3 ms·

We wouldn’t need to detect signals - life arising only a few hundred million years earlier than us would easily have been able to send physical artifacts/vehicl

We wouldn’t need to detect signals - life arising only a few hundred million years earlier than us would easily have been able to send physical artifacts/vehicles/harvesting to every system in the entire galaxy if they had interstellar travel. If life were common enough that it has evolved multiple times in the same solar system (excluding panspermia) then this becomes almost a certainty that it should have occurred

kjkjadksj 3y ago
What a big assumption to make though. Billions of years of life on earth and an object was first put in space what 80 years ago? This technological age of ours could very well just be a blip. Its far more likely based on our own planet that intelligent life does none of these things. We might not have civilization at all if we didn’t happen to farm, we could both be preparing for our morning hunt and foraging just as easily as we are preparing for work today, if events happened only slightly differently. N=1 here. Our trajectory is no generalized model.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Yes, it is possible that there is a large filter between developing life and getting to where we are. I can't deny that that is a possible explanation for the observed Fermi paradox. But finding independent life on other planets would eliminate a whole class of great filters, making it more likely the filter is either as you said or that it is ahead of us. It is bad news imo if it is more likely than before that the filter is ahead of us. And that is unambiguously the case if we were to find life on another planet. Not proof positive it is ahead of us, but it shifts the probabilities. And yes, it took billions of years for life to evolve, but if we find life in our solar system, that is potentially billions of opportunities for life independently evolving.

3 ms·

We wouldn’t need to detect signals - life arising only a few hundred million years earlier than us would easily have been able to send physical artifacts/vehicl

by whimsicalism 3y ago

kjkjadksj 3y ago
What a big assumption to make though. Billions of years of life on earth and an object was first put in space what 80 years ago? This technological age of ours could very well just be a blip. Its far more likely based on our own planet that intelligent life does none of these things. We might not have civilization at all if we didn’t happen to farm, we could both be preparing for our morning hunt and foraging just as easily as we are preparing for work today, if events happened only slightly differently. N=1 here. Our trajectory is no generalized model.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Yes, it is possible that there is a large filter between developing life and getting to where we are. I can't deny that that is a possible explanation for the observed Fermi paradox. But finding independent life on other planets would eliminate a whole class of great filters, making it more likely the filter is either as you said or that it is ahead of us. It is bad news imo if it is more likely than before that the filter is ahead of us. And that is unambiguously the case if we were to find life on another planet. Not proof positive it is ahead of us, but it shifts the probabilities. And yes, it took billions of years for life to evolve, but if we find life in our solar system, that is potentially billions of opportunities for life independently evolving.