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I have a two comments to share about this paradox. 1. The assumption that there are many advanced ET civilizations in the universe is based on the idea that li
by chmike 9y ago
I have a two comments to share about this paradox.
1. The assumption that there are many advanced ET civilizations in the universe is based on the idea that life emergence is a natural and random process. This has not yet be proven to be valid. I share this opinion, but it is important to be aware of the underlying hypothesis because this is what can invalidate the claims.
2. The other point is the "we don't see them". There is also an underlying hypothesis that ET manifestation would be ostensible. Many people deduce from this that they are not on earth and start to speculate on different reason for that.
The hypothesis that ET do not visit us is really not so sure. The first reason is that this visit and exploration may not be in the form we expect (e.g. colonization, diplomatic) and not directly visible to us (e.g. Spying, non-interfering scientifc study). The other reason is that they might have been visible for decenies as UFOs and third type contact encounter. But this possibility is rejected, and had been rejected by Enrico Fermi. To me this is the only paradox in the Fermi Paradox.
However, I do agree that if UFOs are visible ET manifestion on earth, this manifestation has puzzling and unexpected properties. The strongest one being that they apparently seem to leave us alone. There is currently no way for us to know why and deduce anything from this, like for instance rejecting the UFO phenomenon as possible ET manifestavtion because their behavior doesn't match our expectation.
- marcosdumay 9y agoThe problem is not that we do not see them. It's that we exist, so they didn't use every star system on the galaxy to build some swarm brain, giant living surface, or whatever before we even had a chance to be.
- politician 9y agoNot sure why you were down-voted. Isaac Arthur's perspective is that a species with the opportunity to expand would turn ever star into a Dyson swarm which, in turn, would darken the stars. If ET existed, the night sky would be dark.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoWhy would they? Using stars for energy is a human-scale idea. The majority of alien-scale ideas are likely unimaginable in our current state of development. Trying to imagine them is like trying to build a Haskell compiler out of rocks.
- chmike 9y agoIndeed. Our expectation that ET would have an interest in colonizing planets may be wrong. With a space vessel, they would have a perfectly adapted and mobile environment. They can avoid danger and explore to accelerate their technological and scientific evolution. We are still rooted on the ground like vegetals while they could move freely like animals.
- politician 9y agoArthur doesn't assume that they would build on planets, but rather build swarms of habitats orbiting the local star. A Dyson Swarm would gradually fill in around the star reducing its luminescence.
- flukus 9y agoThat assumes that all species are expansionist. Even our own species halts it's population growth once a certain standard of living is achieved.
- marcosdumay 9y agoYes, it assumes that. To put it fairly, every other species on Earth is expansionist, and ours has still expansionist subgroups that, if things keep going this way, will take over he rest of the population in a couple of centuries.
- groby_b 9y ago> if UFOs are visible ET manifestion on earth, this manifestation has puzzling and unexpected properties The weirdest property being that they stopped visiting us as cell phone cams became ubiquitous. Camera shy little buggers.
- chmike 9y agoTo be more accurate, the report of UFO sightings dropped significantly after the eighties. The other weird property is an increase in UFO sighting after the second world war. Jean Jacques Velasco (GEPAN) suggested that it was correlated with nuclear explosions on earth. This is nonetheless suprizing because it would imply that they can make interstellar travels at a very high speed. We currently don't know how this is possible. Anyway, we have to be careful to not consider a behavior not matching our expectation as a reason to invalidate the phenomenon because it is our expectations that may be invalid.