Why is the Fermi Paradox a Paradox?

I never understood the Fermi Paradox. In order to accept it, you have to make some huge assumptions. First from Wiki:

The Fermi paradox, or Fermi's paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates[1] for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.[2] The basic points of the argument, made by physicists Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) and Michael H. Hart (born 1932), are:

There are billions of stars in the galaxy that are similar to the Sun,[3][4] and many of these stars are billions of years older than the Solar system.

With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life.

Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step the Earth is investigating now.

Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.[9]

According to this line of reasoning, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial aliens. In an informal conversation, Fermi noted no convincing evidence of this, leading him to ask, "Where is everybody?"

en.wikipedia.org...

First, this assumes every extraterrestrial encounter is false. This isn't saying where's everybody. This is saying, why hasn't any of them showed themselves to me?

It also assumes that advanced civilizations will make themselves known to us in a way that we will all see them. It' assumes that advanced civilizations will immediately land on the White House lawn.

There's just too many assumptions to be made to accept the Fermi Paradox in any way.

Maybe we're not interesting to interstellar civilizations. Why would we be? We don't go down and try to communicate with an ant colony. If these civilizations are interstellar, we might be like the Flinstones to them when it comes to Science and Technology, The most they probably do is monitor are nuclear activity. Is there evidence of this?





I have had 3 U.F.O. encounters 2 of them looked like probes. Why wouldn't advanced civilizations send out probes controlled by Artificial Intelligence? We plan on doing the same thing.

Meet CIMON, the 1st Robot with Artificial Intelligence to Fly in Space

A beautiful space-exploration friendship between human and machine may have just begun.

Early this morning (June 29), a small robot endowed with artificial intelligence (AI) launched on a two-day trip to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule. No other AI-equipped machine has ever flown to space before, project team members said.

www.space.com...



Think of people who think they see an orb with a face in it. Could they really being seeing an AI probe?

NASA: AI Will Lead the Future of Space Exploration

futurism.com...

NASA's Space AI Hunts Exoplanets, Not Humans — Yet

www.space.com...

The New Age of Discovery: Space Exploration and Machine Learning

medium.com...

Again, the Fermi Paradox makes no sense.

Because it fails to take Bill Shakespear in to account.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I'm sure the aliens learned, long ago, that we are basically just a bunch of dill holes.

We are the Florida of the galaxy.

The Fermi Paradox doesn't proof anyting, it does not proof that alien life should be present in our galaxy nor does it proof that alien life doesn't exist. It only talks about the fact that alien life is very rare and with the current understanding of our cosmos, life is very spread across our universe and the distances are very very great.

Because it’s all an intergalactic TV show and we’re something like channel 5,064. The reason we can’t see them is simply because we can’t. Just like the actors in a film can’t see those people sitting at home watching their movie two years later.. Think of it something like what most religious people believe. Someone named God up in the sky watching every move they make their whole lives.. Only he has a remote with fast forward and rewind and “HE” could be any number of different kind of species that is so far advanced of us that we can’t even imaging what his definition of the word “See” actually is.

If we accept the big bang, we accept that we don't know anything about this universe. What created the big bang. That's the real question. What happens when we sleep? Do we return to the times when the big bang hasn't happened yet?

You ever play Mass Effect?

The question is totally off point to what you're asking but there were a couple of things that popped into my head while reading the post and comments.

First, when I used to play Mass Effect, you'd have so many different civilizations. You've got the peacekeepers, the war mongers, you could have bandit solar systems, conflicting universal entities (ie imagine the republic in Star Wars under the ideals of the Nazis and then there's another empire that had other beliefs). It's hard to imagine such a situation when there's still a belief hard coded in humanities DNA that there's no life near us, we're in a dreamworld where people cant begin to imagine what it would be like to be in cahoots with a star faring culture. I digress.

It's insane the amount of people with experiences and stories, there really is a feeling of "will it ever just bloody happen?"
I look at the sky sometimes and imagine a massive rig soaring in from the outer solar system, slowly making its way through the atmosphere as it descends into its landing zone, and imaging every persons response to this scene the same as we now view another airplane in the sky.

I remember reading a post on this website before, it stated that there must be some kind of safeguard for civilizations classed as we are(non-believers, easily panicked, best avoided). Perhaps there are entities out there blockading traffic and information from a safe distance from us and other low grade civs'. Another post I remember reading was about a professor in America, I cant remember his name, but he was abducted a few times and through being hypnotized he could recall conversations with human looking telepathic beings who possessed powers to create anything they wanted through symbols with their hands (similar to the white scene in the matrix perhaps?) and also other types of beings, scaled etc. Why don't you see these people on mainstream news or documentaries?

Then there's another bakers dozen stories with such clarity, made by people whose lifestyles beforehand had been totally normal, some not even savvy with science fiction stories.

Anyway, my fingers are getting sore.

a reply to: neoholographic

Well the basic equation is sound, all variables though are indeed variable and even those we have estimated numbers for are constantly expanding so an additional variable should really be added to equate for space in which we could hear of these civilizations.
It would however remember only ever arrive at an Estimated number of likely civilizations rather than an actual number since there are many real universe variables it may not take into account.

Why we have not heard from them (unless we have? and someone in officialdom is keeping a lid on it).

Dark Forest theory, this is an extension of the hypothetical theory that some super advanced civilization's may be so called predator* civilization's and also an extension of the potential that some civilization's go dark because there method's of communication are simply not detectable to us either through there own technological advancement or simply they are so very alien that we can not detect them.

*Predator civilization's are hypothetical civilizations that for a vast number of variable reason's prey upon less developed or less defended civilization's, perhaps they are fearful or control a region of space and do not want that contested or to share the resources they find there, perhaps they destroy other civilizations in order to reap all the refined material's those other civilizations have created and perhaps they are von neumann devices an ai civilization or rather plague that spreads out from there origin world landing on world's, self replicating and consuming all the available resources in the process destroying those world's upon which they land and then sending out waves of new von neumann devices to continue this space locust like activity.

Then there is the age of the universe to factor in, how many regions of space are safe enough for a civilization to have time to arise etc.

It could be that the universe is teeming with life but we are so small and so far apart that unless we invent a technology like star wars hyper drives and star trek's warp drives then scenes like the cantina on tatooine are very unlikely to occur - but not impossible and just maybe in a galaxy far far away - somewhere in time - there may just be such a cantina stuffed with such a wide variety of alien species trading, bartering and generally doing business with one another which if they shared technology is actually not that impossible and even more likely if they shared a galactic exchange standard like the star wars universe galactic credit's or the star wars universe gold pressed latinum currency (though it would have to be an extremely rare and extremely hard to synthesize material to make that make sense and also require those aliens to share the concept of an IOU standard of currency for barter exchange.

a reply to: neoholographic

I've done several threads on this.

It's more of a couple of questions than a paradox, and those questions are: Are we alone? If not, where is everyone?

Remember the difference between scientific fact, and scientific theory. One has been proven over and over again through countless experiments with observations of said experiments showing the same thing.

The other is an idea of an answer to something that may (or may not) have some supporting evidence, but has not been proven beyond doubt at this time.

Right now, the only irrefutable proof of life existing is here on Earth. We're surrounded by it, we can observe it. And unfortunately it's a sample of only one.

The idea that life should exist elsewhere in the universe due to the sheer number of planets around stars, and that we know life here is made up of the most common and abundant elements in the universe, is a theory only at this time.

Just as the idea that UFOs must be aliens from some other world is just that: A theory only. There is a very good reason why the "U" stands for "Unknown". You can't point to a UFO siting and say "Ah HA! Take that Fermi! There's the proof right there!" because it's nothing more than blurry video, pictures or eyewitness accounts (from one of the most unreliable recording machines to exist - the human being).

Ironically, the way the story goes is that it was a UFO story that had come out that one of Fermi's friends mentioned during lunch that had him ask the "Where is everyone?" question.

For now, it's just a question, that has a multitude of possible answers to it and even more (actually most likely) one answer to it.

Seriously... we are the loud, drunken neighbors that shoot guns, and blow stuff up. We have been doing that, on an industrial scale, for centuries.

UFO sightings escalated after we detonated a nuke. Why?

Neighborhood watch. They are making sure, that we don't spread our violence and stupidity beyond our solar system.

Visiting our dumb-a$$es... that's like sight-seeing in Syria.

I wouldn't contact us...

a reply to: eriktheawful

Nice post. Many use the Drake equation is an argument that there must be life on other planets which at the very least matches the level of human technological advancement (strangely really, why isn't it based on the advancement of cockroaches or other species with a large population on this planet?), but again, its based on a sample of one planet - not sure how it can be classed as valid.

All moot because it's a human theory that tries to understand the thought process of (possible) life forms several times more advanced than us. At least that's what I think.

a reply to: madmac5150

We are the Florida of the galaxy.

Quite possibly the best quote ever.

a reply to: neoholographic



www.dailymotion.com...

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a reply to: neoholographic

I've never agreed with the Fermi Paradox in its most basic principle and assumption that we should have already had contact. Another alien civilization "finding" us is equivalent to a person trying to locate a single grain of sand on a massive floor 10 miles by 10 miles.

The sheer vastness of our galaxy let alone the Universe is more immense than we can logically comprehend. With that being said there is plenty of evidence we have already had and been in contact with an advanced alien race. It's just that most people won't accept the facts because they simply don't believe in ET life.

a reply to: 1point92AU

Actually I believe there is ample proof that we already have had contact at least several time's, our ancestors since there ancient time's have looked to the heaven's for being's of power and for there God's, Some even believe that our ancestors were a Colony placed here, Eden a seed colony by a race of being's so much more advanced that simply assuming they arrived in space craft may be utterly wrong since they may have long ago surpassed such a limited state of being and indeed the spirit world they call home - that ultra dimensional existence beyond the limitations of our three dimensional material world were we are chained to the ordinary flow of time may allow they to perform thing's we can not even comprehend or understand.

To find other's like ourselves though radio frequency attenuation makes that highly unlikely and if and when we ever do find a way to search out there we may find a grave yard of long dead civilization's some of which may have far surpassed us and other's that reached only our own level or even not as high as we have while other's again may not yet have arisen or may live upon world's reduced by there own actions back to a state of primitive existence as indeed may have happened to ourselves, we may also stumble upon or awaken a predator civilization and then we shall either be reduced to the level of a few survivors hiding in caves and deep jungles or else be wiped out utterly as indeed may have happened to Mars?.




There are isotopes on Mars that can only be produced by nuclear fission, fission as you know is the opposite of Fusion as occurs in our star and never happens on the scale that the evidence on mars show's it may have there under natural circumstances though small amount's of natural fission may occur were enough fissionable material accumulates due to water born depositing of such material, even then though it does not explode as would have appeared to have happened upon mars but act's like a natural nuclear reactor and just undergoes a natural fission process similar to a small meltdown.

This indeed may be why we have not heard from anyone else, we are living in a region of the universe that is home to a predator civilization, one that is guilty of the mass murder of countless sentient being's over a vast period of time and one that will some day, perhaps by us or another race born somewhere else, perhaps even ANOTHER predator civilization - whom may be the very reason it has wiped out other race to stop them from becoming interested in it's own region of space - be wiped out itself no matter how many world's it has colonized.

marsruins.com...

Want to see what a carpet bombed city look's like, no building's, just roads but were the building's were just craters - and NASA call the road's dust devil trail's.
www.marsruins.com...

And on earth a city from the second world war
media1.britannica.com...
upload.wikimedia.org...
upload.wikimedia.org...
These were just the result of ordinary bomb's but let's look at the result of a small nuclear bomb.
d.ibtimes.co.uk...
d.ibtimes.co.uk...

Now give it at least a couple of hundred thousand years for the dust to settle and then imagine the ruin's untouched by anyone, the atmosphere destroyed and only sand storm's to blow upon them for countless ages on a world were it no longer rain's, a world that can no longer cry for it's children because it too is dead.

a reply to: LABTECH767

But you know if there was or is a predator civilization one thing another predator civilization would look for is them and they would detect them by looking for deserts among the stars were there was no sign of intelligent life, why well they are attacking other civilization's out of fear of them or to cull them and keep control of there region of space and that make's them dangerous to one another and of course one another's prime target.

There are all kinds of possible reasons why we don't seem to have obvious and frequent contact with ET civilizations. However, except for the individual interpretations of some odd experiences some people have had over the years, we have to face the facts that there is no conclusive evidence we can all agree on that proves beyond doubt that we have been visited - in some way we can understand - by aliens. Or that there even are any.