Most likely. However I am referring to one planet, and a planet has a finite lifespan in which it will receive enough energy for the anti-fire known as life.

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Yes, and I wasn't clear- I agree that it is not an inevitability.

Thank you. I was fairly sure that was what you meant after I posted my missive. Thank you very much for the clarification.

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Actually, this could also be incorrect. The Fermi Paradox is based on a notion of alien "civilizations" that conform to our concepts of what a civilization is. As brilliant as Mr. Fermi was in many areas, he and his colleagues were discussing 1940s comic book aliens who, no matter how strange they were drawn, were essentially advanced reflections of us. Fermi failed to consider what "alien life" might actually be like. Because of this, in terms of our understanding of biology, one could just as easily imagine a galaxy teeming with advanced alien life and not one of them comes here or contacts us in all the years of human evolution so far. There is nothing in nature to preclude that or make it any less likely. It is no more likely or unlikely than rare aliens. Though we can make informed speculations based solely on our understanding of chemistry and biology on Earth, thus far the real answer about life elsewhere in the galaxy is: we don't know.

If one objects to this notion, then one has to introspect and admit that you are embracing a concept of aliens that think like us and are essentially reflections of us. But in reality, if they exist, they're aliens, so they are not obligated to be like us at all.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

I suppose that one premise of the Fermi question is not so much that complex phenomena elsewhere are likely to resemble us (I'd guess that mostly they don't, if indeed "they" exist, or even that "they" is a suitable pronoun), but that somewhere in the galaxy there might be, just perhaps, even a very few analogous cultures.

Right, but let's be honest: a civilisation that keeps to itself and does not attempt to travel across the galaxy or communicate with others is not what most of us would consider an "interesting" alien civilisation, is it?

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As might have been pointed out before, Fermi's paradox only addresses the absence of expansive civilisations; it says nothing about the stay-at-homes, except to ask why, if they exist, they all stay at home.

A universe full of stay-at-homes who have formed a galactic society using long-range communications would be an interesting place to be. If communications were efficient enough vast amounts of information could be shared between systems, including all the information required to replicate individuals at long distance. You (or a good copy of you) could travel to distant alien worlds effectively a the speed of light, with no subjective time elapsed during the journey.

This may even be yet another solution to Fermi's paradox- the aliens won't arrive until we can build a device to receive them.

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Wouldn't we? I wonder about this. Assuming, and it's a large assumption, that there is something in common between us and this culture, I would have thought it could be just as interesting, perhaps more in some ways, as hypothetical cultures with a closer match.

Are you equating "stay at home" with "not coming to Earth today"? Because all we can say is that we don't have evidence for ET civilizations within the limits of our current observations. We can only speculate about whether or not there are interstellar civilizations.

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I agree with you, I dont think its inevitable, unless given an infinite amount of time (for the whole universe). I just think it's very likely, given the right initial conditions and environment. Now, how common and likely are these conditions across the Universe and how much of a tolerance does life have for conditions even slightly different-- i.e., K or F type sun's (or even other types of stars), or planets somewhat warmer or colder than ourselves, or multiple stellar systems-- that is anyone's guess. My thoughts are that there are forms of life (even intelligent life) that are so different from us, because they exist in completely-- alien (for lack of a better term)-- environments, and took a completely different evolutionary path (as life would have done even here had even one of these mass extinctions not occured), and might have been evolving for tens of millions of years, or even billions of years, longer than life on earth has. Would we even recognize it as intelligent life, or even life period? In short, in our universe, there might well be a universe of possibilities.

I like this way of thinking... it provides a nice lead in to the "Prime Directive" that we will not be able to detect ET unless we, ourselves, are at the right point in our scientific and technological evolution in order to do so. The universe full of stay-at-homes you are talking about reminds me to what's happened to our world since the internet has developed and evolved! :P

The idea of teleportation you've discussed is an interesting one... that MIGHT be the technology we need to develop in order to detect and receive them... before which, they have deemed us not worthy of attention. Perhaps, they dont want to tamper with us-- who knows.

Or maybe they are stay at home because they are waiting for people to call. Bogged down with funding issues, when there are more 'important' things like national defense, they are labeled kooks and resource wasters. At most they somehow drum up the effort to send a small group of beings to the nearest astronomical object, only to have their funding cut. In some of the worlds, science continues with probes and telescopes, while others listen to the heavens, waiting. However, all efforts to create a second home are labeled fantasy and a travesty when 'there are more important issues down here'. Finally the technological civilization collapses, either in slow decay, or in fire, or under the its own unsustainable weight, it collapsed, like all civilizations do. Then disaster strikes, maybe a few days before a new light was seen in the sky, and the sky burned, or maybe some disease broke the locks on their immunity, or some other calamity, or maybe evolution washed them over, or however, and the brief spark of mind, was over.
As of yet, this may be the fate of all intelligent life, or something like it. For all we know, a technological civilization may be just as rare as intelligent life is compared to any other kind. Or that we will ever spread throughout the heavens. Or that all are listening, but none are speaking. All life fears its death, are we ourselves brave enough to truly live?

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The point is - if aliens exist, it is just as likely that all of the advanced ones (that are not extinct) have never come near us as it is that aliens are very rare and/or extremely far away, outside our galaxy.

Also, we don't actually know what a civilization is when it comes to speculations about nonhuman extraterrestrial life. It is parochial to assume "alien civilizations" are going to be anything like us, even remotely. It is better to speculate about extraterrestrial life as a whole rather than presume aliens would be anything like human civilization.

Though we don't know that aliens exist, we do know so far that the basic elements of chemistry upon which life is based exists in deep space and that in itself is a minuscule step toward an assumption that life forms have likely evolved elsewhere in the galaxy. Other than this, and until there is more evidence, we don't know if or how advanced aliens exist regardless of whether they have visited us or not. There is nothing in nature or evolution that dictates that advanced aliens of any kind must travel in space to us.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

You appear to be saying that if advanced alien civilisations do exist and are relatively nearby they have simply not come to our system? The question is - why not? There are many possible answers, and perhaps that really makes it pointless to even ask the question without further information.

But in my opinion the question does still remain an important one. We aren't seeing evidence of a massive, ancient, all-pervading civilisation.

Perhaps we just don't recognise the signs; m1omg suggested that an advanced civilisation might be unrecognisable and therefore invisible to us.

It might, for instance, colonise the deep hot biosphere beneath our feet; I have read an estimate that the mass of that deep hot biosphere is greater than the surface biosphere. We might just be the irrelevant scum that lives on the outside of the planet to such a civilisation. Or a civilisation located inside gas giants, or even inside stars, could have colonised the Galaxy long ago. But that would leave an opportunity for a second advanced civilisation to arise, one consisting of surface dwellers, one which is not affected by the deep hot biosphere, or stellar, civilisation and may not even know about it. We should be able to notice the second civilisation, as it occupies the same sort of environment as we do.

The question could then become - what has prevented this second civilisation from arising? Does the existence of the first civilisation inhibit the second? An invisible and exotic civilisation (or several different ones) might pervade the Galaxy and somehow prevent recognisable civilisations from arising. The older, and invisible civilisation might even absorb the non-invisible civilisations; life in an invisible civilisation might offer so many benefits that it would be foolish to reject the offer. Even this would represent (to get back to the original post ) a 'filter' of sorts - developing but visible civilisations are contacted by invisible ones and given the opportunity to join them in blissful invisibility.

Or perhaps visible civilisations simply destroyed as they arise (for some unnown reason). In which case we should ask ourselves- are we too visible?

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There is nothing in nature or evolution that would force extraterrestrials of any kind (if they exist) to travel in space to us. Fermi was thinking of pulp fiction and comic book aliens in science fiction civilizations based on empires, values and technology from human history. It is just as likely that the galaxy is teeming with alien life, none of which has traveled here, as it is that aliens are very rare.

And we do not know what an extraterrestrial civilization is because "civilization" is solely a human concept. It is like saying "alien automobiles" or "alien uniforms" - if these seem comical it is because we assume "advanced alien civilizations" can beam themselves around and don't need old-fashioned automobiles, just as we rarely use horse drawn carriages and in the future might develop advanced transport systems. But in reality, all of these "advanced alien" notions are an extrapolation solely of human history applied to hypothetical advanced aliens.

Most people when discussing possible alien life are inferring their existence or behavior based entirely on known human values and human history. This leads to a cul-de-sac.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

But what would stop them? That is the question. From a hypothetical population of diverse extraterrestrial civilisations some may be expansionist; those are the ones we would expect to see. Our experience of intelligent civilisations should show a bias towards the expansive ones- yet we see none.

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Why should we assume that some may be expansionist? That would assume that the tendency to expand we see on Earth is, if not universal to life at least found in some other species, and we have no way of knowing if that is the case.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Well, we could assume that expansive civilisations are rare, but I am trying to avoid making such assumptions. We simply do not see them, and that poses a question which we can't answer without more information.

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