Out There

There are those that say no one is out there.  Our focused effort with SETI has been fruitless in over two decades of effort.  But let us put this in perspective. It has been just three centuries since the invention of radio. It has been only a century since we entered an understanding of the quantum world of physics. Perhaps we have centuries before we discover and are able to use some form of galactic communication technology.

There is another thing to think about.  Have you ever waited for another person that is consistently late?  It is a person that seems to be always working from a different clock.  Even among species here on earth there are differences in time frames. A snail moves and seems to react at a much slower pace. A fly zips around. Are their actions merely the result of reflexes?  I wonder if they have a different time sense.  Watch professional athletics in action. Their perception and the reaction sometimes mesmerize. Suppose some entity out there perceives at a glacial pace or suppose an entity perceives in nanoseconds. Perhaps our interstellar communication attempts are the victim of a time sense problem.

A second thing to consider is that our perception is binary. Intellectually we perceive things in terms of duality. Such things as good and evil, left and right, up and down. They may not be such absolutes as we imagine. Some other entity might have a third, fourth, or even hundredth frame of reference. How different reality must be for them.

The worst case is that we are placing importance on things that are not that much of a deliminator. Suppose communication, the transmitting of thoughts and ideas, do not subscribe to our vehicle of exchange. Suppose they have a single central intelligence that controls the parts.  Another approach might be a distributed intelligence among individuals that aggregates, think swam. Maybe even intelligence is not that important in the scheme of things. Perhaps our emphasis on intelligence is really just an anthropomorphic measurement purely important because it is what we consider to be our greatest uniqueness.