What Is The Fermi Paradox?
Dr Aaron Adair coauthor of Aliens and Religion: Where Two Worlds Collide
( https://amzn.to/41e1aL1 )
It relates to our initial intuitions that, hey, the universe is grand, it seems there are bazillions of opportunities for life and intelligence to emerge. So we set up our radio telescopes. We set up other instruments to look for those signs of technology Or heck, we just, you know, open our eyes and wait for them to land on our front lawns.
Lo and behold, the sky is quiet. There is has been as of yet no clear signs of intelligence from beyond our solar system. So the question then becomes. Where is everyone? That's the way Enrico Fermi had put it back in the 50s, when he was having a similar kind of discussion with his other physics friends. And the question is quite strong. Where in our line of reasoning have we gone wrong?
We cannot expect there to be bazillions of civilizations and yet detect none. So how do we make this consistent and. There are many ways to try to attempt to think about, well, what are the aliens doing? Do they have some other reason to keep themselves hidden? And is it before our benefit, or is it for their benefit? So maybe the aliens are just like we're going to court ourselves off from this planet and let them grow up on their own, and so we're basically in a zoo of sorts for their observational purposes. The first scientific paper to describe this back in the 70s literally called it the Zoo hypothesis. Um, and Star Trek. You would call it the Prime Directive.
Of course, it has one significant flaw if you really think there are lots and lots of civilizations out there. They're all following the law perfectly over millions of years without error. They don't have teenagers who get undrunk benders and like, quote UN quote jump the fence into the zoo to play with the lions. Because humans do that at zoos where we make it difficult to cross. And yet people still do that and even get eaten up by those lions. So That becomes a very weird thing to say. OK, there's a Galaxy full of life and they're all perfectly policing themselves to never come here. That becomes a very difficult thing to do.
Now, on the other hand? Instead of for our benefit, what if they're hiding for their own benefit? And there's this bit of game theory that's applied to this that gets called the dark forest hypothesis, and the idea that basically every civilization has good reason to hide from every other one. If you know about another civilization, you have to then worry, hey, if they detect us. Are they good actually be more advanced than us and see us as a threat? Or are they less advanced and then see as a threat and then they're gonna advance quickly to then try to take us out? The only way to really keep yourself safe because you can't, like you know, negotiate anything over the galactic distances that are involved. The only thing you can do to keep yourself safe is stay hidden and if you detect even the tiniest bit of another. Civilization out there. You need to stealthily destroy them as quickly as possible for your own safety.