Chippy_boy
Well-Known Member
@Kirkstall Blue Thanks for liking my posts made a couple of years ago.
Re-reading those got me thinking again about the Fermi Paradox: If intelligent life across the vastness of space and eons of time is inevitable, where is everybody? I think there's an easy logical answer to this which becomes obvious if we consider a parallel scenario.
Imagine two bacteria, Jim and Fred in an imaginary puddle somewhere in Outer Mongolia. Jim and Fred are sitting together pondering life the universe and everything and wondering if other creatures exist somewhere. They have worked out that there must be other puddles but not managed to communicate with any of them. Jim says well look, we are here so in the eons of time and across billions of puddles, there must be life out there like us. Fred says if that's true, where are they?
Clearly we humans do exist and the question is why have we not visited Jim and Fred's puddle? There's two possible answers, imo both of which are true. One is that we have no idea Jim and Fred are there. Two is that even if we did, a random puddle in the middle of nowhere with some random bacteria of zero significance, is so dull and boring as to be not worth launching an expedition to Mongolia over. The planet is teaming with puddles and with bacteria and it's a bloody long way to visit a boring puddle of no significance. Especially one which we don't know whether there's any bacteria in it or not.
Re-reading those got me thinking again about the Fermi Paradox: If intelligent life across the vastness of space and eons of time is inevitable, where is everybody? I think there's an easy logical answer to this which becomes obvious if we consider a parallel scenario.
Imagine two bacteria, Jim and Fred in an imaginary puddle somewhere in Outer Mongolia. Jim and Fred are sitting together pondering life the universe and everything and wondering if other creatures exist somewhere. They have worked out that there must be other puddles but not managed to communicate with any of them. Jim says well look, we are here so in the eons of time and across billions of puddles, there must be life out there like us. Fred says if that's true, where are they?
Clearly we humans do exist and the question is why have we not visited Jim and Fred's puddle? There's two possible answers, imo both of which are true. One is that we have no idea Jim and Fred are there. Two is that even if we did, a random puddle in the middle of nowhere with some random bacteria of zero significance, is so dull and boring as to be not worth launching an expedition to Mongolia over. The planet is teaming with puddles and with bacteria and it's a bloody long way to visit a boring puddle of no significance. Especially one which we don't know whether there's any bacteria in it or not.
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