
Where are they? Why I hope the search for ET life finds nothing (2008) - godelmachine
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/where-are-they-why-i-hope-the-search-for-extraterrestrial-life-finds-nothing
======
overgard
There's an obvious possibility that people ignore because it's not very sexy:
maybe life is common, but sending messages clearly over interstellar distances
is pointless and extremely expensive.

Maybe the energy cost of transmitting a signal that can be clearly heard over
interstellar distances -- mixed with the time/distance barriers of
interstellar travel and communication -- makes it kind of pointless outside of
novelty. (Not to mention any communication would happen on the scale of rise
and fall of civilizations -- how do you even have a coherent conversation
across hundreds of years?). I mean maybe most societies that form just don't
have the energy and willpower to colonize outside their solar system. They
might also be like us where dominant civilisations and philosophy’s rise and
fall every few years — meaning not enough stability for a 50000 year long
conversation

Perhaps the universe is silent simply because there's no reason to speak up.

~~~
mcv
> maybe life is common, but sending messages clearly over interstellar
> distances is pointless and extremely expensive

It certainly is. I've heard that we wouldn't be able to detect Earth's most
powerful broadcasts from a distance of half a light year. So expecting
broadcasts to make it across interstellar distances is ridiculous. Tight beam
signals might work, but then you've got to know somebody is listening. Nobody
knows anyone here is listening, so nobody is sending anything to us.

But I thought the real paradox according to Fermi is not that we don't receive
signals, but that they're not already here. If interstellar travel and
colonisation is even the slightest bit possible, and spacefaring civilisations
are somewhat common, then some of them must have had a millions or billions of
years head start on us, which should have been plenty to colonise the entire
galaxy. Why did nobody discover this fertile planet somewhere during the age
of the dinosaurs?

The obvious solution here is of course that interstellar travel is so
impractical that even in a million years, nobody will ever colonise another
solar system.

That, or Erich von Daniken was right.

~~~
krapp
>The obvious solution here is of course that interstellar travel is so
impractical that even in a million years, nobody will ever colonise another
solar system.

It's also entirely possible that a civilization that colonizes another solar
system won't also inevitably colonize the entire galaxy. I think people assume
this because the mathematical progression makes sense and because the
precedent of humans colonizing other continents makes it seem intuitively
plausible, as if space were just a bigger ocean. Decades of space opera and
science fiction stories have turned the metaphor into an archetype.

Yet if it is true that rockets and radio waves are all anyone ever gets, then
_every new colony_ is an investment of hundreds or thousands of years' effort
or more, assuming there is always a stellar body nearby with a planet which is
amenable to colonization, as if stars were equidistant from one another, and
assuming all previous colonies continue and survive.

Many people seem to assume that either the entire galaxy must be converted to
computronium by Von Neumann probes or no life exists elsewhere in the
universe, but to me, _detecting_ the signs of interstellar civilization
anywhere in the universe is the least likely possible scenario _even if life
is common._

~~~
mcv
Even if it takes a colony 10,000 years before it's ready to colonise, a
billion years is a lot of time. If each colony spawns a new colony every
10,000 years, that's enough to colonise the galaxy.

But it's entirely possible that colonies don't feel such an urge to spread. We
may feel it because our planet is fairly densely populated, but a high-tech
colony with all the education and medical tech to not require large families,
might grow so slowly that their planet will never feel cramped.

------
millstone
> Humans have, to date, seen no sign of any extraterrestrial civilization.

We do not know that and it may very well be false.

Yeast was known of and observed for thousands of years, but was not discovered
to be life until the 1800s. The signs of life were there, but were not
recognized.

It is just our human bias to envision complexity as only occurring on earth-
like planets, on human-like time and size scales, communicating over the EM
spectrum, formed of baryonic matter...

We don't ask what Great Filter prevents the aliens from speaking English. But
we might if English was the only language known on Earth. What languages other
than DNA are spoken in the universe?

~~~
wefarrell
Right, and the author glosses over UFOs but the evidence is undeniable.

~~~
adrianN
The evidence that there is something happening in the skies is pretty strong,
but the evidence that it's extraterrestrial visitors is weak.

~~~
wefarrell
They're a complete mystery. There is extensive evidence that US and
international militaries and space programs have released. That evidence
points to physical objects in the sky that respond to our aircraft and behave
in a way that physicists have said is not possible given our level of
technology.

Maybe they're from a small African nation that's hiding their technology in
plain sight. Maybe they're time travelers. Maybe they're the result of some
distortion in the earth's magnetic field. Maybe they're aliens.

It's a scientific mystery but it doesn't get the proper funding and respect
because of the stigma. This is a huge loss.

------
cortesoft
There are a number of flaws with this argument, but one major obvious one is
the idea that finding life on mars would show the probability of life
generating on a random planet is high. The premise of this argument relies on
assuming life arising on Earth and Mars are stochastic processes that each
occurred independently; on the contrary, there could be shared featured of
Earth and Mars that make life more probable on those two planets than
elsewhere.

The 'great filter' could be shared between the two planets.

~~~
anonytrary
It's about as meaningful as asking 9 people in the same, small, rural town if
they like going to the library, then concluding that x/10 people, in general,
like going to the library. Maybe that particular town has a really shitty
library.

~~~
bufferoverflow
I like reading, but i hate libraries (as in physical buildings), at least in
the western countries. With almost everyone having internet access, there's no
point. Digitize everything, put it online.

~~~
tropdrop
I hate sports, but I don't argue there's no point to them because there's no
point to them _for me_.

A library's advantage isn't just "musty old books" books (some young people,
myself included, love physical books and have small apartments!). It's also a
free, public space you can come to just be. If you're a kid who has no
spending money, you can come to do your homework, or code. Especially relevant
for kids who have a poor learning environment at home (too many siblings,
parents fighting, etc.)

------
DanielBMarkham
This is an old argument, covering well-trod ground.

Somewhere in the ocean there's an island with only one colony of ants.

In that colony, there's a little ant-Enrico Fermi, doing little ant-things,
writing in little ant-journals, wondering little ant-thoughts, including
"Where are they?"

You have to bring a great amount of hubris to bear on this problem to reach
any kind of conclusions. After all, we only have an example of one Earth, with
one species of humans on it. I'm not sure we'd know what an alien was if one
were standing next to us (metaphorically, perhaps actually). We have no common
frame of reference to reason about such things. The best we can do is string
together a lot of terms representing concepts through multiplication. This
gives us the unsurprising result that lots of things multiplied by each other
tend to get either really large or really small really quickly.

The question Fermi asked was a truly profound one. It was profound because it
points the finger back at us, asking _just what do we really know about the
entirety of universe we live in?_

It's a great question. We will be fortunate to see little tiny pieces of the
answer in our lifetimes.

------
nickysielicki
Highlighting text on a webpage so that you can focus on a particular sentence
should _never_ move the text and make you lose your place. I like the idea but
don't make it a pop-in sidebar that moves the page.

~~~
mooreds
Yes, the ux was horrible, especially on mobile.

~~~
michaelmrose
On firefox I couldn't even enable reader mode on this page.

------
brazzy
Charlie Stross' "Accelerando" floats an interesting idea: Post-Tech-
Singularity civilizations might naturally become isolationist because
consciousness becomes tied to computing hardware that is dependant on abundant
energy and low communication latency that you don't have unless you all
cluster closely around a star, i.e. a small Dyson sphere. Leaving those ideal
circumstances becomes unthinkable for the individual because it would mean
lobotomizing yourself.

However, we should be able to _see_ those Dyson spheres, and we don't.

~~~
ludos
Isnt the purpose of a Dyson sphere to keep all Energy inside? If thats the
case, how would you detect such a sphere?

Maybe that's where the dark matter is. 80% of the universe, packed into small
Dyson Spheres, where live is sprawling and we just cant see it. ;-)

~~~
brazzy
> Isnt the purpose of a Dyson sphere to keep all Energy inside?

No, because that would be both impossible (see "black body radiation") and
useless. The purpose is to _use_ all energy produced by the star. But "using"
energy doesn't mean it's gone (see conservation of energy) or that you have to
trap it. What it really means is you want to use the low _entropy_ inherent in
a concentrated source of energy to perform work.

------
codechapin
I think this is not giving enough thought on the topic of population growth. I
believe in most rich/advanced countries population is declining, unless they
have a lot of immigration, United States for example. Hans Rosling has some
studies on this, his studies say that the world population won’t exceed 11
billion.

Also, people are having less sex than before.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-
sex...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-
recession/573949/) which obviously is going to affect population growth.

Although, this could change if somehow we manage to live considerably longer
lives. Then population would grow again. Which is the main promise of Scythe
by Neal Shusterman.

We would need a very good reason to spend the resources to go colonize other
planets.

------
gremlinsinc
Why does there have to be 'one' great filter... I think it's more a 'tiered'
system... I mean on any given planet getting to eukaryotes is difficult..once
you do, you've made it past 'a great filter'.... onto the next...

Everything in life is a battle to survive - even evolution. I don't think
there even being a great filter means that we necessarily wouldn't pass
through it... -- I guarantee you there's a great filter...if we never become
space faring this world will die -- the sun will supernova. If humans survive
to that day, and never leave the solar system then all life here will be
snuffed out... If we do survive eons past the end of this solar system at some
point the entire universe could contract, entropy could run out and all life
would be snuffed out...

On a long enough time line -- everything in this universe will be filtered
out.

~~~
eloff
Not to detract from your other points, which I agree with, but our star won't
supernova. It doesn't have enough mass. It will go red giant and toast our
planet.

------
caller9
It's because the simulation was built to simulate a culture that wasn't yet
aware of aliens and alien interaction isn't part of the experiment. It's also
less expensive in compute resources.

------
vorg
Our own DNA-based life may actually be the von Neumann probes the author
mentions -- self-replicating spacecraft, controlled by AI and capable of
interstellar travel via "Panspemia".

------
fernly
There is currently an excellent podcast exploring these ideas: "The End of the
World with Josh Clark"[1]. Nicely produced, fairly deep content -- including
audio quotes from Nick Bostrom among others.

This link is to episode 1, but for convenience in subscribing look it up on
iTunes.

[1] [https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/the-end-of-
the-w...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/the-end-of-the-world-
with-josh-clark-ep01-fermi-paradox.htm)

------
shireboy
I've thought along these lines before, and am writing a hard science fiction
novel with this premise. I love thinking about the possibility of other
advanced civilizations etc as much as the next guy, but it does seem like the
_other_ possibility is less represented in sci-fi and maybe in current thought
in general. It's so fun to think about life existing and those implications,
less time is given to thinking about life _not_ existing elsewhere and what
that would mean. I get that to a degree. I feel like Debbie Downer just saying
it, but in order of likelihood based on current observation, I would arrange
the scenarios like this:

* Intelligent life only exists on Earth. This is what we have observed so far, so in absence of other evidence this is "most likely" with a large margin of error ;)

* Intelligent life does exist and is abundant, but we are among the most advanced. Hard limits in physics mean it is impractical to travel out of one's solar system, much less galaxy.

* We're among the most advanced because of a "great filter" after our current stage.

* We're among the most advanced because of a "great filter" before our current stage.

* We are a simulation

------
caf
The idea that we'd most likely encounter a colonising civilisation in the form
of von Neumann probes seems reasonable.

Imagine there was one (or even a few dozen) such probe currently occupying an
asteroid somewhere in our solar system, slowly completing the millenia-long
task of replicating itself. Would we have noticed yet?

------
c-smile
If to expand that line of thought even further we shall conclude that we are
alone in observable Universe.

Life as we know it tends to preserve itself - the instinct of self-
preservation is the main feature of life. Others are just consequences.

"Hi-order" life will preserve not only one particular incarnation of it but
various others too.

So as soon one civilization will pass the filter - it should help others to
pass it.

And if we do not see that other hi-order one yet then it means this role is
ours and no one is out there.

For humanity "hi-order" state of life is definitely far ahead - long way to
go. If not the filter is ahead of us :)

~~~
gremlinsinc
>> So as soon one civilization will pass the filter - it should help others to
pass it....

unless neither civilization knows 'when' the great filter is...and continues
to expect it's in the future... this could cause fear of each other... fear
leads to the dark side...

Interstellar war probably isn't good for the less advanced civilization. Let's
hope when the time comes we're not the less advanced civilization...or the
other one will become our great filter..

The great filter also could be a predatory civ that snuffs out any sign of
life after they find it. For this reason many civs could be afraid to do
anything to draw attention.

------
state_less
The possibilities that come to mind are:

1\. We happen to be first.

2\. They are on their way.

3\. They are within reach and are not malevolent, nor allow the spread of
malevolence, given the 'typical' billions years gestation period.

~~~
ianai
Or they exist but because the universe is huge and sparse we’ll never
encounter each other.

My hunch is that life is actually prolific. It’s in the oceans of Encledeus
(sp), may be in extremes on mars, and possibly more in other places. But it’s
not industrial the ways we are.

~~~
gnulinux
> But it’s not industrial the ways we are.

I find this very unlikely. If you do some computer simulations, you can see
that if "life" has minimal amount of freedom to get modified, it diverges to
really interesting objects and exploits a lot of phenomenon happening in its
virtual universe. Something as absurdly unlikely and crazy as symbiogenesis
occured multiple times in our planet. It's unlikely if there is life out
there, it'd stay simple and invisible.

My hunch is that life is extremely rare, if it exists at all. We know from
computer science that evolution is a very good method to find ever-improving
local optimas, so to me it's very likely if life exists, it'll evolve to
galactic empires in a few billion years. And thus thanks to Fermi paradox,
this convinces me that life must be extremely rare, or the Great Filter must
be very effective or intergalactic communication/travel must be extremely
expensive.

~~~
ianai
Our industry is possibly an emergent phenomenon. There are many species on
this plant and only one has taken technology to our extremes. That could be a
differentiator.

------
mooreds
If you liked this, you might enjoy "Light of the Same", which examines the
Drake equation and seti in the light of all the planets that have been
discovered.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236156-light-of-the-
st...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36236156-light-of-the-stars)

------
mooreds
I wonder if the availability of fossil fuels is the great filter? My
understanding is that all that plant matter didn't decay only because fungi
hadn't evolved thr ability to break it down, and thus fossil fuels are a one
time burst of energy that isn't going to ever be available again.

~~~
c22
Do you have a citation for this understanding? I hadn't heard this before so I
did a brief search and found [0], but this seems to apply just to coal which
goes through a lignite phase during its formation [1]. I'm not familiar the
details of how other fossil fuels are formed, but I was under the impression
it usually happens under the seafloor, are the same mechanisms at play in an
undersea environment? It seems like fungi are more common on land than at sea
[2].

[0] [https://clarknow.clarku.edu/2012/06/28/findings-point-to-
fun...](https://clarknow.clarku.edu/2012/06/28/findings-point-to-fungi-as-
prime-suspects-in-fossil-fuel-mystery/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal)

[2] [https://sciencing.com/types-fungi-grow-
ocean-8467074.html](https://sciencing.com/types-fungi-grow-ocean-8467074.html)

~~~
mooreds
Ah, TIL.

I am wrong. I was unable to find any source for this, and, like you, found
some countervailing posts, like this one:

[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/18/3691317.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/02/18/3691317.htm)

So, please consider the above comment retracted.

------
ulisesrmzroche
My latest favorite tin foil hats are The Watchers & The Cosmic War because
otherwise perhaps we're going thru a Great Filter right now with global
warming due to energy consumption, etcetera & I dunno if we're gonna make it
at all

------
zamalek
Human also occur in the earliest likely epoch of the universe:

* We have, astronomically speaking, just entered the epoch where the universe can support life. We have the required abundance of elements and conditions that give rise to life (stellar nucleosynthesis).

* Intelligence is an incredibly strange thing to evolve. Evolution is a gradient (the evolutionary whitening of the polar bear is probably the best example of this). There is no gradient to move down towards intelligence. You have it or you don't; you are reactive, instinctual, or intellectual.

* Intelligent life has also been demonstrated to be unbelievably improbable. With nature as the best laboratory, out of all the species that have ever evolved, only one on Earth evolved intelligence.

In layman terms, we are likely the "ancients," or rather we might be, as we
could simply go extinct.

~~~
mettamage
> * Intelligent life has also been demonstrated to be unbelievably improbable.
> With nature as the best laboratory, out of all the species that have ever
> evolved, only one on Earth evolved intelligence.

I wonder whether this is actually true. Imagine the human society being
transported to dolphin or shark bodies (they'd spawn there). Assume the
following: food is not an issue in the short term and we retain our knowledge
and we have quite a good control over our new bodies and can do what sharks or
dolphins normally do.

Even with these advantages, could we recreate what we made on land?

~~~
zamalek
Good point.

I would say that the defining feature of human intelligence is immediate and
self-directed teaching. House training a dog takes many weeks and many
rewards. Stopping smoking is a decision that a human makes and can immediately
put into practice.

Using sharks and dolphins as an example, both would learn to avoid fishing
nets and communicate that danger (which is not unique to humans), remember it
(which is) to each other and their offspring (again, unique to humans). What's
not done is seemingly more important than what is, because beating opposable
thumbs is pretty hard (as you've pointed out).

------
dreamcompiler
It's very hard to read these not-HTML and not-quite-PDF sites on mobile,
especially with all the popups. Author might have something interesting to say
but I can't tell.

------
zygotic12
Space is BIG with a capital BIG !!! Small is human.

------
david-gpu
Title needs a (2008) tag.

------
mannykannot
Bostrom dismisses, as a fallacy, the idea that the relatively rapid appearance
of life on Earth is evidence for it being somewhat probable, yet it is just
about as fallacious to think that the absence of life on Mars would be
evidence for humanity having long-term prospects.

------
Inu
> UFO‐spotters, Raelian cultists, and self‐certified alien abductees
> notwithstanding, humans have, to date, seen no sign of any extraterrestrial
> intelligent civilization. [...] If large telescopes, NASA satellites, and
> omplicated mathematical data analysis are involved, it becomes harder for
> outside observers to mistake the work for the ramblings of UFO‐nuts and
> other crackpots.

The author makes it clear that for a serious scholar "UFOs" can a priori only
be a subject of ridicule.

~~~
kordlessagain
This behavior evidently started with Zeno of Elea's run on logic through
reasoned argument. He's the reason we have the scientific method, basically.

Fortunately, the scientific method produced technology that allows me to post
this comment. Unfortunately, limiting a culture's philosophy to only
discussing things we can attempt to disprove results in limiting the ability
to discuss something as if it were true, before we know it to be true by
proof.

Example: I believe ʻOumuamua was a spacecraft. Can't prove it, but can't talk
about it as a truth either, which sorta sucks given I figured (when I was a
kid) aliens would be here by now. ;)

------
phkahler
I'm picking up a lot of existential angst in this one. The author hopes we are
the only intelligent species in the universe because why? I think spending so
much time on the nature of ones own existence is to neglect the here and now.
I say this as someone who confronted his own existential angst - it can drive
you in any number of directions, none of which really matter for someone with
an expected lifespan of 70 years. If life is so precious, why not go
experience it while you can?

~~~
AgentME
>The author hopes we are the only intelligent species in the universe because
why?

Because if there is other life in the universe, then it's more likely that the
Great Filter is ahead of us and that human civilization will end sooner. If we
are the only intelligent species, then it's more likely that the Great Filter
is behind us and humanity is more likely to spread across planets.

------
jim_bailie
All I know is that if we're going to locate or communicate with any other
advanced civilization out there, it's sure not going to be with radio waves.
It will be with something a little more subtle that may not necessarily be
constrained by gravity or the speed of light. Just my $0.02

~~~
paxys
It's likely that everything in the universe is constrained by the speed of
light, so maybe radio waves _are_ the best form of communication?

~~~
whydoineedthis
I think a lot of folks don't realize most real and hard science is done with
radio waves. The tech is often associated with antiquated devices for music
and news of erras by gone, but scientifically speaking, radio waves are pretty
high tech. Electromagnetic Radiation has it's own brand problems though. We
really new words not associated with early use cases.

~~~
redial
Sadly most people don't realize what they see is 'radio waves', hence OP's
misguided comment.

~~~
jim_bailie
What you claim is indeed so very sad, but I wouldn't gnash teeth or loose any
sleep over it.

