Fermi's Paradox
- Thread starter DaBossIsBack
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With the vast number of Milky Way-type galaxies with Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets, it's really hard to believe that we don't have other intelligent civilizations out there. Why we haven't heard from them is obviously where things are up for debate. I'm probably more able to believe the Great Filter is ahead of us. We haven't figured out how to harness all energy, and we don't have the tools to listen for higher civilizations. Of course, I've only read a little bit on it. It's just as possible that we are way beyond the great filter, we're incredibly rare, and there are no other higher civilizations.
It's fun to think about. I can agree with almost every explanation I've ever read. All of them make sense. I hope that if there is a great filter that it's already behind us.
They're just really far away.
Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor.
I'm going to put the odds at 6.022 X 10 to the 23rd power to 1 that there is other life. I'm not saying I've been everywhere and I've done everything, but this is a pretty amazing planet we live on and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we're alone in this universe.
With understanding comes a certain arrogance. Fermi's paradox is flawed. To suggest that since there is no observable proof here on earth that aliens have visited suggests there are no extraterrestrial life anywhere else is poppycock.
Anything intelligent enough to get here would have established what it was exactly how they were going to observe/interact with the existing life forms. I doubt they would fly in flags waving and hold a press conference. Noninterference has got to be a universally understood principle of observation. That if you interact with an environment then you will change it and those changes will have unintended/unknown consequences.
An alien life form intelligent enough to travel here would not necessarily announce itself. I'm not saying they have or have not done so, I am saying that to assume that is a basis for disqualifying life everywhere else but here is silly.
I would also add that the paradox is naive to the vast scope of time. More likely life flares up briefly all over the universe intermittently but juxtaposed against an ocean of time it is unlikely any two appear simultaneously with one possessing the ability to detect the other in their brief period of existence.
Perhaps no planet would ever be stable enough long enough to allow for science to develop sufficiently enough to produce interstellar travel as they would have either blown themselves up prior to that or succumbed to the whims of nature and/or the universe.
Anything intelligent enough to get here would have established what it was exactly how they were going to observe/interact with the existing life forms. I doubt they would fly in flags waving and hold a press conference. Noninterference has got to be a universally understood principle of observation. That if you interact with an environment then you will change it and those changes will have unintended/unknown consequences.
An alien life form intelligent enough to travel here would not necessarily announce itself. I'm not saying they have or have not done so, I am saying that to assume that is a basis for disqualifying life everywhere else but here is silly.
I would also add that the paradox is naive to the vast scope of time. More likely life flares up briefly all over the universe intermittently but juxtaposed against an ocean of time it is unlikely any two appear simultaneously with one possessing the ability to detect the other in their brief period of existence.
Perhaps no planet would ever be stable enough long enough to allow for science to develop sufficiently enough to produce interstellar travel as they would have either blown themselves up prior to that or succumbed to the whims of nature and/or the universe.
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There is no way we are alone. We may be the most intelligent life form, that's possible, but there is no way we are alone in the entire universe. We probably aren't even alone in our own galaxy. I think I read once that there are potentially 100,000 Earthlike planets in our galaxy.
The Fermi paradox doesn't suggest that there is no life outside of this planet. It asks the question where are they based on what we know about the universe. It then allows us to speculate why. I don't think it's flawed at all.
Earth is very well defended from planet killing bodies with jupiter and her massive gravitational pull sitting out there. Even so earth has endured several near life killing events. The minute a planet is born and life emerges the clock is ticking on how long that life will flourish before it faces extinction at the hands of the very universe that gave it life. So, as I said, for one to be stable enough to develop interstellar travel and also luckily be in the right slice of time to actually have another life bearing planet to travel to perfectly accounts for the lack of alien visitations. I see no paradox in that at all.
Earth is what, 6 billion years old? Humans have had the ability to get to space for 60 of those years?
60 / 6,000,000,000 = some tiny *** percentage.
Maybe the other planets are just 60 years behind us. Or 100 years ahead of us in technology and have seen what earth has to offer. Maybe we're talking thousands or millions of years.
We're talking time frames that don't even show as blips on the radar of time periods that are billions of years. Maybe there's life out there, maybe there isn't. Maybe there has been. Maybe there will be. Who knows.
Just because we haven't communicated with another life form doesn't mean it's not out there.
60 / 6,000,000,000 = some tiny *** percentage.
Maybe the other planets are just 60 years behind us. Or 100 years ahead of us in technology and have seen what earth has to offer. Maybe we're talking thousands or millions of years.
We're talking time frames that don't even show as blips on the radar of time periods that are billions of years. Maybe there's life out there, maybe there isn't. Maybe there has been. Maybe there will be. Who knows.
Just because we haven't communicated with another life form doesn't mean it's not out there.
Crow you will always be, at least in your mind, the smartest person in the room. For me you will always have the most fixed perspective in the room.
Yup.
Lol. I always thought the dryness of the crackers was the big impediment.
Doesn't that assume that intelligent life would have to arise under similar circumstances? People like to point out that life on Earth must be special because all the conditions that are required are present. Isn't it just as logical (in fact, more logical in light of evolution) that life on Earth is how it is because of the conditions that were present? Now, the odds of actually finding another civilization (if it exists) are incredibly remote for other reasons, like space time and their refusal to take communion.
4.54 billion I think. You can speculate that there could be a planet (or planets) that has about a 3 billion year head start on us. If such a planet exists, and they haven't destroyed them selves or been destroyed by a gamma ray burst of something similar, we would be vvastly inferior to them.
If you can grasp a "trillion trillion tries" as a fleeting moment in an eternal ocean of time then you are starting to get it.
[laughing]
It's the Alien Anal Probing Theory. The theory states that an advanced intelligent species will use their technology to travel all the way to Earth just to stick scientific instruments in our ********.
I mean it's really the only explanation.
I approach truth as if it were a sculpture. I try to patiently walk around it and view it from as many perspectives as I possibly can. I will, unfortunately and inevitably, fixate on one of them and that will be my truth. However, I will still know that it is only my truth and not universal.
And of course you have been looking forward to that.
Only if it is female aliens. I'll lett'em wreck my anus like a crop circle if they are Japanese anime hot.
They probably visited us back during our Aztec "rip out their hearts and burn them alive" stage and decided they'd just move on in their real estate search.
What if the chimps type up Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth, and The Merchant of Venice? Throw it out because it's not Hamlet? Or realize that life might consist of more than just Hamlet?
Another double. Having problems with my computer today. Aliens must have figured out that we have figured them out and figure on giving us problems I figure.
It is an interesting thought that 'we' could have been visited during an earlier epoch and they just flew the touch out of here thinking all we had was volcanoes and large screeching lizards.
I think the most logical explanation is that Earth and it's inhabitants are an entertaining experiment for a much more advanced civilization located somewhere beyond our reaches. They picked 6 billion strangers to live on a planet, work together and have their lives filmed, to find out what happens when people stop being polite....
and start getting real.
Truuuue Storeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and start getting real.
Truuuue Storeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is one of those pop culture things I thought no one else remembered.and start getting real.
Truuuue Storeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!