Fermi's Paradox

[Gil Hamilton]

In N&P, I responded to a thread concerning theocratic Republicans and I do what I normally do when I post a response with a slightly incendiary quality; I think of possible responses to it and responses to those responses. One of them involved applying Fermi's paradox to moderate Republicans in a highly cynical manner as part of a barb to buttress a point.

However, Fermi's Paradox is an interesting concept in and of itself. I'm sure many of you are familiar with story. During the 40s, Physics genius Enrico Fermi was having lunch with his colleagues and the discussion turned to extraterrestrials. The general concensus around the table was that humankind was probably galaxy mates with many sophisticated technology using societies. Something turned over in Fermi's brain and he came to a realization. He asked his lunchmates "Where are they?".

This is more than simple question, in fact it's heavily loaded. Fermi figured that a civilization, such as we were becoming, could develop decent enough rocket power to, with time, colonize another star. Thus, a civilization with the will to do so could eventually pepper the galaxy with their presence. This would take a few million years, but a few million years is not much on a galactic scale. Because civilizations could easily arise many millions of years before our own, a single spacefaring civilization could colonize the entire galaxy. So, where are they? If the galaxy was filled with technological civilizations, one of them should have arrived by now. At the very least, we should be able to hear some signals from them.

This gave pause to alot of people and naturally there have been dozens of responses to it. Some of them are:

-"They already came and went" or the "Ancient Astronaut" idea. Alien astronauts arrived on Earth but didn't colonize it or didn't colonize it for long and have died out or have left. We just haven't found their rubbish yet.

-"They are here now" or the "Contemporary Astronaut" idea. Aliens are amongst us and all those flying saucers aren't all bullshit.

-"We are them" idea. Human beings were settled here from a planet beyond the moon. Popular with Scientologists and New Age types.

-The "They are so advanced we haven't got the technology to detect them" or the "Arthur C. Clarke" idea. A sufficiently advanced civilizations would be indistinguishable from a magical one, and we haven't the knowledge to listen for them properly or understand what we are seeing. Like a mouse looking at the Mona Lisa in the Lourve.

-The "Cosmic Zoo" idea. Aliens know we are here but are leaving us alone, for whatever reason, and no aliens amongst them have broken the embargo.

-The "Finite Lifespan" or "Galaxy is Filled with Sheps" idea. Civilizations may well have a finite lifespan before they manage to be killed off by a catastrophic event or blow themselves back into the Stone Age. A variation I've heard of is that they are expanding, but on a large timescale, individual settlements of theirs blast themselves out of existance and their expansion is dramatically slowed by resettling large portions of space they've already colonized.

-The "Energy Cost" or "It's too damn expensive to home" argument. The energy costs of sending even a small ship of colonists to another world is so expensive that it's much cheaper for them to settle close to home. I've heard at the current rate we produce energy on Earth, the per colonist cost of sending people to Alpha Centauri in a reasonable timeframe is many buh-buh-billions of dollars. For that price tag, they are better off staying at home. This may well be true of all the other aliens out there.

-The Beserker Idea or "Everyone's Laying Low for their Own Safety" idea (also could be called the "Galaxy is Filled with Sheps" idea). The galaxy is a dangerous place in which you might not want to advertise your presence in. As has been said on this board before, it can take a rocket moving at relativistic speeds to get to another star in a reasonable timeframe, but there is no reason that the rocket has to slow down when it gets there. "Shooting first and asking questions later" is a likely survival trait amongst any lifeforms that has rose to mastery of their world and they may shoot first on detection of an extraterrestrial signal, assuming the ETs making the signal will do the same to them. Thus the galaxy is filled with civilizations who know how to keep a low profile and dead ones that didn't know how to shut up when the missiles converged on them.

I'm sure there are others, but those come to mind. What are all of your thoughts on this topic? Where are they?

[Zero]

I'm going with the "it's too expensive" idea. This is the same reason we haven't gone to Mars yet. Problems focussed on earth will always be a problem for us, and people won't want to use the time and energy necessary to expand our horizons past this solar system.

Besides this, as a society becomes more sufficiently technologically advanced, the advances will likely find their way into bigger and more effective weapons. Since aggression is likely to be hardwired into the brain of any living creature that's evolved in competition with others, it is entirely possible that such creatures will have blown themselves to hell by now.

It's also possible that increased technology lead to less selective pressures for the general population, and the species slowly declined. Besides this, increased industrialization leads to a decline in population growth here on earth. For alien societies that are more technologically advanced, having children may be quite costly, and uneccesary.

There's really a lot of small reasons a technologically advanced society could fade from existance before expanding to other stars, or simply not make the effort.

[Dooey Jo]

Well, if the galaxy really is filled with Sheps, we'll know soon enough, considering that we've sent radio out into space for a few decades now

Anyway, if that's not the case, then the most probable thing is that we can't see them. Even we are becoming less and less visible, since we are now using more and more digital signals, and also more directed signals that don't fly off into space that much. I don't think it's all that unlikely that the vast majority of the advanced civilisations in the galaxy would be very hard for us to find with today's technology, and that those that we might find could be somewhere where SETI and the likes aren't currently looking (ie practically anywhere).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Isn't another possibility that we are the most advanced civilization in the galaxy?

[Solauren]

There's also the possibility that, we are the only species with any technology in our area of the galaxy/universe.

Consider

We know that there have been extinction events on Earth before, and similiar level events on near by planets.

i.e Venus; anyone taken a good look at Venus? Something blasted it end over end.
i.e Mars; Dryed up, all life probably died out
i.e Earth; Dinosaurs. 'nuff said

Also, the other places in our solar system that could in theory harbor life do not appear to be conductive to developing technology. (i.e the Jovian moons, the Saturn moon they spotted liquid water)

It's entirely possible that extinctions have happened that wiped out a species before they could make it to interstellar travel capacity, or slowed there technological advance down.

In fact, getting to interstellar travel capacity might be very difficult, beyond even our current expectations.


Really, if you look at it, we've been lucky so far a killer space rock hasn't decided to crash into the Earth and kill us all.


Anyway, a possible reason up.
There are lots of alien species out there with interstellar capacity, but because of extinction events, there spread out. They just haven't gotten here yet.


However, I like Captain Chewbacca's idea. Where the most advanced species in the galaxy.

This of course means, if we get Interstellar, or even FTL technology before everyone else, there all screwed.

[Spoonist]

As paradoxes goes it is prett lame. It is a simple question that could have multiple answers, so not a paradox at all.

It only boils down to if you think that there are other advanced civilizations out there or not, then you just rationalize why it would be so.

[Nephtys]

I'm leaning towards two possible things.

1. We're pretty much at the head of technology for all species in our region of space that are our 'type'. Other races could be found that don't fit into what we'd consider life, or are wholly alien.

2. Sheps everywhere. Everyone believes 3 things:
a. Their own species survival is more important than another's.
b. No species becomes dominant on their planet by being passive.
c. The previous two rules apply to any other race they find, and they know it too.

[Adrian Laguna]

Rule #2 is particularly important to keep in mind. Let's face it, Humans can be vicious motherfuckers. I wrote a hypothetical diplomatic communique about it. "The blood of billions stain our hands. Our blood. What exactly makes you think we'd treat strangers better than we treat ourselves?" There really is no reason to think that any species we meet will be composed of peace loving hippies.