Not sure why this is, but there is another and very obvious solution to the Fermi paradox discussed in the article below. To repeat something said before, but doubtless forgotten by one and all, Isaac Asimov once said, in reviewing much of the same Drake mathematics Krauthammer reports in his article, that the conclusion is inescapable that "they" are already here and do not want us to know that they are here for reasons of their own. Why assume that other species suffer from human weaknesses, after all ? It may be a peculiarity of the human race that we have the kinds of problems we have. Sure, some civilizations might have already self-destructed ; they were worse than us and paid the price. But why couldn't other species arise that do not have our kinds of problems ? To say it a little differently, what if it had been possible for WWI and WWII and Communism and Fascism and, for that matter, Islam, to never have arisen ? As it was, Islam might have been crushed in its infancy had the army of Ethiopia on the march to Mecca not been ravaged by a plague which so decimated its numbers that the invasion had to be called off. Where might we be today ? In a far better place, that's for sure. And this being the case, think of a species that is only marginally better than us, just a little less irrational, just a little less given to pathologies, etc. That small difference could be all it takes between huge success vs. endless wars and human catastrophes. With sufficient lead time, a few thousand years, not even a blink of the eye in astronomic time, where would they now be in terms of "progress" ? As Arthur Clarke once said, if Newton was resurrected and brought back to life in the here-and-now he would first think he had entered a realm of magic. And that concerns only a few centuries. What if the difference between us and marginally superior LGMs ( Little Green Men ) is 1000 years, or 10,000 years ? And pul-eeze do not limit your imagination to technology, also think about improvements in social sciences , psychology, anthropology, sociobiology, and so forth, plus communication skills. Just try to fast forward to where humans might be in 2112, a mere century from now, or even 2050. The thought is staggering, and it is unimaginable when you do a fast forward a thousand years. So, "they" are here but don't want us to know. Why ? One possibility : The New Guinea hypothesis, they are like anthropologists seeking to study a pristine society that still lives in the stone age. DO NOT DISTURB. If you do, then you no longer have a stone age society to study. Another, which may include the New Guinea idea in some form : There is a huge problem if they spill the beans. For the heck of it, let's say that the cosmic equivalent of Satan exists. Satan is deluded , however, and only stops short of annihilating humanity because of his ( or its ) mistaken belief that it will eventually be possible to make human beings his slaves, and rule the world, but this can only be done when people remain ignorant of what is going on "invisibly" as it were. If Satan is exposed publicly, Satan would realize that the game is up and destroy the world and move on to Tralfamador. But if the ETs / LGMs are successful in their "electronic" war against Satan they will eventually so disable him that in the end, Satan will self destruct. All of which takes time, decades and decades. Who is to say that this is ( or for that matter, isn't ) the way things are ? Yet a case can be argued that anything at all remotely like this would be plenty of reason for "they" to keep themselves hidden from view even though they have been here, ensconced in caves in Utah, or wherever, for a really long time. The point is that, even if we don't know why "they" conceal themselves this hardly means that Asimov was wrong. His logic is convincing on the merits. O yeah, to prepare us for the time when they do decide to step into the open, they provide just enough clues to get everyone wondering. Billy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Washington Post Are we alone in the universe?
By _Charles Krauthammer_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/charles-krauthammer/2011/02/24/ADJkW7B_page.html) , Published: December 29, 2011 < Huge excitement last week. _Two Earth-size planets_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2-earth-size-planets-spotted-around-distant- star-a-boost-for-prospects-of-finding-alien-life/2011/12/20/gIQAZhNE7O_story .html) found orbiting a sun-like star less than a thousand light-years away. This comes two weeks after the stunning announcement of _another planet_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nasa-finds-new-planet-kepler-22b-outside-solar-system-with-temperature-right-for-life/2011/12/07/gIQAPfzFdO_sto ry.html) orbiting another star at precisely the right distance — within the “habitable zone” that is not too hot and not too cold — to allow for liquid water and therefore possible life. Unfortunately, the planets of the right size are too close to their sun, and thus too scorching hot, to permit Earth-like life. And the Goldilocks planet in the habitable zone is too large. At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it is probably gaseous, like Jupiter. No earthlings there. But it’s only a matter of time — perhaps a year or two, estimates one astronomer — before we find the right one of the right size in the right place. And at just the right time. As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy — a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence. That silence is maddening. Not just because it compounds our feeling of cosmic isolation, but because it makes no sense. As we inevitably find more and more exo-planets where intelligent life can exist, why have we found no evidence — no signals, no radio waves — that intelligent life does exist? It’s called the Fermi Paradox, after the great physicist who once asked, “ Where is everybody?” Or as was once elaborated: “All our logic, all our anti- isocentrism, assures us that we are not unique — that they must be there. And yet we do not see them.” How many of them should there be? The _Drake Equation_ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/drake-equation.html) (1961) tries to quantify the number of advanced civilizations in just our own galaxy. To simplify slightly, it’s the number of stars in the galaxy . . . multiplied by the fraction that form planets . . . multiplied by the average number of planets in the habitable zone . . . multiplied by the fraction of these that give birth to life . . . multiplied by the fraction of these that develop intelligence . . . multiplied by the fraction of these that produce interstellar communications . . . multiplied by the fraction of the planet’s lifetime during which such civilizations survive. Modern satellite data, applied to the Drake Equation, suggest that the number should be very high. So why the silence? Carl Sagan (among others) thought that the answer is to be found, tragically, in the final variable: the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves. In other words, this silent universe is conveying not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness but a tragic story about our destiny. It is telling us that intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe — an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so. This is not mere theory. Look around. On the very day that astronomers rejoiced at the discovery of the two Earth-size planets, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity _urged two leading scientific journals not to publish_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/federal-panel-asks-science-journals-to-censor-reports-on-how-to-make-a-deadlier-bird-fl u/2011/12/20/gIQASztM7O_story.html?sub=AR) details of lab experiments that had created a lethal and highly transmittable form of bird flu virus, lest that fateful knowledge fall into the wrong hands. Wrong hands, human hands. This is not just the age of holy terror but also the threshold of an age of hyper-proliferation. Nuclear weapons in the hands of half-mad _tyrants (North Korea)_ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/kim-son-declared-supreme-leader-of-nkoreas-people-party-and-mil itary-at-fathers-memorial/2011/12/29/gIQAhwGpNP_story.html) and radical apocalypticists (Iran) are only the beginning. Lethal biologic agents may soon find their way into the hands of those for whom genocidal pandemics loosed upon infidels are the royal road to redemption. And forget the psychopaths: Why, a mere 17 years after Homo sapiens — born 200,000 years ago — discovered atomic power, those most stable and sober states, America and the Soviet Union, came within inches of mutual annihilation. Rather than despair, however, let’s put the most hopeful face on the cosmic silence and on humanity’s own short, already baleful history with its new Promethean powers: Intelligence is a capacity so godlike, so protean that it must be contained and disciplined. This is the work of politics — understood as the ordering of society and the regulation of power to permit human flourishing while simultaneously restraining the most Hobbesian human instincts. There could be no greater irony: For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don’t get politics right, everything else risks extinction. We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it. Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few — the only — who got it right -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
