3 ms·

> sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. ... and your solution to the Fermi paradox is?

jerf 15y ago
Backing your statement, I'd further observe of all the terms in the Drake equation, the second term "fraction of stars that have planets" is the second least contentious, only behind the first term "average rate of star formation in the galaxy". I don't think I've ever seen someone claim that life on other planets is rare because planets are rare! It's only the later ones that are contentious. As someone who is so skeptical, showing a huge number of planets doesn't cause me to update my probabilities any, as I already anticipated such a huge number of planets.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
Time. What are the odds of there being more than one intelligence in the same galactic neighborhood? Looking at our own planet, which is a biodiversity paradise, there's only one strongly sentient, intelligent, tool-using critter - us. Why aren't we surrounded by other tool users trying to communicate with us? Why aren't we chatting with dolphins, working with cephalopods, and commuting to work with chimpanzees? Hell, where are the Neanderthals? They're the only other arguably intelligent species that have co-existed at the same time that we did. It's a big universe, and it's a big timeline.
- mindstab 15y ago
  > Why aren't we chatting with dolphins Ironic you should say: from HN this morning: Researchers 'speak' to dolphins in their own language http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 :) And as for time, that's sort of the point of the Fermi paradox, with this much time there should be evidence of life everywhere, unless you have an unstated assumption that all life is self terminating before it reaches a point where it can leave much of a galactic mark? (In our case then, probably excitingly soon)
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Charles Stross has pointed out that interstellar travel is probably prohibitively expensive, so any marks left by other civilizations might have been purely local. How many marks have we left? You'd have to do a pretty thorough search of the other planets and moons to find our various landers - hell, it wasn't until last year that anyone took recent pictures of the American moon landing sight, right? A Japanese satellite, if I remember correctly. Here's a gedankenexperiment for you. Hire a pilot to fly you from Dallas to El Paso. As you're flying over the panhandle, jump out with a parachute. What are the odds that you'll see signs of civilization? I've made that drive before, and if it weren't for the road that I was on, I'd have sworn the planet didn't even have any vertebrates on it. Obviously my argument is founded on a current understanding of physics, and I'd love to sound like an idiot tomorrow with the invention of cheap interstellar flight and an ansible.
- narag 15y ago
  A variation: maybe we're just the first ones in the neighborhood. Maybe life needs elements only present in third generation stars. Earth could be an instance of extremely accelerated evolution because some favorable traits and we are at least some millions of years ahead of the rest.
bh42222 15y ago
Space - there is A LOT of it, and a hard limit on speed of travel.
JeffL 15y ago
Maybe the answer to the Fermi paradox is somehow "the singularity". As an intelligent species arises, the amount of time between the emergence of intelligence and a singularity that utterly transforms it into something we would never detect is a blink of the eye geologically. So quickly that it's as if they don't exist to each other.
splitrocket 15y ago
Pervasive encryption/compression of electromagnetic communication across an extremely wide spectrum and truly badass video games can explain why we haven't been visited and why we can't watch their TV channels.

jerf 15y ago

Backing your statement, I'd further observe of all the terms in the Drake equation, the second term "fraction of stars that have planets" is the second least contentious, only behind the first term "average rate of star formation in the galaxy". I don't think I've ever seen someone claim that life on other planets is rare because planets are rare! It's only the later ones that are contentious. As someone who is so skeptical, showing a huge number of planets doesn't cause me to update my probabilities any, as I already anticipated such a huge number of planets.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

Time. What are the odds of there being more than one intelligence in the same galactic neighborhood? Looking at our own planet, which is a biodiversity paradise, there's only one strongly sentient, intelligent, tool-using critter - us. Why aren't we surrounded by other tool users trying to communicate with us? Why aren't we chatting with dolphins, working with cephalopods, and commuting to work with chimpanzees? Hell, where are the Neanderthals? They're the only other arguably intelligent species that have co-existed at the same time that we did. It's a big universe, and it's a big timeline.

mindstab 15y ago
> Why aren't we chatting with dolphins Ironic you should say: from HN this morning: Researchers 'speak' to dolphins in their own language http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314056 :) And as for time, that's sort of the point of the Fermi paradox, with this much time there should be evidence of life everywhere, unless you have an unstated assumption that all life is self terminating before it reaches a point where it can leave much of a galactic mark? (In our case then, probably excitingly soon)
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Charles Stross has pointed out that interstellar travel is probably prohibitively expensive, so any marks left by other civilizations might have been purely local. How many marks have we left? You'd have to do a pretty thorough search of the other planets and moons to find our various landers - hell, it wasn't until last year that anyone took recent pictures of the American moon landing sight, right? A Japanese satellite, if I remember correctly. Here's a gedankenexperiment for you. Hire a pilot to fly you from Dallas to El Paso. As you're flying over the panhandle, jump out with a parachute. What are the odds that you'll see signs of civilization? I've made that drive before, and if it weren't for the road that I was on, I'd have sworn the planet didn't even have any vertebrates on it. Obviously my argument is founded on a current understanding of physics, and I'd love to sound like an idiot tomorrow with the invention of cheap interstellar flight and an ansible.
narag 15y ago
A variation: maybe we're just the first ones in the neighborhood. Maybe life needs elements only present in third generation stars. Earth could be an instance of extremely accelerated evolution because some favorable traits and we are at least some millions of years ahead of the rest.

bh42222 15y ago

Space - there is A LOT of it, and a hard limit on speed of travel.

JeffL 15y ago

Maybe the answer to the Fermi paradox is somehow "the singularity". As an intelligent species arises, the amount of time between the emergence of intelligence and a singularity that utterly transforms it into something we would never detect is a blink of the eye geologically. So quickly that it's as if they don't exist to each other.

splitrocket 15y ago

Pervasive encryption/compression of electromagnetic communication across an extremely wide spectrum and truly badass video games can explain why we haven't been visited and why we can't watch their TV channels.