tectonic planet are rare
Time.
Timeline wise, we could be at the beginning of when other species are becoming sentient. Or we could have missed them by a billion years. The gap to get in contact is so massive that the odds are stacked against it ever happening.
Distance and time. No one seems to have a clue how far a light year is … I mean maybe ur finding someone in ur own galaxy over a big enough timeline but sorry 2000 light years to the nearest galaxy? Not a chance.
So if they are right, the Earth is incredibly rare and would be a great find for space faring civilizations. They also had plenty of time to pass by and find this incredibly rare life bearing sphere. But they didn’t. You can flip things how ever you want, the question remains - why haven’t we seen anyone?
Blipblop: “Those creatures on that planet are perplexing. Constantly at war, decimating their natural resources, consuming everything in their paths. Like a cancer overtaking an organism. Should we contact them?”
Morklorp: “Are you fucking crazy?”
I like how you assume another civilization would be any more rational.
I sure did, which is a pretty typical assumption when people think about beings from a different planet.
No, it really isn’t.
There are many ideas and no definite proof. I like the idea that species either try to reach the stars and fail because it costs too much energy, or they find a sustainable lifestyle and not leave their home planet as Dr. Fatima pointed out in a good video
Nice, thanks. I’m of the opinion that any form of civilisation is doomed in about 200 Earth years’ equivalent past their industrial revolution. It is a bit crude, but I will say: so far 100% of the cases I’m analysing have collapse as an expected outcome.
What even makes you think the industrial revolution is a given? It happened exactly once at earth. Also: We are not doomed. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism but both are possible outcomes
I don’t think it’s a given, but the moment it happens, it’s over. I love your optimism but I’m far too old to have it too.
Perhaps we’re just not as interesting as we think. Maybe aliens don’t want to contact us for the same reason I don’t want to contact kids playing in the park: I’m simply uninterested in whatever they’re doing.
It’s also likely that an alien species capable of interstellar travel doesn’t want anything we have. Our resources aren’t anything special, they have no need for slave labor and we don’t produce anything of interest to them. It’s a long drive. Why burn the gas and waste the time?
Knowledge.
Why are there scientists here on Earth studying the most boring subjects imaginable to anyone but them? Why does every tiny organism have a small, but dedicated group of scientists studying it at some point?
We must know - we will know! is a quote which represents humanity well. A factually wrong quote since we will not know everything but, an objective nonetheless. Why should other species believe different?
It’s not so much that we’re boring, it’s that we’re so far away and not trivial to send mass and energy towards.
I think that a sufficiently advanced civilization that could come over for a visit wouldn’t want to.
I also think a sufficiently advanced civilization with the curiosity and desire to learn about us could do so via probes and we’d never know they visited us.
Surely if intelligent life is rare, they’re all of interest
Even on the remoteest of chances that there is it a sapient life form capable and technologically advanced enough to contact us in this galaxy cluster, much less nearby?
Why the hell would they? We are obviously fucking crazy.
Science. Threat analysis. Entertainment at our silly ways.
If they have abundant resources and energy, sending probes wouldn’t be a challenge.
So their whole argument is that tectonic plates are needed for complex life to emerge. There isn’t much proof for it either way obviously but I find the argument flawed.
In any case, here is why I think aliens are here, either waiting for us to divest ourselves of our economic system and destructive ways (capitalism breaks when you mix in easy space exploration and heavy automation) or observing us and how changes emerge in our society like we do with secluded tribes.
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Any advanced civ can tell a planet has life on it from a great distance. If simple life is rare, they would of had a probe here a long long time ago.
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We started modifying the climate over 3000 years ago. Any civ within an 1000 light year range would have had enough time to notice and make it here. That is around 7 million star systems.
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An advanced civ would have covered every single solar system with Von Newman probes.
I think the fernie paradox is more of a test than a rule. Any civ that can’t pull itself out of the muck is probably bad news for galactic society, so they wait and see.
I find the idea that all intelligent species have the same dominator instinct driving them to explore, exploit, and colonize to be flawed. Not even all humans have this instinct, it’s just that our western societies are all about domination so we grow up thinking it’s the norm.
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The argument David Kipling made seems reasonable. Statistically the chance if there being almost no civilisations or the universe just teeming with life are the biggest. The parameters have to be tweaked just right for there being just a few civilizations in a galaxy. It’s not teeming with signals and chances of parameters being just right is low, so most probable is we being alone.
Why would they contact us? Kopernik got a lot wrong, but he was right in that we are nothing special. A species advanced enough to contact other lifeforms must run across planets in various states of ruin 12 a day.
I think it’s fundamentally interesting to see other biology. Just look at us trying to catalogue every possible life on earth, no matter how mundane.
