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What if intelligent life is rare because at some point some other intelligent life set up a systematic process of keeping the universe clear of it?
by dv_dt 9y ago
What if intelligent life is rare because at some point some other intelligent life set up a systematic process of keeping the universe clear of it?
- andrepd 9y agoYou've been playing too much Mass Effect 2 :^)
- dv_dt 9y agoI've actually never played any Mass Effect...
- raverbashing 9y agoPeople are fixated on that, but it's not the only solution to the Fermi paradox
- wasx 9y agoThen we'd certainly have evidence of this genocidal society no? They'd definitely be actively looking for other intelligent life forms, and if they were systematic in eliminating it, they'd have to have the infrastructure to do so which we'd be able to detect. After all you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, any life form like that would have the interest in finding and eliminating intelligent life before it becomes to big to be a threat, which would probably lead them to coaxing other intelligent life forms into making contact. No, I don't think this is feasible in reality, nor is there any evidence beyond "but what if" for that possibility.
- dv_dt 9y agoMaybe the only cosmic infrastructure required would be listening stations and the ability to steer big rocks to sources? The listening stations would be hard to pick out. They could run a 'reverse' fermi equation of sorts and figure out how fast you need to detect and extinguish signals to keep the universe clear. Would the extermination look anything more than unfortunate random collisions? Do we actually have enough data to calculate if collisions are above some noise floor of random happenstances?