¶ Dissolving the Fermi paradox

Url

arxiv

arxiv pdf,

¶ BibTeX

@article{sandberg2018dissolving,
  title={Dissolving the Fermi paradox},
  author={Sandberg, Anders and Drexler, Eric and Ord, Toby},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.02404},
  year={2018}
}

¶ Abstract

The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial {\em ex ante} probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe.

¶ My Summary

The Drake Equation estimates how many alien civilizations we should be able to see. You plug in the numbers, and the equation says there should be loads of aliens in our galaxy, but we haven’t detected any. What gives? Are they hiding? This paper says no, the important question isn’t “how many alien civilizations should we expect to see?” It’s “What’s the likelihood that the number of civilizations is only 1 (us)?” All the numbers we plug in to the Drake equation are uncertain, and if you look at the whole distribution, there’s a pretty big chunk of the parameter space where we would end up alone in the galaxy (as seems to be the case).