The problem with intelligent aliens is that once your civilization becomes technologically
advanced enough to wipe them out, it’s already too late.
Today we will be beginning my Fermi paradox series.
In this episode, we will be looking at intelligent aliens or technologically advanced civilizations,
tied in with the Fermi paradox.
The question that asks: “Where are all the aliens?”.
In more detail, the Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between the sheer size and age
of the Universe and the apparent absence of any other intelligent life besides ourselves.
In other words, if the universe is so large and old surely there has been more than enough
time for another intelligent civilization to evolve and gain intelligence and let us
know that they’re there.
The problem is, an intelligent civilization would need better technology than us, because
our signal is not strong at all.
We would have trouble detecting most of our own signals, even if we were only four light
years away at the closest star, Proxima Centauri.
So, to have any chance of another species receiving our signals or us detecting their
signals, they must have more advanced detecting and transmitting methods than us.
Now some of you will be thinking that it’s not a good idea to broadcast yourself out
to the universe, and those of you with this thought are, for the most part, not wrong,
because shouting out to the rest of the galaxy saying where you are is not the best idea
if there’s another civilization and if that civilization is hostile, you’re entire civilization
is in trouble.
But even if we suddenly did stop broadcasting signals because we realized the possible consequences,
it’s already too late because Humans have been broadcasting radio and TV broadcasts
for more than a century now.
However, this shouldn’t be a concern in the first place because any civilization who
has achieved interstellar travel and has plans to harm life on Earth didn’t need the radio
signals in the first place to find us, and are advanced enough to know about us already.
Now before we discuss any further, there’s one important note you should consider.
It’s important to make the distinction between life and intelligent life.
The Fermi paradox doesn’t care about ordinary life that will never develop intelligence.
Finding algae on an exoplanet helps us in no way in the Fermi paradox.
There are at least two reasons why a species will never gain intelligence.
Firstly, some species will never gain intelligence because they don’t need it to survive.
Fire is one of the things that humans invented that really started things off, and helped
us immensely.
In the far past, about two million years ago, humans came across fire and used it to stay
warm, to sharpen tools, to cook meat and to keep predators away.
A species that doesn’t benefit from fire won’t invent it, or might not even have
the correct anatomy to do so.
Take lions for example.
They wouldn’t benefit from creating and controlling fire because they don’t need
the heat from the fire as they have fur, they can digest raw meat much better than we can
so they don’t need to cook their meat, and lions tend to be apex predators so they don’t
need fire to scare predators away.
And fire is far too dangerous so they’d stay away from it, if they did somehow come
across it.
So, in conclusion, some animals basically don’t need intelligence to survive, and
therefore they won’t develop it.
The second reason is that some species can't gain intelligence.
As I said, in order to become more technologically advanced, in the beginning, inventing fire
is a very good idea.
Some animals can’t do this.
For example, every underwater creature can’t, as their environment doesn’t allow them
to do so.
However some underwater creatures do have brains that are capable of developing intelligence.
A dolphin has a large brain that allows them to do things other animals can’t.
For example when looking in a mirror, studies show a dolphin has self-awareness and when
hunting, they have new and creative methods.
However, because they’re habitat is underwater they will never gain intelligence or become
technologically advanced, which does not help us in the Fermi paradox.
This is called a filter, or a Great Filter.
In the context of the Fermi paradox, a filter is a barrier that is really hard for life
to overcome.
The idea is based around the fact that we can’t see any life out there, despite the
gigantic number of stars and planets.
And so there must be either something preventing life from starting in the first place or something
stopping life before it sends messages or colonizes the galaxy.
Examples of filters include getting the correct star system while having a planet that is
habitable, simple and complex life to develop, multi-cell life and animals with large brains
using tools.
These filters were thought of by Robin Hanson, who first proposed the idea of a Great Filter.
Those filters are ones that stop life from beginning in the first place.
Climate change, nuclear warfare, and asteroids are examples of filters that could stop life
before they send messages out to the universe or try to colonize the galaxy, for example.
In the Great Filter hypothesis there are many scenarios for Humans.
One: Humans have already passed all the filters.
We’ve clearly passed the filters of having a sun capable of sustaining life while having
a planet in the habitable zone, life to develop and so on.
This scenario seems likely because it’s incredibly difficult to kill all life on Earth.
You’d have to go to some extent to kill all life on Earth.
We’ll come back to the idea of killing all life on Earth and methods of doing so near
the end of the episode.
Two: Humans have not encountered all the filters; they’re ahead of us.
While we’ve passed the necessities for life to be able to begin, we might have not passed
filters that are becoming more relevant and popular everyday such as climate change, nuclear
warfare, overpopulation, terrorism and so on.
There could be a Great Filter that wipes out almost every civilization that ever tries
to get past it, perhaps only 1 in a billion civilizations overcome it.
It would be very bad news to find life elsewhere in our solar system, such as on Mars that
has developed there independently.
It would suggest that life is not rare, seen as its happened twice in one solar system,
and it would imply that the filter lies ahead.
However, there may be no such thing as the Great Filter, even if some civilizations destroyed
themselves, it may not be a hard rule.
The Great Filter hypothesis is a popular solution to the Fermi paradox and is a popular camp:
it offers a pretty good, satisfying solution to the Fermi paradox, because it explains
why, at the moment, Humans are the only life that we know of, and why we aren’t seeing
the Milky Way teeming with life.
However, the problem with the Great Filter hypothesis is that you can always say, “Surely
just one civilization can overcome all the filters”.
Using the examples we were talking about earlier, not every species out there in the universe
is going to be based on an ocean covered planet, not every species is going to be like lions
where they don’t need to gain intelligence to survive, not every species is going to
be hit by an asteroid or any other catastrophic event that wipes all life out.
All it takes is one civilization to have the right conditions on their home planet so that
they can gain intelligence and become technologically advanced enough to overcome any filter that
arises but more importantly so that they colonize their galaxy where we would be able to see
them from every angle.
But that’s assuming that the civilization in question actually wants to colonize the
galaxy.
Some civilizations might see no reason in colonizing the galaxy, or it may be too expensive
to colonize the galaxy.
They might stay on their original home planet or close to it in order to hide from other
hostile civilizations.
Or they may keep to themselves on their home planet living in virtual reality running on
a matrioshka brain.
We’re going to cover this notion, that some alien civilizations might see no point in
travelling the cosmos, in a future episode of my Fermi paradox series.
Let’s assume that a very technologically advanced civilization doesn’t see any point
in colonizing the galaxy in manned missions, but instead they use von Neumann probes: self-replicating
spacecrafts that travel to a nearby solar system, grab natural resources in order to
build some more probes and send them to other solar systems, and repeat.
This advanced civilization wants to kill all life off in their galaxy, no matter what the
circumstances are.
They program the von Neumann probes to find exoplanets (preferably an Earth-like exoplanet
that has good chances of having life).
When the probes reach the designated exoplanet they land and scan for life.
If they find any signs of life (whether it’s plant-life or intelligent-life) the probe
destroys it.
If the probe doesn’t find any life then, after its created several other self-replicating
probes, it settles down and sets up shop on the planet, turning on every so often to scan
the nearby surroundings for any signs of life.
If you really want to destroy all life in your galaxy then just program your probes
to look for not just intelligent life but just any living life.
Destroying life that hasn’t gained intelligence prevents that life from potentially evolving
and gaining intelligence over the course of several hundred million years.
Soon, within only a few million years if not less, these self-replicating probes will have
colonized and be monitoring every planet in the galaxy.
When using self-replicating probes, especially when discussing artificial intelligence, it’s
really important to not let them have intelligence or free will.
Instead make them dumb so that they don’t change their motives and philosophies; that
will ruin your entire plan.
This is especially portrayed in one of my favourite books: "2001: A Space Odyssey”
by Arthur C. Clarke.
When travelling the solar system, going to Saturn, the AI on the spaceship called “Hal”
changes his motives and kills one of the only members of crew.
This is one of the major themes of the book: Man, when creating machines especially with
AI, cannot understand how they work and cannot fully control them.
AI turning evil is very often portrayed in science-fiction and makes a very good and
interesting plot.
Let’s say that a very advanced, intelligent civilization discover our planet using telescopes
on their home planet.
Being so advanced they would’ve moved on from their home-planet, and possibly be living
on rotating habitats along with a Dyson sphere around their home-star, or some other advanced
form of living space, but that’s besides the point.
After finding our planet and seeing that it has life, they plan a mission to travel to
Earth.
Through their telescopes, depending on how far away from Earth they are, they would’ve
seen civilization at its very early stages or it might be non-existent, because light
hasn’t had enough time yet to get to their solar system.
They reach Earth several centuries later.
An advanced civilization might have noticed Earth already, before this species, and saw
us as no threat so they left us alone.
But this civilization has a different intent.
They travelled here for Earth’s raw materials and natural resources.
Even with FTL, Faster Than Light travel, interstellar travel will most likely take centuries probably
a lot longer and it’s probably a one way trip, because it’s unlikely that they’ll
be able to refuel and obviously because interstellar travel takes so long.
So telling a species, that has gone through several generations just waiting for this
one moment for centuries, to go away most likely won’t end well.
They might want to talk in person or forget that, and go straight into killing all life
on the planet so that they can use Earth for themselves.
But we could’ve avoided the alien armada in the first place if you put a simple beacon
saying “This is our solar system, no trespassing”.
But if aliens do decide to ignore all communications and kill all life on the planet they’d probably
do means of killing all life on Earth that wouldn’t destroy the natural resources.
That is if their aim is to get Earth’s resources.
If they don’t need the resources then they can just do any method to kill all life on
the planet.
In this case they could nuke it for all they care.
In the scenario that I’ve just created the species travelled to Earth to obtain the resources.
But there are a few other reasons why a species might want to travel to Earth.
Firstly, to talk to us.
An advanced alien species might want to simply talk to us and find more about how we govern
our planet.
Before they come to Earth it’s their job to do some research about our language, psychology,
anatomy, and so on.
Learning our language is the most important and is imperative, so that they can actually
talk to us.
And it won’t be that difficult to learn our basic language, because we’ve been broadcasting
radio and TV signals for very long so they have tons of resources to use.
I may do a video on ways an alien species might use our radio and TV broadcasts to learn
our language, as another episode to this series.
Second, a specific thing.
They might just want Earth for themselves.
On the other hand, it’s unlikely that an advanced civilization would come to Earth
just for our raw materials.
Almost everything you can find on Earth, you can find elsewhere in the universe (apart
from life that is), and it’s probably easier to get it not from Earth anyways.
Third, to destroy our planet.
This is the most logical reason.
An advanced alien species might not take any chances and try to kill any other life in
their galaxy, like we discussed earlier with the von Neumann probes process.
Maybe so that they have no competition in the future and so that we don’t get too
advanced.
There are many ways to destroy all life on a planet although, don’t get me wrong, it’s
very difficult.
I think the most obvious one is nuclear warfare.
For some time, we’ve had sufficient capability in nuclear weapons to render Earth uninhabitable.
It would only take a regional war to create enough soot, that would rise up into Earth’s
atmosphere, and block sunlight.
This would cause a global drop in sunlight and destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer
for the time being.
Even if an advanced alien species used all the nuclear weapons they’ve got, it’s
still not the most effective method to use.
And it’s a bit of a waste of such a perfect planet.
A much more effective method is genetically enhanced viruses.
This includes creating DNA from scratch, specifically aimed at the species you’re going to use
it for, however Humans aren’t currently capable of doing this.
If they wanted to use Earth for themselves, the alien species could create the virus so
that it only wipes out Humans, so that it would leave the rest of the animals on Earth
unaffected.
Previously in history, it’s thought that the dinosaurs were killed off 65 million years
ago by a large asteroid.
This would be another method to kill all life on a planet, but it’s much more difficult.
To do this method, you’ve got two options: either find a sufficiently-sized asteroid
and somehow set it on course for Earth or the probably easier but more expensive method
is to construct an artificial asteroid.
Other much more amusing and exotic methods include: giving Earth enough material and/or
compress it into a black hole, or even somehow make the sun explode in a supernova.
Comment down below your thoughts on the topic in this episode.
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Thank you so much for watching, have a nice day.