Why aliens exist but aren't here: the simplest explanation

I suppose I am not the typical blogger when I say, "I covered that topic 14 years ago, so I don't need to cover it again, right?"

Recently the question of the existence of alien intelligence has come to my attention again. It's a sensational topic. People have been discussing it continuously, I'm sure, but it comes to me anew as part of my scanning for suitable YouTube videos to watch.

These are the links to the posts I made 14 years ago:

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2008/06/aliens-are-bountiful-but-unreachable.html

http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2008/09/failure-to-detect-aliens-does-not-mean.html

None of my views have changed, but I will add a new analysis. Some people may find it boring. (Oh, no! I will lose viewers and advertising revenue!)

Wikipedia includes an article on "The Fermi Paradox", which is essentially: If earth isn't special in some way, there should be lots of other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy. Yet, we have not detected any, let alone had any of them come visit us. How can this be?

First I'll give my answer, which is basically: "You can't get there from here." Most likely the resources and technology needed to colonize a single other world are too great and beyond the capabilities of EVERY ONE of the millions of civilizations.

But if we get past that step, we realize that colonizing the galaxy requires an expanding population growth of colonized planets. Some of the time a colonized planet has to colonize two or more others. If civilizations can expand at most for a small distance around their origins, and habitable planets are as sparse as we suspect, that is why we haven't met any aliens. I'll abbreviate "You can't get there from here" with the shorter "TOO FAR".

I think all of the other explanations are unsatisfactory (except for the Zoo Hypothesis). Here I focus on the Wikipedia article's list of hypothetical explanations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Hypothetical_explanations_for_the_paradox

Earth is special: extraterrestrial intelligence is rare or nonexistent. This is hubris. As scientists look, they find planets around stars, stars of the right types, and planets of the right size and composition, the right distance from their stars. Given our current detection capabilities, everything they would expect to find in support of life elsewhere they have found.

The key question for the others is not, "Is this a possibility?"or "Is this pretty likely?" but rather, "Is this so certain that it would prevent ALL of the millions of civilizations from reaching us?" Some of them are about time limits on these other civilizations. Others are about their being too alien. Others are about why they don't communicate with us. But all are consistent with the resolution of the paradox being that there are alien civilizations (likely millions), but we haven't detected any of them.

A. Global catastrophic risk. ALL?

B. Intelligent alien species have not developed advanced technologies. TOO FAR. If millions of species have been at this for a long time and none has developed the right technologies, chances become very high that there is some limitation beyond cleverness, that is a barrier to all societies. ALL? and TOO FAR mix.

(I switch here from using letters for possibilities to numbers).

As an overall concept (specific examples below) some complex set of psychological or sociological forces will limit or destroy civilizations. None of these have the aura of inevitability. ALL?

1. It is in the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. ALL?

2. It is in the nature of intelligent life to destroy others. ALL?

3. Civilizations only broadcast detectable signals for a brief period of time. ALL?

4. Alien life may be too alien. (This becomes a version of "earth is special", if ALL of the millions of species are so terribly alien. The electromagnetic spectrum and the presence of physical bodies seem pretty basic). ALL?

5. Colonization is not the cosmic norm. ALL?

6. Alien species may have only settled part of the galaxy. TOO FAR. With so many species having the opportunity for so long, why would they stop halfway?

7. Alien species may not live on planets. ALL? RELEVANT?

8. Alien species may isolate themselves from the outside world. ALL?

9. Lack of resources needed to physically spread throughout the galaxy. TOO FAR. Some few individual planets may be brimming with resources, but that's just one small step on being able to spread.

10. It is cheaper to transfer information than explore physically. IRRELEVANT, or a variant of "too alien".

11. Humans have not listened properly. IRRELEVANT.

12. Humans have not listened long enough. IRRELEVANT.

13. Intelligent life may be too far away. TOO FAR. Treated more fully in other points.

14. Intelligence may exist hidden from view. IRRELEVANT.

15. Everyone is listening but no one is communicating. ALL?

16. Communication is dangerous. ALL?

17. Earth is deliberately avoided. The "zoo" hypothesis. Interesting. In a class by itself!

I am proposing that ALL of the millions of civilizations have failed at colonization. That's a high bar to meet, that even with some highly unlikely mix of favorable circumstances, not a single one of millions has succeeded at an arbitrarily expanding colonization.

Here is a brief rundown of what is required to have an expanding population of of colonization.

A huge spacecraft must be constructed. Life must be maintained for thousands of years if the spacecraft goes near the speed of light, millions if it doesn't. Long-term stasis might be one option, but it is entirely possible that NO form of intelligent life can survive and thrive after long-term stasis -- space has dangerous objects and dangerous rays. Otherwise, the society with its usual cycle of life and death must function aboard the spacecraft for those thousands or millions of years.

The spacecraft has to stop when it reaches its destination. The energy to set it off from the home planet can be assembled locally, but the energy to stop has to be carried with the spacecraft, and it is huge. Additional energy in similar quantities is required for course corrections, if the aliens detect from their spacehip that there is a more promising place to visit.

Aiming difficulties. Before setting out on this voyage, the colonists have to know where they are going. Perhaps their techniques will let them verify that there is a world which matches their own environment rather closely, and that is not already occupied by a civilization that would not welcome them. But for an expanding pattern of colonization, far more is required: The planet has to have support for a sizable population, lots of heavy industry, and large, accessible quantities of many minerals to construct at least one new colony ship. Suppose for instance aliens with needs like humans detect a planet with a band like our arctic tundra around the equator and glaciers elsewhere. Perhaps colonists could eke out a living, but not build a large industrial base.

Note also that when scientists make estimates of planets that could host life, they mean life that evolved for local conditions. Some other organism that evolved on another planet may have far more specific requirements for their own survival.

There has to be a net gain. Some of the time, a planet has to have at least TWO successful colonizations for this to be an expanding process. If we allow for some of the colonization efforts being failures, we need to replace them and still have a net growth.

Some have proposed a robotic colonization instead of one with living organisms. This does solve some of the problems, for instance relaxing environmental requirements. Our robots on earth are more and more capable with time. But that does not mean that there is no limit to what they can achieve even in the best of circumstances with millions of civilizations trying. A robot needs to quickly find materials allowing it to replicate itself, which are on earth mined from ores and then processed, at great expense. Then they must build a large industrial base, then construct two or more huge spaceships and launch them -- that is indeed a lot of work. What's more, most engineering systems advance by trial and error, getting feedback from earlier attempts to perfect later ones. But if the robot goes a thousand light years away and is even capable of sending information back, the time between one version and the next one improved based on experience is no less than 2,000 years.

I am not a skillful web searcher, but it seems there are far more articles on how robotic probes could proliferate than the immense difficulties. Perhaps this is akin to how conspiracy theories get huge press, and the debunkers write the facts but don't recycle them endlessly.

I have written ALL? In front of most of the proposed limitations, and so I am hesitant to write ALL! In front of this one. But to me it looks like the engineering challenges cannot be overcome by some rare local favorable circumstances, even with millions of civilizations trying.

For us to be surprised that we have not met any aliens, we have to be confident that some civilization somewhere can solve the "TOO FAR" problem to reach over very large expanses of space. The assertion that not a single one can solve that problem seems to me far more likely than any other explanation.

When I think about colonization efforts, I imagine a map of the universe with widely scattered islands of intelligent life. Most are single planets. Here and there just possibly colonization might have happened, proceeding to a small handful of nearby stars, or even merged togther. They form little bubbles. But the bubbles are way too far apart to meet each other reliably, let alone expand to cover the entire galaxy.

This seems by far the most plausible explanation for why we have met no aliens. Earth is not special, so there have been millions of other civilizations throughout our galaxy and others. However, not a single one of those millions can create a colonization effort that can grow arbitrarily large, and thus come into contact with us.

The second most likely explanation is the "Zoo Hypothesis", but that's an explanation for another day.

None of others seems remotely plausible to me.

Why 'Aliens are Plentiful but Unreachable' is an answer everyone hates

 I've been thinking about alien intelligent life again (just got abducted last night again, sigh).

Here is my conclusion again: Aliens are Plentiful but Unreachable. There are various other possible answers to "Is there intelligent life elsewhere?" What's the emotional reaction to each of them?

My answer is about the worst answer I can imagine in terms of human psychology and yearning.Let's go through the others.

If we are alone, then we are truly special, for once. Every other time we thought we were special we actually weren't. This time we are! (If you muse about deities, maybe there really is a personal God, the only one in the Universe, and they care about Earth personally. Just what purpose those billions of other galaxies are serving in God's plan is a mystery, but God's plans always are, right?)

If the reason we won't meet any aliens is that technological civilizations always burn themselves out quickly, that is a doomsday prediction for us here on earth -- and interesting. Maybe we could somehow avoid it! Or we'll fail, but we know they all failed too.

If aliens are close enough to just now pick up our radio signals (as hypothesized in the movie "Contact") then we might just now be coming to their attention, and we can expect a visit! Exciting!

If there are two or three other civilizations in the universe, we can at least dream about them in concrete terms and how they might be different from us. Maybe #1 is like this, and #2 is like that...

The "Zoo Hypothesis" is exciting. Millions of alien civilizations aren't acting independently. One of them is dominant, at least in our vicinity, and powerful enough to keep any other one from making their presence known. This one dominant civilization, for whatever reason, wants to keep us pristine and naive, uncontaminated by knowledge of a much bigger pond in which Earth is just the tiniest fish. That is a motivation we can understand and seems plausible. When and whether they will reveal themselves is a big question. It's a reason to look carefully at the skies because we might at some point learn enough to discover the telltale signs of a zoo. No one said the zookeepers have to have perfect technical prowess.

But then there's my answer. If alien civilizations are to be counted in the millions, then we are nothing special. Just a run-of-the-mill technological civilization. And worse -- we never get to meet the others! It's like the universe saying, "You're not important. There's millions more just like you. But you'll never meet them! I won't tell you a single thing about a single one of them! Nyah-nyah!"

The Mystery of Labor Unions

 

Like most people of a leftist inclination, I grew up with a favorable opinion of labor unions. It was the workers against the owners, the relatively poor against the very rich. Unions were good. I can see that and get behind it in practice, but as I get older I find myself more and more mystified when I try to think through the theory of labor unions.

Surely there is a positive role for a place where workers can talk and plan and organize and come up with proposals. Improvements of a "qualitative" nature are sensible. If workers dislike some policy out of proportion to what the owners gain from having it, perhaps they will give it up. If in contrast the management is holding onto some program for fear of worker reaction, perhaps they will find that workers don't care about that as much as they thought. Give and take.

The story I heard is that US aircraft carrier pilots early in World War II complained to their superiors that they felt doomed. It was a job with a high death toll, and they would keep flying until they were killed. Management saw their point and instituted the "tour of duty", where if they survived a certain number of months or years, then they could leave and go to less hazardous duty in the US -- training, in this case. The story is that this policy paid off many times over as the training of new pilots could be influenced by the actual experience of veterans who had operated under real conditions as opposed to just the theory imparted by people who had never been there. Something of a digression -- but it wasn't a zero sum game of pilots against higher-ups.

But at the core of the negotiation in the case of US labor disputes seems to be that the workers want to earn more and the owners want to pay less. Without unions, the rule that classical economics would suggest is that there is supply and demand. The owners pay what they need to hire the workers they need, and the workers don't work for a wage if they can do better elsewhere. Unions seek to organize workers who are particular in some fashion (trade, industry, employers) so they can get more. But how do we know how much they deserve? Is it just the result of a bitter contest?

Backing up a bit, the workers and the unemployed make up the vast majority of the electorate. If they choose to do so, they could devise any policies they want. If the current constitution (let's restrict ourselves to the US) prohibits certain things, they could convene a constitutional convention and come up with a new one that was entirely to their liking. They could order all the wealth in the country to be divided up evenly. It's probably a very good thing they don't do this. Although I can't find the reference, my understanding was that Zimbabwe ordered a radical land distribution, but the new owners knew little about organizing agriculture for selling to world markets and there were very serious economic consequences. "Owners" who do nothing but collect dividends from shares of stock are worth little, but I am convinced that the well-paid upper management in most industries (short of the CEOs) are highly skilled people doing vital work that few other people can do. It is suitable that they are paid well.

What keeps the relatively poor from taking over? Some of it might be a genuine belief that rich people deserve to keep most of their money. Some of it might be the overall effect of "rich people control everything" as applied to the democratic process. But there have been exceptions. The 1930s New Deal set in motion a radical redistribution of wealth and income in the US that lasted decades.

Whatever mix they represent of the interests of rich and poor, government has passed significant legislation limiting what employers can do. There are child labor laws, safety requirements (as in OSHA), and minimum wages. In theory, this seems like the right approach to me, in contrast to unions. In practice, with the rich wielding (in fact) a great deal of power in elected government, perhaps unions are a source of worker strength. But the fact that their beneficial effect is so uneven is troubling.

I had some more detailed information about labor disputes at Verizon 10-15 years ago than most people because I knew a contractor there. Verizon inherited some of the unions of the old AT&T ("Ma Bell") when that company was broken up. The situation at Verizon? The unions mass their forces, and Verizon prepares for a strike by training professional employees to take over union tasks. A strike comes, both sides expend lots of effort and resources, and it is eventually settled. One contentious issue was the health plan. The union wanted to keep their relatively generous plan. The less generous one that management proposed was in fact the same health plan that all the professional employees (of supposedly higher rank and status) had. Who was to say what justice was? Did the organized workers deserves better health care because they were organized?

Then there are unions where the employer is the government. I knew a little (very little) about the teachers in the Newton (Mass.) school system, who were organized. Compared to other school districts, they were paid well, but still went on strike for higher wages. Who was to say what was right? Newton teachers didn't need to settle for less than they were worth just because others were being judged to be worth even less. But who could say what they were actually worth?

Unions can also be cumbersome and slow to react. This same Verizon contractor was setting up her office in a union building and was told she was prohibited from plugging in her devices because it was a union building. She had to wait for a union employee to plug them in for her. Something is wrong here. Imagine trying to unionize employees of stores that rented VHS tapes. The industry was hot at its peak, but disappeared so quickly a union would have been useless. Perhaps a silly example...

I'm not sure what to think about today's (US) world in terms of labor. There are lots of what we used to call "white collar" workers who are expected to return text messages 7 days a week. And yet I think most would say they have initiative, empowerment and flexibility that so far exceeds factory workers from 100 years ago that it's hard to even think about comparing them in terms of exploitation. Workers at Google and Apple may not be unionized, but the company treats them well in a competition to keep the most talented.

On the other hand, there is the horror of part-time jobs with irregular scheduling. You never know when your shifts will be in advance, but you must be ready to work when called. Along with leading to a disrupted life, this effectively prevents a worker at one part-time job with taking another to supplement. We can imagine the federal government stepping in to limit this practice, in the same vein as minimum wage laws.

One proposal I have made to help with economic inequality is "wage magnification" (http://bartfusn.blogspot.com/2021/03/wage-magnification.html). It is nowhere on the political map, but in principle it seems like the right kind of solution to income inequality.

But when unions go up against management, do we have anything short of a knock-down, drag-out fight on our hands? Is there any principle governing what the proper level of pay is? Our political system itself is in a knock-down, drag-out mode, but the parties to the fight are elected by voters. Even in a Republican-dominated era, they are deterred from simply ending Medicare or Social Security, because they fear their voters would rise up and desert their party. Instead they have to chip away at it and weaken the programs gradually. Even so, they must be alert to the swing voters who could shift the balance of power to Democrats. However imperfect, there is an anchor there to guide us.