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You are offering three resolutions of the Fermi Paradox. All three of them are the form: some intelligent species will be unable/unwilling to communicate with u

You are offering three resolutions of the Fermi Paradox. All three of them are the form: some intelligent species will be unable/unwilling to communicate with us. This is incorrect. The resolution of the paradox have to be: ALL intelligent species are unable/unwilling to communicate with us. You can try to take your probabilistic resolutions and multiply them all together to show a very low probability. But then you need an upper bound on the expected number of intelligent species. Which keeps increasing (number of Earth like planets). (Mayans were not trying to communicate with anyone else. Those robots will be trying to. There is probably enough structure in physics and math to be the basis of communication with any alien species.)

ChuckMcM 12y ago
My favorite resolution is the one where our solar system, having developed sentience, is under the protection of the galactic equivalent of the EPA, sort of a 'you can't go in there because they haven't finished hatching' sort of thing.
- omegaham 12y ago
  Please tell me that there's a short story on this. I'm envisioning a cigar-chomping developer trying to lobby for building on "prime real estate" while some nutball hippie lawyer is working tirelessly to stop him while his colleagues deride him for caring so much about "carbon-based animals." "Well, we've done it billions of times before. What makes these ones any different?" "It was wrong the last billions of times we did it, too." "Well, you're living on a planet that was taken from some lesser species. And so was the planet your forefathers settled on. And them before that, and them before that. This is the natural course of things. Sucks to be them." I'd read that.
  - craigching 12y ago
    It's a stretch, but isn't this "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy? :)
  - arethuza 12y ago
    There is The State of the Art about the time the Culture comes to visit Earth - there is a decent BBC Radio 4 version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU NB The Culture has the opposite of the Star Trek Federation's Prime Directive - they justify to themselves the hedonistic paradise that 99% of their population (biologicals and machines) live in through the interference of their Contact and Special Circumstances sections in the affairs of "lesser" civilisations.
- sitkack 12y ago
  So we are all on the Truman Show? Only it is a solar reserve instead of a movie set?
Glyptodon 12y ago
I don't think I'm offering resolutions. I'm saying that we have far too limited amounts of information to resolve things in one direction or the other. (On the Mayan aside, I guess I do agree that there will be some basis for getting information from a returned probe, but after millions of years I doubt the home civilization will even remember that they were the ones who sent the probes out to begin with. I guess to be more precise, I expect that the home civ will have been replaced by new civs many times over.) On the probe side, if they return to home there's also no reason to expect them to signal, and seeing one would be unlikely considering we can barely even find asteroids that pose a risk of collision with Earth. So I guess there's also some possibility that there are alien probes slipping through the solar system every so often and we just haven't been able to observe them.
- abdullahkhalids 12y ago
  You are arguing (or you were already in the last comment) that there is something 'wrong' with humans which is the reason that we have been unable to see aliens. I think this is a much stronger argument. As far as I can see, this line of reasoning only requires making two arguments about aliens: they are at most Kardashev Type II and they are not actively broadcasting their existence using EM waves. I don't buy your arguments about memories of probes/ciz at all. I am extrapolating from human civilization. We haven't forgotten much and plan on remembering everything in the future.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

My favorite resolution is the one where our solar system, having developed sentience, is under the protection of the galactic equivalent of the EPA, sort of a 'you can't go in there because they haven't finished hatching' sort of thing.

omegaham 12y ago
Please tell me that there's a short story on this. I'm envisioning a cigar-chomping developer trying to lobby for building on "prime real estate" while some nutball hippie lawyer is working tirelessly to stop him while his colleagues deride him for caring so much about "carbon-based animals." "Well, we've done it billions of times before. What makes these ones any different?" "It was wrong the last billions of times we did it, too." "Well, you're living on a planet that was taken from some lesser species. And so was the planet your forefathers settled on. And them before that, and them before that. This is the natural course of things. Sucks to be them." I'd read that.
- craigching 12y ago
  It's a stretch, but isn't this "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy? :)
- arethuza 12y ago
  There is The State of the Art about the time the Culture comes to visit Earth - there is a decent BBC Radio 4 version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRl9D_agLbU NB The Culture has the opposite of the Star Trek Federation's Prime Directive - they justify to themselves the hedonistic paradise that 99% of their population (biologicals and machines) live in through the interference of their Contact and Special Circumstances sections in the affairs of "lesser" civilisations.
sitkack 12y ago
So we are all on the Truman Show? Only it is a solar reserve instead of a movie set?

Glyptodon 12y ago

I don't think I'm offering resolutions. I'm saying that we have far too limited amounts of information to resolve things in one direction or the other. (On the Mayan aside, I guess I do agree that there will be some basis for getting information from a returned probe, but after millions of years I doubt the home civilization will even remember that they were the ones who sent the probes out to begin with. I guess to be more precise, I expect that the home civ will have been replaced by new civs many times over.) On the probe side, if they return to home there's also no reason to expect them to signal, and seeing one would be unlikely considering we can barely even find asteroids that pose a risk of collision with Earth. So I guess there's also some possibility that there are alien probes slipping through the solar system every so often and we just haven't been able to observe them.

abdullahkhalids 12y ago
You are arguing (or you were already in the last comment) that there is something 'wrong' with humans which is the reason that we have been unable to see aliens. I think this is a much stronger argument. As far as I can see, this line of reasoning only requires making two arguments about aliens: they are at most Kardashev Type II and they are not actively broadcasting their existence using EM waves. I don't buy your arguments about memories of probes/ciz at all. I am extrapolating from human civilization. We haven't forgotten much and plan on remembering everything in the future.