Nick Szabo  🔑

What, in your opinion, is the best explanation for the paradox?

Many early events in the origins and early history of life are astronomically improbable. e.g. copious handwaving still required to try to describe how nature could go from comet stuff to even the simplest autocatalytic set of nucleic acids, not to mention ATP, proteins, ...

By contrast, there are no known highly probable existential risks (e.g. large-scale nuclear war is neither highly probable nor if it happened an actual existential risk to our species), so "the Great Filter is ahead of us" is an explanation of vastly lower probability.

Interesting. I see large scale nuclear war in the future as highly probable. Why do you think not? Isn't there a "Moore's Law of destructive technology"--cost of violence greatly decreasing year after year?

To make a difference in this discussion it has to be 99.9999999999% or more probable, give or take a few 9s.

But what if "engineering" doesn't look like we would expect it to? What if its far more micro than the conception of it we have today? And if a species is extra-planetary, who is to say they must be confined to planet surface and/or conform to specific organism "vehicle?"

Quantum physics is universal, so we can expect physics-based fundamentals of surface engineering to be universal. However alien, engineered surfaces look radically different from natural. If aliens are at all common at least some aren't trying to hide like elves and hobbits.

i.e. if you have to posit that all advanced alien civs (and almost all will 100s of millions to billions of years more advanced than us) are hiding like elves and dwarves, that's basically an admission that they are mythological.

Ever read Wei Dai's Fermi Paradox resolution? http://www.weidai.com/black-holes.txt  Could all be huddled around black holes immersed in a simulation until the universe's heat death. Doesn't rly explain why they're not geoengineering stars to be less wasteful of energy, but it's a clever idea

Interesting. But the surface area available for radiation is a limiting factor, after that have to increase the temperature of the radiator if they want to convert more energy. Also what material would be strong enough to cross the event horizon of a black hole?

Oops I misread, the structure doesn't cross the event horizon, it just points at it (it does have to be close enough so that the event horizon cross-section dominates the sky -- don't know if that is possible).

Circa 1990 Andrew Cutler of Energy Science Laboratories in La Jolla claimed he found hydrothermal ore depletions corresponding to the Cambrian explosion and that the asteroid belt could be explained by a planetoid being dismantled for its nickel iron core around the same time.

We call them aliens and what do they call us, Earthlings only?

If actually knew about any specific aliens, I'm sure we could make up a more specific name.

That's very cool! How do they call or address us, humanoids?

Or do they even speak English to begin with? (: It may be something that sounds like slimey metallic clicks? Do they have the concept of differentiation? Or are they integrative by essence? So many questions.