Talk:Fermi paradox/Archive 7

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Archive 1

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Archive 5

Mediation

There has been a request made for informal mediation (see Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2011-01-07/Fermi paradox). I am willing to act as a mediator if that is acceptable to involved parties. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

This case has been open for two weeks now, but the filing party has not edited Wikipedia during that time. If there is no objection, I will close the case after another 24 hours. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I have closed this case due to the lack of participation. -- Scjessey (talk) 22:58, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

In re Youngness Argument

Alan Guth proposed a statistical model for a 'world' of multiple universes such that at any point in time a randomly selected universe would be exceedingly more likely to have one intelligent life than more (and none more than one). I have undone a revert of my additional sentences to this recently added topic because the argument presented is at a level of simplicity that it, in my opinion, can be accepted on its face without need for sources and without it being considered WP:OR. My grounds for this are the basic assumption that, since Guth's relevant remark was virtually an aside to the central part of the work, if it should be considered for a section of the article at all then independent critique that helps to clarify the aside's merit without drawing on sources should be acceptable on the grounds that published critique is unlikely to exist and the critique is extraordinarily simple.Julzes (talk) 20:19, 30 January 2011 (UTC) Reversed a second person's revert, with WP:OR#Routine_calculation as justification. The expectation of a probability of the reciprocal of an enormous number is "prima facie" a statistically significant coincidence. This falls under a reasonable interpretation of routine calculation, as saying that a probability nearly equal to 0 is indicative of a remarkable coincidence is tautologically simple mathematics.Julzes (talk) 23:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC) I'm planning to find a relevant statistics-oriented discussion within wikipedia's own articles for a rewording. I expect to have been reverted again when I wake up, but it would be nice to be pleasantly surprised that I'm being given a little time to improve my edit without having to buck a 3rd revert.Julzes (talk) 23:13, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

In my non-expert opinion, I'm not sure this particular argument is correct. Considering our universe alone, yes it would be unlikely. But averaged over all universes, of which there are many, many, many more young ones than old ones, it's not statistically odd at all (to the extent that any argument dealing with scrillions of universes can be considered not odd). Along these lines, at least to me, any statement on what might or might not be true in a multiverse scenerio is suspect. I doubt that *any* argument that averages over multiple universes of vastly different ages can be considered so obvious that it can be included without a reference. LouScheffer (talk) 01:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Julzes' argument makes no sense to me. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 01:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

You either didn't read what I said or did not understand it. Guth's proposal says we should not be surprised to be alone because at any time the vast majority of universes that have any intelligent life have a sole example because universes dramatically multiply in number by decreasing age. I simply pointed out that what this situation would lead to is little old us finding at a later date that we are the special first civilization among trillions, which is highly non-Copernican. The weakest statistician could have come up with this argument, and it's very much akin to and in spirit with WP:OR#Routine_calculations Julzes (talk) 02:11, 31 January 2011 (UTC)Guth's argument is actually rather pathetic, whatever his merits as a cosmologist. I would have rather deleted the whole section as pseudoscience, but showing clearly a simple way his argument breaks down seemed more likely to pass, and I'll probably be back with a better remedy some day. As now written, the layreader is apt to be a bit confused, considering the obliqueness of the topic's nature and presentation, unless s/he independently arrives at the same or similar argument as mine.Julzes (talk) 02:27, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Manipulation of our Language and History Evidenced Clearly Yesterday

See h2g2's Useless Facts thread for a sentence on God that generates a prime, and when 'God' is replaced by 'YHWH' and by 'Allah' the smallest prime in one is 67 and in the other is 71 and both have 757 as a factor. Claimed chosen in one try, was this sentence. Mere concatenation of alphabetical positions. The prime is 48-digits long. This comment does not deal with an as yet peer-reviewed fact, but will eventually settle the topic--along with other items--in favor of something along the lines of the Zoo Hypothesis.Julzes (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

The special theory of Devolution as a confirmation of the "Fermi paradox."

I should like to offer that my article in the _Journal of Theoretical Biology_, entitled “Devolution,” is relevant to your discussion of the L factor in the equation: http://www.kouroo.info/general/Devolution.pdf In this article I purported to derive, from unchallenged principles of Darwinism, the conclusion that all life is inherently and necessarily marked by the characteristic of mediocrity. The typical trajectory of a species, in accordance with my special theory of devolution, would be 1.) to originate, 2.) to be mediocre and thus self-perpetuating, and then 3.) to figure out how to destroy its life niche and thus drive itself to extinction. This makes the factor L be a “half-life” quantity similar to, say, the half-life of radioactive iodine, to wit, the number of years it normally requires on average for an average intelligent species to transit from the phase at which it has acquired the ability to propagate intelligent signals into the local galaxy (that would be, perhaps, in our case, at or about the time of the initial episode of the TV program “I Love Lucy”), into the phase in which it has acquired the ability to destroy itself (that would be, perhaps, approximately the present moment of our trajectory). In a universe in which life was marked in this manner, the value of L would approximate 50, which would mean that it would require some 20 galaxies the size of the Milky Way to generate at a particular moment one intelligent species such as ours. This value is in accordance with the Fermi paradox.

174.109.207.156 (talk) 00:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC) Austin Meredith, kouroo@kouroo.info

Why a paradox?

The article fails to explain why the "Fermi paradox" is a paradox, i.e. which calculations did Fermi perform that imply that extraterrestrial spacefaring civilisations should be common enough to be easily noticed by us? The mere fact that there are some 6 × 10²² stars in the visible universe doesn't say anything about this - if e.g. the probability of a civilisation arising from a given star is 10^-23, we would still end up being alone, in all probability. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 20:45, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the paradox comes from a more optimistic estimation of the probability of the existence of civilisations in the Milky Way. In the drake equation article, estimation ranges from 0.000065 to 20,000 civilisations in the MW. It appears that the Fermi's question came out before Drake came out with the equation. So maybe Fermi's estimation is more crude: The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 05:40, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds quite likely, but I would like to see the numbers Fermi used to come to his conclusion in the article. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 12:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

The missing part is "the Earth is typical". Then we'd expect other stars to have planets, and planets to have life, and life to try to expand - all of which are true on Earth. Then given that there are lots of older stars, and a civilization can spread quickly (in cosmological time) across the galaxy, then why are they not here already? LouScheffer (talk) 18:33, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

@LouScheffer: Ah yes, this part is missing from the purportedly "more complete" definition of the Fermi paradox in Fermi_paradox#Basis which I read. It's a rather dubious assumption, IMO, at least from today's scientific knowledge. But even if one used the argument that Earth is typical, one would expect there to be no interstellar-spacefaring civilisations, since Earthlings don't travel to other stars, as of now, and it's unclear if they will ever (be able to) do so. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 12:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Right or wrong, the argument goes that it seems likely that humans will be able to travel to the stars, say in the next 1000 years. So a 'typical' civilization from an older (possibly billions of years older) star would be capable of interstellar travel. But you are certainly correct that one of the explanations of the paradox is that civilizations do not become spacefaring, from one of many possible reasons (they self-destruct, it's too expensive for the benefit, they turn inward instead, they become paranoid, etc.) These are covered in the article. LouScheffer (talk) 14:40, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, if "the argument goes" like this, this should IMO be added to the article's "definition" of the Fermi paradox, not just to the "explanations"; preferrably with references. (But Fermi supposedly performed some real calculations and didn't just use "qualitative" arguments like this.) Bluntly put, there's no use to give dozens of "solutions" (which the article does at great length) if there's no proper problem... --Roentgenium111 (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Fermi is not a major player at all in the topic at hand. His name is attached only because he raised the issue at a time when it was bound to become of interest to people and because of his immense scientific stature. At the time, it would have seemed even more true than today--perhaps quite a bit more--that we ourselves should eventually be traveling beyond our own star system. Other feature implying a paradox, like the 'leakiness' of certain modes of communication like broadcast radio and television, would also have seemed to be natural features of advanced life that we should be able to perceive, and a slightly more vague application of Copernican thought than is now possible made the very strong sense that something was amiss in our understanding of things more inevitable. At any rate, this is an article titled Fermi paradox not because this is the best possible name, but because it is the most recognized one. I don't think there are calculations by Fermi himself on this subject to be found and placed in the article. There is plenty else since, though, and you may follow the various references to find it.Julzes (talk) 04:26, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Possible COI add to "civilizations only visible for a brief time"

I'd like to add to this section that although radio may become harder to see, due to more efficient technologies, other large scale effects, such as reflections from solar power farms, or microwave beams from solar power satellites, might become more visible with time. The solar power reflection, at least, is discussed in "Large Scale Use of Solar Power May be Visible Across Interstellar Distances".. But this is my own article, so it seems a little improper to add this myself without asking first. Also, I know folks have discussed the visibility of high power mirowave beams from solar power satellites, at least informally. Does anyone know of a reference offhand? Thanks for any comments/suggestions, LouScheffer (talk) 14:07, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Fermi's original text

Hi, Is the text which speaks of his Fermi paradox exists ? And if so, where can I find it ? What written or Article Fermi first reported the paradox ? Thanks a lot. Prosopee (talk) 08:13, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Fermi's original observations were verbal and not written. The references in the Name section have eye-witness accounts from the other people who were there at the time. Fermi never wrote anything about the Fermi paradox, to my knowledge. LouScheffer (talk) 13:00, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok that exactly was the answer i expected to... Thanks for your help. Prosopee (talk) 20:07, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Sustainabity Solution

This is a proposal for adding and expanding Haqq-Misra & Baum's Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox (2009). In other words, "exponential growth may not be a sustainable development pattern for long-lived civilations".[1] Viriditas (talk) 09:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I have not read source material on this, but I personally believe it helps resolve the paradox in the following sense: Just as we assume it plausible that truly advanced life will have ceased warring within its own species, we might assume that the biological imperative to reproduce will also be gotten rid of in pursuit of longevity. Procreation could ultimately be classed as non-productive and then counterproductive activity. If there are sources that link this perspective to the paradox, then I believe they should be attached/discussed.Julzes (talk) 01:39, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Explanation to Paradox

Could it also be possible, given the wide variety of other explanations, that we are part of a virtual world which is being run in the "real" world? Seems like this has been explored a lot in other works just wondering why it isn't mentioned here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.54.1.35 (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

You pose an excellent question. It is already in the article under the section heading of "Earth is purposely isolated (The zoo hypothesis)". It's been discussed quite a bit in the literature and it is interesting to consider as a thought experiment. Look for "Nick Bostrom" and "simulation" and you'll find a lot of info. There's also other takes on the same theme, such as Programming the Universe. Good luck, and keep asking great questions! Viriditas (talk) 10:08, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

It's probably not discussed because it's a crackpot idea. See WP:FRINGE. Assuming you find a source for this explanation from a prominent thinker, then we can go about determining if it's mainstream enough to include in this article. Bakkster Man (talk) 20:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Variations on brain in a vat thought experiments are neither crackpot nor fringe. They have a long and rich history and allow us to see problems from different angles and provide new perspectives in return. Viriditas (talk)

Discuss fully before editing, please, unsigned, Bakkster Man and Lou Scheffer. Use normal templating procedure. This responds to an edit. See history. Do not edit war.Julzes (talk) 15:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Earth is purposely isolated (The zoo hypothesis)

Whether or not the inserted/deleted text is sensible, it's certainly unreferenced. If a good source for this portion can be found, then feel free to add back this idea, with the reference. This is particularly important, IMO, for a topic such as this where there are many, many opinions. LouScheffer (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a continuation of the last section. Actually, there is some truth in the idea this is OR. It is mental experimental synthesis upon earlier paragraphs. This is actually the correct resolution of the problem, but it runs over the entire subject and the question of whether English wikipedia is overwritten relative to other languages (It is not, but only because there are so far not enough wikipedians). I need only revert one more time. Not terribly urgent.Julzes (talk) 16:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

By the by , long (very long) before the Zoo Hypothesis was even given a name, the concept had been common currency with modern science fiction prose since the 1930s. However I know of no systematic catalog of this idea from the literature, yet the concepts in fiction predates any given in non fiction. 99.17.8.8 (talk) 01:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The article on The Zoo Hypothesis is mostly a list of such, though I expect it is far from complete.Julzes (talk) 01:45, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

They aren't inclined to colonize

A solar system has vast resources. Only the end of the life of the star would force the species to leave. That wouldn't result in colonization of a whole galaxy, even if a species relocated a few times, they wouldn't cover more than tiny speck of the galaxy. To colonize the galaxy on the time scale the Fermi Paradox suggests would require that this species had an overwhelming compulsion to expand, with each colony preparing the next wave of expansion as soon as it was established. An advanced species might well be inclined to live within its means, and not seek to send out colonies across the entire galaxy.--RLent (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Source?

timeframe of the existence of "modern" Humans

in the section:Human beings have not been searching long enough in the paragraph: the Explaining the paradox theoretically, it first is (from all that we know)correctly stated, that The whole period of modern human existence to date (about 200,000 years) however later it is stated that: One million years ago there would have been no humans for any extraterrestrial emissaries to meet even though it should be phrased One million years ago there would have been no modern humans for any extraterrestrial emissaries to meet--46.142.18.32 (talk) 07:17, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Reference link #16 is broken

This link is broken (ref #16)

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/shostak_paradox_011024.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.219.70.254 (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

New Idea?

I don't know that this has even been thought of as significant in regards to this problem (and am certain it does not accurately answer it, but only because of my particular knowledge); but if somebody knows of any reference dealing with how long it took humans to pass from the tool-using to recorded-language stage (relevant to this article), it might make for some improvement. The issue is how rare it is or is not or could be for a highly intelligent species to never go beyond high intelligence to reach high collective intelligence and a highly specialized labor force using constantly improving tools. Perhaps it is normal to reach a state of satisfaction with a lack of progress and rare to develop machinery. Of course, I would not stick this in the article with an absence of sourcing, but I might have thought this the answer myself if I did not think I had a better one (also currently unsourced).Julzes (talk) 06:05, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

This is at least partially covered under Drake Equation, in the term that is the fraction of intelligent life that is willing and able to communicate. An example that has been used is a water world with herds of dolphins - very intelligent, but never forming a tool-using society that could communicate with other worlds. They might have wonderful history, philosophy, (spoken) literature, and so on, but would be almost invisible on a galactic scale. LouScheffer (talk) 11:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That occurred to me after I posted. Another thing that occurred to me is that some kind of self-purification ritual is a universal part of the transition (of transhuman and extraterrestrial advanced collective intelligence), such that unless there is an imminent astrophysical calamity in a world's near region (forcing migration upon it), a civilization having achieved a capacity to go to the stars would eschew it in favor of some kind of local perfection (temporarily, but perhaps for eons [not advocating this (at least not in the extreme), by the way]).Julzes (talk) 21:37, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The "cloistering" hypothesis posits that a deep philosophical/religious shift occurs which leaves communication with other intelligent life uninteresting at best. A society where supreme importance is put on metaphysical or spiritual concerns wouldn't care to devote resources to answering the question and would probably politely ignore visitors. This idea is well explored in fiction. I don't know how much traction it has in academia (I can't source it). 66.190.93.241 (talk) 03:58, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Anybody truly scholarly on the (current) literature dealing with this?

Some reasonable-seeming material is being edited away for lack of reference. If the person trying to write here would please find source material (or write it!), this could move up a bit in quality.Julzes (talk) 16:56, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. As being the person who removed that text, i feel obliged to offer an interim solution. Perhaps we can let appropriate material stay, with {citation needed} tag on it. Since it is a scholarly topic, we must maintain neutrality, and carefully analyse what material can stay. Lest we spoil the article. Thanks! Anir1uph (talk) 18:33, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Evidence and the lead

The lead sentence in some respects is a lie. The balance between what has been called 'lawyer language' and language for 3-year olds is skewed now towards illiterates. This is not my fight, but if people want good writing here, something better than that there is a lack of evidence should be in the lead.Julzes (talk) 12:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I have tried to re-write the lead paragraph to at least summarize the main points of the argument. LouScheffer (talk) 22:32, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay. That is the argument, and it's cleaner-looking and literate. Of course, colonization has an ultimate limit of everything. So, the Fermi Paradox does have the flaw (one of them) that there is no reason to expect advanced civilizations to stop at such a limit rather than well before it.Julzes (talk) 17:42, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

edit to planetarium hypothesis

The gist re my edits:

Connecting this issue to Bostrom's Simulation Argument is uncited. The citations given contain nothing about the Fermi Paradox, and in my previous reading about the SimArg and web search before making this edit, Bostrom never links them. He discusses the FermiP in the context of the Great Filter, etc.
Therefore, statements re simulated aliens being hard to simulate are OR. Just to note here on the talk page: this idea is obviously wrong, since simulating thin but clear evidence of alien life would resolve the FermiP but would not require simulating aliens (or anything else) in detail.
And in any case, the SimArg is a particular argument for the Simulation hypothesis; the SimArg in its particular detail would be hard to connect to the FermiP at all. In my pre-edit web search, i did find mentions of the SimHyp as an answer to the FermiP (eg, we're in a simulation to study us believing that we are alone), but nothing citable. And that would belong in another section -- maybe "Human beings were created alone", or its own section -- not Planetarium Hyp.
The material about regress in a simulation was OR about simulations, and nothing about FermiP or PlntrmHyp.
I changed some wording to make clear the difference between PlntrmHyp and SimHyp: that in PH we and the Earth at least are not simulated. ~~This is clear in the PH sources.~~(see below)

"alyosha" (talk) 22:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Update: The Baxter article is no longer available on the web, so i've removed the dead URL. I will leave my new wording stand as it is my (unsourced) understanding that the point of the Planetarium Hyp is that we ourselves (and some of our environment?) are not simulated. But this should be checked against the source. "alyosha" (talk) 23:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Recurring Strawman

Current lede trots out that stupid bit about "if the Earth is common", indistinct from rocky or earth sized planets, with certain factors whatever. Have commented on this before in the back matter of this article. Nobody seriously engaged in this topic has ever suggested that the Earth was "common" SFAIK although people like Kurzweil have stated the polar opposite absurdity. Will look later and if it's just that a redaction was never attempted will do so with my named account. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 01:52, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

The redaction would take "typical ..." to some more accurate text. However it'll be unnecessary if the galaxy count reference I added stands as this refers to the fact that we know that, allowing for the wide variety of forms of galaxies and what constitutes intelligent life, a fuzzy lower bound for the number of such per galaxy is known to be 1 (us). And please don't respond about the reasons why focus is only on our galaxy, I'm well aware of that, the subject is not about just this galaxy. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 21:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Added a reference that explicitly states that "small planets can easily form around stars that were born much earlier in the history of the universe". Also, there are two distinct arguments - for our galaxy, why no visits? and for the universe for a whole, why do we see no signs of intelligence? It makes more sense, in my opinion, to separate these in the lede as they are in the summary. Comments of course are welcome. LouScheffer (talk) 20:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I see your point. However, there have been several unexplained signals from areas within our galaxy. That is why I deleted your comment, which you have since restored. I must confess, I still think the comment is too definate as it stands. Regards, David J Johnson (talk) 22:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. That's why I added the word 'confirmed', so as not to imply there is no evidence at all. Maybe link 'no confirmed evidence' to later in the article where the 'wow' signal and other possible detections are discussed? LouScheffer (talk) 17:18, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

OK agreed, as long as link is there. Regards, David J Johnson (talk) 19:58, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Current lede addresses issue for which I created this thread. 72.228.190.243 (talk) 15:32, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

TBH It is not really a paradox if you consider the size of space, and what would be involved in travelling from one civilised system to another, and possible limitations of speed, (maybe FTL is impossible after all), or problems with generation ships, (is it feasible to build sufficient shielding, and could the generational ship be self sufficient for long enough in practice?), the impossibility of suspended animation technology akin to what we see in the movies, or even the likelyhood of a reasonably close civilisation picking OUR system as a destination. Even communication by radio, maser, laser, etc., might have its limitations, given the distance and the brightness of the parent star, and even the problem of recognising what would be a message from an intelligent source. Maybe there are thousands of intelligent civilisations out there, but I can think of loads of reasons why we have not heard from them and I am not that intelligent...lol. The possibility remains that WE are the "ancients" as espoused by assorted scifi programs and films, and we are one of the first species to reach this level of civilisation. This means the onus is on US to get out there and develop warp drive and all the rest...2.125.67.44 (talk) 19:42, 30 May 2013 (UTC)Lance Tyrell

Lance, you should read the article. I covers all that.War (talk) 22:42, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Note on a numerological result

In my idiosyncratic numerology, I tested a sentence along the lines of "The most beautiful cludge in a large sector of the Milky Way galaxy is the third planet around a star known in English as the Sun." I will provide the details here when I get to that in my review of my overloaded computer. This does not address the 'why' very well, but, if one were to take the essence of the numerological coincidence as being True rather than False (significant/insignificant) it would impact the question of fact and narrow the problem down considerably. Note: 'Kludge' or 'Kluge' is a computer science term for something thrown together from parts in a slapdash manner that nevertheless works about as well as a precision effort would (more or less). Slang in the edition of the American Heritage dictionary I have (2004, I think) and a title of a book on the human brain that led me to look it up and produce the (forthcoming here) result.Julzes (talk) 16:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Anyway, a flaw in the lede to the article is the wording that we have had no contact with nor do we have evidence for the existence of extra-terrestrial civilizations. It should say that no such is generally accepted (or perhaps that there was none at the time the paradox was formulated), which is a major difference.

As far as a promised numerological result, it may be disputed whether this is intended as material for the improvement of the article (but that is my intent, though I have not formulated in what way this material would do that exactly). It is also definitely original research, so it in itself is not acceptable for this or any other article in any way. I don't know if or in what way Clarke's laws (See Arthur C. Clarke for reference) are dealt with in the article as it now stands, but the 3rd law at least is relevant.

There are only a few ways of dealing with the following: 1) The mathematical coincidences (from an English sentence turned into numbers and factored) are not significant; 2a) They are but this has no bearing on the truth-value of the sentence nor can any inference of anything meaningful be made; 2b) They are but at best only limited inferences be made; or 2c) They are and this is at least light evidence of the truth of the sentence. I do make an unsupported claim, and that is that a wide range of possible sentences saying similar things were not tested with non-coincidental ones tossed out. The one I present is not the one originally referred to (unless I did remember it verbatim), as it seems I either did that longer ago than I thought and could not quickly find it in review. So, to my mind, it is actually a doubling of coincidental material. The only punctuation used in the sentence is a string of periods (extended diaresis) at the end, with the simple alphabetical positions of the letters in English juxtaposed to each other, and the value of the periods was given as 59 in one case and 61 in another (in my mind representing a duration of time for the first and an expanse of space for the second). These values derive in the first case from a simple sentence (actually, the first value over 26 that makes "God did it." with the concatenation of letters followed by the value a prime) and in the second from a song in the movie The Sound Of Music (Do-re-mi: '...fa, a long long way to run;...').

"The most beautiful kludge in a large segment of the Milky Way galaxy is the third planet around the star known in English as the Sun" when the letter positions are concatenated and then an increasingly large string of 59s is appended only factors quickly when there are 4 or 11 (or some other larger numbers of) copies. With 4 of them, one may or may not think significant that the factorization is 3 times 7 times a certain 175-digit prime, so that I will not 'spell' out. For 11 copies, the factorization is 131*96269*3950147*P177, and the larger prime is not the most interesting thing and so also will not be shown. Just one copy of 61 produces 3 times a 168-digit prime, 6 copies result in 3727 times 2153959 times a (170-digit) prime, and 11 copies results in 13*607*488353841*P176, where the larger primes in the first two entirely lack strings of three identical digits but the 176-digit prime in the last has (near the end) the string '777777' (and also one '000' string, as the only other of triple-length or longer).

Pardon if this seems off-topic or to not serve to clearly direct an improvement to the article, but I started commenting and so I am following through. It would seem most related to the Zoo Hypothesis or a variant. I do need to repeat that I feel there is a significant flaw in the lede. I don't think there is reason to suppose the evidence does not exist and has not been observed, just that whatever evidence there is has not been placed in the mainstream of accepted material on this subject, where it has been regarded as related (which seems often not to be the case for the general question of the supernatural (or seemingly supernatural)).Julzes (talk) 20:43, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Religion Anecdotes as Evidence of Non-Local Alien Communication

Funny how there is no section disussing the most obvious solution to the Fermi Paradox - that communication HAS been ongoing for thousands of years, encoded in mankind's various religious experiences of metanoia and angelic contacts as encoded in various idiosyncratic texts. It really is a beautiful example of the idiot-savant autism of science, unable to think beyond the physics of radio. They must be there, 'WE' don't 'see' them with radio, some do claim to 'see' them via trance and altered states, but since it isn't radio, it cannot be 'evidence'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.226.214.52 (talk) 10:44, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I think your theories would be better advocated in a fringe publication and not Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a encylopedia and deals in referenced facts, not POV or unreferenced statements. Also please do not "shout" and sign your contributions. Thank you, David J Johnson (talk) 10:59, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank YOU! This article's entire subject matter is unreferenced fringe speculation, it is an incoherent hodge podge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.226.214.52 (talk) 11:17, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

And the idea that extraterrestrials have been making contact with humans all along is believed by a surprising number of people, perhaps with the addition that it's being hidden by governments and others. Along with other solutions to the paradox, such as the hypothesis that the transition from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells is chancier than we might think, or that intelligence does not necessarily lead to language, or even more fanciful ideas such as the possibility that many planets with intelligent, communicative beings may lack workable metals . . . the visitation and cover-up hypothesis should be included with all the rest. And perhaps even the idea that, yes, some religious writings may record visitations. And yes, we have to find sources, at least of people making such claims. (And really, to return to what we might think of as 'hard' science, how much do we genuinely know about the rise of eukaryotic cells? We have only the one single example of the Earth.) FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Every new theory is "fringe" until it's tested. Some, tragically, are untestable. Kortoso (talk)

Name of the paradox, rememberances by Konopinski, Teller, York

From Name section of our article:
" . . . The conversation shifted to other subjects, until during lunch Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (alternatively, "Where is everybody?"). . . "

Jones, Eric "Where is everybody?", An account of Fermi's question", Los Alamos Technical report LA-10311-MS, March, 1985.
Please click on the PDF, a 20-page document! (with blank pages)

All three seem to agree on the out-of-the-blue aspect. That after a conversation on UFOs and the possibility of faster than light travel, the conversation moved on to other topics, and then, out-of-the-blue, Enrico Fermi asked . . . FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 19:57, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

page 1:
‘ . . . Thanks to the excellent memory of Hans Mark, who had heard a retelling at Los Alamos in the early 1950s, we now know that Fermi did make the remark during a lunchtime conversation about 1950. His companions were Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York. All three have provided accounts of the incident. . . ’

page 2:
‘ . . .Teller remembers: “ . . . . . I also remember that Fermi explicitly raised the question, and I think he directed it at me, ‘Edward, what do you think? How probable is it that within the next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving faster than light?’ I remember that my answer was ’10^-6.’ Fermi said, ‘This is much too low. The probability is more like ten percent’ (the well known figure for a Fermi miracle.)”

‘Konopinski says that he does not recall the numerical values, “except that they changed rapidly as Edward and Fermi bounced arguments off each other.” . . ’

page 3:
[Konopinski, York, and Teller all remember that Fermi asked his question out of the blue]
[York and Teller remember that there was seemingly immediate recognition that Fermi’s question referred to extraterrestrials.]

‘ . . . York, who does not recall the preliminary conversation on the walk to Fuller Lodge, does remember that “virtually apropos of nothing Fermi said, ‘Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?’ Somehow . . . we all knew he meant extra-terrestrials.”

‘Teller remembers the question in much the same way. “The discussion had nothing to do with astronomy or with extraterrestrial beings. I think it was some down-to-earth topic. Then, in the middle of this conversation, Fermi came out with the quite unexpected question ‘Where is everybody?’ . . . The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi’s question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life.

‘“I do not believe that much came of this conversation, except perhaps a statement that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic center.”

‘York believes that Fermi was somewhat more expansive and “followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many time over. . . ”’

Okay, our Name section probably should include that, not only was Fermi's question out of the blue, but there was seemingly immediate recognition by his lunch colleagues that he was referring to extraterrestrials. And while we do include York's rememberance that Fermi did some quick calculations along the lines of the Drake equation and pre-dating the Drake equation, Teller has no such rememberance and we probably should include that part, too. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 22:30, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Terran radiosphere signal strength

Under: "Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time"

I submit: "SETI astronomer Seth Shostak has claimed that, due to decreasing signal strength our radiosphere is not detectable beyond five light years..." Obviously this might be true of alien "incidental" transmissions/emissions. Source: http://theadvancedapes.com/should-we-send-messages-to-space/ Kortoso (talk) 18:22, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

They are here unobserved

Can someone help me present this properly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_hypothesis#Analyzing_ETH

In a 1969 lecture U.S. astrophysicist Carl Sagan said (Sagan Carl, Page Thornton (1972), “UFOs: A Scientific Debate”. Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-0740-0): "The idea of benign or hostile space aliens from other planets visiting the earth [is clearly] an emotional idea. There are two sorts of self-deception here: either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation by space aliens in the face of very meager evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don't want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFOs.".

Similarly, British astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock wrote that for many years (Sturrock Peter A (1999), “The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence”, Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-52565-0), "discussions of the UFO issue have remained narrowly polarized between advocates and adversaries of a single theory, namely the extraterrestrial hypothesis ... this fixation on the ETH has narrowed and impoverished the debate, precluding an examination of other possible theories for the phenomenon." Kortoso (talk) 19:33, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

New (to me) Hypothesis on Scarcity heard reported

I only caught brief mention of an hypothesis for a plausible cause that advanced life is quite rare, that being that those planets on which life might best develop and those on which it might best first arise have a very small intersection; so that, as the example I was hearing concerned, life on Earth could possibly have gotten its very first start on Mars, needing a collision and a fragment ariving on Earth therefrom to complete the process. If anybody else has more detail on this, it might reasonably find a place in this article.Julzes (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Line 6 edits

I would like to weigh in on the back-and-forth edit revisions to Line 6 of the article. I think this version is better:

"even travelling at sub-light speeds, a single civilisation could completely colonize the galaxy in a few tens of millions of years."

for the following reasons:

1) it is active voice. The other is passive voice. When using passive voice, the "actor" (person or thing doing the action) is not mentioned or is minimized. When using active voice, the "actor" is clear. In this case, the phrase "a single civilisation" provides a transition from the previous item by picking up the word "civilization";

2) it uses the modal auxiliary verb "could", which is hypothetical. All of these items are hypothetical, each one depending upon the previous item. The others use modals such as "may" and "will", not present tense, and definite, "can";

3) "Could completely colonize the galaxy" is clear. No guessing is needed on the part of the reader. "The galaxy" refers to our galaxy, mentioned earlier. "the galaxy could completely be colonized" is unnecessarily convoluted.

4) "at a practical speed of interstellar travel" is vaguer than "even travelling at sub-light speeds". And anyway, the word "practical" is subjective and variable. Who is to judge what is practical? And what is practical could be different a hundred years from now.

Finally, if everyone insists on using the passive voice, at least change "can" to "could". CorinneSD (talk) 00:14, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Alien constructs?

What is this speculation doing here, besides poisoning the well? I vote to move that section to its own article. Kortoso (talk)

I think I agree. It's something humans have imagined would be done by aliens and not imagined very recently either. It's already granted that we cannot expect very much from alien intelligences in terms of specific comparability with intelligent Earth life.Julzes (talk) 20:41, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Bracewell comment

The paper by Robert A. Freitas Jr. of the "Xenology Research Institute", THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL ARTIFACTS (SETA) ^[1] is NOT an attempt to "signal, attract, or activate Bracewell probes in Earth's local vicinity." It's a proposal only. Kortoso (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

"Fermi miracle"

The "Name" section contains the phrase "[the well known figure for a Fermi miracle]" but this phrase is not explained here, nor on Enrico Fermi's biographical page. What exactly does this mean, and why not explain it? 107.9.45.143 (talk) 22:09, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

The late Enrico Fermi is reported to have said that a miracle is an event the chances of which are less than one in ten. Read more, with references HERE, moreover, the phrase should be in parentheses, not brackets. Raquel Baranow (talk) 02:11, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Fixed spelling.CorinneSD (talk) 15:15, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Paradox?

Is this really a paradox in the classic sense, i.e., a statement that is inherently contradictory? Kortoso (talk) 20:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree it's not a real paradox. The answer to the paradox is kind of obvious, it's because we don't know enough about the universe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.135.59.91 (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

RENAME FERMI'S PARADOX — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.180.30.151 (talk) 08:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Merger (sections) proposal

It's been suggested that the sections "Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time" and "They tend to experience a technological singularity" should be merged, since they appear to discuss similar topics.

IMHO the combined section would be too long for easy readability. Kortoso (talk) 18:24, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Philosophy - failure to differentiate between what we know and what we know we don't know.

I have a couple of problems with this article. The most significant is with the view point from those who claim that "theory" doesn't preclude interstellar travel. Theory sets severe limits on all methods of interstellar travel; in terms of energy, in terms of time, and in terms of resources. Despite extensive studies, there are NO known ways to project our (functioning) technology across interstellar distances. NASA, among others, have published extensively on this. Also, the claim that the US Air Force concluded that some UFO sightings were "inexplicable" is simply not true. First and foremost, the US Air Force is composed of individuals, and does not, as a organization, conclude anything about UFO's. If some conclusion was made then site the reference (authors?) otherwise remove the claim. Second, the USAF is not a scientific nor academic body, and the results of any study they carry out will be subject to, and shaped by, enormous political pressures. Invoking them as an authority on UFO's is silly. Next, I have to believe that anyone serious about the logic behind the Drake Equation has better references than what appears in Wikipedia, which is flawed in numerous ways. Why hasn't the equation been modified to reflect CURRENT understanding of the probability for technological life? Lastly, where is the section, and the argument, for the most obvious answer to the Fermi Paradox: that we ARE the "alien probe" sent to Earth. Several different cosmogenic theories allow the possibility that the interstellar spores which initiated life on Earth (according to those theories) were intelligently designed. I think Cosmos (2014) even mentioned it in passing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.189.77.242 (talk) 05:09, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Update/Exoplanets, Earth like

The current lede is anachronistic, the density of planet formation is a verified fact at this point. Struggling to find the right word for the reserving the possibility that planet formation is unique to the portion of this galaxy where they've been resolved and absent elsewhere. In any case "some of these stars probably have Earth-like planets" needs to be much more positively stated. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 13:10, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Our star is not special and there are billions of others in our galaxy that are billions of years older;
Most of these stars have planets¹, some of which are earth-like, many of which will have life², and if the Earth is not special, some of these will have developed intelligent life;
- I think we underestimate the singularity of Earth, and the complexity of life development: the fact that the tides were essential to the development of complex terrestrial life; which are due to the moon, which was created by a catastrophic encounter between Earth and another (now destroyed) planet. Then the precise timing of the dinosaurs extinction by an asteriod, etc.
  - No Yann, "we" do not. You have intercalated your comments with my composition which is not the right way. You should have address in a separate thread entry as I will do below. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 09:40, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
Human cultural evolution is not special, so some of these should have developed interstellar travel, such as the 100 Year Starship;
- As long as we don't have a comparaison, this is much speculation. Human civilization as we know it made be extinct any time soon due to nuclear warfare, or a little later due to depletion of resources. Then the "normal" behavior of potential intelligent aliens may be to live peaceful in their own planet, not expending as much as possible as humans do. Yann (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
Even with interstellar travel by means constrained by our current understanding, the galaxy could be completely colonized in a few tens of millions of years.
- Idem above. We don't know if interstellar travel is even possible at this point, so this is much speculation. Yann (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

is my suggested redact for the noted problem and some others.¹ and ² are easily found. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 13:57, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

OK, I re-wrote the bulleted part of the first section. See what you think. In general, Wikipedia disfavors references in the first section if they are repeated below in the relevent sections, so most of the references are not needed. LouScheffer (talk) 12:36, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Bettah, ty. Lycurgus (talk) 01:37, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Per Yann's comments above:

No 'we' do not underestimate the 'singularity' of the Earth, nor the complexity of the development of life on it. Rather we accept that, from first principles, even if the right conditions for such are exceedingly rare, the total numbers of candidates and the observed facts their distribution (new data on this being why I opened the thread) about them indicate that those numbers must overwhelm such 'singularity', even on a purely natural basis (i.e. presuming the Earth isn't the result of the speculated colonization).
So on the next point we're fully in forum. In applying the Copernican principle to development on the Earth (presumed fully autonomous) we are not saying anything about the others, simply that there ought to be some and as you say likely have been more.
Agree, I think the personal physical travel thing is wrong headed, but that's how the article topic is found in culture, how it's defined. So again foruming as opposed to fact updating which is what my redact suggestion, and the one applied by LouScheffer was about.

108.183.102.223 (talk) 09:51, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, We ( Fermi, the modern scientific consensus/rational mind, and I) do not underestimate your 'singularity' we deny and reject it. Except to the extent the religious mind has or will make some notable response to FP, it cannot have a place in this article. Lycurgus (talk) 02:51, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Excessive

The article contains FAR too much speculation based far too often on entertainment, namely 'science' fiction. By its end the article has little to do with Fermi and his very simple proposition; it rather becomes an essay trying to prove Fermi wrong--even trying to ignore him--and to prove right the so-called Ufology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.69.73.199 (talk) 09:01, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course a lot of this is speculation - but the criteria for Wikipedia is not whether or not it is speculation, it is whether or not it is notable. Notable speculation, remarked on by authors in reliable sources, should be included, especially when it's explicitly mentioned in the context of the Fermi Paradox. Almost every point you have marked has been discussed, usually in several forms, in the science literature. LouScheffer (talk) 04:17, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Although I reject his use of quotation marks (it's science fiction, not 'science' fiction), and his use of "so-called" (it's ufology like it or not), I concur with the unsigned individual above. How many other encyclopedias use video games as references? -Kortoso (talk) 16:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

This is a feature, not a bug. Intellectual honesty requires us to cite the first source we know of for an idea. It's entirely possible that this is not from a peer-reviewed paper, but that does not mean the originator should not get credit. From a (peer-reviewed) paper on the subject (Wright, J. T., et al. The G Infrared Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. I. Background and Justification, The Astrophysical Journal 792.1 (2014): 26.): LouScheffer (talk) 18:39, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

The literature on the spread, likelihood, and form of extraterrestrial intelligence in the universe is sprawling. [...] while we have strived to provide appropriate citations to unoriginal ideas, it can be difficult to provide, or even recognize, proper citations for many important ideas pertaining to ETIs. In many cases, we may not even be aware of our influences.

Many important ideas and seminal contributions appearing outside of peer-reviewed journals, for instance in conferences, reports, white papers, and even science fiction books, teleplays, and film, making them tricky to track down and cite. To give just three examples: [...]

Even restricting oneself to the refereed literature, it can be difficult or impossible to find the origins of ideas that may have crept into popular culture, or to be sure an idea has not been thoroughly discussed somewhere. For instance, the term supercivilization appears in Kardashev, 1985, but likely has earlier attestations. In short, we apologize that the references included in this series of papers are not comprehensive, and we acknowledge that many ideas not original to us likely appear without citation.

Any other possible claimants, per Stigler's Law?

Stigler's Law predicts it isn't really Fermi's Paradox, so are there any other people who should be mentioned as having asked the question before Fermi, whether other scientists, science fiction writers, philosophers, religious people, or whatever? Also I understand that some Christians have long asked about whether the existence of Martians would require Christ to also be crucified on Mars, and I even recall a Sci Fi episode on TV (probably the Twilight Zone) on that sort of subject. HG Wells's War of the Worlds is about Martians arriving here and was written long before Fermi had his chat with Teller (indeed that chat was caused by Flying Saucer reports which themselves show that people were thinking about aliens coming here long before Fermi's chat). So with so many thinking about aliens coming here before Fermi, it would seem strange if nobody asked 'where are they?' before him. Also Svante Arrhenius's theory of panspermia in some sense implies that the aliens are already here as we are all aliens, as is all life on Earth. (This is also implied by Francis Crick's Directed panspermia speculation; more recently the discovery of Martian meteorites on Earth has also been used to suggest that we may ultimately be Martians). And so on. At any rate it seems to me that the article would be improved if there were a brief 'Before Fermi' section dealing with at least some of the above matters, as well as perhaps a brief 'Maybe we're the Aliens' section (Szilard's joke about "they're Hungarians" arguably touches on the subject, but a little more seems needed). Tlhslobus (talk) 10:10, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually I think I'll now have a go at the 'Maybe we're Aliens' bit myself. But I'm leaving the 'Before Fermi' section to others. Tlhslobus (talk) 10:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Fermi may not be the first who asked this question, but he's the first where we have records that someone commented on his asking (this is also the notability criteria of Wikipedia). The discussion of extraterrestrial life is of course much older, see The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900, by Micheal Crowe, for many examples, but no-one seems to have recorded anyone asking "Where are they?". LouScheffer (talk) 13:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, LouScheffer, that was very helpful of you. It seems to me that the article would be significantly improved if something roughly along those lines could be included at the start of the Name section. And given that you seem to know a lot about it, you are probably the best person to try to do it. But if you don't feel like trying it yourself, please say so, and somebody else can have a go (perhaps me, but I'd have to think about it first). The tricky bit would seem to be phrasing it correctly, given that it may well not be easy to find a RS for a phrase such as "no-one seems to have recorded anyone asking "Where are they?"." - though I think it quite likely that suitably chosen words can avoid that problem, but I haven't yet tried thinking of such words. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:03, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Actually it's premature to put the above in, as the following indicates:

http://books.google.ie/books?id=sTkfAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA131&dq=fermi%27s+paradox&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VnErVOe8MoSWaozKgpgI&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=fermi's%20paradox&f=false

(page 131) Fermi's Paradox (also known as the "Great Silence" problem)

Page 131, footnote 10: it would be more appropriate to call it the Tsiolkovsky - Fermi - Viewing - Hart - Tipler Paradox (for more history, see Brin 1983; Kuyper and Brin, 1989; Webb, 2002, and references therein). We shall use the locution "Fermi's Paradox" for the sake of brevity, and with full respect for the contributions of the other authors.

Clearly we need quite a bit more under the Name section. Tlhslobus (talk) 03:29, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

More details re the above:

Title Global Catastrophic Risks

Editors Nick Bostrom, Milan M. Cirkovic

Edition illustrated, reprint

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2011

ISBN 0199606501, 9780199606504

-----------------------------------------------------

(page 142): Brin, G.D. (1983). The Great Silence - the controversy concerning extraterrestial intelligent life. Quarterly J. Royal Atron. Soc., 24, 283.

(page 143): Kuiper, T. B. H. and Brin, G.D. (1989). Resource letter ETC-1: Extraterrestial civilization. Am. J. Phys., 57, 12-18.

(page 145): Webb, S.. (2002). Where is everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi's Paradox (New York: Copernicus)

-----------------------------------------------------

Tlhslobus (talk) 03:57, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

The above page 131 quotes are from Chapter 6 by Milan M. Cirkovic: (page 120) Chapter 6 Observation selection effect and global catastrophic risks (by Milan M. Cirkovic). Tlhslobus (talk) 04:07, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Based on the above, plus Stephen Webb's explanation that Tsiolkovsky was first, I've now added an alternative names section backed by Reliable Sources. Tlhslobus (talk) 06:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about these references. Bostrom bases his comment on Webb. Webb, in turn, on page 23, gives as his reference to Tsiolkovsky the book "Probability 1" by Amir D. Aczel. But this book appears to make no reference to Tsiolkovsky (at least Amazon "Search inside" cannot find it, and it's not in the index). And according to Webb, Tsiolkovsky in turn refers to it as an already existing paradox, to which he offers his own solution. It's also not in the other reference in this paragraph (Extraterrestrials - Where are They?). So presumably there is some work by Tsiolkovsky (probably in Russian) where this argument is made. But for now we have only Webb's word for it. LouScheffer (talk) 13:51, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Aha! I think Webb meant to reference this article, which discusses exactly the ideas of his paragraph, and cites the original Tsiolkovsky documents. I'll fix this later.... LouScheffer (talk) 14:00, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, LouScheffer, your edit is excellent, but I do have some queries/issues:

1-(Minor points) Inaccuracies in your above comments (it probably doesn't matter, but it just might help avoid later confusion): The comment is Cirkovic's, not Bostrum's (They are joint editors, but the comments are in Chapter 6, which is by Cirkovic). I doubt if he is only basing it on Webb, as he adds Tipler to Webb's list, and he mentions 2 other sources for the history (Brin 1983, and Kuiper and Brin 1989). Webb is NOT basing his reference to Tsiolkovsky on the book "Probability 1" by Amir D. Aczel. Although Aczel is [21] in his bibliography, and he has 21 beside the Tsiolkovsky passage, his notes there are numbered sequentially, and presumably refer to notes which are not available to us online. He presumably gets his info from the same article as you do, as that article (Lytkin et al (1995)) is item 13 in his Bibliography (see Webb (2002), page 275)

2-Mention of Stigler's Law, and Webb's mention of the Soviet era, are both now gone: my concern is that this may give rise to baseless perceptions and/or charges of 'American cultural imperialism' by people who haven't been told that this applies to most scientific eponyms, and that the Soviets are also partly to blame. (Incidentally, I added Fermi's paradox to the List of examples of Stigler's law yesterday).

3-Cirkovic's co-credit to Frank Tipler is gone

4-Cirkovic 2011, Brin 1983, and Kuiper and Brin 1989, and mention of them as useful sources for the history, are all gone

5-Wikilink to Hart is gone (although he is mentioned and wikilinked elsewhere)

6-Wikilink to David Viewing is gone, along with the red ink that might suggest to somebody that he deserves his own article (2 RS co-crediting him for Fermi's paradox seems notable enough to me)

7-The subsection is called Alternative Names (and the section is called Name), yet most alternative names are in the Overview section (thanks for pointing that out, as I hadn't noticed)

8-I've probably just failed to notice it, but where does it say that Tsiolkovsky 1933 is an unpublished manuscript (or is this just implied by its being in his museum)?

Some of these items may well be best forgotten, but others definitely need addressing, probably along with quite a few more. However I don't want to attempt any fixes myself until I've given you time to give me some feedback. Tlhslobus (talk) 06:58, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, Tsiolkovsky's 'solution' involving 'perfect ETCs' , or variants thereof, may well be a lot older than 1933.

Around 300 BC, Epicurus of Samos spoke of gods who had arisen as a result of different kinds of atoms and who were too far away to have any direct effect on us (but thinking about their perfect societies might help us improve society down here).

I have long understood this as Epicurus saying advanced ETs must exist, but are too far away, which is one solution to the Fermi Paradox, though in modern language I would interpret 'different kinds of atoms' as different local laws of Physics (which result in different kinds of particles ('atoms') behaving differently under different kinds of laws). In effect I think he's explaining our existence and that of 'gods' (advanced ETs) as an inevitable side-effect of what we would call a Multiverse with sufficiently diverse local laws of Physics in local sub-universes to ensure almost every conceivable local outcome, including 'gods' in some places, and humans in other places (and uninhabitable sub-universes in most places).

He was a contemporary of Aristarchus of Samos of helio-centric fame, so I suspect that there was a school of thought associated with Samos at the time that was pretty good at collecting the reasonable materialist speculations from a much wider region, and that in turn suggests to me that this kind of intelligent materialist thinking has repeatedly reached similar conclusions regarding what we now call the Fermi Paradox going back well into prehistoric times.

On the other hand, Heliocentrism probably requires the ability to measure the distance to the Moon by parallax, the size of the Earth by some method similar to that used by Eratosthenes in ancient Greece, and the distance to the Sun from the shadow of the Earth during lunar eclipses (which then tells you the Sun is much larger than the Earth), which would presumably require Stonehenge/Newgrange levels of development, meaning relatively recent prehistory.

Also Epicurus's explanation seemingly suggests that we are alone in this sub-universe of the Mutliverse, and is thus arguably an early example of the Rare Earth solution to the paradox.

However finding reliable sources to say anything along these lines regarding Fermi's paradox may not be easy (though Carl Sagan did discuss gods=ETs in his 'Cosmos' series, and did mention the Fermi paradox in places, but I don't know whether he or anybody else ever tied the two topics together). Though if we leave the matter here long enough somebody may eventually read it and write it into a reliable source, which, I suppose, is one long-term way of using a Talk page to improve an article.Tlhslobus (talk) 08:46, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Some quick comments: Tsiolkovsky's manuscript is stated to be unpublished in Lyton, p. 371. Also, he seems not to reflect the portion of the paradox that states that the travel time << age of the galaxy.
I think the argument "The laws of physics are different elsewhere" should be included in the article. It is so different from modern-day thinking that I've never seen it in any discussion of the paradox. Do you have a citation for this view?
I'm not sure Tsiolkovsky should get credit (surely someone else even earlier has written similar things, but who can possibly know what exists in unpublished manuscripts?). I strongly believe that no-else except Fermi or Hart should be credited. Fermi could not easily have known of Tsiolkovsky's work. Hart might not known of Fermi's even though it was fairly widespread, since it was unpublished at the time. But after Hart, there was an academic discussion, in the obvious public journals. Independent discovery after that only reflects shoddy scholarship. LouScheffer (talk) 15:38, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, LouScheffer.

"The Laws of physics may be different elsewhere" is only my interpretation of Epicurus's "far-away gods due to different kinds of atoms" (which I think I may have read about here on Wikipedia a few years ago), so I don't know whether there are RS discussions of it in the context of either Epicurus or the Fermi Paradox, though there may well be. But the idea is very common in discussions of the Multiverse, and the Anthropic Principle (which Frank J. Tipler, the last of Cirkovic's 5 (Tsiolkovsky-Fermi-Viewing-Hart-Tipler) has much to say about), as well as being briefly mentioned by Carl Sagan in his Cosmos TV series (and its accompanying book, if I remember right) in the context of a possible oscillating (sub-)Universe, where the constants and/or some of the Laws of Physics get reshuffled at each bounce (back in the days before the discovery of the accelerating expansion of this (sub-)Universe, when it was still possible to argue that the Big Bang might be followed by a Big Crunch and possible rebound). Essentially these have long been ways of getting rid of the Argument from Design case for a creator (as well as explaining in the modern context why physical constants and arguably also some other aspects of the Laws of Physics appear fine-tuned to allow our existence without having to bring in a creator and then try to explain where the creator came from - although they can also be used to explain where a hypothetical creator of our sub-universe might have come from). I'll try to look for references in the Fermi's Paradox and Epicurus contexts, though it may take a little time. Meanwhile some of the above info just may help you if you want to search for references yourself.

Of course in general 'the gods/ETCs may be too far away' need not depend on the Laws of Physics being different, as any Rare Earth theory implies that they are far away (and in the modern world they need only be beyond the Milky Way, or perhaps beyond our Local Group of galaxies), though very diverse local Laws of Physics would arguably tend to help ensure they are far away, separated by many uninhabitable sub-universes (but that is not logically guaranteed). Also if ancient publishers found it profitable to 'improve' on original texts (and there is much evidence that they often did), then we may have inherited a slightly garbled version of Epicurus, and he himself may have written a slightly garbled version of somebody else's thought, and so on. But on the other hand Google may well eventually yield the kind of references we can use.

As for credit, at least Tsiolkovsky wrote about it, seemingly unlike Fermi who seemingly just talked about it. If one is going by published work (the traditional criterion for credit, unless you happen to be Fermi, it would seem) it should perhaps be the Viewing Paradox, as (if I remember right, but I'd have to check) David Viewing got published slightly ahead of Michael H. Hart, both in 1975. Of course, if I remember right, David Viewing is English and a mere engineer, while the 'Fermi-Hart paradox' credits two Americans, who are also scientists. I think it quite likely that by then a number of Russian scientists had read Tsiolkovsky and were discussing his views privately (when you're a celebrated national hero, having your manuscripts available to be consulted in a museum is arguably a form of limited publication), although 'Scientific Atheism' (aka Communism) may have made public discussion difficult. Also, going by who allegedly caused what, we should presumably not credit Gregor Mendel as the father of Genetics because his published work was known only to horticulturalists, and was independently rediscovered by biologists before they found out about his work so he had no effect on biology so he should be ignored. And we should presumably not give Aristarchus any credit for heliocentrism either for the same reason. And if Viewing published more than a few days or weeks before Hart, then Hart should presumably get no credit as a shoddy scholar (and/or vice versa). And so on ad infinitum. But in any case as Wikipedians we don't give credit, we quote reliable sources that do. Meanwhile, I think we need more re Viewing (especially if he really did get published ahead of Ball), which is available online in Webb, I think. And it might be useful to know why Cirkovic adds Tipler to the list, which perhaps comes from Brin 1983, or Kuiper and Brin 1989, though it might also be from some of Cirkovic's own publications.

Just because Lytkin et al don't mention travel time << age of the galaxy doesn't necessarily mean that Tsiolkovsky didn't mention it, still less that he didn't know about it. But even if he didn't (as seems quite possible), it's not clear how relevant it is. He presumably knew perfectly well that the nearest star is only 4 light years away, as this has been known since the 19th century, and consequently the need to mention it may well have seemed rather superfluous - as the travel time for star hopping at .01c is ~400 years (or ~4000 at .001c), where c is the speed of light. The age of the galaxy seems irrelevant in that context unless perhaps one insists that they have to star hop across most of the galaxy (which would only arise if the nearest ETC is about 100,000 light years away). And of course we don't really know what the travel time really is because we don't know how fast spaceships can travel in practice, nor what spaceflight durations might be biologically or psychologically or economically acceptable to alien space-travelers (and neither did Fermi or anybody else), and so on. And at least our current version of Fermi's chat doesn't mention the age of the galaxy (which Fermi may or may not have known). Fermi, being later, probably knew a little more of the relevant factors than Tsiolkovsky, but one might with equal logic deny credit to Fermi on the basis that his estimates of the various factors involved were even more ill-informed than the estimates of later thinkers. Arguably this all means that we as Wikipedians should not be using galactic age and travel time as grounds for quibbling with reliable sources that give him credit (unless other reliable sources explicitly use this argument to deny him credit, in which case both views should be given appropriate weight per Wikipedia guidelines on what to do when RSs disagree). Tlhslobus (talk) 09:24, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Funding

First, feel free to comment in any remotely rational method - intersperse, all the bottom, hatting, etc.

About funding - as far as I know, no-one has ever gotten funding for the purpose of solving, or even studying, the Fermi Paradox. The pure science aspects gets the biggest bucks (the Kepler mission to find planets cost $550M.), and all of astronomy much more, but might only bear on the Fermi Paradox as a side effect. The SETI efforts are more directly relevant, but comparatively small, about $2.5M/year, and all privately funded. See this infographic comparing SETI expenses to others, or the traditional comment that Jodie Foster's salary for playing a SETI researcher in the movie Contact would have paid for all the real SETI that goes on worldwide for a decade or so. Then there are the authors of books about the Fermi paradox, but these are hardly best-sellers ("Where is Everybody" is number 86,000 or so in Amazon books.) It also might be interesting noting how much the Fermi Paradox is the domain of the amateur; almost all authors in the references make their living doing something more practical and less philosophical. A table showing authors and "day jobs" would be very interesting, but it's not clear this is the place for it. LouScheffer (talk) 21:23, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, LouScheffer. Well, given that (unlike me) you seem to feel rather strongly about it (and you may well be right to do so), I suspect most editors here, who presumably feel much the same way as you do about it, would welcome you putting something along those lines into a new "Funding" or "(Lack of) Research Funding" section in the article (backed by suitable RS references of course, but presumably some of the references here say something along those lines). You should presumably also make at least a token effort to "balance" it (mentioning at least one of the arguments stated in Congress arguments against funding SETI would probably do for starters) - you don't even need to get it all right at the start thanks to Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress. And while I don't feel strongly about it myself, I too would welcome such a section (with the usual caveat about needing RS support, which I expect would not be too hard to find), as useful info that improves the article - after all, I have asked for RSs in relation to various aspects of funding in the previous section. I've asked for both 'waste of money' RSs, and RSs giving the other side (item 9 in my request list). Incidentally, although I don't feel strongly about it myself, I don't consider it a waste of money, but some people clearly do and that should presumably be stated as a possible partial explanation for why it's underfunded (provided there are RSs that state this). Or if necessary you can just start by linking to some similar section in the SETI article, if one exists or can be created. So why don't you give it a go and see what happens? Tlhslobus (talk) 06:06, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

getting started on a funding section

Here's some stuff to help anybody wishing to get started on a funding section, either here or in the SETI article to which this article might then link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence

Some of the most well-known projects are run by Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, or the SETI Institute. In 1995, the United States federal government ceased funding to SETI projects, forcing them to turn to private funding to continue the search, though in recent years, government funding of SETI has resumed at modest levels.^[2]

Notes: 1) some may find the NASA reference easier to access by removing the s from the https in the url, to give http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/astep/projects/nra/nnh11zda001n-astid/instrumentation-for-the-search-for-extraterrestria/

2) The claim of SETI funding there seemingly conflicts with at least one statement below, though this may just mean NASA doesn't fund SETI via the SETI Institute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI_Institute#History ... Financial and leadership support over the life of the SETI Institute has included Carl Sagan, Bernard Oliver, David Packard, William Hewlett, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, Nathan Myhrvold, Lewis Platt, and Greg Papadopoulos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI_Institute#Funding_supporters Funding for SETI Institute programs comes from a variety of sources. Contrary to popular belief, and their Form 990, no government funds are allocated for its SETI searches^{[citation needed]} – these are financed entirely by private contributions. Other astrobiology research at the SETI Institute may be funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, or other grants and donations.^[3] TeamSETI is the SETI Institute’s worldwide membership and support organization.

http://www.seti.org/faq#obs7

So who funds the SETI search now?

Current SETI searches are funded by donations, mostly from individuals among the public and a few foundations and corporations. Major donors have included William Hewlett, David Packard, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, Nathan Myhrvold, Arthur C. Clarke, Barney Oliver, and Franklin Antonio. Tlhslobus (talk) 07:07, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Any reliable sources alleging Fermi's Paradox is quasi-religion, etc?

Assuming Reliable Sources can be found to support any of the ideas below, I think the article would be improved if they got a mention:

1 - That Fermi's Paradox is religion, not science - it asks why certain kinds of 'gods' have not made themselves manifest. I note that Carl Sagan briefly mentioned gods=extraterrestials in his Cosmos TV series (and the accompanying book). Francis Crick in his book on the somewhat similar topic of Directed panspermia mentioned that his wife doubted whether that qualified as Science. But I don't know whether similar claims have been made specifically in the context of Fermi's Paradox.
2 - That it is an important example of Scientism, the notion that Science is some kind of religion or quasi-religion
3 - That it is a Question, but should not be called a Paradox, because it has far too many possible answers to be seen as a serious Paradox, and to call it a Paradox is just hype to draw scientific funding away from more important questions
4 - That naming it after Fermi, who (apparently) never published anything on the subject, unlike David Viewing, Michael Hart, etc, is also hype, both to draw scientific funding away from more important questions, and to try to mask its non-scientific quasi-religious nature
5 - That scepticism needs to be expressed about the details of the story of Fermi not merely discovering the Paradox, but also about his simultaneously working out his own Drake Equation, on grounds that skepticism is always required with hearsay in general, and even more so when it's hearsay making somewhat extraordinary claims (as in WP:EXTRAORDINARY?) concerning the 'heroic' alleged founder of any quasi-religion, and perhaps especially one that provides research funds and book royalties for some of its devotees, including those re-telling the founder's alleged story
6 - That for the sake of intellectual consistency it should also ask why some Ultimate Extraterrestrial (aka "God"/The Creator, etc) has not made itself manifest
7 - That it should not be eligible for US government research funds because it is a religion (or for some other reason, such as that it's a waste of money). I know that US politicians have refused to fund the closely related topic of SETI, though I don't know whether any have said that this is because it would be unconstitutional public funding of a religion, nor whether any have said the same about Fermi's Paradox.
8 - Any similar research funding problems elsewhere (such as outside the USA, or scientists in other areas objecting to the alleged misallocation of research funds)
9 - Replies to any/all of the above claims/charges
10 - an indication of what are the main sources, if any, of advocacy and funding for research into the topic - or alternatively an indication that no such sources exist (and perhaps some explanation for why not)

There's clearly a lot of online and offline Reliable Sources to look up in the context of all the above questions (and of course some of these searches may fail to find anything that we can use here). I may try to look up some of them myself, but I probably won't do much looking up, as I'm not all that interested in the topic, and I've already spent rather more time on the topic than I originally intended. So I would prefer to leave these questions here mainly as something to be looked into by the many editors here who can reasonably be assumed to be rather more interested in Fermi's Paradox than I am. Tlhslobus (talk) 05:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

This discussion has been hatted by mutual consent to reduce its visible size, as explained within it in section R7-Hatting Request. Please do not modify it.

Thanks, Lou. This has been hatted with the stated consent of LouScheffer here ("First, feel free to comment in any remotely rational method - intersperse, all the bottom, hatting, etc") by Tlhslobus (talk) 07:50, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

These are perfectly reasonable questions for a research paper or thesis on the Fermi Paradox. However, the answer to most of them is that this an encyclopedia, not research. It's called the Fermi Paradox here since that's what most papers call it, not because either Fermi or Paradox is technically correct. (i.e there's an article Guinea pig even though they are not from Guinea and not pigs.) The research is summarized from the viewpoint of science since that's how most papers study it. There is no mention of funding since there has been no funding, or certainly no funding controversy, perhaps because almost everyone who writes on it does something else as their "day job". The part about Fermi calculating odds is included since a reliable source also included it (and it's correctly noted that this second-hand, so the reader can make their own judgement), and so on.

The parallel construction of "If ETs exist, why don't they show themselves?" and "If God exists, why doesn't she/he show her/him self?" would be an excellent topic for a scholarly discussion, but I don't know of any. LouScheffer (talk) 11:45, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, LouScheffer, though I do have a few issues with it.

R1 (for Reply1) - (RSs are Encyclopedic) - "These are perfectly reasonable questions for a research paper or thesis on the Fermi Paradox. However, the answer to most of them is that this an encyclopedia, not research." Nobody is suggesting that Wikipedia should include original research. The suggestion is that we might look to see whether others have produced research papers and theses on such "perfectly reasonable questions for a research paper or thesis on the Fermi Paradox", and that if they have and are mentioned by a RS (or if an RS mentions the topic with or without quoting a thesis or research paper), then the article is likely to be improved by mentioning this.

R2 - (No Name Change requested) - "It's called the Fermi Paradox here since that's what most papers call it, not because either Fermi or Paradox is technically correct. (i.e there's an article Guinea pig even though they are not from Guinea and not pigs." Nobody has suggested changing the article title. I've asked whether there are other RSs questioning the name on various grounds. This seems a reasonable question, given that we already know that there are at least two RS questioning it. One (Webb 2002) saying it should be "Tsiolkovsky - Fermi - Viewing - Hart" is now quoted in the article. The other (Cirkovic, 2011) saying it should be "Tsiolkovsky - Fermi - Viewing - Hart - Tipler" was put into the article by me, but removed by your re-write - I may or may not try to add it back later, perhaps if and when I choose to try to find out what Tipler's alleged role is according to Cirkovic. Meanwhile I note that neither addition to the article involved any attempt to change the article name, nor any suggestion that it should be changed.

R3 - (Funding) - "There is no mention of funding since there has been no funding, or certainly no funding controversy, perhaps because almost everyone who writes on it does something else as their 'day job'." If that statement is correct, then it should arguably be mentioned (especially if any RS mentions it). Meanwhile, it reminds me of an earlier statement above "Fermi may not be the first who asked this question, but he's the first where we have records that someone commented on his asking (this is also the notability criteria of Wikipedia)." Had that statement been accepted without question, we would presumably still have no mention of Tsiolkovsky (nor, incidentally, of others such as David Viewing, etc). In other words, denials, unless carefully supported by appropriate evidence, seemingly don't improve the article, whereas searches for RSs seemingly do. I could of course be wrong, but personally I'd be mildly surprised if, for instance, none of the considerable private funding for SETI (SETI currently gets 41 mentions in our article) is ever stated by a RS to be funding for research into the Fermi Paradox, or into aspects thereof (indeed I would probably personally tend to see such missing RSs as a paradox rather more profound than the Fermi Paradox, at least in the sense of having rather fewer available explanations, though that is admittedly not a very difficult feat to achieve given how many explanations for Fermi's Paradox are available and listed in the article).

R4 - (Science/Religion) - "The research is summarized from the viewpoint of science since that's how most papers study it." No problem with the broad approach - I think it has to take that general approach, but I suspect the article would be greatly improved by better mentioning and/or linking to other approaches, such as ancient and modern religious and philosophical approaches - we do actually mention them, but rather haphazardly and inconsistently at various points in the article, so a mention in the lead, a specific section (rather like our existing "In Science Fiction and other media" section), and links to other relevant articles, would seemingly improve the way the article deals with these aspects.

R5 - (the Fermi Tale) - "The part about Fermi calculating odds is included since a reliable source also included it (and it's correctly noted that this second-hand, so the reader can make their own judgement), and so on." I fully agree that it should be included. However, it took a pretty skeptical individual like me several days before it even occurred to me that there seemed to be something not quite right about it, so I expect the vast majority of readers will never even notice anything wrong. (I suspect an awful lot of us readers, including me, tend to instinctively accept Wikipedia as 'Gospel' except where we notice it's clearly wrong, and I suspect we Wikipedians don't do nearly enough to protect ordinary adult and child readers from this, even if I've little or no idea how we might try to improve such things). As such I think it woud improve the article if someone found a usable RS saying "there's something fishy about this". And in the meantime I am suggesting that it may improve the article if somebody checks whether it is a case of WP:EXTRAORDINARY, and if so whether it adequately complies with the guidelines there, and, even if it does, whether the wording might still be improved in the interests of not unnecessarily risking misleading our readers - it may well be that it is currently as good as it can be (or perhasp as good as our rules allow it to be, especially if we ignore WP:IAR), but I think that is worth checking (I may even try checking it myself someday, but I suspect the task is probably better left to somebody more interested than me).

R6 - (ETs/God(s)) - "The parallel construction of 'If ETs exist, why don't they show themselves?' and 'If God exists, why doesn't she/he show her/him self?' would be an excellent topic for a scholarly discussion, but I don't know of any." Actually that should perhaps read "God or gods", or just plain "gods", as Extraterrestrials are not usually portrayed as the creator(s) of this (sub-)Universe. I don't currently know of any such specific discussion either, but I'd be mildly surprised if there aren't any (Schlovskii and Sagan 1966, mentioned in our article, seem to come pretty close to fitting the bill, and a bit more checking may well end up indicating that they fit it more-or-less perfectly), hence, as usual, my suggestion that looking for and finding RSs dealing with this "excellent topic for a scholarly discussion" would be likely to improve the article.

R7 - (Hatting Request): And one problem with having to reply to your post, apart from the time involved, is that what was already a fairly long but still relatively short request for RSs has now become a much longer post which consequently fewer people will presumably read, thereby reducing the chances that it will help improve the article, which seems a pity. (Admittedly I could perhaps have made it maybe 20 to 40% shorter if I spent yet more time and effort trying to say a bit less, at the risk of omitting something important, but there'd be little point as it would still be too long) But I guess that's life. Of course the problem could be fixed by hatting your above post and my reply to it, but I would presumably need your agreement to do that. So may I have your agreement to hat as specified, please? Tlhslobus (talk) 17:13, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Getting started on Criticism such as 'Not Science'

The following may help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence#Criticism Tlhslobus (talk) 07:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Getting started on Fermi's Paradox and religion

As mentioned earlier (section R4 in the above hatted discussion), I think the article normally has to take the science-based approach, but I suspect the article would be greatly improved by better mentioning and/or linking to other approaches, such as ancient and modern religious and philosophical approaches - we do actually mention them, but rather haphazardly and inconsistently at various points in the article, so a mention in the lead, a specific section (rather like our existing "In Science Fiction and other media" section), and links to other relevant articles, would seemingly improve the way the article deals with these aspects.

The following may help get started:

http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/physics/fermi.php

David H. Bailey 1 Jan 2014 (c) 2014
Introduction

While having lunch with colleagues Edward Teller and Herbert York, who were chatting about a recent cartoon in the New Yorker depicting aliens abducting trash cans in flying saucers, physicist Enrico Fermi suddenly blurted out, "Where is everybody?" [Webb2002, pg. 17-18]. His question is now known as Fermi's paradox.
....
The question of the existence of intelligent life also has religious implications. As Paul Davies observes, "The search for alien beings can thus be seen as part of a long-standing religious quest as well as a scientific project." [Davies1995, pg. 138].

Tlhslobus (talk) 07:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

See also section R6 in the above hatted discussion re Schlovskii and Sagan 1966. Tlhslobus (talk) 08:27, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Getting started on Fermi's Paradox and Funding

See Talk:Fermi_paradox#getting_started_on_a_funding_section below, and perhaps also Talk:Fermi_paradox#Funding. Tlhslobus (talk) 07:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

^ http://www.setv.org/online_mss/seta83.html
^ "ROSES 2011 Grant Awards". NASA. May 2006. Retrieved July 12, 2013.
^ Seti FAQ - see: So who funds the SETI search now?

[1] ttp://www.setv.org/online_mss/seta83.html

[ASTID_2011-2] "ROSES 2011 Grant Awards". NASA. May 2006. Retrieved July 12, 2013.

[3] Seti FAQ - see: So who funds the SETI search now?

[1]

[2]

[3]