Given a recent USA headline about how the new crop of incoming freshmen college students can't even read well enough to read a complete sentence, I had a sudden burst of inspiration. I believe I have solved a long-standing scientific problem.

It's the Fermi paradox: given how we think intelligent life evolved from sterile chemicals on a primordial Earth, and that there are billions of planets capable of the same sort of process, even if a tiny proportion of those potential sources did go on to bring forth intelligent life, there should be many - thousands, maybe millions - that *did* give rise to intelligent life.

The paradox is, given all these intelligent species out there, why have we heard from precisely zero of them?

There are lots of theories as to why this is. The most pessimistic ones tend to say that intelligent life inevitably does something to eliminate itself, (geologically) soon after becoming intelligent, so they aren't around long enough for them to send messages, or they do so for such a tiny window of time that it doesn't overlap with *our* tiny window. Causes: nuclear war, #environmental #catastrophe, etc.

I now believe that it's simpler: a society of intelligent life eventually invents #LLMs / "AI", and then deskills itself so rapidly in a race to the bottom of the effort-skill curve that they no longer exist, or at least not at a level to be capable of sending messages to us.

We're doing it now.

#AI #life #Fermi #FermiParadox #intelligence #wink

Cientistas da SETI reavaliam o Fermi Paradox, que questiona a falta de evidências de vida extraterrestre no vasto universo. As análises visam esclarecer premissas e críticas, além de explorar propostas contemporâneas e o impacto das novas tecnologias na pesquisa.

🔗 https://omniletters.com/fermi-paradox-reavaliado-seti/

#fermiparadox #vidaextraterrestre #seti #cienciadaluza #tecnologiasemergentes

A galactic network of alien civilisations sharing images of their pets, nothing else....

#SETI #FermiParadox

I was watching Ms Hossenfelder's latest on the Fermi paradox.

I think that a couple of factors are missing from the Drake equation. It seems to me that there are some significant hurdles that an advanced civilisation needs to overcome for them to be visible to us.

We have been assuming that we would see their electromagnetic emissions. This would be true if they were space faring, as its the only way to communicate between worlds (or even moons). Without space travel most communications would be via point to point connections, such as fibre optics, as there is not enough bandwidth in EM for the ubiquitous communications that we currently enjoy.

Two scenarios that would prevent space travel by an advanced civilisation are "water worlds" and "super Earths".

Developing technology might be possible on a water world via the use of enzymes rather than fire, but space travel would seem to be a big ask.

For planets that are just a bit bigger than Earth (higher g) the rocket equation would make getting to orbit infeasible.

It seems to me that Earth might be rather special by having enough mass to hold its atmosphere, but still allow rockets to get into orbit; while also having both large oceans and dry land.

#FermiParadox #DrakeEquation