what's your (favorite)answer to Fermi's paradox?

search: the Drake Equation.
"The Drake Equation gives a means for estimating how many communicating civilizations may be out there. The results can vary widely, depending on the optimism of the numbers you yourself plug in."
of course it is very biocentric but still

"It's not actually a paradox: just a strong hint that we are alone."
or if it is a paradox, it would be because we are continuing to live in denial about our (supposed) loneliness.

But even if it's a lot like our intelligence, this is very premature. How long have we been broadcasting powerful radio waves? Assume that the speed of light is an unbreakable (or at least very hard-to-break) limit, and they can't respond faster than that, either in radio waves or in 'person'. Halve that time and change the years to light years, and that defines the radius of the sphere of possible respondents by now. It ain't that big - this little galaxy, one of countless many at vast distances apart, is something approaching 100,000 light years across, and has billions of stars, of which we are within reach, on the above terms, of dozens. I'm thinking it's a bit early to start worrying about this alleged paradox.

On their travels, obv.

The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory by Geoffrey A. Landis
Fermi's Paradox (i.e. Where are They?) by James Schombert
Answering the Fermi Paradox: Exploring the Mechanisms of Universal Transcension by John Smart
Our Galaxy Should Be Teeming With Civilizations, But Where Are They? by Seth Shostak
The Possibilities of FTL: Or Fermi's Paradox Reconsidered by F.E. Freiheit IV

On the Importance of SETI for Transhumanism by Milan M.Cirkovic

Another theory: we are part of intelligent life's body. We're in it already. Sort of like the organisms that live in you.

2) physics, distances and the interrelation thereof. valid point, as made somewhere at the start.

3) who's to say it hasn't happened/isn't happening already? where did termites come from? they look pretty kooky to me.

4) maybe the atmosphere on our planet would simply annihlate them upon any contact.

5) because the 'reagan' creature landed here in the 80's and everyone is too scared since (leading us to be pencilled in for demolition to make way for an interstellar bypass).

6) because the universe does in fact revolve around the earth, there are no other intelligent beings, and a woman's proper place is on her back having babies. (Pope unavailable to comment on this, but is, i believe, catholocism's widely held view historically)

take your pick, or three for the price of two.

The Galaxy is filled with killer robots looking for signals, we've been lucky so far.

They Are Signaling, But We Do Not Know How To Listen.

"Hey Fry were we meant to be discovering some new planet today?"

"Eh, theres too much on TV. Let's do it later"

============= ============

Again and again, our faces are pushed into a kind of cosmic paradox,
mentioned earlier when we discussed Frank Tipler's vision of humanity's
role in the cosmos. It's been dubbed the Fermi Paradox: `Where are they?'
asked the great atomic physicist Enrico Fermi, looking at the silent skies.
Alien Spiked civilizations might be sensibly close-mouthed, fearful of
others of their kind from alien stock, or indeed from their stock mutated
by different histories.

All flesh is grass, saith the prophet, and all grass is food. If you don't
wish to be eaten by someone else's mouth, you're well advised to keep your
own buttoned tight. Which doesn't mean that absence of evidence is evidence
of absence. They might be there, everywhere. They might be here. We just
don't recognize aliens even when we breath them in and out, or let them
rush like a sigh through the atoms of which we are composed.

Perhaps the nearest to such a explicit perspective is the `dirt' theory
suggested ebulliently, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, by Stephen Witham. `Any
sufficiently advanced communication,' he proposes, with a nod to Arthur C.
Clarke, `is indistinguishable from noise.' If, to the naked eye and naive
ear, much of the cosmos seems like sheer random jitter and clang, that
might be no more than you'd expect of a high-grade encryption program.

Lately there's been a lot of fuss about ciphers and secrecy on the
Internet. Using a protocol dubbed PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, you can run
your email or business documents or cash transaction through a preliminary
filter and turn it into a two-part jumble of letters and numerals that
can't be unscrambled without your private key. Others can, however, use
your publicly available PGP key to test whether a message purportedly from
you actually does have your seal of approval. The neatest form of such
encryption, much prized by extropians and other net libertarians (such as
the programmer and lingerie model Romana Machado, otherwise whimsically
known as Cypherella) is Steganography, which hides your message in the
background of picture files. The profile or spectrum of a well-encrypted
message, efficiently compressed, is perfectly `white', indistinguishable
from sheer hiss or a random scatter of pixels throughout the image you
transmit.

Witham had a nice idea. What if the universe we see is background-coded
with the Minds of our betters, entities that long ago Transcended or
Spiked? This would be a theory of Cryptocosmography, and its Monty
Pythonesque maxim might be: every grain of dirt is sacred... and perhaps
watching you. Witham put it this way:

"We don't know we're not looking at `alien' civilizations. We don't know
that the whole universe isn't colonized. Life evolves to become
efficiently-encoded information, which looks like sunlight and dirt. I
think these are the most natural developments to expect. The default
scenario. I would expect a colonized universe to look exactly like a barren
one. So what was the Fermi `paradox' again?"158

We should not expect to see a cosmos blazing with crude antimatter battles
between berserkers--dedicated life-killers whose five-billion year mission
roaming the void it to seek out strange civilizations and exterminate them.
No, Witham's fear is `interpenetrating infections, computer viruses in the
kernel level of physics,' a kind of `applied theology'. If that's feasible,
it might be that we already inhabit a universe entirely colonized at all
the interesting levels by post-Spike cultures. That would be the mother of
all dirty goo catastrophes. Except that it's not, strictly speaking, a
catastrophe. It's just how things are. `At most, our civilization, life as
we know it, is the faintest ripple, the merest wisp of a breeze, on what's
going on right in our laps. We are an insignificant perturbation not yet
worthy of scratching, information-theory-wise.'

As you might imagine, this rude suggestion elicited baffled or angry
responses from critics. Science already knows too much for this to be true.
There's no room in physics for hidden gods lurking in the dirt, or in the
atoms, or in the folded-up dimensions. Anyway, computer design is well
understood, and data routing and bit-exchanges don't look one whit like
noisy dirt. Get out of here!159

Others noted that, well, really we still only know a teeny part of
everything that's yet to be known. Besides, the point is not that
computations run to resemble noise are efficient, and therefore detectable,
but that this masquerade of noisiness might be the only way to stay free of
a bug-squasher able to stomp your star. (Not necessarily a big problem for
post-Spike technology, but this is a debate for advanced game-theorists.)
`I imagine aliens with billion-year patience would have extra slack here,'
Witham noted, probably with a grin. And if aliens can be expected to comply
with game theory to this counter-intuitive conclusion, maybe tomorrow's
post-Singularity Exes and their human pets will do the same. Our immediate
and recognizable merely human descendants, if there are any who elect to
refuse the uploading option, might end up living in a paradisal world
exactly like Pleistocene spring time, eating of all the trees in the garden
except the Tree of Knowledge...

Re-writing the cosmic laws

Polish polymath Stanislaw Lem once made a similar suggestion.160 Then why
don't we find all those archaic galactic civilizations?

"...because they are already everywhere... A billion-year-old civilization
employs [no instrumental technologies]. Its tools are what we call the Laws
of Nature. The present Universe no longer is the field of play of forces
chemical, pristine, blindly giving birth to and destroying suns and their
systems... In the Universe it is no longer possible to distinguish what is
`natural' (original) from what is `artificial' (transformed)."

The primordial cosmos might have possessed different laws in different
regions (a notion common to current claims by cosmologists Fred Hoyle and
Andrei Linde). If so, only in certain remote patches might life arise.
Attempting to stabilize its environment, each early Spiked culture would
jiggle the local laws of physics to its taste, until in their hungry
expansion for living space they begin to encroach upon each other's
territories.

Vast wars would follow: `The fronts of their clashes made gigantic
eruptions and fires, for prodigious amounts of energy were released by
annihilation and transformations of various kinds... collisions so powerful
that their echo reverberates to this day'--in the form of the 2.7 degree
Kelvin background radiation, mistakenly assumed to be a residue of the Big
Bang. It is a charming cosmogony--an explanation for the birth and shape of
the observed universe--and it fits all too neatly with the colossal
intergalactic filaments and voids first detected years after Lem published
his jape...

This universe of Lem's, torn asunder in conflict over its very architecture
by titanic Exes and Powers, is saved from utter ruin by the laws of
game-theory, which ensure that the former combatants must henceforth remain
in strict isolation from each other. The chosen laws of physics that
prevail, as a result, are just those restrictive rules we chafe under
today: a limited speed of light chosen to slow conflicts, an expanding
spacetime (good fences make good neighbors, don't you know). We live upon a
scratchy board abandoned by the Gamers. The Universe observed and theorized
by science is no more than `a field of multibillion-year labors, stratified
one on the other over the eons, tending to goals of which the closest and
most minute fragments are fragmentarily perceptible to us.'

This delicious logic was not a bid by the distinctly atheistic Stanislaw
Lem to reinstate a religious perspective in his then-communist
Poland--something that the triumphant revival of Catholicism has done in
the meantime, no doubt to Lem's chagrin. Nor am I seriously suggesting that
this is how our universe really began. But the scenario does sketch out
rather brilliantly just the kind of universe we might expect this one to
become, following the human Spike. If so, has it happened elsewhere already?

A perspective that professional cosmologists fail to acknowledge (I can see
their faces screwing up already) is that the observable universe, in whole
or part, might indeed be at least somewhat engineered, but not by any known
religion's deity. You can see why they'd have little sympathy for that
conjecture. The Copernican Principle, which has served science well for
centuries, tells us that the safest default assumption is ordinariness,
mediocrity. Things just are how they seem. There's no immense neon
advertisement in the heavens informing us of the presence (or departure) of
cosmic civilizations.

But hang on. Certainly, we now suspect, there's been plenty of time for
other life-bearing planets to form, hatch their brood, nurture
intelligence, seed it into the cosmos at nearly the speed of light (or much
slower, it makes little difference). That's a logical implication of the
same Copernican Principle. We humans will probably follow this course
sometime between the end of the 21st century and a million years hence. So
why should we be unique in this respect alone?

If that's correct, our own galaxy with its 400 billion suns and at least 10
billion year history has had many opportunities to bring forth Spikes
aplenty in the heavens. True, the earliest stars would have been deficient
in heavy elements, but there have been stars like the Sun for many hundreds
of millions if not billions of years longer than our own 5 billion year-old
star. What would galactic colonizers look like when they're at home? Let us
look carefully not for lurid displays (which are boastful, immature, tacky
and probably dangerous) but for clever husbanding of resources by one or
more sublimely competent technological cultures scattering their mind
children across the sky.

[go to the book for more]

8.58. Posted to the extropian e-list 15 October 1996, and cited with Mr
Witham's permission.
9.59. See, for example, Robin Hanson's reply on the extropian e-list, 15
October 1996.
0.60. `The New Cosmogony', in his delightful collection of reviews of
non-existent books, A Perfect Vacuum, Mandarin, 1991 (originally in English
in 1979, sublimely translated by Michael Kandel), pp. 197-229. I am
grateful to Mitch Porter and John Redford for reminding me of this
wonderful, funny piece.

;-)

*see The Last Starfighter

Bump for related Drake Equation content:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/15/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36

Anyway this is the key to the paradox and why the 'space is really big maaan' answers above aren't a solution (quote from wikipedia):

Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years. And since many of the stars similar to the Sun are billions of years older, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, or at least their probes.

scientists sounding like stoned college kids

I have no idea why anyone automatically assumes intelligent life is an inevitability, it's only happened once on this planet! (Please back up any "or...has it?" #makesuthink claims with robust evidence)

my understanding is that Fermi's paradox hinges on the idea that Artificial Superintelligence is possible. I have my doubts about that. there are certain natural laws that can't be broken, even if you're rich

Trying to remember what Martin Skidmore said about this. Oh wait, it’s upthread

Why would an intelligent species choose to send out physical probes that would not fulfill their mission for "a few million years"? The survivability of such probes over such time periods would be pretty suspect to begin with and the value of the information obtained after the lapse of so much time would be highly questionable.

idk why the specificity of there being as many as 36 advanced alien civilizations is so funny to me.

maybe the mobster from mr. show discovered a new highest number

watch this 3 times and you've dialed the aliens' number

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H7wUKln4OM

Message to aliens: don't bother, Aimless says it's not worth it.

BORAD TO ALIENS:
DROP DEAD

Why would an intelligent species choose to send out physical probes that would not fulfill their mission for "a few million years"? The survivability of such probes over such time periods would be pretty suspect to begin with and the value of the information obtained after the lapse of so much time would be highly questionable.

Some species on this planet (including vertebrates) have been carrying out a mission to survive and reproduce for hundreds of millions of years.

Aimless is projecting a lot of earthling limitations onto the aliens

indeed. i know everyone thinks this stuff is bogus, but if there is some form of higher intelligence / aliens out there, they are unlikely to be biological. i could elaborate but i think everyone will think i'm crazy

but keep in mind that a computer could easily assign a incredibly long-term task and then sleep until it's done. is it better to know something, a million years from now, rather than not knowing it? yes, therefore, send the probe and carry on with other machine-alien things in the meantime

green machine elves, I get u bro

the problem with humans thinking about superintelligence is that we imagine superintelligent creatures to be like really smart human beings

would read ZS sci-fi

they are unlikely to be biological. i could elaborate but i think everyone will think i'm crazy

https://gizmodo.com/aliens-wouldnt-need-warp-drives-to-take-over-an-entire-1847101242

Love it - the full animation is better than the clip at the top. H8 to be blanked by Kardashev III type civilisations.

Aimless is projecting a lot of earthling limitations onto the aliens

Until the Law of Uniformity, which states that physical laws operate uniformly in all parts of the universe, is repealed from the laws of physics, I don't see how transferring information across the universe would be any easier for non-earthlings. Just imagining it would be easy for them is not distinguishable from daydreaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUJYP8tnRE

I don't necessarily endorse the Dark Forest answer but this is a good summary - relativistic kill vehicles seem bad.

kurzgesagt started really, really irritating me for some hard-to-define reason a year or so ago. they come off as really glib maybe

maybe this is fine though, it's mostly a me problem

oh god his voice tho

okay the age of empires bit was nice

i think ultimately the me problem is that they're very good at evoking the vast pointlessness of human endeavour in the face of the endless void. metal af

Aliens haven't contacted Earth because there's no sign of intelligence here, new answer to the Fermi paradox suggests

A new paper claims that intelligent aliens would only be interested in contacting the most technologically advanced planets, and Earth doesn't make the cut. Why haven't aliens gotten in touch? Maybe they think Earth is boring.

Mind-reading what aliens think is a peculiar superpower to claim. Nice that it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

if aliens exist they're a millimeter tall and are killed by a slight breeze

personally, i believe aliens really did detect us a while back and this is what immediately happened

https://i.imgur.com/a2Qlrb5.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/f5vuBys.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/m4v1kND.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/2kHsQdR.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/DYjkAOg.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/dTFQ6Wm.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/anW5rCd.png

The early galaxy didn't enough metals for planets to form, life on Earth formed “maybe about as early as it ever could’ve formed given galactic conditions” - https://www.popsci.com/science/planet-ingredients-metal/

we're an OG

disrupters in the 'having sentience' space

There's a planet not too far away from us whose most advanced race is a population of green badger-like creatures that haven't evolved to use tools yet. And that's the only other planet with intelligent life on it

we're an OG

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, August 9, 2024 10:23 AM bookmarkflaglink

Patient Zero.

Maybe that’s why we haven’t been contacted by intelligent life millions of years more advanced than us

every time they consider it the yanks start another election cycle

semi-relatedly, mr simulation theory has dropped a new one. afaict it says we have to build AI to take our place among the outer gods
https://nickbostrom.com/papers/ai-creation-and-the-cosmic-host.pdf

Ran across this passage from Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora after a many-generation starship finally gets to where it's going and discovers the planets there are 100% toxic to people. It's a very KSR passage, but I kinda like it

"Maybe that's why we've never heard a peep from anywhere. It's not just that the universe is too big. Which it is. That's the main reason. But then also, life is a planetary thing. It begins on a planet and is part of that planet. It's something that water planets do, maybe. But it develops to live where it is. So it can only live there, because it evolved to live there. That's its home. So, you know, Fermi's paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it's too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won't work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn't you? It doesn't even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You'll never hear back. So that's my answer to the paradox.

that's awesome.

ARXIV of the month: "A Less Terrifying Universe? Mundanity as an Explanation for the Fermi Paradox" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.22878

"Applying a principle of “radical mundanity”, this paper examines explanations for the lack of strong evidence for the presence of technology-using extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) in the Galaxy - the Fermi paradox. With this principle, the prospect that the Galaxy contains a modest number of civilizations is preferred, where none have achieved technology levels sufficient to accomplish large-scale astro-engineering or lack the desire to do so."

tl;dr: Civs eventually reach a "enh fuck it" level

The last few answers (too hard/too dangerous/we're too early) are pretty good, and at the moment we stand a good chance of being a confirming data point for the great filter theory. Combine all those and you've got a decent answer.

The idea that humans will ultimately explore and spread themselves across our galaxy feels like a lingering echo of the boundless optimism that characterized the nineteenth century's humanists. In the 1950s & 60s this alluring idea became a talisman against the dark reality of hydrogen bombs and ICBMs. It gave young people permission to imagine a more hopeful and exciting future. Now I notice that most science fiction is dystopian.

I like Kim Stanley Robinson's answer that Elvis Telecom posted:

Fermi's paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it's too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won't work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home.

This makes great sense to me and is quietly optimistic in a way that avoids the grandiosity of perpetual human expansion.