Fermi Paradox

This paper explores the profound interconnections between artificial intelligence (AI), human transformation, and planetary evolution. Drawing from the perspectives of Eugenio Carutti and James Lovelock, it examines how intelligence—both organic and inorganic—is a manifestation of Earth's evolutionary processes. Carutti’s concept of "Planetary Intelligence" and Lovelock’s insights into the Anthropocene and Novacene provide a framework to understand humanity's role in a rapidly changing world. The emergence of AI is not merely a technological phenomenon but an extension of Earth’s adaptive systems, challenging humanity to transcend its anthropocentric worldview. The study advocates for a collective psychic maturation, urging us to embrace interdependence and align human actions with the forces that guide planetary evolution. Ultimately, it invites a reflection on whether humanity is prepared to coexist and collaborate with forms of intelligence that surpass its own, marking a pivotal moment in Earth's evolutionary narrative.

It must be based on quantum physics that we live in a simulation on a quantum scale. This situation, which comes along with quantum field theory, shows that we live in a virtual life. At the same time, as I mentioned in my article, I made this theory as a result of research, as it is a dimension that human nature cannot perceive.

One of the few pieces of hard data that we have in connection with SETI is embodied in Fermi's famous question, often stated simply as: Where is everyone? Our purpose here is to show that this "paradox" is telling us something about the number of communicating societies in the galaxy and the rate at which such societies "grow". Our analysis is based on a mathematical technique that is of fundamental importance in a number of areas of physics. Introduction: In 1950, during a lunch time conversation in which extraterrestrials were discussed, the physicist Enrico Fermi turned to his colleagues, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski and Herbert York, and asked "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?"[1, p. 12]. The paradoxical nature of this question stems from the fact that although most scientists believe that technologically sophisticated societies exist in the Milky Way galaxy, in over 60 years of searching, we have not detected any. Many "solutions" to this paradox have been offered [4]. Some depend on assumptions about the nature of alien societies and/or what the members

It has been widely acknowledged that self-replicating space-probes (SRPs) could explore the galaxy very quickly relative to the age of the galaxy. An obvious implication is that SRPs produced by extraterrestrial civilizations should have arrived in our solar system millions of years ago, and furthermore, that new probes from an ever-arising supply of civilizations ought to be arriving on a constant basis. The lack of observations of such probes underlies a frequently cited variation of the Fermi Paradox. We believe that a predilection for ETI-optimistic theories has deterred consideration of incompatible theories. Notably, SRPs have virtually disappeared from the literature. In this paper, we consider the most common arguments against SRPs and find those arguments lacking. By extension, we find recent models of galactic exploration which explicitly exclude SRPs to be unfairly handicapped and unlikely to represent natural scenarios. We also consider several other models that seek to explain the Fermi Paradox, most notably percolation theory and two societalcollapse theories. In the former case, we find that it imposes unnatural assumptions which likely render it unrealistic. In the latter case, we present a new theory of interstellar transportation bandwidth which calls into question the validity of societal-collapse theories. Finally, we offer our thoughts on how to design future SETI programs which take the conclusions of this paper into account to maximize the chance of detection.

Discussion surrounding first contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) is hotly debated in the literature. This paper responds to claims made by Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis that the ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language indicates that communication with ETI would not be possible, and that the resultant uncertainty forces us into the Hobbesian Trap—the proclivity to adopt pre-emptive military strategies as a function of mutual distrust and fear of imminent attack. The ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language constitutes largely behaviourist thinking and hinges on ‘shared human context.’ However, shared universal contexts, together with the potential existence of post-biological ETI, suggest that communication at a level sufficient to interpret basic dispositions (what I call the level of ‘performative function’) may be possible.

Deploying both philosophical and game theoretical analyses, this paper provides several refutations and a repudiation of Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis's claims: I correct the assumption that ETI would necessarily adopt a game theoretical rationality, critique the notion that ETI would choose a risk-dominant strategy rather than a payoff-dominant strategy, repudiate the claim that communication with ETI would not be possible, and show how the Hobbesian equivalence principle is violated in a proximal first-contact situation. Finally, in the absence of game theoretic decision-making (and inline with the calls from the Billingham report), this paper commences work on the development of an incomplete set of Axioms of First Contact from which to generate a definitive groundwork for both post-detection protocol and rules of engagement. An open invitation to other contributors to criticise, augment, and advance this bottom-up approach to first contact is extended.

This topic is a subcategory of the "Fermi Paradox" or the "Great Filter."

A concept where advanced civilizations have developed time travel technology and intentionally made other civilizations vanish, is sometimes known as a subcategory of the "Fermi Paradox" or the "Great Filter."

The Drake Equation is a formula that attempts to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. It takes into account factors such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars with planets, the probability of life emerging on habitable planets, and the likelihood of intelligent life developing and communicating.

The Fermi Paradox, named after physicist Enrico Fermi, raises the question of why we have not detected any clear evidence or received signals from advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, despite the vast number of potential habitable planets in the universe. It suggests that if advanced civilizations exist, we should have encountered signs of their presence by now.

One possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is the concept of a "vanishing civilization." According to this hypothesis, an advanced civilization may have developed the technology to travel through time and space and actively sought out other civilizations to make them vanish, preventing any evidence or signals of their existence from reaching us.

This idea implies that the absence of clear signals or signs of life from extraterrestrial civilizations could be a deliberate act of concealment. It suggests that advanced civilizations may intentionally avoid contact with other civilizations or take actions to ensure their own privacy and security.

It is important to note that the notion of a vanishing civilization is speculative and falls within the realm of science fiction and hypothetical scenarios. The Fermi Paradox itself has various alternative explanations, such as the possibility of civilizations being too far apart in space and time, the limitations of our current technology to detect signals, or the existence of natural barriers that inhibit the development or expansion of civilizations.

Ultimately, the true answer to the Fermi Paradox and the possibility of a vanishing civilization remains unknown, and it continues to be a subject of scientific and philosophical debate.

Topics about detecting extraterrestrial civilizations are discussed here by artificial intelligence.

In the present manuscript we consider the possibility of conducting SETI with small-size (with diameters less than 1 m) optical telescopes. Calculations are performed for typical parameters of the mentioned type of telescopes. In particular, we show that the techno-signatures of Type-2.x and Type-3.x civilizations might be detected. It is demonstrated that it is possible to detect hot megastructures (up to 4000 K) built around Main Sequence stars and pulsars, as well as von Neumann extraterrestrial probes.

It has been widely acknowledged that self-replicating space-probes (SRPs) could explore the galaxy very quickly relative to the age of the galaxy. An obvious implication is that SRPs produced by extraterrestrial civilizations should have arrived in our solar system millions of years ago, and furthermore, that new probes from an ever-arising supply of civilizations ought to be arriving on a constant basis. The lack of observations of such probes underlies a frequently cited variation of the Fermi Paradox. We believe that a predilection for ETI-optimistic theories has deterred consideration of incompatible theories. Notably, SRPs have virtually disappeared from the literature. In this paper, we consider the most common arguments against SRPs and find those arguments lacking. By extension, we find recent models of galactic exploration which explicitly exclude SRPs to be unfairly handicapped and unlikely to represent natural scenarios. We also consider several other models that seek to explain the Fermi Paradox, most notably percolation theory and two societalcollapse theories. In the former case, we find that it imposes unnatural assumptions which likely render it unrealistic. In the latter case, we present a new theory of interstellar transportation bandwidth which calls into question the validity of societal-collapse theories. Finally, we offer our thoughts on how to design future SETI programs which take the conclusions of this paper into account to maximize the chance of detection.

One of the few pieces of hard data that we have in connection with SETI is embodied in Fermi's famous question, often stated simply as: Where is everyone? Our purpose here is to show that this "paradox" is telling us something about the number of communicating societies in the galaxy and the rate at which such societies "grow". Our analysis is based on a mathematical technique that is of fundamental importance in a number of areas of physics. Introduction: In 1950, during a lunch time conversation in which extraterrestrials were discussed, the physicist Enrico Fermi turned to his colleagues, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski and Herbert York, and asked "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?"[1, p. 12]. The paradoxical nature of this question stems from the fact that although most scientists believe that technologically sophisticated societies exist in the Milky Way galaxy, in over 60 years of searching, we have not detected any. Many "solutions" to this paradox have been offered [4]. Some depend on assumptions about the nature of alien societies and/or what the members

In this paper we consider the Fermi's paradox (FP) and propose a possible resolution in the context of super-advanced alien civilizations. In this sense it can be regarded as to be the weak Fermi paradox (WFP). By assuming that super advanced extraterrestrials (ET) exist and are capable of constructing a huge ring-like megastructure around a pulsar or a main sequence star (MSS) to consume its emitted energy, we consider the stability problem of the ring, studying the out of plane dynamics. It has been shown that for normal pulsars the oscillation timescale, thus the timescale of the spectral variability is of the order of several days, whereas for MSS it can vary from minutes up to hundreds of years. We have shown that by means of the high resolving power and sensitivity, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope can detect either cold (T = 300 K) or hot (T = 4000 K) megastructures throughout the whole galaxy even for very small oscillation amplitudes of rings. As it is shown the observed variability can have characteristics similar to those of some other variables, which can be considered as one of the resolutions of the WFP.

Abstract. The presumptuous philosopher (PP) thought experiment lends more credence to the hypothesis which postulates the existence of a larger number of observers than other hypothesis. The PP was suggested as a purely speculative endeavor. However, there is a class of real world observer-selection effects where it could be applied, and one of them is the possibility of interstellar panspermia (IP). There are two types of anthropic reasoning: SIA and SSA. SIA implies that my existence is an argument that larger total number of observers exists; SSA implies that I should find myself in a region with larger number of observers. However, as S. Armstrong showed, SIA can’t distinguish between different ways how larger number of observers appeared, so it can’t favor IP compared with other ways to get many observers. SSA application here is less controversial as it tells only about relation between regions size: e.g. I am more likely to live in a larger country than in a small one, conditioning that the total number of small countries is also small.
Anthropic considerations suggest that the universes in the multiverse with interstellar panspermia will have orders of magnitude more civilizations than universes without IP, and thus we are likely to be in such a universe. This is a strong counterargument against a variant of the Rare Earth hypothesis based on the difficulty of abiogenesis: even if abiogenesis is difficult, IP will disseminate life over billions of planets, meaning we are likely to find ourselves in a universe where IP has happened. This implies that there should be many planets with life in our galaxy, and renders the Fermi paradox even sharper. Either the Great Filter is ahead of us and there are high risks of anthropogenic extinction, or there are many alien civilizations nearby and of the same age as ours—which is itself a global catastrophic risk, as in that case the wave of alien colonization could arrive between 25-500 ky from now.

In this article, three very different types of visions are explored, through reviews of three recent books that deal with the future of AI: Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence (by James Lovelock), Humanity’s Last Stand: The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence – A Spiritual-Scientific Response (by Nicanor Perlas), and Artificial Intelligence: Modern Magic or Dangerous Future (by Yorick Wilks).
The books are not necessarily representative of any stream of thought, which would indeed be very difficult, given the wide variety of approaches even between sub-groups of a larger current like, for example, transhumanism. But each of the three books does seem to embody one of what we view as three big types of attitudes towards the potential advancements in AI. One of them is a radical kind of optimism ("marry"). This usually manifests as either a belief that AI cannot be anything other than hugely beneficial, or as an acceptance that the emergence of intelligent robots is nothing but a natural step in a higher cosmic order of evolution. Another approach stands at the opposite end of the spectrum, raising desperate alarms that new technologies will break society apart, or, even more severely, that “we are summoning the demon”, and that AI will eventually turn against us, leading to our extinction ("avoid"). Finally, the third attitude is one of moderation and cautious optimism, acknowledging the potential transformative power of AI for good or worse, but being less radical in both the enthusiasm and the concern ("snog").

Longtermism holds that what we ought to do is mainly determined by effects on the far future. A natural objection is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict -- perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present options is mainly determined by short-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate (a version of) this epistemic objection. To that end, I develop two simple models for comparing "longtermist" and "short-termist" interventions, incorporating the idea that, as we look further into the future, the effects of any present intervention become progressively harder to predict. These models yield mixed conclusions: If we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don't mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these "Pascalian" probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism.

Throughout its long history, life has been a force of planetary transformation, remaking the air, the rocks, the landscapes, even painting the colour of the sky and increasing the variety of Earth's minerals. But are the histories of life and Earth just one thing after another, or is there an underlying pattern that we can make sense of? Here, I argue that there is a pattern, and that life-Earth history can be understood as a sequence of five epochs, each of which corresponds to the evolution of lifeforms that can access a new source of energy. With each new epoch, the diversity of life has become greater, ecosystems have become richer, and life has increased its impact on the planet. This framework of energy expansions provides a way to think about current human impacts upon the Earth-and about the probable trajectories of life-planet systems elsewhere in the cosmos.

When people look up at the sky seeing the bright star on a lonely night, have they thinking, are we alone? are the only people that I will ever know are on this planet? This problem is the still the important topic for any human on Earth. 1000 years ago, people from Africa, Asia, and Europe did not even know if there is a big continent on the other side of the Earth, so did the people from America continent. Even though we have not meet one, there is a many argument that support the existence of another intelligent species because how big is the universe and how long the universe have existed.

With an evolutionary approach, the basis of morality can be explained as adaptations to problems of cooperation. With ‘evolution’ taken in a broad sense, AIs that satisfy the conditions for evolution to apply will be subject to the same cooperative evolutionary pressure as biological entities. Here the adaptiveness of increased cooperation as material safety and wealth increase is discussed — for humans, for other societies, and for AIs. Diminishing beneficial returns from increased access to material resources also suggests the possibility that, on the whole, there will be no incentive to for instance colonize entire galaxies, thus providing a possible explanation of the Fermi paradox, wondering where everybody is. It is further argued that old societies could engender, give way to, super-AIs, since it is likely that super-AIs are feasible, and fitter. Closing is an aside on effective ways for morals and goals to affect life and society, emphasizing environments, cultures, and laws, and exemplified by how to eat.

`Diminishing returns’ is defined, as less than roots, the inverse of infeasibility. It is also noted that there can be no exponential colonization or reproduction, for mathematical reasons, as each entity takes up a certain amount of space. Appended are an algorithm for colonizing for example a galaxy quickly, models of the evolution of cooperation and fairness under diminishing returns, and software for simulating signaling development.

The great filter and unfriendly artificial general intelligence might pose existential risks to humanity. Because these two risks are anti-correlated, humanity should possibly be more optimistic about its long-term survival if we have convincing evidence for believing that both risks are real than if we have such evidence for thinking that only one of these perils would likely strike us.

How should the Fermi paradox affect an estimate of humankind's likelihood and best means of long-term survival? A significant probability that many other civilizations have been in our situation but failed to become spacefaring increases the probability that our optimal existential risk strategies are costly, likely to fail, likely to leave traces if they do fail, and might require talents that mankind has but that other scientifically advanced species lack. The Fermi paradox implies that we should seek scientific data based on astronomical observations not accessible to civilizations that lived in the distant past, and that we should create machines to flood our galaxy with radio signals conditional on our civilization's collapse. Our ability to use Bayesian updating on the Fermi paradox reduces the chance that aliens exist but are hiding from us because of their desire to not interfere in our development: giving us a false understanding of the fate of intelligent life in the universe would cloud our understanding of existential risks. The paradox also provides clues as to types of trap that might destroy us. The possibility that our universe is fine-tuned not only for life but also for the Fermi paradox magnifies these results.

Many global catastrophic and existential risks (X-risks) threaten the existence of humankind. There are also a lot of ideas how to prevent them, but the meta-problem is that these ideas are not structured, so it is not easy to choose the right one, or to implement them in the correct order. We suggest using “Plan A, Plan B model”, which showed its effectiveness in planning actions in unpredictable environments. Plan B is a backup option, which is implemented if plan A fails. In the case of global risks plan A is to prevent a catastrophe and plan B is to survive it. Each plan has similar stages: analysis, planning, funding, low-level realization and high-level realization. Two variables, – plans and stages, – provide an effective basis for classification of all possible X-Risks prevention methods, in the form of two-dimensional map and for choosing the best paths to human survival.

How should the Fermi paradox affect an estimate of humankind's likelihood and best means of long-term survival? A significant probability that many other civilizations have been in our situation but failed to become spacefaring increases the probability that our optimal existential risk strategies are costly, likely to fail, likely to leave traces if they do fail, and might require talents that mankind has but that other scientifically advanced species lack. The Fermi paradox implies that we should seek scientific data based on astronomical observations not accessible to civilizations that lived in the distant past, and that we should create machines to flood our galaxy with radio signals conditional on our civilization's collapse. Our ability to use Bayesian updating on the Fermi paradox reduces the chance that aliens exist but are hiding from us because of their desire to not interfere in our development: giving us a false understanding of the fate of intelligent life in the universe would cloud our understanding of existential risks. The paradox also provides clues as to types of trap that might destroy us. The possibility that our universe is fine-tuned not only for life but also for the Fermi paradox magnifies these results.

The notion of 'wireheading', or direct reward centre stimulation of the brain, is a wellknown concept in neuroscience. In this paper, we examine the corresponding issue of reward (utility) function integrity in artificially intelligent machines. We survey the relevant literature and propose a number of potential solutions to ensure the integrity of our artificial assistants. Overall, we conclude that wireheading in rational selfimproving optimisers above a certain capacity remains an unsolved problem despite opinion of many that such machines will choose not to wirehead. A relevant issue of literalness in goal setting also remains largely unsolved and we suggest that the development of a non-ambiguous knowledge transfer language might be a step in the right direction.