this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Maybe. There are so many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox.
The Fermi Paradox is an interesting question, but it is not an answer in itself.
The Great Filter makes the most sense to me. The traits that make a species likely to be space faring are the same ones like to cause it to filter themselves out of the future.
This is one of my favorite conundrums about life you touched on above with another comment and this one. Does an advanced society really exist fully "in sync" with their environment? Probably no space program if so, technological progression is slowed to thousands or millions of years (think of only harvesting resources deposited by natural water flows etc). Or do successful lifeforms use up their planets (then solar systems) resources with enough time to get out of dodge?
Every planet and star system will kill their inhabitants sooner or later. Any culture that is gravity bound will surely perish without advances. The "Fermi Paradox" has always been more about threading a needle than a true/false statement for me.
totally
Maybe they're all around us right now, but we can't see/interact with them for some reason.
My favorite hypothesis is we just didn't invent something akin to subspace radio yet. It's like thinking your little remote island is the only populated place in the world because no one responds to your smoke signals, while the rest of the world uses radio.
Or, we could be first.
Someone is/was.
The dark forest theory seems unlikely, since we've been broadcasting our presence for as long as we've been able to, with nothing as a result. I suppose it's possible that they're headed our way now. Or that they don't have FTL so they won't get here for hundreds of years.