New Take on the Fermi Paradox

Glenn,

You seem to simultaneously hold these two:

1) We know there is no life elsewhere.

2) It is reasonable to look for life elsewhere.

Shouldn’t you say it would be insane to look for something we ‘know doesn’t exist’?

Post 21

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 8:58pm

Matt,

The Nick Bostrum article is interesting. I'm reminded of one concept (forgot the source, sorry) to the effect that as part of the latest "big bang" generation, any other intelligent lifeforms out there may well be no further along that we are technologically, and that we are much more likely to discover them once we, ourselves, have developed sufficient technologies to explore distant galaxies. In such instance, both their 'reach' and ours would finally overlap.

Another thought, looking at the time scales for developing a civilization of explorers, and the time scales involved in space travel, viable space exploring civilizations may have flourished and then failed long before we started looking, or may flourish long after ours has failed - never existing in the same time span, manageable communication distance.

Both seem quite reasonable possibilities, by way of explaining the lack of extra-terrestrial contact.

Personally, I doubt we've ever been 'visited'. As Carl Sagan suggested, flying saucers and alien abductions are just the latest version of angels and demons - just updates on the old mythologies.

Yet I still love a good hard sci-fi tale.

jt

Post 22

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 9:01am

Jon,
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” Thanks for the compliment. : )

Seriously, you're right to point this out. I was sloppy in saying at one point that we "know" there is no intelligent life beyond the earth and at another saying that the proposition "there is intelligent life beyond the earth" is arbitrary. I'm going to stick with the latter and, to the person who claims that intelligent life exists beyond the earth, I going to, following Peikoff, "dismiss his claim without argumentation, because in this situation argument would be futile."

But, if he wants to search for evidence, because he finds the Drake-equation-like arguments convincing, fine. I personally don't find these arguments convincing because it is impossible to assign probabilities to processes that we don't even understand. Scientists are just now on the brink of creating "life" from scratch in the laboratory. (See here.) This is in a controlled environment; how do you assign a probability to the creation of life in the primordial soup?

Thanks,
Glenn

Post 23

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 7:20pm

Glenn,

Rand said, (paraphrasing,) that “’Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,’ according to a very little mind; Emerson.”

Thanks for the conversation!

Edit:
I hope that came across right, Glenn. I only wanted to quote something that was like your quote, and to genuinely thank you for the back and forth.

(Edited by Jon Letendre on 12/27, 10:36pm)

Post 24

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 8:59pm

We can assume that any reasonably stable water ocean with a sufficient organic component and a source of free energy will give rise to celullar life. Fatty acids dissolved in water spontaneously form micelles. Foam and soap bubbles are such micelles. Such foams form naturally at the sea surface. As bubbles grow, they divide spontaneously. Any child who has blown bubbles knows this.

Cell division is a spontaneous pre-biotic phenomenon

Life did not arise from free floating self-reproducing DNA-like molecules, but from bubbles who existence in non-living organic chemistry is well attested and which occur spontaneously. Bubbles which become more stable due to concentrations of salts internally will easily evolve into cells given a very short period of time geologically. Read Stuart Kauffman.

We can assume that life arises as a matter of course in oceans.

Of course, this is most likely bacterial life. The greatest evolutionary development on earth prior to intelligence was meiotic reproduction. This may be a historical accident. Without meiotic sexual reproduction, it is quite unlikely that there would be multicellularity. Fossils have been found in the oldest sedimentary rocks on earth. But multicellular life took 4 billion years to evolve. That is one third of the age of the universe.

It may be the case that multicellular life is rare. Intelligence took another half billion years to evolve. Intelligence seems likely once multicellularity evolves, but it takes time and could easily be wiped out by cosmic disasters which would exterminate all but bacterial life.

Also, Sol is a third generation star. Out system has enough carbon and other heavy elements to support life because our system is made up of the remnants of two prior cycles of supernovae. Our system is particularly metal-rich compared to most. Less metal-rich systems may have stars and gas giants. Rocky worlds may not evolve, and hence such systems likely lack oceans.

We may be among the first of systems to have enough heavy elements to develop life. We may be one of the few systems in which multicellularity evolved, and where it was not repeatedly extinguished by collisions and nearby supernovae radiation disasters.

We can be certain life exists elsewhere.

We can believe that systems like ours will develop intelligent life if they develop and continue to sustain multicellular life.

Unless we kill ourselves, we may soon know how common small metal-rich worlds like ours are.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/28, 10:13am)

Post 25

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 7:03am

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080610083909AAWNjBd

Post 26

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 8:02am

Ted,

Informative post, as usual.

jt

Post 27

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 10:53am

“Just because something is possible doesn't mean it happened.”

When it comes to our creation, the opposite is true; just because it happened means it is possible.

For a species that once did not exist, we sure do make up alot of parochial rules trying to qualify our own existence.

We exist, we once did not; we were created. Our creation is no more at issue than our existence. "By what" , be it cold process or intelligence, is way above the paygrade of the merely created to qualify. "By what" is by whatever actually did create us, and we are no more able to post-qualify our creator as 'creator enough' than we can qualify our own existence out of existence.

At the very least, we were created by the Universe, as it is.

So, on the scoreboard of logic, there is objective evidence of at least one form of a creator, and that is, the Universe, as it is. There is no question about the existence of our 'creator', only of its form. The only overwhelming evidence we have at hand is, the universe as it is. Not miracle enough? Moot, we're here.

A singularity at which we throw our many jarring 'Rules for God/Creator.' Amazing. As if the merely created were advertising to have some job position filled,"our creator."

Must perform miracles. Must have 'willed' us into being. And so on. No end to the illogic parade when discussing 'Rules for God/Creator", as offered up by the newly created.

Or else what? Or else we were not created? We always existed? We were inevitable? We are the first instances of 'intelligence' in this universe, but that which created both us and all we create was not 'intelligent?' More self-serving parochial rules. I don't think the objective universe gives a rats ass if we johnny come latelys call it intelligence all the way down, or cold process all the way up and beyond, it is is what it is.

Oddness happens around singularities, including, the attempts to explain them.

Imagine two Incas long ago, staring out at the Pacific ocean, arguing against the folly of looking for other civilizations. Would their debate have mattered, no matter what they had concluded?

If there is another technologically advanced civilization close enough in space and time, then our civilization will experience its 3D growth wave blowing by us. If not, then not. If that isn't us on either side of that cultural interface, if it isn't naked sweaty apes freshly groomed and teched up, then it will be some other solution in this massively parallel petri dish/quantumm computer.

What we have long already imagined, others might have long actually done. I see no evidence that the Universe, as it is, gives a rats ass if it is naked sweaty apes that participate in such a border experience, no matter what side of such an interface they stand.

I doubt, if we are the new Incas in that collision of civilizations, that the new Space Spaniards will be much impressed by our tales of past conflict on our 2D surface growth paradigm, nor will the new new Space Spaniards be much impressed by past tales of conquest of the planet of the naked sweaty apes.

Why would we expect our role as the new Incas to go any better than the last?

regards,
Frediano

Post 28

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 11:08am

So, if I may paraphrase, you don't give a rat's ass about sweaty apes?

Post 29

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 11:48am

Jon,
Understood and appreciated.
Thanks,
Glenn

Post 30

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 12:14pm

"We can be certain life exists elsewhere."

I agree.

Given:
1. Our sun seems to be a rather ordinary, common star.
2. Our galaxy contains >100 billion stars
3. There are >100 billion galaxies.

If the conditions that are required so life can evolve to intelligence happen only once in one galaxy out of a million galaxies then there must be tens of thousands of instances where this has happened in the universe. If it happens this rarely the likelihood of any of these intelligent races being able to detect another is virtually nil.

Post 31

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 2:45pm

To create implies intelligence - it is something humans, for instance, do... but we are not created, any more than planets - to come into being by a natural process is not to be created... to say otherwise falls into the mystic mentality, however much might be denied...

[it is why, for instance, I do not say an artist 'selectively recreates...' as that implies a prior creation - but rather 're-presents'...]

Post 32

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 3:04pm

Just for clarification, my original purpose in this thread was an examination of the Fermi Paradox, and one possible answer for it.

My suggested answer is that it has to do with the deliberate structuring of the universe by the real intelligences who actually manage to survive the collapse into a near-singularity and re-emerge on the other side in a new Big Bang. This sub-universe may be deliberately structured NOT to promote the development of intelligence, apart from this limited set, as there may be a limited pie at the end. Only so many can fit in the "lifeboat."

A problem which I expected to encounter in this discussion has not actually surfaced, which I count as a positive. Namely, the purely linguistic difficulty that many objectivists have voiced over the years in the form of "how silly to speak of other universes, which can be immediately discounted by the fact that the term universe means, literally, everything that exists."

Of course, this is not the terminology that is actually in use by most physicists, which assumes that everything that we perceive (so far) is part of the sub-universe that started with the Big Bang. The issue of other Big Bangs and other sub-universes is still at the stage of hypotheticals, but most physicists would agree that it is highly unlikely that our Big Bang is unique in the metaverse, but rather is probably so far away from any other sub-universes that neither we nor any of our descendents in the effective lifespan of this sub-universe will ever have any chance to interact with them.

Post 33

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 3:38pm

I answered your question scientifically, twice, without reference to conspiracy theories.

Post 34

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 3:40pm

Robert,

I like your approach to the word "create" but I'm not sure it isn't drawing the noose too tight.
----------

I pulled this from a web dictionary:
1. make something: to bring something into existence
2. give rise to something: to result in something or make something happen
-----------

I put water in an ice cube tray to create ice cubes. Yes, I'm an intelligent being, but the creation of the ice was done by cold. Cold weather creates icy streets. The hurricane created problems for everyone.

I would suggest that something that exists (some aspect of reality), that was created (a skyscraper created by man, or a mountain created by plate tectonics, or a woman created initially by her parents, then finished by the accidents of time and her chosen character)... and then the artist re-creates that reality.

Post 35

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 3:44pm

Cold causes ice. Men create icecubes.

In this debate, creation is a loaded term, and Robert's distinction is proper.

Post 36

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 3:50pm

I like the distinction. And, yes, creation is a loaded term thanks to the religious views of cosmology. But what is the logic, the reasoning, that makes that distinction so? Just saying that only intelligence can "create" seems arbitrary.

There are two contexts here - in the thread it's more about cosmology, but Robert referred to art - and to Rand's definition of art. I would never use the word 'create' in a discussion of the universe (loaded term), but I wouldn't hesitate use Rand's definition of art (no implication of creationism).
(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 12/28, 3:54pm)

Post 37

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 4:48pm

Exactly, because art has a creator. The word, by usage, implies an agent.

Post 38

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 5:46pm

"To create implies intelligence - it is something humans, for instance, do... but we are not created, any more than planets - to come into being by a natural process is not to be created... to say otherwise falls into the mystic mentality, however much might be denied..."

i.e., "Rules for our Creation, offered by the merely created".

You apparently have a rule for creation that requires willful creation. So be it, start your own religion, then pretend it is not a religion.

For all I know, we were created by the universe, as it is, cold process. That is still creation. We did not always exist, our existence in time and space was preceded by our absence, we thereforce came into creation, ie, were created. I've not limited my definition of created to willfull creation, simply the fact of our once non-existence. If you have evidence suggesting our omnipotent existence, be the first and present it.

Whatever we humans create has in fact been created by whatever created us. If we are intelligent, and creation is the qualifying characteristic, then so is our creator, whatever it is. If that is cold process, then that is cold process, and .. so are we; it is what it is, the Universe is what it is.

If what we are is cold process, then so be it. There is an odd symmetry, when it comes to accusations of mysticism; if my belief in the evidence of cold process in the universe as my creator makes me a 'mystic,' then what is the quaint parochial belief that humans are other than cold process?

The only evidence that exists supports cold process, all the way down, and all the way up. The rest is indeed all about souls and mysticism and parochial rules intended to preserve the local brand.

We're told there could be no first willfull creator, because then who willfully created the first willfull creator? That's practically a proof of some kind, until it is pointed out that, there could be no first cold process, because then what cold process created the first cold process? Singularities are messy.

If neither first willfull creator, nor first cold process, could possibly exist, then what? Because in fact, we're here, and once were not.

So, around this singularity we build our 'rules for our creator' -- as if we could legislate our own existence.

reguarda,
Frediano

Post 39

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 5:52pm