Jaron Lanier - Why Aren't Aliens Already Here?

If I were an alien passing by earth, I'm pretty sure I'd be tempted, very strongly tempted I might add, to just lock my doors and drive faster..

That lunatic proposal didn’t disappoint. Lanier is great

Jaron is one of my all time favorite people. Never heard this idea. Amazing

This guy's awesome. He sounds like he's just a super genius who's also incredibly polite. He humors you until you finally shut up and listen so he can share his brilliant answers in their entirety, in peace.

Considering how much of the universe we even know about, it's like scooping up a cup of the ocean, looking in it, and asking where all the life is.

Our technology to observe and detect “signals” of the universal is still so primitive, and we are claiming we cannot find any evidence of intelligent aliens? How absurd.

Interviewer: Why aren't aliens already here? Alien: I really don't know.

The scariest thing I can imagine is that humans are the most advanced beings.

8.7 million species of life on earth and only one has higher technology. A similar disparity probably exists among inhabited worlds as well, the VAST majority containing simple life forms only.

If we cover a babies eyes through the first 6 months of its life, it will never see, the nerve cells won't receive the needed stimulus to function. It's totally plausible that there are thousands of species that don't have the luxury of clear skies and a transparent atmosphere, therefore instead of over stimulated external perception, they develop over sensitive 'internal' perception and know everything about us via that link. They may even have been trying to communicate for centuries and we seem deaf to them, because we have virtually ignored our inner perception for centuries in the name of survival value in external perception. Species which live mainly inside their home planets could be on our doorstep and it'd be near impossible to detect without physically being there.

They've been here for Centuries. 👽🛸

I feel like we’re stuck on radio signals and carbon based life I think that limits us in our understanding of what could be out there even intelligent life could be non-carbon-based who are we to know.

Maybe they are here. Any life form that has the ability to transcend interstellar space and/or can manipulate extra dimensional space/time could likely mimic human appearance quite easily.

What makes these gentlemen think they aren't already here but relatively discreet.

Irony. Children in kindergarten wondering where the adults are... when they're happily watching.

Reality is crazier then you'd ever imagine

How do you even know if they are here or not? Or you can't hide from monkeys if you want to?

We may also be overestimating how easy it is to develop advanced technology and the desire of species to colonize space etc. We ourselves have not achieved anything of significance and may already be on our way out due to the effects of industry and technology on our world/civilization. Truly intelligent species may have no need for outward expansion/colonization and these type of questions like "are we alone?" may be very obvious and even non important to them. We seem to be trying to find ourselves out there.

Regarding our radio waves which began emitting in the 1920s, the furthest they have traveled is less than 100 light years from earth. Considering the galaxy is 100,000 light years across, these radio signals are still practically in our back yard. I believe intelligent life is exceedingly rare. Perhaps occurring only 2-3 times in entire galaxy. Knowing that, it could take up to 100,000 years for any radio wave emanating from earth to be detected by another civilization.

So galaxies could actually just be super intelligent beings organizing the cosmos for an optimization of intelligence