[ExI] Some thoughts on the Fermi Paradox

[BillK]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2026 at 20:36, Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> We can't detect any civilisations that arose after {their distance from us
> in light-years} years ago. So if we were looking at the Centaurus system,
> we would see anything that arose up to a few years ago. Signs from the
> other edge of the galaxy would have to be from no less than 100k years ago.
> <snip>
>
> Essentially, space is big, the speed of light is fixed, so we can't see
> the recent past (except very very close by). The farther out we look, the
> more of the recent past we can't see. So if any advanced civilisations
> arose in the recent past (meaning within the last few thousand years,
> getting more remote as we look farther out), we can't see them.
>
> So the Fermi paradox only holds if you're looking at very big timescales
> (millions of years), and I don't think that's very relevant, given the ages
> of the population I stars and the history of life on earth.
>
> ---
> Ben_______________________________________________
>


DeepSeek-R1 commented -
*In essence, the author paints a hopeful and cosmically dramatic picture:*
Our current solitude might simply be because we're the first observers in
our local spacetime volume to look up. The galaxy could be teeming with
intelligence whose signals are still en route. The "paradox" vanishes not
because civilizations are rare, but because the universe operates on
timescales far exceeding human experience, and light takes time to travel.
The revelation, when it comes, won't be a slow trickle from nearby stars,
but potentially a flood of evidence washing over us from across the
vastness of space, revealing a galaxy that has been lively for millennia –
we just didn't know it yet.
---------------------

Cool!    :)   BillK
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