Fermi Paradox

[brewer]

I responded with #3. I think it is extremely arrogant to think that the human race is so special that aliens would seek us out. If aliens ever do find us (and I don't believe that they have to date) it will not be because humans exist, it will be because they are interested in the earth as a planet and that life exists in general.

I'd be more interested in what type of reception we would give the aliens and what type of reception they would give us.

[Jenny A]

I voted for two, interstellar travel of any distance is probably either impractical or impossible.  But humans aren't that interesting is another good bet.  I have one more.  It seems every other scifi book I read these days involving interstellar travel by humans includes some sort of moral prohibition on revealing ourselves to species who have not yet invented interstellar travel.  So what if they are hiding from us for our own good?

But ultimately, I don't think we really know how likely intelligent life outside of our solar system really is. After all we only have one example.

[Minimalist]

I don't think we really know how likely intelligent life outside of our solar system really is.

Or in it.

[AFTT47]

Number 3 is the closest.

I'm rather astounded by the number of people who voted number 2. Slower-than-light interstellar travel is well within the bounds of physics so if someone wanted to do it, it would only be a question of how long it takes to develop the technology. The only way something is forever impossible is if the laws of physics do not allow it. That is not the case with slower-than-light interstellar travel.

[vorlon13]

The 'big' Orion impulse powered ships Dyson was looking into back in the early 60s are difficult to build, but can do the job. And he was looking at delivering 50,000 people and enough equipment to firmly establish a colony. And then realize, the colony doesn't start at 'stone age' or 'bronze age' technology, they start where they left off at when they left our solar system. I'd be surprised if that colony took even 1 thousand years to get to the point of being able to launch their own 'new and improved' colony ship. And in the meantime those of us back here, will have learned from the first one too, and may have made 2 to 4 more colonizing ships.

Travel time from star to star, from the POV of the 'big picture', becomes almost irrelevant once you have colonies sending their own ships out, and those subsequent colonies doing the same.

For the VAST majority of the last couple million years, humans and their predecessors have for the most part just been banging rocks together and poking each other with sticks, maybe we could do something just a little more significant during the next 50,000 years or so ???

[ignoramus]

We will.
After WW111.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I think it's a form of confirmation bias.

[The Grand Nudger]

We lost the Edmund Fitzgerald in a -lake- on a colonized world with some idea of where it had been and where it was headed.  I don;t know that our not seeing any aliens is indicative of anything at all.  We don't even know what we'd be looking for or where to look. We're lucky just to see each other on this little pebble (and often enough we aren't even -that- lucky).

[I_am_not_mafia]

A good explanation that I once heard was that there is probably only a very short period of time when a civilisation makes its presence known. In less than a hundred years we have gone from sending out television signals into spacd to using cable to deliver them. That's nothing in evolutionary terms.

Add to that the vast distances just to get out of solar system, the even larger distances between systems and that it's taken this long to create the technology to look for alien life. Our civilisation could well come to an end in a hundred years because of the long emergency. The chances of capable civilisations occuring at the same time to spot each other and actually doing so becomes orders of magnitude less likely. We don't even properly search the skies for Earth destroying asteroids.

[Pyrrho]

...

For the VAST majority of the last couple million years, humans and their predecessors have for the most part just been banging rocks together and poking each other with sticks, maybe we could do something just a little more significant during the next 50,000 years or so ???

Hey, why mess with what one knows?  Now, where is my stick to poke someone with...