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This whole idea of "dissolving" the Fermi paradox seems to be missing the point. Everyone knows that we have, in fact, not observed an alien civilization, so o

This whole idea of "dissolving" the Fermi paradox seems to be missing the point. Everyone knows that we have, in fact, not observed an alien civilization, so one of the factors in the Drake equation (or one we should have put in) is responsible. But, is it that there is very little chance of life evolving, or intelligence? Or is it that intelligence tends to be short lived? Or is it because long-lived intelligence uses methods of communication we cannot observe, and is responsible enough not to colonize all the good planets? The consequences for us are large, depending on which one of those it is. Merely saying "well it's not that surprising that one of those factors is tiny" is not really relevant to the question of, which factor is it that is tiny?

thaumaturgy 8y ago
This is addressed in the paper. They estimate that the greatest uncertainties lie in the past terms of the Drake Equation, ergo that there is no evidence of some great threat to the continued advancement of human civilization.
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  Here would seem to be the limit of Bayesian analytics bridging the causal gap.
danShumway 8y ago
No, what the article is saying is that when you rely on distributions of outcomes from the Drake equation rather than averages, it's much more likely that you'll get tiny results. You don't need extremely low values in the Drake equation to end up with nearly no aliens. It's actually kind of likely that we're (close to) alone, even without a crazy complicated theory to justify one of the values being nearly zero. This is missing the point that many people do treat the Fermi Paradox like it's a real paradox - like there's some kind of fundamental universal principle that has to almost universally block out all life or all communication. The article is saying you don't need it. It's good enough to say "well, life might just be sort of uncommon, and even in that scenario we shouldn't be surprised that we got a very low roll." That is a surprising conclusion. No, we don't know the exact cause, but it means that the Fermi Paradox might not be a paradox, in the sense that it doesn't directly contradict all of our priors. Think of it like the difference between saying, "Trump won the election because we fundamentally don't understand how democracy works in practice", and "Trump won the election because he had a 1 and 5 chance of winning, and sometimes 20% chance events happen."
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  "Trump won the election because we fundamentally don't understand how democracy works in practice", and "Trump won the election because he had a 1 and 5 chance of winning, and sometimes 20% chance events happen." This is a great point. Still, if you say "we don't understand democracy because we don't understand that 20% chance events happen" then it seems like the points converge.
- ianai 8y ago
  I find the notion that we have enough information to even guess at where life is let alone that we can assume there is none downright laughable to the point of obscenity. We know a lot less about this universe than it takes to make even sensible guesses as to generalizations about the nature of life in the universe.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Our best-effort guesses are literally the best we can do. Pretty much by definition, dismissing them because "we know so little" means taking a view that's worse than that guess.
    - leeeeech 8y ago
      > literally excuse me, but no. Our best-effort guesses might be the best we could literally do. But there is no need to be that literal, or literal at all. As long as the uncertainty range includes 0.5, it's OK, but merely a test of how much we know as a fact as opposed to intuitively. And at that, the equation can surely be blown up further. Why would it be optimal?
  - teekert 8y ago
    My thoughts exactly, I always think: perhaps in 10 years we find an alternative to radio based communication which is far superior and then we find the galaxy teaming with communicating life forms... Or not. Who's to say? This whole thing seems to me an exercise in quantifying unknowns. We don't know the size of the categories we don't even know we don't know anything about. This can still be a fun exercise of course and it can give you an idea of the assumptions to prove or disprove but still... the value (beside the entertainment value) is pretty small imho.
tabtab 8y ago
"Zoo theory". Even the Air Force now admits they've seen odd craft-like things in the sky that baffle the h8ll out of them. ET may be here but just don't want us to know it.
- castis 8y ago
  Do you know where can I find more information on this?
  - King-Aaron 8y ago
    In 2017/2018 the Air Force released a video of fa/18 pilots intercepting 'objects', which is rather interesting. A good place to start is Project Blue Book however, it has years worth of information that was reported by members of the public etc that the government looked in to. I don't believe it was conclusive in proving the existence of these objects, but rather proof that the government was taking some level of interest in it. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.ht...
    - mirimir 8y ago
      A lot of that was diversionary noise, to help maintain secrecy of stealth aircraft development.
      - King-Aaron 8y ago
        I think you're right, from what I've read about it. I know there's a lot of resources out there on the topic, but it's hard to post links on HN with a straight face knowing that 99.9999% of it is white noise.
- hsienmaneja 8y ago
  I wonder how advanced drone technology would need to be to be able to fake such a UFO as being from an alien.
est 8y ago
Or is it just because we have limit observation of the universe. People in ancient times doesn't know much about the earth either.
TTPrograms 8y ago
> so one of the factors in the Drake equation (or one we should have put in) is responsible The paper exactly explains why this is not the case. This is demonstrated using undergraduate level Bayesian probability. This response is one of many when this work comes up on HN that would benefit from a basic understanding of multivariate probability.
- pavelrub 8y ago
  The paper doesn't explain anything at all. If we are alone in the galaxy - it tells us absolutely nothing about why this is the case, and certainly not that it's unrelated to the factors in the Drake equation, as you seem to claim. On the contrary - the "explanation" it offers relies precisely on the assumption that the factors of the Drake equation are responsible. The only thing it says is that we should incorporate our uncertainty of them when trying to make an estimate. It might be interesting, but it adds absolutely nothing new about why we might be alone, other than "because some factors could be lower than we think". Duh.
chmike 8y ago
When you say "we have not observed alien civilization", you are dismissing all the ufological data we have without valid justification. I can't agree with that unjustified data point set exclusion. When you consider UFOs as a manifestation of ET civilization, the Fermi paradox does not exist.
- skgoa 8y ago
  > ufological data my sides!
- maaark 8y ago
  And when you consider them as a manifestation of mental illness and jumping to conclusions, it exists again!
  - chmike 8y ago
    A paradox is a logical contradiction. That is what motivated the question of Fermi "They should be here, where are they ?". The right answer to this question must remove the logical contradiction, and this is what we are interrested in. The answer that the ETs are visiting earth and reported through ufological sighting would be a valid one, but it is systematically ignored or discarded when considering the Fermi paradox. That is, in my opinion, the only paradox. PS regarding the downvote, Hackenews is not Facebook with its like button. On Hackernews, downvotes are for people who don't respect the rules.

thaumaturgy 8y ago

This is addressed in the paper. They estimate that the greatest uncertainties lie in the past terms of the Drake Equation, ergo that there is no evidence of some great threat to the continued advancement of human civilization.

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Here would seem to be the limit of Bayesian analytics bridging the causal gap.

danShumway 8y ago

No, what the article is saying is that when you rely on distributions of outcomes from the Drake equation rather than averages, it's much more likely that you'll get tiny results. You don't need extremely low values in the Drake equation to end up with nearly no aliens. It's actually kind of likely that we're (close to) alone, even without a crazy complicated theory to justify one of the values being nearly zero. This is missing the point that many people do treat the Fermi Paradox like it's a real paradox - like there's some kind of fundamental universal principle that has to almost universally block out all life or all communication. The article is saying you don't need it. It's good enough to say "well, life might just be sort of uncommon, and even in that scenario we shouldn't be surprised that we got a very low roll." That is a surprising conclusion. No, we don't know the exact cause, but it means that the Fermi Paradox might not be a paradox, in the sense that it doesn't directly contradict all of our priors. Think of it like the difference between saying, "Trump won the election because we fundamentally don't understand how democracy works in practice", and "Trump won the election because he had a 1 and 5 chance of winning, and sometimes 20% chance events happen."

joe_the_user 8y ago
"Trump won the election because we fundamentally don't understand how democracy works in practice", and "Trump won the election because he had a 1 and 5 chance of winning, and sometimes 20% chance events happen." This is a great point. Still, if you say "we don't understand democracy because we don't understand that 20% chance events happen" then it seems like the points converge.
ianai 8y ago
I find the notion that we have enough information to even guess at where life is let alone that we can assume there is none downright laughable to the point of obscenity. We know a lot less about this universe than it takes to make even sensible guesses as to generalizations about the nature of life in the universe.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Our best-effort guesses are literally the best we can do. Pretty much by definition, dismissing them because "we know so little" means taking a view that's worse than that guess.
  - leeeeech 8y ago
    > literally excuse me, but no. Our best-effort guesses might be the best we could literally do. But there is no need to be that literal, or literal at all. As long as the uncertainty range includes 0.5, it's OK, but merely a test of how much we know as a fact as opposed to intuitively. And at that, the equation can surely be blown up further. Why would it be optimal?
- teekert 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly, I always think: perhaps in 10 years we find an alternative to radio based communication which is far superior and then we find the galaxy teaming with communicating life forms... Or not. Who's to say? This whole thing seems to me an exercise in quantifying unknowns. We don't know the size of the categories we don't even know we don't know anything about. This can still be a fun exercise of course and it can give you an idea of the assumptions to prove or disprove but still... the value (beside the entertainment value) is pretty small imho.

tabtab 8y ago

"Zoo theory". Even the Air Force now admits they've seen odd craft-like things in the sky that baffle the h8ll out of them. ET may be here but just don't want us to know it.

castis 8y ago
Do you know where can I find more information on this?
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  In 2017/2018 the Air Force released a video of fa/18 pilots intercepting 'objects', which is rather interesting. A good place to start is Project Blue Book however, it has years worth of information that was reported by members of the public etc that the government looked in to. I don't believe it was conclusive in proving the existence of these objects, but rather proof that the government was taking some level of interest in it. https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.ht...
  - mirimir 8y ago
    A lot of that was diversionary noise, to help maintain secrecy of stealth aircraft development.
    - King-Aaron 8y ago
      I think you're right, from what I've read about it. I know there's a lot of resources out there on the topic, but it's hard to post links on HN with a straight face knowing that 99.9999% of it is white noise.
hsienmaneja 8y ago
I wonder how advanced drone technology would need to be to be able to fake such a UFO as being from an alien.

est 8y ago

Or is it just because we have limit observation of the universe. People in ancient times doesn't know much about the earth either.

TTPrograms 8y ago

> so one of the factors in the Drake equation (or one we should have put in) is responsible The paper exactly explains why this is not the case. This is demonstrated using undergraduate level Bayesian probability. This response is one of many when this work comes up on HN that would benefit from a basic understanding of multivariate probability.

pavelrub 8y ago
The paper doesn't explain anything at all. If we are alone in the galaxy - it tells us absolutely nothing about why this is the case, and certainly not that it's unrelated to the factors in the Drake equation, as you seem to claim. On the contrary - the "explanation" it offers relies precisely on the assumption that the factors of the Drake equation are responsible. The only thing it says is that we should incorporate our uncertainty of them when trying to make an estimate. It might be interesting, but it adds absolutely nothing new about why we might be alone, other than "because some factors could be lower than we think". Duh.

chmike 8y ago

When you say "we have not observed alien civilization", you are dismissing all the ufological data we have without valid justification. I can't agree with that unjustified data point set exclusion. When you consider UFOs as a manifestation of ET civilization, the Fermi paradox does not exist.

skgoa 8y ago
> ufological data my sides!
maaark 8y ago
And when you consider them as a manifestation of mental illness and jumping to conclusions, it exists again!
- chmike 8y ago
  A paradox is a logical contradiction. That is what motivated the question of Fermi "They should be here, where are they ?". The right answer to this question must remove the logical contradiction, and this is what we are interrested in. The answer that the ETs are visiting earth and reported through ufological sighting would be a valid one, but it is systematically ignored or discarded when considering the Fermi paradox. That is, in my opinion, the only paradox. PS regarding the downvote, Hackenews is not Facebook with its like button. On Hackernews, downvotes are for people who don't respect the rules.