[ExI] taxonomy for fermi paradox fans

Dan danust2012 at gmail.com
Tue Jan 27 18:44:04 UTC 2015


> On Jan 27, 2015, at 10:37 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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

It's been a while since I read Webb's book, but, if memory serves, he examined fifty different solutions -- pro and con there being intelligent life not from Earth -- and ended by concluding N=1. It was more like an FAQ sandwiched between book covers than an extended essay on the subject -- again, to my recollection.

Regards,

Dan
 See my Kindle books at: 
http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20150127/3f2a5dde/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list