Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by spuz 2865 days ago
> No. It's simply that statistically, we can't believe we are the first, nor that we are unique. It would be (statistically) extremely odd if we were, and there is a bias against anthropo-centric theories.

Fermi's paradox does not ask about civilisations like ours. It asks about interstellar travelling or at least interstellar communicating species. We have not achieved this level yet so we are not the 'first' as you say. You might claim that our radio signals should be able to be detected, but they are so weak and have been travelling for such a short period of time that they may as well not exist to an outside observer. There may be millions of our type of civilisation out there presently and throughout history but they would all be undetectable to us and hence our civilisation doesn't play into the paradox.
2 comments
akvadrako 2865 days ago
Well one answer to the Fermi paradox is we get wiped out but barring that it seems unlikely we won't reach the stars in millions of years.

And you seem to ignore it, but the other part of the paradox is if we can achieve interstellar travel in millions of years, that's like no time at all on a galactic scale. So it would be a major coincidence if we are within 1 million years of the first.

link
spuz 2864 days ago
As far as the Fermi paradox is concerned it's a much safer assumption to make that advanced civilisations will achieve interstellar communication before they achieve interstellar travel.

Even so, my point is that human technology tells us nothing about the probility of a civilisation ever developing interstellar communication because we haven't seen it happen yet. We are still at the 0 stage when going from 0 to 1. It doesn't make sense to extrapolate from our position on the technological timeline. It makes more sense to assume tabula rasa that aliens have developed this technology and then explore the implications of that.

link
ci5er 2865 days ago
Ok. Fair enough. My point was simply that: we might be curious, but most of us aren't lonely or looking for any higher purpose or meaning (well, many may be, but if we were - we wouldn't look to aliens to satifice them)
link