"K_h" <KHol...@SX729.com> wrote:

Fermi's paradox suggests that there are little or no
other intelligent civilizations within the Milky Way
galaxy.

Hardly.

Fermi's Paradox is itself a paradox. It could be restated
to say, "Assuming that aliens are anything like us,
they can't be anything like us."

I'll explain.

Fermi's Paradox is supposed to apply to species with the
technology to travel below the speed of light. The point
being, even at a tenth of the speed of light, or a hundredth,
given the age of the universe there's been more than ample
time for them to reach us. And there lies the problem.

See, given a hundredth of the speed of light, it would take
10 million years for them to cross the galaxy. And that's
a long time, but one way to make it even longer is to say
that the creatures crossing the galaxy are anything like us.
Because, see, all the racial differences between men have
only developed in the last, oh, 100 thousand years of so,
and even going back a few thousand years ago most of the
ethnic groups we see today either didn't exist, or existed
on an entirely different scale.

We're not all still Goths, Vandals and Celts, now are we?

To put it short:  Fermi's Paradox is supposed to work with
human like races functioning within the understood limits of
the speed of light. Yet we know that you can't seperate a
species like us at those distances -- at those time intervals
(when messages can't travel faster than a light year per
year) -- and not give rise to entirely new & competing cultures,
turned ethnic groups turned races.

So, by virtue of expanding into the galaxy they would be
creating competition -- enemies, if you will -- which would likely
have the effect of stifling expansion.

Not only can't you exand through your enemies, but the slightest
competition is going to bring conflict.

Then again, why would a race that's anything like us expand
through the galaxy in the first place?

We tend to be incentive driven, and there doesn't appear to be
any incentive.