Recent study shows strong likelihood we are the only intelligent life in the universe

[Justin Swanton]

Dr. Anders Sandberg and a team of researchers at Oxford University have recently published a study, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox, that posits the strong possibility we are the only intelligent life form in the galaxy or even the universe.

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced by the line of reasoning (regardless of what I think of the conclusion). The Fermi Paradox and its counter arguments all assume:

a) that intelligent alien life is capable of physically reaching us,

b) that intelligent alien life is capable at least of making its existence known to us.

How likely is either? If we respect the laws of physics, any kind of serious interstellar travel is impossible; perhaps the odd tiny probe to a neighbouring system presuming we are sufficiently motivated to be prepared to wait decades before getting any data back from it.

What about transmitting a signal? Early warning military radars emitted by far the most powerful wavelength that aliens could recognise as coming from an intelligent source, but their range is several hundred light years at the most. Given that the galaxy is 100 000 light years wide, an alien planet would have to be very close by, exist at the same time as the signal-emitting civilisation and have constructed technology that is capable of receiving that signal. The radar signal itself contains no information other than that an intelligence produced it. Data carrying signals are much, much weaker.

To what extent would a civilisation devote resources to constructing a really powerful transmitter that could let a hypothetical alien world know it exists (hundreds or thousands of years after it began transmitting) without either world being able to do anything with the knowledge? Do we have any incentive to construct such a transmitter?

 

[BAYLOR]

Mankind as the only intelligent life form ? Given how big the Galaxy is and how much bigger then th universe is. I don't think so .

 

[-K2-]

Dr. Anders Sandberg and a team of researchers at Oxford University have recently published a study, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox, that posits the strong possibility we are the only intelligent life form in the galaxy or even the universe...

...Do we have any incentive to construct such a transmitter?

Personally, given the timeframe to reach such distant places and considering their response time, I'd have no interest in attempting to initiate contact. It's not that I do not see the value in announcing that "we exist and are here," it's just that in even 100-years hopefully our technology will advance enough that success then would far exceed the efforts ofthose of now.

Beyond that, we have a lot to learn about our own little spec of the universe first. More so, we always like to imagine that another culture will bestow upon us vast leaps in technology, though I'd suspect it is only reasonable to assume that their methods and materials might very well be out of our realm of options. Finally there is that aspect of conquest. We like to imagine a technologically evolved species has what we deem as high moral standards, yet our morality is not another's (more so if ours is the standard, conquest is the norm).

Lest we forget this fun old short :

All that said, if you believe we are the only intelligent life in the universe, then come and hang out with my pals and I for a day. We'll change your mind quickly

K2

 

[Harpo]

We're not even the only intelligent life on this planet.

 

[Danny McG]

We're not even the only intelligent life on this planet.

Commie!

 

[BAYLOR]

We're not even the only intelligent life on this planet.

Your right , We completely forgot about the clever and dynamically intelligent Three Toed Sloth.

 

[Justin Swanton]

On the topic, here is an idea of how much military radars cost. In the hundreds of millions to billions bracket.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I feel like I just read some kind of April Fool's joke for statisticians.

All they did was plot "researcher uncertainty" into a graph, give it a numerical value, then plug it into the Drake Equation - resulting in: uncertainty!

 

[Toby Frost]

How are we defining intelligence? For that matter, how are they?

 

[Vladd67]

The idea that we are the only intelligent life in the infinite universe just strikes me as a little arrogant.

 

[Vertigo]

The idea that we are the only intelligent life in the infinite universe just strikes me as a little arrogant.

But the idea that others are inevitable strikes me as closer to religious faith than science. The fact is that until and unless we ever find any single other example of life (even the tiniest of microbes) then we can make absolutely NO assumptions whatsoever. Without any other example of life any other conclusion is either grossly pessimistic or grossly optimistic.

Incidentally one thing I hate that keeps popping up in discussions of the Fermi paradox is the belief that any aliens out there have been listening to our radio/television signals for the last 100 years. So thank you @Justin Swanton for opening the discussion with the observation that even military grade radar will only reach 100 light years . At that range any radio/television would have long since disappeared into the background, I believe that radio/television is reckoned to disappear into the background within considerably less than a light year, which is considerably closer than the nearest star.

 

[Anthoney]

That's like the gnat in my kitchen proclaiming it's the only gnat in the world because it can't find another gnat in my house.

 

[Brian G Turner]

But the idea that others are inevitable strikes me as closer to religious faith than science. The fact is that until and unless we ever find any single other example of life (even the tiniest of microbes) then we can make absolutely NO assumptions whatsoever. Without any other example of life any other conclusion is either grossly pessimistic or grossly optimistic.

It actually strikes me as the reverse: either life is a process that arises naturally from the physically laws of the universe, or it's a singular miraculous event that happened only on Earth. The former seems the more logical presumption, the latter more one of faith.

 

[Vertigo]

That's like the gnat in my kitchen proclaiming it's the only gnat in the world because it can't find another gnat in my house.

I didn't state that I therefore believe we are alone, only that in the absence of any other discovered life we have insufficient information to make any assumptions of probability either way.

 

[Vertigo]

It actually strikes me as the reverse: either life is a process that arises naturally from the physically laws of the universe, or it's a singular miraculous event that happened only on Earth. The former seems the more logical presumption, the latter more one of faith.

But the problem is that you are making an assumption based on no statistical knowledge. Maybe the appearance of life was miraculous (please note I'm not saying it was) but without other evidence we can neither make a case for that or against it.

ETA: To try and make my stance a little clearer:

To state that we have found no other life therefore there is no other life out there is clearly a fallacious argument. Equally to state that we have found one example of life therefore there must be loads of life out there is a fallacious argument. We simply have no evidence to allow one or other argument more validity; absolutely none. Of course the problem with the former is that we can never prove a negative. It is possible we may one day prove there is other life whereas we can never prove there is no other life. But that doesn't make proving there is other life more likely.

 

[Justin Swanton]

It actually strikes me as the reverse: either life is a process that arises naturally from the physically laws of the universe, or it's a singular miraculous event that happened only on Earth. The former seems the more logical presumption, the latter more one of faith.

And we wander on to the turf of Evolution. Evolution makes the assumption that the fantastically complex 4-base prescriptive programming language of DNA arose by pure chance, without supplying any evidence for that assumption. Between the molecular organisation of a single cell and the molecular organisation of elements and compounds there is a chasm of nature, not just degree.

But, I suspect, that goes beyond what can be discussed on this forum.

Certainly the conviction that Evolution is scientifically proven leads inevitably to the conclusion that life must have spontaneously arisen on other planets. There are so many of them a few at least will have the necessary conditions.

 

[BAYLOR]

I didn't state that I therefore believe we are alone, only that in the absence of any other discovered life we have insufficient information to make any assumptions of probability either way.

If we are alone in the Universe, It would be a very disappointing.

It would mean our science fction books lied to us.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

a) that intelligent alien life is capable of physically reaching us,

b) that intelligent alien life is capable at least of making its existence known to us.

If there is other life out there, we are not physically capable of reaching them, nor of making our existence known to them, and we know we exist. And we assume we are intelligent.

Also, the other intelligent life on this planet has been either unable or unwilling to make itself known to us until we are intelligent enough to figure it out for ourselves.

 

[Anthoney]

My comment was for the whole question and those scientists. If there was a civilization 3 or 4 billion light years away from earth we would never know unless they sent a signal 3 or 4 billion years ago.

 

[Onyx]

Dr. Anders Sandberg and a team of researchers at Oxford University have recently published a study, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox, that posits the strong possibility we are the only intelligent life form in the galaxy or even the universe.

Neither the new study nor Fermi posits that we're the only life in the universe.

The Drake Equation sets out method for calculating the likelihood of intelligent life in a particular volume of space.

The Fermi Paradox asks the question, "If the Drake Equation makes us feel like there ought to be a lot of intelligent life, shouldn't we see some of it?"

Sandberg's study says "No Fermi, it might just be that when you put in all the right data into the Drake equation, the actual probability is extremely low, so it isn't paradoxical."


Just as the Drake Equation doesn't make any actual claims about probability of intelligent life, Sandberg isn't really saying there isn't life, but that a lack of other nearby life falls within a reasonable probability of being true, rather than being completely improbable.

To me, interpreting Drake as a claim of high likelihood was a mistaken interpretation, and Fermi was simply responding to that claim on its own merits. But Drake does not establish any sort of likelihood, and just lays out the tools to apply data. Data we largely don't have. So while Sandberg is "debunking" Fermi, he's also debunking those folks that misread Drake.


We have no idea how likely or unlikely intelligent life is per unit number of stars.