of energy is hard or impossible no matter how advanced a society gets or advanced societies have no need for such harnessing or because advanced societies follow the paranoid "dark forest" logic.

Another theory I have is that truly sufficiently advanced societies stop giving a shit. They figured out how to be in equilibrium with their resources and are capable of being happy that way.

Giving shits about things is one of the big reasons we have wars and other potentially civilization-ending possibilities.

Even if we are able to put 100 humans on a spacecraft for 100 years hurtling across the galaxy I'm pretty sure they'll start fighting among each other after 2 years. It's one of the reasons that I think we'll need to make embodied AGIs that are less prone to fighting to continue the legacy of civilization long term.

Well if a planet has a few intelligent species, the expansionist one would dominate the rest.

If there is no expansionist species, after a time one will emerge due to mutation over time.

Look at humans - there were a bunch of other intelligent species around the time humans came to the scene - we out expanded and outcompeted all them.

Now of course this is just a sample of 1. But also seems kind of inevitable. So if mutation and natural selection are the only way for an intelligent life to emerge, it would probably also be expansionist, just by virtue of outcompeting everything else. And thus would naturally want to “explore” for the sake of it - just like humans.

Of course there might be other ways to achieve intelligence- like it being developed by other species (AI). But same rule still apply. If there are more than one, eventually the one that wants to expand will expand more than the others that don’t…

And even if the species found a way to “change themselves” to make them not give a fuck, by a virtue of change being possible eventually you’ll get expansionist “strain” again.

>And even if the species found a way to “change themselves” to make them not give a fuck, by a virtue of change being possible eventually you’ll get expansionist “strain” again.

For such a species, there would likely be no selection pressure towards such a trait. I suspect it's actually the opposite: being less expansionist could have enough benefits that it would become widespread entirely through random mutations.

Infinite growth isn't possible, desirable, or even "natural".

Or maybe it’s just us humans. We don’t have much experience with other intelligent species, let alone species that are more intelligent than us. Maybe this expansionist thing is a sign of not being civilised at all and stops happening when 500 iq is reached by most (so bell curve middle goes from 100 to 500).

Except now the dark forest hypothesis precludes the development and use of warp drives with detectable collapse signatures.

so if we detect them we know it's false; that's very significant

It would be, but we still have to keep in mind that P(ETs|warp signatures) != P(warp signatures|ETs) and there's also the issue of the Schelling point of never being the first.

agreed