The Fermi Paradox Revisited: Does Intelligent Life Exist Outside the Sciences?

I intended to write about something else today, but there were a couple of good points raised in the comments section of my original post on the Fermi Paradox that I think deserve a response here rather than there. 

Before I start let me say I have a high regard for argument. If it is engaged in with a generous spirit it can benefit the interlocutors. For it to work as it should, arguments must be conducted in a spirit of humility, with all parties submitting to the truth.

Does that mean we will always arrive at the truth through good arguments? Nope. But we can give it a try!

The first objection to my post is that I am not qualified to address the subject of the Fermi Paradox because I am neither a scientists nor a mathematician. 

Here’s Denis E. in his own words:

Why, then, do you write about scientific concepts? You are clearly out of your element.

The point, it seems to me, is this is a domain problem best left to others.

But is it? I don’t think so. If it has a domain it is either logic of rhetoric, or both. (I opt for both.)

Let’s look at the premise that the Fermi Paradox is based on. (Perhaps I’ve misstated it? I don’t think I have, but I’m open to correction.)

Here it is:

Intelligence = Technology. The more intelligent you are, in this little equation, the more sophisticated your technology will be.

Intelligence is a difficult thing to define. (Just think about all the controversy surrounding IQ.)

Here are a couple of things I’m not saying: I’m not saying that technology is unrelated to intelligence, and I’m not saying that intelligence isn’t influenced by technology. The brain appears to be somewhat plastic, responding to use and environment. My point is just that there is not a direct correspondence between the two.

Another thing to remember is there is a distinction between science and technology. What is sometimes called “pure science” is the systematic documentation of material causation. If you want to pursue that, you’ll need technology, so there is a relationship there (think Galileo’s telescope or the Cern Supercollider), but nevertheless, they’re not the same thing.

(I made mention of some of the ideas that needed to be present in our civilization for science to get off the ground. Science has plenty of velocity now, but it still calls for certain things to keep going. Here’s a short list: literacy, mathematics, a community of scholars, reliable and accessible records, and industrial civilization generating enough surplus capital to keep things funded. Not intended to be exhaustive, I’m sure you can think of other things.)

Let me pull an Archie Bunker, Some of my best friends are scientists. (True, btw. One of my best friends is a particles physicist who works with the Cern Large Hadron Collider.  When I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts I had friends doing advanced research in the sciences at Harvard and MIT. I like scientists and I respect what they do.)

But really, this isn’t a domain thing. It’s a logic thing.

Here’s the syllogism as I see it:

• Major Premise–The more intelligent you are, the more sophisticated your technology will be.
• Minor Premise–Intelligent alien life has not communicated with us.
• Conclusion–(there seem to be a few) 1. There’s no one out there smart enough to communicate with us, 2. There’s someone out there and we’re known, but we aren’t worth bothering with (yet), 3. There’s someone out there, but their hiding from us for some reason. (Maybe you can think of more, but I’ll stop here since my problem with the whole thing is the major premise, not with the conclusions so much.)

Sound arguments are a basis for knowledge in every discipline, and because that’s so, its not a domain problem we’re dealing with here. This concerns reasoning in the broadest sense.

My objection was raised to what appears to be the major premise underlying the Fermi Paradox.

There seems to be a problem with the minor premise too. It had occurred to me, but I didn’t go after it.

But another commenter did. Here’s Joslyn Renfrey in her own words:

The thing is, the fermi paradox has a multiplicative term for the number of intelligent civilizations that produce, specifically, radio technology. I believe that our current transceivers aren’t really enough to reach other solar systems, more likely and more efficient candidates, like lasers or highly collimated X-ray beams would be far more suitable, and far less detectable.

Indeed, even we use several different encoding schemes which render our transmissions scrambled in particular ways that make it very efficient and reliable to transmit and receive them, if only they were decoded in a certain way. It seems that the most detectable forms of communication, are also the least efficient.

Aliens might simply not care about talking to us, because they have no clue we exist, or because we would probably find each other as mutually incomprehensible as the aztecs and the conquistadors. They would seem crazy by our standards, and us too, by their own. Whatever technological advantages or deficits we have compared to them, they would be a result of differing resources and capabilities between our civilizations, not philosophies.

I think this is a good point. Humans and aliens may be speaking past each other. We can’t hear each other’s signals. It is a matter of unknown, unknowns. They may not know how to hear us and vice versa. (Perhaps this is a naive supposal, I’m open to correction.)

Can we communicate with intelligent life elsewhere in the university?

I think this is a nice way to wrap this up. As the sciences progress some scientists seem to be losing the ability to communicate with people outside their disciplines. Some remarkably stupid things have been coming from people who do play scientists on television. I’m thinking of this.

I do hope that scientists will rediscover intelligent life outside the sciences before they discover intelligent life on other planets. If they don’t, I am afraid of what it might mean for the rest of us, humans and aliens included.

And just in case you’re wondering what the whole Fermi Paradox thingy is, here’s a delightful presentation of it: