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Fermi Paradox Predicting Humankind's Future?
An anonymous reader writes "The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct."
Webb's 50th solution is the one that he believes is the most likely. Unfortunately for extraterrestrial enthusiasts, the solution is depressingly pessimistic: "...the only resolution of the Fermi paradox that makes sense to me--is that we are alone." Webb's preferred solution is highly controversial, but it satisfies Ockham's razor; out of all the Fermi paradox explanations, it is the simplest one. On the other hand, the solution is only as good as the evidence it is based on. New evidence could lead to a different solution to the paradox.
Fermi's Paradox isn't really a paradox, it's a question: "Where are they?" One possible answer is, "They don't exist." It seems probable that as we explore the galaxy we will find life everywhere, and intelligence nowhere.
The evidence for this is very strong. For one, there is the fact that we see no evidence for them at all. For two, life on Earth shows us that the kind of intelligence that builds spacecraft is extremely unlikely to evolve.
Evolution routinely produces some complicated solutions to common problems over and over again. The eye has (probably) evolved many, many times. Wings have certainly done so, as have fins. Everything we know about natural history on Earth tells us that evolution by variation and natural selection will produce the same solution to the same problem with very high reliability. This is even true of things like extra vertebra in the necks of some Central American lizard: there are a couple of species that have this feature, and previously they were thought to have a recent common ancestor. Gene sequencing shows this is not the case--it is merely a result of common evolutionary pressures on similar forms having similar results.
Human intelligence, on the other hand, seems to be something of an evolutionary fluke. Our ancestors were a marginal species of mediocre tool users for hundreds of thousands of years before we suddenly started on our current course about fifty thousand years ago, with the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. If intelligence was even just ten times harder to evolve than eyes and wings, it would have occurred more than once in the entire history of the Earth.
Until someone comes up with a compelling account as to why human-style (i.e. machine-building, empire-building, world-colonizing) intelligence should be anything other than incredibly rare, there really isn't any other reasonable answer to Fermi's Question.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Well, it's a population pressure thing. If there is no limit to your expansion, you'll expand to your limit.
Not that I don't think Fermi is full of it. All the "There can be no intelligent life if they haven't already a) been found by us or b) taken over the galaxy, theories are pretty foolish. There could be intelligent life inside 10 light years from us, and we wouldn't know it now; hell, we could be living on a planet seeded with life by an advanced society and we wouldn't know it...Maybe the dinosaurs were killed off by an automated terraformer. =P
Basic probability also suggests that it is extremely unlikely that we are an isolated occurrence...You'd have to buy into Creationism to think that such as we could never have happened anywhere else.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Extremely unlikely also means it's possible. We might very well be the first intelligent life to emerge in this galaxy. We might be the first in the universe. Extremely unlikely doesn't mean impossible. If we are, God help the younger species; the humans are coming.
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Think 20 million years. Or 200. Or billions, even. 10,000 years is not being dramatically ahead, that's being barely older than we are.
Consider the enormous timescale of evolution. Earth has existed for about 4.6 billion years. Compared to that, a few million years is nothing. What if the meteor that killed the dinosaurs had arrived a few million years earlier? Or later? Why did evolution take a billion years to get cells past the prokariotic stage? Could that have happened a few million years faster? Or is that step so unlikely that most planets never make it?
Furthermore, consider the age of the universe. The universe is about 3 times as old as the earth. Why couldn't an earth-like planet have appeared 5 or 6 billion years ago? There are good reasons why such a planet can't have appeared 14 billion years ago, but what about 7? That'd give any civilisation arrising on that planet an immediate 2 billion year headstart on us.
Is that enough to conquer the galaxy? If it isn't, nothing is.
They've had 10 billion years to visit us.
Sure, if you are only looking for life. If you are looking for intelligent life, the chances are much smaller.
If they were here in the first 99% of those 10 billion years, they would have missed us. We may be marked as a "potential revisit" but the likelihood of any existing lifeforms knowing that we are here is very small. The likelihood of us knowing that THEY are around is even smaller.
If the number of potentially viable planets is of any meaningful size, we could be one of a billion planets out there that they plan to eventually come back to.
They've actually had about 50,000 years to visit us, less if you only want to count "recorded history". Indeed, any visits done 50,000 years ago would have been to a group of "intelligent" primates who, in all probability, would have had great difficulty in having the contextual skills needed to show intelligence to the visitors.
So, Fermi's paradox is that something impossible is expected of aliens civilizations, that we have no way to tell has happened. And this is taken seriously, why?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Sure, but they could also have colonized the whole galaxy, then devolved and died off in the same period. Or they could just have skipped us because they like metal-rich planets in the liquid water zone with an atmosphere that's primarily methane, or any number of possible scenarios.
The point is, unless they set up an "Alien Burger" on the moon with a sign forty miles on a side, we'd never know they were around. Omni-directional radio of terrestrial origin has very little chance of ever being received in another solar system.
There is also the whole "What are the odds of intelligent live evolving at all?" question. It may be that, despite the age of the universe, the conditions for intelligent life took a long time to come together. Or that the process of evolution tends to take a while to produce a space faring civilization.
There are way too many variables to just automatically say, "If it were going to happen, it would already have happened."
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
You're forgetting the age of the earth and the age of the universe. The universe was already over 10 billion years old before earth came into existence. Even if every other earth-like planet really needs at least 4.5 billion years too evolve an advanced civilisation, I still don't see why such a planet couldn't have formed one or two billion years before earth has.
The odds are really simple: if the evolution of intelligent civilisations is likely, then some of those must have a multi-million year headstart on us. Why aren't they here? The possibilities are limited:
Could be there's a few other options, but basically they all boil down to: we're incredibly lucky, or we're doomed.
By far the most successful animal species on Earth is the ant. They have exactly the type of determination that you describe. Imagine a technologically advanced species with similar attitude - every individual has a pre-determined role supporting the species plan of conquering every available planet. As for revolts and warfare, there is plenty of war between different ants. Hasn't prevented them from becoming the dominant type, on the order of 1/4 - 1/3 of the total animal biomass.
Hit a nerve, I see.
Yes. I take it personally when my belief system is used as a synonym for stupid, ignorant or "intellectually backwards". Just as, say a Muslim would takes it personally when Islam is equated to terrorism, or sci-fi fan is equated with "Trekker" (or Trekki, if forget which). I can usually take someone hitting a nerve in stride, but that nerve has been rubbed raw.
The reason I say you'd have to buy into Creationism, is because in Creationism, God created man, and no other species. That would be the only explanation for how an intelligent species could exist without there being the possibility for other intelligent species.
Well, there is nothing that says we are not the first intelligent species in the universe. I agree that it is HIGHLY unlikely, but someone has to be the first. Also don't assume that everyone who believes that God created man believes that God stopped there.
It's not that Creationists lack common sense. It's that they are so rabid about anything that might possibly in some world conceivably be a challenge to their beliefs, that they refuse to accept anything outside their little book. If they were open-minded at all, they wouldn't be pure Creationists. Just that simple.
There are "jihadis" that are even more rabid in their beliefs, but to say that all Muslims are equally closed minded is just as offensive as your argument. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you mean any disrespect, but stereotyping religions is no different using stereotypes as a basis for racism.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I don't know if government is anti-procreation as much as people expectations of what a minimum lifestyle is. I suppose that counts as society.
I have a two-bedroom, one-bathroom post-war rambler, about 900 square foot foundation. The family that built this house raised six children in it in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, I am constantly asked when I will buy a bigger house because I have one child.
Could a "typical" family have six to ten children today? Certainly. Would they all have DVD players, attend summer soccer camp, college funds, and the latest fashions? No.
They've had 10 billion years to visit us.
We've also had 10 billion years to visit them. Since we haven't done so yet, does that imply that we don't exist?
Even if there are a million advanced civilizations in this galaxy, that doesn't mean that we'd know about them. We've been listening for radio transmissions for a small number of decades; the fact that we haven't detected any alien transmissions just means that no transmissions which are strong enough for us to detect and are modulated in a way that we would notice have arrived at Earth during that very narrow window. Our entire recorded history is also very short compared to 10 billion years, and we'd be unlikely to know about any alien visits which could have occurred before we developed enough to pass on historical information to our children.
I just don't buy the premise that other civilizations are unlikely to exist simply because we haven't detected them yet. 10 billion years is a long time, but the universe (and even just this galaxy) is a big place, we haven't been around for very long, we've been actively looking for signs of other intelligent life for an extremely short amount of time, and it seems to me that even our ideas about what we should look for are tainted by the assumption that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would be something like us and see the universe in a similar way.
Religion is different from race. Religion is consciously chose, race isn't. Religions, as a rule, mix common sense rules with some amount of logic-defying ridiculousness. The common sense rules hook people in, and then the illogic breaks their minds, rendering them incapable of making rational decisions on their own. They become cattle for the priestly class which profit from their mental enslavement. Religion teaches people that they are incapable of thinking for themselves, that they need a higher power, always speaking to them through a human intermediary, in order to know how to live correctly. Religion is a form of mass psychosis. It is no more a legitimate "belief system" than the ramblings of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Almost by definition, a person has to mentally damaged in order to accept religion. This is no slight against any person so damaged, any more than a person damaged by a viral infection is at fault. It is not your fault that your mind was infected by an insidious mental virus that has damaged your ability to think, in order to make you better at spreading the virus to others. But you should not be respected for having the virus, and your attempts to pass the virus on to others should be stopped.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Here is why we do not see alien colonizers: Any civilization sufficiently advanced to discover Space Travel evolves its own GW Bush.
"We've also had 10 billion years to visit them. Since we haven't done so yet, does that imply that we don't exist?"
The argument requires the mediocrity principle which implies that if there are many other intelligent civilizations many of them would be far more advanced then we are. Given that it doesn't matter that we've had 10 billion years to visit them-we are the less advanced civilization.
"Even if there are a million advanced civilizations in this galaxy, that doesn't mean that we'd know about them."
Maybe, but if this is true you need to argue against one of the premises in the Fermi paradox. The argument itself seems to be valid, so you need to argue against it's soundness. Which premise is wrong then? It seems to follow logically from its premises.
Take it to be:
Premise: Mediocrity principle. Thus we are not special and as such if there are many civilizations many of them are more advanced then we are.
Premise: Life has a tendency to overcome scarcity and colonize new habitats.
Premise: Earth has been around long enough for a sufficiently advanced civilization to have densly colonized the area.
Assume for the sake of reductio ad absurdum that there are many other civilizations. Then because of the previous premises we would expect to see sufficient evidence of them in the galaxy. We do not see sufficient evidence of them in the galaxy, so we have a contradiction. So we conclude that there are not many other civilizations.
Notice this doesn't say there are NO other civilizations. This is merely an argument that if there are as many as people want to say there are (tons and tons of habited worlds with intelligent life beginning far before and far after ours) we should see them by now. Since we don't there can't be as many as people say. There could be some, just not a multitude.
I am aware of no such science. You may be talking about some type of politics.
Unless it is their goal not to disturb? A civilization sufficiently advanced that they're going around inspecting and cataloging life around the universe is almost certainly sufficiently advanced to hide their presence from the subjects they're studying.
I said this in another post, but I'll say it again. I think that Fermi here is giving a scientific argument. This means that expiremental verifiability is important. If you are saying that WE are the aliens, then evolutionary biology seems to have a body of evidence that we happened by chance, and to argue against it you need to posit some untestable hypothesis like (aliens struck the lighting into the primordial soup in just the right way as to create life that they knew would lead to intelligent beings eventually.) If you are saying that they are here but we can't detect them, then you are making claims also outside the realm of science since we have no expiremental faculty to test your hypothesis. Either way Fermi is going to say that he is arguing that if we take science to be the only way we humans can reliably come to know truth, then we must conclude that there is not a sufficient number of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. It is merely an argument from what we can reliably believe given our science. Now you can say that this is a weak point in science's ability to come to truth. Which I would agree with you. But you need to recognize that this same hole also allows for arguments to the existence of God and a mariad of other things that cannot be verified by science but may be believed to be true none-the-less.
If you want to believe in undetectable aliens, then fine, but you have to realize that you are now asking a question of philosophy and not of science. Fermi is not saying that he has proven there can't be aliens, he is saying that the VERY BEST SCIENCE CAN DO, is tell us that there are countably few intelligent civilizations.
The speed of light is a real and unbreakable rule as a result nothing more than 4 or 5 light years away is reachable.
There are at least two major issues with extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Let's assume that they evolved independently of us. It is often said that- by the sheer number of star systems- that there are likely to be a very large number of potentially life-supporting planets elsewhere in the universe. Let's assume that this is correct, and further that life may have evolved on a proportion of them.
Thus, the reasonable conclusion is that there is life "out there". Fair enough. Now; consider the timescale of the evolution of intelligent life on Earth. Very simple bacterial/single-cell type stuff for a large portion of that time. Moderately-intelligent creatures (dinosaurs, birds, etc...) evolving at slow speed for a very long time. Then- on the cliched "24-hour-evolutionary-scale"- mankind, the only organism likely to get anywhere near space-travel- appears at "five-to-midnight".
Furthermore, although Homo Sapiens in their modern form have been around for 200,000 years, most of the progress made towards space travel hasn't been even; it's been very skewed towards the present day. Technological sophistication has been growing ever-faster, on a pretty-much-exponential scale; how much modern technology has been developed in the past 100 years (a lot)- how fast has computer technology developed in the past *30* years (an incredible amount- by many orders of magnitude(*).
It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going. Around 10 years ago, I figured out by myself (**) that the next 1000 (if not closer to 100) years are likely to see more significant and fundamental changes in the nature of the human race than those since the dawn of human-like-intelligence.
My point being this:- Yes, there may be many planets/systems out there capable of evolving and supporting life, and possibly many with life as we speak. However, if we assume that the evolution of life (and technology) follows broadly the same pattern elsewhere as it does on Earth, (very slow for a very long time, then an incredibly sudden surge in intelligence/development), then...
Unless intelligent evolution (and its inevitable offshoot, technology) has independently reached the same "explosive" stage on one of those other worlds at *exactly* at the same time it has on earth (i.e. around the present day), they'll either be way behind us (at best.. primitive man? monkeys? horses?) or so far ahead of us that it's unlikely we can even speculate on where they'll have reached.
Remember; our recent technological evolution has been very sudden relative to the timescale of mankind's evolution. In turn, mankind's evolution has been a sudden event relative to the history of life on the planet.
So, the chances of independently-evolved life elsewhere having reached a comparable stage to us is similar to the chances of two independently-set 24-hour clocks purely coincidentally reading the same time to within a small fraction of a second. If they're more than a few seconds behind, they're nowhere near achieving space travel.... if they're more than a few seconds ahead, they're likely gods, as far as we're likely to be able to comprehend them.
That's assuming they haven't made a fatal mistake as they progress on their exponential evolutionary/technological curve. As with mankind, by the time they've developed space travel, it's likely that they'll be developing sciences and technologies that have the ability (if not used carefully and responsibly), to wipe them out completely. If they're anything like us, their technological evolution will not be matched by social evolution, and there will be great danger that around the time of (shortly before or after) developing space travel, that they'll put a foot wrong and wipe themselves out.
Back to the parent comment; if the alien intelligence has survived, and is more
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Evolution in some sense requires the mediocrity principle. Humans are merely chance events in the universe and we should expect to find many other similar intelligent species around the universe. If humans were the only such outcome of evolution then the chance involved gets smaller and smaller. The smaller the chance that evolution could have occurred the more surprised we should be for finding that it has occurred. The more surprised we are that it has occurred, the more it seems to make sense that some necessary being (we can call him "God") is conducting things, possibly in ways we don't understand.
For tradional materialistic evolution to work correctly we have to be just another chance occurrence with a "nothing to see here, move right along" sign tacked to our foreheads.
Presumes:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So after reading through a bit of the comments to this article I gather that the collective wisdom of slashdot thinks that the state of extra-terrestrial life basically looks like some combination of Star Trek's Prime Directive, Babylon 5/ SG1's elder races, and Might and Magic's this colony forgot about technology motif.
I don't know why that surprises me...
Seriously, SciFi has so many holes in it that become quite obvious even as the story plays out, we shouldn't be extending out fiction to the universe.
If there is extra terrestrial life capable of FTL travel, wouldn't it stand to reason that it would put out colonies? Wouldn't it become successful by gathering resources when and where it can? Wouldn't we be able to spot either that or pick up their communications by now if it had ever happened within a reasonable distance of us? I can think of no reason why advanced ETs would bother to try to shield us younger species, it just doesn't make sense, unless you're looking for a plot device for a long running TV series.
The whole elder younger races thing, is even sillier, if there had been hundreds or thousands of apex species maybe we wouldn't know everything about all of them, but wouldn't it make sense that if there are multiple species in contact with each other eventually younger species will figure out the tech of the older ones, build on it and they will advance together? It seems unlikely to me that any species will have passed its prime keeping its technology secret, to the point that a younger race would be unable to reverse engineer it, so that the elder race is viewed as mystical.
Finally, I think that far-flung colonies forgetting about technology and regressing is possibly the most plausible, doesn't it also stand to reason that if we are such a colony we know enough about our planet that we'd be able to detect and "advanced tech" from our distant past?
I think the possibility that another poster mentioned, that we're just not in a sweet spot of galactic geography makes sense. If the c speed limit holds, any real colonization is likely to happen somewhat closer to the galactic center where interstellar distances are more manageable.
OTOH if the c speed limit doesn't hold, then I agree with Fermi, we really should have seen some ET life by now.
You are assuming we would recognize any evidence of extra terrestrials as such. If advanced ETs exist, we do not know by what means they communicate, travel, their preferred habitats, what resources are of value to them and can only guess what indicators we should look for. If there was an exact duplicate of the present-day Earth with humans and all a mere 3 LY away we'd still have a difficult time finding each other. We give off stronger radio emissions than our star ought to, but it's hard to make sense of any of those signals at such a distance--Arecibo probably isn't sensitive enough to pick out omnidirectional TV and radio signals and with more and more of our communications going digital or over wires, we're getting quieter. We'd probably have to send a powerful, focused and deliberate signal when our counterparts are actually listening to our part of the sky to get noticed. Maybe a space telescope could catch the earth transiting the sun clearly enough to pick out the emission lines of free Oxygen in our atmosphere--a strong indicator of life, but even that's exceedingly difficult and no guarantee. Basically, we're pretty deaf & blind and have little clue what we're supposed to be looking for anyway.
Our galaxy might be teeming with life, it may have even attempted to communicate with us many many times, but with our present ability to observe the universe around us, we very likely wouldn't have noticed.
Remember intelligence is only one way to solve the problem of keeping your species away from extinction.
Sharks are very dumb and have been doing just fine.
It is perfectly possible to imagine a universe full of life and yet with very few intelligent multi-planetary technological civilizations.
We are smart because we could not outrun (our outbite) our predators. We had to evolve other way.
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