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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

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Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#41

Post by keiferski »

The Fermi Paradox always seemed like an incredibly simple-minded idea to me. So much so, that I don't quite understand how someone as intelligent as Fermi could seriously put it forward.

The idea that life in the universe will be comprised of humanoid-esque beings that have the same perception of time as us, or the ability to communicate in a "language", is just a human-centric idea. It's us, projecting our own worldview (which has developed through millions of years of evolution) on to the infinite universe. This is the fundamental problem with positivism; using your current limited sensory knowledge to construct a complete world-picture.

Even life itself is not a neutral word; it mostly just means "carbon-based entities like those on Earth." Perhaps the reason the universe seems so empty is because we only have the ability to see things like ourselves?

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#42

Post by mensetmanusman »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #7
V-2 wrote: post #5

"When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable." Opinions like these (I stop one step short of calling them findings, as this is spe…

It's not religious. If anything the opposite is true. Believing we're the only intelligent life in the universe is an epic violation of the Copernican Principle. There are so many other explanations for Fermi Silence - from the reality of extremely limited sampling to the creeping suspicion that we're too mediocre and underdeveloped to recognise truly intelligent life - that grand assumptions about our specialness se…

https://www.archbalt.org/vatican-sponsored-meeting-discusses...

The laws of physics results in occasional clouds of dust and water (life) that can contemplate their unlikely existence (humans).

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#43

Post by eternalban »

V-2 wrote: post #5

"When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable." Opinions like these (I stop one step short of calling them findings, as this is spe…

C. G. Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 10, Civilization in Transition: Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (pg. 320 of pdf)

http://cista.net/tomes/Carl%20Jung%20Princeton%20imprint/10%...

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#44

Post by nl »

Tepix wrote: post #36

The claim that we are alone in the observable universe seems incredibly arrogant. We don't have enough data for such an extraordinary claim. Time and time again we have discovered that we are less special than we thought. Life appeared quickly after Earth was formed. I'm convinced the universe is teeming with life.

Being convinced that the universe is teeming with life is one thing. Intelligent life is quite another.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#45

Post by roenxi »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #7
V-2 wrote: post #5

"When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable." Opinions like these (I stop one step short of calling them findings, as this is spe…

It's not religious. If anything the opposite is true. Believing we're the only intelligent life in the universe is an epic violation of the Copernican Principle. There are so many other explanations for Fermi Silence - from the reality of extremely limited sampling to the creeping suspicion that we're too mediocre and underdeveloped to recognise truly intelligent life - that grand assumptions about our specialness se…

Or the rather more gloomy explanation that there is no economic way of breaking out of most gravity wells & interstellar life is practically impossible. So there are lots of little earth-like civilisations out there, but too rare for us to detect them, and none ever grow large.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#46

Post by marcus_holmes »

V-2 wrote: post #19
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not religious. If anything the opposite is true. Believing we're the only intelligent life in the universe is an epic violation of the Copernican Principle. There are so many other explanations for Fermi Silence - from the reality of extremely limited sampling to the creeping suspicion that we're too mediocre and underdeveloped to recognise truly intelligent life - that grand assumptions about our specialness se…

"Believing we're the only intelligent life in the universe is an epic violation of the Copernican Principle." Not necessarily, because the principle collides with observer bias in this case. I don't think it's valid in this context. "There are so many other explanations for Fermi Silence" Of course. I'm not concerned about the explanations themselves though - more about the emotional dimension; the attachment to the…

I find the theological aspects fascinating. If there are alien races, do they get their own Jesuses (Jesii?), or did we get the only Son of God? If there are multiple Jesii, are they considered to be the same person (to make the Trinity) or is the Trinity a little larger than 3? Did all the Jesii occur at the same time? Or at the same developmental point of the alien race (assuming a standard civilisational progression for all species)? Are there sapient, spacefaring aliens who have yet to have their own Jesus, and are therefore still in the "virtuous pagans" category?

I realise this is kinda poking holes in Christian theology (always fun), and there are these kinds of questions for all religions. Can an alien reach Nirvana through meditation? Are there alien Buddhas? Are there Mecca-equivalents on all inhabited planets, or do aliens need to know the direction to our Mecca to pray?

The woo-woo "aliens are gonna come and teach us how to be better humans" is less interesting, I think. The underlying psychological need for some beneficent parental authority figure to come and solve our problems is almost too obvious.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#47

Post by wildermuthn »

MauranKilom wrote: post #9

TL;DR: "We don't know how often abiogenesis happens, and our uncertainty for its rate is extremely large. The error bars extend so far into 'effectively zero' that we could or could not be alone, it's a toss-up". Seriously, this paper hinges entirely on the prior distribution for the abiogenesis rate. Longer comment: The paper considers each parameter of the Drake as a probability distribution over some range. Notabl…

Another refutation: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kvZshdx5FzTPjyhxG/...

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#48

Post by jk7tarYZAQNpTQa »

keiferski wrote: post #41

The Fermi Paradox always seemed like an incredibly simple-minded idea to me. So much so, that I don't quite understand how someone as intelligent as Fermi could seriously put it forward. The idea that life in the universe will be comprised of humanoid-esque beings that have the same perception of time as us, or the ability to communicate in a "language", is just a human-centric idea. It's us, projecting our own world…

> The Fermi Paradox always seemed like an incredibly simple-minded idea to me

I agree, but for different reasons. My favourite way to dissolve the Fermi Paradox is to simple state that the main assumption, i.e. "the lack of evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations", is just wrong :)

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#49

Post by credit_guy »

keiferski wrote: post #41

The Fermi Paradox always seemed like an incredibly simple-minded idea to me. So much so, that I don't quite understand how someone as intelligent as Fermi could seriously put it forward. The idea that life in the universe will be comprised of humanoid-esque beings that have the same perception of time as us, or the ability to communicate in a "language", is just a human-centric idea. It's us, projecting our own world…

I find the Fermi paradox quite shallow too, but for different reasons. Even if a twin sister civilization of humankind existed somewhere on a different planet revolving around a different star, how would we detect it? Space is huge, and hoping to detect some signs of intelligence close to a distant star is like trying to photograph a firefly that flies around a lighthouse, from miles away in the sea, only about 1 trillion times more challenging.

You just need to see what faint a signal we receive form the Voyagers, which are deliberately pointing their antennas at us and are thousands of times closer to us than any star to appreciate how improbable it would be for us to ever detect extraterrestrial communication.

Re: Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

#50

Post by gmuslera »

The streetlight effect, we are searching in our close neighborhood, for signals that we would use in our current kind and stage of civilization, and because we didn't find anything we conclude that in the whole universe there is no life or intelligent life at all.

Maybe SETI search should add several terms to the drake equation to understand odds of hitting gold. Is not enough to be intelligent life, to be found in the way we are searching for it, distance, way of communication, culture, kind and stage of civilization, wish to be found, wish to expand, biology, and probably more are just terms in the equation that lowers the probability for us to find anything. There are too much implicit assumptions about what we are searching for, and maybe there is none that fits that because some basic rule that we don't know yet, as we are not advanced enough (a dark forest is just an example).

Is like assuming that advanced enough cavemen will be communicating across the galaxy with louder drums. And that as we hear no drums in space, there is no life anywhere.

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