John Schilling wrote:

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

John Schilling wrote:

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

I see the Fermi Paradox as based on an invalid assumption.

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.

Not really. Timewise, it seems to me that there must be several steps in
the development of the universe before life as we know it can exist.
Matter must cool enough to condense past the subatomic particle phase.
Stellar cycles (star birth and novas) must happen before carbon can
exist to develop into molecules complex enough the reproduce. Even after
life happens, intelligence (especially technology bearing intelligence)
probably does not always evolve.

I submit that "technology-bearing intelligence probably does not always
evolve" is a gross understatement.

You may be right, but with our sample of one solar system, we can only
speculate. On your side of the argument, is that we are the only
technological species on this planet. On the other hand, intelligence may be
a survival trait that tends to favor Darwin's laws.

As for the rest, there are Sunlike stars about which Earthlike planets
could have developed and evolved life, that are billions of years older
than Sol.  So, even accounting for the things that perhaps must happen
before technological life evolves, the claim that technological life is
not vanishingly rare implies the existence of technological life that
has had a billion-year head start on us.

I do not think you fully appreciate what that means.


There will also always be fulfilled dreams.  Again, I do not think you
understand what a billion years means.

Well, for a being that expects to live only 75 or so years, I think I have a
pretty good handle on it. A billion years is so long that no species would
remain unchanged. They wouldn't have to go extinct; they would become
something else. Something else with different needs, abilities  and
motivations.

A billion years is long enough for a technological civilization to grow,
fail to make significant interstellar travel commonplace, fall, rebuild
a new and different technological civilization, repeat a hundred times
until it becomes clear that some quirk of the species its civilizations
can never make significant interstellar travel commonplace, fall once
so completely the species goes the way of the dinosaurs, have an entirely
new intelligent species evolve from the rats or cockroaches left by the
first, have *that* species build a technological civilization, fail to
make significant interstellar travel commonplace, fall, rebuild a new
and different technological civilizatios, repeat until it becomes clear
that *this* species cannot build a civilization that will make
interstellar travel commonplace, go extinct, repeat the
extinction/evolution cycle
half a dozen times, until the fiftieth civilization established by the
sixth intelligent species to inhabit that world finally gets around
to launching a starship.

And still have most of a billion years to spare.

As for "make interstellar travel commonplace", the bar on that is set
pretty low, and certainly does not require FTL drive.  Assume that the
fastest starships ever are generation ships or sleeper ships coasting
across the void at a pitiful 0.001c, with a maximum range of a dozen
light-years.  Assume they are so expensive that even the most active
of a hundred civilizations founded by each of a dozen races will only
build up a burst of enthusiasm sufficient to finance a launch once
every thousand years.  Assume that only one ship in ten manages to
plant a successful daughter colony, and that new colonies take ten
thousand years to grow to the point where they can build starships
of their own.

Here is where I think you many you have overlooked how the numbers add up.
Let us take the example of our nearest extra-solar star, which is 4.3 light
years away. Which I think is an example that favors you position, given that
odds are you'd have to go considerably further to find an Earth-like planet.

4.3 LY = 25,222,492,800,000 miles (sorry if you would have preferred KM).
That many miles at your speed of .001c would take 4300 years to traverse.

That is a long, long time for machinery to break, metal to grow brittle, the
crew to be irradiated, and to be subjected to the continuous risk of being
in the same place at the same time with a pebble sized (or larger) space
rock that has a disastrously high rate of speed, relatively speaking.

That may be the usual pattern for technologically advanced intelligence:
a few thousand years of glory followed by self-inflicted extinction.

As mentioned above, that's a *good* thing for the colonization argument.
Either the glory extends to launching the starships, or it clears the
way for the evolution of a whole new species that will have another shot
at getting it right.  And the gigayear timescales are such that evolving
whole new intelligent species as needed, does not seriously slow down the
program.

You and others in this thread have made some good points, and who knows, you
may be right. But given the fact that they are not here, there are only two
logical possibilities.

Possibility one is that they are not out there. We are alone in this galaxy.
The Earth is special, man is special, and we are the center and peak of
biological existence. Given the number of stars in this galaxy, I just can't
accept that as plausible.

Possibility two is that they are out there, either in large or small
numbers. But for some reason they have not traveled the enormous distances
between us and them.

I'm always open to reason, and further data. Until then, I'll continue to
consider the second possibility as the one that most likely describes
reality.

-- 
Tony Sivori