[ExI] Wrong frequency? Astronomers rethink where to hunt for alien signals

[Keith Henson]

A very slow data rate is still a stupid idea.

The US uses a slow data rate to communicate with subs. The antennas are
incredibly long.

Keith


On Mon, Jul 27, 2026 at 12:58 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> <mike>
> I'm curious if there are cross-scale examples of this maturity filter. do
> old humans dismiss young humans for similar attention span differences?
> </mike>
> <gemini>
> Yes, this cross-scale dynamic exists. While advanced cosmic civilizations
> might filter us using millennia, older humans frequently filter younger
> humans using months or years based on attention spans, delayed
> gratification, and long-term planning.
> In sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior, this is often
> studied through lenses like temporal horizon and executive functioning.
> ## 1. The Institutional "Maturity Filters"
> In professional and academic worlds, older generations have built systemic
> "attention filters" to test whether younger people can handle long-term
> commitments:
>
> *
> * Academic Drudgery: A PhD program or a medical residency is rarely just
> an intelligence test; it is an attention and endurance filter. Senior
> academics often "dismiss" or filter out brilliant but impatient minds who
> cannot tolerate years of slow, incremental research.
> * The "Pay Your Dues" Corporate Culture: Senior executives often ignore
> the strategic ideas of entry-level employees not because the ideas are
> inherently bad, but because the junior employee hasn’t demonstrated the
> multi-year stamina required to see a massive project through to completion.
> *
>
> ## 2. Cognitive Development and "Time Horizons"
> Biologically, the brain's prefrontal cortex (responsible for long-term
> planning and impulse control) isn't fully developed until around age 25.
> [1, 2]
>
> *
> * Subjective Time vs. Objective Time: To a 5-year-old, a summer vacation
> feels like an eternity because it represents a massive percentage of their
> total life experience. To a 60-year-old, a summer is a blink.
> * The Dismissal: Because adults operate on a multi-year time horizon, they
> naturally dismiss the immediate, high-energy crises of teenagers as
> "phases." The adult understands that the thermodynamic "heat" the teenager
> is expending on a short-term issue is inefficient and unsustainable.
> *
>
> ## 3. The "Maturity Handshake"
> Spike's email mentions that showing maturity means understanding the
> trade-offs of time-space entropy. We see the exact same thing in human
> relationships:
>
> *
> * The Shift in Conversation: A young adult passes the "filter" and is
> finally accepted as an equal by older mentors when they stop asking for
> immediate fixes and start discussing 5- or 10-year trajectories.
> * Demonstrating Stamina: Just as an advanced Matrioshka Brain (MBrain)
> might wait to see if we can sustain an observation over a decade, an older
> mentor or investor waits to see if a young person will stick with a
> discipline after the initial excitement wears off. [3]
> *
>
> [1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com](
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/raising-humans-in-a-digital-world/201904/parenting-in-a-digital-age-what-experts-are-saying
> )
> [2] [https://www.drlisalong.com](
> https://www.drlisalong.com/blog/failure-to-launch-syndrome-parent-guide)
> [3] [https://www.instagram.com](
> https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYQrUJLsCoU/)
> null
> </gemini>
>
> I'm not sure if i consider myself "old human" or "young human" - in the
> context of a longevitist, I'm freshly hatched... but there does seem to be
> a preponderance of even-more-recently-hatched humans around,  y'know?
>
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