"John Schilling" <schillin@spock.usc.edu> wrote in message
news:bg6ijk$k6c$1@spock.usc.edu...

"Tony Sivori" <TonySivori@yahoo.com> writes:

I see the Fermi Paradox as based on an invalid

assumption.

I used to live near the ocean, and would sometimes wade

and swim in the sea.

I never saw a shark. Yet I did not exclaim "There are

said to be sharks in

here, I don't see them and therefore they probably do not

exist." I knew

they were there, but merely beyond the range of my human

sensoria.

I believe that is a fairly good analogy to

extraterrestrial intelligence.

The size of the universe is such that it is inconceivable

that we are the

only technological beings in existence. Yet that same

immense size that

assures we are not the only ones also insures that it is

improbable that we

will interact with, or even detect them.

That is a very common belief, but it ignores one critical

parameter: the

immense *age* of the universe.

Which insures that even the most lackadaisical

technological beings will

get around to finishing their galactic colonization or

megascale engineering

projects in a cosmic eyeblink.  They've had ten billion

years to stop by for

a visit, to build structures we can see from halfway

across the galaxy, or

whatever.  And yet, nothing.

Either we're the first, or something highly wierd is going

on.  Wouldn't

be the first time the universe has thrown high wierdness

at us, but the

high wierdness doesn't fall to obvious explanations like

"the universe is

too big".

Maybe there isn't one single obvious explanation, but that's
exactly the problem. There also may not be anything exactly
obvious at all, but there are many, many perfectly
_logical_ scenarios that would work--that's the problem:
there are just too many to pick out just one or two. Instead
we can only list a whole  menu of possible choices, and say,
"pick one or more of the above!" And even that is still not
good enough, because one then has to add, "or pick a few in
one particular galactic era, and add a few others in another
era, etc etc.--i.e., take full account of the
psycho-socio-history factors directing the statistical
rises, and the declines and falls of intelligent
civilizations, and calculate some central tendency for their
distribution and lifetimes within the galaxy due to said
(and other unknown) factors. In the end, one is left with
almost complete uncertainty as to what the answers are to
Drake and Fermi's questions. But the answers are out there!
Jes not so easy to deduce!              ...tonyC

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