Mathematicians show the Fermi paradox might not be much of a paradox

Another issue with all this is that we are narrowly defining "intelligent" life.

Both corvids and cetaceans have been around longer than modern humans. They both likely had the capacity for tool invention, information sharing, non-instinctual learning, culture, and means of communication well before we could.

Even fucking jumping spiders have object permanence and the ability to solve novel problems. We live on a planet filled with intelligent life and we are just figuring out how to even measure and test it, because all these creatures have intelligence adapted to their environments.

To assume a completely alien species would develop intelligence in even a similar way to us is hilariously misguided. Evolution isn't a goal oriented process.

Ogre said:

Another issue with all this is that we are narrowly defining "intelligent" life.

Both corvids and cetaceans have been around longer than modern humans. They both likely had the capacity for tool invention, information sharing, non-instinctual learning, culture, and means of communication well before we could.

Even fucking jumping spiders have object permanence and the ability to solve novel problems. We live on a planet filled with intelligent life and we are just figuring out how to even measure and test it, because all these creatures have intelligence adapted to their environments.

To assume a completely alien species would develop intelligence in even a similar way to us is hilariously misguided. Evolution isn't a goal oriented process.

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Fermi paradox is about advanced civilizations, not intelligent life.

I think it's a bit early to throw in the towel on the search for alien life. The universe has only been here for 6,000 years. Let's wait a few more millennia before giving up hope.

Drake equation you hiding a child

So add aliens to the list of bigfoot and other myths that cant be found despite living in an age of attention seeking and social media where people vie for attention and to be the "first" at doing something or another, can be provide any tangible evidence to its said existence.
At this point in time if people were even really being abducted its going to trend on twitter and have likes on Instagram before CNN and others report on it.

Vishmarx said:

Not if those specific parameters are for the moment near impossible to comprehend, much less be understood/observed/calculated and further used for reliable mathematics

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Yep, hence my caveat at the beginning of my response saying that the predictions are not useful because they are based on guesswork.

My point is that there is nothing inherently useless about having a result that covers a relatively wide percentage range, such as 50-99%.

If we could be confident that the probability range actually was between 50 and 99%, then that's an extremely useful result because it would tells us a lot.

It'd tell us that both the 'impossibility' scenario (the one where there is say a >99.999% chance we are alone) and the 'certainty' scenario (the one where there is <0.00001% chance we are alone) are incorrect.

A 50-99% result puts us square in the "we need to seriously consider this possibility" range.

we don't even have a clue what kind of life is possible and what kind isn't.

there isn't even a clear definition of life... are viruses life? most say no, some say yes.

CrazyDude said:

Would we even recognize intelligent life to begin with?

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This is actually kind of an interesting question. We're still very much gauging the intelligence of the creatures around us, imagine if we found life that was birthed out of environmental conditions not even existent on Earth. It might not be so much that we couldn't communicate with them, but more about whether or not we'd even be able to tell if they're sentient and intelligent in the first place.

astroturfing said:

we don't even have a clue what kind of life is possible and what kind isn't.

there isn't even a clear definition of life... are viruses life? most say no, some say yes.

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pretty much . for all we know even mars is teeming with life and all its citizens are soap bubbles

ibyea said:

Fermi paradox is about advanced civilizations, not intelligent life.

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I'm well aware.

The article that this thread is about has to do with the Drake equation as a means of addressing the Fermi paradox. Guess what is integral to the Drake equation? Guess what is integral to the development of "advanced civilization?"

Coricus said:

Honestly I find the whole Lovecraftian notion of horrors that break human minds simply by being seen laughable.

Either a lifeform is going to be perfectly fine to look at, or at worst the brown note is gonna be something utterly underwhelming. Oh yes, regale me with your tales of how anyone who stares into the abnormal line patterns on Apos'troph'e the Maddener's skin for an hour straight with no aside glances will have mild permanent eyesight impairment.

The idea of regular aliens being a threat on purpose gets me, too. If you're space dwelling, you already have all the resources at your disposal you could possibly need. Grow your own food, our flesh probably isn't even edible. Get water out of comets. Terraform barren Goldilocks planets instead of an occupied one if you can already custom-remix an atmosphere. If you have robots, you don't need flesh and blood slaves. The only use Earth has to alien life is as a curiosity, basically. Either just watch quietly from a distance or else go in, get bio samples and leave. Alien threat is a joke.

And with that in mind I really hope we aren't alone in the universe. Barring something inadvertent, I just don't see a reason why it would screw with us other than our own paranoia fantasies. It doesn't hurt that the study of potential biology beyond earth is so darn young and the percentages here are basically a numerical shrug.

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With the Lovecraftian angle of my post I was mostly thinking about my fear of forms that bring fear and disgust. I had a science teacher tell us that if there are aliens, there's a high probability they're not the cute humanoid types that we see in Star Trek and Mass Effect. Couldn't help but think of weird monster looking shit ever since lol

There's harmless lifeforms on our planet that I'll never get used to seeing. So harmless or not, if there's an alien species out that looks like man sized cockroaches. I'd rather stay on Earth.

Chamaeleonx said:

You mean that your hit chance is 99% yet you miss 3 shots in a row? xD

Generally a lot of the posts in this thread make me pretty sad. =(
Being alone like this is pretty boring and sad. I will continue to believe.

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Yup. Anyway the Earth is crazy enough for me to not bother with aliens. Let's sort out shit out, that's the best way to prepare for contact. And no, I don't mean space force.

-- not sure why people are dragging the drake equation for thinking it asserts more than it does. it's a list of known variables, nothing more.

-- that we don't know the range of each variable is the problem.

-- not sure why people are putting danger quotes around the fermi paradox, as if it's not an actual paradox. it is, and it's pretty simple. the paradox is that when you fiddle with the drake equation with any non-zero variables, the number intelligent civilizations in the universe approaches infinity. infinity. on a graph, it's a parabola. that's fiddling with any of those numbers and making sure all of them are non zero. that's it. yet we have exactly 1 instance of civilization that we know of. which is the worst kind of evidence to have. regardless, this is very much a paradox whether or not you believe it's valid.

-- Aliens should be basically uncountable but we are not seeing any evidence of them. That's a paradox, folks, even if you can come up with a million reasons why we're not seeing that evidence!

-- The self-replicating robots one is the one that convinces me, if you need convincing.

-- While the part of me that firmly believes in rigorous science that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the other, logical part of me says we should be seeing vast evidence of civilizations around us, much less extra terrestrial life. I imagine that we're the single-cell organism in the greenest, hottest swamp, absolutely teeming with life, shouting "where is everyone?!" while being shat out by a frog as it gobbles up a dragonfly.

-- you could tell me drake says zero, you could tell me drake says infinity. i'd really like some of these variables to become just a little clearer before i take any paper seriously, no matter how many Bayesian regressions they do.

-- i tend to believe some mixture of the zoo theory and the dark forest/predator theory. don't go shouting into the dark, i say. (but maybe do and see what happens?)

Occam said:

Nonsense.

Matter has certain properties that lead to self-organization.
As far as we know, under the right circumstances, the emergence of life is quite likely.
Given the number of stars in the universe, it's incredibly unlikely to only occur once.

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I think the idea here is that it is more than possible for it to occur more than once. But it hasn't, yet. The universe, by the time it dies, could be overflowing with life. But what if we truly are the first? What if the others haven't come around yet, and we're looking for neighbors that haven't even been born?

It's unlikely, in my opinion, but it's fun to think about, and adds a whole new layer of mystery to our tiny piece of the universe.

Full disclosure: I'm an astrophysicist with a background in Bayesian analysis.

I don't know whether it has been discussed but in Bayesian terms, the range from 35 - 85 % (or something close to those numbers) is quite meaningless. In hypothesis testing, it's all about orders of magnitude.

So the current evidence put into those models delivers at worst an evidence ratio of 15:85 (= better than 1:6). At best it turns out be about 2:1. That's not really strong evidence for either conclusion. To make strong claims that are conclusive, you want ratios like 1:20 or 1:100.

The low ratios and the large range between those scenarios (from 2:1 to about 1:6) basically means that we don't really know enough (with respect to thr model used) and leads us pretty much to a 50:50 situation. It's pretty weird to take this result as any kind of justification to bash prior usages of the Drake equation.

Also, it would be interesting to discuss what kind of information was even put into this study. Astronomical? Biological? Sociological? Historical? Philosophical? How were all of these things modelled and quantified? Or further to the fringe: What about the WOW signal? Or even UFO reports? ? Most UFO reports are misidentifications or hoaxes but even just a single one of them rated with a probability of being plausible given the information with > 90 % (e.g. what about the Nimitz case?) would be enough to invert the probability ratios of the hypotheses.

Nothing earthshattering in this study in my opinion ...

Life on earth exists only in a tiny snapshot of the universe. It began about 4 billion years ago, and will end in about 2 billion years. Our time as a space-knowledgeable species is small, infinitesimally small even, so the odds are against us detecting anything due to the sheer size of space. I'd love to see it happen, but I feel like I'd have a better chance to win the lottery every day for a year.

i don't like the idea of absence of evidence as an evidence
just because we haven't found any evidence doesn't mean there's none

I wonder if life exists elsewhere, if it is resilient as it has been on Earth. With how rare it seems to be, it's interesting know that life on the planet has managed to survive multiple extinction-level events from the planet's own volatility and external ones. Would be interesting to see if this is the case in general, where the existence of life is rare but once it begins it's quite hard to end in all forms.

When virtual reality is advanced enough we won't really mind about what's in the universe or not. And that might be one of the reason we appear to be alone, once you can create your own paradise there's no need to expand.

the_korben said:

Full disclosure: I'm an astrophysicist with a background in Bayesian analysis.

I don't know whether it has been discussed but in Bayesian terms, the range from 35 - 85 % (or something close to those numbers) is quite meaningless. In hypothesis testing, it's all about orders of magnitude.

So the current evidence put into those models delivers at worst an evidence ratio of 15:85 (= better than 1:6). At best it turns out be about 2:1. That's not really strong evidence for either conclusion. To make strong claims that are conclusive, you want ratios like 1:20 or 1:100.

The low ratios and the large range between those scenarios (from 2:1 to about 1:6) basically means that we don't really know enough (with respect to thr model used) and leads us pretty much to a 50:50 situation. It's pretty weird to take this result as any kind of justification to bash prior usages of the Drake equation.

Also, it would be interesting to discuss what kind of information was even put into this study. Astronomical? Biological? Sociological? Historical? Philosophical? How were all of these things modelled and quantified? Or further to the fringe: What about the WOW signal? Or even UFO reports? ? Most UFO reports are misidentifications or hoaxes but even just a single one of them rated with a probability of being plausible given the information with > 90 % (e.g. what about the Nimitz case?) would be enough to invert the probability ratios of the hypotheses.

Nothing earthshattering in this study in my opinion ...

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I don't think the purpose of the paper is hypothesis testing. It is just pure speculation about what the likelihood is, and argue that the Fermi paradox is not that surprising considering the range of probabilities possible. Regardless, I agree with you on your overall conclusion, it's nothing.

Oh and regarding what information they put in, basically they made a pdf based on estimates and uncertainties obtained from literature. The pdf was generated by some monte carlo algorithm. And they also updated it with various types of probability distribution based on our lack of observations and various scenarios.

Yeah, it's okay for what it's going for, but it's a useless paper otherwise.

Sign My Guestbook! said:

The really big problem is that our idea of civilization has only cropped up in the last 10,000 years or so, and our species hasn't been on the stage for long. Even if there are equivalent intelligent species out there, they could be tens or even hundreds of thousands of years from having city states. Considering colossal gaps between sub-atomic particles, and that most of the universe is basically a void between cosmic objects, "loneliness zones" are not uncommon. On a time scale of exoplanetary racial co-existence we might be looking at a similar scenario.

We're going to have to try really hard to stay alive for a while, or whoever comes next might be just as lonely as we are.

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Agreed, the idea of said civilizations co-existing is the tricky part, have there been some before us? will there be many after us?

Stand down Space Force

Could also be next to impossible for a civilization to ever become spacefaring if they are from a planet with lots of gravity. Unless they come up with some other kind of propulsion technology. Exploring space might not even be a thing for peeps from larger planets.

There's a 0 to 100 % chance that they are right.

Quinton said:

Those are some... huge ranges.

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They are both huge and ridiculously precise. They are made up.

"Based on the current state of astrobiological knowledge"

We have no astrobiological knowledge.

SecondNature said:

A more depressing thought is that it doesn't even matter if there is advanced/sentient life. The distance between civilized planets is so vast that it's just not possible to effectively communicate, let alone meet.

The scarier thought is that tons of (sentient) life exists and goes extinct alone, never to be known.

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Yup, my optimism when it comes to the search of alien lifeforms have eroded by time and now I'm at a stage were I too think these two "outcomes" are the most likely if there exist life outside of the milky way.

fairyd said:

I'm sure life exists outside of earth, but I think it would be cooler if we were the only intelligent creatures in the universe.

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It would be depressing as hell. Humanity is terrible and I'd be genuinely sad if we were the only intelligent life in the universe. The universe would be a colossal failure if true.

We've only been really "looking" for alien life for what ... under 100 years?

This is kind of like declaring bears don't exist because you walked down your street and back and didn't see one.

Spectone said:

That means we can colonise the whole galaxy right? With nothing to stand in our way.

I always hated those Darloks.

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It's like starting a Civ game on huge with just one other AI Civ. Easy mode.

The belief that life, what still sentient life, exists anywhere else in the universe remains a belief and is not based on any existing evidence. It is no different to religious beliefs and the conversations literally follow the same pattern i.e.

Q: Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
A: Yes there has to be
Q: Where is your evidence?
A: I have none but there must be because...!

Razgreez said:

The belief that life, what still sentient life, exists anywhere else in the universe remains a belief and is not based on any existing evidence. It is no different to religious beliefs and the conversations literally follow the same pattern i.e.

Q: Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
A: Yes there has to be
Q: Where is your evidence?
A: I have none but there must be because...!

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How is it no different than religious beliefs? We know of one intelligent species in the universe here on earth. We at least have a single example of intellegent life forming in the universe. We at least know it can exist. Belief in God, angels and demons has nothing.

Its not so much a belief as it is just logical to think that life exists elsewhere when taking into consideration the size of the universe.

Life not existing elsewhere is as much of a belief as it is a belief it exists.

PSqueak said:

Possible.



Absurd.

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Agreed. I'm only just now starting to buy the theory that we're alone in our galaxy. Never buying into the theory that we're alone in this seemingly infinite universe.

Hell, I'm still not convinced that there isn't a galactic civilization just jamming any signals from reaching us, allowing us to develop before we can join them and be a competent species on the galactic scene. This whole idea that we've no response from any of our calls so we must be alone is really assuming a lot.

MrNewVegas said:

Would time not erode that all away eventually though? Or is it something like billions of years for that to happen?

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I don't think humanity is all that far away from creating AI that will outlive the species. Once you have drones that self-replicate and repair, or even advance themselves technologically, those drones/AI should live as long as the universe itself. But that doesn't mean we could detect them currently, or that the drones would be looking for other civilizations.

LookAtMeGo said:

How is it no different than religious beliefs? We know of one intelligent species in the universe here on earth. We at least have a single example of intellegent life forming in the universe. We at least know it can exist. Belief in God, angels and demons has nothing.

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You're right we have evidence of thousands of sentient intelligent species co-existing on Earth. We do not have evidence of life existing anywhere else. Before we could make any logical assumptions we would need to prove:

• That life can or has exist(ed) elsewhere (unobserved)
• That other planets like earth do or have existed (unobserved)

The above are actual logical assumptions which, unless satisfied mean that expecting life to be found elsewhere is based purely on belief and not evidence. The existence of Earth is proof of the existence of Earth. It allows one to assume that life could potentially exist elsewhere but does not qualify the belief that it does. For example I could say "We have evidence humans can exist therefore humans must exist elsewhere in the universe". Are you wiling to accept that belief? I would put forward that one of the main proponents of this existential fallacy is the fact that we tend to underestimate the complexity of even the most basic forms of observed life

Its not so much a belief as it is just logical to think that life exists elsewhere when taking into consideration the size of the universe.

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As explained above it is not logical in any way.

Life not existing elsewhere is as much of a belief as it is a belief it exists.

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I did not say that life does not exist elsewhere. I wrote that believing it does is no different to religious beliefs which are not based on evidence.

• Can life exist elsewhere? Yes.
• Does it? There is no evidence to support that i.e. believing it is does is not based on evidence and is therefore similar to religious beliefs

Sho_Nuff82 said:

If FTL travel is actually impossible, even if aliens exist we could conceivably never meet them in the lifespan of our star.

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Basically, the worst balanced 4X game of all time.

The Dark Forest hypothesis is still the most persuasive(and terrifying) explanation I've heard so far.

Half empty, half full, but 4000 times more complicated

I get it. Even mathematics comes down to perspective after a while.

What a bullshit paper, lmao.

Razgreez said:

You're right we have evidence of thousands of sentient intelligent species co-existing on Earth. We do not have evidence of life existing anywhere else. Before we could make any logical assumptions we would need to prove:

• That life can or has exist(ed) elsewhere (unobserved)
• That other planets like earth do or have existed (unobserved)

The above are actual logical assumptions which, unless satisfied mean that expecting life to be found elsewhere is based purely on belief and not evidence. The existence of Earth is proof of the existence of Earth. It allows one to assume that life could potentially exist elsewhere but does not qualify the belief that it does. For example I could say "We have evidence humans can exist therefore humans must exist elsewhere in the universe". Are you wiling to accept that belief? I would put forward that one of the main proponents of this existential fallacy is the fact that we tend to underestimate the complexity of even the most basic forms of observed life



As explained above it is not logical in any way.



I did not say that life does not exist elsewhere. I wrote that believing it does is no different to religious beliefs which are not based on evidence.

• Can life exist elsewhere? Yes.
• Does it? There is no evidence to support that i.e. believing it is does is not based on evidence and is therefore similar to religious beliefs

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Eh, I could have a D20 and believe I could roll a 20. Probability wise, as long as I keep rolling I should get one eventually. Yeah, sure, you could make the argument that it'll never happen, and yeah, sure, I guess technically I could roll it a billion times and never get a single twenty, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect one given enough time and given the fact that we know there's at least one 20 on the die. If one of those parameters was different, say, I could only roll 10 times or that we weren't sure a 20 was even on there at all, then maybe I would compare the belief to religion.

Oh there are plenty of earth like candidates and i'm betting there is plenty of life. Civilizations though, i think not.

Figgles said:

"Based on the current state of astrobiological knowledge"

We have no astrobiological knowledge.

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You might be confused about what astrobiology is. From Wikipedia:

"This interdisciplinary field encompasses research on the origin of planetary systems, origins of organic compounds in space, rock-water-carbon interactions, abiogenesis on Earth, planetary habitability, research on biosignatures for life detection, and studies on the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space."

So we do have some astrobiological knowledge.

1000% H said:

Eh, I could have a D20 and believe I could roll a 20. Probability wise, as long as I keep rolling I should get one eventually. Yeah, sure, you could make the argument that it'll never happen, and yeah, sure, I guess technically I could roll it a billion times and never get a single twenty, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect one given enough time and given the fact that we know there's at least one 20 on the die. If one of those parameters was different, say, I could only roll 10 times or that we weren't sure a 20 was even on there at all, then maybe I would compare the belief to religion.

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This is a poor analogy as the universe is not die and life is not simply a single roll thereof. Rather, if one were insist on attempting to use a die it would be the equivalent to saying:

You managed to roll 20 on a D20 therefore somewhere else in the universe somebody has also managed to roll a 20 on a D20. It presupposes a D20 exists elsewhere in the universe because you have seen one.

I must admit I do find belief dichotomy rather puzzling. To accept that something can exist based on evidence is completely different to believing it does based on:

1. No supporting evidence
2. Increasing, at present, evidence to the contrary.

The current conversation has literally been the following over and over again:

Q: Is there life elsewhere in the universe?
A: Yes there has to be
Q: Where is your evidence?
A: I have none but there must be because...!

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying". - Arthur C. Clarke

It's difficult to think we are alone but maybe we are the "precursors", it has to be us or maybe one existed and disappeared, but it's difficult to wrap your head around that out of the entire universe, this single system developed intelligent life.

I still think it's highly unlikely that we are it. Why would we be? Why would we be so special in that way? I think it's incorrect to think that way.

tommy7154 said:

I think it's incorrect to think that way.

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Why is it incorrect? Scientists are, by their very nature, sceptics

Burt said:

But the lack of any signs of alien life in everything that we're able to observe for however long we've been able to observe it is something that can be accounted for.

If you look for a flower in ten thousand places and it's there in 9000 of them, that means one thing.

If you look for a flower in ten thousand places and it's only in one of them, that means something else.

Hopefully the way they accounted for this and extrapolated it is comprehensible to people who aren't good at math.

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This is assuming the criteria used to look for alien lifeforms are properly chosen though. I mean, if you look for a flower in thousand places the traditional way, not finding it is actually evidence of it not being there. The techniques used to determine whether alien lifeforms are on (very far away) planets do not strike me as similarly reliable in showing that no alien lifeforms exist on the planet.

Whether or not its true, its fascinating to see the reaction to it. Everyone rejecting it before understanding it, and saying its depressing that we might be the only sentient being in the universe.

I dont see it as depressing if we are the only sentient civilisation. Its depressing that we are probably going to destroy ourselves and most of the lifeforms on the planet, but maybe the fact that we are the only ones, could help us to realise we are our own custodians. We are responsible for ourselves and the wider universe. No Gods or Aliens are going to save us, surely that should seem clear by now at least. We should presume that we are alone for this fact alone.

Who knows what we could be doing in a 1000 years if we can get through this time, and get our shit together. Creating dysen sphere's, seeding new planets, creating new eternal lifeforms, who knows what other fantastical things are possible. But it doesn't seem likely that we are going to get through the next 100 years, and that would be a fucking crime and sad tragic end if we are the only sentient being in this galaxy let alone the universe.

Michaelsens said:

You might be confused about what astrobiology is. From Wikipedia:

"This interdisciplinary field encompasses research on the origin of planetary systems, origins of organic compounds in space, rock-water-carbon interactions, abiogenesis on Earth, planetary habitability, research on biosignatures for life detection, and studies on the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space."

So we do have some astrobiological knowledge.

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It was hyperbole. Our knowledge is basically limited to earth, and what little exploring we've done of the solar system. It may as well be nothing.

Razgreez said:

Why is it incorrect? Scientists are, by their very nature, sceptics

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I just think it's wrong and gives us an importance that we dont actually have. Like, at all. We were the only planet and the only galaxy and the only universe...I just dont think so.

I dont believe that if we are here (and apparently, we are) that there would be nothing else anywhere. It wouldn't make sense unless we are it and all existing life somehow came here to this one tiny place. What a waste of space that would be.

Even if we aren't really here and it's some kind of simulation that implies there's something else somewhere.