Where Are All The Aliens? We Ranked Every Explanation
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- čas přidán 4. 05. 2024
- The Fermi Paradox has many solutions. Many explanations for the fact that we don't see any signs of intelligent life in the Universe. We ranked all the major ones and put them into tiers from S to D.
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00:00:00 Intro
00:01:33 Fermi paradox
00:02:25 Zoo Hypothesis
00:06:19 Prime Directive
00:11:10 Simulation Hypothesis
00:16:54 Dark Forest
00:25:48 The Great Filter
00:33:54 Self-Destruction
00:40:16 We're The First
00:44:15 Rare Intelligence
00:49:00 We're Alone
00:56:00 Communication Barrier
01:04:35 Post-Biological Life
01:12:16 Hibernation Hypothesis
01:16:31 Our Tech Isn't Good Enough
01:20:49 We're Searching In Wrong Places
01:24:08 Aliens Are Among Us
01:27:01 Interstellar Travel is Impossible
01:36:19 Reapers
01:42:03 Expansion is Inefficient
01:47:48 There Is a Better Way
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People try to pick "a solution" when i think it's lots of them combined, with each one lowering the chances of us seeing intelligent life near us.
Also, a lot of them already overlap on their own. "Self-Destruction," "Rare Intelligence," and "Interstellar Travel is Impossible" are really just restating different layers of "The Great Filter." "We're the First" and "We're Alone" are just describing a universe where the early filters are extremely strong. All the ideas describing alien behavior can all be true across many individual cultures at the same time.
Some solutions may be that there's an either/or situation between different solutions. Perhaps there's an either/or situation between self-destruction or finding the "better way". Perhaps there's an either/or situation between whether interstellar travel is possible or life creating or evolving into post-biological beings: Life putting some version of themselves onto computers that can be accelerated more quickly, or more speculatively, turning into an energy being that could travel in something like holoships from Red Dwarf.
Yeah, it's definitely a combination. Although I think "rare intelligence" and possibly "life is rare" are the most likely top reasons why we see/hear nothing. Even if intelligent life is rare, it's certainly plausible to still have dozens of civilizations at any given time in a galaxy that are so far from each other that catching a glimpse or a signal is extremely difficult if not impossible. The galaxy is BIG.
You can make an Anti-Drake Equation out of that.
People always hate on me for really liking the Dark Forest hypothesis but it's like.... In a practically infinite universe it probably is true to an extent, along with a ton of other hypotheses. Thing is it's not really about picking the flavor you fancy because it's the coolest, a ton of them likely do overlap.
I agree with Fraiser on one point for Dark Forest, any species powerful enough to be a threat already knows we’re here. Hiding is pointless
How would they know? Life on the Earth and Earth civilization are undetectable from the closest star much less anywhere else. Also interstellar travel is quite literally impossible so menacing aliens cannot get here if they wished to eat us all.
So the conclusion would be, we are already doomed.
@@technokicksyourass or there’s nothing out there (that wants us dead and is a legitimate threat at least)
Any ETI that knows of us and views us as a threat will resort to a relativistic kill weapon. The kill-shot will come at us at or very near the speed of light. We’ll have vanishingly little time to react, very little chance of saving ourselves even if we do react.
Given that Earth has been broadcasting the presence of life for roughly 2 billion years ETI has had oodles of time to do something about us. We’re still here suggesting that no ETI within hundreds of lightyears feels threatened by us. Or there is no ETI within hundreds of lightyears.
Our broadcasts have spread to a miniscule portion of the galaxy. Some small fraction of a percent. Dark Forrest could be true, we just may not be noticed for another few million years.
Rare Earth is definitely my number 1 choice.... Now throw in the vast distances between Earth like planets + Drake equation and civilizations are just rare and too far apart (causally disconnected).
The more I learn about biology, astronomy, geography and chemistry the more mindboggling it becomes which conditions and historical events had to be just right for complex life to even be a thing here. Could there be another civilization inside our own Galaxy? Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if we are among the most advanced in the universe. The fact alone that our star just happened to travel out into a relatively calm region of space and has only been disturbed just a little bit by a brown dwarf, who zipped by a few hundred thousand years ago, is crazy. could've easily been life-ending if we were in a more crowdy area.
intelligence + body form. sampling earth evo, very, very few species that could be physically capable of manipulating environ to make tech discoveries needed for advance communication. there was a dino that *maybe* with evolved intelligence could have, but there just haven't been many candidates. could be it's just an incredible outlier to develop advanced ability.
@@extollo the Silurian hypothesis hasn't been completely ruled out. Imagine a naturally very skittish smaller dino got pretty advanced at some point and they went underground when things got bad. All the while they just kept on advancing and being perfectly content living underground. Might even be under a kilometer of ice for all we know and they are probably not very large in numbers either. Then all of a sudden they get spooked by our underground nuclear tests. I mean, that definitely would have been a "wow, what are those underdeveloped hairy apes doing? Better start keeping an eye on them" hence all the UAP-sightings near Nuclear facilities.
Yeah that's basically my opinion. There is probably a lot of Intelligent life but it's spread out very far over distance and time.
@@bertdemeulemeestermost advanced in the universe? I just can't fathom that with how many billions of years there were before us for life to advance.
With regard to Dakotah Tyler's comments on the simulation hypothesis, he had two criticisms:
1. to simulate every atom in the universe, would require a computer larger than the universe.
2. It makes no sense to simulate an entire universe, and then only put one planet of life in it.
But what if these two ideas are complimentary... what if to get around 1, they only simulate the parts of the universe at the detail and scale they need for the people on the single planet to have a compelling view of the rest of the universe, without simulating all the atoms of every star out there. In fact, that's how many modern computer games work, simulating finer grained details only as you get close enough for those details to become relevant to the view (Or whenever you zoom in on them with a telescope etc).
In that case, the simulation of only one world with conscious observers, might help them to solve the issue with the information theory and computational power issues involved.
I give it a C+. Only a little higher, but still.
Yes, Dakota doesn't really understand how computer programmers think, and therefore how computer programs work.
They get optimised as much as possible to use as little resources as possible, it would be ridiculous to simulate "every atom in the universe"
@@sssfulton yeah, when you think about the amount of photons we get from distant galaxies, its literally just a handful of photons per hour that get collected over days to accumulate a visual picture, this shows how little processing it could take to simulate distant galaxies / universe
no mans sky fr
a simulation would not have to simulate the whole universe, it would have to simulate only our perception of the universe
yeah but as Moiya points out, at that point you're just arguing Plato. Like sure, I can walk through my hometown in a dream, with huge holes in logic everywhere, and as long as I'm not lucid dreaming my brain just goes with it. You can't test for something you're not conscious of. However, I think this theory breaks down because it requires 100% perfection. You can lucid dream. Not only can you lucid dream, you can start lucid dreaming IN a non-lucid dream, AND this is an actual, teachable skill. If our simulated universe requires this to be the dream state for our higher conscious minds to be in, then it should have the same problems dreams have. And if you can learn to become, say, 'super-lucid' this by definition should make you aware of the simulation, the same way lucid dreaming automatically makes you aware that you're dreaming. But not only has this never been observed, among spiritualists and similar who claim to be able to reach a higher consciousness, they've never recognized anything even resembling a simulation. That immediately fails the sniff test for me.
@@z-beeblebroxOur perception of the world around us is largely reconstructive. Our map of the cosmos is even more reconstructive. Whenever we, as an example, detect signs of alien transmission our first assumption is that the highly sensitive and temperamental equipment we are using must be at fault.
@@DigitalDustChan None of that is what the OP is trying to argue for. But IMO - and this goes both ways - any signal that's not strong enough that we know with certainty it's from an intelligent civilization, isn't worth detecting, period. It's problematic enough dealing with decades-long gaps between replies, if there's error involved as well we'd be better off not realizing it's for real in the first place.
@@z-beeblebrox this would not be Plato, this would be you being an NPC and shouting all day "This is a good day for fishing" while bumping into trees and changing direction randomly ... except you don't perceive that because you don't have code for it.
Talking about simulations is meaningless: if it is a simulation anything goes. Maybe even this conversation is scripted, and the player characters will get clues to complete quests from this thread.
@@EmilNicolaiePerhinschi imo this line of thinking is nothing but a waste of time. So yes, exactly like Plato :P
my only disappointment is that you didn't include Isaac Arthur, President of the National Space Society, considering he has an entire youtube series covering fermi paradox solutions.
It’s possible he was asked, but wasn’t able to do it.
You should check out P E Rowe. He has a year of weekly sci fi short audiobooks based on Isaac Arthur's topics. As talented as Asimov, Heinlein, or Le Guin, imho.
Considering there's an entire series worth of perspectives, would it fit into a 2-hour video?
Someone else asked the same question in the comments here and Fraser answered that he has had many collaborations with Isaac Arthur in the past and he said he wanted to add additional voices to the conversation.
I know they’ve colaborated before, maybe it just didn’t work this time or maybe he wanted to switch it up a little IDK. Either way Isaac is a gentleman and isn’t exactly hurting for exposure right now.
So fun! Fraser this is the most enjoyable tier list I have ever watched. I found myself smiling through the entire 2 hour journey and was disappointed that it had to end. Excellent hosting, great colleague insights, a true CZcams gem! Thank you so much.
Thanks a lot, I'm glad you enjoyed it
Agreed! It was a great conversation and exploration of philosophy of existence. I liked the rating system too. Not too serious and open minded which I loved
I remember reading a story about a hiker who got lost in Japan. This kind of baffled me, because surely if you walk in a straight line in Japan for a few kilometres you're bound to bump into a farm, city, railway, highway... I mean, it's pretty densely populated. But you can't see a city 25km away if you're in the woods. Space may well be the same, but we haven't really got the ability to see all that far. In 100+ years when we've surveyed the whole galaxy with future super telescopes and haven't found anything, then it gets interesting.
Japan is mostly mountains, only densely populated around the coastline.
@@HAL-vu8efand there's no cure for autism either. Facts are interesting.
@@brick6347but he was right about the inland of Japan only being scarcely populated. You shouldn't have started your otherwise perfectly good explanation with some rather dumb observation. You don't have to be autistic to know how the population in Japan is concentrated along the shoreline. Not being American definitely helps too😂
In a survival class we were told that you follow any flow of water down stream.
On the dark forest, many of our creatures are brightly colored, and make noise to scare away others.
We are one of many cilvizations, but due to the size of Universe, our Light Cones will never intersect :(
💯%
I used too many words to say something similar
Agreed this is the most compelling to me. I dont think there is a practical way to go faster than light. I think the self replicating robots angle is just a cop out and in reality isnt possible, I think the distance is too far for even that to practically function. The universe is full of life its just a bunch of islands so far way from each other and the sea between is to treacherous for anything to survive the journey,.
This is the premise of the novel Spin.
Humans have been doing science for 400 years. .. The universe is 14,000,000,000 years old.
General Relativity theory is not the end of physics.
But what is the bottleneck that prevents the universe from having a higher density of civilizations? Would you expect other nearby planets with an environmental suited for life, but having no life? Planets with actual simple life forms? With complex animals?
I also like the idea of 'dumb aliens'. Consider if the dinosaurs weren't interrupted this planet would likely still be theirs.
And whats to say they would not have developed intelligence? Birds are dinosaurs, despite their tiny brains, eg crows are surprisingly intelligent and not too far from the apes we evolved from.
@@vertigo2893 they ruled earth for 165 million years without the need of higher intelligence because intelligence isn't necessary for existence.
The late paleontologist Dr. Stephen Jay Gould discussed this in one of his books. (I think it was “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”.) He believed that life was very common in the universe but intelligent life was extremely rare. He argued that if, for example, the asteroid that wiped out the non avian dinosaurs had missed the Earth that intelligent life might have never arisen.
He mentioned that during the age of the dinosaurs that there was no trend towards increasing intelligence at all. He said that even allegedly intelligent dinosaurs like velociraptors weren’t as smart as modern-day corvids like crows and ravens. And of course, with dinosaurs out of the way that let mammals, including us, to flourish.
@@bbartky I would imagine that the asteroid was just the thing that wiped out the dinosaurs *first.*
Life is, first of all, adaptable -- but only if allowed enough time. The dinosaurs were very well-adapted to their environment, but it changed faster than most of them could adapt to keep up with. And sooner or later, some kind of sudden change is inevitable -- very few things in the universe are constant. If it wasn't the asteroid it would've been something else.
Mind you, that kind of change to Earth's history would probably render all subsequent life unrecognizable by the time you reach the modern day. Any intelligent life might not resemble humans at all.
@@vertigo2893It's not the intelligent life only, it's the intelligent civilisation. Orcas are very intelligent but they don't build computers or planes or perform surgeries.
A simulation of the universe doesn't require a computer with the power of the universe, like Dakotah says. You don't need to simulate every atom. Only things that are observed need a supply of data, which, compared with the size of the universe, is miniscule. Open world video games don't load the entire map into memory the entire time, just what is active on and around what's on the screen. This actually ties in fairly neatly with quantum mechanics and measurement and wave functions. One could take it a step further and apply the holographic principle to make the data requirement much smaller/compressed, since the perceived three-dimensionality of space is contained in only two dimensions. I'm not convinced regarding the simulation hypothesis, but it is certainly a compelling idea. I'd put it in A tier.
I think the grabby alien's hypothesis is pretty compelling to us being among the first. I guess you could call this one Rare Intelligence too. I liked Dakotah's answer here about the hard steps from going from simple life to complex. It really is one of the single best pieces of data that we have towards the answer to the Fermi Paradox. That combined with the null results from all our searches, the other big piece of data we have, is basically the grabby aliens hypothesis. I think both of these should be S-tier. If you are reading this and haven't heard of the grabby alien's hypothesis, search for the video from PBS Spacetime. It is a good summary. You can also find the paper titled Grabby Aliens where they walk through their full argument and the math behind it. It is pretty easy to read in terms of science papers, and is very compelling.
I'm only 10 minutes into this but I already feel like you should do this format again but with Isaac Arthur as a guest. That guy has a lot of really clear and in-depth thoughts about this subject matter that might make a video like this very informative to a lot of people.
I've done a lot of collaborations with Isaac, I wanted some new people. :-)
@@frasercain I know you have, it's just that I thought this concept would be right up his alley.
Conversely, I like your new guests but this topic doesn't seem to be one that they have thought an awful lot about. They make some rookie mistakes in their thinking, such as not acknowledging that getting your hands on as much energy as you can is an instrumental goal and that you don't have to explain why _some_ species wouldn't do x and y but why not a single species out there would do x or y.
Yes, he has some really convincing points and counterpoints on some of these (like the "its very improbable, that every single individual adheres to the prime directive"-point Fraser made), that would have made some of the arguments in this video much more easy and helpful.
agree@@unvergebeneid
Word
If we live in a simulation, our ENTIRE experience of the entire universe is still INSIDE the simulation and we’d have zero idea of the real size and power abilities of entities outside this simulation.
If we're in a simulation, it is highly likely our simulators were simulated as well, and likely in a similar simulation to our own.
My problem with many of these is that they have to account for ALL life. Any scenario where a species has to choose an option (go ethereal, stay home, don't spend extravagant energy, ...) may apply to SOME species, but not ALL. For me any solution has to be caused by nature/physics or there will be exceptions that we might detect. Anything else goes straight in the D-bucket for me.
The most plausable to me is a combination of rarity and not having looked wide enough - in other words, they exist, but are far and few between and we just need to keep looking (possibly for millennia to come).
I think you guys got it completely wrong with the simulation. Like, first, why do you assume every atom in the universe would have to be simulated? Do you now how video games/ virtual environments are rendered? Computer only renders in detail the thing we are interacting with, everything else kinda doesnt exist. Sounds quite quantum, doesnt it? :D
Also, the if the base universe is much larger, complex then our universe, as real as it seems, could be their equivalent of Minecraft. Does Steve in Mincraft say it would be impossible to have a computer simulate all that Minecraft wolrd because, according to his Minecraft physics, it would take a computer bigger than the entire Minecraft universe?
I brought that up. The simulation doesn't tell us anything about base reality. The Sims think they're living in reality, but it's nothing like the real world.
@@frasercain But it got a D :(
@@frasercain but, you could optimize it well enough that it could skip simple steps to get the end result pretty well, and you could probably see those skips if you developed the science enough. just like how computers can make circles out of triangles.
you have to think bigger - out of the box. like, what if the real universe is 1 brazillian times larger than our sim, and there is no speed of light limit limit, and it's 20-dimensions, and everyone gets a pony, and there is no 2nd law of thermodynamics, and math is way easier. not a single rule or observation or technique or limit we see can be assumed to apply in the the outer reality. that's where the argument fails for me not that it's unbelievable or impossible - but it's unfalsifiable. so might as well get on with the other ideas unless 'they' give us a hint.
yea but still the simulation hypothesis doesn’t tell anyone anything. Like maybe it’s a simulation in a simulation in a simulation but so what none of that gets you anywhere.
I think our tech is the most important bottle neck when we talk about detecting other intelligent life forms. Because light year travel time prohibits us from observing planets that are light years away in our current present time, due to the vast distance and the speed of light, any planet we observe would be a past version, not a current/present version of that planet. So complex life could have developed but all we can see is just the planet before any activity happens.
I personally think the Fishbowl hypothesis is most accurate. Life is common; even multi-cellular life is common. Even intelligence is not all that rare. Yet, civilization with technology and access to the cosmos is extremely rare. Most life will evolve with water inside an ice bound planet or moon. And even if intelligence happens and creates a form of civilization, the chances to discover space faring tech is so extremely improbable. It took humans 2 million years to get to this early point of space travel.
Modern humans have only existed for 300,000 years, not 2 million.
A friend had a sci fi short story idea: life evolves on an ocean planet with an ice layer. They never evolve eyes but just advanced sonar. They drill through the ice, look at a star filled universe, but hear nothing think the ice is the edge of their universe and go back under water
@@thatfuzzypotato1877 Great idea, but i think they could still detect stuff from the outside, like a meteorite hitting the ice from above, some sort of atmosphere and pressure on the outside, maybe with some winds and the sound of the wind
@@krumuvecisyeah, not a perfect idea, mostly just a way to explore how limited senses could blind a race to the greater universe
It took less than 100 years to go from flight to escape of our solar system though. Seems like technological advance is on an exponential curve so might not be so far off to making self replicating probes.
Personally, I think a combination of the following factors makes the most sense:
1. Vast Distances(I feel like no matter how educated you are, it's really easy to handwaive the absolutely massive distances between planets, star systems, galaxies, and so forth)
2. Narrow scope of the places and methods we've looked for intelligent life(We really are just shining a laser pointer into the corner of a dark forest and assuming no life exists because the light didn't land squarely on Sasquatch's forehead)
3. Narrow definition of what we would consider "intelligence" (i.e. assuming intelligence = technological expansion across space at ever increasing power demands)
4. Timing (For instance, there could have been alien species relatively close to or greater than human intelligence, but say, lived 100 million years ago and went extinct after 100 thousand years)
5. Great Filters (I am more inclined to believe most of the filters are behind us, but some like the conditions needed to grow technologically are specific enough that there are probably tons of planets with life thats somewhere between single celled bacteria and the dinosaurs, but almost none that got to the "mining the planet for ancient stores of fossil fuels if they even have that equivalent to power their technology" stage)
6. We're the First/There are no advanced civilizations(tied in with 1 and 2 - It could just be that there hasn't been any other advanced intelligent life that developed in the relatively small amount of space we've looked at so far. Doesn't mean there isn't 100 star faring civilizations in Andromeda, but just that there aren't any Galactic Empires nearby)
In a nutshell, it's a lack of scope combined with just the vast distances/timescales and what we consider intelligence being heavily dependent on our own evolution that answers the Fermi Paradox. I don't think there are any invisible civilizations "hiding the truth" from us, but instead that life is possibly prolific, and space is just like, really, really big on timescales that don't mesh well with our current standards.
The nearby star flyby in 1.3 million years is Gliese 710. I've already made plans to visit.
Right, that's the one.
Nice, I booked the week off months ago
Time and distance is the biggest filter: Odds are against any peoples being at level of sophistication that they can find and begin communication with another peoples of the same mindset. There might be someone thinking almost the same as we do but they are three galaxies away and the odds of us finding each other are next to zero.
I agree distance is the answer thats it
I think the true answer is a combo of a lot of these. I think that the most potent options is the idea that we are one of the firsts and expansionist civilizations kill themselves, and non expansionist civilizations don't feel the need or find is selfish to take the whole universe to themselves.
My favourite solution is the evidence horizon. So civilisation spreads across the galaxy like ripples in a pond, falling apart afterwards because of natural processes and the problems of maintaining that civilisation, like distance and time.
So in short, we’re either existing before the first wave, or we missed the last wave and we’re surrounded by ruins and the dead, slowly falling apart all evidence disappearing.
Also, I think the great filter is that little girl!
I'm a video game programmer. The behavior of photons (wave to particle on interaction) is the same way we optimize physics in games. Gravity can also be explained by processing speed. each tick of time is the length of time needed to run the simulation in that given area. The more calculations needed, the slower time moves. So the more matter in an area, the more calculations needed per tick. It would work this way if each Plank Length is a processor of fixed processing speed.
As far as simulations being visibly different is incorrect, that's not what we do as game developers. We find a simulation that gives the same results with lower resolution. A fractal calculation will give as much detail as you can observe and all that accuracy will be correct. WE CAN MAKE THIS NOW., but In a much simpler way.
Looking at the universe from the perspective of high accuracy optimized simulation, the simulation theory is a B or an A.
That doesn't explain base reality though. It doesn't really answer the question, it just shifts it to a new area and pretends to answer it.
@@SuperYtc1 Then that begs the question: What is this "base reality" you're proposing? Sounds to me like an unfalsifiable concept, and therefore lacking current scientific validity. It's just as easy to say that the universe is by its very nature iteratively simulated in both past and future directions, infinitely.
"each Plank Length is a processor" That doesn't make any sense, sorry. Like plank lenght is a 1D concept. We live in a 4D relativistic spacetime continuum here. :) And what exactly you mean by "processor"? Do you mean Von Neumann architecture CPU? Or what? :)
"more matter in an area, the more calculations needed per tick" - What if you have the same number of particles but with different mass? For exmaple the same number of protons vs neutrons. These two systems would have a different mass (and therefore different time dilation) but the same computational requirements. Doesn't work. I think this might be a case of "every problem looks like a nail" kind of bias.
I vote for a combo; "Intelligence" ( the kind that gives a damn about the sky in any way ) is EXTREMELY rare, and we're temporally alone.
on a small scale, think about all the species on this planet alone that can create space ships. theres one. only one.
@@mryellow6918 All of the species that ever existed too! Not just now. I agree that it is possible that intelligent life, capable of space travel for the purpose of exploration and/or expansion could be a complete fluke or astronomically rare to the point where we maybe the only type of species like that in our "neighborhood" right now.
Could be, could be. Unless we find another life, we can't really judge the rarity. Currently, as far as we know, we're the only ones in the whole existence
oops, i replied to the wrong comment. Oh well, it still fits
That's probably the most likely scenario. I don't think the Earth, the Sun or our solar system is particularly significant. The only determining factor left over is intelligent life. Life on Earth has evolved over a period of 4 billion years and the modern Homo sapiens for only about 160,000 years. Out of 4 billions years of evolution and 160,000 years of human progress, we have only now started to explore the universe.
From this scale of time alone we can conclude that intelligent life and more importantly - spacefaring life - is exceedingly rare. Life itself is likely very, very common in the universe, but intelligent life not so much. Or it could be that we have just gotten very unlucky in terms of evolution and that's why it's taken us so long. Perhaps on other planets the conditions are even better and where intelligent life could evolve even quicker.
I miss the weekly space hangout, but thank you for helping me find Moiya again! And thanks for promoting new and amazing talent. Found Dakotah a while back thanks to you as well. Amazing everyone! Thanks!
Regarding the game theory argument you made on the Dark Forest Hypothesis, it is only valid for a game with only one interaction. When you have a game with multiple interactions, strategies with good behaviour outperform detrimental ones.
So, shoot first and then immediately switch to diplomacy? Because during first contact, we do not know that there will be a second.
Actually all it takes is for a small percentage of hostile aliens to completely wipe out all the benevolent ones and if benevolent ones happen to witness this, they will cease to be benevolent.
@@justfellover Yeah, but if you have a first contact, it should be natural to assume there will be a second, especially if the contact is relatively close enough that you can have any sort of dialogue(even if it takes 100k years to get a reply). Its one thing to assume you are alone in the universe. Assuming you are alone in the universe... except for that one other group of intelligent people 100 thousand light years away is much less believable.
@@GodWorksOut True, but in that case you'd run into two scenarios:
1. There is only a few civilizations out there and if you are the top dog civilization, you'd likely be able to expand pretty openly while culling weaker civilizations, with your presence being pretty easy to be detect as there wouldn't be anyone to stop you and enough of a technological gap that you could detect and destroy any potential future rivals
2. There are tons of civilizations out there, enough that a single top dog is hard to determine, in which case the fairly constant destruction of other civilizations would be fairly easy to detect
Even if you can't see the other hunters in a dark forest, if it's violent and dangerous enough, there should be carcasses and the sounds of animals being predated.
We're the first.
It's the perfect null hypothesis that doesn't require us to imagine anything that may or may not be happening elsewhere.
Sure, and we don't have to be THE first in the entire universe, just in the area we can meaningfully observe. I think that would be the laniakea supercluster at most, so that still leaves plenty of room to spare for other civilisations that might be out there, just not close enough for us to see.
Even a local first makes me sad. It’s ok though, I’ve become accustomed to sad. Means we are special and we’ve got to care for our planet.
There's just too many filters.
Right chemistry
Stable temperate atmosphere
Liquids
Abiogenisis
Multicellular
Complex
Then I think there's something about the sequence of our evolutionary tree.
Something about spacial awareness in primates when swinging in the trees and then social brain and language.
And then even if another species gets there, they're going to need an atmosphere that supports combustion in order to do metallurgy.
We're not even the first on this planet, let alone the galaxy, or even the solar system.
@@_nebulousthoughts so many filters. We haven’t even defined them all. Australia was still in the Stone Age when Europeans showed up. Why? Economists speculate it’s because there weren’t any long-legged animals to act as beasts of burden for commerce, and thus very slow development. Without Jupiter acting as our comet-sink, we’d have been destroyed many times over. Etc, etc, ad nauseam. We’re unbelievably lucky.
Would we be able to detect life on Earth if we were like 20 lightyears or more away from Earth with our contemporary state of the art technology? I highly doubt it. And that's your answer. Our technology simply isn't sufficient enough to detect alien life in even our local part of the galaxy. So what paradox?
Well right yes
We discuss exactly that.
One assumption with the Fermi Paradox is that "more advanced" means "much bigger, more impressive and louder". We're pretty close to looking for biosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres, we'd be able too see if neighboring intelligences were building dyson spheres and if Von Neuhman probes were mining the moon.
Was this asumption accurate? Hard to tell, we don't even know what technology on Earth will look like in thirty years.
Note that they DO adress that in the video.
Hell, we have trouble identifying intelligent life in our own backyards!
Except know about by radio frequency signals.
This was great, everyone seemed to have a good time
Isn't it conceivable that complex intelligent life and technological civilizations are possible in the Universe, but extremely, extremely unlikely? And we happen to be it, the only winning lottery ticket in the galaxy or the Universe?
The numbers are not on your side.
@@LG-km8fw Please elaborate, because i respectfully disagree with you here.
Yea sounds like 49:00 or maybe 25:53, 44:20. Plausible I think because if there IS a winning ticket, the anthropic principle says we *must* be the ones holding it.
Yep
That's damn near impossible. The universe might possibly be infinite. Humans think way too highly of ourselves.
The best objection to the "simulation hypothesis" was not the ones they settled on but one they glossed over - it's not a hypothesis at all because it's not falsifiable. I'm 100% with Moiya on the simulation hypothesis.
It's not falsifiable YET. It may never be falsifiable, but we can't say that for sure right now. String Theory, as far as I know, isn't falsifiable yet either, but we sure put a lot of our energy into exploring the concept and its offshoots in recent decades.
If this zoo hypothesis should work it must mean there actually are a bunch of intelligent aliens and all of them are both in agreement and 100% disciplined, over long time? What are the chances? Are they not even slightly similar to us, where some guy jump in to the bear pit?
Yup, that's where it breaks down.
And, you know, there's an evolutionary pressure to have at least SOME members of a species being the kind to jump into bear pits. Yeah, most of those die but the ones who don't find new ecological niches or resources.
So you have to have different species who can all agree despite being more diverse than what you see on earth. More different than a moss and bananas. Who all agree. AND you need ALL those species to have internal consensus? Over millions of years?
@@TheStephaneAdam - besides, who will be the crew on these spaceships? Of course, exactly as on ships etc here on earth, ordinary people doing impulsive things when they have an opportunity, there would be someone on earth with a camera when one of these guys eventually can stretch their legs on earth do something undisciplined
@@frasercain couldn't that also mean that when Kirk goes and interacts with primitive planets, when those people go tell others of their kind about it, they just get dismissed as crazy ufo folks... Maybe not all the advanced beings coming down from the heavens crap that is all throughout our ancient history and mythology and religions and just plain old people even today saying they saw weird sky crap weren't lying, or at least not all of them. Boom! So there are beings "breaking their prime directives" all over our history but it's all explained away as myth/religion/crackpot conspiracy theories. Ever consider that?
Maybe there are laser turrets taking out the jumpers before they get over the fence
Great filter is natural selection. It is also an argument for why we should find a few, very intelligent species, because every impact, mass extinction, cosmic conditional filter, will prune the dumb life and select for intelligent / adaptable life. That filter doesn't need to mean nobody at all, just nobody anywhere near us (at least very unlikely) -- the most likely answer by this logic is that we're the first/only in our galactic neighbourhood, but not the universe.
Not if the "pruning" is removal by the roots.
The answer to the Fermi Paradox is so simple (as per Occam's Razor): space is so much bigger than we can comprehend, if there are any others out there, it’s unlikely we’d ever see them. Using the needle in the haystack apology, the haystack is so unimaginably big, and the needle so small, even if the aliens were super advanced, the time it would take to statistically find one would probably be thousands or millions of years
But you havent explained why the needle is so small. There are trillions of earth-like planets within our observable universe, why would only one of them produce intelligent life?
@@vertigo2893 because of the tens of thousands of stars we’ve surveyed using Kepler, tess and others - we’re yet to find an Earth analogue. Our proverbial needle is so small, simply because space is so big and so vast. And that’s without even factoring in the time lost to the limit of light speed
@@BlinkRazor But we have found earth like planets, like LHS475b. Its obviously incredibly hard with our current tech to see planets at trillions of kilometer, heck, we are not even sure yet how many planets there are in our own solar system! That doesnt mean we dont know that there must be billions of habitable planets in our galaxy alone and literally quintillions in the observable universe. And it doesnt mean we shouldnt be able to detect signals from them if any of them have advanced civilizations. Yet so far none of them seem to transmit any intelligent EM radiation and none of them seem to have launched von neumann probes. That requires a better explanation than "small needle".
Advanced civilisation would expand exponentially in all directions to maximize its chances of survival. For example at only 0.1c you could colonize an entire galaxy within a million years. So for example if such civlisation existed 1 billion years ago, lets say 500 million light years away, then we should already be able to see them. Because a huge area in our sky would have infrared light from Dyson spheres and show other technosignatures..
@@kyjo72682 Ok, but if that advanced civilization developed a billion light years from us and has only been colonizing for say, the last 100,000 years? What evidence would we see right now? It seems alot of the Fermi Paradox solutions, especially the more pessamistic ones play fast and loose with just how vast the universe is and how little of it we've actually seen.
They acknowledge that the universe is billions of years old and expanding faster than the speed of light, but then act shocked that we haven't found proof in the last 100 or so years we've been looking, and that our ability to "look" in general is basically the equivalent to sticking your nose out a window in New Jersey right now to see if you can smell(and determine the flavor of) a pie baked in Zimbabwae 3000 years ago.
When you were talking about "sending a bad idea" to a civilization; I'm pretty sure this is the plot in the 1995 film Species. Good stuff.
I was surprised that the panel dismissed Fraser's zoo/simulation hypothesis. One of the huge advantages of that type of hypothesis is that it completely bypasses the Copernican principle/mediocrity principle, which is arguably the main reason that the Fermi paradox is a paradox to begin with. Where is everybody? if life is so mediocre and common, as it should be based on the sheer numbers, where is everybody? answer: they are common in the universe but we are being hidden from them and nobody is bothering to look for us just like nobody on earth is bothering to find an invisible grain of sand located somewhere on one of the beaches of the earth. Also, the simulation hypothesis doesn't require anything like a simulation of the entire universe, as others have pointed out.
It would require simulating practically all observable universe since the big bang. Otherwise how would you ensure that every observer has the same consistent view of the causal history?
42:32 - I really have to disagree. “Life forms really early” is not some universal fact, it’s just what we observed in our particular case. After all, we only have a sample size of one.
Until we see evidence of life forming equally early elsewhere in the universe, it’s much more correct to say “OUR life formed really early”, and to use that to *support* the “we’re first” argument, rather than to refute it.
we have the sample size of all different species on our planet, if you don't believe in all life stems from a single random cell.
In essence, it boils down to being unable to compare just one sample. The earliness or not of our life is irrelevant, since some other life might've taken longer. If we rank all known life-forms and first is the one with a rank one, then we are the first since we only know one. I think it's a red herring to point to our lateness or earliness. On the other hand, having seen our recent rapid technological advancements, if we assume an earlier-than-us alien life, it must be communicating or at least producing waste heat - not being to observe that, in my opinion, is the real argument for us being first.
I agree. Also, as far as we know, life only started once here. If we had seen left- and right handed DNA or anything else that could point to multiple origins of live, then it would be a much stronger argument.
I have had decades to think about the Fermi paradox. 49:we are alone. Uniformity of physics in the background of space says if we find life on the earth, life should have regenerated for billions of years before the oxygenation event. We find life began as a singularity. The Miller Urey experiment and tunneling chemistry in the cold of space show that amino acids are found in asteroids and moons. We dont have a theory or definition of life that predicts life. We find life by comparison. Even if it's panspermia you only push the origin back in time. That's why life is not cause and effect of uniform physics. Life has not been detectable in space as complex proteins for 10.2 billion years. Life on earth is a paradox. You can't seed the earth without complex proteins in Kuiper belt objects. Life is a thin layer on the surface of earth. Levinthal paradox of proteins. The human body 37,000 billion cells, 37.5 trillion symbiotes, Andromeda is only a trillion stars, 80 billion neurons, about as many as the clouds of Milky Way stars, our dna can stretch twice across the solar system, dendrites are 1,000 to 10,000 trillion, Our own thoughts may occur because of Feynman paths and Penrose microtubules. If life is cause effect there would be swarms of Boltzman brain comets. You are a singularity from every generation 37 trillion cells accurately reproduced from one cell. Physics does not predict free will from a swarm of particles. By the same logic life doesn't begin from inert metallicity. It is as though the universe does not have the degrees of freedom. See Y Chromosome Bottleneck at the dawn of civilization, Cambrian Explosion of Life, Origins Revisited by Richard Leakey Jr. Just the 1s2 tip of discovery
For me I tend toward the interstellar travel is impossible (or just so inefficient to be useless) but also with the grand filter removing civilizations at various points, with self destruction being one of these filter possibilities.
Considering the vastness of space, the diversity of life just on this one planet, I can't imaging any solution that involves everyone responding to the same problems in the same way. Humans don't even do that within our own species. There's just far too many unimaginable ways to be.
But there is one 'right way' to respond when you have infinite resources and no natural predators, and life always takes that route. Because if one lifeform doesn't naturally multiply to fill a niche fully, then one that does will take that place for them. On Earth there is limited space, which limits this, but there is no real limit in outer space. The first species to spread exponentially will out compete any that does not.
@@cortster12 If they're aiming for a very-long-term survival, like sometime in the black hole era, then exponential growth might waste resources prematurely. No, there's not a one right way.
@krumuvecis
Exponential survival isn't feasible, and also not something an entire species can decide at once. If 99% slow down their expansion, but 1% do not, then that 1% will become the 99%.
@@cortster12 True, but again, with the vastness of that space, it'd just as possible to assume that what you described is happening 1 billion light years away from us, and only started a million years ago. Expecting to see evidence of it now is like expecting to see a gorilla in your broom closet in the next five minutes to prove that they ever existed at all.
@@cortster12 Unless that 1% encounters a Great Filter that only affects those who try to expand too greatly and get wiped out/wipe themselves out. Humans needed curiosity and desires for more to branch out and evolve technologically, but you can argue that if caution and apprehension were also traits we possessed it'd be very easy for us to have gone extinct as well. And again, that all assumes that we'll eventually just "figure out" long term expansion/living in space/colonizing other planets in the long term. It's possible that it's just not feasible in a way that only becomes clear when you progress a bit further than we are now.
Loving Moiya's constant Stargate references. ONE OF US!
Same. Star Wars vs Star Trek is irrelevant.
@@frasercain Have you guys watched the „Andromeda“ series with Kevin Sorbo as Captain Dylan Hunt? that was another nice scifi series, imho
and of course, Babylon 5
and Earth-2 („G-889“) was a realistic scifi series
I think it'll turn out to be one of two things. The Dark Forest idea is plausible. Assuming there have been advanced civilizations out there, there has had to be at least one case of one civ wiping out another one. This would mandate that all of the remaining civs assume a Dark Forest scenario approach. But my first choice for explanation is that we just don't know what to look for. Everyone says we've been looking and haven't detected anything. We've detected lots of things in the universe. We might not understand what we're truly seeing. Some animals don't realize they are looking at themselves when they look in a mirror. They lack the capability to grasp what a reflection is, or maybe they don't have any sense of self. Maybe we humans are also lacking a key element that is needed to recognize extraterrestrial life when we detect it.
"We are first" is one of my favorite because it's 100% true for some alien species out there.
Maybe us, but definitely for someone.
Octopi have arms. I can see them evolving into something formidable given another billion years.
People complain that octopi are unlikely to have discovered fire, but that's short sighted. We can't live in a steel furnace. It's an artificial environment that we construct to hold the fire. Octopi can function on land, and there is plenty of firewood on the beaches. Even more in preindustrial times.
Octopuses. No need to thank me.😃
@@sirbarringtonwomblembe4098 What a relief. I would have shouldered that debt forever before parting with my precious thanks.
@@justfelloverJust as well that I used to be a Debt Counsellor/ Consumer Rights specialist then.
the solar system has a timeline you need to expand out of it before the solar area becomes uninhabitable.
no worries, we still have time
@@krumuvecis says every civilization until they realize how hard it is to outrun a sun
It's also necessary to expand because cataclysms like impacts are capable of taking out an entire world's stock of life.
Regarding the simulation hypothesis, you need to talk to a programmer, specifically a game developer. You don't have to simulate every atom in every celestial body in the universe, you only have to have a good model for each to simulate the relatively few photons that reach us from all of those objects.
How exactly does a game developer simulate a relativistic spacetime? :)
I liked Dr. McTier's point "Intelligence need not be a default."
Just look at the Honey fungus as an example of an alien species on another habitable planet.
I'm really glad you were the voice of reason in this, Fraser! I would've been screaming at my screen way more if you hadn't been there! ❤
Great guests and chemistry and exciting discussion. I watched for 2 hours without a break.
From what I have gathered about the JWTS is that we are actually looking through 2 universes and that is a total trip !
Actually some of the crazy things we see and hear about in quantum physics seems to support the simulation hypothesis. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the double slit experiment, quantum entanglement, speed limits not exceeding 186,000 miles per second, hidden code in string theory, etc. It's very fascinating and top scientists are taking it very seriously these days
I don't understand how any of it supports the simulation hypothesis. If anything it creates more problems to be explained. :) For example don't you need infinitely more information to store the whole probability wave function instead of just a single discrete value? How do you simulate an actual space-time continuum with its relativistic effects? etc. etc.
No, I don't think you do. Your argument only limits simulating the entire universe. We could, in principle, simulate a portion of the universe and only when a conscious observer is actively observing. It wouldn't, by necessity, require 90 plus billion light years of probability waves. What a waste of computing memory space.
The universe can be simulated. We need a theory of quantum gravity, but for a sufficiently advanced civilization, the sim could be rather east for those wanting to explore their histories.
@kyjo72682 I recommend some quick research regarding some, or all, of the things I mentioned and how they might relate to a sim universe. It's very fascinating
My solution to the Fermi Paradox : Interstellar travel and interstellar communication have NEVER been possible due to the laws of physics. Since the universe has stabilized, millions of civilisations have thrived, reached an advanced state then withered away, having depleted all their available resources, trapped in their own solar system, just as we are.
These civilisations have built radio-telescopes to listen to the void, but to no avail. Artificial signals have always been, and always will be too weak not to fade away in the Oort clouds/gas clouds surrounding each star. Like we did, they built space station, reached their moon(s), maybe their closest planet, but that's all. Probes were sent, but were just too insignificant to be noticed, and died.
The best aspect of this solution is that it does not contradict anything we witness now : No signals, no signatures, no megastructures, nothing.
yup, too big and too long of time frames
Except, Nuclear Pulse propulsion was around in the 80s. And it could get u to Proxima in 100 years. We couldn’t do it for financial and political reasons but we were well on our way. Again, in the 80s. Same thing now with solar sails. Interstellar travel getting an A was lazy lol
@@maniacslap1623 keep dreaming
@@maniacslap1623 keep dreaming
Usually not a SETI guy but was so much fun! Great trio!
Nice. I had waited to listen to this until i had a nice drive and it was well worth it. Though, I was wondering about the 420 hypothesis where it is the scenario that they show in movies when someone gets "altered" mentally and wonders if our solar system isnt just an atom in a fingernail of a larger being 😅
I really enjoyed this. I think the issue is that the known universe is so vast, humanity is such a short part of the timeline, and our technological ability to observe the universe is so limited, that we just simply haven’t found other life yet. I think if we had this same conversation far enough into the future, we’d think it ridiculous to have ever thought we were alone.
Easiest solution: We are not looking
Well, we have looked at a couple stars. A couple stars is not even a dip.
Yeah it was too much of that in this discussion. Like interstellar travel being impossible getting an A.
Bruh, they figured out how to get to Proxima in 100 years using Nuclear Pulse Propulsion…in the 70s. And that was us using bombs not requiring fusion, the hard part. Politics is the main reason we haven’t already built a probe and sent it to Proxima.
@@maniacslap1623 True, but the hypothetical isn't the same as practical application. Maybe sending unmanned probes is the easy part, but actually colonizing(or even seeding life without actually moving the intelligent life to another star system) is what inevitably falls apart. Similar to the Great Filters(or it is in itself a filter), it could just be that trying to expand takes so longer with such a high rate of failure that given billions of years, in all the places we've looked so far, intelligent life as we understand it just hasn't been able to establish a Galactic Empire of sorts.
Anyhow, when we confirm we have a working warp drive technology we also know in the same moment we are alone in the universe
You don't know how big the universe is. Even if we started now there are still places we wouldn't be able to get to before the universe ended. A warp drive would mean that there is intelligent species out there that either don't want to see us or they are still too far.
@@jackiemyers2773 - how do something we do not know and never will know even exist?
@@doncarlodivargas5497 I think the point they are making is that even if you do create the technology to say, jump more than 100 light years at a time and could reach the edge of the galaxy in say, 100 years(or less), the vastness of the universe and the speed of it's expansion might still prevent us to reach parts of the observable universe(much less beyond it). If an intelligent species is out there but is so far away that there isn't a feasible way to reach it before it gets ever more distant from us, then we'd have no proof, even if the speed of light specifically wasn't a limiting factor for us anymore.
@@GiggaGMikeE - but you can't both claim there is a lot of aliens everywhere, and, at the same time also claim they are too far away for us to ever meet, you must choose one and go with that
This was the highlight of my day thank you for making this video and having these conversations in a way that everyone can understand them.
Re: The Simulation Hypothesis, this is what happens when you ask people with no computer programming experience questions that have to do with computer programming. They talk nonsense. Why would you ever have to simulate every particle in the universe? Can you track a particle and figure out where it is now and where it's going to be the next time you check? Does it matter if you're breathing some specific atom of oxygen vs another?
Consider the air in a room, all you really need to track is composition, temperature, and pressure the vast majority of the time. Then you need a good way to drop down to more and more detailed levels of simulation only when something actually requires it (e.g. only when certain scientific experiments are done), otherwise everything can be handled by a random number generator. There's no experiment that can possibly be done on Earth ever, no matter what, that can possibly tell if the center of the sun is running a full physics simulation, let alone any other star. All we get is a certain flux of light and particles along with a certain amount of gravity. Were we to somehow send a probe into the center of the sun, you would just need to fully simulate the area around the probe's sensors.
This is really basic stuff in computer science and even our physics simulation models, we do it all the time with no real issues, but none of the scientists that talk about the simulation hypothesis seem to know about or understand the concept at all.
"Interstellar travel is too difficult" is the obvious answer. It's not impossible, but without FTL all of those sci-fi dreams of interstellar civilizations are SUPER silly.
The whole "If one in a thousand makes it then someone has to explore everything" argument doesn't make sense. It's a massive amount of energy, resources, and time and nobody has unlimited versions of any of those. One doesn't follow the other at all.
You get new resources from new star systems. You don't need unlimited, just enough to get to the next star system.
think your forgetting the billions of naturally forming fusion furnaces that are just begging to be used as a resource.
"Interstellar travel too difficult" is probably the least plausible idea of them all.
We already have sufficient technology to do it, albeit slowly. And nobody says aliens can't be a little more patient.
Even humans in the past thought nothing of building monuments that would take decades, or occasionally even centuries to complete. And that's all you need to get from one star to the next. Even with present day technology.
@@frasercain That's a new group of people who'll go on their own path. How does one form a coherent international civilization when nobody can talk to each other, much less have any real influence?
Time can't be discounted here. Civilizations can live in die before someone could send a physical thing from one star system to another.
With a sufficiently self-contained habitat, relativistic speed is unnecessary. Just lots of time, which the universe is happy to supply.
I'm with Fraser on the "We're Alone" being in S-tier. No indication that the formation of life is an easy step that just "must happen" on all the other planets that have the right ingredients. That seems like a logical fallacy where people see a large number of potential planets out in the universe and since they can't comprehend that number, assume that somewhere one of those has to be life bearing, when the step to generate life could be 1 over 1000 times that number for all we know. Non-life -> life transition is still too poorly understood to make a claim that it surely happens across other planets.
I think "we're alone" is the saddest scenario possible. Imagine a universe in which Homo sapiens is the most intelligent species
@@fep_ptcp883 It felt to me like Fraser was arguing a different point. He seemed to argue "does this explain the Fermi Paradox?" whereas the guests seemed to be ranking based off of perceived/logical likelihood. "We're Alone" absolutely explains everything, but still seems to me to be laughably inadequate as a logical solution unless several other factors are also involved (like Great Filters, Interstellar is impossible, etc.)
The universe abhors one-offs. If it happened here, it happened somewhere else as well. I refuse to subscribe to the 'We are alone' explanation, as it is more improbable that we are alone. Maybe a better explanation is that we are alone in this part of the galaxy, or we are the only ones in this galaxy, but if every galaxy had only one civilization, there would be at least two trillion advanced civilizations in the observable universe. Yet, we are just too far apart to ever communicate or detect one another.@@fellknight
@@fep_ptcp883 You don't have to imagine that. For all intents and purposes that is literally the case. The only thing sad about it is assuming the worst in everyone past, present and future because of shitty people around you now.
@@fellknight I noticed that too, and it was most pronounced to the "We're Alone" solution segment, to the point where I felt like they should have called it something else when I assumed they were all arguing for or against it's likelihood of being true. I was absolutely shocked by Fraser giving it an S rank in that case, but it is basically the best answer for specifically answering the Fermi Paradox itself.
I'm with Fraser. I give the "We're alone" explanation an S. We recoil from this explanation because it seems the height of arrogance in a galaxy teeming with earth-like planets. It seems an act of hubris to assume that _we_ would be the inhabitants of the only planet in the galaxy with life on it. But of course, that's exactly how the only oasis of life in an empty universe _would_ see itself. They would assume their condition to be the norm.
So far, we have not been able to create life from just chemicals. It may be an incredible fluke. If we were ever to accomplish this in the lab, I would definitely consider changing my position on this.
David Bowie sang it best:
"There's a starman
waiting in the sky
He wants to come and meet us
But thinks he'll blow our mind."
👽
People just don't appreciate how rare it is for life to exist, even when all the data tells you that.
I totally agree. I don't understand some scientists optimism that life is easy when observation says it is not. Not only do we not see life spontaneously occur, our best science has no idea how it would. Observation tells us the steps required from a pool of amino acids to self replicating life are cosmically unlikely. We may be the only lucky ones, just like it appears.
@@brucehansensc And that life is just a blip in time randomly throughout the universe.
@@brucehansensc The problem with something being "cosmically unlikely" means it's also cosmically likely, the cosmos being a pretty big place, with lots of time and space for even the most unlikely things to eventually happen.
@@psterud That's why I choose "cosmically" to show that the scales might be similar. The knowable universe and time are big but finite. Cosmically unlikely does mean what it says. An "ah ha" moment could change the probability. Lets keep looking but believe what we see. Science is observation not faith.
Woot! Dr. McTier is back! Always good to see her! Great to see Dakota Tyler back too!
I love it how the "scientists" think that our technology would see through much more advanced technology
I read the Three-Body books by Cixin Liu and wanted to point out there was a misunderstanding.
Dark Forest doesn't have a bully species going around, poking fun of the galactic neighborhood. Rather than there being a bully species going around taking from others, the theory suggests that every civilization is afraid of making their presence known, because if they do then any other civilization can launch an "anonymous" strike on the solar system to ensure their own survival. If any one civilization was going around being a bully (being a LOUD species), any other civilization could launch an attack (the book suggests photoids) to eliminate the threat. There are no "bullies", the threat is everyone else.
As an animal, I'd say it's simple. The transformation of very intelligent animals to a wise species , can't happen fast enough to make it off any planet successful.
I think if you look at us we're possibly entering or have entered a dysgenic decline.
@@Apistevist fine. Make me look up the meaning of 'dysgenic'.
@Apistevist ok. I've looked it up. Yes ,I agree. That too. When females have babies to good looking men, that have less maturity, intelligents, and low morals. This will tend a society to dysgenics. Crappy public schools don't help us either.
Or, it's possible that what we consider intelligence is actually very narrow and isn't as conducive to a species surviving on other planets as well as it did for Humans on Earth. Hell, on Earth human-styled intelligence can be more harm than good(especially as we evolved). Sound base instincts, high birth rates, with a minimized energy cost seems to be much more viable long term than being able to make tools and ponder reality for most of Earth's history.
Reality is a simulation and the sysadmins haven't purchased the "Xenotools" license packs yet. Management keeps vetoing the purchase requests.
Nit: Xenotools is a free open source package but they don't want to deal with xenotools because it breaks optimisations.
"If a dumb rock can make an interstellar journey, why not a smart rock?" Perhaps dumb rocks aren't subject to insanity? and a trip too long triggers insanity? So even if a rock starts smart, by the time it arrives, it's dumb?
This may fall into the great filter, though a lot of these theories roll into each other. Anyway, I've been coming to think that motivation may be a crucial factor in whether or not civilizations make it to being an interstellar species. By motivation, I mean what is directly motivating a civilization to go into space? Kipping made an argument on a podcast that we humans were lucky to have the Moon as a motivator; however, I'd argue that the Moon turned out to be a dud. The Apollo program was scrapped after we realized there was nothing else to do there. The Moon is a dead rock. And here we are 50 years later struggling to get a Moon program going. Don't get me started on the Starship nonsense.
But what if the Moon was more like Titan? What if the Moon had a breathable atmosphere? What if Mars and Venus were both habitable? The Apollo program would almost certainly have never stopped, and it's likely that we would have got there much sooner if historic humans could have looked up at the Moon and seen green forests and blue oceans. Or, if Galileo turned his telescope to Venus and/or Mars and saw oceans and lush green forests. It would be a completely different timeline. A visually habitable Moon, alone, would have driven humanity scientifically and technologically much faster.
So, while Kipping was right to bring up the notion that motivation could play an essential role in the success of a civilization, I disagree completely with his notion that Earth is some sort of ideal scenario. Quite the opposite, actually. We have a completely dead moon. Mars and Venus are both inhospitable. Unless Proxima Centauri turns out to be some sort of paradise, we may be a stranded and doomed civilization. At the very least, our growth as a civilization is stunted when you think of the more ideal scenarios a budding interplanetary species could be facing.
I’d like to think Earth is an anthill in the middle of a dense remote forest . I mean, would **you** look for a specific anthill in the middle of the huge forest in Oregon?
Human beings are looking through the entire universe for habitable planets right now, so yeah I think aliens would.
@@davegold We can only barely get the basics of what might make for a habitable planet in a very narrow scope in our relatively immediate vicinity. We're hardly looking "throughout the universe". It's like sticking your nose out a window to see if you can smell a pie that was baked thousands of miles away hundreds of years ago and determine if you'd like the taste of said pie.
A very enjoyable two hours watching this. Two great guests
Thanks a lot, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
The thing with the simulation hypothesis... if we suppose that we're really in a simulation, and that the beings running the simulation are accurately simulating the universe we think we're in, we're still lacking an explanation of the Fermi paradox. It still seems like there should be aliens.
We gotta unlock that level, through play or pay.
Well, unless other life was not programmed into the simulation. Or if it was, maybe it's only one "intelligent civilization" per galaxy or something equally restrictive.
Fascinating subject, I love the insight that the guests provide, and you all cooperate beautifully. Nice one, it's my favourite science video in a fairly long time.
Long time patreon supporter here, keep up the exceptional work :)
40:32 this is what i believe,
we are the first intelligent civilization, and the universe are ours to conquer
We may not be the first intelligent civilization, probably even far from it. 'Intelligent' In the confines of the fermi paradox means the ability to spread throughout interstellar space, and manipulate solar systems to our whims. If there were civiliazations out there like us, it would be almost impossible for them to see us in our current technological state.
It's very possible to have an intelligent civilization without space travel. Humans did it for thousands of years. Dinosaurs proved being big and bad was better than being smart. It also takes a very long time for evolution to happen. We may be the lucky ones in our corner of the galaxy.
We're not even #1 on Earth, more like #7 or #8, and that could be generous, since our own human bias on what constitutes intelligence is inescapable. We created the test with us as the definition of intelligence, how laughably ignorant of us.
Very arrogant.
You guys know it would take us over 100,000 years to get to the next star system. That's not even 0.00000001% of the possibly infinite universe.
My thoughts on the simulation hypothesis is that we are in stasis on a colony ship, and the simulation is training us how to build a civilization so that when we arrive, we have learned how to live together and not destroy ouselves.
Sometimes, I imagine that the reason we're alive at the time of AI is that we are, in fact, AI, being trained constantly. We don't quite know yet what it means to be human. This reality is actually a low resolution version with a huge invisible wall called the expansion of the universe.
Lovely concept.
Advanced spacefaring civilization are likely exceedingly rare in the current era so we shouldn't be surprised when we look further back in time at distant galaxies with our modern but still primitive tech that we don't detect much of anything and even when we think we've found unusual anomalies/signals our tech currently isn't sensitive enough to make/confirm the type of unambiguous conclusions we are after, just look at the phosphine detection on Venus even though Venus is next door, kinda makes humanity seem a little impatient and delusional with that context in mind.
In any case what we likely have here is a galaxy where microbial life does emerge more than a handful of times but long lasting space faring civilizations don't. Not only that but when they do rarely come into being they are hopelessly diluted by the vastness of both space and time so extinction comes long before interactions or even detectability becomes feasible so in short its a combo of a few solutions great filters (cosmic scale natural selection), physical constraints on space travel, very rare intelligent space faring civilizations, maybe we are a bit early, our instruments still have a ways to go and something no1 wants to consider and that is building obvious/detectable sprawling megastructures we like to imagine isn't actually feasible, practical, incentivized or safe.
Anyway great topic & guests would like to see more with other astronomy/astrobiology related science communicators and experts.
There is a Better Way : Gardeners and philosophers. No transcendence, no utopia, just contentment. It's the civilizational equivalent of an elderly person coming to peace with the fact that they will die, simply because we all die. Such a civilization turns its attention to itself, tending to its needs, reflecting on all its accumulated wisdom, cultivating living beauty around it, and spending as much time being right here, right now for everyone in the family. After a chaotic childhood and a brash, reckless adulthood, civilization is ready to cease exhausting its energy in the vain and futile pursuit of living forever, settling down to a peaceful end, and willing to allow other, younger, less wise civilizations to live their natural lives out, too. S-tier explanation for why we seem alone.
Maybe we aren't advanced enough to see them... Maybe they aren't advanced enough for us to see.
Sure could be the case for most of them, but there should be exceptions, and there doesn't appear to be any. THAT is the Fermi paradox.
@@joeyhoserThere also don't appear to be any residents of Wisconsin, if you are not yourself in Wisconsin to observe them.
@@justfelloverYou don't have to be in Wisconsin to know there are people in Wisconsin, or know that there some people, somewhere.
@@joeyhoser True, if you're advanced enough. Or if they are, and wish to disclose themselves. But if you just poke your head out your door and look, you most likely won't find them.
@@joeyhoser You don't need to be in Wisconsin to know that there are people in Wisconsin because we already have enough information/the ability to see the whole of Wisconsin to know people live there. Drop someone in the middle of the woods with no prior knowledge that Wisconsin even exists and no ability to do more than look a few feet in every direction and whisper and it's possible they'll never see another person before they die. It's not really a comparable scenario. If we had the entire universe mapped out and a full history of said universe, it might be the same, but you are working backwards in your hypothetical.
cool video idea
Thanks!
My favorite solution is the scientific blind spot hypothesis. That's the theory that there is plenty of evidence that there are ET's everywhere, but it's just not the kind of evidence that our scientific methods accept. The scientific methods and processes we use are very effective at revealing truths about the world we live in, provided those truths can be observed under controllable or predictable conditions, but that creates a blind spot. If I ever witness a phenomena which is observable, but never under conditions that any human can control or predict, then I'll have witnessed a real thing that the scientific community will be unable to verify, and will consequently continue to doubt, even if millions of other people witness the same thing, across multiple generations. As it so happens, an interstellar civilization is exactly the kind of phenomenon that could be capable of avoiding controllability and predictability, without necessarily hiding. It's exactly the kind of phenomenon that would produce no evidence other than anecdotal evidence.
Prime Directive - “Again with the fictional TV series. Is that where you get all your life lessons?” - Dennis Taylor, For We Are Many (Bobiverse Book 2)
Why not. Perhaps it's easier than finding objective facts in the noise of our society, lol.
This is one of my favorite episodes. Loads of fun and provided a new perspective on the Fermi Paradox. It's also nice to see really young scientists who seem to have fun in this activity. Thanks so much for all you do, Frazier.
I think the biggest answer is intelligent civilizations rise and fall by either killing themselves off or suffering some calamity beyond their control like and asteroid, gamma ray burst or even volcanos that cause extiction. Advanced civilizations rarely coexist and if so, distance is the problem
The most compelling argument to me is a combination of many arguments with a focus on time:
Intelligent life capable of developing advanced technology is probably incredibly rare and the physics of deep space travel or communication is unbelievably difficult and limited by physics/time. Layer on top of that all the other arguments about motivation, civilizational destruction, etc etc, and it almost seems silly to call it a paradox; even if they're out there, even if they're common, even if they wanted contact and exploration and were amazing at it, it would be unreasonable to expect to detect them do to physics.
My favorite explanation is that every civilization eventually builds a time machine, creates a time paradox and eradicates its timeline from the universe. I guess you could put that under the great filter.
But there's another that you missed. Maybe a "civilization" is just the richest person of the first civilization, subduing everyone else with nanotechnology or whatever. This is an explanation in itself as that being wouldn't need a lot of resources, but also negates the common argument "why nobody visits us", because there isn't a variety of opinions on how to treat us.
My personal fav is that FTL tech works and when developed aliens use it to vacate dangeous galaxies.
This episode was awesome! Thank you guys for spending all this time on such a great subject! I’m also very excited to finally have a question worth asking for the question show!
We’ve spent a lot of time studying the possible generations of stars and galaxies, but has anyone spent time studying the generations or life cycle of planets? Like if we separated Jupiter from the Sun and left it to its own devices how long would it last? Would it churn with storms forever? Or get so cold it would shrink and freeze? Could there be planets formed at the earliest times of the universe that are pure hydrogen and that’s how they stay forever?
Awesome episode! This one is definitely source material for the history books.
4 sittings and finally finished this really fun convo! thanks Frasier and fab experts!
There's a version of the Dark Forest that doesn't require a bully civilization.
Basically it states that any civilization with enough knowledge to broadcast their presence (or expand into the universe overall) also has enough knowledge to know they should NEVER do it under any circunstance.
If you imagine knowledge like a ladder, knowing that you should never leave your planet would be in a lower step than knowing how to leave your planet.
As humans are not on the step of knowing how to leave our planet, we can also assume we didn't reach the step of knowing that we shouldn't leave. So the "why" of the matter is not required to make the theory work.
The problem with "There's another way" is that Stars don't last forever - to so remain stable, you MUST jump from Star to Star.
Running through my thoughts on all of them:
Zoo Hypothesis - Would require an insane amount of effort, effectively constructing a sort of hologram around our entire sphere of existence. Would also require that every civilization that is near us agrees to maintain this. Feels too hand wavy overall.
Prime Directive - Similar to the Zoo Hypothesis, it feels like it would require too much coordination among multiple alien species to be a realistic answer
Simulation Hypothesis - I'll push back against Dakotah's original complaint that it would take too much energy to simulate an entire universe by noting that you don't need to simulate an entire universe. Realistically you only need to simulate, atom for atom, quark for quark, an entire planet. You don't need to fully simulate the core of the Milky Way, you only need to have worked out what the radiation that reaches us would look like. That said, I also don't feel it truly answers the Fermi Paradox in all but the most literal ways. It never touches a why or a how we are alone in this *simulation* even if we aren't alone in the real universe. What did the simulator make unique on Earth such that in a universe where we should see other species roaming around we instead only see ourselves.
Dark Forest - As you all mentioned, it seems like there would have to be some evidence of this predator species out there
The Great Filter - I agree this is an excellent explanation for why many species fail, I'm skeptical on it being an explanation for why *all* fail though.
Self-Destruction - Similar to above, I agree it can be an excellent explanation for why many fail, but I'm skeptical about all. We can see many potential failure points (nuclear war, climate change, AI takeover, etc.) and we can, theoretically do things to prevent them. Whether we do or not is a different question, but it seems a stretch to say that *every* intelligent species fails one of these tests.
We're the first - To me this requires a follow on explanation of why/how. The conditions as we know them for life existed for a long while elsewhere compared to Earth and even if you slide that scale by a million years, some species should have been able to colonize, or at least harvest from, a non-trivial portion of the galaxy around them.
Rare Intelligence - Sure might be true. Kinda a subset of the Great Filter. But I still struggle to have it explain *all* versus most.
We're Alone - Might well be true, but doesn't answer *why* Feels almost like just shrugging and refusing to answer the question. Like when my kids pester me about something and I don't feel like thinking about the answer so they ask "why xyz?" and I answer "Because. That's why"
Communication Barrier - This could explain why we don't see their communications, but doesn't explain why we don't see their mega projects.
Post-Biological Life - A little too mystical for me.
Hibernation Hypothesis - Even if the end of the universe is objectively better for some future civilization or not, waiting for the end of the universe does not preclude also using resources now to prepare for that and evidence of that should exist
Our Tech Isn't Good Enough - Answers a lot about why we don't detect messages, but doesn't answer why we don't see mega projects.
We're Searching in the Wrong Places - As mentioned, there isn't really anywhere we haven't searched.
Aliens Are Among Us - OK Mulder
Interstellar Travel is Impossible - I dunno, we're doing it now. We've got a probe outside our solar system now and nothing seems to have stopped it yet. Obviously it's going insanely slow by interstellar standards, but slow and hard isn't impossible and a billion years is a really, really long time.
Reapers - Same as the Dark Forest hypothesis. Doesn't make a lot of sense (as cool as Mass Effect is), and even if it was true we should see evidence of the reapers.
Expansion is inefficient - To me this feels like it would also require some sort of universal convergence towards a hive mind. As long as there is individualism, there's going to be someone who wants to be the boss and is willing to leave society behind to have their way and once you get to the point technologically that you can live in space (some form of O'Neill cylinder), you can just stick an engine on the back of it and suddenly you're expanding into the universe. Repeat for a billion years and you own the galaxy.
There Is A Better Way - Either is too woowoo/mystical if the better way is ascension or doesn't seem to line up if it's just living in balance given how many "extra" resources are around. You can build an awful lot of interstellar probes just using stuff from the asteroid belt and harnessing excess solar radiation.
In general, I think a big unanswered question (or perhaps frightening prospect) for solutions which involve species getting to the point we're at but not expanding due to some limit, filter, or higher universal law, is that such an event must occur fairly near in the future of our species. Human civilization is maybe 10,000 years old if you want to count the earliest city type environments and we're at the point of launching hundreds of tons of mass into space. It's not unreasonable to believe that, if we wanted to do it, we could launch a Von Neumann probe within 200 years. And once you launch one, you've basically visited the entire galaxy in relatively short order in terms of galactic timeframes.
So if there is some inevitable end to civilization coming, that would mean we're within a few generations of it. Otherwise it stands to reason that we could launch a Von Neumann probe and if we could do it, someone else could do it millions of years ago from somewhere else and be all across the galaxy by now.
Fascinating discussion -- loved it! I agree with most of the rankings, though personally I'd have "We're alone" and "We're the first" much higher, perhaps even S tier. I don't know if that makes me a pessimist -- I'm a lifelong Trekker, and would love for the universe to be populated with humanoids with different bumps on their heads and weird ears, but I think it's pretty clear that at least our galaxy isn't lousy with spacefaring aliens.
I am glad you titled this where are the aliens instead of Fermi (why did Fermi get credit for a question mankind has always had?) paradox (that isn't even a paradox, its just an observation).
Thoroughly enjoyed this and would love to see more videos in this format. Btw, I've been a huge fan of Dr. McTier since watching her contributions on The Weekly Space Hangout!
My take on the simulation theory:
On one hand it's kind of more feasible because of one simple thing that you didn't discuss; that's not a criticism by the way, I think the reason this occurs to me is because I'm a very specific kind of nerd; as in, it's my interest in video games but also math as well as the technical trickery behind modern 3D rendering; anyway, I'll try not to ramble too much and get to the point.
Modern 3D video games are insanely detailed; think of every citizen in Grand Theft Auto going about their business or every robot-animal / gorgeous piece of foilage in Horizon;
the way they make games like these function on anything less than a top of the line NASA supercomputer is they use a boatload of tricks to only render in detail what the player is very close to or actively engaged with; imagine that when you drive in to a different neighbourhood in GTA, a bunch of citizens suddenly pop in to existence just around the next streetcorner, out of your field of view, so that it appears they were always there doing stuff so that you can encounter them and they seem life-like, but in reality the street was actually barren and empty until you the player got close enough that there might be a chance that you actually see in to that street, therefore it was quickly brought to life RIGHT before you were in fact close enough to see.
What this would look like in our universe if we were living in a simulation was something like distant galaxies actually just being blurry stand-in pictures UNTIL right before we point JWST at it, in a manner of speaking. So whomever or whatever is controlling the simulation would not in fact have to simulate the entire galaxy, just fake it to the point where it looks like an entire galaxy from our point of view.
I still don't think simulation theory is that interesting or significant or engaging, though, because it's an unfalsifiable theory. Think of all the things our brains are showing us incorrectly (you can see your nose right now, your brain is just ignoring it) and of how unreliable and easily manipulated our memories are (I can barely remember what I ate two days ago) and it would be trivial for such a simulation to fool us, in my opinion.
And secondly, if we are in fact living in a simulation that is as detailed as the world we live in, that would make it no different from being an actual reality in my view.
I'm really glad Moiya pointed out the possibility with "Interstellar Travel is Impossible" of sending some means to create ourselves, rather than sending us directly. Has struck me for a while as our most likely path for spreading to other systems - a tiny advanced space probe that takes mere decades to reach another star, then builds the means to grow humans at the other end.
Yeah, I like that too. Travel at light speed, like in a Stargate. 😀
@@frasercain I think this was a different proposal. AI that explore, construct habitats, then bake some people from its big AI recipe book.
Nowhere near as handy, but also much less likely to spread an interstellar plague from something picked up from the Alpha Centauri wet market.