A Darwinian explanation for the Fermi paradox [UPDATED 4/21/2011]
April 18, 2011 by Amara D. Angelica
Arecibo Observatory: did the "Arecibo Message" transmitted toward the Andromeda Galaxy in 1974 risk extinction of our species? (Credit: NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF)
The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. As Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everybody?”
One answer is that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the improbability of life evolving at all in our universe.
In an April 4 paper in arXiv, Adrian Kent of the University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute suggested two alternate reasons why we haven’t heard from extraterrestrials:
- “Intelligent species might reasonably worry about the possible dangers of self-advertisement and hence incline towards discretion” — the “Undetectability Conjecture,” suggested by Beatriz Gato-Rivera in http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0308078 and arXiv:physics/0512062v3.
- Strengthening that argument: “Evolutionary selection, acting on a cosmic scale, tends to extinguish species which conspicuously advertise themselves and their habitats.”
Transmitting to ET: bad idea?
Kent concludes with an observation: “It often seems to be implicitly assumed, and sometimes is explicitly argued, that colonising or otherwise exploiting the resources of other planets and other solar systems will solve our problems when the Earth’s resources can no longer sustain our consumption. It might perhaps be worth contemplating more seriously the possibility that there may be limits to the territory we can safely colonise and to the resources we can safely exploit, and to consider whether and how it might be possible to evolve towards a way of living that can be sustained (almost) indefinitely on the resources of (say) our solar system alone.”
In SHOUTING AT THE COSMOS … Or How SETI has Taken a Worrisome Turn Into Dangerous Territory, astrophysicist and science-fiction author Dr. David Brin advises that “people who care about [transmissions from Earth] — preferring a wide-ranging discussion before a few individuals start screaming into space on our behalf — are going to have to do some yelling of their own.” He explores this issue further in A CONTRARIAN PERSPECTIVE ON ALTRUISM: THE DANGERS OF FIRST CONTACT and other thought-provoking articles.
Response from David Brin [added 4/21/2011]
In fact, I’ve been wrassling with the Fermi Paradox since before it was called that. Since 1985, when I named the mystery “The Great Silence” — in what is still the only full review article ever on the subject.*
In that paper, I catalogued almost a hundred explanations that people have offered for the silence in the sky and our appearance of being the only civilization around. Alas, this topic brings out the most impulsive and opinionated side of many people. Folks tend to choose one particular answer, over all the other possibilities, for reasons having a lot more to do with individual psychology than either logic or evidence.
If you look at the good old Drake Equation (it needs to be expanded by a couple of factors), then it’s clear that some factor must be lower-than-expected, in order to make the emptiness we seem to see around us. But which factor?
Funny thing. Those who *want* the cosmos to be empty of competition (so we can fill it) tend to choose Drake factors on the left side. Those who are eager for contact tend to choose factors on the right side! Moreover, once a person picks a favorite explanation, he or she tends to cling to it, vociferously sure that all other theories are nonsense. I’ve seen this happen to some of the smartest guys I know.
Almost nobody seems willing to admit “We just don’t know; there’s too little data.”
The particular “Darwinian” theory recently published amounts to “they’re all cowards because some predatory types out there may be mean and so everybody’s hiding.” Alas, it is an old, old, old hypothesis. It’s been around a boringly long time. Moreover, I find it a bit sad that the authors actually think they invented it. Heck that explanation could be true… and I am hoping we’ll have a moratorium on idiotic “message” shouting till we learn a bit more. But that doesn’t make the idea original.
Someday, I hope, people will enter this fascinating field actually interested in exploring the full scope of ideas that it allows, before blabbing “I just figured it out!” the first moment they get a notion. Perhaps one day when curiosity outweighs egotism. Heck, maybe then we’ll be ready for contact! ;-)
- David Brin
* My “Great Silence” paper about the mysterious Fermi Paradox, the strange lack of signs, in the heavens, of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Quarterly Journal of Royal Astronomical Society, Fall 1983, v.24, pp283-309 (downloadable at http://www.davidbrin.com/sciencearticles. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983QJRAS..24..283B)
Comments (19)
by cfox@ma.rr.com
considering the fact that the vast majority of humans who are not focusing on their next meal still cannot tell the difference between fact and fantasy, there seems little point in looking for other civilizations, I am not sure there is one here.
by gillammi
If intelligent life took 4 billion years on Earth to emerge and the universe is 13 billion years old, then probability suggests that civilization could have had billions of years of exponentially accelerating intelligence.
Could extraterrestrials even consider conversation with humans worth the effort? When was the last time one of us flew to rural Pennsylvania to try to communicate with a snail?
Humans could be snails in the forest of animals in the Universe. Just as humans might wait for snails to evolve to be able to talk to us, ET might wait until we are able to talk to them.
by jabelar
This doesn’t seem to be a good explanation as evolution actually favors the more aggressive, expansive, greedy entities. It is true that evolution will also produce some secretive creatures, but that wouldn’t account for total silence from alien worlds.
My favorite explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that there have indeed been many intelligent civilizations but when they approach the Singularity they invariably wipe themselves out. This is because the dangers of new technology during that period will outpace the creatures’ ability to shed their evolutionary past — for example with humans we continue to be greedy and violent even though by some estimations we’re less than a century from the Singularity.
Basically I’m saying that advanced technology civilizations never last more than a couple centuries before hitting an existential catastrophe. There are so many possible such catastrophes that the odds quickly cancel out the Drake Equation. There can be mistakes with environment, mistakes with weapons, mistakes with pathogens, the creatures can get trapped in virtual realities, or lose the will to continue, or have some sort of religious apocalyptic war, or their sentient technology they create will destroy them and then die itself, etc. I know this is a pessimistic view, but I think it is consistent with the fact that evolution will favor entities that battle for supremacy, develop technology along the way, then that technology rapidly advances before they can manage their old greedy behavior.
My second favorite explanation is that we may actually be the first (or only). While the odds are extremely remote, someone has to be the first. It is like a statistician saying “no one can win a lottery” when in fact we know someone does despite the overwhelming odds.
by enviridude
Isn’t the case that the distances involved are at present too great for our technology. Even in our own galatic terms, wouldn’t the signals we pump out from earth be almost undetectable beyond a few lightyears in distance compered to the cosmic back ground radiation? Wouldn’t that be same with us receiving these signals from other worlds. Am I just downplaying out capables in this area or is everybody else over estemating our ability?
by andrzejlipski
The structure of the universe makes so that the only living organisms we have been in contact with exist in a closed system. Because of this isolation we have discovered a collection of survival strategies that have perpetuated because of the natural selection process. But that doesn’t say that we as the collective organisms have invented all of them. We have only created the ones that are ideal of the environments that exist on this planet.
Sure the survival of the biggest coward is a successful strategy in the savannah and that has probably been the one that helped humanity thwart much faster predators but the stellar environment is one of great distances between small oasis across the universe. Maybe instead of focusing on the strategies that helped humans advance we should refine a better abstraction of the stellar environment and then look for similar models in or own planetary ecology and see what is successful.
I applaud the paper for continuing the discussion and appreciate anything that encourages others to participate. And as doe Mr Brin. I enjoyed your books David. I read the Uplift Series as much as I’ve read my Tolkien. But to respond with a I said it first, to me, comes off a little conceited. Why can’t someone discuss the topic further because it has already been published. Should we never go to the moon again because some men over 50 years ago already went there. The rest of his response was engaging but I could have done without his need to stake a claim, or he could have found a better way of plugging his paper. After all he is a writer.
by cosmowrench
Actually, in order to mine a small rocky planet it would be much easier to seed the planet with self assembling, self organizing and evolving robots who like shiny things and will dig em up for u. No recources needed, no energy needed all u have to do is come back after a while, discard the robots and take the shinies they dug up.
by Keysailor
We study so many simpler lifeforms than ourselves. Do the bacteria, protozoa, or even frogs recognize that they are being studied?
We likely haven’t the senses or ability to recognize contact with any significantly higher intelligence than ourselves.
Will our post-singularity selves even care about our pre-singularity, or will we have learned all we need from that stage and be focused elsewhere?
by peolesdru
If two advanced civilizations light years apart wanted to communicate using radio on purpose, they would have to build very large transmitters and receivers and point them at each other. We are unlikely to pick up the sort of emanations we produce from a similarly advanced civilization. A more advanced civilization might use an entirely different technology to communicate over long distances. So maybe when we eventually develop sub-space communication, we’ll find 100 years worth of email waiting in our inbox. Ditto greylander regarding the odds of our neighbors having much interest in our resources. Heavy elements are easier to mine from smaller rocky planets that don’t come with a moral conundrum and water is MUCH easier to mine from the gas giants and their moons.
by a
I should hope that these advanced aliens, should they exist, won’t go harvesting our humble planet for matter should they want more disk space for their computers. Rather perhaps they could harvest the matter of the multiverse. I’m partial to the simulation argument however.
by Not Sure
My book, Mind War; The Singularity, proposes another solution to the Fermi Paradox; they’re already here, and they don’t want to be found, because it would destroy our culture.
by Editor
Response from David Brin added 4/21/2011
by drift
not thrilled with either of these ‘new’ possible explanations, we hear the same follywood independence-day scenarios again and again – be it aliens or gray goo… i tend to favor the simulation argument, or that technology evolves so quickly that it becomes unrecognizable, or that we simply don’t know what to look for…
the great ‘empty space’ that we float in (compared to other galaxies is a bit… troubling – is it ONLY by chance?
simulation works out a lot of kinks (for me) and makes some sense in relation to what we’re seeing at the quantum level.
by josdorpjossie
So let’s hope that the speed of light cannot be crossed. This will buy us enough time to develop ourselves into computronium and be a serious competitor for any species out there. I’m not sure one species of computronium or another still matters by that time. Maybe by that time it’s all about competition of ideas, and not the hardware it’s implemented on.
by Jaynay.com
Crossed or even approached!
by AeaeaActual
The Fermi paradox has occupied my thoughts for years, and neither of the explanations put forward by Kent are new or particularly interesting. They are also not compelling. The Fermi paradox in and of itself certainly *is* compelling. Part of the Fermi paradox is the reasonable assumption that there has been ample time in the universe for singularity-level civilizations to emerge, civilizations which might’ve filled the universe with intelligence in exactly the way Ray Kurzweil posits we may do one day. So, where are they? They should’ve come knocking by now, and in a reasonable way, not as bogeymen who abduct people for probing and who mutilate cows, or as any of the other myriad ridiculous characterizations of alien intelligence.
One unlikely but possible explanation is that such aliens don’t exist and never have. It is possible to conceive, and to hypothesize explanations for, the possibility that we’re it; humans may actually be the first life form in the universe to get to this stage. I’m not selling it hard, but it’s possible.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about ultra-violent, resource-hogging alien civilizations, and I’d hope we’d be good enough to mature into a civilization that will not itself go on to become an ultra-violent, resource-hogging force as we move out into the universe, should we encounter other life out there.
@AeaeaActual
by greylander
The reasoning here is incomplete. Any reasonable projection of technological advance means that with centuries (by the time we have interstellar capability) all we will need is energy and matter, which we will convert into whatever form needed. The same will be true of any advanced race.
Neo-Darwinian theory tells us that the replicators of the future (memes) will expand to fill all possible niches as rapidly as possible — because the ones that do not compete and expand aggressively will be out-competed by those that do.
Stealth is important, but evolution here on earth shows it is not a trump card — there are other ways to survive other than being stealthy.
Competition among memes does not require physical destruction of competitors — useful memes from one society can spread into the information processing systems of another and vice versa. Memes for cooperation will tend to win in the long run. Thus, advanced civilizations are more likely to merge than to destroy each other.
Advanced societies *may*have means and motive to avoid detection, but as to what those might be, we can only fancifully speculate.
Just because some collections of memes choose to remain hidden, this does not mean that other meme-groups will not expand to exploit available niches.
by gillammi
What is the best evidence that memes for cooperation will tend to win in the long run?
by Khannea Suntzu
So there would be territorial claim, scarcity driven competition, at some level in the cosmos, and if a planetary technological presence (species?) ‘attracts attention’ it attracts some measure of violence. This is of course a horrific notion, and it instantly makes the universe feel Lovecraftian and horrific. It also means we might also be years away from an instantaneous and utterly futile eradication. The relativistic-speed pellets of antimatter might already be inbound. If we soon we see the kuyper belt from one direction explode in a cascade shower of X rays we know we will be next minutes later. They’ll sterilize the whole system from interstellar space.
Only way to be sure :)
by Porkov
For a fantastic, wonderfully humorous mass-media presentation of this issue, watch “Mars Attacks.”