Why this Solution to the Fermi Paradox Is Terrifying

[@AggressiveBeagle]

I’m not saying everything Steven Greer says is truth but I think he’s right when it comes to how any beings that have achieved interstellar travel are enlightened and know that there are an abundance of resources and there are no need for conflict… we humans are still quite primitive and the only reason we think they are a threat is because that’s all we know.

[@kinngrimm]

That stance can only be kept, should there be a reasonable fast way to travel within a star system or inbetween systems. Sofar we haven't found one that would be even economicly to leave earth ^^. For that something like a space elevator would be needed and some other concepts that are partly even tested right now like a sort of space catapult/cannon. When ignoring that hurdle and we would just use sun energy and would not have any time constraints, travel within the solar system might be a thing, but for economic viability companies usually aim for a return on investements within once lifetime ^^ or rather a couple of years which with current space flight isn't a thing either sofar. Are Space X and Origin promising engagments, ofcourse they are, but not really profitable sofar or are they? Has Space X already gotten all the money back they invested, i actually don't know the numbers there. Anyways we are still and will be for decades yet in the beginning phase i would assume. Going then to interstellar travel between systems ... generational ships with current tech and a shitton of redundancies seem to be the best option for a "one" way trip. Aslong we haven't mined the oort cloud there seems not really a viable reason to get ressources from other systems anyways which may firt become one in maybe 500 years + depending on how automated and exponentially growing the mining would become sooner or later. Even then there is still the option to mine planets which may last a lot longer or even gather ressources directly from the sun. Once these ressources are gone, there are still the once in outerspace without a system like rogue planets and such or planetary systems without dips from an intelligent species that would have evolved in said system, but a system just empty and barren without life. So yes there is no reason to fight over ressources in the short run maybe when entropy kicks in at the very end, but till then there are many options. BUT looking at our own species, we didn't fight only over ressources, we fought because we didn't like how someone was looking at us, how someone is looking, just to proof a point, just to make a mark in history and on and on. We humans are not short on reasons to get into a fight, as we see it with Ukrain and other wars before problem is rather how to stop fighting once it started. Looking at evolution, the reasons why a population of a species evolves had already largly been taken from us humans and even becomes rather unlikely the bigger a population becomes. So aside from maybe (forced) genetics, we are pretty much as good as we get in terms of our biological evolution. In terms of social evolution we sure haven't reached the peak and its anyonce guess how that might take part with capitalism, fashism and other isms ^^ prevalent in our societies. While the internet had brought together the worst characters who before stood alone and were ridiculed now suddenly they see they are not alone and group together, i still see it as the cause for the biggest change within all of our lifetimes in a good way and i am hopefull that this would lead in the end to a better overall understanding of each others cultures and maybe we get it eventually through our thick skulls that working together, uniting in common causes will bring us further instead of listening to those who devide us because of religion, nationality, color of our skins, greed or any other demagogury. Even if we would overcome our violent and suspicous parts of our nature in the long run, that would still not be a reason to through away caution in believing any other species which made it to the stars(if even possible as sofar these are just dreams) would be benevolent. I for once rather have first at least a second place in the stars we call home before announcing our existance to the universe maybe then from a third place without any presence than a communication unit (the books starting with 'Three Body Problem' discribed this really well). Often enough there is the wish to be safed without having ourselves to first overcome our innner deamons, which is the base for the believe in benevolent aliens. Sure they may exist, but even they have to be cautious not to attract the other kind. //edit:spelling

[@azuretiger-kfpmarketingstr6018]

Greer has steered cult leader in recent years, I actually much prefer to use Gene Roddenberry's Prime Directive as an example. Bounced off cold war concerns, one aspect of the great filter suggests that any species that achieves a certain level of technology inevitably destroys itself from unrestrained use. Therefore if there are interstellar species they would possibly have overcome this and may not want to risk contact with cultures that have not. It's been less than a century since we split the atom and the first thing we do is blow each other up, we're also pretty arrogant and think we have it all figured out. Even if alien civilization is benevolent we can't expect to be on their holiday card list.

[@AggressiveBeagle]

@@ses190 I know how you feel but when you look at our spices as a whole there are far more people that are barely more evolved than Neanderthals and our way to perceive reality is and will be skewed for the foreseeable future. We definitely will never be enlightened enough to join the galactic community in our lifetimes.

[@AggressiveBeagle]

@@azuretiger-kfpmarketingstr6018 the simple fact we’re still here suggests to me that we don’t have anything to fear from any other beings from other star systems.

[@kingmasterlord]

@@azuretiger-kfpmarketingstr6018 yeah he's always been too full of himself for me to take him completely seriously, but I don't think he's exactly wrong either

[@anthroposlogica9379]

Dear Alex (idk how to spell your last name sorry), I am a paleo Anthropology student and took up Astronomy as a hobby a few months back. I wanna say thank you for making space so Fun and easy to digest. The reason i didnt get into space sooner was because i felt it was such a BIG subject with too complex math and subjects to truly grasp. But you have made everything so easy and so entertaining to watch. I work for the California science center and your videos have given me such more appreciation for the quest forward to the heavens. I started with your playlist on moons and have binged many videos per night or at work. Though i would not consider myself an astronomer by any means, you have Educated me in ways i thought impossible years ago. Thank you dear sir. Sincerely, your fan Raymond A, Castillo.

[@KevinwithanI]

Very well said 👏👏👏

[@mareklwhip4590]

Astronomy IS extremely complicated and there is so much to it. I'm a Junior in highschool, and have been studying Astronomy since 5th grade. There is still so much I do not know.

[@anthroposlogica9379]

@@mareklwhip4590 its quite the journey tho

[@Psalm1101]

Unfortuantly the real science is troubling The rare earth theory and redwarf paradox. Redwarfs make up of 80 percent of all stars they are tiny life killers. Kepler has verified this as COOL WORLDS utuber kepler scientist explains in are we alone in the universe. Also is are sun unusual and more. Also physicist Brian cox says we are alone in the galaxy. Lastly life has not been made in the lab. Protochemist james tour explains . Enjoy science and enjoy star wars also

[@n8mail76]

As a student of astronomy I'm interested in your perspective of light and time. You should post what you have learned and what your perspective is.

[@Berkeloid0]

I heard about an interesting study done years ago where they interviewed people on their opinions about whether we should announce our presence in the cosmos or hide in case aliens were hostile. It turned out that those people who felt like they belonged to their community were more likely to say yes aliens will be friendly, let's contact them, but those people who weren't social, didn't feel like they were part of any community and generally found it hard to trust others, were all the ones saying no the aliens might be hostile don't contact them. I thought it was interesting that simply asking someone's opinion on whether it's a good idea to contact aliens was like a mirror, reflecting how they felt about their fellow humans.

[@roberthickerty390]

I do not overall care much for my fellow humans. I am a one on one person and willing to meet and talk but prefer my own company. Even so, I would want to have ETs show up. That would be cool. Of course they might just kill us all. The way humans are acting these days that may not be so bad.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

if the subjects of the experiment are ruled by their emotions and biases to this point, then their opinion is worthless, if they are speaking from emotions and past experiences with other humans, they are not thinking with logic, and they have no place in the discussion of the rationals of interractions between alien species

[@kappaspinning4832]

There was an interview done with random people in europe street if they would accept a refugee, most people answered yes. But when presented with one at the spot (an actor) and asked them to take him, the overwhelming majority of people who said yes, noped out. Do you think that people who said yes, that we should contact alien, would accept to be sent as the first ones to contact an unknow alien race? I'm just pointing out that most people in these interviews don't take the question seriously.

[@roberthickerty390]

@C we know how to kill each other. We don’t know what aliens have for weapons or how hard they are to kill. Also I suspect our motto for dealing with aliens would be, “ We come in peace. Shoot to kill!”.

[@jgobroho]

Fascinating

[@douglasphillips5870]

I think the great filter makes the most sense. There are so many variables that need to line up for a species to become space faring that it rarely happens. We've barely started ourselves.

[@adamnguyen4517]

Sure there’s a bunch of variables but if you run the same scenario hundreds of billions of times in JUST the Milky Way alone, you’d get millions of intelligent civilizations.

[@softan]

That doesn't sound like a great filter, that sounds like thousands of small filters, but I guess put together they'd make a massive filter.

[@erikkaareson6493]

New neurtrino data supports this too.

[@dark7element]

Indeed, even if intelligent lifeforms evolve, there are plenty of other great filters they can run into. There are dozens of powerful, wealthy empires in human history that could have started an industrial revolution, yet didn't.

[@SingularityZ3ro1]

The "Grabby Aliens" Theory was not mentioned here, but it is also an interesting theory. This would mean every civilization that survives the "great filters" and is also expansionist will eventually start a colonizing crawl through its galaxy and then through all galaxies in reach until everything is occupied, or it hits the border to another grabby civilization. If the galaxy still seems empty once or observation methods are getting better, that would conclude, that we might be the first civilization in our galaxy or even the galaxy cluster. And will eventually become "grabby" ourselves. It all depends on how hard the great filters for intelligent life and civilizations = how early we are when it comes to civilizations that develop the ability for space colonization.

[@JoelJernbergPalm]

@adamoconscientia4774 🤯

[@PerpetualSmile]

I think people overestimate the idea that all aliens would want to colonize everything in range. Once you're somewhat multistellar, why continue? I think the search for other life and phenomena would become a primary drive, not increasing our numbers for the sake of it.

[@SingularityZ3ro1]

In the end, I think the most constant thing is that predictions about the far future are massively off. Would be really exciting to be able to see how everything looks in 100, 500, and 5000 years. :-)

[@maxkho00]

@@PerpetualSmile Why continue? Because: 1) Once von Neumann probes are invented, it would take absolutely 0 resources and 0 effort. 2) It would be by far the most efficient way of exploring the universe, including searching for other life. Assuming mind uploading/brain-in-a-vat technology becomes viable by then, which it will, perception of time could be manipulated at will, so even billions of years can be made to subjectively feel like seconds. Therefore, that it would take relatively long (a few billion years) for von Neumann probes to colonise a sizeable chunk of the observable universe wouldn't matter at all. 3) Again assuming perfect simulation becomes viable, it is likely that the beings inside it will choose to bear offspring at a higher (likely much higher) rate than that at which they would decide to cease existing. To sustain this rapidly growing required size of the simulation, super-exponentially more resources would be required. And that's just one very plausible example of a motif for a post-scarcity civilisation to expand. There, of course, are plenty of others.

[@Chuck_N0rris]

At some point we would likely stop. It makes sense to expand to a few systems in case something happens, and to gain resources. But in order for humans to expand trough the galaxy, we would have to reproduce as well. From a biological stand point, we wouldnt have the numbers to populate more than a few planets. We are already reducing our numbers and biologically we have switched from reproducing to living longer. At some point, evolution may make us live forever. Nature doesnt have any set rules about that other than that DNA is the closest thing we come to immortal. It can be traced back to the origin of life on Earth.

[@PronatorTendon]

One of the things that has always bothered me is the claim that we have about a 100 light year diameter bubble of ever expanding radio broadcasts. The problem with that is most of our radio emissions wouldn't be detectable halfway to Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years distant, let alone 100 light years. Just to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft, we have to detect signals on the order of quadrillionths of a watt, and they only recently breached the heliopause, which is only a small fraction of the distance to the star nearest to our sun. I think this idea that has been tossed around for years has led many people who don't investigate further to believe that both we and extraterrestrial life would be far more detectable from such great distances than they are in reality. If we want to be seen from distances of hundreds of light years, we would need to build structures larger than the earth itself with immense transmission power, precisely directed toward where we calculate target stars will move over the many years such transmission would require. Even then, we would be waiting centuries for replies, the great-great grandchildren of the scientists who sent the signals having died long before a potential receiving device even observes the signal. Then there is an equivalent response time, placing the only reasonable targets within a radius of 20 or so light years, at maximum. And that's to say nothing of potential life in other galaxies.

[@ticthak]

You ignore that the probes have only a few watts of transmission power and the're directional, but not at all tight, so you're off by orders of magnitude as to our detection capabilities for RF. But what if we can't even recognize the modulation scheme/code structure of a signal, or aren't looking at that EM frequency band, or something besides EMR is used for communication? In other words, saying there's no one out there because we can't hear them just means we haven't listened anywhere hard enough...or we're too stupid to listen in the right way (much more my suspicion).

@@ticthak my thoughts as well. Also they maybe even use totally different technology to communicate over those vast distances. One that isn't discovered yet by us. Some even may as well use light for communication. Probably the whole spectrum of it. So tuning in on one part of the light spectrum isn't enough. It's more like tuning in on Radio waves on all channels at once.

[@TheDotBot]

I agree. The point being, space is really, really big, light speed is a snail's pace at this scale life is rare and industrial civilisation exceedingly rare and - if it exists at all - the chances are it couldn't interact with us in any meaningful way, if at all. It's not a problem of signal strength, just vast distances. But it's more a mathematical problem. There are billions of stars out there, but the prerequisites for life are high, as we know now. So the probability of any life anywhere is a huge number times a tiny number, which means instances of signalling life might at any one time average out at six times per galaxy or once every six visible universes, either way the chances of any form of contact are slim to impossible. Problem being, we used to think we're on an average planet orbiting an average star in an average solar system and that all the chemistry we need is all over the universe. We now know that's not the case, but nobody wants to entertain the possibility that we are for all practical purposes completely alone in the universe.

[@ticthak]

@@TheDotBot We actually DON'T know that the chemistry isn't broadly distributed- we don't even have a clue what's on/in Europa and other moderately inaccessible places in our own solar system, let alone the nearest systems other than gas giants or other VERY large exos. Also, only in the past few decades was the majority opinion ANYTHING other than how exceptional and not average Earth was, ...because WE'RE here, "God's chosen". It even saturated most of Western scientific thought and philosophy for thousands of years.

[@ticthak]

We also have studiously avoided keeping front and central the realization of the narrowness of the signal bandwidth we operate in, and consequently listen to.

[@Zathurious]

"Two possibilities exist. Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." That quote sends chills down my spine everytime.

[@Sublime_1]

Afraid to be alone? Getting destroyed by aliens would be the only terrifying thing for me, doesn't matter if they exist or not.

[@FluffyFractalshard]

you guys are so funny! earth and humanity has been enslaved by parasitic aliens of higher dimensions for the last 26.000 years who created an artificial slave-matrix to keep us dumbed down and as far away from the truth and our true nature as possible to serve as their batteries. many souls currently incarnated on earth have been living in other star systems throughout this galaxy and we had contact with our starry brothers and sisters all the times back to atlantis and lemuria but also ancient egypt and much more recently.. ...and you guys still wonder whether they are out there or not xD

[@Sublime_1]

@@FluffyFractalshard never heard that one before. That suppose to be who put the black knight satellite up there?

[@Operator214MerchantMarine]

if were alone , it means two things ., either humanity came in first or came in last 🤔

[@1zxtv]

Really, after seeing it typed in every single fucking comment section for every video related to space ever made. Being one of the most overused quotes ever, it sends chills down your spine ?

[@differous01]

"...human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." War of the Worlds is written as the end of a Dark Forest [7:40] scenario/the start of a Grabby one.

[@michaelprice3040]

I think a fair assumption of first extraterrestrial contact is look at our own actions, we send robots into space all the time, it’s just so much more simple and safe than sending living beings. I’d expect to see AI or drones before a living organism.

[@cashyman1941]

We have no idea how far extra terrestrial biology can go.

[@michaelprice3040]

I didn’t say it’s was impossible just said it was “fair assumption” that artificial interaction would be first opposed to living.

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

I think we might detect signs for intelligent live on another planet, but we might never even have the slightest bit of contact, because of the massive distances. Sending a probe through even a small part of the galaxy might take millions of years.

[@Hubieee]

@@HeavyMetalGamingHD Actually to send it like 40.000 light years, so 1/3 of our own galaxy, voyager would need 700.000.000 years. This is already a longer time period than any planet with a regular sun might support life at all. In that time, earth won't support life anymore since the luminosity of the sun will have increased to a degree that makes life impossible on earth (without thinking about major technical solutions at least).

[@adamnguyen4517]

I forgot who said it, but theres a quote saying that colonizing our galaxy isn’t a technological issue its a AI issue.

[@nicholas6900]

I always liked that short story where humanity finally found a signal and started listening only to hear a simple reply, "Shh, be quiet...they are listening."

[@whome4642]

Yikes!

[@venusasaboy]

Also basically the plot to The Three-Body Problem

[@solmyr42]

Horrifying x)

[@Ronythethird]

This is based on a true story

[@Mophony]

@@Ronythethird And what story is that?

[@wyv3rn1]

I'm firmly of the belief that if there is other intelligent life out there that has succeeded in figuring out space travel that they wouldn't destroy another life-bearing planet which contains intelligent, tool developing life if only for the simple reason that it's very likely such life is probably fairly rare within the universe so it would make sense to preserve such a gem. Not just to study, as you could probably learn of your past through said creatures, but also because something so rare should be taken care of

[@swissbiggy]

In that case any advanced alien civilisation should destroy us straight away, because if there is one thing we are not than it is intelligent. No intelligent species would destroy it's own environment for little gain as temporarily power.

[@ecbrown6151]

It’s a nice thought but literally any motivation is possible with an Alien species. It’s a roll of the dice, on the bright side the vast distances of space and it’s built in speed limit means we may not meet an Alien civilization soon if ever.

[@wyv3rn1]

@@ecbrown6151 maybe though I dunno, I feel like for any species to get itself to a point of intergalactic travel, they would almost end up having empathy become innate simply because to get to that point they would need teamwork and cooperation among themselves, which in turn would push a evolutionary compassion of sorts maybe I am too much an optimist in my thinking though lol there is one thing that can't be argued and its that I agree it's extremely unlikely any other intelligent species will find us based on the size of the universe alone

[@hansburch3700]

@@wyv3rn1 Das kosmische Internet funktioniert sehr gut, unser Planet wurde leicht entdeckt. Wie es ist mit hochentwickelten Ausserirdischen zu leben, wissen wir seit langer Zeit, sie wissen alles über uns, wir wissen nichts über sie, wenigstens tun wir als ob.

[@alexpavalok430]

I think it logically follows that if you are smart enough to have hyper advanced technology, you must also have a wide understanding of cooperation, cause and effect, benefits and negatives, and thus morality.

[@paulrapp6]

The first time an alien civilization comes to earth, we instantly become second class citizens of our galaxy.

[@paulhaynes8045]

Surely we are already - we just don't know it?

[@M167A1]

More likely dead, have to clean the bugs out you know.

[@Tinman97301]

The way we use our planet I would argue that we already are. We know better and still abuse the only place we can survive 👍 humans gunna human I guess.

[@Anuchan]

Let's assume an alien species seeded our planet. That means all life on Earth is part of some experiment. What does a scientist do when the experiment is over? The same thing we do to white mice we experiment on. We exterminate all life in the experiment. Is that what's waiting for us?

[@ekay4495]

Bro were already little bacteria in the scale of our galaxy

[@remc2]

Thank you, Alex, for these fascinating ideas on why Aliens would not contact us. In my humble opinion, Occam's Razor points to easier explanations for the silence. It's the mind-blowing size of our galaxy. Any artificial radio signal will be attenuated below the level of natural background noise before it can reach another star. Accelerating a space craft to relativistic speed would take incredible amounts of energy. While Alien science and technology may be much more advanced than ours, I doubt they would be able to get around basic phenomena like inertia or the conservation of energy or the laws of thermodynamics.

[@bruceconstuble4603]

Our solar system is the neighborhood where aliens roll up the windows and lock the doors as they pass by.

[@Jason75913]

unless they are naïve, word has surely spread among interstellar species by now of the violent bunch inhabiting a particular little blue planet in this solar system

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

@@Jason75913 aliens lucky we don't have have FTL drives yet, otherwise we probably going full Klingon everywhere. 😂

[@lancerevell5979]

Yep, when we finally develop FTL capability, WE will be the "Alien Invaders", spreading our crime, violence and corruption throughout the galaxy.

[@bruceconstuble4603]

@@lancerevell5979 yep like a virus, destroy and move on.

[@BillHimmel]

The most likely solution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that the huge, giant and unimaginably vast distances of space don‘t allow space travel, no matter how advanced you are!

[@jakegarvin7634]

Man if I was sitting in my backyard and a colony of ants attempted to communicate with me I'd be fascinated regardless of whether or not I could understand the message

[@hellotheregeneralkenobi365]

Related, ants don't really understand that we are here. We also may not recognize if advanced lifeforms are already around us and impacting our lives.

[@markfindlay8636]

🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜 Hello we like your garden.

[@JcoleMc]

How would you know they were attempting to communicate at all ?

[@jakegarvin7634]

@@JcoleMc I don't know and who cares

[@JcoleMc]

@@jakegarvin7634 Exactly

[@Trizzer89]

I think that no matter how advanced we become, we would be interested in life on other planets

[@merlinwarage]

True. We always need resources, territories and slaves. That's the human way.

[@danelynch7171]

The first hundred or so would be interesting....

[@Nick-dx2pt]

@@merlinwarage slaves????

[@MrNote-lz7lh]

@@Nick-dx2pt Of course. They still do the backbone of the work today. Although realistically we will create our own slaves in the form of robotics. Which means we would have no use for alien life and just keep them as exotic pets. Or kill them off.

[@bobsmith9271]

For real. If we found ants on Mars, everybody would be super excited.

[@dmeemd7787]

This channel just keeps getting better and better, can't wait to pick up your book once it's available again!

[@somedudeok1451]

This channel is pretty good, but his solutions to the fermi paradox were all fundamentally flawed and he failed to point those flaws out. Generally Isaac Arthur is the best channel when it comes to the fermi paradox.

[@Eddy-nn7wj]

@@somedudeok1451 thanks for recommendation. While I like and appreciate what Astrum is doing, I feel that his produce is more relevant to younger audiences or less experienced ones at very least.

[@somedudeok1451]

@@Eddy-nn7wj Yeah, I've gotten the same impression of Astrum.

[@renegonzalez8258]

Damn. The whole thing about Aliens not wanting to share their ideas or tech with us. I like how Bayformers of all things mentioned this. In Revenge of the Fallen, Galloway asks why the Autobots haven't shared their tech with Humanity. Optimus replies with, "I have seen your species capabilites in waging war. It will only bring more harm than good." Or soemthing along those lines.

[@visualpossibilities]

It's hard to imagine a civilization advanced enough to achieve interstellar travel travel would have anything to gain from, desire of, or fear from us.

[@henryneubert7798]

Why do humans keep dogs nowadays? They serve no purpose except they give humans a good feeling. Humans like the feeling of somebody relying on them. And humans are greedy. We can't get enough of anything, even problems. If we run out of problems, we create new problems (see Maslows pyramide of needs). If that species' brain (or whatever they us to think, if they think at all) works similar, then the contrast between their achievements and their lack of a deeper purpose could be even bigger than for a human today. When you understand how the universe works and realize you are lonely and everybody else is a toddler, then maybe you start to search for a purpose. You colonized multiple solar systems and now your civilization cannot be destroyed by a singular solar flare, but why does it matter if you live or not? Maybe you want to enlighten primitive civilizations. You are the only adult here, and one has to take care of these children. That would be a cool legacy. My existence matters. If that's their line of thinking, humanity would be a perfect dog.

[@TheBeastCH]

Perhaps they could be interested in our culture and art, if they value such a thing. But the stuff we produce right now, for a large part, can barely be considered that. Other than that, we might as well be a primitive tribe living on some remote island and yelling at dots on the horizon, thinking it's a different island, hoping there might be a different tribe that has invented the raft. While airplanes and cargo ships pass them every day, from the US to China and the other way around, remaining either unseen by said tribe, or having been such a common sight for so long, they're mistaken for natural. Cloudmaker birds...

[@CHiCguitar]

Other than our land. I imagine there's some natural resource on this planet they'd love to take.

[@visualpossibilities]

@@CHiCguitar a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have access to anything they could possibly find on Earth in abundance throughout the Galaxy. I doubt there is any element that is unique to Earth.

[@TheBeastCH]

@@CHiCguitar Anything they could get from earth, other than DNA samples or music, they could get in the asteroid belt much easier and with more abundance.

[@snafutube]

It seems to me that assumptions about alien life if it is out there, are usually far too anthropomorphic … we still have far too little knowledge about other creatures on our own world, let alone those that may exist on distant worlds, or other environments where life may exist

[@literalantifaterrorist4673]

yeah, I feel the same. He considered how they could have similar drives to us, but didn't consider that they would probably have motivation completely different from ours, to the point of not being able to understand it. Hell, when we first meet, we may wear the wrong color and make them think we're declaring war. Our greeting might be a grave insult. Our friendly first message could be a threat.

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

Right? Like some technology advanced dinosaurs or huge insects and dmt . Just some crazy other planet with whatever version of that biogenesis stuff creates as a living mass of cells and energy, but say 600 billion year old planet around of some crazy star system. Heady stuff but I do believe we’re a good model.

[@SerifSansSerif]

Agreed. The Fermi paradox is garbage because we know so very little about the requirements for life, and therefore what the variables to look for are. We could very well be extremely rare or life itself might be far rarer than expected. We live in a habitable zone with an abundance of water, sure, but we also have an absurdly large moon that's tidally locked with our planet, a gas giant that sucks up all space debris (which, in and of itself might be a failed second star as binary systems are quite common), and most of all, our planet has an absurd amount of phosphorus compared to other planets in our solar system and even more so to the universe as a whole. And that's about 5 variables? Then life on our own planet... The most suitable life forms for travelling through space are.....microbes. Seriously. The simpler the life the better. Plus it can always go into stasis and rehydrate or warm up and become active again. You can fit entire ecosystems of microbial life within a droplet of water, and so on. So even if life were to form and exist elsewhere the likelihood of it being anything greater than an ameoba is, what I would guess at being virtually between 1% and 0%. Even still, until you find another form of life, all of this is just a shot in the dark, because there's not even a second sample to compare and contrast to. (I.e. life on one planet may not have a tidal moon meaning it's not as essential as we think, but both rely on similar stars with a specific bandwidth of light, which wr never considered, so.....) And, it's also worth noting statistics don't mirror. You existing in a universe that supports life is 100% likely, but the likelyhood of a universe that supports life may be nearly 0%.

[@mlbh2os211]

I was thinking the same thing. Well said!

[@Myrslokstok]

We are basicly cusins with Dolphins 🐬 they talk and we understand nothing.

[@bearcubdaycare]

The video talks about cooperation expanding as empires grew. But trade routes spanned continents before empires did. I think that's a more relevant analogy.

[@seth7745]

This is the key difference between global trade and globalism. The earlier allows for the preservation of individual cultures that lead to the benefits of specialization while the later destroys it. Ironically, the greatest threat to diversity is global unification.

[@mikefinn]

​@seth7745 Diversity, without extremism, can be maintained on a unified Earth. Open travel, open sharing, open and free trade, cooperation on existential threats, free market economy, stop the manufacture of war materials. We are a long way from there.

[@luisgentil]

I don't think it's very plausible that aliens are aware of us but are simply not interested. If we are for aliens like ants are for humans, well... many people are passionate about ants, study then tirelessly, build huge ant farms to watch them go and understand how they organize and survive etc. Ants' biology and behavior even serve as inspiration for new technologies.

[@emmanuelmedina6915]

Well you’re talking about a niche of people who like ants enough to study them on a planet with a population of 10 billion people. The only way that comparison would be fair is if there are 10 billion plus alien civilizations who have noticed us. Assuming there’s not that many, it’s safe to say a lot of alien civilizations would not be interested and have their own goals and problems outside of meeting other intelligent life. For example, we are building incredibly expensive telescopes as people die of hunger and thirst. If these alien civilizations are smarter than us, they’re focusing on perfecting their communities rather than studying us.

[@CHiCguitar]

Imagine some alien anthropologist that's SO stoked about us and none of their friends care omg :(

[@artidox__]

Space Battleship Yamato (or Star Blazers) explored the Dark Forest theory, sorta. One of the weapons used by the alien race to decimate Earth were Planet Bombs which were just asteroids charged and manipulated to artificially hit Earth

[@logiconabstractions6596]

Indifference seems unlikely to me, too. We have people spending their lives investigating, say, worms, or minute species of bacteria and plants. Curiousity is a near certainty if one is to evolve into a technological civilization. They're likelyt to be just as curious as beings as we are. Plus, you don't need them to "agree" about the fact that humans are, or not, interesting. I don't find ants particularly interesting, and most people don't yet. Doesn't prevent people from spending lots of time studying them.

[@papajawn]

The most terrifying part about the Dark Forest Theory as a solution to the Paradox is that it is simply the most logical thing an alien civilization would do. Not knowing how much more advanced another civilization could be is a huge factor in deciding how to deal with it. Imagine yourself in the dark forest, a hunter stalking the trees. Suddenly, you hear a twig snap, and you are locking eyes with another hunter. You have no idea what kind of weapons he could have, what tactics he could use, how aggressive he could be, or even what he could be doing. If you value your own survival in this instance, the only logical answer is to open fire and eliminate them. Survival is the primary need of all life, and this applies to civilizations in the universe as well. It would make sense to assume another civilization would do the same. There is also another factor, the chain of suspicion. In conflicts on Earth, chains of suspicion exist as well. One army may not know what their enemy is up to, so they send spies to figure it out, or they figure it out through communication. In space, however, where planets are separated by any number of light years, communication may as well be impossible, unless of course you known how etch a supercomputer onto a proton (those damn Trisolarans!) or have sent a probe to keep an eye on them. In scenarios like this, the more powerful civ always wins, simply because they have better, more advanced technology. This is the darkest secret in the universe.

[@michaelstreeter3125]

I disagree! Imagine you are on a boat and see nothing for days on end. Then you see another boat. When this happens people on the boat normally jump up and down shouting, and wave their arms to signal "Ahoy there!"

[@adamwu4565]

If they were REALLY logical and rational, though, they would also consider that if there is a second hunter that they can see, there could be third, fourth, fifth, and sixth hunters they cannot see, and that some of these other hunters might have superior binoculars and can actually see both them and the second hunter they can see, as well as more powerful and longer range guns. And if they shoot that second hunter, these third and fourth hunters will see that too. And now these third and fourth hunters won't have to guess and wonder how aggressive and paranoid and murderous they are. They'll KNOW. They also won't have to guess at what the capabilities of their weaponry is, or what their likely defences will be like. They'll KNOW. And what will they do with that knowledge? How will they, rationally, and logically, react to such a threat? The first the shoot is the second to die.

[@adamwu4565]

So the only logical safe recourse is NOT to fire. To show (at least some) of your weapons so everyone knows you are not helpless or defenceless, but not to use them, and instead to be as friendly and peaceable and benevolent and cooperative as you can possibly manage to be. So that all third, fourth, and fifth parties that might be watching KNOW that you are not a potential threat, and only dangerous if first provoked.

[@alexpavalok430]

I think what you describe is a pretty human way of thinking. Sufficiently advanced aliens who would obviously have advanced detection and concealment technology, would be able to prove a threat long before it becomes a threat to them. I'm sorry but if aliens can get here, the last thing they think of us of is aa a threat. We a fragile flesh bags who tend to kill each other. How exactly would we pose any threat to an alien race who has fast than light travel or other hyper advanced tech.

[@Dampfaeus]

I believe we can assume that space faring species think things through. Three more advanced weapons they might even be related to how good at logic and thinking they are. So, if we can think of the dark forest theory, so can they. The problem with dark forest is that every species loses, as the universe is inevitably destroyed. Therefore even if the beginning assumptions are sound, it's best to not go by that theory.

[@AmyDaisy69]

If aliens had brains, they would stay as far away from us as possible.

[@noszfeuhlwurdin7715]

Don't threaten them! :-P

[@on_6933]

True, who would want to meet a species that's still racist against their own species.

[@libraryquiet]

+Amy+ Why do you say that?

[@johnbuchman4854]

They'd simply redirect an asteroid our way.

[@AmyDaisy69]

@@libraryquiet Because we are a stupid, violent and dangerous species.

[@gsczo]

The thought alone about discovering some alien civilization who are "equal" to us in a threatening level basically means game over. As an example: If you see a snake lying around near your bed, would you just sleep comfortably? Or kill the snake? (I mean you could capture the snake but that's not the point). Perhaps the snake was just minding its own business, but can you really risk it? You are aware of the danger even if you have nothing against the snake. So, would you talk to the snake? You can't, there's no communication whatsoever since both species are nothing alike. That's the point, in a situation like that you can't gamble the entire planet, both civilizations will clash without having "bad" intentions. The only scenario where that doesn't happen is when one is far more advanced than the other without being afraid and respecting their space while applying control if necessary, like capturing a snake without killing it. It's like the food chain in animals, they kill each other if it means either food or threat otherwise they'll just "peacefully" stay round. If something becomes a threat without a way of communication then it automatically means war, simple because both sides will reach the same conclusion and can't trust each other. I see absolutely no reason how we could talk to aliens, we can't even talk to snakes, let alone something quite literally out of this world.

[@Johnboy33545]

If you find a snake on your bedroom floor you need to do some house work.

[@JonnoPlays]

This video single handedly spawned an entire year of "terrifying science" video titles

[@frame-perfectadskip9159]

The Fermi Paradox factors how many planets could potentially host life, but we don't have the first clue what it takes to CREATE life. that's why the universe is empty

[@TexRobNC]

There are a lot of practical things to consider that you hinted on. Things like. You are right, likely exploring would be for resources, but if a race is capable of harvesting resources at a planetary or larger scale, they likely would have no problem finding plenty of uninhabited places to do that. If they are capable of that kind of travel, they are likely also likely capable of doing it in a guided manner. I think it's more likely life is super common in water worlds in the habitable zone, and we should consider that nobody has found us because nobody is looking for more life, as we aren't special.

[@bigfootsdecendant594]

Another thing to note is that if aliens are able to travel faster or at light speed we would never be able to see them moving through space, and with light taking time to travel we could be looking right at planets that may have life on them that may not be intelligent or even large but because we are seeing these planets years in the past their light hasnt had time to reach us just yet

[@nutzeeer]

Would that be cool? Hm.

[@johnbuchman4854]

We're probably the alien's equivalent of the cat channel. Wonder what will happen when they lose interest?

[@nutzeeer]

@@johnbuchman4854 we arent even domesticated. before cats doves were a liked ped in many societies. now they roam free in cities. they are said to be good beans in general.

[@AlanBolshevik]

I think operating on the basis of the dark forest makes most sense. Assuming a benevolent universe is far too risky.

[@shlomomarkman6374]

Dark forest is not that realistic. You can't truly hide even if you don't transmit as even we are very close to detecting atmospheres of exoplanets and finding life signatures if present (like Oxygen) or tech signatures. The energy required to a dark forest strike can't be hidden as well. It requires megastructures, huge reactors and similar. It can't be missed for thousands of LY even by our current tech. A dark forest strike from a 10k LY or worse from Andromeda which are beyond reasonable detection range is stupid as you can't know what your target is doing right now, not 2.5 million years ago, by now they could go extinct or become an interstellar empire with tech better then your own

[@alexpavalok430]

@@shlomomarkman6374 you assume that hyper advanced technology doesn't allow advanced civs to conceal themselves easily. The way the UFOs behave(if they are aliens), is so far beyond our understanding of physics, that it only becomes a surety that these beings can conceal themselves easily, if not manipulate space and time itself.

[@daylightbright7675]

That's just a reflection of how we feel about other humans. It's stupid enough to ascribe human characteristics (Like malice, prejudice, tribalism etc) to other animals on our own planet, let alone sapient animals who evolved on another world. It would completely depend on which civilization we came into contact with as any out there would likely be just as different from eachother as they are to us, and how we related to them individually. We have absolutely no way to know what they'd be like or how they'd respond. If I had to guess I'd say they'd just be curious and eager to learn about us and Earth. As curiosity is the only trait I can reasonably assume a species advanced enough to master interstellar travel would have, as it's one that's very good for innovation

[@roseCatcher_]

@@daylightbright7675 Every single dominant species, when migrating to a region where a low-order species operates and could cause a hindrance, will tend to clear out that area. Sharks do it when to moving to regions operated by seals, cuckoos do it to crows, Europeans did to Native Americans, we humans today do it when we clear out forests to farm. Nothing wrong with considering Dark Forest and its not anthropocentric nor has anything to do with malice. If a nuclear scientist, who is trying to build a reactor sees an anthill problem on the foundation land, he will remove the anthill, no mailce in question, nor survival. Just because he couldn't care less. Tribalism on the other hand is not a human characteristic, lol. Bacteria and even genes are tribalistic. For example, somatic genes will sacrifice themselves (selfless selfishness) so that another survives. Human and cousins' (all extant species) characteristics and prejudices are built upon evolution and self-correction in an extremely volatile environment. One mistake by a species population and an entire ecosystem is gone forever. "If I had to guess I'd say they'd just be curious and eager to learn about us and Earth. As curiosity is the only trait I can reasonably assume a species advanced enough to master interstellar travel would have" You operate on guesses and assumptions so much, and then you call the proponents of dark forest dependant on human characteristics? Laughable. They have million years of data on their side, thousand years of statistical understanding of how groups interact, no matter the mastery of either group; what do you have on your side, except broad assumptions?

[@daylightbright7675]

@@roseCatcher_ See here's the thing, even you using the term "lower order species" as if they're lesser is still very human. Because I know you're referring to the food chain, but you're still flavouring it with an aura of human society and hierarchy, as if nature cares what species is physically bigger or stronger in any way. Ants and arthropods in general are way more successful and important for life on the planet than we will ever be, regardless of how we may value them or see their existence. They were here long, LONG before we were, and will be scuttling around long after we're gone. The reason individuals of their species are seemingly so weak is because selective pressures put on them valued rapid reproduction and overwhelming the environment with sheer numbers over the fitness and survival of individuals as in most vertebrates, and mammals especially. It's R selection up against K selection. The scientist may choose to clear out an anthill for convenience or any other reason, but that's not going to hurt the species one bit. That's kind of the point of their entire setup. Some may die, but the whole is unharmed. Sharks also don't consciously "clear out" anything. Seals vacate for their own safety, the same way Sharks do when they see Orcas or Dolphins around because they know the other predators coming into the area are dangerous to them. It's literally no different than someone choosing not to hike, hunt or live out in bear country. I also don't see how this gives any clue how an alien species would see us or interact with us? The animals and organisms you've mentioned are all part of the larger ecosystem we have here on earth. We all come from one, singular common ancestor and evolved together side by side, differentiating to fill different niches and roles in our own individual habitats. All life on our planet is intimately connected in a dance of sorts, exchanging energy and roles back and forth like some kind of macabre ballet. That's how life does it here on our planet. Can you really not see how that could be very different than interacting with beings who come from...somewhere else entirely? Who are totally disconnected from our own tree of life? Organisms where they come from may gain energy and reproduce completely differently. The very concept of "predators" and "prey" might not exist at all. Or that dynamic may exist far more strongly and they may have an intense desire to swiftly exterminate all life here. My point is, we have absolutely no way to know, we're all operating on baseless assumptions based on our own experience. I only say I assume they would be curious because that and being very prosocial are the only reasons we've made it this far at all. It's the foundation of how we evolved our higher intelligence and seems to be very effective at doing so. There's no real reason for me to assume it would be a guarantee, but much like we assume water is vital for life, I assume it is vital for sapience.

[@jona826]

If every civilization has a SETI program that is listening but they are all too cautious to actually transmit a powerful, "I am here!", signal, they will assume they must be alone.

[@abacusabandon]

I think there is one flaw in the final part. “An aggressive race would not benefit the galactic community as a whole” we simply do not know this to be true. What if there is an aggressive race but, like a war dog, it has assumed a specific role within that broader community? Seems perfectly plausible even taking cooperative-competition to its logical conclusion.

[@Daniel-qy9mb]

Wow, did a great job with this thought experiment. I hadn’t consider several of the possible outcomes you mentioned.

[@kalef1234]

i love that there's stock footage or someone sweeping up ants from the floor.

[@Johnboy33545]

So?

[@fallenhobbit6554]

Interesting fact often ignored in this fermi paradox debate. The most common star in the visible universe is the red dwarf. They can live for up to 6 trillion years. That means the longest lived stars out there right now have only been shining for 1% of there lifespan. Given what we know about how life here evolved, that means we may be simply the first life to evolve in the universe SO FAR. Who knows what a trillion years will bring.

[@Jason75913]

a trillion years would undoubtedly bring a great variety of intelligent species descended from ours, _H. sapien_ , at the very minimum, assuming some aggressive species doesn't decide to exterminate us all at some point

[@boshlovely2002]

@@Jason75913 descended from us? that’s crazy amounts of hubris to think that humans could last as a species that is so self destructive or to disregard the idea that a plethora of other currently existing species have the potential to rival our intelligence and are only held back by lack of time and certain factors of their biology intelligent species will continue to spawn and the idea that they’d only be humans or descend from humans is highly misguided

[@Jason75913]

@@boshlovely2002 "hubris" nah, just realistic Your "plethora of other currently existing species" are the animals around us? They won't develop with us around. Ever. But I can imagine some people going out of their way to find a world for some of the animals and create an environment so they may further evolve with us out of the way. But the simplest and most realistic possibility is new species evolving from ours as ours spreads out and becomes an interstellar species. I ignore potential intelligent species out in the universe as we know absolutely nothing about them whatsoever. They, too, will evolve over time if they go/are interstellar, it's just a matter of time.

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

That's sad, if we're the first. That means humans are going to be that ancient civilization that aliens discover and learn and wonder where we gone.

[@AlexJewellAlex]

I was looking for a response bringing this possibility up. There's a strong possibility we're alone - not because we'll always be alone, but because we were first and our own, individual frame of reference for time is so catastrophically tiny compared to the implications of our paradoxes. E.g., if you show up to a birthday party and you're the first one there, there's still the same high probability there will be 100 other people there eventually; you're alone just because your nerd ass didn't come fashionably late. Now stretch that night into trillions and trillions of years, and we may be standing around with a red solo cup by ourselves for awhile.

[@veleriphon]

It would be more likely that aliens would, if at all, study us with extreme caution before attempting first contact. At least, if they are the friendly sort. If not, we could expect either blatant contact, or even violence.

[@Alexey65536]

Why of all Fermi Paradox solutions no one has suggested the simplest option. Who said that technologies needed for interstellar travel are possible at all? Maybe there are millions of alien civilizations out there. But like us, they are stranded on their homeworlds with no means to overcome the boundaries of physics. We may be receiving tons of artificial radio signals every day - yet having come from such great distances they are indistinguishable from white noise.

[@budgetproductions1178]

the biggest problem I have with fermi paradox is that it fails to take account that our observation of other planets and systems is very low and the image resolution is horrible. and as we all know, the farther the distance the more altered the signals we can get. even if there is life on the nearest star system, their radio signals will be very weak to the point that it gets clouded by other cosmic signals.

[@logicpolice2451]

That doesn’t contradict the ferni paradox…. That is the same in effect as the dark forest proposition. That aliens are out there we just dont or can’t see them.

[@chrismanuel9768]

Also the paradox kind of falls apart when you realize the starlight coming in from distant worlds is essentially millions and billions of years in the past. By the time we see any signal being sent out, it will have been a hundred thousand generations or more.

[@somedudeok1451]

No. The fermi paradox is not a paradox, because we would assume that there's one or more alien civs in specific spots that we should've found. It's a paradox because the universe is old enough that the entire galaxy should've been colonized many many times over. The fact that it isn't can only mean that there are no aliens, or that they are so rare that only one civ exists for every billion galaxies, or that we are the first, or that interstellar travel is impossible for some reason. The latter two are very unlikely.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

@@somedudeok1451 the drake equation is completely made up it's like a monkey stacking banas, all we have as info is earth, we know earth is 5+billion years old, that life didn't exist as anything significant until the cambrian explosion .5 billion years ago, and the universe is about 13 billions, so we don't know AT ALL if we're new arrivals by universal averages of civilisations, or how long on average they take to pop up not only did we come very close to having proto humans wiped out many many times in the last million years, we on top of that despite that have still not accomplished anything of note, and all of earth's industry combined isn't anywhere near enough to send a single colony ship to the nearest start, so as far as the fermi paradox goes, not even humanity can be considered a starfearing civilisation, or even a detectable one

[@somedudeok1451]

@@anonymous-rb2sr You're cautioning me not to read too much into the single example of Earth, while you're doing it yourself. What makes you certain that something like Earth couldn't have happened just 1-2 billion years sooner somewhere else? A billion years of a head start is well enough to have colonized the galaxy by now. And it doesn't even need to be earth-like life - you have to rule out that _any_ process that could theoretically result in the creation of life couldn't have happened before us. And such an assumption is more than just far fetched, if you already consider the drake equation to be a stretch. And sure, the possibility that we are THE first civilization ever is not 0%, but if life can randomly arise, think of how unlikely it is to find yourself among one of the individuals of the first civilization, rather than one of the unimaginable numbers of people and civs that will come during the eternity after us. It might as well be 0% effectively that we're the first. It all means the following: The fact that we do not see obvious aliens everywhere is all but proof, that aliens - for whatever reason - do not exist or find it impossible to colonize anything beyond their home planet.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

@@somedudeok1451 you misread, when I said "all we have as an example is earth" (paraphrasing) I wasn't saying it's a bad idea to base our estimation, at least our estimation of the possible on that, I was saying the opposite I was saying that the drake equation was near useless because of how completely unknown the variables are, but for earth and humanity, those are known factors, and we also know a lot about the details of how we got here, how much time each step took etc as for your question in the reply, I never said it's impossible advanced life existed before mankind, if the universe is infinite it's even certain, but what I am talking about is the bulk, there is a massive difference in "not being the first" and "being the quandrillionth arrival at the spacefearing finish line" there is a difference between saying humanity has to be first, and saying that the galaxy should be overflowing with billions upon billions of civilisations, I disagree with the second statement, not the first one as for my personal views on the answer to the paradox, I personally am in the camp that getting to "detectable space civilisation" is insanely difficult and rare, to the point that there are not even millions of such occurances in a galaxy of ours's age, paired with our detection technology and infrastructure being in practice laughably insufficient, paired with the genuine fact that if galaxywide transport is possible, then systematic war is an inevitability. I don't know if the "dark forest" hypothesis has that much value, where everyone is hiding in fear, it's certainly the most unlikely option, as far more likely, civilisations don't hide, despite the threat of anihilation being the same, they simply do get anihilated That paired with the absolutely gigantic size of our galaxy (people usually fail to understand both the distances and the number of stars, a galaxy is not just a big group of stars, it's almost an universe in itself, the milky way is of mind bending proportions) is enough to answer why we haven't seen anything plus we have only been looking for what, 60 years? And able to detect things that are within .01% of the length of the galaxy radius from earth? we're basically blind, even the assertion that there is no life in the galaxyis made too soon, we don't know, the only thing we can know for sure, is that if they can make their way here, they're not coming in peace, if they ever do decide to make the trip We should make no logical mistakes in the speculation or policy making, right now we are basically powerless about our own destiny, if there are aliens that can reach us before at the very least 10 thousand years, we have no way to impose our will over theirs, even for ourselves From that position, the only logical approach is that of assuming we are in an undeclared war against enemies we don't even know exist, and spend our ressources on a healthy mix of intelligence gathering, to know what we're up against, if anything, and increased defensive abilities, all while exercing extreme caution and avoiding anything which increases the odds we get wiped out, be it by doing anything that would cause that decision to be made by our would be destructors, even if it's the mere information that we exist That's the only thing we can do, observe, learn, gather intelligence, improve the size, resillience and power of our industry and fighting ability, all while remaining hidden and without giving anyone a reason to destroy us, would the "stay hidden" part have already failed

[@somedudeok1451]

@@anonymous-rb2sr *there is a difference between saying humanity has to be first, and saying that the galaxy should be overflowing with billions upon billions of civilisations* No, there is no meaningful difference between these two statements. Because, if you acknowlege that it is likely that we're not the first or even among the first few civilizations, you're acknowledging that any civilization that did come in first had at the very least hundreds of thousands, if not millions of or even a billion years to colonize the galaxy and that's more than enough time to do it. Colonizing the galaxy takes only a blink of an eye astronomically. If we are not first, it precisely means there should be aliens everywhere. *I personally am in the camp that getting to "detectable space civilisation" is insanely difficult* What would be so difficult about it? It seems to me like once you're past the cambrian explosion, life's path to conquering the planet and solar system is all but set. To me it seems more like the jump from single cell to multi-cellular life is the unlikely bit (Earth was stuck with single cell life for billions of years and everything after was quick). But again, if that had happened anywhere just 1 million years sooner, we would now see aliens easily. *if galaxywide transport is possible, then systematic war is an inevitability.* No? Why would that be? There's no reason to expend energy trying to cleanse a system of life that's already there before colonizing it, when there are plenty of other stars evidently unoccupied by anyone, since they're still shining their light into the void untapped. What would you do of the following? Burn down a forest to create more space for agriculture, or simply first build farms all over the fertile plains that stretch as far as the eye can see around that forest? You'd only choose the first, if you are genocidal. And assuming a genocidal nature or ideology for all alien civs comes with it's own problems. *far more likely, civilisations don't hide, despite the threat of anihilation being the same, they simply do get anihilated* Again, why? And even if all alien civs would systematically get annihilated by an ominous type 2-3 ancient civ, we should be easily able to see those ancients. Cause what are they likely to do, once they wiped a system clean? Colonize it themselves, of course. Exponential growth is not something we'd be able to miss. *milky way is of mind bending proportions* Mind bending maybe, but relatively easy to colonize all the same. The Milky Way is about 105700 light years across. That means any civ able to travel at only 10% the speed of light, would need a maximum of a bit more than 1 million years to colonize it all (reasonably assuming that setting up shop in a system and producing another interstellar ship takes very little time compared to travelling the vast distances between stars). Peanuts in galactic time frames. *able to detect things that are within .01% of the length of the galaxy radius from earth? we're basically blind* Sure, but even blind as we are, simply the age of the universe and everything I've said above suggests we should still see them everywhere, because they'd be impossible to even miss by accident. *if there are aliens that can reach us before at the very least 10 thousand years, we have no way to impose our will over theirs* Not quite. We'd _NEVER_ have a way of standing up to any civ that came even just a thousand years before us. The sooner you start advancing technologically, the sooner you'll have more tech to advance even faster. Meaning that the initial advantage of just a thousand years compounds upon itself to result in an insurmountable difference thousands or hundreds of thousands+ of years down the line. On a long enough time scale, even just a single year of head start results in an insurmountable difference. This means that preparing for potential conflict is not an option. We have to act as if we are alone, which we very well might be, considering the evidence and extrapolations I've talked about. *the "stay hidden" part have already failed* Also not quite. Staying hidden was never an option. If you have a metabolism, I can look at your planet's atmosphere from across the galaxy with a good enough telescope and determine through the makeup of gases that there must be life there. I can then, through measuring the distance, calculate how far along the technological ladder you're likely to be. If you are ahead of me, I can never catch up, no matter what and I have to act accordingly - aka just go about my business expanding and appeal to your better nature, once we're able to talk. And if I'm ahead, you'll never be a threat to me and I can do whatever I want. That does not, btw, mean that I'm necessarily going to genocide you. Outside of randomly being predisposed towards genocide by nature or ideology, I have very few reasons to do anything to you. The cosmos is big and seemingly empty. And if it's not empty, because I've found you relatively close by and must now assume that there are many many other older civs watching my behaviour from every neighbouring galaxy, I best not do anything that may seem reckless or immoral in an objective sense.

[@joem7889]

You did not mention the Great Filter. The most scariest yet most plausible explanation of all.

[@thetonybones]

What’s the Great Filter?

[@theonebman7581]

​@@thetonybonesYear later, but oh welp The idea that every civilization, once advanced enough, has to endure an event of such characteristics and such proportions, it has only two possible outcomes - if the civilization survives or avoids the event, it's destined for eternal greatness; if it doesn't, it's game over - said civilization is wiped out completely. There's also another interpretation that argues great filter events are multiple, and may be inevitable, but they may not outright end the civilization; rather just "reset" it, or collapsing it to such extent that it reverts back hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years technologically and culturally. Common examples of great filter events are everything you can probably already think of - nuclear power, mass extinctions, competition, war, disease, invasions from other alien civilizations, and I'd argue even philosophical approaches and outlooks too; for instance, we're only this advanced because the West and its main spheres of influence in Latin America and parts of Asia believe in ideologies that push and justify progress, but what if there came one day when humanity grew so terrified of its own power, that progress itself became forbidden and we all became Tibetan monks or something?

[@CHiCguitar]

The Dark Ages was called that because of a similar fear of progress.. But from what I understand other parts of the world sort of "picked up the slack" if you will while Europe was busy loving on God and burning heretics at the stake@@theonebman7581

[@nekononiaow]

@@theonebman7581 you forgot climate drift severe enough to make civilization unsustainable through uncontrolled emission of pollutants (carbon dioxyde, in our case). And in our particular case, it seems we are heading straight toward such a great filter.

[@theonebman7581]

@@nekononiaow I'll be real, I sincerely doubt that You're overlooking life and us humans a lot if you think we wouldn't be able to survive our own climate change, considering everything we've been through - it'll suck, but it won't send us to extinction and cause our civilization to collapse On top of that, I at least _wanna_ believe we're getting better at not screwing up the climate and things are starting to "gonna start getting better/less bad"; we're slowly moving out and away of fossil fuels (apart from China, since they release more carbon than the entire rest of the world combined and don't really care), we're fighting back on acidification, habitat destruction and biodiversity destruction, we're about to hit a worldwide population crisis because every day there's less people being born, and the developing world is slowly, well, developing

[@Johnnykara75]

What if this universe is so young that we might be one of the first civilizations in it...?

[@jjm152]

Yup. People generally hate this theory because it's frankly boring, but it's just as likely that we are the most advanced form of life in the universe as any other scenario with super advanced aliens. Hell, the most likely explanation for why we can't make contact with other aliens is actually that you can't get around the light speed problem - again extremely boring as it makes a 10 second long youtube video, but incredibly likely.

[@yushion5804]

Something in the dark : "stop! Don't tell that idiot ..... "

[@ThatGuy-y2c]

There is definitely life on planets and moons all over the universe. I think we are likely among the more advanced species to inhabit the cosmos given how young the universe is and the age of our solar system. If some form of practical interstellar travel is possible (which I doubt), I believe we will be the threat to other species and planets, unfortunately.

[@sourswift]

I mean even within our own solar system there have been signs of water, and some essentials for life, if we found that JUST in our solar system could you imagine the whole Milky Way, or the ENTIRE Universe!

[@slipsonic809]

Yeah I think we're just one of the first intelligent civilizations to form. It's weird to think that maybe in a million years humans will be the ancient super advanced aliens to other solar systems, but maybe...?

[@Johnboy33545]

Your comment is entirely an assertion without evidence. I think there's other life in the Universe but I also think it's silly, at best, to declare definitively. You don't know. Stop pretending you do.

[@ThatGuy-y2c]

@@Johnboy33545 It is impossible for us to be living on the only planet with life in an infinite universe. It would be more likely for there to be no life at all in the universe than for there to be a trillion trillion stars and even more planets and moons, with only one of those bodies inhabited by life. Engage your logical faculties or stay quiet.

[@MrVikingsandra]

I keep thinking they're most probably out there but they're soooo immensely far away we'll never cross paths because it's impossible to travel faster than light and survive. I once heard Brian Cox say he calculated/ speculated there might be 1 or 2 civilizations per galaxy... Loved the video, amazing thought provoking content

[@RandomGamer-qy6ys]

FTL isn’t fiction anymore it’s possible we’re just not quite there

[@apocalypsator6]

All the creatures that met humans were either eaten or made part of their system (dogs, horses, birds in cages etc...) Maybe aliens noticed it and decided not to be matrix batteries.

[@anonymous-rb2sr]

oh nooo, not the poor birds in cages not like birds are a biological machine that exists for the single purpose of eating other living beings to maintain itself, and that countless species of birds have driven countless other species to extinction through overhunting What you ascribe to humans is a universal trait of all life, even ants invented farming several times, the only reason not all animals species farm is because most of them are too stupid to have figured it out, the simsons were right, if the cow could, it would eat you Same for the aliens, they'll give us the same treatment the worms have for the plants, the birds have for the worms, and the humans have for the birds

[@RennieAsh]

They're called _Harbulary_ batteries.

[@michaelparker8657]

Any life forms which can travel between the stars would kick the hell out of us. Game over.

[@dangerfly]

Aliens that solved interstellar travel but still need ANYTHING from us is the most ridiculous idea in the history of ideas. It's like us being able to manipulate genetics to create modern vaccines yet can't manufacture needles to inject people with them. How much sense does that make? Also, we wouldn't be a curiosity to them (really, zoo?) at all since they'd be able to control matter, physics, genetics, simulations, etc to a staggering degree.

[@MrNote-lz7lh]

Yep. Even if they were a peace loving sort the moment they see that we're not they'd wipe us out just to prevent a future danger to their own kind. But I am sure they'd make it fast at least. What would really suck is if sadist aliens found us and decided that nothing would be cooler than to stick us into a simulated hell we're we would be tortured for eternity without even the luxury of dying.

[@dangerfly]

​@@MrNote-lz7lh Uh... how could aliens be peace loving if they'd wipe out an entire civilization just to prevent future danger to themselves? That's the EXACT opposite of peace loving haha...

[@steveshsi7486]

I think the answer to the Fermi paradox might be speed of light travel is impossible and other worlds are too far away.

[@HellHunter00]

Too far to get to but not too far to see(albeit an older version the further away we look). It doesn't explain why we haven't seen any signs other intelligent life that has had hundreds of millions to billions of years to develop.

[@steveshsi7486]

@@HellHunter00 what do you expect to see exactly from a earth sized planet a thousand light years away?

[@Igor-ug1uo]

I agree, but it seems to me that the "paradox" itself is silly. It's based on assumptions upon assumptions upon fantasies. Let's go through the list: 1. Life exists everywhere in the universe. We don't know that, but it makes sense to assume to be true. 2. Difficult lifeforms exist everywhere. It's not obvious at all. 3. Intelligent life (human-like) exists everywhere. 4. These intelligent lifeforms create civilizations. 5. These civilizations have physics-defying sci-fi technology that allows impossible travel and communication.

[@MathMetalMan]

​@@HellHunter00 if you looked at earth from 300,000 light years away today you would have no idea about humans or how advanced we are now. Maybe we have/are already looking at planets with extra terrestrial life but we just don't realise because they have developed in the time since it took their planet's/star's/galaxy's light to reach us 👀 we might already be looking at each other without realising it

[@SunilChhetri-h7w]

​@@HellHunter00No cuz you will be looking to the past cuz we see the things when photons reach us

[@mattt9278]

So the Prime Directive from Star Trek? I can buy that. Don't make contact until a civilization is sufficiently advanced, a common theme in scifi (the Asgard from Star Gate not sharing their technology with lesser races) Great video!

[@StupidusMaximusTheFirst]

This would be the wisest thing for a benevolent civilization to do. There is nothing else really. If they just come here waving hello, we'd probably cause them extreme harm. Could they avoid this? Sure, with a show of force, like getting their interstellar spaceships or whatever it is they got, right in our faces. This on the other hand would totally terrorise people, and even if they mean no harm, the disruption would be so great, who knows what would happen? We'd probably start killing each other, or our civilization would collapse one way or another. Another thing they could do is follow something like the prime directive, but with slow gradual contact here and there. Maybe this is already happening throughout the years. This way, although you do hear stories about such things, you don't really know whether it's fact or fiction, you just set it aside, don't think about it too much, while humanity does get used to the idea slowly. This could be the reason they avoid an official contact, but you do hear stories from random people.

[@johnnydarling8021]

When talking about this subject with others, I often like to bring up the analogy of a primitive tribe on an island. They look out from the island in all directions but only see water going off to the horizon, so they naturally conclude that they are alone, and that their island-tribe is the only one to exist.

[@alvaromneto]

Yes but that doesn't really translate well to the fermi paradox. It leaves out the entirety of the magnitude that is the time that has passed since the big bang happened. If life was really so common as we assume because of the sheer number of candidate planets to have ever existed to support life, just one civilization would be enough to colonize one entire galaxy in a several thousand years (which is a second in universe scale). To go back to your analogy, they should look out from the island and see shipwrecks, tiny boats, or even planes going overhead. Instead, they see absolutely nothing for 13.7 billions of years.

[@chew7656]

do you even know of any primitive tribe that thinks they're alone?

[@johnnydarling8021]

@@alvaromneto no civilization would be able to colonize any galaxy in only thousands of years, UNLESS you invent a Fast-Than-Light (FTL) travel technology, which, as advanced as our civilization is, is still so much science fiction, it would be (almost) indistinguishable from magic. Second, even if there was such a technologically advanced civilization somewhere out there, doesn’t mean they would necessarily be in OUR galaxy, considering how many OTHER galaxies there are. Thirdly, how would we detected such a civilization? (This is the part of the island analogy where they look out to the ocean horizon, and see nothing). Radio waves travel too slow and become weaker as it spreads out in all directions, that it would become unintelligible after a relatively short distance. Any civilization that has mastered FTL travel would have to use FTL communication (possibly with quantum entanglement) which we would have no means of listening in on. I’m not saying they don’t exist. I’m questioning how able are we to detect them. We only recently began to even confirm that there are exoplanets, even though they existed all along. Civilizations at similar technological level as us, would be basically undetectable with our technology. Civilizations at a FTL level of technology would be equally undetectable (how do you even see a ship traveling faster than the speed of light?)

[@Hunne2303]

@@chew7656 there is, to my knowledge one lonely island tribe left over and the govt. prohibits any visitors...for their own sake, that tribe is known to be cannibalistic and apparently does shoot arrows on planes flying low over their turf

[@Hobbiville]

But we have not firmly concluded that we are alone Actually there is great debate, many people are possibilists towards the existence of intelligent life in other planets, and the diffused general idea seems to me that we still don't know

[@SJR_Media_Group]

Thank you for an excellent vantage point to further discuss 'Star People'... If Star People do exist on other worlds, they wouldn't even know we are here until they receive electronic confirmation (Radio, TV, and other electronic emissions) we have only had those for last 100 years or so. Let's say they live 10 light years away. They received electronic confirmation that other civilizations were out there. If they have the technology to travel at 1/10th Light Speed, it would take them 100 years to get here. It is possible they just arrived, or not quite yet. It is possible they have been here for 10 or more years too. Star People would have sent probes, not manned missions to explore Earth. If they are smart enough to travel at 1/10th Light Speed, they are smart enough to send probes with super advanced AI. The probes would act independent of communication with their home planet. Any signal would take 10 years to get there, another 10 years for a reply. Also, if they are that advanced to travel across the Galaxy, they are smart enough to make probes that don't crash at Roswell, get tracked on Radar, be imaged with IR, make noises, or even be visible to our eyes. They certainly would not get recorded on someone's cell phone. Maybe the Star People have come and already left. Maybe they didn't find what they consider to be 'intelligent life'. maybe they survived their own wars and have become peace loving beings. If they see war, famine, greed, etc here, it is recognized as non-intelligence. Maybe their probes came, took some samples (air, water, soil, dna) and then left. Maybe they plan on returning 1,000 years from now to see if we destroyed ourselves, or like them, became a peace loving species. What do you think ???

[@hansburch3700]

Es scheint so, dass gerade verschiedene hochentwickelte Ausserirdische sich auf der Erde auswirken. Wir haben das Problem uns zwischen ihnen zu entscheiden.

[@SJR_Media_Group]

@@hansburch3700 Danke für deinen Kommentar. Die Zeit wird zeigen, ob wir Besucher von einem anderen Planeten bekommen. Ich bin mir nicht sicher, wie unsere Reaktion sein wird, wenn das passiert. Translation: Thanks for your comment. Time will tell if we get visitors from another planet. I'm not sure what our reaction will be if that happens.

[@chrismanuel9768]

I've always laughed when people say "humans are the only life we've found in the universe". Excuse me but no, there are MILLIONS of species on this planet. So we know that not only can life evolve in the right conditions, but it can evolve explosively

[@terenzo50]

My solution is simply that we're not as interesting as we think we are.

[@Litephaze2000]

Well, Alex… I wish the world had just a few more of you around here! You are outright sensible, intelligent, none of this could go on and on! Great work as always! Signed, Litephaze.

[@adamlindfors5082]

It think the most probable answer is that its just rare for life to form and even more rare for intelligent life that builds technology to evolve.

[@RJB_TV]

it took life on earth billions of years to get to the point it is at now. Given the age of the universe there might be life that is just starting its multi billion year process of evolution. And that would be impossible to discover for another billion years.

[@johannaverplank4858]

As we learn more and more about how unique our planet actually is, I think there's just not as much intelligent life in the universe as we once hoped. If advanced alien species exist or existed, we are simply too separated by deep space and time to be able to detect and communicate with one another.

[@OriginalDonutposse]

This is literally the opposite of what science is finding out about our planet and the universe through direct observation right now.

[@johannaverplank4858]

@@OriginalDonutposse I disagree. Yes, there are billions of similar suns like ours in our galaxy, however, planets like ours in just the right spot with a large moon and a Jupiter sized planet protecting that planet have yet to be found. Not to mention all the other very specific circumstances scientists believe led to life, and the very very very specific circumstances that lead to intelligent life. It seems the more scientists learn about the universe the more the anthropic principle seems to be true rather than the Copernican principle. There is a simple explanation to the Fermi paradox, we just don't know it yet. That's what makes sense to me. Of course I could be completely wrong. I hope I am and the explanation is more exiting! 😁

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

@@OriginalDonutposse that's not rally what's happening. it's simply insanely difficult to detect earth sized planets. And it's even more difficult to detect biomarkers on said planets. But what we have found out is, that there is a insane amount of planets. basically every star also has planets.

[@richardcoughlin8931]

The simplest answer to the Fermi paradox is that the universe is just too big and too old to allow for meaningful communication between civilizations on different planets. Through persistence and a lot of luck SETI or other astronomical programs might catch some sign of intelligent life on a distant planet, but in all probability it will be hundreds or thousands or millions of light years away and so there would be no point in attempting to respond even if we chose to.

[@theonebman7581]

I think this is my favourite explanation next to the Great Filter/Filters tbh We really underestimate how vastly, mindbogginly insanely huge the universe and its distances truly are, as well as our own perception of time - we've been around by barely 90,000 years, our societies and civilizations the way we understand them by barely 12,000, and we act like we'll still be alive to experience the death of our sun

[@maraudostrogoth747]

Fermi didn't question the existence of aliens. He pretty much assumed it. His question was with regards to whether timely interstellar travel was possible.

[@RedRocket4000]

Yes the idea the light speed limitation can't be solved is a depressing solution to the Fermi question but one that can't be ignored.

[@pagenotfound7248]

It is a statistical improbability that other intelligent life doesn't exist

[@robinhooper7702]

This is one of your best presentations. Thank You.

[@jeremybalzarini279]

Wow, you raise really great points! Never thought aliens, if monitoring us, would want us to learn the importance of cooperation before revealing themselves.

[@leysont]

Honestly I don't think this would be a good idea for a highly advanced civilisation if they actually care about us. What if we destroy ourselves? What if a Nazi-like state eradicates all human genetic, cultural, linguistic and religious variation? Our species would never be able to recover from that. If I were a super-intelligent civ observing us I would intervene to stop such things.

[@NafanyaZX]

Sigh. Naive thinking. Cooperation is a trait of an intelligent species, but so is individualism, promising opposing goals and views. Cooperation is not a virtue. It is merely one of the possible means towards achieving a goal with higher efficiency. But so are betrayal, robbery and exploitation, etc. Depending on the circumstances, a person may employ a multitude of strategies throughout life. Especially if outnumbered. Intelligence means you are not locked into a single pattern. A significantly more advanced civilization waiting for us to choose cooperation, sounds like benevolent gods waiting for us to become benevolent gods. What for? We are incapable of aiding them in their goals. But we sure are a ressource, which can be exploited. As biological machines, at the very least we can expect to be reprogrammed. I see no point in them waiting for us to catch up, if they can get there instantly.

[@oatmealman1586]

@@NafanyaZX yo Socrates, maybe they don't want us to kill them.

[@somedudeok1451]

But why would they care if we are cooperative? Nothing we could do could ever be a threat to an advanced interstellar civ. They can basically do whatever they want. They do not need our cooperation. The only reason they'd have to tamper with our cooperativeness is, if their ideology demands it, but that assuming that they have such an ideology - or that they even have any ideology - is relatively far fetched. I find Astrum's "solutions" for the fermi paradox all flawed in at least one significant way.

[@whitekaren7742]

@@NafanyaZX are you 12 years old? your low-resolution thinking shows your immaturity son.

[@atty1337]

Really enjoyed this video. Thank you for this!

[@viletreeve9120]

What if the communication signals are being blocked and erased? If many intelligent life forms have existed and communicated in the past perhaps many wars have already happened between planets so the most advanced beings have decided to keep the lesser developed life forms from communicating until they're ready to join an intergalactic community.

[@Pit_Lord]

Looking up at the sky and realizing that every star you see could have died millions of years ago and you would never know it is a great way to gain perspective. They’re just echoes across a fabric we can’t even perceive.

[@smileyp4535]

I never understood the "they don't want to talk to us, would you talk to an ant?" Uhh yeah I would if I could, there's so much biologists and scientists could learn by being able to speak to animals and bugs, and as such I see no reason why higher level beings would be unwilling as a species and to an individual to speak with us. It makes no sense

[@TheLastStarfighter77]

Simply brilliant Alex! Fantastic analogy 🏆

[@yarngod]

Beautiful! We can have a value for them as a nice experiment too. Triple blind:). Also the more independent teams you have working on developing something the more chance you will find an excellent solution.

[@MajorTomFisher]

In our society, technology turned us all into introverts, so it seems plausible that aliens would have the same problem

[@esteewilson5482]

@@Jay-cf6dz lol

[@anneeq008]

I don't totally believe that. Even NOW in this thread, and on social media we all have shorter distances of communication and more of an ability to be opinionated. We're introverted in the sense that we're less reliable on physical social interactions. But you can argue that technology has made us far deeper and more widely social

[@irchonite1953]

This comment is just completely wrong and pessimistic

[@aakhthuu]

Are you suggesting that aliens are busy watching porn. That might explain what goes on in abductions.

[@billwhite9333]

Technology has brought almost the entirety of the planet together via social media alone. This comment should not have so many likes

[@mr.d.rektorstudios]

"Aliens would look at us like how we look at bugs" like you've never seen anyone be fascinated by watching a bug doing something, or want to talk to them just to know what they know

[@LehtusBphree2flyFPV]

This is the most intuitive incredible channel I've ever experienced

[@milodemoray]

We have explored what type of motivations alien beings might have, but this is based on what we know of ourselves. What I propose is another little piece, "any alien civilization who are capable of the technology and the determination to cross the vast expanses of space, may actually ask "are they worth the trouble?"

[@hansburch3700]

Ein Planet wie die Erde ist äusserst selten, niemand wird sich die Gelegenheit entgehen lassen. Durchschnittlich bewohnte Planeten sind vergleichbar dem Mars.

[@theonebman7581]

Did the Europeans ask themselves that when arriving in the New World, right after embarking on the biggest and most riskiest journey ever across the unknown and being technologically advanced to carry such plans in the first place?

[@RememberTheChase]

The last one was just describing star fleet in star trek 🖖👌 prime directive

[@Space_Rebel]

Yep.

[@pn2543]

people on DMT report multiple ET contacts but for some reason are ignored by physicists, it might be worth taking seriously given that the nonlocality of consciousness implies the superfluousity of radio communication

[@Hunne2303]

I tried that once. And also saw that fabled cat (without having read about that particular curiosity), had an OOB experience too, which was very weird...didn´t go as far as otherworldly dimensions, ETs and whatnots, because...to be honest, that upcoming was the most intense thing I have ever put myself through (yeah, had to smoke infused herbs in a bong, perhaps not the best way to do it)...just scary, like being washed away by a huge wave or like being straped to the nose of a rocket going full blast through the lower atmosphere. Still have a lifetime supply but I doubt I´ll touch that anytime soon.

[@quinnperro1128]

"people on hallucinogenic drugs are not having their hallucinations taken seriously"

[@EffectiveMartialArts]

Great perspective about cooperation. Would be interesting to explore as well this possible solution to the Fermi paradox, which is arguably the simplest: maybe we’re just too far. Considering the mind-boggeling distances between stars and the comparatively slow speed of light, couppled with the massive technological challenges linked to achieving even of fraction of c, it might very well be nearly impossible to communicate effectively, let alone travel between stars-at least for biological beings with short lifespans such as us. Would love to hear your thoughts on this in another video. Thanks for sharing 🙏 - Patrick

[@tylerheard3982]

Another fantastic video, and I’m actually now pretty interested in that Henson Razer 😅

[@pokeybit]

Hard to find part one without you creating playlists for us.

[@rxlfe7177]

I think we're not seeing them because the universe is huge. we haven't seen the bulk of our galaxy and all the planets in it. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more human type species in the universe that we'll never know about. I also don't think they choose not to communicate with us for some existential reason, they don't know we exist and why would they come here when there are so many planets in our galaxy, some a lot more interesting imo. I hope we find someone tho I'm down for some galactic drama

[@theodoreroberts3407]

What if what we consider life is too narrow. What if they're communicating right now and we don't even know how to receive it, let alone how to understand them.

[@saucevc8353]

There are other ways. Why haven't we seen a single Dyson sphere or detected the light from a relativistic engine? Surely we're not the only species to have thought of these ideas?

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

@@saucevc8353 we only checked a very small number of stars for that. the number of stars is insanely big.

[@TheDanSebastian]

Such beautiful content and ideas. This makes me happy and hopeful. Thank you!

[@garylcamp]

Nice. Another reason for no contact is 2 fold. 1. It may be there is no way to move faster than light, which just limits travel or even communication. 2. Life just does not form that often so any 2 species will be, on average, too far apart to meet. Note that we might be at a point similar to the situation of electronics. We are so used to transistors getting smaller that we have trouble accepting the truth. We can't make transistors smaller than the atoms we make them with. Similarly, we may be near the end of the road of scientific discovery allowing us to keep expanding.

[@NthnLikeCodeine]

i have to ask, why is the theory of aliens being less advance so unexplored? maybe we're the ones that otrher civilizations will be wondering about. It's far off and a small chance but considering every other alien life we've found are microorganisms. Humans may truly just be the first ones to get past the great filter.

[@stephenfreeman7616]

I talk to the insects in my garden, especially the beneficial ones like lady bugs, praying mantis and bees. And I talk to the plants too. However, much like our search for extraterrestrial intelligence, nothing ever talks back.

[@hansburch3700]

Meine Insekten summen wenigstens zurück.

[@RennieAsh]

Yes, but some insects are considered a threat. Eg invasive wasps or certain ants and spiders. Definitely something to consider

[@terrylambert8149]

You aren't looking for signs of life, you are looking for signs of technology.

[@Hovenn]

facts

[@iainmair485]

Signs of technology are signs of life.

[@paulollerhead941]

Signs of technology is only a sign that life existed once. It may well have died out billions of years ago. Therefore signs of technology may be just signs of technology.

[@AstaryuuGaming]

This makes sense: if I remember correctly, we actually have already found evidence of exoplanetary life. However, we have not found evidence of sentient exoplanetary life, hence the Fermi Paradox. Plus, if we find evidence of a hyper-advanced civilization that has since been destroyed, we still can easily say we are not alone, because that would immediately prove that we are in no way a fluke - neither biologically nor technologically - and thus odds would be that somewhere there is a sentient species that hasn't destroyed itself.

[@BMXaster]

Technosignatures are signs of intelligent life, either alive, or long dead but more likely the first. Biosignatures could be signs of life in general, intelligent and non-intelligent, aswell as not a lifeform afterall. It could just be a chemical reaction or a protein we haven't yet detected. It could be alien flora, eg doing photosynthesis. If you bet for it to be life, it's way more likely that it has to still be there.

[@bidet1515]

Every topic about fermi paradox always dodge one posibility ; May be it's just impossible to travel beyond our star . So as no species in the universe are able to travel beyond his star, that's why we never see them.

[@Rhiwwers]

Solution to the Fermi paradox: aliens might be human too, I like that. Also, just a little correction. Viking culture at home was largely oriented towards fertility worship. Raiding was a long held tradition going back to the bronze ages, that sought to focus the winter food supplies on women and children, and bring to back riches and slaves to keep the society running. The image of vikings as a solely violence-worshipping culture (like the aztecs are portrayed too) was created by christian monks and kept alive later by Wagner, nazis and other people capitalizing off it, when really raiding was a well organized economic necessity. :) generally the vikings actually sought to trade first and strike second. Lindisfarne was an unprecidented event, which is why it takes up so much space in the litterature. culture is infinitely diverse, especially polytheistic non-book-religious ones! (The sagas, our earliest written account dates from the 1200’s, and is also a christian culture product, despite the late christening of Iceland.)

[@garbagedaycleveland]

Looking forward to Astrum videos is the only TV show I look forward to haha

[@hausy]

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and do your utmost not to antagonize. The details will have to be figured out on the fly because we can’t know every possibility.

[@bd1435]

Aliens have encountered other civilizations like ours and it probably didn't turn out great, so they're super reluctant to interact.

[@Berkeloid0]

Well every time a human civilisation has encountered one that was less advanced it never ended well for the less advanced civilisation, so it is no doubt in our best interests if they don't contact us until we're closer to their level.

[@SigvaldtheMagnificentPrince]

@@Berkeloid0 Sentinel island, That tribe is left alone and they aren't extinct, There are probably some others that haven't had things end bad.

[@Berkeloid0]

@@SigvaldtheMagnificentPrince The key there being "left alone". There may be some who ended up fine, but the vast majority throughout history who weren't left alone seemed to regret it.

[@Muuip]

Amazing presentation! Much appreciated!👍

[@petekwando]

Well considered points. It may seem simplistic, but the more I think about it, something along the lines of a Prime Directive seems plausible: hands off until we try to leave our solar system, and then we get first contact, and a lecture on the rules of the road.

[@mariadaluzmoutinho5701]

Incrível vídeo!! Mesmo as diferencas, mesmo que tivessem permitido a evolução de várias formas de vida ...essas formas não podem ser muito diferentes e muito mais especiais que nós?!! Sabemos que com o passar do tempo o Universo desenvolveu estruturas cada vez mais complexas e no mais complexo encontram-se seres inteligentes e suas construções conceptuais ...não poderiam existir sem o surgimento de estruturas com formas de vida simples e vida mais organizada que a nossa os Extraterrestres com ideias pré concebidas talvez se tornem um obstáculo ...a história da vida na Terra parece tão cheia de acontecimentos casuais...que a probabilidade de o mesmo ocorrer noutros mundos parece remota...Se calhar são mais inteligentes e ao observarem-nos acham-nos rudimentares porque nos andamos aqui a matar uns aos numa violência enorme e não somos Unidos ...

[@JessiBear]

The problem with the search for life is: Would we even recognize life if we found it? Would we consider a planet wide mycelium with a hive mind, intelligent life, when there is no possibility of communication?

[@dcfromthev]

@@InterviewsWithTheAncients I think they meant no possibility of communicating with humans.

[@niclikescakes]

@@InterviewsWithTheAncients Gonna have to stop you right there, buddy ol' pal.

[@niclikescakes]

@@InterviewsWithTheAncients "Evidence" is losing its meaning. This is basically saying "Trust me, bro." but with more channel advertising.

[@misstakenbelief]

100%. Do you know how many biologists, lab scientists, fungiculturalists, microbiologists, etc. value and respect all forms of life? We're not stupid: Fungi are amazing lifeforms. The people looking for life elsewhere are the people who would recognize life if we found it, and they're the ones who would respect it the same as our own.

[@somedudeok1451]

Why would a mycelium species powerful enough to dominate a planet be incapable of communication? You don't need mouths in order to communicate. All you need is some way to detect electromagnetic radiation and a way to create it yourself - and they will have both, considering how inherently useful that ability or tech is. And even if it is not intelligent life, we could spot it by simply looking at the planetary atmosphere with a good telescope and determine the make up of that atmosphere. If we see a disproportionate amount of gases that are unlikely or impossible to form naturally, then we know there is life there.

[@cyrusaalborg]

If aliens discover a " pale blue dot " and they are superior to humans and can travel ,they will use earth as holiday destination , probably get rid of almost all humankind and will put the rest in circus or zoo for their entertainment. Love this channel

[@ryannygard3661]

Without faster than light travel it would take hundreds of years for them to visit us, it would be surprising anything would take a vacation with that long of a travel time. It's possible faster than light travel is just completely impossible.

[@youtubestudiosucks978]

@@ryannygard3661 wormholes are faster then light. Just travel using a wormhole you've tested out that doesnt just connect you to the inside of a random blackhole like most of them do.

[@theramplocal]

For all we know they have cameras /eyes on us 24/7. Like the Truman show but way more dumb people

[@swissbiggy]

Aliens would not need to get rid of us. We can do this perfectly by ourselves, as we do witness every day. ✌

[@istvansipos9940]

if they are capable of interstellar travel, they are more than capable to create any holiday destination in virtual reality. An alien citizen won't spend some decades or centuries to fly here for a vacation. They just go home and enter the virtual world they fancy that day. Then comes "another day at the office", then maybe a completely different virtual world. just have a look at mankind: even we (relatively primitive apes) are way closer to enjoyable virtual worlds than to interstellar travel. And if we discovered a perfectly gorgeous holiday island somewhere, we would not spend a year flying there, let alone decades or centuries.

[@cillianennis9921]

My favorite answer is just that its really hard to decode another races radio waves after its travelled such a long distance & is likely just another part of the cosmic background.

[@z00zify]

In all videos about the Fermi paradox, I miss what is the most probable cause to me: alien civilizations exist, but they are scarce and too far away. Also, the fact that we don't know of any civilization that has expanded through the galaxy proves that faster-than-light travel is indeed impossible.

[@evita9284]

After watching so many Marvel films of aliens speaking English, I'm convinced that we are safe as the British must have colonised the universe and made everyone speak English as part of a Universal British Empire.

[@nalanl]

The likelihood that aliens know we're on earth is incredibly remote. And if they were close enough to know, it's unlikely they'd bother coming to visit. The milky-way galaxy is over 100k light years across... It would take soooooo long to get here. Is earth really worth it?

[@HeavyMetalGamingHD]

The milky way is so incredibly big, that it would imo allow for multiple intelligent species, that simply don't know of each other.

[@DrumToTheBassWoop]

We need mass effect relays basically.

[@SalariaStudios]

Rule 1:Shoot or be shot Rule 2:Galaxy goes to the strong and never the weak Rule 3: always expect that your contact follows the same two rules.

[@mahdiasnaashari5119]

Gambling my spirit by materialistic future !! It was my speech topic just half an hour ago. Such a sincronisty!!❤

[@Darth_Insidious]

The Fermi Paradox can't be "solved" until we find the aliens. This is just another guess at what we might find.

[@lightningsparx5786]

I'd like to think an Alien Civilization whom has achieved interstellar travel would have moved passed the human mindset of "conquest" and would instead want to learn about our culture over taking the planet for resources. Considering the resources on Earth would be abundant throughout the universe.

[@daniell5740]

That’s stupid all of life cares only about conquest/food/water/rare things