The Fermi Paradox -- Where is everybody?
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They still have to build a ship capable of breaking their planet's gravity, capable of escaping their solar system, and reaching a nearby star with enough fuel to decelerate and orbit/land on a likely candidate. None of these things are particularly benefited by being "low energy" except for travel time - which is just a nuisance and makes travel less likely for us, although with generation ships time isn't really a limitation so much as it is a motivation killer.
Even if we were willing to board a generation ship today, I think even with the combined wealth of the entire planet we could not build a ship capable of accomplishing this task.
Being "low energy" to me makes this seem particularly less likely since the mechanicals of the ship would be similar in either case.
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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This is my general reaction when people talk about aliens that exist in dramatically different modalities than humans. It sounds cool on its surface, but breaks down when you accost it with ideas like locomotion, entropy and energy processing.
Then again who knows, maybe I have an advanced microscopic alien race in my colon, our earth is a miniscule element of a larger being and the death of fohguild.org and rerolled.org killed a symbiotic artificial intelligence that communicated with other AIs using sub-layered energy fields distributed only through deep roots memes.
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yerm
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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If the aliens are advanced enough, would we even know? We might see strange star changes, or gravity shifts, and have no idea some advanced race is barreling past our sun in search of say a boron-rich region to settle.
When humans discovered new islands with a new species, did we make contact? Do we reach out to fish before constructing a dam or discuss with bears before drilling mines?
The biological genetic difference between us and far less intelligent life here is very small, but results in massive difference. Why should we expect intelligence elsewhere to be even close to parity?
My personal opinion is alien life and even intelligence probably exists but contact and communication is unlikely. The more likely situation is we discover them when they do something like swing in and harvest our oceans dry, or irradiate the entire atmosphere to remove oxygen, or drain our sun, and whatever it is without saying shit to us. Or we eventually do it to someone else.
When humans discovered new islands with a new species, did we make contact? Do we reach out to fish before constructing a dam or discuss with bears before drilling mines?
The biological genetic difference between us and far less intelligent life here is very small, but results in massive difference. Why should we expect intelligence elsewhere to be even close to parity?
My personal opinion is alien life and even intelligence probably exists but contact and communication is unlikely. The more likely situation is we discover them when they do something like swing in and harvest our oceans dry, or irradiate the entire atmosphere to remove oxygen, or drain our sun, and whatever it is without saying shit to us. Or we eventually do it to someone else.
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Lambourne
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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One hypothesis that I came up with is a variation on the zoo hypothesis - we haven't seen other intelligences because we are far from unique - in fact, life may be so common as to be completely uninteresting. There aren't any biologists studying the ants in my backyard, not because they're not alive but because they are everywhere.
The underlying idea is that we have a history of thinking of ourselves as very important, and every discovery we make knocks us down a peg. We thought of ourselves as created in God's Image on a world created specifically for us in the center of the universe. We've since found out we are basically a slightly smarter version of the chimpanzee that lives on midsize planet that revolves around a non-special star, and are in no way at the center of anything. Extend that downward trend a bit further and you end up with the ants in the backyard, certainly alive but not worthy of anyone's attention.
The underlying idea is that we have a history of thinking of ourselves as very important, and every discovery we make knocks us down a peg. We thought of ourselves as created in God's Image on a world created specifically for us in the center of the universe. We've since found out we are basically a slightly smarter version of the chimpanzee that lives on midsize planet that revolves around a non-special star, and are in no way at the center of anything. Extend that downward trend a bit further and you end up with the ants in the backyard, certainly alive but not worthy of anyone's attention.
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So would your hypothesis say they have visited us, but decided not to contact us or investigate because it's just another infested planet, one among many, who cares?
I don't see how that relates to "we haven't seen other intelligences" other than that, because if other intelligences are very common, it seems at least one would have sooner or later decided to piss in our pond.
Worthy of attention or not (and I despise this 'humans are garbage' self-deprecating schtick btw, we are absolutely the center of the universe TO US, regardless of the truth of that) they still would have interacted with us in some way if intelligences and interstellar travel were as common as you postulate.
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Maybe they do interact with us, but most shit is suppressed and were led to believe that all of it is just a joke and one bug hoax. Tons of shit out there that is unexplainable that is documented by pilots, NASA astronauts, and common people seeing shit in the sky that is beyond our capability.
Haven't you seen ancient aliens marathon? Im inclined to believe that we were seeded here by aliens or some grand genetic experiment to make us all into slaves then we somehow magically made the leap from ape to human in a considerable short timeframe, or it was some sky fairy god that gave his right rib to create us.
Haven't you seen ancient aliens marathon? Im inclined to believe that we were seeded here by aliens or some grand genetic experiment to make us all into slaves then we somehow magically made the leap from ape to human in a considerable short timeframe, or it was some sky fairy god that gave his right rib to create us.
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Lambourne
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The idea is that life is so common it's not usually worthy of study. They may be aware of us but not bother to investigate in depth because we are in no way special, same as a biologist might take a cursory glance at my backyard, decide there is nothing there he hasn't seen a thousand times over and never come back.
It's not really self-deprecating as it is knocking down our self-importance. There aren't people from all over the world lined up around the block to meet the major of Bumfuck, Flyoverland. It's not that he's not important in his own way, it's that he's just not special.
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Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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The universe is so damn vast and old that it is unlikely that the microscopic time frame that we have been here would also line up with another civilization that actually achieved any sort of interstellar space travel. Would our species haven been able to achieve space flight without fossil fuels like coal and oil? Could any? That is another factor that requires millions of years and the right conditions to achieve.
This is assuming that traveling across great distances in the universe is even possible. I think it far more likely to come in contact with a robotic civilization then an organic one.
This is assuming that traveling across great distances in the universe is even possible. I think it far more likely to come in contact with a robotic civilization then an organic one.
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Listened to a podcast on this and the narrator was all torn up about being alone, still an interesting listen I wish i could provide more information to find it.
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Xarpolis
Life's a Dream
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I've heard from the Joe Rogan podcast a long time ago that Human Beings are actually alien to the Earth. One of his guests believed that we were deposited here by another alien group because of the survivable habitat that is Earth. Or maybe even deposited here by other Humans because our native planet has been destroyed or deemed unlivable.
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Dull
Molten Core Raider
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Second this, he has some very interesting and indepth vid series. Well worth the time.
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