Today I was watching Elon talk about all the successes of SpaceX in this video. He says he has seen a lot of things, but nothing that seems to be alien craft.
I’m here to talk about the Fermi Paradox. Here is what my friendly robot told me about the Fermi paradox:
Yo! The Fermi Paradox is this super cool and kinda mind-boggling thing. It's all about the big question: With so many stars and planets out there in the universe, why haven't we bumped into aliens yet? Like, the universe is insanely huge, right? Billions of stars in our galaxy alone, many of them with planets that could be kinda like Earth. So, you'd think the odds are pretty good there's life out there somewhere else.
The paradox is named after Enrico Fermi, a super smart physicist dude. He basically asked, "Where is everybody?" during a casual lunch convo with other scientists in 1950. It's not just about finding little green dudes, but any sign of life, like radio signals or megastructures in space.
Here's the deal: The paradox points out this weird contradiction. On one hand, you've got a crazy-high chance for alien life because the universe is so vast and old. But on the other hand, we've got zilch, nada, no contact or evidence of aliens. It makes you wonder, right? Are we just looking in the wrong places, or is there something else going on that makes intelligent life super rare or maybe short-lived?
It's a head-scratcher for sure and gets folks thinking about all kinds of theories and possibilities. It's one of those things that's not just about science but also gets into philosophy and what it means to be alive in this vast universe. Cool stuff!
Elon in the video thinks our civilization is a dimly light candle that needs to burn brighter by getting to another planet. He is early in AI with backing OpenAI and Tesla probably being one of the largest machine learning organizations. Now you and X to that portfolio with Grok.
This is why I have Brandon Fugal and Kirk Ouimet speaking next week, March 5th, about how we should think about Aliens and AI. Are they the same? Are we needing to side with one or the other for help?
Brandon is spending more money and time on researching the paranormal than probably any non government organization with his SkinWalker Ranch project. Kirk is spending all his time on asking AI how we save our human body and our species. These two will debate on stage some real crazy questions that I am preparing.
But I want to know your questions so I can ask them next week…or if you are nearby, just come to the event, it’s free. Who do you think will save us? Aliens or AI? We are all going to die, but maybe we can avoid that as individuals and a species.
Thanks and happy 4:20 on this Sunnyday
SP
Possible explanations:
1. A culture sufficiently intelligent to communicate and/or travel between stars would also have gained the ability to destroy itself, and given enough time, eventually will. That window might be fairly narrow. Only 0.0001% of the Milky Way is within 100 light years of earth. Radio waves like we have been generating for 100 years become indistinguishable from background radiation before they even get to our nearest star neighbor, four light years away. The alternative is to blast out strong signals, which must be narrow. It might take too long for an advanced civilization to cover the entire galaxy with a strong signal during the brief window before it destroys itself, and the chances that the signal and an alien planet just happen to intersect during the brief window in which it can receive the signal but before it destroys itself is seems vanishingly small. It's kind of the Drake Equation in reverse, only the numbers get smaller and smaller instead of bigger and bigger.
2. Or, it may be that the advanced civilizations that endure are the ones best at hiding themselves, thus avoiding becoming the target of advanced, belligerent civilizations.
Regarding your question, I don't think AI will save us (and may be complicit in advanced civilizations destroying themselves) but I don't think aliens will ever have the opportunity to.
Just a thought. Throwing it out there.
Although we feel we are moving so fast on the information super highway, nothing can stop us, comparatively to aliens, maybe are at a Neanderthal level?
Perhaps we cannot detect them or see them because they are so advanced and we are not. If that is the case, AI is not going to do much to help the situation.
But of course I truly have no idea.