The Fermi Paradox
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The Fermi Paradox
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Re: The Fermi Paradox
#2My solution to the Fermi Paradox: Who the hell knows, who the hell can know, when all we have is a sample size of 1 to extrapolate from. The solutions to the FP seem to be representative of the personal beliefs of whomever is discussing it.
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#3My solution to the Fermi Paradox: Who the hell knows, who the hell can know, when all we have is a sample size of 1 to extrapolate from. The solutions to the FP seem to be representative of the personal beliefs of whomever is discussing it.
Of course no one can now right now, it's not one of these things that can be solved by theoretical work alone. At some point - assuming we don't go extinct before reaching it - we will know.
But it's still open to useful speculation, as there might be something we still need to consider in order to avoid said extinction.
The Fermi Paradox is one of the more thought-provoking signs that something might be amiss (at least in our part of the galaxy), and especially because our culture is predisposed to not take anything happening on the interstellar stage very seriously this provides an impetus for reflection that would otherwise not happen.
One of the most benign (but ultimately depressing) possibilities is that biogenesis is somehow extremely unlikely. There is no reason to assume this is true, given that we know even the more complex building blocks of life are actually very prevalent throughout the universe - but it may still be statistically unlikely that cells form from them. On the footsteps of that possibility follows the hypothesis that technological intelligence is rare. Again, that's not exactly in line with what we can observe on Earth, but it might still be the case.
Most of the other options should be positively troubling, though.
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#4i love this puzzle. here are some theories:
1. simulation argument
2. civilizations have a high or inevitable chance to self destruct after 3. civilizations transcend our observable universe after 4. due to the single observer problem, humans fail to grok some very important feature of larger scale space that prevents detection/increases isolation
[1] http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#5when the question is: "where are they?" and the answer is: "there is nobody here." then all long living civilisations must have left. so we should answer the question "why did they leave?"
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#6This article does a good job of covering a lot of different ideas on this paradox. I have a problem with the idea of "big numbers" in it though, like where it implies 500 billion billion is nearly infinite, or that one-in-a-billion is a freak occurrence. There is a saying that if enough monkeys pound on a keyboard, one will type Hamlet. This would take a lot of monkeys. If we take the odds of hitting one character to be 1 in 40 (which doesn't account for properly hitting the shift key to make a capital), factoring in the 130,000 letters in Hamlet (according to Wikipedia), we get the odds of a monkey typing it at 6x10^208267. This number comes from 40 keys and 130,000 letters. How about when we start taking molecular numbers of items (6x10^23) and start raising that to a large power? I don't think it is a given that the number of planets out there infer there should be other life.
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#7i love this puzzle. here are some theories: 1. simulation argument 2. civilizations have a high or inevitable chance to self destruct after 3. civilizations transcend our observable universe after 4. due to the single observer problem, humans fail to grok some very important feature of larger scale space that prevents detection/increases isolation [1] http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html
Or we just haven't observed them yet because we aren't technologically advanced enough? What if they don't use radio?
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#8My solution to the Fermi Paradox: Who the hell knows, who the hell can know, when all we have is a sample size of 1 to extrapolate from. The solutions to the FP seem to be representative of the personal beliefs of whomever is discussing it.
Of course no one can now right now , it's not one of these things that can be solved by theoretical work alone. At some point - assuming we don't go extinct before reaching it - we will know. But it's still open to useful speculation, as there might be something we still need to consider in order to avoid said extinction. The Fermi Paradox is one of the more thought-provoking signs that something might be amiss (at l…
"The Fermi Paradox is one of the more thought-provoking signs that something might be amiss (at least in our part of the galaxy), and especially because our culture is predisposed to not take anything happening on the interstellar stage very seriously this provides an impetus for reflection that would otherwise not happen."
A hypothetical observer in North America, circa 1500, would have no idea that Asia and Europe existed. Perhaps we're not too far from some interstellar space empire, but since they use some exotic means of FTL communication, we can't detect them?
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#9I've always wondered at what distance it would be impossible for current technology to detect life on earth.
Re: The Fermi Paradox
#10The "we are the first" argument seemed less convincing than it could have been. A better argument from that perspective is the observation that Type III civilizations expand at an alarming rate. Whatever the motivation for expansion[1], basic simulations and back of the envelope calculations show that even with technology we could imagine building in the not so distant future, humans could expand into the cosmos at >0.9c. We must assume the same of ET.
Now information only reaches us at the speed of light; we are only capable of looking for ET in our own past light cone. That means that any Type I or Type II civilization like us should expect to see an empty sky for most of their existence, until all of a sudden the most distant stars go dim (Dyson sphere, or whatever energy capturing device). And the darkness spreads in a wavefront travelling at almost the speed of light, until it hits and ... the unpredictable happens.
We see an empty sky because if the sky wasn't empty, the planet we call Earth and our Sun would already be consumed by some extraterrestrial Type III civilization and Fermi would never have existed.
[1] An inflationary universe provides incentive for a hypothetical Type III civilization to spread throughout the cosmos as quickly as possible, as idle time means regions of the universe becoming permanently inaccessible. Or maybe just resource competition and a desire for some elements of a population to remain on the frontier.