The Fermi Paradox

This conviction that there is little (technologically) to prevent ETI from traveling to the stars has inspired a "back door" argument that ETI doesn't exist. It is an argument of a puzzling sort. It is dominated with peculiar assumptions, even prejudices, and it fails the test of logic s1Freitas 1983ab, 1985. Nevertheless, it has received an apparently serious hearing in the literature, giving one some concern about presumptions and prejudices playing overly important roles in scientific discussion. Perhaps, though, this is better viewed as a healthy willingness to explore new concepts, however unlikely.

The argument is called the Fermi Paradox, after Enrico Fermi, who allegedly first, even casually, formulated it. The thinking goes, in its briefest form:

1. if lots of ETI exists, and
2. if they can travel from star-to-star in any reasonable time-frame, then
3. because the galaxy is so old and many of the ETI's comparably old with it, the earliest ETIs will have had plenty of time to travel to all the stars many times over.

But, since we have no evidence of them visiting here, one of our assumption must be wrong. Conclusion: since the case for possible space travel technology seems secure, it can only be that no such ETI existed in the first place s2Tipler 1980 s3Martin & Bond 1983.

Most readers will have already spotted the flaws in this position, but, especially for ufology's sake, it is useful to point out the major fallacies. The initial prejudice which is apparent to anyone even midly conversant with the UFO phenomenon is the cavalier assumption that we have no evidence whatever which could be interpreted as ETI visiting this planet. Most serious UFO researchers would be willing to admit that we have no conclusive evidence for an extraterrestrial visitation, but to say that nothing in our recent, or even distant, history might be so interpreted bespeaks of a profound prejudice or ignorance of some kind. In a straightforward way, the whole trust of the ETI literature should lead one to an intense research interest in the mysterious elements of the UFO phenomenon, as it is in these elements that the predictions of the Fermi Paradox reasoners would be borne out: that is, by every scientific line-of-reasoning, ETI should have visited our system. Any refusal of interest in investigating the UFO phenomenon, using an ETI concept as one working hypothesis, should surely be astonishing.

But, for the moment, we may set aside this problem and move on to a second, equally troublesome one. This second fallacy or unnecessary assumption was originally hidden between the lines, but is now openly discussed in the body of Fermi Paradox articles. The assumption begins with the view that, if ETI visited our solar system, the evidence of these visitations would be overt if not overwhelming. This rather "science-fiction" vision of ETI activity seems to pervade all thinking by the Paradox supporters. They seem to have grave difficulty imagining their ET-travelers as being anything other than colonizers.

When one speaks of colonizing, giving overt display, or leaving obvious evidence about to be observed, we are talking about behavior, and we are talking about motivation primarily. Almost everyone addressing the topic admits that it is a dangerous game to guess what alien behavior and motivation would be, and that wisdom alone should place the "colonization hypothesis" into perspective as just one of many possible ideas. A certain sort of reflecting upon possible behavior and motivation is not dangerous however, if we display the proper attitude. Such reflection will be objective if we do not arbitrarily select just one motivation or behavior and then build absolutist conclusions out of that viewpoint. Some consciousness of alternatives is healthy surely.