The Fermi Paradox -- Where is everybody?

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Sentagur

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Maybe this discussion is part of the universal simulation. A bunch of nerdy sims standing around a forum water cooler with thought bubbles popping up over their heads while Q's teenage son about to launch nukes from NK or send a gamma ray burst in our direction just for yuks.
Lets face it, the Earthsim #312234259 if badly overdue for a hard reset. The memory overflow errors are threatening all the other instances of the sim in this cluster.
 
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moonarchia

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What if right now the current alien president of the United Planets issued a travel ban and during his 200 years in office, we couldn't go there if we wanted. They even restricted travel to our planet.

Seriously though, why can't we be the first? There would have to be one and it's not above thinking we are it.

The universe is too old for that to be likely. We are part of the second generation of stars, and a late bloomer at that.
 
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Brad2770

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The universe is too old for that to be likely. We are part of the second generation of stars, and a late bloomer at that.

But how do you know? Just because "time" doesn't mean it's guaranteed.

Also, what if simple things like the creatures that evolve around the intelligent beings helps get them through the Great Filter. How far along now would humans be had Horses and Dogs not evolved? I think there is a lot more to it than just politics and religion.
 
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Sentagur

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But how do you know? Just because "time" doesn't mean it's guaranteed.

Also, what if simple things like the creatures that evolve around the intelligent beings helps get them through the Great Filter. How far along now would humans be had Horses and Dogs not evolved? I think there is a lot more to it than just politics and religion.
Not only that, imagine a world with just a slightly different evolutionary path, where bacteria manages to break down ancient forests before they can turn into coal or something that prevents oil formation.
Would an intelligent species even be able to kick of industrial revolution without those.
And if no industrial evolution how many years would it take to get to the information age?
 
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ShakyJake

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Not only that, imagine a world with just a slightly different evolutionary path, where bacteria manages to break down ancient forests before they can turn into coal or something that prevents oil formation.
Would an intelligent species even be able to kick of industrial revolution without those.
And if no industrial evolution how many years would it take to get to the information age?
The reverse is also true. For however many civilizations that have the above limitations there would be an equal probability of the opposite. Same applies to the thought that some civilizations wouldn't bother to expand out from their home star. There would still be those who do. The universe is far too large to make assumptions like these.
 
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yerm

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Maybe organic life is a cancer growing on the electron of our solar system atom in the galactic cell. The host universe may not be aware of us or choosing to forego treatment in the hopes of a remission, but should we fester out and spread throughout the galactic cell and seek to infect other galaxy cells, other universe doctors are prepared to treat this infection and wipe it out. Like they did all the times similar life futily tried to manifest before us.
 
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moonarchia

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But how do you know? Just because "time" doesn't mean it's guaranteed.

Also, what if simple things like the creatures that evolve around the intelligent beings helps get them through the Great Filter. How far along now would humans be had Horses and Dogs not evolved? I think there is a lot more to it than just politics and religion.

I know we're in the late second generation of stars because of astrophysics. I don't "know" if we're the first intelligentish species or not, just that it's unlikely.
 
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Cybsled

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Not only that, imagine a world with just a slightly different evolutionary path, where bacteria manages to break down ancient forests before they can turn into coal or something that prevents oil formation.
Would an intelligent species even be able to kick of industrial revolution without those.
And if no industrial evolution how many years would it take to get to the information age?

Coal and Oil were ideal early fuels because they packed a decent amount of energy in a relatively compact form, which was crucial for portable energy generation to drive vehicles (trains and later cars and planes). And of course coal was needed for cheap steel production.

However, I don't think is required to achieve an industrial revolution, nor is it the only factor. There could easily be alternatives that exist on alien worlds that achieve the same purpose. The bigger factor for the industrial revolution was also heavily political and geographical. Having the means to create technology doesn't mean it is adopted or becomes wide spread. War historically drove many innovations. The general concept of the steam engine was created back in Ancient Rome, but no one ever did anything with it, perhaps because no one could conceive of a way it could either help win wars or assist in resource acquisition.
 
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pharmakos

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pharmakos

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Bumping this in case anyone cares about decluttering the Astronomy thread a bit, a couple Astronomy news items got buried under it at least.
 
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Ukerric

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Totally forgot about this.

But at least, I could slip in the Terminator Species in.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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I think they have already come here. They saw what a fucked up species we are and basically put up the interstellar "no-go zone" warning sign. Ain't no one in their alien right mind coming here.
 
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Sentagur

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I think they have already come here. They saw what a fucked up species we are and basically put up the interstellar "no-go zone" warning sign. Ain't no one in their alien right mind coming here.
Highly likely.
Basically the only aliens still visiting us are shitlord teens who snuck out in ther parents flying saucer for lulz and the weirdo aliens that are into anal probing.
 
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Hateyou

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I think it’s because we’re a blip of time in a massive timeline and a speck of rock in an unfathomably massive void. The odds of some race evolving to the point they can and want to just warp around investigating trillions of planets trying to find other life are so infinitely small it will never happen.

But that’s just like, my opinion bros.
 
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pharmakos

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I think they have already come here. They saw what a fucked up species we are and basically put up the interstellar "no-go zone" warning sign. Ain't no one in their alien right mind coming here.

yeah that's one of the few ideas i mentioned in the OP even. humans are most likely pretty fucking terrible to each other and the planet from the perspective of a thounsands-to-millions of years old star hopping, galaxy spanning civilization. they are probably hoping and praying we never go interstellar.
 
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