8 ms·

What about Fermi's paradox though? I mean, where is everyone?

by m_mueller 8y ago

hyperpallium 8y ago
It's addressed in the article: it takes a long time for complex life to arise, so we are among - or the - first.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  That's the optimistic interpretation. Pessimistic: There's one or more great filters.
  - hyperpallium 8y ago
    No. Assuming this specific paper's thesis, that is the conclusion. There exist other arguments not based on this specific paper's thesis. Of those, I find plausible the observation that as we tame the world to suit us, we shrink. Cities, civilization, supermarkets, products, TV, internet. By this trend, we'll live in dream terranes before long. (BTW as people get richer, reproduction gets less). But we'll need power, and eventually a dyson sphere to capture all the sun's light - perfect for an inward-looking, closed-off people! Then what, I'm not sure. Perhaps long before that, we won't need other suns; we'll have artificial suns (controlled fusion). That's what happens to everyone else: as they grow in technological sophistication, they get better and better at directly meeting their own (previously evolved) needs.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  any evidence to support that extraordinary claim?
kamaal 8y ago
I think a lot of answers have existed for that question. In the context of this thread, lets say you are a species which stepped out of your planet, there are plenty of asteroids, and even planets lying around you can mine for resources. You settle billions of your kind in space. You are not running out resources and have no motivation beyond research and science to venture out a little far. Would you, such a race, want to travel interstellar distances? You would travel far distances by organic growth. Also its likely how old the universe is anybody who didn't kill themselves to extinction, is likely at our phase of development. And is likely asking the same questions as us. Those beyond our phase of development are hiding for a good reason.
coldtea 8y ago
Fermi's paradox is just a hand-waving argument involving tons of unknown probabilities. It's not a given that alien civilizations "should" have developed this or that technology that we ourselves don't have.
- perfmode 8y ago
  it’s a probabilistic argument, so it is inherently about “should”
Aaargh20318 8y ago
Personally I think the answer is anti-natalism. Once life gets more intelligent it takes a relatively short time (compared to the age of the universe) to get to the point where they realise it's unethical to create new life and choose to go extinct. As a result, intelligent life around the universe only exists as short 'blips', being around for too short a time to ever meet other species.
- maaark 8y ago
  >it's unethical to create new life and choose to go extinct. I don't get this. What use are ethics when everyones dead and gone?
- pavlov 8y ago
  The default for unintelligent life is to survive at all cost and fill every niche. You're suggesting that intelligence flips that purpose so that every sentient species eventually becomes depressed suicidal existentialists?
  - Brockenstein 8y ago
    All at the same time, united in a single goal... Seeing the wide spectrum of intelligence and education that humans manage it's hard for me to believe we'll ever reach a point of uniformity as a species were something like self-imposed extinction would be plausible.
  - Aaargh20318 8y ago
    Not depressed or suicidal, just realising they have no right to gamble with another human being's life.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      An honestly held belief that their child would have a miserable, depressed, ill life I could understand - especially because those traits can be heritable. I can also understand sour grapes. However the other arguments seem very ill-motivated.
throwaway7312 8y ago
Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon likely wonder the same thing. It's such a big Earth, yet only a few hundred humans are known to exist. Why are there no other detectable signs of human life, like smoke signals, territory markers, or emissaries from any more but a handful of other tribes? Surely if advanced humans existed, they would have contacted these tribes by now, to share technology, discoveries, and medicine. Yet they haven't. How can the whole planet be so... silent?
- chongli 8y ago
  If they're not aware of any other humans (let alone all the cities out there) then they're likely not aware of the actual size of the earth. Perhaps they only consider it in terms of the surrounding territory.
- nickwalton00 8y ago
  A lot of these "uncontacted" tribes have actually had contact in the form of smugglers, loggers, drug cartels etc...many of those experiences ended with them getting killed so it's not surprising they would avoid us.
- riffraff 8y ago
  I understand the point that we might be too backwards to see the signs of hyper-advanced civilisations, but how is it that _all_ the other civilizations are super advanced to the point that any trace they leave is impossible to understand? And, won't uncontacted tribes in the amazon have seen airplanes and such?
- ripsawridge 8y ago
  Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon are not really uncontacted. They are the way they are by preference.
RobertoG 8y ago
A main component of the paradox is time, but this paper solve that. Life existed from the beginning, but only now has become complex enough. So, we don't see or hear artificial signs in other galaxies because light is from the times when there was not complex life in the universe. Now, we only have to solve why we don't see or hear artificial signs in our galaxy. But the problem is not so perplexing because we are talking about one or two million years. If, for instance, a big part of the galaxy is bad for complex life (after all, we are far away from the center and that could be relevant), Fermi's paradox is solved.
- Tepix 8y ago
  What are the odds that our life is the first that has reached sufficient complexity to be able to communicate within our galaxy? Given that there are 100-400 billion stars (and even more planets) just in the Milky Way: Pretty much zero.
  - CodeCube 8y ago
    I appreciate a good reason to think deeply as much as the next person ... but odds are just that, odds. If we were the result of some freak black swan event that kickstarted "life", the odds of it happening are irrelevant ... because it did. To be clear, I'm not saying that's what it is ... the fermi paradox is a great thought experiment. But let's just keep things in perspective. Low odds don't mean something won't happen, just like "true random" doesn't mean the same song can't/won't play 10 times in a row ;)
    - emiliobumachar 8y ago
      The troubling thing about the Fermi paradox is that the Great Filter may still be ahead of us. As in, the universe may be littered with the ruins of single-planet civilizations slightly ahead of our technology level. We may have observed and cataloged many such planets, failing to notice the ruins.
  - RobertoG 8y ago
    The problem has been always the temporal scales. But if you change that, the odds are not so bad. If all the civilizations started more or less at the same time that us, it's not so weird that we have not found anybody else. If you add some other factor (maybe civilizations are only possible far from the center, so there is a big spread between them) the probabilities improve. It also would mean interesting times ahead for humanity. Of course, all this is only idle speculation.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Never forget to include the Bs term when considering the Drake equation: https://www.xkcd.com/384/ https://www.xkcd.com/384/
Symmetry 8y ago
If you look at probability distributions rather than single estimates for every term in the Drake Equation then the absence of visible aliens isn't so unlikely. http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/media/eps/jodrell-bank-centre-for-astrophysics/news-and-events/2017/uksrn-slides/Anders-Sandberg---Dissolving-Fermi-Paradox-UKSRN.pdf http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/media/eps/jodrell-ba... And just the existence of life doesn't mean there's complex life. We don't have a firm lower bound on how long life took to arise on Earth after we got liquid water on the surface but it can't have been more than 120 million years. Photosynthesis, mitochondria, and other innovations allowing for complex life like you and me took way, way longer. I made a diagram for a blog post here: http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-again.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...
Balgair 8y ago
Three things: 1) Ordinary Matter ~10^53 kg (4.9%) Dark Matter ~5*10^53 kg 26.8% Dark Energy ~1.3*10^54 kg 68.3% Undiscovered ? ? We are only made up of < 1/20th of the universe's matter budget, and at that, most of Ordinary Matter is in stars and black-holes (we think). There's not a lot of matter out there (as a percent) left for life to be made of. As for the majority of the budget? Well, we know dark matter falls down ... that's about it right now (kinda). And Dark Energy? Yeah, it makes things fall up. It's ok, makes no sense to anyone else either. I put 'Undiscovered' there, as it seems we are making discoveries about the universe at a pretty rapid rate these last few centuries, so this budget is likely not even close to the real thing. Also, people talk a lot about not meeting aliens, but just talking to them. Based on the fact that we have little/no idea how Dark Matter and Energy works, and we only really use radio signals (when funding permits), it may be like trying to whisper at the Queen of England while standing in Norway; a telephone would be much better. 2) Tom Scott on immortality and risk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5a6wrJpxP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5a6wrJpxP4 3) Life may be so abundant in the universe that it's not worth talking or meeting up with. What would you say to a single mayfly if you could talk to one on it's level? No scientist or other person has bothered to try, and I think there's a good reason for that.
sunstone 8y ago
We are a baby civilization. Everyone is waiting for us to grow up.

What about Fermi's paradox though? I mean, where is everyone?

hyperpallium 8y ago

It's addressed in the article: it takes a long time for complex life to arise, so we are among - or the - first.

m_mueller 8y ago
That's the optimistic interpretation. Pessimistic: There's one or more great filters.
- hyperpallium 8y ago
  No. Assuming this specific paper's thesis, that is the conclusion. There exist other arguments not based on this specific paper's thesis. Of those, I find plausible the observation that as we tame the world to suit us, we shrink. Cities, civilization, supermarkets, products, TV, internet. By this trend, we'll live in dream terranes before long. (BTW as people get richer, reproduction gets less). But we'll need power, and eventually a dyson sphere to capture all the sun's light - perfect for an inward-looking, closed-off people! Then what, I'm not sure. Perhaps long before that, we won't need other suns; we'll have artificial suns (controlled fusion). That's what happens to everyone else: as they grow in technological sophistication, they get better and better at directly meeting their own (previously evolved) needs.
ekianjo 8y ago
any evidence to support that extraordinary claim?

kamaal 8y ago

I think a lot of answers have existed for that question. In the context of this thread, lets say you are a species which stepped out of your planet, there are plenty of asteroids, and even planets lying around you can mine for resources. You settle billions of your kind in space. You are not running out resources and have no motivation beyond research and science to venture out a little far. Would you, such a race, want to travel interstellar distances? You would travel far distances by organic growth. Also its likely how old the universe is anybody who didn't kill themselves to extinction, is likely at our phase of development. And is likely asking the same questions as us. Those beyond our phase of development are hiding for a good reason.

coldtea 8y ago

Fermi's paradox is just a hand-waving argument involving tons of unknown probabilities. It's not a given that alien civilizations "should" have developed this or that technology that we ourselves don't have.

perfmode 8y ago
it’s a probabilistic argument, so it is inherently about “should”

Aaargh20318 8y ago

Personally I think the answer is anti-natalism. Once life gets more intelligent it takes a relatively short time (compared to the age of the universe) to get to the point where they realise it's unethical to create new life and choose to go extinct. As a result, intelligent life around the universe only exists as short 'blips', being around for too short a time to ever meet other species.

maaark 8y ago
>it's unethical to create new life and choose to go extinct. I don't get this. What use are ethics when everyones dead and gone?
pavlov 8y ago
The default for unintelligent life is to survive at all cost and fill every niche. You're suggesting that intelligence flips that purpose so that every sentient species eventually becomes depressed suicidal existentialists?
- Brockenstein 8y ago
  All at the same time, united in a single goal... Seeing the wide spectrum of intelligence and education that humans manage it's hard for me to believe we'll ever reach a point of uniformity as a species were something like self-imposed extinction would be plausible.
- Aaargh20318 8y ago
  Not depressed or suicidal, just realising they have no right to gamble with another human being's life.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    An honestly held belief that their child would have a miserable, depressed, ill life I could understand - especially because those traits can be heritable. I can also understand sour grapes. However the other arguments seem very ill-motivated.

throwaway7312 8y ago

Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon likely wonder the same thing. It's such a big Earth, yet only a few hundred humans are known to exist. Why are there no other detectable signs of human life, like smoke signals, territory markers, or emissaries from any more but a handful of other tribes? Surely if advanced humans existed, they would have contacted these tribes by now, to share technology, discoveries, and medicine. Yet they haven't. How can the whole planet be so... silent?

chongli 8y ago
If they're not aware of any other humans (let alone all the cities out there) then they're likely not aware of the actual size of the earth. Perhaps they only consider it in terms of the surrounding territory.
nickwalton00 8y ago
A lot of these "uncontacted" tribes have actually had contact in the form of smugglers, loggers, drug cartels etc...many of those experiences ended with them getting killed so it's not surprising they would avoid us.
riffraff 8y ago
I understand the point that we might be too backwards to see the signs of hyper-advanced civilisations, but how is it that _all_ the other civilizations are super advanced to the point that any trace they leave is impossible to understand? And, won't uncontacted tribes in the amazon have seen airplanes and such?
ripsawridge 8y ago
Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon are not really uncontacted. They are the way they are by preference.

RobertoG 8y ago

A main component of the paradox is time, but this paper solve that. Life existed from the beginning, but only now has become complex enough. So, we don't see or hear artificial signs in other galaxies because light is from the times when there was not complex life in the universe. Now, we only have to solve why we don't see or hear artificial signs in our galaxy. But the problem is not so perplexing because we are talking about one or two million years. If, for instance, a big part of the galaxy is bad for complex life (after all, we are far away from the center and that could be relevant), Fermi's paradox is solved.

Tepix 8y ago
What are the odds that our life is the first that has reached sufficient complexity to be able to communicate within our galaxy? Given that there are 100-400 billion stars (and even more planets) just in the Milky Way: Pretty much zero.
- CodeCube 8y ago
  I appreciate a good reason to think deeply as much as the next person ... but odds are just that, odds. If we were the result of some freak black swan event that kickstarted "life", the odds of it happening are irrelevant ... because it did. To be clear, I'm not saying that's what it is ... the fermi paradox is a great thought experiment. But let's just keep things in perspective. Low odds don't mean something won't happen, just like "true random" doesn't mean the same song can't/won't play 10 times in a row ;)
  - emiliobumachar 8y ago
    The troubling thing about the Fermi paradox is that the Great Filter may still be ahead of us. As in, the universe may be littered with the ruins of single-planet civilizations slightly ahead of our technology level. We may have observed and cataloged many such planets, failing to notice the ruins.
- RobertoG 8y ago
  The problem has been always the temporal scales. But if you change that, the odds are not so bad. If all the civilizations started more or less at the same time that us, it's not so weird that we have not found anybody else. If you add some other factor (maybe civilizations are only possible far from the center, so there is a big spread between them) the probabilities improve. It also would mean interesting times ahead for humanity. Of course, all this is only idle speculation.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Never forget to include the Bs term when considering the Drake equation: https://www.xkcd.com/384/ https://www.xkcd.com/384/

Symmetry 8y ago

If you look at probability distributions rather than single estimates for every term in the Drake Equation then the absence of visible aliens isn't so unlikely. http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/media/eps/jodrell-bank-centre-for-astrophysics/news-and-events/2017/uksrn-slides/Anders-Sandberg---Dissolving-Fermi-Paradox-UKSRN.pdf http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/media/eps/jodrell-ba... And just the existence of life doesn't mean there's complex life. We don't have a firm lower bound on how long life took to arise on Earth after we got liquid water on the surface but it can't have been more than 120 million years. Photosynthesis, mitochondria, and other innovations allowing for complex life like you and me took way, way longer. I made a diagram for a blog post here: http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-again.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...

Balgair 8y ago

Three things: 1) Ordinary Matter ~10^53 kg (4.9%) Dark Matter ~5*10^53 kg 26.8% Dark Energy ~1.3*10^54 kg 68.3% Undiscovered ? ? We are only made up of < 1/20th of the universe's matter budget, and at that, most of Ordinary Matter is in stars and black-holes (we think). There's not a lot of matter out there (as a percent) left for life to be made of. As for the majority of the budget? Well, we know dark matter falls down ... that's about it right now (kinda). And Dark Energy? Yeah, it makes things fall up. It's ok, makes no sense to anyone else either. I put 'Undiscovered' there, as it seems we are making discoveries about the universe at a pretty rapid rate these last few centuries, so this budget is likely not even close to the real thing. Also, people talk a lot about not meeting aliens, but just talking to them. Based on the fact that we have little/no idea how Dark Matter and Energy works, and we only really use radio signals (when funding permits), it may be like trying to whisper at the Queen of England while standing in Norway; a telephone would be much better. 2) Tom Scott on immortality and risk : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5a6wrJpxP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5a6wrJpxP4 3) Life may be so abundant in the universe that it's not worth talking or meeting up with. What would you say to a single mayfly if you could talk to one on it's level? No scientist or other person has bothered to try, and I think there's a good reason for that.

sunstone 8y ago

We are a baby civilization. Everyone is waiting for us to grow up.