What is the answer to the Fermi Paradox?

[Viking]

To take these in turn

Evolution of Life is extremely rare - this is not the case, life is a consequence of biology. The three big steps towards making intelligent life on earch (cyanobacteria creating oxygen, whatever resulted in animals in the cambrian explosion and walking apes getting large brains which are capable of abstract thought) are not necessary consequences of biology.


Evolution of Intelligent Life is extremely rare - this one is my pick. Animals on earth are as stupid as they can get away with being. If they could survive with a smaller and less complex brain evolution would result in those animals getting stupider.


Intelligent Life destroys itself soon after it becomes able to do so - well, given our sample size of 1, no. Even the worst case scenarios for nuclear war has a few people surviving. Humanity has survived Toba like near extinction events before. Extinction happens when either some other form of life fills your nische in life, your habitat is destroyed or a new predator predates you too successfully. For an adaptable omnivore capable of making tools none of these are likely. Nuclear war won't kill us off, it might force us to subsist on cockroaches though.

An Ancient space faring civilization destroys new advanced species - in which case I ask fermi's question, where are they?

Interstellar travel and communication are both impossible - well, no, we are already capable of finding dysonspheres on nearby stars and some forms of communications. The universe is big, really really really big, but still, these things are possible.

[Eddie Teach]

Intelligent Life destroys itself soon after it becomes able to do so - well, given our sample size of 1, no.

Except that our sample size is 0.

[Viking]

Intelligent Life destroys itself soon after it becomes able to do so - well, given our sample size of 1, no.

Except that our sample size is 0.

We are capable and we haven't.

[Eddie Teach]

We are not capable. And even if we were, "soon" hasn't expired. 70 years is a blink of an eye for the universe.

[jimmy olsen]

An Ancient space faring civilization destroys new advanced species - in which case I ask fermi's question, where are they?

Maybe we haven't become advanced enough for them to notice yet?

Even if they have noticed us, space is big. They could be on their way and just haven't got here yet.

[dps]

Put me in the "Evolution of intelligent life is extremely rare" group. 

[grumbler]

You're really flogging that singularity shit for all its worth, ain't you.

It is one of the few Wikipedia articles he thinks he can understand.

Logic is to Siege as bicycle is to fish.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many non-radiating civilizations.  Nukes and television isn't humanity's default state, living in small groups as hunters and gatherers is.  That such people would be incredibly boring to meet also seems to have failed to cross would-be space explorers' minds.

Are you seriously retarded? 

Meeting an intelligent alien race, even one in a stage of development equivalent to the paleolithic would be the most interesting encounter in the history of humanity.

Moses' encounter with God may rank higher TIM.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Octopi are fairly intelligent.  Compared to some people I see on blogs very much so.  It would be difficult to judge what constitutes intelligence in something alien from ourselves.

[jimmy olsen]

Octopi are fairly intelligent.  Compared to some people I see on blogs very much so.  It would be difficult to judge what constitutes intelligence in something alien from ourselves.

Can they stab you with a pointy stick?

If so, they're probably intelligent.

[viper37]

So, with this many habitable planets, why haven't we detected intelligent life?

Many reasons:

• We're the most advanced civilization out there, the others are just as the microbial stage of evolution.
  
• We're the most retarded civilization out there, we're too insignificant for them to contact us, like we don't try to communicate with ants.
  
• They are at an evolutionary stage similar to ours, they can't travel in space for long distance, nor send real-time communications to many light-years away.
  
• They actually tried to contact us, but there a vas worldwide governments conspiracy that hides them from us.  Every technological advancement since the 50s is because of the technology they gave us
  
• In most likelyhood, there is possibly life on some of these planets, but we don't have the technology yet to scan the planet's surface and detect them, if they exists.
  

[Maximus]

Octopi are fairly intelligent.  Compared to some people I see on blogs very much so.  It would be difficult to judge what constitutes intelligence in something alien from ourselves.

This.

Linguistics would be interesting, but even more fundamental would be the ability to observe an intelligence completely different from our own. For while our best understanding of intelligence is less anthropocentric than Tim's it's likely still very limited.

Even in the above paragraph I have assumed that an intelligence requires language. It is hard to imagine how it could not, but it may be possible.

[mongers]

Maybe the Big bang was started too early and the simulation unbalanced from the beginning, producing timeliness way off what was the intent ? 

God's belated offers of Heaven,Valhalla and so forth are makeshift patches to stop the boat sinking.

[crazy canuck]

Evolution of Intelligent Life is extremely rare - this one is my pick. Animals on earth are as stupid as they can get away with being. If they could survive with a smaller and less complex brain evolution would result in those animals getting stupider.

An evolutionary explanation for the Tea Party?

[Siege]

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were many non-radiating civilizations.  Nukes and television isn't humanity's default state, living in small groups as hunters and gatherers is.  That such people would be incredibly boring to meet also seems to have failed to cross would-be space explorers' minds.

Are you seriously retarded? 

Meeting an intelligent alien race, even one in a stage of development equivalent to the paleolithic would be the most interesting encounter in the history of humanity.

OK.  Let me restate my thesis: they would be boring to talk to.  "No, thunderbolts aren't evil spirits.  No, I don't want to eat your poisonous indigenous food.  No, I'm not a god."

If their chicks are hot, I bet quite a few languishtahs would answer differently to those questions.