Ask Lemmy

Well, alright, but I'm not going to argue about any of this.

The Fermi paradox basically says "based on what we think we know about how the universe works, we should be seeing obvious signs of alien intelligence in it. But we don't, so we're wrong about something we think we know." The problem is that we don't know what we're wrong about.

It is common in various science fiction and space related subreddits for people to confidently sweep in and declare that obviously the reason that aliens aren't around is . As if all the thousands of researchers working on these concepts were all just a bunch of idiots who hadn't thought of whatever they'd thought of.

A common class of these sorts of shower thoughts involve assuming that every single alien species and culture, throughout all of time and space, conform to some particular notion they have of how aliens should think. Some sort of "prime directive" or Nirvana-seeking conscious refusal to go out into the cosmos to colonize new solar systems, or conversely some kind of pessimistic self-destruction that everyone dives into without exception. I try to explain why these sorts of explanations don't work well, I question their basis for making these assumptions, and I usually get some form of "oh, so you're saying you know how all aliens are going to think and behave?" Shot back at me. Which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what I'm saying.

Another common theme is the "nothing will ever be possible in the future unless we've already done it now and have an economically practical example" approach, usually to try to argue that space travel or colonization is impossible. The other day I had someone who ultimately argued that it was impossible because steel would evaporate over time in a vacuum, so building spacecraft that lasted longer than a few centuries couldn't be done. I pointed out the examples of billion-year-old metallic meteorites and he dismissed them because "meteors don't need structural stability."

I try to address these arguments rationally, with math and references to actual research, but end up butting into a position of pure faith. It's incredibly frustrating. As befits the topic.