From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jul 23 2003 - 13:25:56 MDT
Here's another thought on the Fermi Paradox:
What if we are overlooking something terribly simple? Maybe life in the
universe is very rare, and intelligent life even more so.
There couls be just 2 or 3 intelligent life-forms in each galaxy. Some have
wiped themselves out in self-made extinction. Some have been destroyed by
other environmental disasters just prior to singularity or the ability to
build a Von Neuman machine.
It could be that even a civilization such as ours only has a 1 in 1
trillion chance of making it to the point where they can colonize space. We
could be 1 of only 3 civilizations in the entire universe that has made it
as far as we have. 2 could have come before us, but suffered from some other
cataclysm before getting to the point where we would see any evidence of
their existance.
Or maybe there is only one other that is more advanced than us and they just
haven;t gotten into our neighborhood yet.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: Fermi "Paradox"
>
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, scerir wrote:
>
> > "They don't have to be made of ordinary matter
> > at all. They could exist on many levels that
> > we are unable to detect."
>
> But now you raise some questions more perplexing than
> the F.P. -- e.g. have they always been there or did
> they evolve in some way? Do they not contact us or
> spread into our sphere by choice or simply because
> it is impossible? If by choice -- are the laws of
> physics "better" in their realm for the evolution
> of intelligence? *Or* do all intelligent civilizations
> discover such levels and migrate there? Or do they
> create such levels because they can and doing so is
> the highest expression of the beauty by non-self-directed
> evolution?
>
> I'd suggest you are creating more problems than you are
> solving by suggesting this...
>
> > Here they are ...
> > http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307335
>
> I just knew it -- I glanced at the list of authors yesterday
> [which reads like a "who's who" list of physics...]
> (and was silly enough to peruse the text briefly) and moved
> on to some other things muttering to myself -- "I just know
> someone is going to post this URL to the ExI list when there
> are only 3-6 people on the list [possible lurkers not included]
> even remotely capable of evaluating this."
>
> Frak. I was right.
>
> Ok, now here is an idea for making the list easier to deal with.
> We divide it into two halves -- one where submissions solve more
> problems than they create and one where sumbissions create more
> problems than they solve. Just a thought.
>
> Robert
>
>
>
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