[ExI] Discussion of whether the Fermi Paradox is a fallacy

[John Clark]

On Sun, 5 Apr 2026  MR.Kimi AI wrote:

*> The Michelson-Morley analogy fails because ether had defined properties;
> "technological civilizations" is an open set.*
>

*I don't know exactly what MR. Kimi AI means by that but I do know that if
the Luminiferous Aether had actually existed then we would have expected to
see certain things but we did not, and if there were other technological
civilizations in the observable universe then we would have expected to see
certain things but we did not. And that's why it's reasonable to conclude
that neither the luminiferous Aether nor other technological civilizations
exist. *


> *> The von Neumann argument assumes expansionism is universal, which is
> speculative.*
>

*No! You assume there are no exceptions and expansionism is universally
despised. I say it is overwhelmingly likely that at least one ET out of the
quadrillions rather likes the idea. And it would only take one to make a
Von Neumann machine. *

*> **66 years is a cosmic eyeblink.*
>

*That's true, the time between 1960 and 2026 is an eyeblink by cosmic
standards, and yet in that nearly instantaneous moment of time the human
race has managed to do quite a lot, for example it has increased its
computational ability by a factor of 10^17, which is not a small number by
cosmic standards.  In 1960 the fastest supercomputer in the world, the IBM
7030 Stretch, could perform 1.2 million operations per second, the smart
phone in your pocket can perform about 40 trillion operations per second;
that means that just one smartphone can perform 30 million times as many
computations as all the 1960 computers in the world combined. *

*It makes you wonder what will happen during the next "cosmic eyeblink".*


> *> The Fermi Paradox is only "resolved" if we assume civilizations are
> either short-lived (extinct before interstellar capability),*
>

*No. The human race gained interstellar capacity in 1977 when Voyager 1 was
launched. The Fermi Paradox is resolved if we assume that every single
civilization without exception goes extinct before it gains the ability to
make a Von Neumann probe, it makes no difference if the civilization goes
extinct after that. Interestingly we are less than a decade away from
gaining that ability ourselves.  *


> *> **quiet by choice*


*You assume that every single individual in every single civilization makes
the same identical decision. I assume that when it comes to intelligent
beings there will never be universal agreement, there will always be
dissenters.  *


> * > or very rare (filter ahead).*
>

*If the filter is ahead of us then it's going to need to show up mighty
damn soon, although I do admit that in light of the recent Iran situation
that unhappy state of affairs seems a little more likely today than it did
one month ago.  *

*John K Clark*
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