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There's something I intuitively dislike about the early human hypothesis to the Fermi paradox. It seems too much like geocentric Earth hypothesis or the long li
by kypro 4y ago
There's something I intuitively dislike about the early human hypothesis to the Fermi paradox. It seems too much like geocentric Earth hypothesis or the long line of hypotheses which suggest us humans are special in some way. We rarely are.
I find the Fermi paradox fascinating though because non of the proposed answers satisfy me. These days I tend to think it's likely there are few compounding factors instead of any one single factor. I quite like the idea that intelligent life probably is fairly rare (so maybe we are quite early) and that the intelligent life that does evolve is fairly likely to either destroy itself or to simply lose interest in the analogue world with time. Personally I think if there is intelligent life out there most of it is probably living in digital worlds because why use energy exploring and explaining this universe when you can just create your own?
On the less likely but interesting side of things I also wonder if it suggests simulation sometimes. If everything points to us being quite uncommon then at some point it becomes reasonable to ask if it's even a question of probability but instead perhaps one of intention. If you see 10 dice on a table and all are showing a 6 on the face, you probably wouldn't think, "oh, how unlikely", but instead assume it was intended. But then again simulation theory is a good answer to all hard questions so I'm not that keen on it either. I just think it's most compelling in the context of the Fermi paradox and our seemingly fine-tuned universe.
- gitfan86 4y agoI believe that the earth centric and human centric view is the problem with the Fermi paradox. Why do we assume that a civilization more advanced than us would have desires towards colonization and contact with lesser lifeforms? It would be like an ant colony assuming there are no more advanced lifeforms because a more advanced lifeform would have destroyed their colony or contacted them via pheromones
- bayesian_horse 4y agoWith the "grabby aliens" there is only the assumption that a portion of civilizations become grabby. We don't have good reasons to believe that portion to be zero. But even a very small chance leads to all the other predictions, like that we are early and so on. It's also not so much about active contact than that you could observe technological signatures from a certain distance.
- gitfan86 4y agoOur definition of "technological signatures" is an ant colony's pheromones. Because we don't have a solution to quantum gravity we cannot rule out the possibility that other civilizations can control space/time without emitting photons.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoOur civilization is already putting out photons into the neighborhood. Hard to imagine other civilizations being able to master that technology in a blink of an eye when it's not even possible with all the physics we know.
- kypro 4y agoI don't like ant colony analogies because I think there is a meaningful difference between a life-form entirely unable to communicate high-level abstract thoughts and those that are - even if it's relatively simple. For example we view apes as "lesser lifeforms" to ourselves but we still try to communicate with them, and they communicate back to some degree. Or a more extreme example would be dogs - we communicate with them all the time even if they don't have anything that interesting to say back to us. I'd also argue we still take significant interest in ants despite the fact they're unaware of us. And if we thought we could say hi to ants via pheromones we almost certainly would. The mere fact we keep records of all the species we find on Earth and try to understand them in great detail despite them being much less intelligent then ourselves I think suggests aliens would probably at least have some interest in us, even if we're not that interesting. And even with ants it's clear we have a lot to learn from them. Ant colony optimisation algorithms wouldn't exist if we didn't take an interest in ants, for example.
- colinmhayes 4y agoI don't think the fermi paradox assumes that. Aliens don't have to want to be seen for us to see them. All it takes is one civilization failing to hide for us to see aliens, so the question then is "why has every single intelligent life form dedicated so many resources toward effectively hiding" or "if they're not doing that why haven't we seen them"
- gitfan86 4y agoFrom Wikipedia: "Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.[12]" The assumption is that they would be expanding to larger areas of the galaxy that they have not been to before. I'm asking why we would assume that they would want to expand to billions of solar systems. Obviously we can assume that humans would want to expand since we have a long history of that. But there is no reason to assume they would think like humans, especially given that we have not achieved interstellar travel ourselves.
- colinmhayes 4y agoThe beautiful thing about grabby aliens is that it only takes one grabby civilization for the theory to be true. It’s not assuming that there are tons of civilizations that act like that, it’s saying that if there is even one then we won’t see them until they conquer us.
- gitfan86 4y agoUnless that grabby civilization encounters a much more advanced passive civilization. And that passive civilization decides that the grabby one is a virus that needs to be eradicated.