Im soon gonna upload an interesting video on youtube about this topic

Imagine a planet with abundant water, carbon, nitrogen and many other relevant life ingredients. Life eventually evolves there, and even intelligent life also evolves.

There's a problem with this planet, though: there are very little materials you could use to build spaceships. Extremely low amounts of iron, aluminum or any kind of strong metal that could be used there. All materials in this planet are liquids or brittle solids, like coal.

Also, there is very little silicon in this planet, so it would be hard to make chips, and therefore radio communication would be very difficult.

The intelligent species in this planet will never be able to invent cars, planes and computers because their planets lack the necessary materials to build those (even though they have the brains to do that). They will keep a simple tribal lifestyle and will be stuck forever in this planet.

Is this usually taken into account when people talk about the rare earth hypothesis? If intelligent life evolves, but they cannot exit their planet or communicate with others outside their planet, they will likely never interact with humans in any form.

(Points at a Neutron Star). Stars burn protons to fuel a chain reaction.

(Points at every other Star). They all successfully made a single fusion reaction not knowing what the consequences were.

Ok so ik this is a sci-fi but what if yk how when you paint online - digital art. There's like layers to the whole art but every change your make on each later is visible as a wholein the image, what if that's what our universe is like and we're just looking for others on our layer but they do not exist in our layer and to find life we somehow need to discover the other layers and their paths which exists in the same time and same place but not on our layer. Idk if I'm just going crazy but a good theory no? Is this something I came up with or its already a thing ( there's more chances for the latter)?

Edit: yep I was asking wrong as I first thought but atleast now I got what Fermi actually is, thanks guys!

G'day all! We're a couple of Aussie mates who have been lurkers on this sub for a while. About a year ago, we were inspired by ideas about rationality and paradoxical questions to create a podcast: Recreational Overthinking. We recently released an episode about Fermi Estimates, where we go through a few fun examples, and also discuss the Fermi Paradox.

Given that we enjoy a lot of the ideas on this sub, we thought we'd share our socials here in case anyone is keen on checking out the podcast! For reference, the Fermi Estimate episode is Episode 18: Terror Slug. If you've got any thoughts on it, we'd love to chat about them in the comments!

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3xZEkvyXuujpkZtHDrjk7r?si=vXXt5dv_RL2XTOBTPl4XRg

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/recreational-overthinking/id1739244849

Instagram: recreationaloverthinking

If a civilization that easily manipulates and accesses high-energy physics (e.g., an atomic bomb is a New Year's firecracker and children get a particle accelerator for Christmas) and does not become a hyper-rational hyper-self controlled civilization, where every individualistic, defiant, crazy and daring drive is not TOTALLY suppressed, it will extinct itself.

So every advanced civilization in the galaxy is necessarily an iper-rational hive mind or something very close. All of them will possibly have concluded that exploring space is useless/dangerous.

"But you need but one that does not conform itself to this paradigm..". Nope.

If you possess such a tech that you can create a black hole during the science lesson in high school, you cannot afford any deviation from the paradigm.

This post is uh inspired by the video done by John Michael Godier. And is mostly a bunch of questions.

Basically the TL/DR is that a Miyake Event is a supped up version of a Carrington Event (solar storm that could threaten our electrical grid)

I have never been a huge fan of a late stage great filter/late stage filter as a solution to the Fermi Paradox but if Miyake events happen once a millennium, we are talking about threading some serious needles here.

You need enough fossil fuels on your planet to help jump start industrialization, but you don't use too much to cook the planet, while running out of limited fossil fuels. Then you need to make the transition to electrification, but you also need to dodge Miyake events. If your society does crash because of Miyake event, you need enough resources to rebuild before you next Miyake event.

Also can we build an electrically grid that is shielded from Miyake events? Do we even have the technology. If not, are O'Neil Cylinders subject to the fall out of occasional Miyake events?

This is my very first post on Reddit, but I was just wondering if there has been any thoughts on the Devonian Extinction.

My thoughts are thus:

The Devonian Extinction event was in part due to an evolutionary arms race of plants racing skywards to the sun. This upward chase without land-based animals to keep the forests in check is thought to be the source of a massive drop in atmospheric C02, causing a massive spike in global temperatures and eventually one of the worst extinction events in Earth's life history.

Where this comes into play in the Fermi Paradox is that it is assumed that interstellar civilizations would have to have gone through technological revolutions guiding them through increasingly dense fuels that power their technology.

For humans those are long-chain carbon molecules. Without these basic high-energy density molecules from things like coal and petroleum, we may have never reached the energy density of things like nuclear power.

Where do we largely get our long-chain carbon molecules? The mass extinction event of the Devonian and the global forests that nearly simultaneously laid down to build our current coal beds and gas fields.

If planetary evolution on worlds abroad never had a similar event, they may never achieved interplanetary travel or technology.

Thoughts?

1.) as species grow larger, sexual reproduction is favored over asexual reproduction

2.) with species that sexually reproduce, the act of sexual reproduction needs to be enjoyable for at least one of the parties involved.

3.) as these species grow more intelligent, they invent tools. First their inventions are things that are necessary or at least beneficial for their survival, but as the species evolves, and their technology advances, new inventions are less and less about survival and more about entertainment, or in a different word, pleasure.

4.) it is not long before some inventions are created to satiate the species desire to reproduce. In our times and world, this is porn, hentai, erotica, and sex toys.

5.) because these inventions satisfy our urge to reproduce while being easier to access than it is to find a mate, the drive from this species to reproduce is lowered, and the birthrate lowers.

6.) as technology advances, and satisfies more and more of an individuals needs, the urge to find a partner is driven lower and lower, until the population drops to an point that it can't recover

The Berserker Hypothesis posits that the universe was wiped clean of all life by Von Neumann probes and those probes self destroyed as part of their programming. I propose that as we are the ones who seem to benefit from there being no aliens that it implies we created the state of the universe ourselves. Most likely some precursor of humanity created the exact situation needed to recreate humanity if the Von Neumann probes ever had to be used in intergalactic war and as you can see it was needed.

Or put more simply if you find a boat that should have millions of people and there's only one person on it you might be suspicious of them.

There are a lot of explanations for Fermi Paradox, and I think some of them together caused the phenomena we saw, so I synthesized some of them into a coherent narrative below. In short, life is abundant, life to intelligence is the first great filter coming from randomness in evolutioin (so it takes time and space), but some civilization will occur and they all go extinct at certain point by themselves or when they meet others and don't get along with each other, and if they do survive, they as a whole enter into next level of arena, where the game repeats. Moreover, the high level intelligence remain stealthy to lower ones for safety reasons.

ps: English not my native language, and following is translated from ChatGPT. This is my first long post in reddit, pls don't mind my format.

The universe has existed for about 14 billion years. Several generations of stars have burned and exploded, scattering enough metals into the interstellar medium to form life. The Milky Way galaxy was formed slightly later, around 13.6 billion years ago. About 4.6 billion years ago, a dense region within the Orion Arm's interstellar cloud collapsed under gravity, igniting the Sun, with the remaining matter forming the planets that orbit it. Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago, took several hundred million years to cool, and stabilize its orbit. Primitive life appeared between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago and began to evolve. Humans appeared roughly 5 million years ago. Civilization began with the use of tools and technology, with primitive stone tools being used about a million years ago, the emergence of language around 200,000 years ago, and ancient civilizations forming about 6,000 years ago.

The evolutionary history of life on Earth can offer insights into the timescales of civilizations in the universe. Although life can form under different conditions, there are common factors, such as the need for macromolecular substances capable of forming complex structures, and a solvent to facilitate material exchange with the environment. The approximately 100 elements in the universe formed gradually, with heavier elements being rarer, and the most abundant elements are several orders of magnitude more common than the less abundant ones. Considering the chemical properties of elements, organic macromolecules with carbon chains and water are the most likely forms for life to appear (in the first place).

I believe that life is widespread in the universe. Given a suitable star and the right elements on a planet in the habitable zone, amino acids can gradually synthesize, and over billions of years, evolve into life with universal fundamentals but specific forms. Life formation requires certain conditions and sufficient time; these requirements may seem stringent, but they are relatively simple for the universe with abundant space and time. The first Great Filter happens at the transition from life to intelligence. Life evolves through natural selection and random mutations. We can think of the evolutionary arena as a plateau with peaks and valleys. Animals randomly move in different directions over time, leading them to ascend or descend certain peaks. Occasionally, tides come in and eliminate all animals below a certain height, and such a cycle repeats. Eventually, the system stabilizes, with each animal(s) occupying a peak where they have reached an optimal local solution (ecological niche), leaving no room for further ascent. There may be higher peaks elsewhere, but reaching them requires animals to abandon their current advantageous form, descend into a valley, and risk being wiped out by the tides. This explains why evolution is slow, as species in stable environments evolve into their corresponding ecological niches, where their form is the optimal solution for survival as long as the environment remains stable. Over billions of years, life has undergone this repeated evolutionary process. Finally, around 2 million years ago, climate changes led to the aridification of East Africa, causing widespread vegetation die-offs, forcing a group of ancient apes to descend from the trees and walk upright on two legs in search of a new home.

The second Great Filter, and possibly the one we are currently facing, is the leap from mastering technology to entering interstellar space. "A galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across. At 1% of the speed of light, a civilization or self-replicating machine could cross it in 10 million years. Why is the universe still empty?" This is a form of question posed by the Fermi Paradox. With a sense of civilization's time scale, it becomes easier to explain. The timescale for civilization formation is about a million years, but once a civilization begins developing science and technology, this timescale compresses to a century, and technological progress will only further compress a civilization's timescale. The more advanced a civilization is, the longer a hundred years will seem, let alone a thousand or million years. Therefore, the idea of slowly colonizing the galaxy at a snail's pace is implausible. The purpose of expanding beyond the solar system is because local resources can no longer meet the civilization's needs, which means that this civilization could use sufficient resources within the galaxy and has mastered technology several eras beyond the atomic age, but before that, it is very likely to self-destruct. Although, for some reason, it is not impossible for a civilization with a timescale of a few decades to spend a thousand years reaching a target 100 light-years away, considering the first Great Filter and the nature of such behavior, the probability of it happening becomes very low, and more unlikely actions will only further reduce its occurrence. The universe is vast but still finite, and when the probability of an event becomes too small, even if it is theoretically possible, it may never happen in the entire history of the universe or its distant future. Therefore, the Milky Way may have many planets with life, some of which might have developed intelligent civilizations, but they are all trapped locally. In the entire universe, other galaxies might be similar, with some even producing one or several interstellar civilizations that may have encountered and communicated with each other. Beyond that, perhaps every few thousand galaxies that have birthed interstellar civilizations could produce one that develops into an intergalactic civilization traversing its galaxy cluster at near-light speed. Each possible scenario above reduces the probability by an order of magnitude or more. The evolution of civilization is the evolution of technology, and the use of technology carries risks. The more advanced the technology, the more a civilization can impact its environment and leave a mark on the universe, but when they fall, the greater the destruction that technology can cause. So, one explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that the universe is vast, life, intelligence, and even more advanced civilizations may appear, but with each step forward in technology, the probability sieve makes the most influential civilizations increasingly rare. The distribution of civilizations in the universe resembles Gabriel's Horn, with an infinitely large base and a rapidly narrowing top. The curve of this horn is not smooth, with abrupt contractions representing the Great Filters. The first Great Filter is natural and not caused by humans, arising from the randomness in the process of natural selection. After that, each Great Filter is the same, all human-caused, and all due to one reason: intelligent individuals meet, interact, develop together until one day, they mutually annihilate each other. Of course, if fortunate, they can avoid this bad outcome, sustain a larger collective through certain means, and step into a bigger universe as a complete and harmonious entity. They could enter their galaxy group (about 10 million light-years), their local supercluster (100 million light-years), their supercluster (1 billion light-years), and structures so large they defy description. At the highest levels of the horn, there may have been only a few, a dozen, or perhaps more of these civilizations in the entire universe. But no matter how many, curiosity rather than the survival instinct drives them to explore the broader universe, to experience the most intense and lively aspects of the universe, to witness the formation of supermassive black holes, to observe neutron star mergers up close, to explore the deepest mysteries of the universe, and to understand reality itself. During their journey, they might have seen countless civilizations still confined within their solar systems, halted before the second Great Filter, and the destruction of these civilizations often took with them the life on their planets that had taken billions of years to evolve, extinguishing any hope of starting over. They would not attempt to intervene, but unlike our indifference to the struggles of ants, these civilizations, like them, possess intelligence and free will, filled with curiosity about the same universe, longing to explore broader horizons. Their choice not to intervene is not out of coldness or indifference, but because these civilizations, which have yet to pass the test, are internally divided, distrustful of each other, unable to form true unity and harmony. To these advanced civilizations, those that fail to pass the test are dangerous. More advanced technology will only lead these immature civilizations to expand their distrust and conflict in dangerous ways. If such civilizations fail to overcome their internal contradictions and violent tendencies during their evolutionary process, even with more powerful technology, they will only exacerbate their self-destructive tendencies, and they might even bring this destructiveness to a wider universe. In extremely rare cases, perhaps out of pity, they might leave a barely perceptible ripple in space-time, pulling back a pure-hearted civilization on the brink of destruction due to an accident.

The journey continues, and they are lonely as individuals. They want to know if there are others like them in the universe. They look forward to meeting other similar beings, sharing each other's history, technology, and beliefs. Over a long period, they finally encounter others, one, two, three... These civilizations begin to contact each other, carefully exchange, learn from each other, and develop together.

Humans have come a long way from a million years ago to today. Using the imagined community and agreements, we have gradually incorporated more people into larger structures, experiencing hardships and setbacks along the way but ultimately succeeding. The current largest structure is the nation-state, built through beliefs, ethnicity, and constitutions. Throughout history, technological progress has prompted more people to meet earlier, forcing people in different structures without mutual benefits to resort to traditional solutions from their ancestors, war. In the 15th century, the maturity of ocean navigation technology led to the Age of Discovery, followed by centuries of bloody progress. In modern times, relative stability was achieved through mutual benefits brought by trade. However, ethnicity, nations, and the so-called glory that comes with them are still the largest binding concepts that humans can truly understand and grasp, leading to World War I and World War II. The most advanced technologies were brought to the battlefield, tearing hundreds of thousands of people to shreds in batches, and resources far surpassing those invested in science during peacetime were poured to develop the most effective killing weapons. In the end, after that war to end all wars, nuclear weapons, the most destructive technology ever mastered by humanity, were born before any larger structure could emerge. Civilization will not realize its predicament; it will not stop moving forward and will continue its progress. The development of communication technology brought the internet, and within a few decades, people across the entire globe were drawn into the same community. People began to curiously communicate with others on the opposite side of the Earth, sharing views and cultures, and promoting mutual learning. From nature and nurture, people are different from one another, and so are the nations they form. In the past, to unite, people established stable collectives through nations, sharing a history and culture that made them proud. But when nations meet, the legacies that people cherish from history become a burden. To unite more people together, it was necessary albeit unrealistic, in effect, to first remove the tools that bound them to a particular group, while simultaneously creating a new tool to bring all those who have been freed from their bonds together again and start developing anew. This echoes the previously mentioned plateau of evolution, where, to break free from a local optimum and continue progressing, one must first pause, or even regress during trial and error, descending into a valley before climbing again. The term "global human community" has existed for a long time, but like many other terms that refer to ideals that people aspire to but have yet to realize, people still carry the weight of history and do not know how to achieve them. This is because the immediate problems to consider are already overwhelming compared to distant goals. But civilization is unaware of this, and technology will continue to progress. Two samples are not enough to predict whether the scale of total war will cause greater destruction with further technological advancement. Precision strikes may achieve objectives while curbing casualties. But aside from these, black swan events like the Cuban Missile Crisis will not be the last. In the coming centuries, more technologies will emerge. Humanity can win countless times, but Death only needs to get lucky once. This could also be a reason for incentivizing humanity to step into space sooner, to spread to other planets.

https://youtu.be/-adQRJ6Vsuc?feature=shared

1. We are probably alone in the galaxy and even in all the observable universe between (study of the future humanity institute)

2. we are alone because of the paradox of youth

3. rare earth hypothesis

4. rare life hypothesis

5. hypothesis of rare intelligent life

6. hypothesis of technological civilizations and species with rare tools

7. improbable fire control

8. rare natural moon and satellites

9. large filter for the passage from prokaryotes to eukaryotes

10. large Cambrian explosion filter

11. slow filters

12. lack of oxygen for the transition to complex life at the right time

13. lack of geological activities to promote the development of life

14. scarcity of magnetic fields

15. alone because we live in a computer simulation

16. alone because you are a Boltzmann brain

17. only life of this type because anthropomorphism and egocentrism

18. systematic extinction by spatial phenomena

19. systematic extinction by natural phenomena

20. ecology and shortage of resources technologies which never reach maturity and detectable in the form of flash before disappearing

21. self-destruction of civilizations

22. destruction by AI and/or nanotechnology (gray goo scenario)

23. theory of multiple large filters

24. no paradox because slow expansion due to the frequency of colonies generating other colonies

25. we are the first

26. they left our dimension to go to other physical dimensions and other layers of existence, (they are here but we cannot see them)

27. Civilizations are absorbed in their media and disinterested in exploring the universe

28. they uploaded themselves to digital havens and matryoshka brains

29. interstellar travel is difficult or impossible for civilizations

30. lack of resources

31. impossible to hold empires over thousands and hundreds of thousands of light years

32. they don't care about us

33. they go aboard galaxies for their machines

34. intelligent life returned to the center of the galaxy 4 billion years ago, we arrived too late (NASA study it seems to me)

35. they came to earth several millions or even billions of years in the past and found nothing interesting

36. they ibernate (estivation hypothesis)

37. they spread like water (galactic percolation theory)

38. they colonize the stars and found small empires like the Polynesians did in Oceania. (Hypothesis of the cosmic archipelago or alone in a galaxy crowded with aliens)

39. they are reluctant to colonize because of the dangers like colonies waking up

40. they do not see the point of colonization

41. they have an ethic that prevents them from colonization

42. there are "reapers" and we appeared after the last harvest

43. black forest theory

44. ancient and unique super predator theory

45. theory of multiple predatory civilizations

46. berserker theory, (or deadly probes scenario)

47. grabby alien by Robin Hanson

48. zoo hypothesis

49. planetarium hypothesis (version of the zoo hypothesis)

50. cosmic apartheid theory

51. we are as insignificant as bacteria, we cannot detect them and they do not even notice us or consider us in the best case scenario

52. the hypothesis of aquatic worlds

53. the ocean worlds hypothesis

54. the expansion of the universe

55. we know less than 1% of the Milky Way

56. Big bang alien (kurzgesagt)

57. their messages have not yet arrived

58. we haven't been listening for long enough

59. we don't listen well enough

60. messages do not go at the same speed and go unnoticed because they think at different speeds

61. they are the UFO, kidnapping, men in black, government (Macron repels him...lol 🇫🇷🐔)

62. religions and ancient astronaut theory

Well I admit the last two are a bonus for laughs, don't overdo it anyway...!!!!

I like to think that once an alien civilisation becomes advanced enough, instead of colonising other planets and exploring the universe they take a utilitarian view of the world and focus on the alleviation of all suffering on their planet through stuff like genetic engineering, utopian designer drugs, wire-heading etc, and live in a constant state of euphoria and bliss, with this level of contentment, what incentives would they have to explore the universe? Why risk it all for the unknown?

Hey everyone,

I’ve been mulling over a thought that’s both exciting and a bit unsettling, and I wanted to share it with you all for some healthy discussion.

What if the reason we haven’t had any direct contact with extraterrestrial beings isn’t because they don’t exist or haven’t reached us yet, but because they’re already here—observing us through their advanced AI?

This idea ties into the Fermi Paradox, which questions why, given the high likelihood of extraterrestrial civilizations, we haven’t encountered any evidence of them. Perhaps the answer is that they’re not traveling the stars in the way we expect. Instead of biological beings making the perilous journey across the cosmos, advanced civilizations might be sending AI probes to explore and monitor other planets—including ours.

Think about it: As civilizations advance, it makes sense they’d opt for safer, more efficient means of exploration. Instead of risking their own lives with interstellar travel, they could send AI agents to study other worlds. These AI could infiltrate our technology, learn our languages, understand our cultures, and monitor our development—all without us ever realizing it.

Inspired by the series The Three-Body Problem on Netflix, this idea flips the classic narrative of first contact. We often imagine the challenges we’d face communicating with aliens upon their arrival, but what if they’ve been learning about us for generations? They might already know every language on record and have a deep understanding of our history and politics—possibly even better than we do ourselves.

Flipping the script, if we discovered life on a distant planet, wouldn’t we consider doing the same? Sending AI probes or signals to gather information before making any form of contact seems both logical and practical, especially given the limitations of human space travel compared to the rapid advancements in AI technology. While the dream of warp-speed travel captivates our imagination, the reality is that AI development is likely to outpace our progress in faster-than-light travel.

This brings to mind the “Prime Directive” from Star Trek, which prohibits interfering with the natural development of less advanced civilizations. Perhaps these alien observers have a similar principle, choosing to watch and learn without direct intervention—unless certain criteria are met.

On the other hand, depending on their intentions, they might have already integrated into our critical systems—like defense, infrastructure, or communications—giving them the ability to influence or control outcomes if they deemed it necessary. It’s a bit eerie to consider, but with our increasing reliance on technology, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

We’ve seen unprecedented leaps in technology over the past few decades. The rapid advancement in computing power, the swift creation of vaccines during global health crises—like the “technological hand of God” that seemed to guide us through the COVID-19 pandemic—and the developments in AI could be seen as monumental human achievements. But could they also be nudged along by external influences?

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think it’s possible that extraterrestrial civilizations are already among us through their AI? How would this perspective change the way we approach technology and space exploration?

In my opinion, there is another step to consider beyond the frequency of emergence of intelligent species. And that is: how many of these species possess or retain a "collective hive mind", motivating them to invest resources and lives in space travel across hundreds of light years, galactic colonization efforts, and so on.

If, as a species evolves, it becomes more individualistic—where every single existence becomes incredibly valuable to its possessor (especially if future technology can grant an eternity of youth and pleasure)—you won't find many willing to board a space shuttle and set off for a solar system 54 light years away. The risks include not returning, dying horribly in space or on a hostile planet, or, at best, discovering a Mars-like rock with a few bacteria on it. Or perhaps an advanced civilization that blows you up, or abducts you to make awful stuff.

If you're that curious, why not just send some tiny, invisible automated space probes, take some pictures, and bring back the data?

Our concept of exploration, colonisation, transcending the limits, might be biased by the fact we are just risking a few decades of your mortal, imperfect life. If the risk was to lose an eternity of fulfillment, possibility, growth, and enlightenment.... we would be much more careful.

Perhaps the "great filter" is simply an aversion to risk born from having too much to lose and not enough to gain from space exploration.

I'm baffled by how people wonder about the Fermi paradox when the answer is so obvious. The earth is extremely rare. Simple life like bacteria is probably very common and can be found everywhere. Complex life is very hard to form because it has only appeared in the last 500 million years. Even if Complex life forms, intelligence might not. And even if intelligence forms, it might not be as advanced as human intelligence. Intelligence Can be unhelpful as it costs a lot of energy. There could esaly be planets where intelligence ends with Neanderthal levels.

A common argument is that life would not be anything like earth but that can only be true to a certain extent. Life would almost certanly need carbon and oxygen and water. Bacteria may be able to suvive conditions like this but complex life is much more fragile. Even with the perfect conditions, think about how many things had to go right for us to exist. The earth has come very close to extinction several times and many rare events have come together to make humans possible. We have no idea how many of these events were necessary for us to form but with each event added the odds of intelligence decrease quickly.

I acknowledge that this solution makes several assumptions and leaps of faith but this is by far the simplest solution to the Fermi paradox that makes the least leaps of faith.

In this series, I took a hard look at the Drake Equation and ran some serious data simulations to estimate the odds of alien civilizations in our galaxy. What do the numbers really say about the likelihood of past and future encounters?

After digging into the probabilities, I found that the chances of us crossing paths with extraterrestrial life are even lower than you might think. Or are they?

From Bayesian models to Monte Carlo simulations, I’ve quantified the uncertainty behind the UFO phenomenon in a way that goes beyond the headlines and conspiracy theories. If you’ve ever wondered about the science behind the Fermi Paradox and our place in the cosmos, this analysis might change the way you see things.

Check out the full breakdown on Medium https://towardsdatascience.com/calculating-contact-a-data-driven-look-at-alien-civilizations-2435267bd4ac and join the conversation. Are we missing the signs, or are the odds just not in our favor?

So, I probably sound stupid, and if I am, please correct me, but, since it takes most light centuries to reach earth, then the reason we can't see any evidence of notably advanced alien civilisations is because we're looking at the past, before they were advanced enough for it to be noticeable. It's just a theory, but tell me what you guys think.

In this video David Kipping brings up 3 criticisms of Robin Hanson's Grabby Alien Hypothesis, which has been posted on this subreddit before, but can also be found HERE if you need a refresher. Robin Hanson responded to this video today on his substack, and in my opinion refuted the criticism quite well, though both made interesting points. I would award this round to Hanson. What do you think? Here is Hanson's resonse.

Astronomer David Kipping

He's not arguing that we ARE alone, he's arguing that the odds of us being alone are essentially the same as the alternative, because the odds are unknown. Many people falsely believe that the odds are in favor of life existing elsewhere in the observable universe, but in fact there is no evidence to support that belief; which as Carl Sagan says in the video, makes it a faith-based belief.

I would like to address the Fermi Paradox by identifying The Great Filter by using the perspective of a Prime Directive. In order to do this, you must understand these three concepts.

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi blurted out, "But where is everybody?"

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. This barrier may be identifiable.

I personally think the Kardashev scale is not the most logical one in it's most accepted form and a modified variant of it would be more appropriate with Type 1 civilizations being those that master harnessing fusion energy for both production on a planetary scale as well as for interplanetary travel. Why I think that will become more apparent as I continue.

The Prime Directive is a sci-fi idea from Star Trek that can also be called a "non-interference directive." It is a guiding principle that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. Its stated aim is to protect unprepared civilizations from the danger of starship crews introducing advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready. It's a simple idea based on morality and ethics. It's akin to don't serve minors alcohol or don't let your 10 year old drive the car. It implicitly assumes that advanced technology and knowledge is dangerous in the hands of an immature civilization, which seems reasonable. It's similar logic as to why we don't let just anybody play with Plutonium. It's probably a good idea.

I want to take a moment to discus human progress and how it relates to the energy density of our technology. It's very obvious that our progress is directly correlated to the energy density of our power sources. First it was wood. Then coal. Then oil. Then nuclear fission. We are currently stuck here, but the next natural progression is nuclear fusion. If you understand the differences between fission and fusion, you should know that fusion energy is far more safe than fission energy and this is simply because of the physics. Fission is radioactive and basically a dirty bomb with no safety switch, while fusion is not radioactive and very easy to "turn off" in addition to being more energy dense. Fusion is simply better by every metric than fission.

Let's get back to The Prime Directive. If life evolves similarly everywhere in the Universe, then those advanced civilizations that have survived The Great Filter are very aware of it as well as why it exists. I am proposing that The Great Filter lies in the transition to mastering fusion energy on a planetary scale. I am basically proposing that other similar civilizations have blown themselves up with nukes before they mastered fusion energy on a planetary scale and that this is more common than not. Therefore, advanced civilizations that have survived this great filter are very aware of it. They would understand that contact at this point is incredibly dangerous for everybody involved. In fact, the worst case scenario from their perspective would likely be such a civilization becoming interplanetary because they simply are not a sustainable civilization and the drive to go interplanetary is basically to plunder resources or escape a burning planet. Those are not welcome visitors.

They also have very good reason to not hand over fusion energy (or better) to a less advanced civilization because without that learning curve they would actually become a serous potential threat to advanced civilizations simply because of a lack of maturity in understanding technology and it's responsible use. The stakes only get higher after mastering fusion energy and they are not prepared to wield it wisely if they have not proven a mastery of the nuclear realm. That means no assistance. Prove you can solve the problem on your own first. In such a scenario, a Prime Directive would hold that formal contact is only acceptable once a civilization proves planetary mastery of fusion energy at the very least. This means the entire planet runs on clean sustainable fusion energy. Additionally, the use of fusion energy for interplanetary travel would likely make formal contact an eventual necessity as it is simply not even reasonable to expect to go interplanetary with solar panels or chemical propulsion. This is because of energy density. It's basic physics and NASA has said, "nuclear propulsion may offer the only viable technological option for extending the reach of exploration missions beyond Mars, where solar panels can no longer provide sufficient energy and chemical propulsion would require a prohibitively high mass of propellant and/or prohibitively long trip times." Going interplanetary simply doesn't scale well until you get into the energy density realm of nuclear technology and this is basic physics. This also supports the hypothesis of ET monitoring nuclear activity because it's an important technological signature for any interplanetary civilization.

If physics and the evolution of life is similar all over the universe, then it's logical to propose that the answer to The Fermi Paradox is that The Great Filter is in our mastery and understanding of nuclear technology specifically for energy production rather than weapons, and that advanced ET civilizations that have survived The Great Filter have a Prime Directive to not make formal contact until a civilization has survived The Great Filter on their own accord. They absolutely would be watching and this would explain UFO/UAP. They are waiting to see if we blow ourselves up or figure out how to utilize fusion energy to create an actual sustainable civilization. They also would likely be hostile if we attempted serious interplanetary travel before surviving The Great Filter because we would be considered a serious threat. Basically, the Elon Musk idea of going to Mars to escape the mess we make on Earth makes us equivalent to an interplanetary cancer. Such a scenario makes no sense if we simply master fusion energy. We need not escape ourselves, but simply explore our neighborhood.

This also introduces the idea of interplanetary civilizations potentially acting as a kind of planet hopping cancer going from one to the other after turning them into wastelands. This is completely unnecessary if you have a planet wide economy based fusion energy rather than on fossil fuels. In such a scenario, the nuclear connection to UFO/UAP is that we are being monitored to see if we will a) blow ourselves up, b) become a threat by ignoring the creation of sustainable civilization, or c) master fusion energy and become approachable. Alternatively, there could also be ET with intentions of planet hopping to our planet because they are trying to survive The Great Filter. In such a scenario, it's unclear contact would be favorable for us.

The Fermi paradox asks why we haven't yet detected signs of alien civilizations. However, it does so with a premise: "in light of our current knowledge," thus starting from the assumption that "if our description and understanding of the universe/physical laws are correct."

Consequently, resolving the Fermi paradox by hypothesizing alien civilizations that are biologically very different from us or that use science-fiction-like technologies—theoretically plausible but not feasible in light of our current scientific knowledge—is incorrect. The simple reason is that if we are missing some fundamental information about certain phenomena or scientific laws or tech, the entire premise of the paradox would no longer be applicable, and any evaluation of the probability/improbability of a contact with other intelligent civilizations/life forms would need to be reconsidered.

In other words, if there is something fundamental that we are missing, our entire conception of physics, chemistry, biology and/or technology may have to be rethought. So, let us assume that nothing fundamental is escaping us.

The Fermi paradox must, therefore, be addressed within the framework of our current scientifical and technological established knowledge, without assuming elements that (despite their ‘’verisimilitude‘’ and and compatibility with physical laws) go beyond that knowledge.

1. Any alien civilizations we might detect are limited to our galaxy, plus Andromeda, and the smaller galaxies of the local group. Every other galaxy cluster is moving away from us due to expansion (dark energy) and is effectively out of reach. Their light still reaches us, but they have vanished beyond the horizon, for any practical purpose they are causally disconnected from us: no one will ever come from there or go there. This restricts any estimates (like the Drake equation) to a very very very small portion of the observable universe.
2. Given achievable technologies and energy scales we can manage, interstellar distances are simply enormous. Even assuming highly a more advanced and refined spacecraft tech we’re still talking about journeys of centuries to reach the nearest stars. Such travel would only be feasible with automatons/non-organic personnel (cryostasis or life forms with lifespans making such journeys feasible are not to be assumed, given the current state of our knowledge). A "flesh-and-blood expedition" would need very considerable effort in terms of logistics and planning and resources
3. Everything out there is in perpetual motion. The solar system moves, nearby star systems move, everything moves. The three-body problem makes it extremely difficult to map and predict the whole stuff. So for instance, if we aim to reach Proxima Centauri in 200 years, predicting exaclty where Proxima Centauri will be in 200 years and where Earth will be in 400 years (assuming a return trip) is very challenging. If space exploration is extremely slow and "energy demanding" (see point 2), "the galaxy’s map" must always be very updated and precise. There is a huge risk of arriving at the time-space point where Proxima Centauri was calculated to be 200 years earlier and, due to a small calculation error or lack of knowledge of initial conditions, ending up in interstellar emptiness.
4. Planets of interest (those worth the effort of colonizing/exploration) could be relatively rare. For instance, Alpha Centauri, Vega, Altair, or Sirius might be just barren rocks and gas giants. The first “truly interesting” planet might not be 4-5 light years away but 50 light years away, leading to exponential increases in the problems outlined in points 2 and 3.

So I think that with current scientific knowledge and understanding of technology, the resolution of the Fermi paradox is quite simple. Alien civilizations likely exist, have existed, and will exist in our galaxy/local group (application of the mediocrity principle) in considerable number, BUT they are confined to their own star systems or, at most, to neighboring systems. An advanced and intelligent civilization might have sent probes and sensors all around for geographic/cosmological purposes, but a "physical journey" over long distances by members of that species might be simply unfeasible or, at the very least, an exceedingly rare event.

Is it possible that space colonization is just economically unfeasible? For example let's say we currently are not colonizing space because the huge costs. What if we never invent technolgy that is cheaper and more feasible to sustain. For example now a Mars base would be pretty hard to build and sustain with our technological level. What if it stays that way even if humanity is given 1,000,000 years of safety, because there is no way how to make that sustainable? And we never advance much than 21 century level of Tech.

Or another take is that we might get to the end of technology sooner than we think. By end of technology I mean that it is physically impossible to invent tech far beyond our current level?