• Thinking about this logically, I think we should disregard all the warnings and get the outgoing signals rolling. If we catch the attention of super-advanced beings, yes, they might decide to wipe out our whole existence, but that’s not that different than our current fate (to each die within a century). And maybe, instead, they’d invite us to upload our brains into their eternal virtual utopia, which would solve the death problem and also probably allow me to achieve my childhood dream of bouncing around on the clouds. Sounds like a good gamble to me. ALIENS ARE ALREADY VISITING THIS SHITTY SLAVE PLANET. There is no Question of “if” aliens exist, what the fuck do most of the readers of this blog think FUCKING ufo’s are? There is enough UFO evidence on utube to sink a battle ship.

If only 1 of the thousands of UFO videos on utube are real then that 1 ALIEN Space ship is your proof that Aliens exist and are here and most of the blog is pointless nonsense. Wake up you Freaks, Intelligent species are already here, lending you money at interest!!!!.

A misconception, most likely. While some basic tenets of science might be considered subjective like verything we know (some consider mathematics to be a product of the human mind), the scientific method, allowing to develop consistent models to explain observations/evidence, results in scientific theories which have enormous predictability power (and are not mere hypotheses; scientific theories are not the same as the colloquial word “theory”). Understanding these models is knowledge, not faith.

That said, it’s normal for imaginative minds (which we are) to fill the gaps in knowledge with beliefs and to resort to philosophy and hypotheses, making the Fermi Paradox very interesting. I guess science is getting a little closer to what Christians have been saying about the Type III civilization (God and his hosts). Maybe in 100 years science will admit that religious folks were right after all. It is funny actually that a lot of questions being raised in the Fermi Paradox, there are direct answers in the Bible already.

The problem with science and religion is that both speak very different language when talking about the same thing. A lot of scientific jargon in this article can be translated into religious speak. It is amazing how far scientists are behind in their conjecture versus the religious folks. See, that’s why religion still has a foothold. Would you say believing in leprechauns has equal merit to the theory of gravity?

If I could produce al old book, which was dictated to a man by a leprechaun, would that make it equal? Religion asks the wrong questions, and any conclusions reached using religion are by their definition untestable, and don’t predict anything. Science is testable, makes predictions, and IS NOT even remotely related to religion. Science is a process, not an ideology.

Burning Spear The Fittest Of The Fittest RARE. The History of England, vol. Edition: current; Page:. Ingenious men, possessed of leisure, are apt to push their researches beyond the period, in which literary monuments are framed or preserved; without reflecting, that the history of past events is immediately. Burning Spear The Fittest Of The Fittest RARE. The Story of Burnt Njal. Sent from the original Icelandic 'Brennu- Nj. He was a mighty chief, and a great taker up of suits, and so great a lawyer that no judgments were thought lawful unless he had a hand in them. He had an only daughter,.

Saying they “look at different sides of the same coin” is like saying mathematics and finger painting are the same thing. “It is funny actually that a lot of questions being raised in the Fermi Paradox, there are direct answers in the Bible already.” So we never should have studied evolution because the origin of species was in the bible already? We never should have developed laws and philosophies because the answers were in the bible already? We never should have created archaeology because the bible told us all of history already? We never should have studied weather because the causes were in the bible already? The whole point of science is to say “No, we don’t have the answers already.

Let’s go out and find them.” Claiming that we already have all the answers will not advance humanity. If you think living happily in ignorance is better than accepting that we don’t know everything and seeking the truth for ourselves, then be my guest. But understand that many people are not content to just hear “this is so” without hearing “this is why.” You will not lay our curious minds to rest by talking down to us. Even if you believe that you have found the perfect truth, understand that we do not think there even is a perfect truth. I have nothing against religion or religious people; I think that we can all coexist.

But if you have already chosen faith over observation, then understand that others have already chosen observation over faith. Sadly u need to look at this with a complete open mind. Attacking any aspect of our being is naive. Its all a part of who we are. And until we know better as a whole those comments u made just continue to prolong our struggle in becoming one and and figuring out what the big picture is. You can pretend to be unbiased but u are just portraying yourself as sorta dumb. We get from your post that you hate religion and thats about it.

Well that and u dont know which of these options stated u really believe in. I think its a huge part of human nature to believe. So stop persecuting one belief or another and lets just all get past that great filter plssssssssssssssssssss •. That “human nature to believe” *IS* the Great Filter.

(Or one of them, at least.) Right now it is running amok in the Middle East, destroying every scrap of civilization it can reach and brutally killing anyone who believes anything even slightly different. In the U.S., it is helping to dumb down what is left of an educational system and acting to make sure that we go on to make the planet uninhabitable. If we as a species can’t get beyond that and the accept the world as it is instead of as some desert nomads centuries ago wanted to see it, we’ll never get off this planet – and shouldn’t.

Combine that with tribalism, and the chances are slim. One completely unprofessional theory I have has to do with both aliens and the feasibility of faster-than-light travel. If there were lots of alien civilizations AND FTL travel was cheap enough to be affordable by the top 0.5% of a civilization, then we would been visited by dumb or crazy representitives of an alien race by now. Perhaps the obnoxious kids of some alien billionaire come to do the equivolent of TPing Earth's lawn, or a crazed alien evangelist out to bring we lowly humans the word of some alien god. I’m rooting for Group 2 Possibility #8, where one alien who is in charge of reading all blogs in English is chuckling at this whole post until he/she/they/it gets to the Group 2 Possibility #8 part of your post, and then says “Oh shit” and has to push a big red alien button because we’ve caught on, but then his manager comes in and berates him for the false alarm because plenty of humans have postulated Group 2 Possibility #8 but there’s no real way for humans to actually know. Wouldn’t want him to get fired though, since it sounds like this is a new gig for him.

Actually, I spend a lot of time worrying about brain upload these days, but mostly in the context of not understanding the technology my future kids will be using. Sort of like how looking back I’m bewildered that I was allowed to be on AOL 2.0 and chat with strangers, because my parents didn’t understand all the horrors the internet could bring to a child. I’ll still be using Facebook and my kids will be like “LOL DAD IS THE WORST” but not actually using words since they’ll be uploading it to the ThinkCloud, though I’m sure the even using the word “cloud” will be as funny as someone buying a VHS tape today. Then again I’m probably overestimating the speed of technology, like most films and books do. What are they trying to do – be accurate? Star Wars was the smart one, by placing itself in Possibility 1 or 2. OK, now I am rooting for Possibility 1 or 2, combined with Possibility 8, combined with Star Wars coincidentally being real, and the real Han Solo watching Star Wars and being happy that at least Harrison Ford played him in the movie.

If you’re going to ask about brain upload please ask Han what he thinks about the upcoming movies. A few readers have asked about various parts of a post-creation process, and this seems as good a place as any to share.

Here’s a full rundown of what goes into a post: 1) Topic selection. A stage when my Instant Gratification Monkey is in full rebellion. Every topic that seemed so tantalizing when I first conceived it and wrote it down on my grand idea document suddenly seems disgusting and impossible, because I’m not in “This is Future Tim’s problem!” mode, I’m in “This is my current problem” mode. For this week, I first wanted to do a post on putting size into perspective, from the quark up to the multiverse (kind of like the size version of the Putting Time in Perspectives post). Then I called WBW co-founder (and kindergarten friend) Andrew so I could procrastinate from doing anything by discussing post ideas with him. He wasn’t that enthused about the size idea and came up with the idea to dig into some funny NYC-related phenomenon, something we’ve been talking about for awhile.

This was interesting, so I brainstormed for a few minutes, but I was disappointed because I had gotten all excited about doing something with astronomy, so I went back to that. I started thinking up two other ideas too—one is a long cartoon with no text (about an alien discovering our tiny universe by shrinking himself), the other was the Fermi Paradox, something that’s been sitting in the doc for a bunch of months. After much idiotic deliberation between those three astronomy posts, I settled on Fermi.

There was a ton to research because there are so many different theories and principles and hypotheses to get a good handle on. I did about 25 hours of reading, pulling quotes or terms or ideas into a Word doc as I went. Since I only pick topics I’m excited to learn about, research is usually the most fun part of the process (unless I’m behind schedule and hurried).

When I finished, the Word doc was 15 pages long. 3) Outlining/Structuring/Planning. This is always by far the hardest and ickiest part of the process. This stage is where I take a billion scattered thoughts and ideas and potential structures and have to figure out how to make them into a post. This is where the most important and creative work happens—by the time I’m done with this stage, most of the jokes/thoughts/drawings/etc are worked out in my head. This is the really important part because often a post isn’t working and it’s because the structure is wrong (i.e.

Should it be a “15 Things That.” post or a story-telling type post or a mostly visual post or another 10 possibilities). And when the structure is right, the whole thing just works. Because I have a weird personality, I refuse to write one word or draw one thing until the outline is completely finished and every corner of things is worked out in my head—which sometimes leads to me watching hours and even days go by as I stare at the screen, despise my outline, and despise myself.

If I’m really late with a post, it’s usually because this stage took way longer than I planned for it to. For this post, outlining was easier than normal, because all the theories didn’t leave me with too many options other than listing them—although the Great Filter was messing everything up by being part of a few different theories, so this held me up for awhile. I finally came to the two major groupings structure, which solved the problem, but that was about my 6th crack at categorization before something finally worked. The other part of this stage was weeding out about 75% of what I had researched. Even with only 1/4 making the cut, it was a ridiculously long post.

Decisions here center around things like including the Type I/II/III Civilizations thing or not. I could have left that out and put a whole other thing in and it would have been a different post. This time, this stage only took about 5 hours, but it’s often the longest part (especially for any posts on life/happiness where I’m inventing a lot of terms for it).

This is my second favorite part after researching, because A) I get to lie down while doing it, B) Since the outline stage already did all the hard thinking, this is just me spitting it out. And I get to do fun parts like intros and conclusions where I get to pretend I’m a real writer. This usually goes by fairly quickly, although sometimes I spend a ton of time on one section—in this post, I just couldn’t get the conclusion the way I wanted it, and I still don’t like what I came up with. Because this was so long and I had to verify facts a bunch of times, the writing took about 10 hours.

Mercifully, there were very few in this one. I have a blurry memory of drawing squiggly green lines, one by one, in the Great Filter diagrams at 6am this morning, having not yet slept. I got extra behind on this post because an unexpected thing took up half of Monday and half of Tuesday, so I slept about 3 hours Tuesday night and nothing Wed night to get this done before work starts on Thursday (Thursday doesn’t qualify for Tuesday(ish). Anyway, drawings are not mentally challenging the same way outlining is, but they’re physically grueling. I’m an extremely untalented artist and need to draw things over and over again to get them right, and so much of the comedy of a stick figure is in the tiniest part of the way a mouth curves or the exact shape of an eye dot, so sometimes I’ll draw a face 50 times before I get it right. I have to shake my hand out a lot since for some reason I clench my drawing pen like a mother desperately clinging to her baby’s wrist as it dangles over a cliff. And sometimes I decide to draw landscapes or backgrounds, which is weird because they take a ton of time and add very little for the reader.

A common experience is looking at a blank canvas and having to draw something like a couch or grass or a chair and just having no idea how to do that. Part of the problem is that I’m overly anal and I’ll do things like spend an hour on a Venn diagram to make it pretty and perfect, when again, that doesn’t do much for the reader so it’s a weird use of time. This post had almost no drawings, so those only took about 3 hours, part of which was spent hideously drawing hundreds of star dots, one by one, for the feature photo for the front page. But on a typical post, drawings take 10-20 hours. So the total here was 40 hours. Typical post takes 35 – 60 hours.

Thanks for sharing the time it takes to write a post. As a blogger myself, I know that most of my readers completely underestimate how much time it takes to write an epic post (or any post, really). And they don’t don’t realize that you’re doing it for free. They think, “Oh, but he sells thousands of T-shirts!” Wrong. Blogging is a labor of love, not a money machine (for 99% of bloggers). In your case, you could turn this into a money machine, but choose not to. More ought to donate, even if it’s just a little, to help you out.

I just sent you a few bucks, as a thank you. I never do that, but given that I’m running a Kickstarter campaign now, I figure I should give just like I’m asking others to give. I’ve read about 10 of your posts and I love them all, but this is my favorite one. The one thing that disappointed me is that you didn’t conclude the post by sharing what you think is the best explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Or perhaps you would simply admit that you have no clue.

I’m an Explanation Group #1 guy and believe the Great Filter is evolving into a high intelligence. I suspect simple life is everywhere where conditions permit, complex life is relatively abundant, but that crossing the chasm to technologically advanced species has only happened once.

The 10 explanations of Group #2 don’t convince me. What about you? Just finished reading the post and then your explaination of the pre-process. Thank you for describing how you go about with your work! I find that really interesting in life in general.

I guess we often only see the final product of things, but all the work behind is interesting and inspiring. Thanks again! Finally a short comment on # 5 the “super predator” theory.

For me it seems unlikly that such a controlling civilization would be able to last. Something tells me that they would eventually implode upon themselves. Like the Nazis would probably destroy themselves if the weren’t beaten i WWII. “Where are they?” Meanwhile on another highly intelligent alien planet: Alien 1: “Hey Tom, I visited earth again the other day, just for shits and giggles.” Alien 2: “Oh yeah, where’d you go this time?” A1: “I think it’s where they call the United States.

I hovered for about a minute in the silver cruiser and I think at least a few humans saw me. They even put their primitive video footage on their so-called internet but still no one is believing our existence.” A2: “Haha those humans are so cute.” A1: “Hey you wanna head down there and go scramble their fighter jets sometime?” A2: “Sure I should be free Sunday.” •. Depending on who you are asking, there’s a whole bunch more dimensions in spacetime than the four we group together as the here-and-now. Call it 10 all day, although I saw one theory with as many as 26, in a brief survey of string theory. Anyway, where are the other people?

Maybe they’ve advanced to where they only interact in the 6 we can’t see. Hey, look at that blob over there!

Well, yes, to you in regular spacetime, he looks like a blob, but in the other 6 dimensions, he looks like a really intelligent, handsome blob. And he’s totally hooking up with multiple SMOKIN’ blobettes on the 1-800-hotblob party-line, which to us is known as dimension 9. OR going with possibility 6 up above – maybe they communicate and broadcast using quantum entanglement, which solves the problem of instantaneous communication over large distances.

We have no way of listening in, and they probably don’t even have the equipment to check radio communications anymore, except for some old stuff lying around in the blob flea market the way 8-track and betamax players pile up here on earth. I hope you do a similar article on the multiverse idea. While it is fun to discuss such things, I think there is one key point to always keep in mind. Towards the beginning, the phrase “Moving forward, we have no choice but to get completely speculative.” was used because there are so many moving variables that we have no knowledge of and limited comprehension of. In all honesty, I don’t believe humanity will ever answer the question.just a great mystery that will go on forever. But still fun to discuss 🙂 •.

I tend to think we are alone. I think as our science has advanced, we oversimplify how utterly complex even a single celled organism is and we have no idea how or what animates life to begin with.

A large part of that is because we have successfully mapped the human genome (and dozens of other animals and plant life). So we know the blueprints, the environment and the ingredients necessary for a living organism; or at least an organic living organism on earth.but that’s all. Many people believe life was an accident. Billions of years of all the ingredients in one pot, stirred in the right environment trillions of time and presto.LIFE. But having the right pieces and environment doesn’t guarantee life. Think about it this waysay you loaded a 747 with: lumber, concrete, glass, wiring, carpet, shingles, cabinets, plywood, fixtures, etc and pushed them all out of the plane simultaneously from 50,000 feet. You could do it 100 billion trillion times and never end up with a new house.

And building a new house is child’s play compared to giving life to a single celled organism. But chemical systems don’t work like pushing stuff out of an airplane There’s no reason to think that natural selection only works for life.

*Anything* that replicates that is best suited for an environment will persist. You can end up with replicating “loops” of chemicals that can evolve under the pressures of natural selection just like life and create the biological building blocks. This would make that chances of eventually turning into life much greater than just throwing a bunch of stuff together. Your presentation includes an unexamined assumption.

You have assumed that once a civilization achieves the technological ability to “listen” for signals from extra-terrestrial civilizations it will not only persist, but continue to develop. We have had that technological ability for a mere 50 or so years. An unpleasant possibility is that our technological civilization will not persist for more than another 50 years. We could succumb to global warming, for instance, or warfare caused by shortage of resources (water and oil are two obvious possibilities).

So a possible analogy is fireflies: technologically-capable civilizations blink into an out of existence, at remote distances. The probability that any two blink on at the same time and persist long enough to communicate over vast distances might be impossibly small. I think that would be a version of the great filter hypothesis. A future great filter wouldn’t necessarily imply certain doom for a technological species in that it would be the author of its own extinction.

It could be that the technological and physical requirements to successfully and persistently bridge interstellar distances isn’t possible for the massive majority of species. It may also be that it’s just not worth it. The tremendous amount of resources needed to ferry materials or lives those distances could be so enormously expensive or impractical that any pay-off derived from arriving at a new system is less than the cost of going there. Many civilizations might colonize their local systems extensively and just hit a kind of equilibrium since making the next leap would require orders of magnitude more energy that is not economical to exploit in such a way.

To me that’s really the most plausible explanation to the paradox. We are just too small and our lives are too short in the grand scheme of things. Requiring civilizations to be millions of year old and is mind boggling and seems impossible. So it’s likely that at this current time we are alone in the galaxy, it is sad but that’s the most likely solutiin. At the same time, if such civilizations did exist the technology they would possess is utterly unamiginable to us and they might capable of anything maybe even traveling to other galaxies, so who knows?

We know nothing. I don’t think anyone every claimed that something like a cell came about by pure chance; that would be stupid. It came about from evolution by natural selection, which is about the opposite of pure chance. It’s true that it require a great amount of faith to believe that a cell came about by pure chance (as to opposed to evolution, which only takes evidence, not faith). But I think it requires even more faith than that to believe it came about by a creator whose existence is wholly unexplained and who has never been observed. And that really funny thing here, is that you are taking the items listed in this post and assuming that this is what people actually believe. These are all *clearly* just conjectures and postulates, and nobody puts their faith in them.

If you don’t see that it’s because you’re looking for a way to defend your own baseless beliefs by saying that the beliefs of others are also baseless, when in fact they are not the beliefs of others. That’s a stupid defense anyway, even if it were valid. “I’m not wrong because you’re just as wrong as me!”. I agree with this. There was no radio on Earth in the year 1 million B.C., but in universe time, that is a small fragment. What example did they use on Cosmos, that we are in existence during the last second of the last day of the universe’s year? We could have been visited way back then, or will be visited in a million years from now when we are extinct.

These calculations need to be multiplied into the 1% of 1% (etc.) calculations mentioned in this article. I believe that life exists on other planets, but it doesn’t have to be radio transmitting yet (one ant on another planet would count), and we may never hear from them.

But you can also consider me freaked out by Hawking’s Columbus quote. Never of thought of that. Has anyone considered that God created all of this. The entire amazing whole thing. To show us how amazing He is and how small we are and yet how much he loved us. I know a lot of you will doubt and choose to believe in a “Big Bang”.

Horrible theory. Sounds silly to me to hear people that believe we were made by accident not a Creator. Every look at a great piece of art or a beautiful building and think hey look at that accident. It’s beautiful! Then why look at the universe that way. God loves you.

Enough to make this world and all the galaxies around. He also loves you enough to send His son to die for your sins. Next time you look at the stars please don’t make the mistake to think what a beautiful accident. Or none of those, because those are all anthropomorphic and were claimed to particularily care about Homo Sapiens. But all the evidence shows that so far we are left to ourselves, and that we have simply evolved from other animals.

Those are the ancient deities of people who claimed humans were created at their image, while science demonstrates that they were actually created by humans, the inverse. And interestingly, anthropogenic effects on the climate, as well as global warming, were one of those critical events which could not be predicted by the alleged-prophets of those traditions •. This did not take into account that as our planet was being born a star exploded giving us the magnetic feild we needed to ward off radiation. Or that our moon is the perfect size and orbit.

Both are needed to give us the life we need. With these odds the chance for life diminishes to the possibility that we are the only ones and that is because a force not yet recognized wanted it this way. Only when we figure out what force creates a black hole will we know the meaning of life. To me infinity is impossible in time or space •. Well that’s not quite right, for two reasons: 1. If the Great Filter is in front of us and most civilizations that reach our level die out at some point afterwards, there would probably not be very many of them around at any one given time. If 21st century Earth civilizations lasted 100,000 years on average (which would be a serious success considering that we’ve only been at this level for under a century and there is already dangerous nuclear technology), that would mean there would be two of them in the galaxy at any one time.

If they lasted 10,000 years on average, there would only be a 20% chance that there’s even one of them alive in the galaxy at any point in time. So the only way the galaxy would have many broadcasting civilizations at once would be if they lasted for millions of years.

But if there were a Great Filter in front of us that killed off advanced civilizations a few thousand years in, it would make the galaxy so sparse we would likely not exist with many, or any, others simultaneously. The radio signals we broadcast are very faint and not detectable to any but the most immediate stars in our galaxy. So there could be a number of similar civilizations broadcasting similarly and we wouldn’t detect them. In other words, the Great Filter could definitely be in front of us •.

Perhaps we dont see the bait yet, perhaps we are not ready to be preyed upon yet 🙂. Actually, even the term ‘predator civilization’ has a very terrestrial association.

It’s very much like humanizing the aliens, just a little better. Just because the earth life developed a process where energy consumption happens by forcing other energy sources to give it up (predator – prey), this might not be the course of events elsewhere.

In fact it is more probable to assume that energy utilization might evolve with complete co-operation from the source. The other beings might be appalled (humanizing, of course) to see the predatory nature that exists here.

A beautiful post, it will be interesting to see how close these estimations correlate as our understanding develops further, and better still, if we are ever lucky enough to exist for long enough for it to be proven. Just a minor point on what you have written: if for every grain of sand there is 10,000 stars out there, of which 5% are sun-like (or 500 per grain of sand) and 1% of those have Earth-like habitable planets. That would make 5 Earth-like planets for every grain of sand on our world? If you missed the intermediary fraction in your analogous representation. Surprised that nobody has mentioned the ability of life to survive Mass Extinction Events as a good candidate for your Great Filter.

If conditions in other planetary systems are similar to our Solar System, then recurring mass extinctions would considerably reduce the likelihood of intelligent life evolving & advancing to the point where it could survive such a cataclysmic event, in the time between any 2 such events. It is thought to have been between 5 and 20 mass extinctions of life on Earth, of varying degrees of severity, in the last 540 million years alone.

It is also estimated that upwards of 98% of all species’ that have ever evolved are now extinct. How might stats like these affect the calculations about the number of alien worlds that could currently support intelligent life? I liked your comment and the Great Filter could be that there are mass extinction events so often that advanced forms of life are forced to reboot and thus never fully develop. However, in looking at earth we could even consider the opposite that mass extinctions are required to get to the next level of complexity.

Maybe if not for that big asteroid 65 million years ago we would still be just lizards here now I always wonder that if given enough time would intelligent life always form. Is life gaining complexity as part of evolution and thus eventually intelligent beings are an inevitable part of evolution. Or are humans just a crazy accident that normally does not occur on other worlds (regardless of time/chance)? Life seems happy to stay the same unless under stress why did humans get buy with basic stone tools for so long?

OK, a few minor differences over 10,000 years, but very little advancement in stone tools. Why (what is good enough?). Mother nature moves so slow eventually you have a mass extinction and thus life hits a reboot and may never have enough stable time to allow for that last critical step (where a lifeform creates enough technology to leave their own planet and also take control of their own DNA to survive long term in space, or be able to terraform another planet. I think there could easily be a dozen very big “great filters”. Every Earth like planet out there is running out of time (assume that red dwarfs put out too little energy or are tidally locked, thus only sun like stars create life), you have only 6-7 billion years max to create life. Advance itthen leave your planet before it is destroyed. What if life normally takes 8 billion years to develop and Earth just got lucky with having a giant moon that stirred the life pot a lot faster than normal.here we are early by billions of years.

Other Earths the intelligent life shows up just as their oceans boil off or just as super volcanos destroy their planet, or before they get an asteroid protection program up and running (game of lowest common denominators). I kind of have a different opinion about the “paradox” because there is a huge assumption underlying the whole argument. It’s that technology will advance exponentially. It certainly seems to be doing so now, and we often extrapolate that it will continue to do so.

The entire type I, II, III presupposes exponential growth. What if the growth we are currently experience is just a short spurt of new technology, and the growth eventually slows down to polynomial speeds. It might take billions of years to get halfway to type II from where we are now.

Same with lightspeed. Sure, with sub-lightspeeds we could still do an awful lot, but we are nowhere near the tiny percentage of lightspeed we would need to even make a dent. Technology progresses in ways that we never expected, and totally fails to move in the expected ways.

Air travel technology hasn’t changed all that much in the past few decades (despite much speculation in sci-fi). But who expected wikipedia? Possibility #11, there are a multitude of planes of existence (read: multiple parallel universes), there are other type III’s, but they travel all over the fucking place, in different planes of time, possibly in the same exact location. There could be a type III civilization living on earth right now in a parallel universe, or there could be a parallel earth where we have been visited by other life.

If you think of the sheer number of planets in the universe, multiplied by the number of possible universes, and if a type III civilisation could travel between these possible universes, the odds of them ever visiting us is infinitesimal, smaller than the odds of guessing the ncaa bracket perfectly, which also hasn’t happened since we started looking for intelligent life •. Given the sheer size of space, I’m inclined to lean towards the rural back country hypothesis and that no one’s come by yet. Also, if indeed the speed of light can’t be broken, civilizations could never evolve past type 2, and would forever be tied to their local star system. I do believe type 2 is possible though! Scientists recently announced they may be able to convert light into matter. The implications of that are insane. Combined with 3d printing you could have an army of robots replicating themselves and constructing a Dyson sphere.

Only thing with a Dyson Sphere is, how do you deal with the green house effect and external impact of space debris. It still blows my mind that insects were invented only 320 million years ago by mother nature. Flowers were just invented 125 million years ago This planet has been working on complex life for 4.54 billion years (ok, now 60 million years older than we thoughtthanks moon).

125/4,540 so in the last 3% of the time here on earth evolution figures out flowers. Bipedal primates 200K (maybe less). 200/4,540,000 or a fraction of that we reached the Americas by only 15,000 years ago so a fraction of that we started using metal tools just a fraction of that we invented computers in just a fraction of that then connected everyone in the world together in a fraction of that time.only a matter of time before we crack all the secrets of DNA and can manipulate lifespans/heath and expand brain power or merge with machines (or find out we are but stepping stones within evolution and machines or next level biology awakens to take life to the next level of complexity). (at this pace) only a matter of time before we can unlock most/all the secrets of physics and the universe. The singularity is near I still think we are trapped by the physics of distance and we have yet to understand just how ridiculously far away other solar systems are to us and how hard it is to have carbon based life forms survive in deep space over long periods of time.

Does it count if they are out there, but are too far away to ever contact us (and they don’t survive). Does it count if we never can find them, or them us?

What if they are too busy (like us) just trying to survive or get off their own planet?.I always hated that question If a tree falls in the woods, but no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? Yes, silly, the laws of physics still exist maybe the question is, does it still matter? So does it matter if a twin earth out there gets all the way to intelligent life and then gets destroyed 10 billion years later when their sun expands and swallows them up and they never escape to a new planet or spaceship? What is the meaning of life? The question is the answer of course to give life meaning. So, if you are an intelligent species and you unlock all the secrets of physics and the universe, but all of that knowledge is destroyed with you, does your existence really matter? Yes, but it would be nice to pass that info on, or share with others It would be fun to find someone else out there.

Could be Possibility 10. None of life as we know it is real. We live in a hologram. Who created it? Someone that intended to encase infinite beings into human bodies that are limited to only perceiving the universe as we know it and not beyond it. A deception of unimaginable cunning and cruelty. Have not sages and shaman from our ancient past not said that life is an illusion?

We can only perceive from a three dimensional perspective and through our five human senses. This is by design.

Everything in our entire universe is a prison from which we have never known true reality. We are all infinite beings that have been incased (incarnated) in human instruments over and over again with no escape. Our bodies are designed for the explicit purpose to keep us in a limited perspective and in separation from what and who we truly are. We believe we are our bodies and nothing is so further than the truth. Even upon death we are not free. The designer of this prison also created the astral planes upon death as a holding platform until we become recycled (reincarnated) and born as a baby to continue this form of existence with a perpetual amnesia of our true selves. We have never known reality whilst in this dimension.

You are infinite. Explanation Group II reads like applied SciFi, complete with the Prime Directive! I find Group I much more compelling, because it seems so unlikely that any Group II explanation would apply to all 100,000 civilizations one might expect in our galaxy.

The Klingons wouldn’t obey the Prime Directive, and not everyone would be cautious enough to keep quiet. Not all would be so advanced or fast or slow that we could see no sign of them. I think by far the most likely explanation is that we’re the first in our galaxy. Someone needs to be first! Once we get a foothold on other planets, we’re unlikely to completely destroy ourselves. And it would take a relatively short time to seed life throughout the galaxy, comparable to how long it took humans to take over the earth.

Whoever is first is very likely to already be everywhere before the second develops. • Pingback: () •.

I’d also like to mention something that others have said. You leave off the possibility of a supernatural higher power; i.e. I admit and respect that nothing that I say would likely change your mind about the existence of God so I’d like to recommend a book to you. It’s called The Language of God by Francis S. Francis Collins is world-renowned geneticist and currently the director of the National Institute for Health. He is also one of the people credited with mapping the human genome.

You did so much research into this topic and your article was amazingly well written and reasoned. This book approaches the topic of God from a completely empirical and scientific way. Would you consider reading it? Let me sum up a few thousand years of human thought on the matter, especially as it has been expressed in the on-going search for truth, which existed millennia before the scientific method yet was still a reasoned exploration of truth: Humanity has largely decided (whether they are consciously aware or not) that we are generally in Explanation Group 2, with humanity favoring Possibilities 3, 4, 5, and 8, with less popular agreement of 9 and 1 (all held simultaneously in a harmonious arrangement). Loved most of the post – very thorough in almost all respects.

But I disagree with the author’s answer to Possibility #8. Not because I think the government is suppressing things, but because I think most people (including the author) shut down the possibility without ever resorting to anything approaching scientific inquiry. In fact, the question of whether the government is suppressing evidence or not isn’t really the scientific question. The real question is, is it scientifically acceptable to take a position that there is evidence of extraterrestrial visitation? If the answer is no, and it’s career suicide to even suggest this – regardless of the potential evidence that might be cited – then we have a situation where we can’t know if the government or anyone else is suppressing it or not, because almost all valid scientific inquiry into the subject is suppressed by the scientific community itself. I would argue that we are in this situation, where no valid scientific inquiry into evidence of AGIs is going to happen in the current climate. In fact, the author of this post literally brands even the idea of potential suppression as “idiotic” – which I think proves the point.

No offense, but branding people as idiotic without even hearing the arguments isn’t very scientific. We need to get past the emotions and name calling and deal with it scientifically. What’s the evidence for it? What’s the evidence against it? The only thing idiotic is not listening to and researching both sides. With regards to government suppression in particular, it’s worth noting that in countries other than the U.S., airline pilots are required to report any abnormal occurrences, and do so regularly – including many contacts which are very weird, and are officially unidentified flying objects.

But in the U.S., the same reports are frowned on at best, and can be career-limiting for pilots at worst – even when the reports are corroborated by multiple pilots and other observers. Although this is not suppression of concrete evidence of AGIs, it is suppression of the science, because it suppresses information which could be used in scientific inquiry. Does that mean there’s a hidden UFO at Area 51?

But it does mean that governments have their own agendas, and they are already suppressing some level of information now, so we shouldn’t be too trusting of their motives or explanations of events. If we dismiss the concept of government suppression out of hand as idiotic, we’ll never know what suppression might actually be happening. Estelar Excel To Vcard Keygen there. So I would say the author’s answer to possibility #7 is incorrect. Not because I believe we’ve been visited by extraterrestrials, but because in our current climate, any evidence that we have been visited would not be accepted. So before we can even answer possibility #7, we need to eliminate the prejudice against the topic. We can’t answer it until scientists are free to ask and investigate the question without fear of backlash and ostracism.

• Pingback: () •. Although you mention many reasons to explain the Fermi paradox, among them some wildly speculative, you did forget an important possibility, one that I consider most likely. Namely, civilizations elsewhere are at maximum as complex as we are, and as such are only recently beginning to explore the galaxy. So, just like the first protons, the first Helium atoms and the first heavy atoms formed everywhere at the same time, so did the more complex molecules, multicellar life and eventually civilizations form at the same time everywhere.

Actually, I think only 2 conditions would be needed for this to be possible. 1 Complexity growth is unperturbed by local events, such as planetary forming and mass extinctions.

2 Complexity growth should be governed by a Constant, unchanging both spatially and temporally. For the first there is some proof, e.g. As is shown by mr Kurzweils singularity hobby horse, where accellerating return seems independent on major catastrophic events. On this and the a possible value for the Constant governing complexity growth I have written an article you can find here: •.

You state “our search for signals stretches only about 100 light years away from us (0.1% across the galaxy)”, but this is incorrect. A reply to our first radio transmissions can only come from within 100 light years, but a random, unsolicited signal can come from anywhere, provided the civilization has been broadcasting long enough for it to cover the distance. Indeed, SETI has two search programs: one that targets nearby, sun-like stars, and one that does not target anything but instead listens to the entire sky, so that on the off chance that there’s a civilization 1000 lightyears away that has been transmitting for at least 1000 years. There’s a limitation as to the signal level we can detect, which is fairly close assuming a signal like our TV broadcasts, but a Type II or III civilization would presumably be using much stronger transmitters for solar system-wide or galaxy-wide communications, which would allow us to detect the signals from much farther away.

• Pingback: () • Pingback: () • Pingback: () • Pingback: () •. A couple of other possibilities may be that the other civilizations have come and gone in waaaay different time frames – think “Long ago in a galaxy far, far away”.

And those burgeoning civilizations, like ours, may have developed methods to destroy themselves – like atomic weaponry – and used them. Like us, we are on the verge of killing off our species by wallowing in our own garbage.

This is the mindset of the people these days who think climate change is a liberal plot against them and their religious beliefs. To be sure, Earth will continue on without us.

Mother Nature will hardly notice us passing. I find this discussion fascinating, especially as I was watching the movie Contact just last night. So many scenarios to contemplate. So many times I’ve looked up at the night sky and wondered if someone on another world, or multiple other worlds, in multiple other galaxies were doing the exact same thing, wondering about me. What they look like, how they communicate, how they live, work, travel. I wonder if they have forms of art, culture, music, religion, war, poverty, racism, humanitarianism.

I don’t believe that we are alone. As was stated in the blog, the odds are too great against it. And as, was quoted in the movie last night, “if we are the only ones out here, then it’s a terrible waste of space.” • Pingback: () •. If civilizations rise and fall in what looks like a scintillation pattern (across time as well as space), the chances of two specks appearing close enough in space and time to interact might be very small. Those interactions may span the range from altruism to genocide.

In rare cases they may include the wisdom to stay where you are and colonize nothing. “Manifest Destiny” is a facet of human vanity; we can hope it does not afflict truly civilized species. Perhaps failure to outgrow this parochial arrogance is the true Great Filter. As long as science is`justified by so many unproven theories, it will always be the intellectual realm of math equation based robot thinkers who cannot see beyond what we know and try to apply it to the unknown. The reason why radio signals are nowhere to be found in the cosmos is that perhaps the method of communication has not been discovered or utilized by other alien civilizations. And the reason why we have not had contact is that the vast distances between life supporting planets are much too far for survivalist travel.

The sheer size of never-ending space allows for a concept of eternity or forever. And this is why there may be no need for a such thing as God. Because there is too much transient chaos in the universe to think it was created by a special someone or something that cares. I Believe there are 3 types of Beings in the universe: physical, which we are all familiar with – our spiritual counterparts, which exist in the spiritual Medium, surrounding the Void in the infinite Medium (space) – and a third type which we have labeled Aliens – I Believe Aliens are the ‘mechanics’ of the universe, who are responsible for maintaining orbits, checking on life types, etc etc. Aliens have the unique ability of being able to travel through both ‘worlds’.

They travel through the ‘spiritual’ Medium ( dark matter) because it is timeless. They use dark energy (reverberations of the Big Bang) for propulsion because it can travel faster than the speed of light — is it just a coincidence that our moon fits perfectly over our sun? No, it’s because the sun is 8 times bigger, but also 8 times further away – an arrangement by our Alien brothers! Then it wouldn’t be GOD as in the all mighty creator, but just another species of life that is more advanced than us. It would lead to the possibility that the human race has the chance to gain the same levels of power. In that respect that would throw the current theory of GOD out the window. If you mean GOD as the creature, entity or intellect that sparked the creation of the human race then you would be correct.

But they live in the same universe as you and I, making the chances of them creating it implausible. There is evidence for possibility 6 (that we are listening for the wrong things), but a lot more evidence for possibility 7 (that the government is hiding contact) — the only possibility that the author dismisses as “idiotic”. How many books have been written about this, how many people have come forward talking about it, how many craft have been sighted by ordinary people — compared to the other possibilities mentioned? I guess compared to pure speculation, such happenings amount to nothing.

• Pingback: () • Pingback: () •. Let’s explore 2.7 a little.

It essentially presents the hyposhesis that if there currently is contact from an ET civilization, we don’t know about it because the government is covering it up. But what if there are other possibilities as a result of current contact from ET cvilizations? Seems to me there are.

So I propose amending 2.7 to something like: Possibility 7) We are receiving contact from other intelligent life and a) The government is hiding it. This is an idiotic theory, but I had to mention it because it’s talked about so much. B) The ETs hypothesize that open “on the White House lawn” contact would be very disruptive to our current society.

And so they show their ships only very rarely so rare photographs are the only evidence, plus the occasional trace radiation evidence left behind where they do an even more rare landing. Sometimes there are simultaneous radar, photographic and eyewitness observations. Although this evidence is authentic, it is obscured by other people making fake photographs and wild stories to sell books or have a good laugh. Yet the ET presence is gradually introduced into our civilization rather than a sudden shock event such as a landing on the White House lawn.

I believe that its because we are the invasive species (aliens) on this planet and have not learned to be intelligent. Humans have done nothing but base their existence on greed and power forfeiting real abilities such as knowledge, cohabitation with the other species on earth and sustainability of the environment we exist in.

Lets suggest that we were put here far, far, far away from everything else in the Universe to protect it. We would not recognize intelligence if it was right in front of usbecause most don’t have a way to look past our greed and thirst for power. Think about it •. Great article. I agree with others though that the author is too dismissive of the idea of the government having knowledge about UFO’s. Given the impressive depths to which the author is willing to research and analyze everything else, they are surprisingly (and to me, unfairly) dismissive of that one. As with others, I don’t say this because I have a firm belief in some government conspiracy – I don’t.

It just doesn’t seem like an implausible premise. We know the government has many secrets.

If UFOs have indeed visited Earth, the US government is probably the most likely to know about it on this planet, given their technological resources. And the whole point of the article is that intelligent life outside Earth is highly likely. SoI really don’t understand why the idea is “idiotic.” •. Are you serious? The idea that government is “hiding” their contact with the aliens is NOT a dismissive idiotic theory. It’s actually one of the most plausible ideas because it ACTUALLY has some evidence (unlike the great filter theory, etc) Do enough research or speak to any serious astronomer (hint: become close friends with him first) and he will tell you the stuff he and his buddies see and know while all the sceptic fools out there are bathing in blissful ignorance.

People who know it = know it. People who write about it based on their 1-week internet search = spread ignorance. Simple as that. There are many who know that humans always had and currently have interactions with beings not-from-this-earth on REGULAR basis. Do some research about some to-the-point factual information about our constant contact with the aliens and you will understand how foolish you are saying that “that theory is idiotic.” Good luck, just don’t fall into the sceptic trap where all the idiots are currently having their ignorance orgy. Spot on – ALIENS ARE ALREADY VISITING THIS SHITTY SLAVE PLANET.

There is no Question of “if” aliens exist, what the fuck do most of the readers of this blog think FUCKING ufo’s are? There is enough UFO evidence on utube to sink a battle ship. If only 1 of the thousands of UFO videos on utube are real then that 1 ALIEN Space ship is your proof that Aliens exist and are here and most of the blog is pointless nonsense. Wake up you Freaks, Intelligent species are already here, lending you money at interest!!!!. I had a lot of fun reading this, but I feel like our top scientists are missing the point.

Thinking of the advancement of a species in strict terms of energy consumption and suburban sprawl can be limiting. Is it possible that the universe itself is alive, not a desolate wasteland, but a living creature made of living parts? Maybe all of these parts have their own experience in their own section of space and time just as unique to them as ours is to us. Our scientists should consider the possibility that the earth is alive and therefore meets the requirements for type 1, and the sun is alive and conscious therefore meeting the requirements for type 2, and the milky way itself is a creature and so on I would even argue that the life force that exists in us and in the insects and in all the cells, exists in the very electrons themselves, making them some crazy type of creature/civilization that no one has any idea on how to classify. Our oldest human cultures spoke of the connectivity in all things and revered the earth the moon the sun and the stars as guiding spirits. Some of these cultures have survived the worldwide trend of genocide and colonization of the last 10,000 years.

These cultures, along with many of our prophets, thinkers, and artists throughout time protest the worlds governments and power structures and urge the need to care for our planet and each other. We might not have to exploit the resources of other planets to advance. We might need to maintain a loving relationship with our own planet to survive.

In all likelihood, everything that could possibly happen is happening and we’re just too small and too fast to be fully aware of the gargantuan infinity of it all. #14 Earth is under divine quarantine C.

Interesting that he left out the “Boom” hypothesis (nuclear war), which was at the top of Sagan’s list of reasons why there might not be anybody out there. If all life is a competition for scarce resources in the context of an evolutionary process which includes the race to develop better weapons (extrasomatic in the case of human beings), then it is hardly a surprise that we are alone. Interesting also that the word “industrial” appears nowhere in the article, as our alleged ability to ferret out civilizations orbiting other stars depends entirely upon this characteristic of our current civilization.

We were “intelligent” for many millennia before we had radio telescopes and space probes, remember. And industrialism and it continuance depends entirely upon the planet’s energy endowment, which (excepting solar energy) is finite. It could be that all intelligent civilizations go through an industrial phase and then “run out of gas.” They don’t necessarily have to collapse, but may instead go on being “intelligent” at a lower level of complexity, one that does not make contact with other civilizations a viable possibility. This is called the “sustainability” solution to the Fermi Paradox, and given what we are currently learning about life and ecology it seems to me to be the most likely solution. (There is a paper about on the Web somewhere; sorry, don’t have a link). I would like to add, that “intelligent” in the whole article is used in industrial and technological context. Also, “lower level of complexity” is in an technological context.

What about, hit me for that, spiritual complexity? Look at buddhist monks, they have an incredible level of complexity and can perform spiritual task western people can hardly grasp. It could be possible that an highly advanced civilisation is much more complex in spiritual terms than humans can understand.

At last, reality is a very complicated thing •. Let me see if I understand: you are saying that the one obvious solution to the paradox cannot even be considered, even though possible observations of this phenomenon have occurred millions of times in history, and the only way this phenomemon could fail to explain the Fermi Paradox is if every single one of those reported observations is false, and despite that fact that our understanding of the universe.says this phenomenon should be frequetly observed which is in fact the source of the Fermi Paradox!

Do I have that right? Before you go off on an ad hominem rant, please do me a favor.

Please list the specific reasons that observations of UFOs are “Idiotic”. “Reasons” do not include insults and name-calling. All I ask is specific and clear examples of why you feel that reports of UFOs are idiotic. Anything you can assert so strongly must have a number of compelling pieces of evidence behind it, so please just list them for me, if you would. And don’t forget that I said that “every single one” of UFO observations must be false in order for the Fermi Paradox to remain a paradox, and I meant it – one “real” observation and the paradox goes “poof”! Remember that we have only effectively been searching for a very tiny portion of time.

Not only do we need to be able point in the right direction at the right time to receive any quantifiable & verified signal, we have to be in the right place relatively speaking at the receiving end of a broadcast, intentional or not. So as we develop stronger and more technically proficient ways to look for an intelligent broadcast, we will be able to filter more information at one time. Lets give it another 100 years or so:) •.

You didn’t mention that maybe we’re tiny little meaningless creatures and that maybe this form of life is 1000 times bigger (just think about how big dinosaurs appear to us in this tiny planet, because we know for sure this is a tiny planet). And they just can’t notice us, and we may be very well getting in trouble trying to contact them Maybe if you think it the other way round it would make sense we are looking for life the way we know it, but in some other planet it may be so so small that we can’t notice them. Well, having dinosaurs on Earth some years ago, it makes me think that IF there are different civilizations, they all may vary in size, and maybe a lot more than you can expect.

• Pingback: () • Pingback: () • Pingback: () •. You can understand the government hiding it.

But what’s in it for the ET? Why would they want to communicate only with the US government?

Don’t tell me that they crash landed on Earth. After a few billion years of technological progress into the future, or even a few thousand, their spaceships won’t crash. For that matter their first flights to Earth surely wouldn’t be themselves, but rather telerobotic or biotic avatars. While they remain in orbit or nearby – if they come here at all themselves – and wouldn’t send their one and only telerobot – they’d build a few more from resources in the asteroid belt first if they happen to be down to their last telerobot or avatar – the whole thing just doesn’t hang together at all from the ETs point of view. Funny and thought provoking. It’s good to see an article like this which gets people thinking about the bigger picture for a while. It makes a nice change from Candy Crush Saga and Kim Kardashian’s incredible expanding ass, if only for a few minutes.

Your “discussion” of possibility 7 however, let’s the article down. Just to write off the notion that “We are receiving contact from other intelligent life, but the government is hiding it” as “an idiotic theory, but I had to mention it because it’s talked about so much.” is weak to say the least.

It’s not even factually accurate. There is only one government which officially denies any knowledge of extra-terrestrial visitations that being the US. Nearly every other government (including the UK) in the world keeps a very open stance on the matter and furthermore admits that there are often objects which penetrate their airspace which goes way beyond what is considered technologically possible by our contemporary standards (see Nick Pope formerly of the MOD or the GEPAN committee in France, Belgium, Mexico etc) Moreover any official scientific study on the subject has always lead the scientists involved (if not the official authorized conclusions) to become acutely interested in the reality of the phenomenon. Even J Allen Hynek who lead the American investigations in the UFO phenomenon for 20 years was ultimately convinced that there was an unexplainable (at least in ‘rational’ terms) reality to the multitude of reports of aerial sightings from all kinds of witness, including military personnel, civilian pilots and radar operators, despite the fact that as he himself admitted, this study was always required to offer an arcane explanation to each case (see Project Blue Book). Whether or not these reports are indeed sightings of extra-terrestrial craft or even something else (like inter-dimensional craft) is up for a very valid debate. Furthermore, given the secrecy around US and other military black projects (which they say is usually around 15-20 years more advanced that what the rest of the world enjoys) makes it virtually impossible to arrive at any certainty but that does not mean we should write off the discussion as unworthy.

Only close minded simpletons would rather not tackle a subject that had no definite outcome as it’s the very questioning of issues beyond our current ken, that leads mankind to strive for further knowledge. In any case, reality as we understand it in the old Newtonian sense of the physical mechanics of the world, has been completely blown out of the water by Quantum Physics which shows that (at the nano-scale at least) our world is a lot more mysterious and uncertain than we would like to believe and it opens up the possibility of all sorts of things which we would have previously considered impossible.

Our current scientific understanding of the physical world around us does not limit possibility only our ability to recognise or realise said possibilities. Possibilities, 6, 8 and 9 are therefore not mutually exclusive of possibility 7 which, in my humble opinion, you have been hasty to write off. I suggest you give that subject a short period of serious and open minded examination. There is plenty of non-tin-hat-derived information available, the possible conclusions of which could be quite staggering.

Go down the rabbit hole, and then ask yourself wait, but why? There is a theory among few UFOlogists that the phenomena exists but it’s not probably aliens, but something else we don’t have the tools to detect yet, that manifests as different kind of mythologies every time. It’s aliens nowadays, fairies in the past, etc. Some of these UFOlogists believe the the field has deteriorated into the majority forcing the alien hypothesis of UFOs, creating all this neomythology of Area51, government hiding all information, etc.

Of course the government has worked on projects trying to identify these objects since it could still be a threat to airspace, but according to some of the skeptical UFOlogists, they are not hiding much, there is no great government-alien conspiracy, they just know as little as the scientists, they are equally puzzled and may have left the subject since those unknown objects appear and dissapear, fly around but mostly don’t consist as a danger. So, yeah, I do also not believe in the government hiding real alien visitations, it’s not impossible, you are ok to say it would be nice to be analyzed, and maybe my small analysis (which is mostly one side of the story I am more inclined to believe) is above. There are some disturbances, maybe not alien, nobody knows what their real nature. Unless we go with the other argument on the list that says maybe the nature of aliens is so alien we don’t even know we are visited.

And those UFO phenomena have high strangeness sometimes. But doesn’t answer why they appear, disappear, they troll air pilots, but never never do real contact. Maybe zoo hypothesis or alien logic.

How can you assume so many different species at ‘starting of life’ line at the left? It will appeal to logic if you start with one, branching out to so many at ‘a’ point of filter, one or more survive after filter, which branches again to yet another so many and so on till such a huge impact filter when nothing survives. And what about the chance that one ‘intelligent’ species like Man, which learns how to exploit every resource faster and faster till exhaustion bringing about its own end before learning to control exploitation? The real filter for Man appears already on and no one who has a say is looking for it.

It sounds as a very real possibility when the wheelchair guy gave just 100 or 200 years for Humanity. What if we would turn this discussion on it’s head? We are now one of a vast multitude of intelligent civilizations residing in this visible Universe, or perhaps in an adjacent one. Each has passed through the Great Filter, but in doing so has recognized that the greatest barrier is not a natural planetary event, or even an external one, but the intelligence which has permitted each to contemplate such things. To arrive at this pinnacle each has had to overcome the inherent aggressiveness which permitted dominance of all other competing species, yet would prove to be the greatest threat to continued existence. Given this unique perspective, we now observe untold numbers of other civilizations struggling as they approach this barrier. How should you react?

Should you intervene to assist in order to make their transition successful? Who would you make contact with? Given that these worlds are fragmented into multitudes of aggressive, conflicting cultures would any external intervention resolve problems? Probably not, as past situations have so graphically shown. The terrible truth is that each world must face this on its own. It will come to a critical decision point where one path will lead to a flourishing civilization and the other will lead to decline, if not extinction. From this perspective, all you can do is observe.

Though I know nothing about the subject, especially when put into the perspective of people who have Doctorates in Theoretical Physics, it seems to me that a point beyond the evolution of intelligent life is the Great Filter. And that we’re not to the Great Filter yet. Evolution has no longer become necessary for the survival of humanity, and any genetic mutation that is beneficial and not shunned will only be passed on to a small (ridiculously small – there are more than 7 billion of us now) percent of the population. These people won’t have any more advantage or likelihood to live as the rest of us. Perhaps slightly, but the rest of us aren’t going to go extinct. We might need to evolve from an intelligent species to a species that is also strong or quick, or detail-oriented.

But the strong or quick or detail-oriented members of our species aren’t going to carry us there themselves. Evolution is now unnecessary, and is rendered, for lack of better words, impossible in humanity. If the Great Filter calls for being detail-oriented (and by detail-oriented I mean you memorized how many lines are in the King’s beard at the top of this page), then we’re screwed. Now this doesn’t mean we’re exactly to be extinct end, but we’ll never harness the power of out galaxy, maybe getting up to 1.6 or so. We’ll be small or insignificant in the grand scheme of things, not being able to advance further. And small and insignificant things are crushed. But they might also be spared.

Maybe these aliens are naturally benevolent? Or maybe they just don’t care about us because we’re so tiny and insignificant, unable to reach beyond 1.6 because we’re not detail-oriented enough. And they were. Fascinating stuff.

Regarding the possibilities why we haven’t met advanced civilizations assuming they exist, I am reminded of a quote from a science fiction author regarding typical ways aliens are depicted in movies: “What civilization has the advanced technology to travel across the vast distances of space and take over earth, yet doesn’t have anything better to do?” I suspect we may be pretty boring to the advanced civilizations and hence we haven’t had a visit from any of them. If they can get around faster than light, they probably don’t need to send radio signals to communicate.

So we may have no way of detecting them. Carl Sagan’s “Contact” has an intriguing possibility about how advanced civilizations might contact us. I think you are right If aliens have figured out the big things like being able to escape their own gravity and survive in deep space, then they have likely figured out silly problems like how to cure all of their own diseases, or live forever and solved things like energy problems (have basically unlimited energy).. So all the Fear based movies of aliens wanting anything we have (like our planet or resources) is just a failure of understanding how technology advances in levels. The only thing that has value is knowledge, so my guess is they have so much more than us we have very little of that currency they don’t already have. Maybe we have some fun creative ideas, or books or movies or stories as creative content that is different from pure knowledge of science, or info to share. Lets assume for a moment that they have also evolved emotionally and not just technologically and thus would want to help us, or share info or just be curious to check us out (lets argue being insanely curious is a key ingredient for super intelligence in the first place).

It would seem if they wanted to contact us they could (assuming that great distances and time were not the big filter and problem. There may be critical limits to physics that nothing can get around). I think there are billions of planets like us and their inhabitants may have reached even higher form of living. In my mind though no one has ever reached such height as to be able to travel beyond their own “solar” system for example and never will, if the planets are more or less of the same making, there is a limitation as to the biological composition here on earth and in all other planets in the galaxies. Our destiny is to die off in one manner or another. We’re fucked but who cares? I’ve got much bigger worries like for example having to die.

Pretty sure this idea has been brought to light somewhere on this message board but it could be possible we ARE in the midst of the colonization of the milky way galaxy and we ARE the type 3 species. Given the amount of stars and planets, the most practical way would be to implant the building blocks and/or genetic materials like spores to habitable zones.

We are the “first out” species from this galaxy, version something astronomical. All life on this planet could be cut from the same cloth as the very first species that became aware in the milky way, just crafted and molded by Earth’s environment.

This would be advantageous for time and effort purposes of the host species as well as for overall health of life in this galaxy. Having variable life would be as valuable for the galaxy as it is for each individual planet. “Possibility 7) We are receiving contact from other intelligent life, but the government hiding it. This is an idiotic theory, but I had to mention it because it’s talked about so much.” Not so fast, this topic or possibility deserves deeper exploration. I believe the universe is teeming with life. There are a growing number of highly credible witnesses who confirm this is in fact the case.

I’m not talking about Joe farmer in the mid-west who sees lights in the sky do some research, you’ll discover that many former NASA employees, astronauts who have walked on the moon ie Edger Mitchell, cosmonauts, various top Navy and Air force brass from around the world not just US, former intelligence community officials who’s security oaths have expired, numerous politicians including Canada’s former defense ministerThe honorable Paul Hellyer, not just some guy who worked in the mail room. FAA Division Chief John Callahan, Nick Pope former British intelligence agency and ministry of defense the list of credible people coming forward just in the last few years is hard to ignore and what they have to say is mind blowing it can’t all be BS. I do believe there are type 2 and 3 civilizations that have and continue to maintain an interest in our little blue planet and us and that this fact is being kept from the general public for various reasons some quite reasonable I also feel that Possibility 8) Higher civilizations are aware of us and observing us (AKA the “Zoo Hypothesis”) is also in affect. There is a broader “hands off” rule that advanced civilizations respect for the most part, however the day is fast approaching when the peoples of Earth will know and accept as fact that we are not alone. I’m not saying that everyone is going to meet an ET, but at some point there will be a global acceptance of their existence and eventually it will be no big deal.

Use cursor keys to browse >Burning Spear The Fittest Of The Fittest UK Promo vinyl LP album (LP record) Tracklisting / Additional Info: A1 The Fittest Of The Fittest 3:48 A2 Fire Man 4:11 A3 Bad To Worst 3:34 A4 Repatriation 3:42 A5 Old Boy Garvey 3:46 B1 2000 Years 4:03 B2 For You 4:09 B3 In Africa 4:04 B4 Vision 4:48 Condition: This item is in Excellent condition or better (unless it says otherwise in the above description). We buy items as close to Mint condition as possible and many will be unplayed and as close to new as you could hope to find.

Irrespective of the source, all of our collectables meet our strict grading and are 100% guaranteed. Click for more info.

Availability: Sold Out - 'Request Next' to get an email if it comes back into stock. Year of Release: 1983 - 34 years old Artist: (click here for complete listing) Title: (click here for more of the same title) Postage/Shipping: for a postage/shipping quote Format: vinyl LP album (LP record) Record Label: Radic Catalogue No: RDC1077681 Country of Origin: UK Language: Regardless of country of origin all tracks are sung in English, unless otherwise stated in our description. Additional info: Promo Deleted EIL.COM Ref No 8BSLPTH621124 (quote this reference in any e-mails, letters, faxes or phone calls to help identify this item) Barcode: 810 Genres:, Complete Stock List: email: to contact our sales team. Alternative Names: None To order by phone: Call 10 quoting EIL.COM reference number 8BSLPTH621124. • eil.com (also known as Esprit) has been the world's biggest and best seller of premium quality and top condition rare and vintage vinyl records, rare CD's and music memorabilia since 1985 - that's 31 years! And we are proud of it.

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