[ExI] taxonomy for fermi paradox fans: was RE: powers of ten

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 2:47 AM, Dan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> This reminds me of Stephen Webb's _If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens
> ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the
> Problem of Extraterrestrial Life_.
>

It's true, you could give at least 50 different reasons, all equally
likely, why the universe is full of intelligent life but looks as if it
were not. But only one  explanation is needed, 50 is too many and is a
pretty good indication to me that none of those reasons are correct. In my
opinion the Universe is not full of intelligent life and only 2 hypothesis
do a good job at explaining why it is not and at explaining observations:

1) The observable Universe is very big but it's finite,  so somebody had to
be first, and it's us. We know one thing with absolute certainty,
*somebody* looked out across the vast universe and concluded it would be
ridiculously unlikely that they were alone, and yet they were.

2) Some catastrophe hits a civilization when it gets a little past our
level; my best guess would be the electronic equivalent of drug abuse.

 John K Clark



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