/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9846299

Who says other intelligent life is hiding? even if there are millions of intelligent species out there the chance of us being able to find them is virtually zero.

>>9846299
Not hiding is the stupid thing. Us humans are damn stupid and all earthian life is at risk in some 100,000 years because of the SETI message.

>>9846299
Why is it a stupid argument?

>Asserting something is stupid and offering zero reasons why just to start a flame thread

Fuck off.

>>9846299
I first realized humans being the first intelligent life in the known universe is a retarded idea when I was 12 and learned about Copernicus in public school.
Copernican principle is assumed by the standard cosmology model (Lambda-CDM) by the way.

>>9846299
>studies biology
your opinion is already irrelevant

>>9846299
I realized it when I was looking at the age of the universe. The universe has been able to support life for almost 12.8 billion years. and yet we see nothing. Our space equipment is pretty lacking, but if there was at least one old intelligent species, they would've left a big impact somewhere we could see even with that. If you ask me, I think the probability of life forming is near 0%, so close to 0 making it possible Earth is the only life in the universe, or maybe life is somewhat common, and intelligent life is near 0%. If we're not the first, we're one of the first, at the very least.

>>9846988
>Hur dur why don’t aliens colonize teh ooniverse even though that’s a waste of time

>>9847013
>spreading your species across multiple planets doesn't increase species survivability

>>9847013
This is what people always fuck up when trying to understand Fermi paradox: It's not a question of why didn't some aliens colonize the universe.
It's a question of why didn't ANY of the aliens in the entire observable universe do that, which is a lot more of a mystery.
It's like the difference between not being surprised most people don't get struck by lightning vs. somehow finding yourself on a planet just like ours with lightning storms happening at the same frequency yet nobody in the thousands of years of recorded history of this alternative Earth-like planet has ever been struck by lightning.
Fermi paradox involves a lot of things that might seem rare except that the scope of the observable universe makes even seemingly rare situations something you'd have good reason to expect to see a decent amount of.
And that in turn means suggested explanations involving aliens just not being interested in doing whatever given thing they're not doing are not very plausible since they depend on all aliens conspiratorially behaving in the same way without exception.

>>9846321
>>9847013

Even if our galaxy is dominated by intelligent civilisations that, for some reason, disregards the pros of spreading your species, the first purpose of all life, and ensuring that you cannot be destroyed by a supernova or asteroids, then it'd take just one anomaly race that has unlocked the stars to nonetheless completely colonise its entire galaxy in the span of a few millions years even if they can only travel at a fraction of lightspeed. Factor in FTL and you also have to consider all the anomalies from the rest of the universe. Bottomline is it's very unlikely that there's life in at least our galaxy

>>9847017
You know solar systems have more than one planet typically right? All you have to do is build a big ass space ship and move between stars as they get too old every few BILLION YEARS

>>9846321
They aren’t though. Billions of universes could have been created before ours without any life as we know it.

>>9847028
Nope. Life is doubtless extremely common. Life that creates civilizations are doubtless rare, and you’re retarded for assuming anyone would waste their time colonizing all the planets in an entire galaxy.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

>>9847038
advanced civilizations will most likely suffer from overpopulation due to high life expectancy and high standards of living. then they're look to other parts of the galaxy to colonize/gather resources

my take is that if those advanced civilizations do come across earthlings, they'll likely hide their presence and experiment on us - that is, until we're deemed advanced enough so that interaction with us will be deemed beneficial for them

>>9847038
Refer to my post again or >>9847025 and read it this time, dummy: it takes just one 'retarded' race who wastes their time colonising for a galaxy to get completely dominated. Even one exception from your idea of alien life's behaviour is enough. And that's ignoring that it is probably in most advanced civilisations' interest to expand since, at some point, it should be possible to engineer matter, or for some other reasons we can't even conceive yet

>>9846299
Humans haven't been around for as long as it takes light from the fartherest reachs of the visible universe to reach us. So it's a pretty bold statement to make.

>>9847071
The absolute state of this post. Light from the farthest reaches of the visible/observable universe has reached us. That's what makes it the fucking observable universe. That's what it means

>>9847071
>Humans haven't been around for as it takes light from the fartherest reachs of the visible universe to reach us
>visible universe
How is it visible if the light hasn't reached us yet?

>>9846299
My bet has always been that the intelligent life is so dissimilar to humans we couldn't notice it even if it were in front of us

>>9847051
>”Civilizations cannot develop population control measures. It’s impossible”

>>9847025

Tbh humans are trying and failing currently when you think about it - maybe there would be a universal IQ limit that means at best any other life would be as capable of colonising the universe as humans are

>>9847065
We wouldn’t even notice if they did, dumbass.

>>9847089
It's possible, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether ALL of them opt to control population as an alternative to space travel and off world colonization.

>>9847092
Yes, or they’d literally go extinct before they even left their Kuipier belt,

>>9847090
>humans are trying and failing currently when you think about it
Not really, no. We've been pretty successful in the very short amount of time that space travel has been a thing for us. People walked on the moon and made a return trip back to Earth, that's a pretty solid proof of concept for making it to a human landing on Mars eventually, and from human landing it's plausible there's a path to longer term settlement. It's a very difficult problem but far from proven impossible.
>maybe there would be a universal IQ limit that means at best any other life would be as capable of colonising the universe as humans are
With no other information to go off of the best guess is that we're of a middling intelligence relative to the rest of the universe's intelligent life.

>>9847035
and what happens when the population can't fit into a single solar system?

>>9847098
All of them though? What makes you think not a single divergent case would exist?

>>9847102
They die until there’s a manageable number of them.

>>9847105
Every single one. Our population is already leveling out, and any species that DIDN’T level out would experience ecological devastation and famines and probably much earlier in their development,

>>9847091
No we wouldn't have noticed because we wouldn't be here now since the matter would have been exhausted possibly billions of years ago already if there was other intelligent life in our galaxy

>>9847101
Possible does not equate to practical. Just grow up and accept interstellar travel wont happen.

>>9846988
>The universe has been able to support life for almost 12.8 billion years
Probably not. Heavier elements wouldnn't be plentiful enough for an advanced civilization before a few generations of star formation had occurred.

>>9847101
I'm not saying it's impossible I'm just saying another species not accomplishing it doesn't mean very much - if we haven't colonised the universe and we are the most capable species on our planet then it is weird to say there MUST be some species out there that could do it - or further the absence of them doing it wouldn't mean there isn't some civilisation of brainlets that never evolved for some reason

>>9847111
What the fuck is “matter exhaustion”? You just have to camp out around a star, maybe build a Dyson swarm and that’s all you need for billions of years.

>>9847117
Tbh we could even stretch this and say most capable in our solar system now

>>9847117
Colonizing space beyond the home system doesn’t happen. It’s not possible. Just accept reality.

>>9847117
>>9847121
Both Earth and our entire solar system would be mindfuckingly miniscule fractions of the observable universe.
That's the fundamental point of the Fermi paradox.

>>9847128
There is no paradox. Only retards think colonizing space ever happens.

>>9847115
>>9847125
What evidence do you have that it's either prohibitively impractical or impossible?
If we can get a guy on the moon and back we should be able to eventually get a guy to Mars. And if we can get people to Mars then we can start making progress towards keeping people there for progressively longer amounts of time without dying.

>>9847089
no, but assuming a civilization of intelligent aliens are similar to humans in thought process and have the means to travel to other planets with relative ease, it's entirely plausible that there will be social pressure to opt out of population control (see controversial one child policy)

>>9847132
Why do you keep asserting that opinion instead of making an argument for why you believe that's the case?
What's your reasoning here?

>>9847119
Again, we can't conceive the rate at which a hyperadvanced civilisation could expend energy. The fact remains that, if somebody has the tools to optimise, then they will likely be used. And even if it isn't, for some reason, the norm, it takes just one anomaly who has access to these tools

>>9847128
Yeah but it is irrelevant because it assumes there is no physical limit to knowledge - even if the 1 trillion stars all have a planet with life there is no reason to think there is a civilisation capable of developing to that level in that amount of time amongst any of them

>>9847139
The population controls ITSELF. The vast majority of it is in shitty poor countries.

>>9847141
Colonizing other systems is improbable, difficult, and a complete waste of everyone’s time unless you’ve lived for so long around a star that it’s going to die and you need to move to another one.

>>9847143
^Yeah, this.
>Our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across. If a probe were capable of traveling at one-tenth the speed of light, every planet in the galaxy could thus be colonized within a couple of million years (allowing some time for each probe that lands on a resource site to set up the necessary infrastructure and produce daughter probes). If travel speed were limited to 1 percent of light speed, colonization might take 20 million years instead. The exact numbers do not matter much, because the timescales are at any rate very short compared with the astronomical ones on which the evolution of intelligent life occurs.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/409936/where-are-they/

>>9847143
There are no anomalies. It’s not possible. If civilizations magically grow their populations indefinitely with no stopping ever, they would eventually have to go to other star systems, or just, you know, experience famines and social struggles that reduce their populations again or implement very simple population controls

>>9847144
>it assumes there is no physical limit to knowledge
No it doesn't.
For your statement to be true it would mean you believe I'm arguing for a task that requires infinite knowledge.

>>9847137
Colonizing mars is possible, but not practical and simply a waste of time outside of “lol we colonized Mars”.

>>9846955
If aliens wanted to kill you you are dead. It wouldn't be hard for something that can travel fast to just cleanse every planet indiscriminately. Also it's unlikely that all intelligent life would do it especially since the one that doesn't has the advantage of being able to spread across the universe.
>>9846321
All life spreads as far as it could. If intelligent life exists it would have spread to every corner of the universe.

>>9847151
>Hur dur lets fill space with Vom Neumann probes for absolutely no reason

>>9846966
>Something is dumb despite what all evidence and logic says because of the Copernicus principle even if actual evidence says otherwise!

>>9847160
>All life spreads as far as it could. If intelligent life exists it would have spread to every corner of the universe.

Keyword :Could

It can’t, or it can and it’s simply not viable like saying we should build a metrolpolis on the South Pole. That’s retarded and a waste of time.

>>9846967
Let me guess, Engineering or CS?
>>9847013
>Reproducing is a waste of time
And this is why people should learn a bit about biology.

>>9847035
>I don't understand natural selection

>>9847157
No it simply means the task would be beyond what any civilisation could learn within say 2 million years of it existing due to physical constraints on possible intellectual ability dictated by the universe itself

>>9847089
Can you explain how a species will make a population control system that works for the entire species? How would anyone stop 1 of the trillions of members millions of miles away from reproducing and why would they?

>>9847159
If it's outright impossible or effectively impossible then it wouldn't be practical and would be a waste of time.
I don't think it's anywhere close to effectively impossible though.
We know a large amount of money is being spent on trying to make a human Mars landing happen, so that alone is some evidence the possibility has been seriously considered and deemed realistic enough to at least try.
And if it's just possible but really difficult and expensive then it's absolutely still worth it. Having planetary redundancy is easily the most important thing we can do following more immediate survival concerns like maintaining a decent global food supply.
One thing we know for sure about our own planet is there have been a shit ton of extinction events in the past, and it's not too farfetched for a natural disaster like Yellowstone going off or a large enough comet or asteroid colliding with Earth ending our history as a living species if we have 100% of our population confined to this one planet.

>>9846966
>>9846321
>>9846955
>>9847013
>>9847038
>>9847091
>>9847089
>>9847109
>>9847154
>/sci/ doesn't understand the Fermi Paradox or natural selection
Kek

>>9847167
You said "it assumes there is no physical limit to knowledge."
Which is definitely wrong and would mean someone is arguing for infinite knowledge when nobody has argued for that.
What you're talking about now isn't the same as a limit to knowledge existing.
I agree a limit to knowledge exists. I'm pretty sure almost everyone agrees to that.
You're conflating a limit to knowledge existing with your other claim here that not only does a limit exist but it's a limit that prevents space travel and colonization.
Significantly fewer people would agree to that second claim.

>>9847170
We CAN, but it would be a massive money sink just so we could say “lol Mars colony” until we develop REALLY good automation that might as well be Grey Goo.

>>9847165
Reproducing just to reproduce is a waste of time, yes. Biological urges are irrelevant.

>>9847170
There are no comets or asteroids that could collide with earth and Yellowstone cannot erupt for tens of thousands of years at least. Even if those things happened, we’d survive just losing a few hundred years of “”””progress””””

>>9847179
>Biological urges are irrelevant
You don't understand natural selection. Any trait that will propagate itself will spread. Doesn't matter if it is an urge, an idea or an action.

>>9847154
Everything in the universe is decided by anomalies. It is thanks anomalies that there are variations that allowed for galaxies to form in the first place. You are so tunnel-visioned on immediate problems we know from earth like overpopulation that you ignore options like reorganising and spending matter (something that you will definitely have to colonise the rest of the galaxy for) and other things we can't hope to understand right now. That one race develops to a point where it reaches intelligence and soon after unlocks the stars suddenly stops in its evolution is unlikely. That every single civilisation would do that is impossible. And since we do not see signs of any such civilisations, we must be alone

>>9847179
>is a waste of time
So is everything you idiot. Do you think natural selection cares if something is a "Waste of time" in your opinion or not?

>>9847185
This anon gets it. Without an explanation explaining why EVERY SINGLE race wouldn't want to spread (which goes against natural selection) then it can be concluded that we are alone.
I don't mind this though because it makes humans the "old ones" and all other races will learn about us if we are successful.

>TFW was upset when I realized there were no aliens
>Now realize it means we have the job to populate the universe
>Realize every one of us is special and the most special things in the entire universe

>>9847163
>all evidence and logic
There's no evidence for anything yet and what "logic says" is exactly what the Copernican principle says, that it would be a stupid idea to guess we're special and a less stupid idea to guess we're an average case.

>>9847197
Except if you understood how biology works you would realize this isn't the case. If there is an alien species (or multiple) that can spread, they will. The fact that there isn't aliens everywhere means they are likely no where.

>>9847200
No matter what answer you go with for the Fermi paradox it's going to be a weird answer.
You just have a pet weird answer because you're obsessed with biology. Your answer's as shit and implausible as the other usual answers though because it would require believing we're extremely special as the only life in the entire fucking universe.

>>9847203
>Why answer a biological question with biology
Also my answer isn't shit, it makes the most sense.

>>9847205
It doesn't make much sense at all because it would require believing we're extremely special as the only life in the entire universe.
>a biological question
Fermi wasn't a biologist. And most people who do work involving this question are physicists, not biologists.

>>9846966
>Let's keep using a 600 y/o idea to understand the universe even though we know far more than 600 years ago.
Nobody uses Freud anymore even if he was the one who kickstarted psychology, because shit evolves and ideas change.

>>9847213
>we know far more than 600 years ago
Yes, and the vast majority of that additional knowledge supports the concept that it's fucking retarded to guess we're a special case, let alone such a ridiculously special case that we're the only life in the entire universe.

>>9847082
>>9847085
The absolute brainlet state of these posters.

>>9847183
Nope. Civilizations propagating outside of their home system isn’t possible.

>>9847200
We can build a huge city in Antarctica. Will we? NO. BECAUSE THATS FUCKING DUMB

>>9847186
Natural selection never selects for retarded and inefficient traits, so you’re wrong.

>>9847185
Matter isn’t “spent”, you fucking retard. The sun provides energy which the biosphere uses to rearrange matter indefinitely.

>>9847254
>Natural selection never selects for retarded and inefficient traits

>>9847231
But they weren't wrong

>>9847260
It never selected for the laryngeal nerve’s position to be retarded like that. You’re completely tight, and only proving my point.

>>9847264
>It never selected
Are you claiming ancient aliens created giraffes artificially?

>>9847205
Your answer assumes uniqueness which automatically puts it in the trash can or at best at the very bottom wrung of plausibility. That you dont realize this causes me to think you are either uneducated or an idiot.

>>9847208
>It doesn't matter if evidence says we are special we can't think we are
>Fermi wasn't a biologist
Doesn't matter
>They are physicists, not biologists
Doesn't fucking matter.

>>9847250
Nice source.
>>9847254
>I don't understand natural selection
>>9847266
You are a retard. Stop sucking Copernicus cock

>>9847265
Nope, you fucking retard. Evolution selected for the development of necks from the original form of a fish, and this resulted in the laryngeal nerve becoming very oddly and inefficiently shaped.

>>9847266
Couperin principle isn't some fucking proven theory you stupid fuck. Literally something has to be the first and considering the universe is only 1% of 1% of 1% it's total age it's pretty likely we are the first.

>>9847254
>Natural selection never selects for retarded and inefficient traits, so you’re wrong.
It absolutely does you cretin. There are multiple selection pressures contingent in evolution, only one is survival selection. Male peacocks feathers continue to be a ridiculous useless investment of energy because female peacocks select for them, re sexual selection.

>>9847272
Natural selection isn’t re

>>9847254
>Natural selection doesn't select for inefficient traits
Middle schooler detected

>>9847279
Relevant. Kill yourself biologist retard

It's my personal belief that the act of industrialization leads to the inevitable death of intelligent life across the universe.

>>9847280
Retard detected. Natural selection does not select for inefficient traits.

>>9847282
>Natural selection isn't relevant to a discussion about live
>>9847282
Brainlet is mad.

finite planetary resources and the environmental damage of industrialized societies makes a cosmic scale civilization impossible. there is intelligent life on other planets, but by nature it can never spread due to inherent limitations.

>>9847284
Yes it fucking does. Do I really have to tell you all the inefficient parts of the human body? Are you 12?

>>9847290
That is why any intelligent species would spread to space. It's why we are trying to make moon/mars bases and mine asteroids. Your argument only proves why civilizations would start colonizing space.

Why doesn't /sci/ understand basic biology? I know this is mostly a math and physics autistic circle jerk board but if Biology is so easy why can't /sci/ fucking understand it?

>>9847291
Those weren’t selected for. They’re things evolution COMPENSATES for.

>>9847292
Intelligent life can never spread to space, sorry. It’s impossible.

>>9847272
Uniqueness is generally incorrect throughout the natural world.
>>9847277
Just saying we are first doesnt resolve uniqueness because it just moves it to "ok why are we the first?. As far as we know only a small section of the universes timeline can develop and sustain intelligent life, so no it is not "pretty likely". There is no basis to make claims from hence the paradox in the first place.

>>9847297
>Those weren't selected for
Yes they fucking were. Having a fuck ass long tendon was selected for despite it being inefficient
>Going to space is impossible
Nice job speaking out of your ass.

>>9847296
Biology is not relevant. Kill yourself.

>>9847300
>Generally
Well good thing generally doesn't mean always.
>Ok, why are we first
We are the first species that was complex enough and had evolutionary pressure to get smart while having an environment that allowed it.
>>9847304
0/10 bait

>>9847301
Nope. Natural selection would never select the more inefficient option. The inefficient one is the ONLY option, so it’s stuck with that and just works around it.

>>9847296
Several reasons:
1) Most of sci are illiterate uneducated chimps or HS students
2) I dont know of any schools that require stem students outside of biology to take a class on evolutionary biology
3) /sci/entists are contrarian and hate darwin

>>9847305
Nope. There are infinite civilizations as advanced as us all over the place. They never leave their home systems because that’s not possible and they die not long after the industrial revolution.

>>9847307
>Moving the goal post
Also you are wrong. The most efficient option would be to simply have the tendon go to the shortest length. It didn't select for it because that isn't how natural selection works.

>>9847310
Darwin was objectively wrong. Hes Just a good poster boy.

>>9847312
>Anon's still talking out of his ass

>>9847263
They are, they can't even read English.

>>9847317
>he was objectively wrong
On some things yes but he was very right about many other things. He was right about literally hundreds of things and by far the no other biologist has ever gotten as many things right as he did. Even without the theory of natural selection (which is the most powerful theory in biology) Darwin would be a giant in the biology field.

>>9847314
Nope. Evolution just compensates for the bad stuff it’s stuck with like our shitty backwards eyeballs.

>>9847322
>I-It's not selection it's compensation
Oh wow anon, you really are a special type of stupid. It's selected for, doesn't matter what you call it.

>>9847305
If youre comfortable with the answer just being pure chance fine, dont be surprised when most other people arent. Dont then try to argue from a concrete position on a topic that is currently intrinsically unknowable particularly when your preferred answer is statistically less likely than some others given all prior observation.

>>9847325
>Statistically less likely
Except it's by far the most likely and logical answer given you understand basic biology.

>>9847317
see>>9847321
Similar to how although tesla was a crackpot walking engineer meme he still produced some great work.

>>9847324
Nope. Evolution did not actively select for shitty backwards eyeballs over ones that are facing the right way and it didn’t actively select for shorter laryngeal nerves because there was never a more efficient option. Evolution is literally stuck with these flaws organisms inherit from their ancestors and can only compensate.

>>9847325
Name a more likely solution anon, I dare you.
>>9847333
Yes it literally fucking did. It literally selected for a shitty backwards eyeball instead of selecting for a better one because evolution isn't far sighted. It selected for what was best each step despite it being inefficient in the long run. You don't understand natural selection

>>9847339
>Yes it literally fucking did. It literally selected for a shitty backwards eyeball instead of selecting for a better one because evolution isn't far sighted. It selected for what was best each step despite it being inefficient in the long run

Yep, because it couldn’t change it anyway. Keep trying so hard sweetie. It’s adorable how dumb you are. Evolution did not select for eyes facing the right way or the wrong way. The ancestors of vertebrates just drew that specific card for eye development and have been stuck with it ever since.

>>9847333
Evolution is really REALLY fucking inefficient. Let me give you an example. Arms races. So much energy goes into a system when two species compete in an arms race. If both sides decided to simply stop then they would both be far better off. Evolution doesn't work like that though.

>>9847346
No, they wouldn’t be better off if they stopped improving to tackle their competitor, prey, or predator, you retard. If they stopped, they’d fucking die.

>>9847343
>It didn't select for the thing it selected for
>The ancestors just drew that specific card
No they didn't, evolution selected for it. It's not just random you dumb shit.
>>9847348
Yes they fucking would. If both parties stopped the arms race they would both be better off. This is a well known "problem" in biology for anyone learning natural selection.

>>9847330
The observed evidence from earth disagrees with you.

>>9847348
>Snake stops developing such powerful venom
>Possum stops developing resistance
>Both parties do better since they don't have to use energy on an arms race

I imagine their is intelligent life out there, but they will never make contact with us nor will we make contact with them.

Virtual Reality is the answer to the Fermi paradox.

Once can assume that faster than light travel is impossible and thus never created by any form of intelligent life, thus rendering colonial expansion of life throughout systems, galaxies and the universe moot.

When intelligent life advances to the point it can create simulations of lives, societies, worlds, planets, galaxies, universes 100% realistic and lifelike whilst being unaware of it being simulated when they enter, they will all opt to spend their days in their own perfect realities created to suit their individual preferences, as gods more or less.

This is what happens, faster than light travel doesn't. Why explore new systems or galaxies when you can have a 100% realistic simulation of any universe or world you want in which it will be YOU that does the exciting, groundbreaking things (as opposed to you being a peasant and scientists doing shit in actual reality) because you've made that a parameter for the 'virtual' reality you go on to enter.

>>9847353
Explain. If anything it agrees with me because life spreads to anywhere it can.

>>9847339
>Name a more likely solution anon
Here is one that is softly supported by our own society. Civilizations destroy themselves via destruction of their environment.

>>9847355
>their
there* welp, looks like im not intelligent life

>>9847356
You already agreed that uniqueness is generally incorrect in natural theories. The observed evidence is why we have and agree on that position. Your answer assumes uniqueness. QED given what we know its not that likely we are the first.

>>9847351
Mutations ARE random. The original structure that vertebrates developed for their eyeballs specifically faces backwards, forcing the nerves to dive through the front. The original structure that octopus developed faces the more efficient way.

What you don’t seem to understand is that there WAS NO OTHER EYEBALL MORPHOLOGY AMONG VERTEBRATES. If there WAS, that one would have the selection pressure advantage. Vertebrates are stuck with this specific flawed form because a better one literally never existed.

>>9847357
But we haven't destroyed ourselves and there is no reason to think EVERY civilization does. In fact we are already starting to explore space.

>>9847354
>Both are now worse because they have shittier venom and shittier resistance and that’s good

>>9847361
>It's not likely that we are first
Until you take in the evidence and then it becomes the most likely answer. The evidence being that if there were other life they would have almost certainly spread across every part they could which natural selection dictates would happen.
>>9847362
>Non random selection of non random traits
I see you are in fact an idiot who doesn't understand evolution.

>>9847368
I understand evolution much better than you, sorry. I win.

>>9847367
Except they are not. You have a childs view of evolution. If both parties don't have to use energy into venom and resistance they can both increase their numbers and be more efficient

>>9847370
Either bait or mad. Can't tell which.

>>9847371
That would require magically avoiding eachother like they formed some kind of peace treaty. Doesn’t happen.

>>9847374
You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry you’re so stupid. How the fuck would evolution select between options that don’t actually exist?

>>9847377
Doesn't matter. If both parties didn't commit to an arms race and played "fair" as in neither side developed stronger poison or stronger resistance both parties would win. The fact that this doesn't happen shows how inefficient natural selection is.
>>9847378
It's only not an option because natural selection isn't efficient. It COULD have made our eyes work perfectly but it didn't because that isn't how it works.

Virtual reality is the answer to the Fermi paradox.


No intelligent life ever creates faster than light travel and explores their galaxy or universe in any sufficient manner.

Lifelike simulations of any thing you want is our end goal, gods.

>>9847382
You don't have to develop FTL to explore the universe. Even at current speeds humans could technically explore the galaxy in a few hundred thousand years.

>>9847378
>When you are so wrong you have to just start shitposting

>>9847381
It shows how animals are thinking about not trying to be murdered. Natural selection will hone them to compete better with whatever they’re competing with. They have NO control over it. It’s not some kind of hive mind Gaia that controls animals like an RTS game. It can’t just tell them to “play fair”. What are you talking about?!

Yes it could, and a mutation *could* occur at any point in the long history of vertebrates that shortens the laryngeal nerve or fixes the nonsensical position of the laryngeal nerves. It doesn’t, though, because it can’t and evolution can only compensate for these inherited flaws.

>>9847351
>No they didn't, evolution selected for it. It's not just random you dumb shit.
For natural selection to push a mutation out there needs to be a selection pressure against that mutation.
Because of this it is possible for mutations that have no selection pressure against them to coexist with the original forms, and it is likewise possible for another mutation that then survives selection pressure to select for that previous mutation.

Some selections may be indirect.

>>9847396
You just explained why it is inefficient. It's sad that I have to explain natural selection on fucking /sci/.

>>9847396
>It can't
It could have at the very beginning but it didn't because natural selection isn't efficient and doesn't think long term. It also could have slowly mutated that way once animals got onto land but didn't because that would have required short term losses which natural selection doesn't do. It's not fucking efficient

>>9847400
Okay you’re right I’m wrong.

>>9847402
Nigger what short term loss is there for shortening a nerve by a millimeter?

>>9847386
>in a few hundred thousand years

We will have developed the means to create 100% realistic simulations of whatever we please, i.e 'ancestor simulations' far far far before the "few hundred thousand years" it takes us.

>Alien fags so desperate they have to make idiotic conspiracy theories about why we just can't see them
Feels pretty comf being alone.

>>9847407
>this brainless thins nerves can be measured in millimetres

JUST

>>9847411
>this brainless thins

I wouldn't go around calling others brainlets if I were you...

>>9847407
Because that would fucking kill you or make your life hell before it became functional. With that nerve shortened slowly until it raps back around the proper way there would be a lot of fucked up generations before it becomes better.
>>9847408
Even if you have simulation you will want to continue to increase processing power and use machines/workers to operate it, this takes more and more energy as you want to do more and more things.

>>9847414
To continue this means you will want to get more and more energy expanding just as if you were a normal civilization. A civilization with a super computer that gets ever more and more resources to increase it's processing ability would be just as detectable as a civilization that spreads everywhere by reproducing.

>>9847411
Yes, nerves can be measured in millimeters. What are you talking about?

>>9847409
>we should be able to see tiny people on tiny planets trillions of kilometers away using nonexistently powerful telescopes

>>9847426
This one isn't >>9847260 Do you see why it's inefficient?

>>9846299
>>N-No they are just hiding
>is a stupid argument.
>141 replies
OK, it's late, and I'm not going to read 141 posts, so here goes:
The Fermi "paradox" is pure hubris.
There are dozens of exhalations that don't involve aliens "hiding", but even running through them implies we are advanced enough to notice aliens at all.
We've never looked anywhere besides our own solar system, and even there we've barely peeked under the first rock or two.
We can't receive radio signals similar to our own at interstellar distances (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#We_are_not_listening_properly).).
The Earth has been here for 4.6 billion years, but we've only been writing stuff down (recorded history) for 6-7 thousand years.
During most of that time we would have remembered an alien visit as gods descending from the heavens.
But somehow, because aliens haven't showed their faces in the last 2-300 years (0.0000066% of the time the Earth has been here), we must surely be alone, because our exact moment in history is just that fucking important.
Opie, you're one arrogant cocksucker.

>>9847414
Just shorten its overall length so it still meets at both ends...

>>9847431
It’s very long but you can definitely still measure it in millimeters. Even a tiny change in its length would be an improvement.

>>9847433
>Shorten it's overall length
Then it constricts your heart and you slowly die. Unless you mean why doesn't it just go from A to B instead of taking a needless loop around the heart? Well originally going behind the heart was the shortest distance but evolution can't just undo that so now it will ALWAYS do it despite it being so long and unnecessary.

>>9847432
They could be chilling out in a space gas station in Alpha Centauri. How would anyone know unless we literally went there?

>>9847432
>but even running through them implies we are advanced enough to notice aliens at all.
You don't understand the Fermi paradox. The question "why can't we find aliens when we look", it's "Why aren't aliens everywhere?".

>>9846299
When did you first realize that just because we can't observe something with our given methods and capacity doesn't mean it doesn't exist?
For me it was studying physical chemistry and realizing that
>electrons are things too
is accurate, but we can only really map its path/probability area without knowing what "shape" the electron itself has.

>>9847439
See >>9847438
If aliens exists natural selection dictates that they should spread to everywhere it is possible to exist or use every piece of resource they can. The fact that they don't means they likely don't exist.

>>9847439
yeah i bet you deny the existence of god tho

>>9847432
>dozens of exhalations
dozens of *explanations
Auto-correct and bourbon make poor partners.

>>9847319
Explain it. The statement that the light from the farthest reaches of the visible universe hasn't reached us doesn't make sense.

>>9847436
>Unless you mean why doesn't it just go from A to B instead of taking a needless loop around the heart? Well originally going behind the heart was the shortest distance but evolution can't just undo that so now it will ALWAYS do it despite it being so long and unnecessary.

THATS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT. It can’t fix these problems inherited from previous organisms but as long as it’s not overly debilitating, it can compensate and correct. However, if we introduced one predator and then another predator that was much more inefficient, the less efficient one would die out or be forced to adapt to some niche.

>>9846299
Why are you all completely ignoring the fact that it's entirely possible that there is no method of ftl travel. And even if there were, how would we detect the traces of those civilizations, the only thing we can find with our current equipment is stars, and the planets orbiting those stars.

>People actually think population control works long term
Wow guys, just tell everyone you know to stop reproducing and in 100 years the people that didn't listen will be the vast majority of people.

>>9847441
You’re assuming it’s viable to exist everywhere. It’s not. Civilizations aren’t bacteria that don’t think about jack shit and just grow. If colonizing an adjacent system would be an incredibly inefficient cash sink, they won’t do it. There is simply no reason to not chill around your birth star until it dies, then move.

>>9847453
Kill the people that don’t listen. The population controls itself, as we’ve seen everywhere in the first world.

>>9847449
You don't need FTL to colonize the universe.
>>9847454
It's viable to exist or to collect resources in some form from the vast majority of star systems.

>>9847454
>Civilizations aren’t bacteria that don’t think about jack shit and just grow.
They literally are. Why do you think the human population keeps increasing? We could all have as much gas and space as we wanted if we decided to limit the human population to only 7 million people.

>>9847438
>"Why aren't aliens everywhere?".
Because not all environments are suitable to all species.
Let's assume by "everywhere" you mean Earth (Jesus, that's fucking arrogant).
We maybe haven't been colonized because:
a) advanced societies don't reproduce like locusts.
b) even if they do, Earth's gravity, existing life, solar flux, tides, the color of the sky, etc, etc might not make Earth an ideal home for whatever species dominates this part of the galaxy.
c) they might not want to wipe out indigenous life
and/or:
d) they were here already, and life on Earth , or maybe the Cambrian explosion are the result of the or presence
And let's not forget the vastness of time itself.
Nothing lasts forever.
If intelligent, tool-bearing, interstellar space-faring species only last for tens of millions of years, while planets enjoy goldilocks status for billions of years, 99% of all potential space empires don't exist at any given moment.
...but somehow *I* don't understand the Fermi paradox.

>>9847466
>a) advanced societies don't reproduce like locusts
But they would reproduce to the point where it is inevitable that they would need to take up every space/resource they can
>Might not make earth an ideal home
Doesn't matter. Even if they don't colonize it directly (They likely could bioengineer themselves to) they could use energy and resources for our solar system to help create more colonies. You don't actually need a "special planet" to start colonizing or taking advantage of a solar system.
>They might not want to wipe out indigenous life
Doesn't explain why literally not a single alien has visited us. Even if Earth was off limits every other solar system without life wouldn't be meaning we should be able to see them everywhere even in our own solar system.

>>9847461
>Civilizations are literally prokaryotes

Wow.

>>9847459
There’s no reason to collect resources everywhere. You don’t need anything than a Dyson swarm at home.

>>9847471
>But they would reproduce to the point where it is inevitable that they would need to take up every space/resource they can

Yeah, totally.

*First world countries barely reproduce at the replacement level*

>>9847478
>You don't need
You don't need anything at all ever anon. Your point doens't mean anything. Natural selection dictates that living things will continue to reproduce so eventually a single solar system wont be enough.

>>9847466
A civ that can travel the stars can probably make anywhere habitable. They wouldn't colonise star systems they need places to live, they'd do it to harness the energy. The more expand, the more energy you can harness, and the more demanding processes you can run. You need to widen your scope beyond trials humans are already facing right now and will likely have solved in the next hundred years. If there was just one extremely advanced civilisation in our galaxy, we likely wouldn't be here right now and yeah you don't understand the Fermi paradox

>>9847482
And guess what, they are getting replaced. Even if certain groups don't, they get replaced by people that do. That is how natural selection works. Do you honestly think in 100 years America will have less people than it does now? The people who failed to reproduce will be replaced by the people who reproduced more. It's why /pol/ is so scared of blacks and mexicans taking over.

>>9847471
>But they would reproduce to the point where it is inevitable that they would need to take up every space/resource they can
WRONG.
More advanced societies here on Earth have negativepopulation growth( Japan) or only grow because of immigration from less advanced societies.
Our ONLY model says advanced societies SHRINK, not grow.
>>9847471
>they could use energy and resources for our solar system to help create more colonies.
>could
Could != Must
...and unless they're growing to some hypothetical nearly unlimited size, why would they need our resources?
>>9847471
>literally not a single alien has visited us.
AGAIN, we;ve been recording history for a TINY fraction of the Earth's history. We have NO idea what was going on here a billion years ago, and even massive alien presence just a thousand years ago (0.0000217% of the Earth's existence) wouldn't have been remembered as "people who came from some other star".
Even suggesting we'd know about a tiny fraction of alien visitors is really arrogant.

>we should be able to see them everywhere even in our own solar system.
We know that most of the liquid water in the solar system is off Earth, but we've never looked in a single drop of it.

>>9847483
Nope. Your idea of natural selection is simply wrong since humans are not reproducing at replacement levels in many nations, okay in shitty poor ones.

>>9847488
Those groups will stop breeding at greater than replacement levels. That’s simply how civilized nations are.

>>9847488
>And guess what, they are getting replaced.
Nope.
Even counting Africa and s.e. Asia, we've been at "peak child" since the 90's.

>>9847492
please read here >>9847485. A civilisation wouldn't expand to grow its population, it'd expand to access more energy to be used in more demanding tasks. That we have only recorded a fraction of the timespan of our galaxy is irrelevant when you consider that had been as much as ONE such civilisation in our galaxy, ever, it would have very obvious signs

>>9847485
>they'd do it to harness the energy
Ah, the Kardashev Scale.
Let's measure the advancement of a society by the amount of energy they use.
So a "truly" advanced society must surely have some combination of high population and high per-capita energy use.
The reason this is absurd is left as an exercise for the reader.

>>9847441
>The fact that they don't means they likely don't exist.
The fact that we haven't seen it doesn't mean they aren't.
Let's be realistic here. It took about four billion years for our planet to go from a burning rock to harboring intelligent life.
The universe is about 13~14 billion years old. In order to form planets with things a space faring race would need we need things like iron, aluminium, copper, and likely shit like uranium, plutonium, gold and other heavy elements.
Most of this we have found come from Neutron Star mergers, for which we need some main sequence stars to burn for hundreds of millions of years, preferably in binary pairs. They're going to need to do this a bunch of times, too. There's a lot of planets to form.

Imagine for a bit that the majority of the heavy elements were only what a supernova could shit out until fairly recent times, say six or seven billion years ago. Any life that formed on planets from before that time would be lacking heavy elements that would be essential space travel in general.


>>9847444
>The statement that the light from the farthest reaches of the visible universe hasn't reached us doesn't make sense.
How long does it take light from the furtherest reaches of the universe to reach us?
How long have humans been around for?
Have humans been around for as long as it takes light from the furtherest reaches of the universe to reach us?

>>9847508
If you're not expanding your civilization, you aren't expanding your energy needs.

What would a civilization capped at a few thousand immortals need a Dyson sphere for?

I suspect the Great Filter is efficiency. If you don't manage to override your base instinct for perpetual expansion, you exhaust and destroy your own biosphere before you gain the technology to colonize another system. Thus all space faring civilizations are extremely efficient and extremely limited in scope, barely detectable, if at all.

Or intelligent life is just rare as fuck. ...and/or we're just out in the boonies, and all the cool stuff is happening closer to the galactic core... Or everyone eventually finds the top quark is unstable and bails on a universe doomed to false vacuum.

>>9847514
The original post was convoluted because the poster didn't know what he was talking about, but it was easy to infer that what he thought was that light from the edge of the (then) universe hasn't reached us, which is false. That's what makes the observable universe observable, which something he didn't seem to grasp. If he unlikely meant that humans have not been around for what is now 46.6 billion years, since that's how long it'd take for the light at the edge to arrive at us now, then he's even dumber and it's just a completely arbitrary comment

>>9847523
No, my original post was not convoluted. People just can't fucking read.

>>9847355
simulation is an evolutionary death trap, and with death traps there will always be the ones that avoid it and then pull the plug on the VR larvae

>>9847275
>"inefficiently shaped"
>doesn't count because it made sense in fish
Except your original argument was that we shouldn't expect to see inefficient things from nature, so if you acknowledge inefficient things come from nature it doesn't matter if you don't think they count as "selected" or not, it still means your original argument is invalid.

>>9847681
>>9847355
Doesn't remove the factor of cosmological disaster wiping you out, along with all your VR equipment, as well as the fact you need to power said indefinitely.

Granted, you only need to colonize a few systems to delay that problem insomuch as possible until heat death (assuming there's also a population cap). I suppose you can delay it a bit longer inside an event horizon, if you can find a large calm one, and cosmic censorship isn't a thing.

It does seem, however, any species prone to that level of escapism woulda found some really nice drugs and done itself in before it went full VR. It's true though, once you reach a certain level of integrated intelligence, the universe is going to get a bit boring. Only so many combinations of four forces and a handful of particles to see - eventually it'd be like exploring in Minecraft, same blocks everywhere. I think the goal would thus be, not a simulation of this universe, but one more complex that can actually keep them entertained. If they continued advancing inside that VR universe, they'd eventually get bored, and make it more complex still, and that might entail expanding power needs, though who knows to what degree.

FTL isn't a worry of the Fermi Paradox though - it's assumed. It's just, even with non-FTL, a species bent on infinite expansion shoulda colonized the whole galaxy by now... That is, assuming any such species still slaved to that base instinct can ever hope to do so.

>>9847355
>Virtual Reality is the answer to the Fermi paradox.
1940's: "they all developed nukes and wiped themselves out"
1970's: "they all polluted their worlds and poised themselves to death"
2010's: "they're all playing super-xbox and never left home"
I'm deeply suspicious of any explanation that posits our current situation is so important it defines the fate of every civilization in the galaxy.

But hey, maybe the aliens all invented fidget spinners, and are too busy doing sick tricks to come visit.

>>9847808
>a species bent on infinite expansion shoulda colonized the whole galaxy by now

The far side of the galaxy is about 80-85kly away, and actual colonization would likely follow the spiral arms, and not cut through the core.
We have no practical experience with interstellar travel, but let's assume a species is headed this way at 0.01c, on a path that will take them 100kly to reach us.
That's a 10 million year journey.
You also have to assume they're only driven to move on to the next star when some kind of local conditions justify the next colonization, so you can't assume continuous progress.
Just two million years ago, our ancestors were fancy animals just starting to bang rocks together. Can we really assume a species will maintain the ability and desire to travel for 10+ million years?
Let's say they do, but when they get here, unless conditions (visible light spectrum and amount, GRAVITY, temperature, elements present, etc. etc.) are just right, they're likely skip over Earth.
And what if they avoid colonizing worlds with existing life? Maybe they are worried about local biological threats, or maybe they're interested in preserving local life.
And how long do you think interstellar civilizations last, anyway?
Nothing lasts forever. If they last on average tens of millions of years, but planets enjoy Goldilocks status for billions of years, that means about 1% of all potential civilizations exist at any given point in time.

And let's not forget Dyson spheres, swarms, etc
Any alien government/religion/military/chess club that wanted to maximize its population without giving up control by having colonies splitting off would likely pursue megastructure technology.
Even Niven's Ringworld would have a surface area of 2.4 e+14 square kilometers, or as much as 3 million Earths.
A full Dyson sphere could have a population in the billions of billions.
Therre's no reason to believe even absurd population growth would have to lead to colonization.

>>9847154
You realize the more spread out, and diverse a species is, the more abundant food will be, reducing famines to a non-issue. Assuming a population steadily grows instead of exploding, there's no reason you can't keep up, especially on the scale of near stars.

>>9847910
confirmed brainlet

>>9847028
>Even if our galaxy is dominated by intelligent civilisations that, for some reason, disregards the pros of spreading your species, the first purpose of all life, and ensuring that you cannot be destroyed by a supernova or asteroids,
Because individual lives don't care about preserving their lives nearly as much. You and a bunch of other people might say they would be willing to sacrifice themselves to a lifetime of confinement and boredom to MAYBE colonize a planet in our own solar system, but it's incredibly unlikely. And even if you were mentally ill enough to be able to, what about your descendants?
Humans are animals too, and animals like their comfort zones. No animal evolved for space travel.

>>9847978
it wouldn't be difficult for any sufficiently advanced civ to colonize a far-off planet, just send a self-sufficient megaship factory filled with suspended animation immortals and wait a few millennia

>>9848009
Why would they do that though?
Assuming humans are average intelligent life behaviorally, humans scarcely like to do shit that benefits themselves much less benefit only others.

>>9848012
>humans have never colonized another far-off region

>only one intelligent species popped up in billions of years on earth, meaning that intelligence is probably super rare or just takes a long fucking time to spring up
>hurr why dere no aliums ??????

>>9848021
Yeah, for personal benefits.
What is the benefit of dumping billions of dollars so someone else can live on mars and do nothing all day?

>>9848035
Technological advancement. It's pretty common technology developed by NASA makes it way into a ton of products and projects.

>>9847929
The estimates range from 20-100 mil years, depending on methodology, and that's nothing when the civilization could have an eight billion year head start (or more, under some theories). There's no reason to assume a significant pause between colonies, assuming galactic domination is the long term goal. A new colony could conceivably have another dozen embryo ships ready to go right after it's founded.

But yes, with mastery of genetic engineering comes extreme longevity, and presumably a more forward thinking view along with. Thus, any mitigation of death, is likely to come side by side with an equal, if not greater, mitigation of birth. A civilization capable of eliminating any social or biological drive counter to their long-term survival is not likely to go down a path that they know is ultimately unsustainable.

On the other hand, with that sort of engineering also comes homogeneity, which more or less eliminates the problems of colonies "going rogue".

>>9847929
>Dyson spheres
About the only thing a civilization can conceivably achieve more impressive than colonizing an entire galaxy, is a habitable Dyson sphere. The sheer magnitude of material production and engineering involved makes biological immortality and interstellar travel look almost quaint.

Plus, it's not something you really want to build until you've colonized the entire galaxy, or at least have it very closely monitored, particularly if it's built in the only solar system you have. A Dyson sphere would be visible to upstarts around most of the galaxy, and if any one of them saw it as a threat, one relativistic kill missile is all it would take to wipe out your whole civilization, and those take fraction of the tech and resources to build.

And even Dyson spheres are still vulnerable to certain cosmological disasters and have a limited life span, so unless you happen to be lucky enough to spawn around the perfect star in the perfect location (ie. nothing like what we have here) they are the sort of thing you start building after you've already colonized the whole galaxy, and are running out of space.

>>9848035
Going into the solar system is desirable because it's possible to fetch resources from asteroids and planets that are abundant with them. Going from the solar system into remote colonization is desirable because the people who own the factory ships will get even more resources. Why do you think that remote colonizers won't invest their own property? And the advantage of the people left behind, even if you don't have to account for them, is that they'll be able to get rid of all the colonizers so they won't compete for resources or spread their eventual ideologies (which is what happened with the new world, for example).

>>9848056
>Going into the solar system is desirable because it's possible to fetch resources from asteroids and planets that are abundant with them.
Which is why humans have done this despite having the technology to do so for decades now?
>Going from the solar system into remote colonization is desirable because the people who own the factory ships will get even more resources.
Why? Ned to get more resource because...HURR NEED MORE RESOURCES SO I CAN GET MORE RESOURCES SO I CAN GET MORE RESOURCES TO GET MORE RESOURCES
At what point do you realize that you're acting like an animal succumbing to irrational instincts?

The answer to the fermi "paradox" is that the status of being alive is not objectively particularly preferable to not being alive. It's only our instincts as animals that tell us otherwise. It's no coincidence that as humans become more intelligent and less reliant on irrational instincts that suicide becomes much more common.

>>9848072
>Which is why humans have done this despite having the technology to do so for decades now?
we don't have the technology to do so in an economically efficient way
as space tech becomes more advanced and resources become more strained on earth, that economic balance will shift, and that's without considering the different situations an alien would face

we've literally only been in space for like 60-75 years


as for your really stupid worship of reason: it's not something you can use to determine what you want to do, it's just a tool
and intelligent people don't kill themselves more often, that's just a myth

>>9848072
>as humans become more intelligent and less reliant on irrational instincts that suicide becomes much more common
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDvN-g-3SxI

There's an objective advantage to being alive, namely that you can experience the universe, and make meaning within it.

I suspect the suicide rate goes up when folks realize they are merely cogs in a machine that's going nowhere. However, the suicide rate has nonetheless been fairly flat since 1800, unlike the tech, and that effect.

Life on Earth has a basic instinct to expand its sphere of influence and spread to ensure its survival. In man, this often manifests as a desire to tame unconquered lands. We do not yet have the technology or infrastructure in place where any madman can go gallivanting across the solar system looking to stake a new homestead, or to even treat it like the trans-Atlantic voyages of old - but, barring a dark age or apocalypse, we probably one day will. Musk is just a hint of the madmen to come, each of whom will be able to pursue their dreams with increasingly less resources and personal clout as time goes on, until they are as common as mountain climbers - and by then richest and wildest of them will be looking towards those other stars.

>>9848098
>as for your really stupid worship of reason
I do not worship reason
I just recognize that life worship is irrational.
>>9848103
>There's an objective advantage to being alive, namely that you can experience the universe, and make meaning within it.
That's not an objective advantage, that's entirely subjective whether you believe the ability to experience outweighs the negatives of experiencing bad things.
>Life on Earth has a basic instinct to expand its sphere of influence and spread to ensure its survival.
This is nothing to be proud about.

>>9848110
Well, if you can hold your breath until you die, I'll consider it subjective. I doubt you'll even make it until you pass out though.

>>9848110
>I just recognize that life worship is irrational.
and you use "irrational" as a term that shows something is wrong, i.e you let reason be your god and master
you can literally not take a rational action as any action presupposes some sort of goal, which reason can't give you, so basically you are dumb

>>9848114
>Well, if you can hold your breath until you die, I'll consider it subjective. I doubt you'll even make it until you pass out though.
Didn't know instincts and reflexs made things objective
>>9848118
>and you use "irrational" as a term that shows something is wrong, i.e you let reason be your god and master
You are just projecting. Irrational doesn't mean wrong. Being wrong doesn't even mean anything bad.
However when discussing behavior of intelligent species it's better to act as if they are rational (not acting as though infinite growth is good because infinite growth is good and they know this because modern humans think infinite growth is good)
Basically I'm just criticizing you guys for assuming the current human socioeconomic paradigm is the "default". I'm saying that you can't assume aliens would find growth for the sake of growth appealing and act on it because assuming that behavior is the norm has little basis other than capitalism being the predominant human paradigm at the moment.
You might as well assume aliens have a religious belief that tells them there is a holy land on their planet and so they don't want to get too far away from it or they will go to space-hell.

>>9847964

>>9846299

What do you mean by "the known universe," you daft sodomite?

Semantically, the implications are remarkable. Suppose I live on Earth, in a region -- let's call it X -- isolated from the rest of the planet, and I decide to venture the inscrutable pelagic unknown, the belly of Styx. Suppose further that I reach a new land -- which unbeknownst to me harbors civilization. Should I, upon leaving, then say "I have extended my knowledge of the <i> known </i> Earth and come to the conclusion that the people of X must be the first intelligent life on Earth?"

More succinctly, to what degree is the known universe <i> known <i>? I <i> know </i> Andromeda exists just as the explorer of country X knows there is a land outside of country X. Does the <i> known </i> universe encompass all that we have named or <i> know of </i>, that which we can, through ostension, identify on a map? Is it not fair to suppose that there is more to the universe which has not been "mapped" which can conceivably be "mapped?" Is the "known" universe "known" if one hasn't found definitive evidence to demonstrate it does/doesn't harbor intelligent life?

>>9848134
>Didn't know instincts and reflexs made things objective
The instinct is there for an objective reason.

>because modern humans think infinite growth is good
Plenty of humans recognize it as bad (indeed, pretty much every human acknowledges this on one level or another).

At the same time, most humans, like most complex life, are willing to put up with a really shit ratio of "good" experience to "bad" experience, over no experience at all.

And like most complex life on the planet, we also appreciate opportunity. We're a bit more nuanced in that we also know one of the best opportunities to create a world in which that ratio doesn't suck so bad, is to found a new world.

It's a fair bet that any intelligent life that reaches the cusp of space, is going to be dealing with many of the same obstacles we did - including that instinct for perpetual growth and survival that made it dominant enough a life form on its own world to do so.

Now, personally, I posit that, in order to survive and spread beyond its biosphere before it consumes it, will require fundamental changes to its nature. The Fermi Paradox, yes, is flawed in that it generally assumes this is not the case. But for life to reach the stage we're at now, perpetual growth and expansion pretty has to have been part of its nature at some point - unless, of course, its source is artificial.

The instinct for survival, however, is likely not one you'd engineer out. If anything, you'd likely make it more comprehensive, and more focused on the whole, rather than the individual (lest you're lucky enough to already have that instinctual arrangement).

>>9848137
It doesn't go through the sock: he should have cut the sock and glued the metal to the skin directly

>>9847268
It absolutely matters to the context of you claiming it's a biology question when it isn't.
Also approaching it as a biology question is retarded since your entire basis for thinking about the topic is then limited to life on one planet out of the entire universe.
Biology so far isn't really the study of life, it's the study of life as it is on the one planet we're familiar with, as opposed to physics which isn't confined to information from a single planet.

>>9848047
>the civilization could have an eight billion year head start
That' seems unlikely:
http://www.iflscience.com/space/earth-may-have-formed-earlier-92-other-habitable-planets/
> research, using data from the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes,
>which suggests that 92% of potentially habitable planets in the universe are yet to be born.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2015/10/92-of-earth-like-worlds-have-yet-to-be.html
>Compared to all the planets that will ever form in the universe, the Earth is actually quite early.
etc:
https://astronomynow.com/tag/peter-behroozi/
https://www.google.com/search?q=earth+earlier+92%25
...but let's say your alien invaders passed through 5+ billion years ago.
The solar system wouldn't have been here.
Most of the time since is the per-Cambrian.
Would we even know if someone settled the Earth a billion years ago, then died out )or left_ after 10-100 million years?

>There's no reason to assume a significant pause between colonies,
There's no reason to assume their wouldn't be either. OK, once there's a few thousand inhabited systems, at least one of them should be launching a colony ship at any given point.
But the first humans to colonize a new world aren't going to be in a big hurry to leave, especially if you're postulating that resource depletion or overpopulation motivate further colonization.

In the end though the "we should have seen the aliens by now, so they must not exist" argument rests on the premise that there aren't any other people out there, and that seems remarkably unlikely.

>>9848193
>which suggests that 92% of potentially habitable planets in the universe are yet to be born.
Universe is newbie with only just over a dozen billion years in it with maybe a hundred trillion to go. Yes, we're among the first planets, but those first planets are numbered in the billions of trillions throughout the cosmos, and hundreds of billions in our own galaxy (possibly more, given what we've been observing, and the fact that the most common stars, unlike our rare yellow dwarf, are also the most likely to have swarms of rocky planets).

>The solar system wouldn't have been here.
>Most of the time since is the per-Cambrian.
The Fermi Paradoxes contention is that they should have already colonized the solar system, rather than simply passed through it.

>>9848193
>But the first humans to colonize a new world aren't going to be in a big hurry to leave
I said Embryo Ship - no one's leaving the colony, they are just ensuring their immortality among the stars - something I could easily see sufficiently resourced interstellar humans doing, just for kicks - hell, could be part of every wedding ceremony. (But hopefully we've refined our nature a bit by then, should we ever get that far.)

I am in the camp that finds it a bit absurde to assume that a civilization could reach the stars without changing that base drive first. So, I wouldn't expect it to be the norm, though if intelligent life was very common, odds are one of them would be going at it.

Thus, I suspect the actual answer to the Fermi paradox is the simplest one - intelligent life is just rare as fuck. If the odds are bad enough for just one for every few dozen galaxies, then we'd never meet any, lest we created it ourselves, or allowed it to evolve billions of years from now. We wouldn't be alone in the universe (get into too many zeros for that), but barring FTL, we midas well be.

>>9848048
>The sheer magnitude of material production and engineering involved
Sure, but there are plenty of half-steps. Unlimited growth of a space-faring population would likely lead to creation of large numbers of space habitats.
Anybody know how many people we could support in this solar system living in artificial habitats?
>it's not something you really want to build until you've colonized the entire galaxy,
Assuming no FTL, a single society can't colonize an entire galaxy. They'd be too widespread, and it would take too much time for legal and cultural changes to propagate.
That was my whole point. A single government can't rule people thousands of light years apart.
Any existing society bent on population growth would be motivated to keep that larger population in a single star system, or at least in a few neighboring systems.

>A Dyson sphere would be visible to upstarts around most of the galaxy,
We presently can't detect nearby Dyson spheres:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#Search_for_megastructures
>Identifying one of the many infrared sources as a Dyson sphere would require improved techniques for discriminating between a Dyson
>sphere and natural sources.[33] Fermilab discovered 17 potential "ambiguous" candidates, of which four have been named
>"amusing but still questionable".

>one relativistic kill missile is all it would take to wipe out your whole civilization
That's probably more true of a single planet than a Dyson sphere.
We really don't know enough about megastructure engineering to really say what it would take to "break" one.
And who said you only have to have one?

The only reason I brought them up is to counter the argument that "massive population growth must lead to colonization".
Since we have zero practical experience with any interstellar or megastructure tech, there's just no way we can say one _must_ precede the other, especially since we know absolutely nothing about the culture of your hypothetical aliens.

>>9848212
You seem to have painted yourself into a corner.
You've used an unreasonably specific set of assumptions to paint the "only possible" picture that could involve the existence of E.T.'s would require us to know about them.
If you're right, we're alone in the galaxy (local group maybe?), and that's just so unlikely that Hitchen's Razor suggests your ideas belong on /x/, not /sci/.

>>9848048
>Dyson sphere would be visible to upstarts around most of the galaxy
They are dozens of Dyson Sphere candidates.
If you dig into SETI research there are actually quite a few objects and events that could be artificial in nature but we can’t confirm.
Aliens probably are postbiological and incredibly advanced, to a point where we are unimportant to them

>>9848134
>However when discussing behavior of intelligent species it's better to act as if they are rational (not acting as though infinite growth is good because infinite growth is good and they know this because modern humans think infinite growth is good)
you have to assume they're intelligent, not rational, aka they can use reason but don't just disagree with whatever thing you think is irrational
growth is good because you get more stuff and with more stuff you can do more things
growth has nothing to do with capitalism, it's all with a desire for more power, which is why we had feudal states with higher population and more resources than the first agrarian societies

>>9848224
p.s.:
I can paint really specific pictures too, watch:
Most of the stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs.
Some claim the conditions on a world orbiting a red dwarf are so different from our own, it would make a poor home for humanity (tidal locking, high infra-red spectrum, etc).
Surely, our part of the galaxy must be dominated by people that wouldn't be comfortable living here on Earth.
Since all societies must want to prevent interloping trespassers, they must be keeping out potential Earth-colonizing species.
Mystery solved!

>>9848219
>>9848219
>Assuming no FTL, a single society can't colonize an entire galaxy. They'd be too widespread, and it would take too much time for legal and cultural changes to propagate.
>That was my whole point. A single government can't rule people thousands of light years apart.
You're assuming they never gain the genetic engineering capacity to homogenize their civilization, and as another anon was complaining, projecting base human tendencies on an alien civilization with such technology that they could have wiped them from their nature countless ages ago, if they ever had them at all. Conversely, you're also assuming they care, though if they were hyper individualistic, I suppose there'd have to be some limits to that, and a base instinct not to kill their own, which might slow them up a bit.

At the same time, if a government needed to control such a populous directly, that would assume a populous that was potentially unruly and thus didn't want to be controlled, and thus would desire escape. In such a fractured, human-like, civilization, new colonies would crop up every time some rebel faction managed to gather the resources to make a run for it, which would happen increasingly often as technology improved.

Granted, in that case, maybe they already had their galactic war and thus are all in hiding ala good ol Dark Forest.

>>9848224
Well, I'm saying that's the Fermi Paradox's convention. Its premise is that the fact that we aren't part of an alien colony is the strongest argument for there not being any intelligent aliens - or at least them being extremely rare.

I'm not saying there's no alternative solutions to that conundrum, and indeed am saying that the assumption of perpetual expansion the concept makes is kinda silly to begin with - at the very least, it shouldn't be the default, and intelligent life would likely have to be very common for us to see that, which would lead to conflicts between them.

But beyond that, we've no hints, as we can't see shit beyond our backyard, and contrary to sci-fi, undirected radio transmissions don't extend beyond solar systems. Could be freaking Star Trek out there, and we wouldn't know it.

>>9848219
>We presently can't detect nearby Dyson spheres
We can't, but anyone with one of pic related could, and we're working on our first right now.

So, again, big target, visible to half the primitive apes in the galaxy or more. Unless you're of such supertech you can build them left and right, or are absolutely assured no one's building relativistic kill missiles (which, yes, would break those, and the star in them, in sufficient size or numbers), better to start up colonies before you start working on those, and you'd have the technology for the former far before you had the tech for the latter.

But again, I suspect any civilization with that sorta technology is going to have virtual immortality and a population cap. No reason for such a civilization to build anything like those. (Even if you're kugelblitzing black holes to power starships - you don't need arrays so large they'd be visible from other solar systems.)

>>9848236
>You're assuming they never gain the genetic engineering capacity to homogenize their civilization,
What, like a monocrop?
If anything, genetic engineering would allow them to make different people adapted to different.environments.
And you're missing my point.
You really can't have a single government (or culture) if it takes 100k years for even a message to get from one side of the galaxy to the other.
And if people take millions of years to cross the galaxy (assuming their species lasts that long), separate populations are likely to evolve into divergent species, even without genetic engineering.

>>9847154
>famines
A civilization that can create dyson swarms wouldnt even be biological so there would never be any famines ever.

>>9848268
>the fact that we aren't part of an alien colony
[citation needed]
Alien species might just seed worlds like ours with life (panspermia), or perhaps the Cambrian Explosion is the result of "colonization".

> Its premise is ... strongest argument for there not being any intelligent aliens
No. The whole point of the Fermi Paradox (and the reason they call it a PARADOX) is there SHOULD be other people, so where are they?
The Fermi Paradox relies on the assumption that there ARE aliens out there, otherwise it wouldn't be a paradox.

>>9848272
You simply install a desire to avoid genetic drift and/or a genetic kill switch that prevents it, and burn the culture into the genetic makeup itself.

You're fundamentally altering your genetic make up at will at this point - no need to think you'd stop at immortality, particularly if you reach a unified culture before you reach the stars, which seems likely.

...and again, if you don't have this capacity, and have problems with "divergents", this makes it more likely for colonies to crop up everywhere, not less, as then you aren't just doing it to ensure your civilizations survival, but for political differences.

It seems more reasonable to assume most colonies would be embryo ships, with embryos tailored for their new environs (possibly further by the machine that lands them there). But, if you're virtually immortal and/or have perpetual suspension, maybe actual colonists would be involved.

>>9848272
Adapting to different environments is too restrictive it would be better to remake humans so they can live anywhere in the universe.

>>9847519
>I suspect the Great Filter is efficiency. If you don't manage to override your base instinct for perpetual expansion, you exhaust and destroy your own biosphere before you gain the technology to colonize another system. Thus all space faring civilizations are extremely efficient and extremely limited in scope, barely detectable, if at all.

This sounds like the most likely explanation. I'd imagine that most space-faring civilizations would still end up only truly understanding the dangers of mindless expansion the hard way by rebuilding society after some apocalypse level event caused by it.

If Earth had a WWIII and lost 90% of it's population, we wouldn't exactly be sent back to the stone age. It would be an extremely stressful time for everyone but it would be a massive culling of any society that either has too many enemies or relies too much on goodwill.

The survivors get a chance to rebuild society anew, but they have access to libraries containing modern science and technology documentation everywhere and if they want modern conveniences they get to spend all day re-engineering and repairing them. So now you have an emerging society where large swaths are are technically competent and can't just live comfortably ignorant of all the modern conveniences provided for them. Moreover, they'll have lived through the biggest extinction event in man's history and probably put a lot more measures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.

>>9848283
>The Fermi Paradox relies on the assumption that there ARE aliens out there, otherwise it wouldn't be a paradox.
Yes, my bad... Simplest solution then, rather, but not the only one.

>Alien species might just seed worlds like ours with life (panspermia), or perhaps the Cambrian Explosion is the result of "colonization".
Perhaps, though seems a kind of a half-assed effort. Think they'd leave a note. Maybe we have to string the DNA of aliens on a bunch of other seeded worlds to play the video back.

>>9848299
>Maybe we have to string the DNA of aliens on a bunch of other seeded worlds to play the video back.
Maybe they carved it into the cosmic microwave background.

(Calls your ST:TNG bluff and raises SG:U... Then cries as he realizes they will never resolve that plotline.)

>>9848236
Dark Forest is retarded, you can detect Earth like planets using telescopes, you can even image cities, rural fields etc.Hiding is pointless.

>>9848338
Well, we can't, yet, but may be able to soon.

But, in that particular scenario, they'd be hiding from each other, not us. They might be building underground or in nebula as a result. If they spotted us, they'd know we weren't a rebel faction. Wouldn't make us safe, but at least they'd have more pressing threats to attend to.

>>9848353
Need a hypertelescope with a virtual aperture the size of Jupiter before you're doing that on any but the closest of stars anyways.

>>9848361
At which point, you're a target.

>>9848338
>Dark Forest is retarded
All of the attempts people make to explain the Fermi Paradox are retarded honestly.
They always involve someone having a preferred wrong answer and then wondering aloud why everyone doesn't realize how obvious their wrong answer is. When in reality their idea has already been gone over to death as part of the original formation of the Fermi Paradox and their answer not being plausible is exactly why the Fermi Paradox is a thing in the first place.

>>9848375
I've heard twenty or so explanations that I like, but Occam's razor just keep dragging me back towards the depressing, "intelligent life is just extraordinary rare."

Not that observations wouldn't be much the same under those other twenty, but, meh, we're blind as fuck, so that's neither here nor there. Granted, a few of those explanations are even more depressing.

>>9848361
>he doesn’t know about gravity lensing

>>9848375
I think the answer is quite simple
Universe is huge, even with speed of light you can only reach 30% of observable space
Technological species are unique, life might be common though
There is no need to colonize whole galaxies
Technological species are by obvious reasons apart by millions of years

>>9848382
Intelligent life being so rare that we don't see any of it is itself one of those implausible explanations though, it's built into the original Fermi Paradox too.
That's the thing, everyone thinks they're doing something like applying Occam's razor and picking the least outlandish explanation, but what makes it a "paradox" is all these explanations are outlandish, including the one where life is so rare we never see it, since the scope of the universe and the amount of time that's elapsed would mean even a very rare phenomenon would be happening more than enough times to be noticeable.
It's like the analogy of being struck by lightning. Very unlikely to happen, but it would be extremely implausible if in the entire recorded history of human life on planet Earth no one was ever struck by lightning given how many people would be around all those thousands of years.

>>9848385
I want to say "that's not how that works", but I'm afraid you'll give me a link.

>Technological species are by obvious reasons apart by millions of years
Only flaw in that one, is that once you've got a few colonies, the only thing that can wipe you out is another species with that same capability, or yourselves. Once a species reaches the stars, it should be around until the stars burn out.

>>9848391
>I think the answer is quite simple
That's what I'm arguing is a bad idea to do.
You should give the physicists who've looked into this topic the benefit of the doubt here. They're not a bunch of complete retards, the "simple" explanations are all things that have been looked at to death and make up the basis for why the Fermi Paradox exists in the first place as a concept.

>>9848361
which is easily doable if it is a hypertelescope swarm, and our civilization is likely able to achieve within 100-200 years.
Now imagine a civilization million years ahead of us.
Face it:if aliens exist they know Earth exists.Most likely they either don’t care or don’t want contact.
If technological civilizations are very rare our biggest value might be unique development and ideas, contacting us would destroy this.

>>9848400
>You should give the physicists who've looked into this topic the benefit of the doubt here.
Plenty of scientists are focusing on their narrow fields of research, and don’t even know capabilities of modern telescopes, clinging on ideas about Radio SETI from 70s

>>9848400
Why should I give a shit about what physicists think about a biological problem?

>>9848413
Why should you consider this a biological problem when your entire body of biological knowledge is limited to a single planet?

>>9848396
>since the scope of the universe and the amount of time that's elapsed would mean even a very rare phenomenon would be happening more than enough times to be noticeable
Yes, but we only have to worry about observing aliens in our own galaxy, when it comes to the Fermi Paradox, and you don't have to put very many zeros on the rarity of intelligent, potentially space fairing life, before it becomes the most likely explanation.

Especially when you start going into history, linguistics, and archeology, and realize that civilization itself was a convergence of a huge set of coincidences that just spreads like a virus once you have it, and not an inevitability at all. The same is true for the renaissance and the industrial revolution, possibly even of complex language and thought, given how many tens of thousands of years we were running about between fire and the first city - each advent being possibly as unusual a confluence as life itself. If any one of a million different things didn't come together at just the right time, we might still be in the trees, and there's many of those incredibly unlikely key moments, unique in our history, required to get us to where we are, and had they not happened then, may not had ever happened again.

Granted, some other species may be more suited to the stars from the get-go, and thus get there even sooner, but this does still all make the odds look very bleak.

>>9848401
Yes, though the point of that scenario is they wouldn't care if they saw us. We're clearly not the droids they are looking for. They might see us as a distant future threat, but they got real immediate threats to deal with, and blowing up our solar system would give them away to those.

>>9848396
>since the scope of the universe and the amount of time that's elapsed would mean even a very rare phenomenon would be happening more than enough times to be noticeable.
False. The "universe is so big" argument doesn't mean anything when you have no idea what the chances of intelligent life arising is. It could be 1 in a trillion trillion trillion for all we know. Therefore the most likely explanation is that until evidence says otherwise we are mostly likely the only ones.

>>9848421
>the most likely explanation is that until evidence says otherwise we are mostly likely the only ones
No, you don't assume we're a special case in the absence of evidence. You either don't make a guess at all or if you have to make a guess you make the guess that we're a middling case, the latter being exactly what the standard cosmology model assumes.

>>9848421
Mediocrity breaks that. There's nothing unusual about this solar system, and indeed, the more we look around, the more it seems it may not even be the best suited for life - the other variety being magntitudes more common.

You can get to being the only one in the galaxy pretty easily - but you start getting into ridiculous odds, when you try to make yourself unique in the universe, or even just the observable universe. Not that, for practical purposes, being unique in the galaxy and the universe isn't much the same.

The problem here is that everyone is assuming that the alien life form is as intelligent as we are. Think about that now, when you take a photo of your dog does he know that his image will be in your smarphone? No, and he will never know, does a fish know what's there beyond water? What if we are like dogs or fishes to other life forms?

>>9848428
Without evidence that there are others and with evidence that there aren't others it is clearly most logical to say there aren't others.
>>9848432
>There is nothing unusual about this solar system
Except it has intelligent life in it. It's very likely the event that made Eukaryotes or DNA using life is so rare that it only happened once or twice.

>>9848440
The argument is that if alien life exists it should be everywhere and obvious. A dog wont understand a camera but it sees humans every day.

>>9846964
This should've been the /thread

>>9848287
>You simply install a desire to avoid genetic drift and/or a genetic kill switch that prevents it
And when the ones who move to another star change their minds over the course of a few thousand years?

>burn the culture into the genetic makeup itself.
Sounds unlikely to be practical.
Environment drives culture (to a point), and NO culture will remain unchanged for millions of years.
Environment also drives genetics, no matte how much tinkering the original aliens did eons ago.

Besides, what's your point? You think aliens must inevitably create a genetic monocrop (a really bad idea, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana)), just so they can support your personal narrative of a homogeneous species and culture spreading throughout the galaxy?
And what happens when some other species, also intent on colonizing the galaxy runs into them?
And what if their uniform culture includes compassion for local indigenous life?
Nah, you'd be better off going the other way: genetic engineering allows them to fit into any available environment instead of skipping over unsuitable worlds.

>>9848441
Assuming a universe where physics work the same everywhere, given even the current megere observations, you quickly get to the point where you've stuck more zeros onto that rarity than is acceptable. It's unlikely that any chemical event in the universe is THAT rare, we're made from some of the most common elements in the universe, and there's plenty of nucleotides just floating around on rocks in this solar system, making it very likely life also exists somewhere else in this solar system. (And even the extra-solar Oumuamua seems to have carbon compounds on the surface - not that those aren't freaking everywhere).

>>9848453
Also natural selection will just cause people to mutate away from any genetic cap you put on them.

>>9848458
That's why you instill a huge fear of that, and give them enough starter technology to prevent it.

Social engineering is a lot easier, when you can define the beast you're working with.

>>9848292
>it would be better to remake humans so they can live anywhere in the universe
That sounds really implausible. The whole "point" of genetic selection is that different organisms do better in different environments,
Besides, I ca see the point of sending our own people to the stars, but what's the point of creating what's effectively a whole new species just to propagate them?
I'm sure you relish the thought of a designed people coming back to wipe out the normies, but your personal emotional-needs driven fantasies aren't a good basis for serious speculation.

>>9848457
> It's unlikely that any chemical event in the universe is THAT rare
You say this based on nothing.
Let's say life on a planet is one in a billion
Now let's say going from prokaryotic life to Eukaryote life is 1 in a billion
Now let's say going from Eukaryotic life to intelligent life is 1 in a billion
Now it's so unlikely that it only happened once at best.

>>9848463
>Instill fear
>Ones that disagree populate and outnumber the ones that fear repopulating

>>9848466
Starting life (abiogenesis) is the only hard part, evolution is a force of nature that will keep things in check from there on out unless conditions get too rough

>>9848470
You realize life wont necessarily get complex just because evolution exists right? Most biologists (me included) agree that the transition from prokaryotic to Eukaryotes life was a freak event that is extremely rare. In fact it only ever happened once in the 4 billion years life existed on earth. It's very likely that if we rerolled it wouldn't have happened at all.

>>9848299
>Simplest solution then, rather, but not the only one.
I would argue the simplest explanation is that both time and space are so vast we simply haven't run into any yet/lately.
Or maybe that UFO's are actually interstellar visitors.
A complete lack of galactic neighbors would seem to require a complex explanation.
Given the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, what's keeping our potential neighbors from existing?

>>9848299
>Maybe we have to string the DNA of aliens on a bunch of other seeded worlds to play the video back.
That was a Sar Trek STTNG episode.

>>9848466
>You say this based on nothing.
You say that, then proceed to pull numbers entirely out of your ass.

>>9848466
No, then it'd happen a few trillion times.

I guess you really don't understand the scope you're talking about.

To make it an event unique to the *observable* universe, the odds would have to be less than 1 in 200 trillion trillion. For the whole cosmos, probably 250 times that. That's the pessimistic estimate that only gives 4 billion years for it to happen, we're just ignoring those other 4-8 billion, depending on the model.

All the components to make it happen seem to be in just about every solar system, so no, while life might be rare, it ain't unique. It's, indeed, almost certainly elsewhere in the galaxy. We've done enough abiogenic experiments to have ideas to know how it could happen, and we have rough odds of those things happening naturally, and those may not be the only ways it could.

Intelligent and industrial life, well... That's murkier and less understood water - in part due to controversy.

>>9848473
>endosymbiosis
its not that rare, could have happened multiple times as you already know

In a sec of microorganisms, some are bound to get swallowed up by other ones without being digested somehow. And then some of those end up coincidentally being a good combo. No sweat.

>>9848484
Reigning theory is that the first bacteria that grew out of control apparently altered the environment such that abiogenesis was unlikely to happen again, flooding everything with oxygen and drastically cooling the planet. (Though there's still self-replicating RNA in red clay and the like.)

...and I guess we're all descended from that dick.

>>9848466
>based on nothing
Exactly.
We do have nothing to go off of.
Which means you should guess we're a middling case, not an extreme case, let alone such an extreme case that you're talking about being unique to the entire universe.
I'd argue us being unique to the universe is the least plausible class of explanations for Fermi Paradox. It's as bad of a guess as the guess Earth was the center of the universe.
When a line of thought leads you to a conclusion where we're extremely special that should be a HUGE red flag your line of thought is mistaken.
"You made a mistake" is a shit ton more plausible than "you're the absolutely unique miracle of life that occurred just one time on this one rock taking up one seventy quintillionith of the space in the entire observable universe."

>>9848495
Yeah but I'm talking about eukaryote evolution
Idk maybe it is super rare
But ircc certain algae actually did it again (brown seaweed or volvox or something) so they're like double eukaryotic

>>9848469
They won't disagree, that's the whole point of homogenizing and programing the whole lot to begin with. The desire for genetic stability becomes a lot like the desire to breath.

>>9846299
Explain Greys

>>9848498
>Yeah but I'm talking about eukaryote evolution
Eukaryotes are just more advanced/complex bacteria.
I'd guess they're inevitable once you have bacteria, assuming life itself doesn't cause a runaway greenhouse effect or something like that.
Any biofags here want to weigh in on the possibility of macroscopic life evolving with bacterial cells instead of eukaryotic?

>>9848541
>Explain Greys
Time travelers from Earth's far future.

>>9846299
>When did you first realize that humans must be the first intelligent life in the known universe?
lol, I just noticed this:
>first intelligent life in the known universe
>known universe
Known to who? OP is technically correct in that the universe known to _us_ is a very small and limited place.
There's almost no detail beyond our own solar system, certainly not enough to determine whether any aliens exist in our interstellar neighborhood.
So yes, we are the only intelligent life in the tiny fraction of the universe known to us, congrats OP, your poor writing has accidentally made you correct.

>>9848780
>There's almost no detail beyond our own solar system, certainly not enough to determine whether any aliens exist in our interstellar neighborhood.
It's safe to say we will know in 20 years if life exists outside Earth thanks to telescopes.

Personally I would say there is rather strong chance of life under surface of Mars-I would give it 90%

Clouds of Venus-60%

Europa-60%

Enceladus-80%

Clouds of Jupiter-40%

>>9848789
also it is likely that life in our system originated on Mars and was transported via ejecta to Earth.

>>9846299

There's sapient life out there, but the laws of physics as we understand them appear to make interstellar travel an impossibility.

The time and resources involved are simply too great to overcome.

We are trapped in our solar system.

>>9848838
Not really, but there is no reason for extensive colonization of the galaxy

>>9848853
this. we have tens of thousands of years of dinking around in our own solar system before going interstellar.

>>9848861
Exploration will be pursued-especially once data about other biospheres will start coming from telescopes, or detection of Megastructures.

As to colonization-our solar system can sustain trillions of humans for billions of years.
I can see some groups leaving to colonize interesting places in the galaxy, or to secure species from things like gamma ray bursts, but it will be more of a cluster type of colonization than a wave. I believe there were even simulations of this.

>>9848789
>It's safe to say we will know in 20 years if life exists outside Earth thanks to telescopes.
Great, just in time for net-gain fusion, the singularity and a cure for the common cold.
And where are you getting your percentages?
If they came out your ass, I hope you washed your hands before you touched the keyboard.

>>9848887
>Great, just in time for net-gain fusion,
No, just in time for these babies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Magellan_Telescope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(spacecraft)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescope_for_Habitable_Exoplanets_and_Interstellar/Intergalactic_Astronomy

>>9846988
>we're one of the first, at the very least.
I could get behind that. The universe will on live for several trillions of years, at the very least. There will be many, many more civilizations to come in the future.

>>9846299
>buy lottery ticket
>lottery takes place
>don’t know the numbers, didn’t watch the news
>Claim the most intelligent and likely guess is that you got all 7 out of 49 correct and won a million dollars

>>9848912
>>we're one of the first, at the very least.
>I could get behind that. The universe will on live for several trillions of years, at the very least. There will be many, many more civilizations to come in the future.
That's a little like saying our galaxy is one of 100+ billion galaxies.
That's great and all, but what about here and now?
You might as well say "there are billions of women in the world". Sure, but then why was I a virgin in high school?

>>9848934
have you not played stellaris? we're the OP ancient race in the galaxy.

>>9848942
That would be really sad, if true.
Tell me more about Stellaris.

>>9848954
its a space 4x game. really comfy gameplay, nice soundtrack. i haven't played in a while but its gotten tons of updates. give it a pirate.

>>9846335
Signals have been leaving the solar system for close to a century now, and they grow more powerful every year. The aliens will hear us eventually whether we want them to or not

>>9849390
I just hope they don't decide to come kill us because the BBC programming is so shit

>>9849390
The aliens will be human, and we won't see them until we start leaving for other habitable planets outside of our solar system. Our first generation of ships will get overtaken by faster ships from later civilizations of Earth that forgot those first ships even left, which from their frame of reference was ancient history. Our descendants will colonize the galaxy before us and establish their own worlds and cultures ready to be discovered.

>>9846299
if aliens did get here they'd probably die to one of our more simpler illnesses like in war of the worlds.

>>9849700
>can travel thousands of light years
>he thinks their medicine isn't advanced enough to deal with unkown diseases
War of the worlds is a stupid movie. There is no way humanity woud be so lucky.

>>9849390
Actually, our signals have been getting fainter thanks to improved efficiency and switch to digital. And it only takes a few light years for our transmissions to become indistinguishable from background noise.

>>9846299
Well you are goddamn stupid son
We might find life in our own solar system (Europa, Ganymede) and remains of past life on Mars, Venus, maybe somewhere else

We can only detect signals in our own galaxy wich is insanely huge even if you travel at light speed. we detected 3000 exoplanets in it (so far)
there is billions of billions of galaxies, some exist since more than 10 billions years

The probability that life only emerged on our planet is near 0


Also wait for the james webb telescope please

>>9849752
That's true, but we're talking macro here. The simple fact our universe exists at all, with the ability to harbor any life is near 0. The fact our universe is expanding at an increasing rate defies all of the known laws of physics. I don't think you understand the Fermi paradox well enough.

>>9849759
How do we know that aliens didn't visit us/sent signals before the existence of man?

Do you think our race will still be there in 30000years (a "short" period of time)?

Do you think interstellar travel is possible?

Do you think that life must become intelligent at one point or another?

How do we know a signal is on it's way to us but will arrive in 1million years or tomorrow?

>>9849700
>if aliens did get here they'd probably die to one of our more simpler illnesses like in war of the worlds.
No, every time in history that contact has been made between two previously separate populations it's always the native population that gets disproportionately wrecked by disease, not the contact initiating population.
The fact the contact initiating population is able to make the trip in the first place means they'll likely come from a more developed civilization with more past exposure to a greater variety of pathogens and more robust immune systems as a consequence.

>>9848444
Ok but the dog is just an example, let's say very small insects then or bacteria, what i want to say is that maybe we aren't able to recognise other life forms, but non because we can't see, hear, feel them, but because we can't even comprehend with only our brain that they exist.

>>9849767
>How do we know that aliens didn't visit us/sent signals before the existence of man?
I don't, but what does that have to do with probability?
>Do you think our race will still be there in 30000years (a "short" period of time)?
Personally? No, at least not in the way we know it now.
>Do you think interstellar travel is possible?
Not in the capacity you are thinking. The distances are far too great.
>Do you think that life must become intelligent at one point or another?
That depends on how you define intelligence. Is an alien animal bound to pick up a rock some point and use it as a tool? Probably, given enough time to allow for evolutiom.
>How do we know a signal is on it's way to us but will arrive in 1million years or tomorrow?
We don't, that still has nothing to do with probability.

>>9849768
You're right, but for the wrong reasons. The indigenous population usually gets sick faster because there is more of them without immunity in a smaller area. Their immune systems probably don't even know what a flu virus is, as the flu virus evolved here on earth under earth's specific conditions. Their world would have have the same atmospheric composition as well as billions of other evolutionary factors to have evolved into the same strain of virus.

Pls all of you remember that evolution is different from improvement, evolution is just a random change that can be either good or bad for survival and mating, the only thing we can say is that there is a wall of minimum complexity that is the unicellular being. Then you can go further but also come back.

>>9849772
How do we know that aliens didn't visit us/sent signals before the existence of man?
>I don't, but what does that have to do with probability?
The fermi paradox is claiming that if the universe is as old as we think it is, aliens should be everywhere. maybe they aren't that common, maybe they already detected us and came in the past
Maye they are all dead in the vicinity

Do you think our race will still be there in 30000years (a "short" period of time)?
>Personally? No, at least not in the way we know it now.

Maybe it's impossible for an intelligent life form to sustain more than a definite period of time or maybe it's impossible to escape their home planet

Do you think interstellar travel is possible?
>Not in the capacity you are thinking. The distances are far too great.

See point above


Do you think that life must become intelligent at one point or another?
>That depends on how you define intelligence. Is an alien animal bound to pick up a rock some point and use it as a tool? Probably, given enough time to allow for evolutiom.

Try to imagine life under the icy crust of Europa, non intelligent life. It's still life right? If we discover it, what would you think of the fermi paradox?


How do we know a signal is on it's way to us but will arrive in 1million years or tomorrow?
>We don't, that still has nothing to do with probability.

There is a probability that we are just being discovered right now


excuse my english i'm french

>>9849777
You're right, but only improvements survive to pass on their genes. Theoretically anyway. Of course we know that's not always the case, but a poor evolutionary trait would cause difficulty in surviving, producing etc. It is random as a mutation, but sticks around as an advantage to adapt to the current environment.

>>9848853

> Doesn't understand the time scale, energy involved

> Majority of our engineered stuff barely lasts a decade or two before breaking down/needs a massive overhaul. Your spaceship needs to last centuries and thousands of years without an overhaul. MIcro-meteors and radiation will take their toll.

>Stars and everything in space is moving about. There's practically nothing between the stars. You need bring along a shit-ton of energy and resources.

>>9848009
>it wouldn't be difficult for any sufficiently advanced civ to colonize a far-off planet, just [pure sci fi fantasy]

>>9849738
THIS, but even more so.
We're not only moving from a world with a small number of more powerful transmitters to larger number of weaker signals.
And as we make more efficient use of the bandwidth, it sounds more and more like white noise.
Even if someone were listening to television channel 13, they'd get the Baltimore CBS station, the New York PBS station, etc, etc. all jumbled together.

Perhaps the greatest criticism of te Fermi Paradox is this...
We know people like us are possible, so where are the other people like us?
Well, since we've never gone anywhere, and we can't pick up signals like our own at interstellar distances, the universe _could_ be chock full of people _just_ like us, and we'd never know.

>>9849768
IIRC, around puberty the human immune system starts to specialize in either viral/bacterial threats or protozoa.
People who eat more meat are more likely to have a weaker defense against viral diseases.

>>9849778
No problem my friend, I can understand.

>The fermi paradox is claiming that if the universe is as old as we think it is, aliens should be everywhere. maybe they aren't that common, maybe they already detected us and came in the past
I don't agree though. Why would aliens be everywhere? Time and amount of intelligent life may he correlated, but correlation is not causation. Just because there is an increase in time does not imply there will be an increase in life.

>Maybe it's impossible for an intelligent life form to sustain more than a definite period of time or maybe it's impossible to escape their home planet
How? Even if we were able to upload or consciousness into a computer, that computer still needs energy to run. Energy is limited, we know that through the laws of thermodynamics. Traveling for millions of light years needs millions of years worth of energy. That's not easy to just cart around space.
>Do you think interstellar travel is possible?
>Try to imagine life under the icy crust of Europa, non intelligent life. It's still life right? If we discover it, what would you think of the fermi paradox?
If we discovered life as close as Europa, I still would have trouble believing the universe is teaming with it. We don't know how life came to be on earth. If "something" deposited life into our solar system, it could have been a freak accident that deposited life in our solar system only. I don't know what that accident would be, but I would need to see evidence that there is a species out there capable of FTP travel, which I do not believe is possible.

>How do we know a signal is on it's way to us but will arrive in 1million years or tomorrow?
>>We don't, that still has nothing to do with probability.
>There is a probability that we are just being discovered right now
And that number gets smaller every single day we don't receive a celestial message.

>>9849772
>I don't, but what does that have to do with probability?
IT means we aren't really asking "why haven't they showed up yet, it's been 4.6 billion years?".
Instead we're asking "why haven't they been back in the last few hundred years".
Earlier visitors would probably be remembered as gods, demons, angels, etc.

>>9849804
That's complete speculation though. There is no actual evidence to attest to that. Gods could have been aliens, gods could have been massive volcanos, Gods simply could have been meteorites, eclipses, etc. My point is, we don't know what the ancients framed their gods after. Sure, it could have been aliens. However, it is much more likely that Zues was modelled after lightning, not E.T. as there is plenty of evidence the ancients saw lightning. There not a lot that suggests they saw aliens. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you need something more than speculation on something like this. And since we can only speculate, probability suggests a higher chance of seeing lightning than seeing aliens.

>>9849784
we're not talking dyson shells, ftl or AI gods here
immortality and suspended animation is just very good medicine (and might even be easy depending on their biology). A big spaceship is just a big spaceship.

Abiogenesis hasnt been proven yet. So we cant assume life exists on other planets.

Maybe the universe is just like really big and kind of young.
Obviously OP didn't study enough or he would see that water bears are built to Surve harsh conditions like space. Also amino acids aren't all that hard to make and someone jog my memory but some organelle has whacky unnecessary alienish DNA?