Feb 17 2009
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Mac: The Fermi Paradox
Mac Tonnies has a good new post over at Posthuman Blues on the Fermi Paradox. Here’s an extract from it:
If we subscribe to the conventional interpretation of the Fermi Paradox (a thought experiment that forces us to struggle with the prospect of a Cosmos largely devoid of intelligent life), it would seem we’re indeed alone, at least insofar as we have any hope of making contact with interstellar neighbors. But what exactly is the Fermi Paradox? And does it necessarily imply that we’re a freak of stellar and biological evolution, potentially the only intelligent species in the universe?
Physicist Enrico Fermi’s vaunted “paradox” began as an off-the-cuff thought experiment. If the galaxy is suited for the emergence of life and intelligence, Fermi asked, then why do we fail to readily detect the handiwork of extraterrestrial species? After all, according to the wisdom of his era, expansion into space seemed near-inevitable. And if humans were poised to become a multi-planet species, then certainly aliens had accomplished the same feat long before we arrived on the stage, perhaps transcending their home solar systems in favor of interstellar colonization and mind-boggling feats of “astro-engineering.” (Fermi would probably have been hard-pressed to imagine an early 21st century bereft of Mars colonization, let alone the demise of the Apollo program.)
And here’s the link to the rest of the article.
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February 17th, 2009 at 9:00 am
These ideas re. Fermi’s paradox interject quite nicely with all the recent news and articles provoked by Paul Davie’s plea to biologists to look for “life as we don’t know it” right here on our own planet.
If we could find a new bizarre earthly life form that had escaped previous conventional detection—maybe we could find some living among clouds— that perhaps could have reverberating repercussions in SETI’s approach on how to chat with ET.
February 17th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
To speak of the probability of the existence of ETs is scientifically and mathematically ignorant. Statistics are inappropriate to any phenomenon that is not statistical by nature. For example, you and I know apple trees exist, so it would be quite ignorant or ludicrous for either one of us to calculate of the probability of apple trees existing — all we have to do to know apple trees exist is to go out and observe one.
In an infinite universe, even if we pretend that evolution and abiogenesis were a purely random phenomenon (they most definitely are not), the odds of ETs existing would still be 100%. That is because any probability, no matter how infinitely small that probability is, multiplied by infinity equals infinity. So it would be ignorant or ludicrous to discuss the probability of the existence of ETs. Probability would only allow us to guess what the population density is because it would allow us to guess what the chances are of us crossing each other’s paths — and isn’t that the most important thing here?
Anyway, at this point in the discussion, Fermi steps in and says that if ETs exist at any reasonable population density, and some of those ET civilizations got their start — instead of 4.7 billion years ago as we did — say 14 billion years ago, they should have multiplied and multiplied and filled every nook and cranny of our galaxy like a plague by now — or at least filled a large fraction of it. Well they haven’t so they must not exist. So what’s wrong with that? Well, one of the many flaws in Fermi’s Paradox is that we cannot presume to know what ETs would think or do. Why would the ETs want to multiply and multiply until they filled vast areas of space? Just because they can? Just because that is what we would do? How arrogant and immature those thoughts are! Humans pretend to be so much more intelligent and superior to all other lifeforms, yet after thousands of years they have yet to learn that, “An organism that thinks only in themes of its own survival will invariably destroy its environment and, as we are learning from bitter experience, will thus destroy itself”. We are barbaric. We are warmongerers. We are xenophobic. We are destroying our world. Why would a a vastly more mature civilization want to visit with us? A species evolved enough to traverse light years of space would be a species that learned to not destroy itself and it’s environment; a species that would not want to spread to another part of the galaxy like a plague — those are things *WE* humans would do if we could travel through space at this point in time, so we should be glad that Fermi’s Paradox supports that thought that maybe superior civilizations don’t think like we do.
Yet another flaw is the ignorant belief that our radio waves or the lights of our cities shining like beacons into the night could be detected in solar systems far, far away. Come on people, put on your thinking caps like you were first taught to do in kindergarten, and imagine what reason for why residents living in Phoenix cannot tune their TVs in to a station located in New York…it’s too far away! What makes these idiots think that they are going to hear a TV station on Pluto or even the Moon, much less even the nearest star to us only four light years away? As the recently released paper, BROADCASTING BUT NOT RECEIVING: DENSITY DEPENDENCE CONSIDERATIONS FOR SETI SIGNALS (see http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3863v1), says, “a galaxy can be teeming with civilizations yet not have a guarantee of communication between any of them”. Even that presumes that they would use the same primitive communication methods and mediums as we do.
Fermi’s Paradox is a joke. Unless you like looking ignorant, why discuss it any further?
February 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Nick you mentioned the Tulpas being externalized — well here’s how Terrance McKenna describes the DMT hyperspace:
“And the objects that they make have the peculiar ability to themselves generate this linguistic ’stuff’ which condenses as other objects. So beings are making objects, showing you objects, the objects are turning into beings and making other objects, these beings and objects, they jump into your chest - and then they jump back out. They jump into your body and disappear into your body, and then they jump back out, waving these things, just throwing this stuff in all directions.”
That’s EXACTLY correct — because reality is a holograph with external reality as a reflection/vortex of our internal energy storage — all as the rainbow of reality. We’re all contained within this collective dream of pure consciousness.