Answers to the Fermi paradox

[Cutlass]

This is about the Fermi paradox, guys, not the age of the universe.

Take it elsewhere.

In any case, here's my tentative opinion (worth what you paid to get it):
If there is intelligent life, it must be outside our galaxy. Any intelligent life that arose within our galaxy would have by now expanded to fill it; we have no evidence of such, so it is unlikely that intelligent life has arisen in our galaxy. Yes, I'm aware that this implies that the earth is 'special' an violates the [wiki]Copernican principle[/wiki], but I'm not too concerned about that.

And given the vast distances involved, I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to ascertain the existence of intelligent life beyond this galaxy.

There are a great many reasons that intelligent life could have arisen within the galaxy and not come to own it. Off the top of my head

• They didn't want to
• They didn't last long enough to develope interstellar travel.
• There weren't any planets within range for them to colonize
• They were wiped out by a supernova
• They came and went long before Earth was inhabitable
• They are too far away to have gotten here yet

 

[emzie]

In any case, here's my tentative opinion (worth what you paid to get it):
If there is intelligent life, it must be outside our galaxy. Any intelligent life that arose within our galaxy would have by now expanded to fill it; we have no evidence of such, so it is unlikely that intelligent life has arisen in our galaxy. Yes, I'm aware that this implies that the earth is 'special' an violates the [wiki]Copernican principle[/wiki], but I'm not too concerned about that.

And given the vast distances involved, I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to ascertain the existence of intelligent life beyond this galaxy.

Still requires Einstein to be wrong.

 

[Jamesbranch]

Hey guys, Michio Kaku talks about the fermi Paradox in the later half of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8dcb8iKSM

 

[cardgame]

Einstein's been wrong before

 

[plarq]

We're talking about Cosmological constant right?

 

[Glassfan]

Frank Drake made a fundamental error in his assumptions. He made these in the 1960's, when new TV and radio and telephone microwave towers were proliferating across the landscape. He deduced that this process would continue indefinitely and that really advanced technological civilizations would be like bright shining beacons across the galaxy. But then came cable and the internet. Networks now broadcast microvolts over fibreoptic cables instead of megavolts off into space. Assuming this to be an obvious technological development, extraterrestrial civilizations would be somewhat green and quite and largly invisible to SETI.

 

[emzie]

Fine then, but don't try to use science to prove evolution either, which cannot be proven.

Man, not to continue the derailment, but this claim needs to be addressed each and everytime someone brings it up. No, evolution cannot be proven. Nor can gravity. Nor can thermodynamics. Nor can anything just about anything off paper, for the only people who can prove something are mathematicians.

Of course, that doesn't mean that because a scientific theory cannot be proven that it can't be demonstrated to be very very likely. I feel pretty confident in stepping outside, despite the fact that the theory of gravity hasn't been proven.

So, you can play all the word games you wish, but the theory of evolution has a base as strong as the theory of gravity. It has been observed, it has been directly tested, it has never been disproved (and it would be very easy to disprove if it were wrong!)

Now, the mechanism of evolution is another story....

Frank Drake made a fundamental error in his assumptions. He made these in the 1960's, when new TV and radio and telephone microwave towers were proliferating across the landscape. He deduced that this process would continue indefinitely and that really advanced technological civilizations would be like bright shining beacons across the galaxy. But then came cable and the internet. Networks now broadcast microvolts over fibreoptic cables instead of megavolts off into space. Assuming this to be an obvious technological development, extraterrestrial civilizations would be somewhat green and quite and largly invisible to SETI.

Somethings can't be replaced by fibreoptics... imagine trying to run a cable to the moon! I think we'll always have some use for high-powered EM broadcasts. Though I agree SETI is a bad approach... if I were trying to broadcast our presence here on Earth to aliens, I wouldn't use EM broadcasts.

 

[cardgame]

I don't mean to come off as... well, arrogant I guess, but I'm going to assume the people who run SETI know more than you (or I) do about the matter.

 

[emzie]

I don't mean to come off as... well, arrogant I guess, but I'm going to assume the people who run SETI know more than you (or I) do about the matter.

I can't come up with a better way to search for alien life unless they're looking to be found. That doesn't mean EM emissions are a particularity good way to search. Even the people with the most vested in SETI would acknowledge what they do is a shot in the dark. They continue to receive funding for SETI is a matter of priceless reward compared with modest investment.

 

[Jamesbranch]

If you watched the video, The guy explains that we broadcast on only 1 channel, So we shoudl broadcast on more.


VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8dcb8iKSM

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

i think it's arrogant to think that god created us of all animals in his image.

I know I would be mightily embarrassed to die and meet God the Cow.

 

[Spoonwood]

Domination3000,

I would suggest that you seriously study some calculus and/or differential equations before you talk about radiometric dating. If you merely throw some internet site at us as a way to reject this sort of thing, then you've arbitrarily thrown out mathematics. If you COULD show how the application of simple, ordinary differential equations to radiometric dating doesn't come as valid, then there might exist something to what you say. Until then, please go study. And remember, the mathematics involved and calculus at its theoretical level comes as "objective", so there doesn't exist any possible danger to your faith in studying such.

With respect to the original question, I think the communication problem in talking to an ETI (SETI minus S) comes as much more difficult. I don't see how simple mathematical patterns come as a sign of intelligence. We've basically started to realize that simple mathematical patterns like the even numbers, the odd numbers, and even the prime numbers don't really come as sufficiently indicative of intelligence. Blind computers can generate them all too easily. Research into artifical intelligence historically had problems in making machines that could say beat a grandmaster at chess. It required a lot of tricks to finally do this, and in comparison to writing or driving or a car or better still in comparison to a composition of activities that we do as people which include, but are not limited to, writing, reading, talking, walking, driving, playing games, telling people how to do things, helping people how to do things, etc. JUST playing chess comes as quite simple. Real intelligence involves doing many different complicated activities. Accordingly, a sufficiently advanced civilization recognizes this, AND programs such complexities into a communication signal. The only problem though comes as that once such complexities get programmed into a signal, it comes as too difficult to tell if the message comes as sufficiently intelligent or not sufficiently intelligent. On top of this, we may we've ignored the possibility of intelligence coming in degrees a little too much.

 

[Ayatollah So]

If there is intelligent life, it must be outside our galaxy. Any intelligent life that arose within our galaxy would have by now expanded to fill it

Unless they died first

Maybe it's just really hard to get life started. I think that's the most likely hindrance to an abundance of space-faring species. Either hard to get replicators (e.g. RNA) or hard to get them from using up all the available resources (say, proteins) and dying before evolving a way to use new resources (photosynthesis, thermal vent nutrients, or whatever).

This hypothesis has two main advantages. 1. Unlike many other steps (like the evolution of intelligence, which seems to have happened multiple independent times) we have no evidence that these stages of evolution are relatively easy. (As far as I know.) 2. Less gloomy than the hypothesis that there's an absolute doomsday weapon just waiting for every species that gets smart enough to commit self-genocide with it.

 

[illram]

@Integral

Well we're here, and we're intelligent (some of us anyway) and we haven't filled the galaxy yet, so presumably there could be other intelligent life forms near our stage of development out there. By near I mean within, say, 1 million years or something.

Also that assumes intelligent life would expand the way we think it would, or expand at all.

 

[warpus]

Yes, but lack of society slows down communication.

I agree that a non-social civilization would (probably) develop slower, but disagree but you need social animals in order to have society. You might, but who knows..

Any intelligent life that arose within our galaxy would have by now expanded to fill it; we have no evidence of such, so it is unlikely that intelligent life has arisen in our galaxy

Eh, that's quite an assumption. What makes you think that it is justified?

 

[classical_hero]

The problem with the Fermi paradox is that we have two variables that are unknown and such all it is, is just speculation. Also I do have problem with that if their is alien life out there, why aren't they searching around, like we are? But the problem for this is based on the assumption of somehow dumb chemicals formed life on here, yet whenever any experiments done on trying to replicate that have failed.

 

[Cutlass]

The problem with the Fermi paradox is that we have two variables that are unknown and such all it is, is just speculation. Also I do have problem with that if their is alien life out there, why aren't they searching around, like we are? But the problem for this is based on the assumption of somehow dumb chemicals formed life on here, yet whenever any experiments done on trying to replicate that have failed.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=365159

It just took learning the tools.

 

[Synobun]

In my perfectly honest opinion -

There is intelligent life out there. Mathematically, it is literally impossible for there not to be. As said before, Sol is a tiny speck at the edge of a tiny galaxy. Andromeda is what, three times larger than the Milky Way? Our biggest issue is distance. It is obvious we will not find space-faring civilizations unless they come to us, as we are basically... in space terms, in the stone age. Our rockets use incredible amounts of fuel and aren't as agile as we believe them to be.

Along with that, Earth's orbit is filled with debris that, after decades, finally drifts into the atmosphere and burns up. Just taking a shuttle to the spacestation takes extreme planning and mathematical calculation so as to not hit anything that would cause damage.

It is absolutely ignorant to think we are the only intelligent race in the universe. The universe is broad, we can only see so far and only see so much, and already there are trillions of galaxies, which will have trillions upon trillions of stars inside each one. The number is literally uncountable for humans.

And another thing, people say that if aliens have visited Earth, we would know... The problem with that, is that if a highly advanced alien race comes to Earth, and just simply avoids our detection systems (which aren't that great), and watches us... They'll think of us as savages. Torture, rape, murder, genocides, happening all around the world every single day. To be frank, if I was an alien visiting another planet, I wouldn't want to get involved with that. Rather, I'd watch for a while, gather what info I can, and boot on out of there and keep searching.

Plus, after some observance of our media, I'm sure they'd realize if they revealed themselves they'd be automatically labelled as a big bad enemy.

Mankind is just simply not ready to face a new civilization. Maybe in a couple centuries, but not now.

 

[Perfection]

There is intelligent life out there. Mathematically, it is literally impossible for there not to be.

No it isn't. The probability of intelligent life arising on any given X in the universe (star, galaxy, whatever) could be correspondingly tiny or significantly tinier than the reciprocal of the number of X.

Yes the number is large, but that doesn't mean you can wave your hand and declare it infinite.

 

[Synobun]

No it isn't. The probability of intelligent life arising on any given X in the universe (star, galaxy, whatever) could be correspondingly tiny or significantly tinier than the reciprocal of the number of X.

Yes the number is large, but that doesn't mean you can wave your hand and declare it infinite.

There are trillions upon trillions of stars. Earth was capable of hosting life.

For all we know, other cells on other planets could develop in a completely different manner as cells on Earth do. It's ridiculous to believe that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe to host intelligent life, and that every other planet can only host simple bacteria if even that.