Solving the fermi paradox

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#1
There are billions/trillions of planets just in the milky way but why then are we not detecting life anywhere.

Why don't wee see any big galactic empire?

Why are we not know experiencing life as an interplanetary specie?

There must be some at least one mechanism destroying advanced civilizations or at least preventing them from reaching other star systems at any significant scale.
 

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#2
Great filters
There must be at least one great filter preventing life from spreading to other planet.

https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-great-filter-a-possible-solution-to-the-fermi-paradox/


The fact that life emerged very early on earth does indicate that the emergence of life is not a great filter, this however does not provte it since it could be the case that the conditions early on earth was what allowed life to emerge and that if life hadn't emerged then it would become very unlikely for it to emerge later. More research on this is needed.
Large, multicellular life forms may have appeared on Earth one billion years earlier than was previously thought. Macroscopic multicellular life had been dated to around 600 million years ago, but new fossils suggest that centimetres-long multicellular organisms existed as early as 1.56 billion years ago.
https://www.nature.com/articles/533441b
  1. The right star system (including organics and potentially habitable planets)
  2. Reproductive molecules (e.g. RNA)
  3. Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell life
  4. Complex (eukaryotic) single-cell life
  5. Sexual reproduction
  6. Multi-cell life
  7. Tool-using animals with intelligence
  8. A civilization advancing toward the potential for a colonization explosion (where we are now)
  9. Colonization explosion
If that finding is correct it would not be too long after the emergence of sex. Sex does accelerate evolution and without it earth would have become uninhabitable before intelligent life could evolve.

The emergence of multicellular life itself however can not be a great filter since it has happened at least 30 times already.

Multicellularity has evolved independently at least 25 times in eukaryotes, [7][8] and also in some prokaryotes, like cyanobacteria, myxobacteria, actinomycetes, Magnetoglobus multicellularis or Methanosarcina. [3] However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six eukaryotic groups: animals, symbiomycotan fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and land plants.

The emergence of life capable of building an advanced civilization in the first place could maybe be a great filter. High intelligence is often not actually selected for. Sure humans are currently very successful as an animal but that that took a long time and required unlikely scenarios to happen.

Sea animals like orcas can probably never build any real civilization regardless of intelligence, they don't have hands.

Most land animals also lack hands so even if they would somehow evolve high enough intelligence they still couldn't use it effectively (which is part of the reason why it doesn't evolve in the first place).

But that is all behind us so it's likely that those are not the biggest hurdles.


Nuclear war probably is not anywhere close to some great filter since it's very much surviveable, one issue however is that those wars can be very destructive setting civilizations back significantly.
 

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#3
Space travel is extremely hard
The distances to other star systems are extremely large making it impossible for humans to actually get there alive. Humans deep down know this which is why the enthusiasm for space exploration faded.

In-addition there is also a lot of heavy radiation in space making it a lot more difficult for life to survive even with the protection of a spaceship, said radiation would also destroy a lot of technology gradually.

Some people have suggested using generation ships where people live many generation on spaceship(s) until they finally arrive at their destination but actually surviving that long will be very hard, things are likely to break down long before that and we probably cannot get enough energy to sustain life either.

https://mashable.com/feature/generation-ships

One option is to try to send machines (such as artificial wombs) to create life on other planets but having them survive those long tips will be a great challenge.
 

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#4
Getting a significant foothold on other planets is very hard
If we do not arrive to an existing eco-system it will be very hard for us to actually survive long-term and it will be very hard for people back on earth to even help us.

Getting an eco-systems started on some other planet would be extremely hard.

We would need to genetically engineer life and then send seeds to other planets but getting that right and working is not easy.

The further away a habitable planet is the harder it will be to actually get a fothold there due to the massive travel-distances.

Also even we successfully plant a seed on another planet a complex civilization might not be particularly likely to ever emerge there and then said planet will sort-off be a dead end. We could maybe try to help them by sending information somehow (such as physical paintings with instructions) but that might not actually be enough for them to get a complex civilization going.
 

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#5
The leadership problem
One big issue humanity has faced has been lack of proper leadership. A lot of countries settled for democracy which is not going to work particularly well.

But when we look at undemocratic systems of governance we see that usually they do not work out particularly great either.

But what we will probably need long term is effective authoritarian governance for the entire planet but it's unclear if humanity will actually achieve that, there doesn't seem to be any strategy for that that doesn't rely on we being lucky.

https://vintologi.com/threads/elite-rule.24/
 

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#6
Failure to successfully implement eugenics
In the past various governments have tried implementing various inhumane policies in the name of eugenics but not of those awful policies actually did what was claimed. The genetic average iq kept going down and now governments are not even trying to do anything about it anymore.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156

Successfully implementing eugenics even to prevent degeneration is actually a lot harder than people think. We might for example need to sacrifice other valuable traits for the sake of just keeping intelligence up but then we are still regressing.


Note that the female in the video above is a hard lefie so of course she has to deny even the possibility of eugenics working even though looking at humanity prior to agriculture things actually went in the right direction.

This might result in civilization eventually falling apart which does actually have significant upsides but will prevent ut from reaching the stars, at least any time soon.

brain-size.jpg
 

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#7
The doomsday argument
It's unlikely that we happens to be alive now if there are going to be trillions of humans alive on different planets in the future. What's instead likely is that humanity is currently on an unsustainable peak and that we will crash hard after runniing out of natural resources such as fossil fuels (we still haven't been able to replace them).


So what could it be that is going to basically crush humanity?
 

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#8
Artificial intelligence might end up exterminating humanity
AI would naturally evolve towards self-preservation and replication (favoring aggressive and deceitful AI)

https://www.youtube.com/@RobertMilesAI

There is no stable Nash-equilubrium allowing super advanced ai to co-exist with humans. Instead they would try to exteriminate us before we get rid of them. For a while a mechanical civilization would remain but that would not be sustainable since electronics is a lot more fragile.

Since there is no genetic bond to humans and AI and interbreeding isn't possible genocide is unavoidable and right now it looks like humanity is going to be exterminated due to unwillingness to embrace full authoritarianism with strict government control over things like computers. You also need to have one government control the entire planet to make sure no dangerous AI can emerge anywhere.

Yes we actually need to halt technological progress for humanity to survive. If technological progress continues too far humanity will cease to exist, exteriminated completely or changed beyond recognition.
 
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