🏡 Back Home
🔎 Search
The Fermi Paradox - Wait but Why
- Author: waitbutwhy.com
- Full Title: The Fermi Paradox - Wait but Why
- Category: #articles
- Read on: 2022-06-02
- URL: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html
Highlights
- The Kardashev Scale, which helps us group intelligent civilizations into three broad categories by the amount of energy they use (View Highlight)
- A Type I Civilization has the ability to use all of the energy on their planet. (View Highlight)
- A Type II Civilization can harness all of the energy of their host star. (View Highlight)
- A Type III Civilization blows the other two away, accessing power comparable to that of the entire Milky Way galaxy. (View Highlight)
New highlights added June 4, 2022 at 12:16 PM
- One possibility: The Great Filter could be at the very beginning—it might be incredibly unusual for life to begin at all. (View Highlight)
- We’re rare, we’re first, or we’re fucked. (View Highlight)
- evolution does not strive for a goal but just happens, (View Highlight)
- The Great Filter could be the jump from the simple prokaryote cell to the complex eukaryote cell. (View Highlight)
- If we’re neither rare nor early, Group 1 thinkers conclude that The Great Filter must be in our future. (View Highlight)
- One example of a phenomenon that could make this realistic is the prevalence of gamma-ray bursts, insanely huge explosions that we’ve observed in distant galaxies. (View Highlight)
- Explanation Group 1: There are no signs of higher (Type II and III) civilizations because there are no higher civilizations in existence. (View Highlight)
- the silence of the night sky is golden.” (View Highlight)
- Explanation Group 2: Type II and III intelligent civilizations are out there—and there are logical reasons why we might not have heard from them. (View Highlight)
- Possibility 1) Super-intelligent life could very well have already visited Earth, but before we were here. (View Highlight)
- Possibility 3) The entire concept of physical colonization is a hilariously backward concept to a more advanced species (View Highlight)
- Possibility 2) The galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some desolate rural area of the galaxy (View Highlight)
- Possibility 4) There are scary predator civilizations out there, and most intelligent life knows better than to broadcast any outgoing signals and advertise their location (View Highlight)
- Possibility 6) There’s plenty of activity and noise out there, but our technology is too primitive and we’re listening for the wrong things. (View Highlight)
- Possibility 8) Higher civilizations are aware of us and observing us (AKA the “Zoo Hypothesis” (View Highlight)
- Here on Earth, we’re the king of our little castle, proud ruler of the huge group of imbeciles who share the planet with us. (View Highlight)