On Sat, 4 Jan 2003, Sarad AV wrote:
> There has been much speculation around Fermi's famous
> question: "Where are they? Why haven't we seen any
> traces of intelligent extraterrestrial life?". One way
> in which this question has been answered (Brin 1983)
> is that we have not seen any traces of intelligent
> extraterrestrial life because there is no
> extraterrestrial life because intelligent
> extraterrestrial life tend to self-destruct soon after
> it reaches the stage where it can engage in cosmic
> colonization and communication. This is the same
> conclusion as that of the Doomsday argument (i.e.: we
> are likely to perish soon), but arrived at trough a
> wholly different line of argument.
>
>
> So does the fermi paradox mean that there are no extra
> terrestrials.Can't we throw away this paradox like
> every other paradox?
There is no paradox, only a unanswered question. When one is faced with a
paradox it is usually more helpfull not to ask what is 'wrong with it' but
rather 'what mistake in assumption have I made'. In this case the
assumption is that we've covered all the potentials and that we understand
what a alien civilization would do (even though we have not even come
close to reaching that technology). This 'paradox' is only an example of
our curiosity -and- our hubris.
There is at least one other alternative, of course my own favorite...
As technology increases the rate of increase increases (the famous spike
or whatever you want to call it). The way the curve is usually drawn is a
straight exponential. However I believe this is wrong. I believe that the
rules of the cosmos are simple and limited, and that the total number of
things that can be done with such a set is limited as a result.
Additionaly there are many 'impossibility theorems' that set other limits.
So the technology growth curve should actually be a tanh() sort of shape.
The question is:
Once a civilization reachs the upper asymptote of the curve (in other
words they learn pretty much all they can learn) what do they do with it?
In particular, do the totality of laws and effects allow the creation of
other cosmoses? Are the physical rules of those cosmoses fixed, decidable,
or random? What are the results of each of those choices? When the cosmos
is generated does it 'enclose' the generator or is it a 'seperable effect
in time-space' (in other words I'm here and the cosmos 'bubble' is over
'there' at least for a while).
My view summed up into something like Clarke's Law:
Any civilization suitably advanced creates it's own custom cosmoses and
moves in.
--
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