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Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

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Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#11

Post by indubitable »

joe_the_user wrote: post #2

The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. But not quite. This paradox assumes that a more technologically advanced society would naturally expand it's energy usage and output to the point that it could be detected by us. That is, expand…

The paradox itself makes no such assumptions or speculation. It simply says that everything we know indicates that life and presumably technologically advanced life should be everywhere, yet we see it nowhere. There's an absolutely phenomenal article on the Fermi Paradox at WaitButWhy [1]. Your objections are mostly just scratching the surface of the wide array of possible explanations for it.

[1] - https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#12

Post by camillomiller »

My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures. Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms?

I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though. 1/3 is a damn high probability. At the same time all the examples we make to wrap our heads around these mastodontic concepts are so trivial and so inherently human, that I wonder how can we really take our own musings seriously. We might be able to escape the boundaries of Earth’s gravity at some point, but will we ever be able to escape the boundaries of our human thought?

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#13

Post by Chathamization »

davedx wrote: post #3
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. But not quite. This paradox assumes that a more technologically advanced society would naturally expand it's energy usage and output to the point that it could be detected by us. That is, expand…

But that’s the thing, if our galaxy had lots of 20-21st century Earth level civilizations, we would be able to detect them with our existing SETI programmes. Personally I like the hypothesis that states eventually all comms will be encrypted and therefore indistinguishable from white noise.

> But that’s the thing, if our galaxy had lots of 20-21st century Earth level civilizations, we would be able to detect them with our existing SETI programmes.

But we couldn't. In general, SETI couldn't even detect such a civilization even if it was in the star system closest to earth:

> If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth?

> In general, no. Most earthly transmissions are too weak to be found by equipment similar to ours at the distance of even the nearest star. But there are some important exceptions. High-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes) could be detected at distances of tens to hundreds of light-years with a setup similar to our best SETI experiments.

The OP is right, in order for their to be a paradox we have to assume that civilizations much more advanced than ours are using a particular type of tech (the kind we're looking for, like radio broadcasts), that their using much stronger signals that we have ever used, and that the time period they used these hypothetical super powerful radio signals happens to be at the right time for us to encounter them. IE, let's say they used them for 2,000 years before moving on to other tech, but the signals only reached earth between 1,548,000-1,546,000 BC, or 450,000-458,000 BC, etc.

People are making a set of very, very specific assumptions based on little evidence. Then they see that the evidence that is available suggests that it's unlikely that every single one of their assumptions is correct, and they respond by calling it a paradox.

[1] https://www.seti.org/faq

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#14

Post by rwnspace »

joe_the_user wrote: post #2

The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. But not quite. This paradox assumes that a more technologically advanced society would naturally expand it's energy usage and output to the point that it could be detected by us. That is, expand…

The notion in the article is great fodder for a novel, but I think this perspective is sound. You've said almost as much, but I think there's a good argument to be made that societies which undergo an industrial revolution either collapse the ecology that supports them, or survive it by maturing and expending energy on QoL for the whole biosphere. In either case the window of time for making a cosmic racket is fairly small. It could just be that interstellar networking is generally quite rare.

Personally I think the same tendency which makes us so enterprising and leads to thinking up 'paradoxes' like this, is the same thinking that makes us not-so-certain to pass the ecological test.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#15

Post by camillomiller »

visarga wrote: post #6

> advanced civilizations just want to compute We got the answer right here. It's much more interesting and probable to meet AGI than aliens. Space travel is dangerous, but virtual space is just as interesting.

Cool plot line for a SF novel. We advance VR so much that we end up meeting another civilization THERE instead of outside.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#16

Post by joe_the_user »

indubitable wrote: post #11
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction between the very reasonable surmise that there must be other forms of technologically advanced life out there somewhere in our great galaxy and the complete lack of any evidence for it. But not quite. This paradox assumes that a more technologically advanced society would naturally expand it's energy usage and output to the point that it could be detected by us. That is, expand…

The paradox itself makes no such assumptions or speculation. It simply says that everything we know indicates that life and presumably technologically advanced life should be everywhere, yet we see it nowhere. There's an absolutely phenomenal article on the Fermi Paradox at WaitButWhy [1]. Your objections are mostly just scratching the surface of the wide array of possible explanations for it. [1] - https://waitbutwh…

You are simply mistaken. The article you link to filled with speculation concerning "type II" and "type III" civilizations.

If you assume earth-level civilizations as advanced, "where is everyone?" has a simple answer - "I don't know because we couldn't see them anyway". If you assume some other civilization as advanced, you are speculating. That's what speculation means.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#17

Post by TeMPOraL »

camillomiller wrote: post #12

My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures. Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms? I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though. 1/3 is a damn high probability. At the…

> each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures

Unfortunately, we can't do it any other way, by the very nature of conscious thoughts.

> Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms?

Why should we? We might be doing a lousy job, but we're doing the best we can.

> At the same time all the examples we make to wrap our heads around these mastodontic concepts are so trivial and so inherently human, that I wonder how can we really take our own musings seriously

It's not like we know of anyone else whose musings we could take more seriously than our own. The known universe, as beautiful and awesome as it is, is also dead.

> will we ever be able to escape the boundaries of our human thought?

If we survive long enough to achieve the ability to re-engineer our minds, I hope so, yes.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#19

Post by fsloth »

camillomiller wrote: post #12

My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures. Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms? I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though. 1/3 is a damn high probability. At the…

"I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though."

It's boring as hell, metaphysical conjecture, suitable for late night bar talk and deus-ex-machina sci fi plots. The 1/3 probability especially is total bullshit. It's fun if viewed as an art project, and as such has some entertainment value.

It does not really explain anything. Unless one enjoys figuring out with theoretical physics, which facets of our world would point out to a simulated existence, it offers nothing of value when seriousy figuring our place in the cosmos.

Re: Computing and the Fermi Paradox: A New Idea Emerges – The Aliens Are All Asleep

#20

Post by InclinedPlane »

camillomiller wrote: post #12

My humble impression is that each and every philosophical hypotesis we make is somewhat based on human paradygms, structures, and super-structures. Why can’t we accept that we populated this world for the equivalent of a cosmic blink, and we are therefore unequipped to even grasp the existence of other life forms? I am a fan of Bostrom’s conjecture about the simulation, though. 1/3 is a damn high probability. At the…

I'm reminded of the old problem of the flight of bumble bees. Someone did some calculations on bees, modeling their flight using the same properties of aerodynamics as fixed wing aircraft, and they came to the conclusion that bees couldn't fly. Of course the obvious answer was that bees simply don't fly the way that fixed wing aircraft do and we merely did not understand how they flew at the time (we do know). But imagine an alternate world, a world where bees and other flying insects did not exist, then the equivalent calculation might be taken much more seriously about the impossibility of flying insects.

Similarly, what do we know about hyper advanced technological civilizations with the capability of colonizing galaxies? Basically nothing. So any model we have of them is fundamentally invalid. Even if we pretend that layering on a bunch of "conservative assumptions" can remove that fundamental difficulty of having zero knowledge of such civilizations, it very much does not. At the end of the day this is a problem that is beyond our current understanding and we cannot make any firm statements about it one way or another.

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