this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Hot take: There’s no such thing as the Fermi Paradox, the day I learned anything about radio emissions is the day that theory became bunk to me, the radio bubble surrounding earth is only 75-light-years wide, and the furthest signals are weak and undetectable even with sensitive equipment
The theory rests on the assumption that radio is a universal technology and not a short-lived transitional technology, most of this planet already communicates primarily thru microwaves and fiber optics, even if radio is a common “transitional” technology the magnitudes of time implied in trying to find it at the right time in space makes detection nearly impossible
At a certain distance we can’t distinguish between natural and artificial radio signals, the debates over the WOW! Signal and BLC1 show even if you detect “something” it doesn’t mean much to the wider scientific community
We JUST started looking for techno-signatures in an organized fashion during the last four years, and even that method suffers from similar problems to the radio method (debate over Taby’s Star for instance)
We’re a blind, deaf person in the middle of the woods who occasionally whispers Marco Polo every ten years and then wonders where everyone is
Also thinking that civilization has to conform to human norms. Besides there could be hundreds of alien biospheres relatively close, yet a xeno tree or xeno fish can’t really send back a signal now, could it?
I think the Fermi paradox is anthropomorphic.
There’s an assumption built into it that “civilization” is the end point of life, the “highest” or “most advanced” form of life. But biology doesn’t work that way.
I’m absolutely certain that the universe is filled with organic chemistry and life but the idea that civilization is inevitable or stable seems anthropomorphic. Civilization has barely existed on earth for 5 or 10 thousand years, and it has only been doing stuff that would be detectable from far away for maybe 1 or 2 centuries.
From a sample size or 1 we can already see that is an uncommon state for life to exist in, and it already seems like an unstable niche to occupy.
Life has existed on earth for what 4 billion years, complex life for 500 to 1000 million, and civilization for 10,000 at most. There’s every reason to suppose that life is inevitable when the planet permits that kind of chemistry but practically no basis to assume civilization is inevitable when life exists.
Doesn’t detract from your point, but I think you’re meaning “anthropocentric” lol.
Yeah, the whole thing assumes that the aliens would be using a communications technology that:
We've had radio technology for about a century, vs the 10,000 years or so of human societies existing. Even as recently as 200 years ago, we'd probably be expecting the aliens to show up on horseback with a handwritten missive to be read to us. We make a lot of assumptions that they would use radio waves to communicate, and would beam radio waves at us, when we could very well be using technology that these aliens abandoned for more advanced communications technology centuries or even millennia ago.
Yeah, my position as a biologist is that, from everything we know, it looks like proto-life started pretty much as soon as conditions on earth made it possible. The chance that there's no other life in the universe is pretty much just the chance that there are no planets substantially similar to earth (gravity not too crazy, has liquid water, atmosphere, magnetosphere etc) and that's obviously bunk.