Last year's thread on the Fermi Paradox might interest you ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/380303

Is it possible that we are the first on[e] that [has] arrived? — SteveMinjares

Sure. Highly improbable I think. (Discussed in link.)

Are we so primitive that we are the equivalent of tribal natives waiting being invaded by intergalactic conquistador?

More or less 'our expectations' given terrestrial history since ... h. sapiens wiped out the rest of the other latter-day hominids tens of millennia ago. Scarcity drives the logic of conquest; only a post-scarcity civilization, it's reasonable to assume, is resourced enough to master interstellar travel.

Or is as simple as we have nothing of value to grab anyone’s attention?

Well, if you can travel the stars, then you've solved your life systems problems sufficiently enough for them to be self-sustaining (recycling). And that's if you (extraterrestrial intelligence) are even sending "manned" ships into deep space; you're probably not. The Oort Cloud about a half light year from the Sun has all the frozen hydrogen, etc locked up in countless billion years-old comets for refueling starships. Many orders of magnitude more than needed or which can be found in the inner solar system. The only thing of value we (Sol 3) might have that ETI might want is our social media or reality tv shows.

Or maybe they are just waiting until we just kill ourselves off before they colonize the planet?

Nah, same as above. If you've come this far, then the last thing you need is a massive gravity-well you can't drag around with you through interstellar space. Interstellar travel, to my mind, implies a mostly planet-free 'civilization'. It's like when on Earth the first viable land animals had crawled (or got storm-tossed) from the ocean: once air-breathing was achieved, water-breathing got left behind and new evolutionary niches were explored and colonized. I imagine deep space is the same. Mid-twentieth century nostalgias for "navies" & "westerns" in spaaaaace are cartoons for bedazzling the inner "space cadet" in us all (I'm a lifelong 60's Star Trek, 2001 & Alien fanboy too!) and have no bearing on the actual prospects for a spacefaring civilization given the inherent hazards of the hard, irradiated, vacuum and the astronomical magnitude of the durations, distances and energy resources involved.

We are not important, I think, to them (ETI) unless we're deemed a threat (which given, like piranha in a goldfish bowl, we're confined to low orbit around this Earth for the foreseeable future, we certainy are not), so to "kill ourselves off" won't matter much either way – if I were them I'd wonder what the hell took us so long after the Trinity blast or Hiroshima & Nagasaki – but our machines may some day become sophisticated (i.e. intelligent) enough to warrant an ETI's attention and interest.

Social Distancing!

Are we so primitive that we are the equivalent of tribal natives waiting being invaded by intergalactic conquistador? — SteveMinjares

I guess you would like to read the theory of “dark forest” in the context you are asking for: https://www.google.es/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/01/20/technologys-dark-forest/amp/

It is surely the mark of intelligence to rush about the Galaxy exploring, invading, and exploiting everyone everywhere, and generally interfering and demonstrating the superiority of ones' civilisation. If one just minds one's own business, one might be mistaken for a dumb dolphin or something.

A machine intelligence might consider biologicals to be a waste of material resources and wish to convert everything into something more efficient. Or biological existence to be unnecessarily cruel. The Dark Forest Theory is simply that we can't know what sort of values aliens might have, which is something all aliens come to realize, and therefore everyone becomes a potential threat. That's combined with the idea of a technological explosion once a civilization reaches a certain point, which means you can't count on remaining safe from being more advanced.

On Earth at least, more primitive civilizations have not generally done well when introduced to more advanced ones. And we're all human. In the Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem, nearby aliens need a new world because theirs is about to become inhabitable, and they learn of Earth from a Chinese radio signal.

Is it possible that we are the first once that arrived? — SteveMinjares

Considering that which has given rise to everything else has to be infinite in duration, and anything that can happen in an infinite duration probably will, life is just as likely to be a 1 in a googolplex years occurrence. We have no reason to believe other life spawns exist/will exist in this universe, unless biology can show it can spawn relatively easily.

There are two views here we should consider.

One would be, as Neil deGrasse Tyson said, that what we're doing is equivalent to taking a bucket to the ocean, scoop up some water, look in the bucket and then state that there's no life in the universe.

The second option, also worth seriously considering, is Ernst Mayer's view. He points out that in the only planet we know of that contains life in this universe, intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. Look around, most of the species that survive and thrive are single cell organisms.

Likely not brilliant.

So it's not clear. I lean to the view that there is life, but I'm unsure about it being intelligent.

If we really do exist as aliens to others, why don’t we visit other aliens in the multiverse? If we don't, where is the evidence that we really exist? This is a reversal of logic.

It takes a fleeting six hundred thousand years for humanity to reach the level of development of type I. of civilization on Kardashev scale, if of course we develop at such a pace and do not bomb ourselves back into the Stone Age, for which there is no guarantee. Not mentioning the possibility of mass extinction.

Even though we will be capable to reach that level, it won't be sufficient to visit another civilizations. If, on the other hand, an extraterrestrial civilization is advanced enough to visit us, it must have an infinite amount of resources.

But what can that kind of civilization want from us? It would be like we want to communicate with earthworms. The Fermi Paradox is a childishly naive assumption.

SP

It is surely the mark of intelligence to rush about the Galaxy exploring, invading, and exploiting everyone everywhere, and generally interfering and demonstrating the superiority of ones' civilisation. If one just minds one's own business, one might be mistaken for a dumb dolphin or something. — unenlightened

I'm not sure what a highly advanced alien civilization might do, but I agree that assuming they would behave like us is not justified.

The second option, also worth seriously considering, is Ernst Mayer's view. He points out that in the only planet we know of that contains life in this universe, intelligence seems to be a lethal mutation. Look around, most of the species that survive and thrive are single cell organisms. — Manuel

if of course we develop at such a pace and do not bomb ourselves back into the Stone Age, for which there is no guarantee. — Art Stoic Spirit

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that one of the reasons we haven't met alien civilizations is that whenever one reaches a certain level of technological advancement it destroys itself.

On the other hand, if a dozen branches of the tree of life are headed toward technological maturity and the first one that gets there destroys its own environment, we might not see the other branches mature. The presence of one such species may obfuscate the potential for others.

This is a great exemplification of the _weirdness_ of anthropocentricity: we don't seem to be able to consider life elsewhere in the universe without making it about us, which isn't remotely close to the most interesting questions we could ask.

I recommend you watch Isaac Arthur. He has tons of episodes exploring the Fermi Paradox. Here is a list of episodes with links.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E7UTCFWSRk1vuyjmYhSvtmvINVSU9tWy5LabQeHW9t8/htmlview#

To save you some time, Isaac thinks intelligent life is extremely rare and that we are the only ones at least in our group of galaxies.

To save you some time, Isaac thinks intelligent life is extremely rare and that we are the only ones at least in our group of galaxies. — Maximum7

Based on very circumstantial evidence (and my own unjustified intuition), I'm betting on life being common and intelligence not being extremely rare. Here's some "evidence."

• Life started on Earth just about as soon as the environment cooled down enough for complex molecules to form.
• As we start to understand how life began, it seems the processes involved may be explainable without the need for vastly improbable or exotic phenomena.
• It appears that complex nervous systems have evolved independently at least twice in the history of life in organisms very far apart on the evolutionary scale - vertebrates, including humans, and invertebrates, including mollusks.

So, does that prove anything. No, but it does allow me to say what I want with at least a veneer of justification. I bet we find life on Mars or one of the planetary moons. Maybe I just hope we do. If we do, that will change everything.

Yep. It's certainly easier to just absorb sunlight or oxygen and just barely move and have no worries than it is to be human being.

What I meant was that the sample-of-one argument doesn't stand up. Even within humanity, it's not necessarily the case that self-destruction would arise, merely that, if it begins, it's hard to stop. Genes are largely about capacities, less about tendencies. Environment plays a bigger role, not just in refining or transforming the genome through natural selection, but also in what that genome is, how it behaves, which of its characteristics are more important. Chance plays a role. But our self-destruction seems to me mostly a matter of memetics. Certainly its dominance is mediated more through culture than, say, having opposable thumbs.

If humans had been the second mature intelligent species on Earth, we probably wouldn't have been allowed to go on as we have, in fact we probably wouldn't have tried our luck in the first place.

It seems to me perfectly likely that there would be intelligent dominant life out there, be it past, present, or future, that isn't as cancerous as we are, and even perfectly possible that we are anomalous among intelligent species. We'd need to meet some to find out so we can do proper stats and that seems unlikely, but we can't take ourselves to be the norm in their absence.

Sounds reasonable. Yeah, I don't see why there could not be an intelligent species that was by default much more altruistic, empathic and so on.

I don't disagree with us taking ourselves to be the norm. Just pointing out that in this planet, the more intelligent a species is, generally, the less likely they are to survive and thrive. Maybe elsewhere things are different.

Has anyone ever considered that an advanced civilization may have taken a different route and chose social and cultural advancement (Metaphysics) instead of technological.

That Technology has advanced to a point where advancing any further technologically will no longer have any practical benefiting to there society. And focused on civil harmony and enlightenment of the mind.

It Is possible to reach a Technological dead end and that Technology advancement may hit its limit where it can’t go any further. As an advanced civilization they may have decided to embark on another different frontier.

Meh. I don't see much depth in the Fermi Paradox because of the way it is stated. It assumes they are not here because they are not visible. There are two problems with this:

1. Some people say they are here.

2. The paradox is based on the assumption that if they were here we they would make themselves known. Why would they?

Maybe their presence - for reasons known to them - is secret or semi secret? Maybe they make their presence known to some people and not to all...

:up:

Has anyone ever considered that an advanced civilization may have taken a different route and chose social and cultural advancement (Metaphysics) instead of technological. — SteveMinjares

1. Mechanical power - human
2. Mechanical power married to electromagnetic power - human
3. Mechanical + electromagnetic + computing power - human
4. Mechanical + electromagnetic + computing power + psychic power - alien.

Idiom: ON/FROM/LIVING ON ANOTHER PLANET!

Definition (from Macmillan Dictionary): used for saying that someone does not notice what is happening around them, or has ideas that are not reasonable or practical

Example sentence: The party doesn’t seem to be in touch with popular opinion – it’s as if they’re from another planet.

:chin: Hmmmmmm...

Are we so primitive that we are the equivalent of tribal natives waiting being invaded by intergalactic conquistador? — SteveMinjares

I think there is a raging intergalactic pandemic and a moratorium has been put in place to keep physical distancing at 6 million light years between civilizations. Once the disease has been eliminated, that's when the flying saucers will come to eliminate us.

Unless, of course, we speed up the bullet and annihilate ourselves ourselves.

1. Mechanical power - human
2. Mechanical power married to electromagnetic power - human
3. Mechanical + electromagnetic + computing power - human
4. Mechanical + electromagnetic + computing power + psychic power - alien. — EnPassant

You left out fission or fusion power. Not a criticism, just a note.

You also left out the power of desire.

The power of power. (Political, social or personal. Bullying, expecting and taking privileges, exploiting workers, etc.)

The power of powerlessness. (relying on sympathy, empathy, pity, kindness.)

The power of love. ("Jimi wrote this song The Power Of Love..." on the Band of Gypsys live recording.)

The power of faith, hope, and prediction.

The power of stupidity.

The power of knowledge.

The power of moeny. (Also called Moneypower.)

I case some argue the validity of some of the power types I listed above, pre modum scrutio ipse, I state:

"The power of poetry."

Based on very circumstantial evidence (and my own unjustified intuition), I'm betting on life being common and intelligence not being extremely rare. Here's some "evidence." — T Clark

Often people say that life must be abundant in the universe and this belief is based on the idea that life arises spontaneously from matter. The argument is that there are billions of stars and planets so the chances are that life evolves in lots of places. But what if life does not arise by chance? By a statistical physical mechanism? What if life only evolves if it is brought into existence by intelligence? This alters the picture radically.

Complicating the matter greatly is the fact that the evidence suggests two things:

1. These beings are nuts-and-bolts, biological, space-faring aliens.
2. They are spirits or interdimensional beings who travel here via the 'Astral Plane' as some call it.

If the evidence suggests both of these things then maybe they are both true.

But what if life does not arise by chance? By a statistical physical mechanism? What if life only evolves if it is brought into existence by intelligence? This alters the picture radically. — EnPassant

If I'm right, then we don't need an explanation for life based on outside influence. As has been noted many times before - the idea of life being created by aliens or extra-dimensional entities just moves the question of how life started to a different location.

Complicating the matter greatly is the fact that the evidence suggests two things:

1. These beings are nuts-and-bolts, biological, space-faring aliens.
2. They are spirits or interdimensional beings who travel here via the 'Astral Plane' as some call it. — EnPassant

I am not aware of any convincing evidence.

the idea of life being created by aliens or extra-dimensional entities just moves the question of how life started to a different location. — T Clark

Yes, but it also makes us reassess how likely the existence of life in the universe is and calls into question the assertion that life 'must' be abundant in the universe.

I am not aware of any convincing evidence. — T Clark

The abduction accounts paint an interesting picture.

Yes, but it also makes us reassess how likely the existence of life in the universe is and calls into question the assertion that life 'must' be abundant in the universe. — EnPassant

I don't think life must be abundant, but that's where I'll put my money if I have to bet based on the very limited evidence I provided and just because.

What if life only evolves if it is brought into existence by intelligence? — EnPassant

There are abundant grounds to suspect this "what if" puts the cart before the horse like saying "what eyes are brought into existence by sight?" or "what if wings are brought into existence by flight?" :roll:

I find it exceedingly difficult intellectually to accept that sapience in this universe is unique to Human Beings. The reason for this is predominatedly empirical (i.e. specifically convergent scientific evidence): the more rigorously we've observed the non-terrestrial universe the less we find non-terrestrial exotica "out there" as the same physics & chemistry which apply here more & more apply everywhere that we can observe; and though biological phenomena is the product of local, irreversible evolutionary paths, the physical & chemical precursors/conditions for biologies to emerge are, it seems to me, ubiquitous; and where there's a biology there's eventually an ecology and eventually critical disequilibria which catalyze adaptations which stumble upon "sentience" and then degrees of "sapience" as niche-transgressing prizes in the evolutionary lottery. I can't imagine that other celestial objects made up of sufficiently chaotic physical & chemical systems-processes don't give rise to their own particular biological histories (i.e. evolutionary paths), of which some are, at least, as robust as Earth's. It seems to me that everything we're learning about the universe reasonably points in the direction of the non-uniqueness (though perhaps not "ubiquity") of biological phenomena however sparcely distributed thoughtout the universe. — 180 Proof

But what if life does not arise by chance? — EnPassant

Even materialists state that it arises because it is caused, and not due to random chance.

The difference between creationists and materialists is that creationists assume a very intelligent thing put it together, while materialist reason that chemical reactions are bound to happen in ways that create (carbon-based) life forms. Not because someone designed it that way, say the materialists, but because the chemical elements that form the basis of life have an affinity to combine in this way.

The creationists will say, "yes, but did not someone make these chemical elements to have affinity to be the way they are?" And that is the dividing line between creationists and materialists. Creationists will insist it has been planned that way by a higher power or by some intelligent creature; materialists will insist that the combination of elements is not planned, but caused.

This "not planned but caused" is a tough cookie to digest. To materialists, it is the bread and butter of their world view; to creationists it is incomprehensible.

One day one person will come up with an ultimate explanation that puts this debate to sleep, much like this debate puts me to sleep.