Kurzgesagt (In a Nutshell)

Zero traces of theoretical technologies that we haven't even built yet, in the narrow area that we've looked. And all under the assumption that 'populating the galaxy' is feasible or desirable to hypothetical sapient species that we haven't met and have zero meaningful idea as to the psychology of. Not to mention the impact of things like von Neumann probes, which a more preservationist/conservationist society might frown upon.

These 'paradoxes' are thought experiments and don't prove anything, and shouldn't be treated like they do. All we can be reasonably certain of is that complex life is rare but still occasionally happens (i.e us).

Edited by Chortleous on Apr 18th 2024 at 11:40:36 AM

I mean it's not really making unjustified assumptions. Maybe a few don't want to, maybe most don't want to or never figure out how (because the industrial revolution required such a weirdly specific confluence of factors on our world so it's probable it would be difficult to see happen other places. I think the industrial revolution is probably a great filter in its own right because of just how specific those circumstances were) and hang out in agriculturalist or hunter-gatherer societies forever. But the thing is, it would have to be true of every species in the galaxy that ever got into a position to attempt to take over the galaxy that they don't want to do that, which seems like an unreasonable assumption to make if we truly know nothing about them and assume more than one or two got that far.

It absolutely is interesting that we don't see any aliens yet. It's probably a kind-of-good thing (if they're expansionist enough to try taking over the galaxy they'd almost certainly invade, earth has a lot going for it. Though if they don't wipe us out outright we'd probably end up with a higher standard of living afterwards.) The question is why we don't see them.

I happen to currently think the most likely reason is the Industrial Revolution is hard to make happen and you presumably need one of those to do space travel of any kind, so most aliens who are social enough to build cities and things are subsistence farmers because they don't have much industry.

Yeah to start with it requires a certain lag between large amounts of dead stuff being buried before decomposers evolve.

Also atmospheres. Presuming they have the dexterity and tools to work with complex mechanical technology, they'd have to have worlds that allow for the use of fire, which is a very specific condition Earth has. And even if they did have the machinery, the use of tools, fire, and enough social progress to try it, they may just not have the resources to.

I imagine life is semi-rare, intelligent life is rarer still, and only a small amount of those make it to the industrial phase. I mean, it took humanity 3 million years and the combined efforts of at least 9 human species to get here.

And that's with all the abundant resources Earth has. I can't imagine how many millions of years it would take a species to get to the cultural stage, let alone what we'd define as civilization on worlds worse off than us.

Honestly Earth life is so incredibly tuned to keeping itself around I'm pretty sure it's gonna manage to pass the 800 million solar deadline by a fairly decent chunk somehow.

Life on Earth depends on specific chemical processes. Once the planet starts losing the ability to support those processes, evolution stops being a solution. Hopefully whatever civilization is around by that point is able to practice solar engineering to address the issue. Or they could go live on Mars instead, which will become much more hospitable... until the Sun runs out of hydrogen, at least.

Again, the idea that civilizations would decide not to attempt interstellar travel/colonization, despite having the technology to do so, is a soft filter. It depends on assumptions about psychology that are completely unsupported, never mind that only a few have to defy them in order for the paradox to break.

As I said before, I think it's far more likely that interstellar travel is just too hard to accomplish no matter how good our tech gets. That's a hard filter, albeit a depressing one, because it means we're stuck here.

There's a certain type of person who, when presented with the Fermi Paradox discussion, states that humans shouldn't seek to spread to other stars because we're so awful that we shouldn't inflict ourselves on the rest of the galaxy. They presumably extend that logic to aliens as well. This kind of self-hatred is interesting as a psychological phenomenon but has nothing to do with reality.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:49:01 AM

Granted I feel like solar engines could be a sort of workaround for that. Still slow and probably rather risky for whatever you're travelling towards and yourself, but it probably helps cut down distances by a decent amount as well as staying (mostly) safe at home.

But you know, still kind of super tech.

Why smoking is appealing, and how it causes the physical and psychological harm that it does, both short-term and long term.