Sara Imari Walker

But I don't think that technological progress is linear.

So they might have the technology to come and visit us, say, but not have other kinds of technology that we've advanced.

Perhaps.

I mean, the closest planetary system is probably, you know, about four light years away.

There's planets there.

It's very debatable about, like, whether it's a Trappist system, like, whether those planets are actually habitable or not.

Because we don't know if they have atmospheres and there's all kinds of debate in the community.

But, like, potentially, yeah.

Yeah, based on sort of extensions of current theories of gravity.

Yeah.

Right.

But the challenge with these kind of like thought experiments is we're always applying today's standard and understanding to long term futures.

And if you imagine that we go through this process of, you know, creating the kind of technologies that you're describing, we will be so fundamentally different in the process.

We'll be having a different discussion.

And we won't be able to reason about what that looks like based on the way that we think about things now.

So I think this this kind of you know, I've never really been a fan of like these sort of, you know, survival of the fittest predator prey.

Like the aliens are just going to be so much more advanced than us and come and take over everything kind of narratives because it just doesn't seem to be it.

First off, it's not consistent with what we actually observe because we don't observe aliens yet.

And second off, it doesn't seem consistent with the trajectory of what we're doing overall, especially if you think about us not individually, but like much more as just like a biosphere evolving into a technologic, like a technosphere.

Isn't it amazing that things that were once myths become fact through technology?