FastForward Radio with George Dvorsky and PJ Manney

That was an interesting show but I can’t understand the fascination with continually bringing up to the Fermi paradox. It’s next to useless and it’s far from a paradox since even the way it’s framed is dumb. Who’s to say that we haven’t been observed for millions of years? Who’s to say we could even begin to understand the methods of monitoring our by beings capable of interstellar/ interdimensional travel? We can’t even predict what we will be doing 200 years from now let alone 2,000 or 200,000 or 2 million or 200 million.

And you don’t need to resort to Dyson spheres or other crazy human preconceived ideas about what THEY would do based on what WE would do. We cannot realistically predict non-human super intelligent motivation, ethics, modus operandi and behaviors.

All this talk about “Every civilization would explore and colonize space at an exponential rate” is so incredibly silly and presumptuous. Come on. even we primtive humans have not laid down concrete over every square inch of earth.. Even we have a limited abiliy to use a bit of self-control and impose limits. Why must a super intelligence have an insatiable desire to colonize every planet in the galaxy? And colonize it exactly how? What does that mean? Are we supposed to assume ET’s would always make their presence known to us? Does lack of open contact NOW mean that they were never here in the distant past?

And the whole non-exclusivity argument sounds great until Dvosrky casually threw in the “well say there are a MILLION civilizations how are you going to get them all to comply” etc.. Well who the hell said there needed to be anything REMOTELY close to a MILLION civilizations out there? So it has to be n= 1,000,000 or n = 1? Why cant n= 5 or n= 100?

Perhaps part of the natural process of developing interstellar technology is a concurrent level of ethics and responsibly since by the time a civilization gets that far along they have mastery over material needs and are no longer obsessed with absorbing or conquering everything in their line of sight.

Or perhaps one race developed first a billion years ago and grew so powerful that they shepard all other upstarts in the galaxy along the way and enforce their own set of rules such as non-interference etc. That might sound like science fiction but its no more silly than looking for radio waves or Dyson spheres. Suffice it to say I could come up with “solutions” to the Fermi Paradox all day long and no one can dispel it since none of us have any data to argue the point aside from the fact that we don�t see open direct contact with us now.

The “Paradox” needs to be put to bed rest and for all.. We simply don’t have enough information about the situation to make any kind of informed guess.

The Fermi paradox addresses the fact that after decades of depictions of an abundance of alien civilizations in the galaxy in science fiction, and the fact that SETI scientists were making the exact same assumptions, no alien transmissions have shown up yet.

Clearly, Enrico Fermi was puzzled by the fact that the LGM hadn’t ever shown up, even though (presumably) they would have had a long head start.

It isn’t really a paradox, true. It is an expression of science fiction and science puzzlement about Where the Heck Are They?

“Why must a super intelligence have an insatiable desire to colonize every planet in the galaxy?”

They probably wouldn’t bother with what are, in reality, very dangerous places–yes, planets. They’d probably create their own space colonies in friendly asteroid belts.

That is, if they DON’T undergo a continually accelerating technological Singularity. As George pointed out, the Singularity would be a good explanation for the fact that their radio signals have NOT appeared.

“Are we supposed to assume ET’s would always make their presence known to us? Does lack of open contact NOW mean that they were never here in the distant past?”

Those points were addressed during the show.

“And the whole non-exclusivity argument sounds great until Dvosrky casually threw in the “well say there are a MILLION civilizations how are you going to get them all to comply” etc.. Well who the hell said there needed to be anything REMOTELY close to a MILLION civilizations out there? So it has to be n= 1,000,000 or n = 1? Why cant n= 5 or n= 100?”

He used that large number as an example. But we could use smaller numbers. Number 1 super-civilization may comply because of their morals and ethics. But would number 2 automatically comply with number 1′s request for hands off? How about number 3 or number 4, etc.?

“Perhaps part of the natural process of developing interstellar technology is a concurrent level of ethics and responsibly since by the time a civilization gets that far along they have mastery over material needs and are no longer obsessed with absorbing or conquering everything in their line of sight.”

Perhaps, but don’t bet the rent.

“Or perhaps one race developed first a billion years ago and grew so powerful that they shepard all other upstarts in the galaxy along the way and enforce their own set of rules such as non-interference etc. That might sound like science fiction but its no more silly than looking for radio waves or Dyson spheres. Suffice it to say I could come up with “solutions” to the Fermi Paradox all day long and no one can dispel it since none of us have any data to argue the point aside from the fact that we don’t see open direct contact with us now.”

This possibility was also addressed. Do you recall the Cosmic Zoo or Cosmic Sanctuary scenario?

“The “Paradox” needs to be put to bed rest and for all.. We simply don’t have enough information about the situation to make any kind of informed guess.”

That never stopped us before, especially on FFR.

BTW, my answer is the same as the one offered by George on the Singularity impacting the unlikelihood of SETI ever making a discovery.

As things may turn out, the average length of a “radio civilization” may turn out to be around 100 years, thus making it almost impossible for 2 such civilizations to co-exist in the same time-frame in our galaxy and possibly in the entire universe.