Tom Mangnall
Jim SalterThis is the best take on Fermi's Paradox that I've ever seen.
Charlie O’Hara@jimsalter I’ve always assumed that intelligent life is so rare that it appears only once every few galaxies. There’s just no way for any species to communicate at that distance, let alone to traverse the distance at sublight. Each one truly, truly alone. 😭
@awfulwoman if you assume that becoming technological doesn't extend the likely lifespan of a species--which seems extremely likely--the odds of us existing at precisely the right time to intercept another intelligent species' radio noise even WITHIN the galaxy are pretty damn remote.
Even crocodiles would be wildly unlikely to have been around to intercept such a brief window, and it seems VERY unlikely that we'll make it to a single million years of tech, let alone hundreds of millions.
@jimsalter mate, you’re talking to someone who read Cosmos cover to cover when she was 8. 😂
@awfulwoman me too, but I was WILDLY more optimistic about practical FTL travel back then. I didn't really understand why Fermi's Paradox *isn't* a paradox at all until sometime in my early thirties, IIRC.
Cassandrich@jimsalter @awfulwoman I am absolutely optimistic about FTL and that's why I accept that it's not possible.
Impossibility of fascism ruling the entire universe or even multiple star systems is the most wonderful thing possible.
Irenes (many)@dalias @awfulwoman it's essentially impossible for fascism to rule the one planet we already have, for that matter. They can't get rid of us any more than we can get rid of them. Humans try All The Things, both good and bad. It's hard wired into the design.
It depresses me that the fight against fascism can never be won once and for all, but it's a relief that it can never be LOST once and for all either.
@jimsalter yeah, similar. I used to be sad that I’d never live to see the golden age of humanity. Now I’m just glad I won’t be around to see the end of it.
toooobeeee 
cliffordheath@jimsalter @awfulwoman Extend? Technology is precisely what *ends* planets, or rather, civilisation is, because its primary role is to exponentially accelerate resource depletion.
@cliffordheath @awfulwoman I don't disagree. Now. Thirty years ago, I would have argued rather vociferously otherwise, and I suspect at LEAST a plurality, if not an outright majority, of our species still would.
@jimsalter @awfulwoman The depressing thing is realising that it couldn't be otherwise, on any planet. Evolution exists because selection itself favours any species that's better able to utilise (dissipate) the available resources and energy flows. This is a tide which cannot be turned
@cliffordheath @awfulwoman "cannot" be turned might be a little too strong. Ever read The Mote In God's Eye? It's not impossible to imagine a very old planet eventually rewarding species/civilizations that minimize their footprint, strongly enough to bend the arm of evolution toward conservation.
@jimsalter @awfulwoman to "minimise their footprint" depends on rational thought, but we have ample evidence that rationality is an accidental byproduct, not a driving force
@cliffordheath @awfulwoman it doesn't require rational thought, it just requires an environment that rewards conservation. Species that evolve in a desert tend to be pretty damn frugal in their use of resources, by necessity.
Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping@awfulwoman @jimsalter I must say I strangely don't find that that sad. This way we can commiserate in silence
Feoh@jimsalter I need to be focusing on Fermi's Paradox more, lately I keep dwelling on Fermi's Great Filter, to an almost unhealthy extent, but DAMN it's hard with everything going on in the world :)
saddest cabbage@jimsalter
How horribly sad and poigniant. 🙁
How horribly sad and poigniant. 🙁
DJ Enno
Craig DuncanJames Mark Miller is a writer, narrative designer, reader, and inveterate recluse.
He lives in California with his wife, two dogs, a horrible cat, and too many books.
His book based on his twitter entries is called A Small Fiction.
@craigduncan thank you! 💚
Kevin RussellWishful thinking. Billions and billions spent, terabytes of data, thousands of searchers, decades of nitpicking study, and not one empty matchbook, not a sniff, not an atom out of place in a very very big Petrie dish.
Hopeful sure, even excited for the search, but the unlikeliness, the fragility, of this gossamar exception, is also fascinating and enervating.
And frightening. Its really very easy for a planet to fail.
#Fermi #FermiParadox #Venus #climate #carney #CDNpoli #klima
@kevinrns the wishful thinking isn't that intelligent life might exist elsewhere, the wishful thinking is that attaining some level of technology actually extends a species' likely lifespan.
PARTICULARLY in the absence of some magical technology, and I do mean, *magical*, that would make migrating to a new solar system practically possible. I'm pretty dubious that even interplanetary colonization will ever make sense, at this point.
The potential for Martian, lunar and asteroid belt habitation is 5 sigma.
Extra solar human activity has no supporting technology. Or expected technology.
Fermi's paradox is science. The mathematical potential for it is astounding, the evidence is zero, not just none.
Scale is hard for us.
If you had a pizza box and a bowl of soup.
And you ripped the pizza box in half, drew the biggest circle inside and pinned it to the wall. Then took the bowl of soup to the next room.
When you come back, look at your circle on the wall and pretend its a drawing of our galaxy.
Pull out the pin, don't drop the galaxy.
The hole in the pizza box from the pin, corresponds well with the distance all of earths radio has travelled since radio was invented.
doboprobodyneGood visualisation; thank you.
May I ask what the soup-in-the-next-room represents?
Ross of Ottawa
lizzzzard
Iris VolkI'm ashamed to say, Ross is right, its a planned joke.
The bowl of soup is for lunch.
D. G. Marshall
Michael Gemar@kevinrns @jimsalter Is the answer to the Fermi Paradox that nowhere else has invented soup?
Precisely, we can find no dirty bowls.
MostlyTato@jimsalter
A picture, or in this case a series of pictures, paints a thousand words.
Edit: bookmarked to re-post at a later date if I may...
A picture, or in this case a series of pictures, paints a thousand words.
Edit: bookmarked to re-post at a later date if I may...
@jimsalter I think that any aliens considering visiting Earth would take a look at how we humans treat each other and then just think, nah, we're good.
Robin Barton@jimsalter Ironically, unless we break the faster than light puzzle it will remain as such
Giesbert Damaschke@jimsalter (Excuse my bad english): I think it does not illustrate the Fermi Paradox: it depends how one understand the „other We“. „We“ (as humans) exist on this planet (and this planet only), other intelligent life exists in other forms, that are not „We“. Every single individual (on earth) feels lonley (and is surroundet by other lonely beings)). Anyway: thanks, I really like this comic
ROTOPE~1 
@jimsalter the best part is that when two alone civilizations meet, they quickly become one alone civ and one dead civ.
Whatever Works@rotopenguin @jimsalter hopefully this is not a "universal" rule....
Since we started broadcasting radio waves over a hundred years ago, they've only reached a dozen or so stars. We'll be long gone before they reach any other civilization (if there's anyone still around there to hear it).
I like to think that buried in the universe's background noise is the incredibly weak remnants of countless dead alien civilization's radio chatter.
B_Bird
Futurama - Lrrr - Ruler of the Planet Omicron Persei 8
mrflash818@jimsalter Even if the odds are minuscule, I would like us to attempt high-power focused radio transmissions to candidate systems that could detect us, on the chance anyone was there to receive us. #meti #seti https://mrflash818.livejournal.com/229959.html
@mrflash818 @jimsalter Our most powerful radio emissions would not become audible with our best receivers any further away than 10LY, a fraction of just this small galaxy. There are a lot of stars in that sphere but it's still infinitesimal in the universe
@mrflash818 of course. SETI is incredibly cheap, when you look at the risk to reward, even if it's unlikely to pay off.
peterFour lifespan is very short... an intergalactic species would need a lifespan of billions of years to bother coming to find us.
We would not recognise them, nor them us.
@jimsalter the underlying truth is that we as humans are really, really poor at comprehending enormous numbers. We can work with them, and write them down, but we can never really grok them.
luna aria ielenia
Thank You for the link !
Chad McCullough
Jon GerdesThere is another contributor to the paradox that I don't see trotted out very often.
That blasted c thing! The speed of light and that hyper inflation thang means that vast areas of the universe are outside of those cute light cone things that you see in text books and QuantaMag articles.
The universe is too large to know if we can possibly communicate with all intelligent paradoxes.
I look forwards or perhaps backwards to the suitable XKCD.
@gerdesj yeah, I talk about that a lot. I think most people who talk about Fermi's are aware of c... But most of them are science fiction fans, so even if they don't think FTL will ever happen, they still tend to think that a technological species should survive essentially forever. Which, if true, would leave the paradox intact.
But if you assume no greater lifespan for a technological civilization than for a typical species... Well. No more paradox.
Cynthia 💣🏳️⚧️I've long believed that to be the case.
TFed 🍉🌻🚀
@jimsalter life should exist out there, It took as few billion years to transition into multicellular organisms.
Probably, life at least exists there as a single-celled organisms
Philipp Blum@jimsalter They may not be. We are just not developed enough to even know. -- X CEO
@citrullin well, I'll certainly agree that Musk is woefully undeveloped.
@jimsalter > He might be not so bad after all. You might be surprised. This might just be the comeback story of the century. -- X CEO
@citrullin nah man, I'm pretty sure the emerald mine trust fund kid who hangs out with outright Nazis on the social media platform he bought, threw sieg heils from the podium of a White House address, and made the AI model he embedded in said platform so right-wing it started calling itself "Mecha-Hitler" is, in fact, pretty fucking bad.
Fish Id Wardrobe@jimsalter …you may think it's a long way down the street to the Chemist's…
4d3fect@jimsalter Fantastic thread, thanks, all!