Where are the Aliens?


The Fermi paradox asks why we haven’t found any other civilizations in our massive universe? Surely, statistically, in such a large area, advanced civilizations that can broadcast signs of their existence and/or emit other signs of their existence must have come up multiple times. Why then haven’t we found any?

Karl Schroeder, a science fiction author, has an interesting take on that. He starts by rephrasing Arthur C. Clarke's famous declaration that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Nature. Basically, either advanced alien civilizations don't exist, or we can't see them because they are indistinguishable from natural systems. I vote for the latter.”

That is an interesting argument: it basically says we don’t find these other advanced civilizations because they are in perfect harmony with their environment. And so we can’t spot anything even when we are looking right at it, because it is so aligned with its environment that we don’t see anything different. I’d call it the hiding in plain sight argument!

But if you think a bit more, can such a civilization ever exist? Or rather, can such a “in perfect harmony with their environment” civilization survive for long? After all, wouldn’t the environment of such a civilization keep changing over time? To see what I mean, consider several examples of  massive changes induced on our own planet due to factors that have nothing to do with man’s recklessness: the planet’s magnetic field “flipping” in the past, severe climatic changes such as the Ice Ages, continental drift, asteroid hits etc? Who’s to say equivalent changes couldn’t happen to that in-harmony civilization? And when such a change does happen to its environment, who is to say that the civilization could necessarily re-adjust to align in perfect harmony with the new environment? If it can’t, the civilization would either get wiped out or survive in out-of-harmony format. If it’s the latter, it couldn’t hide in plain sight and would/should get spotted sooner rather than later, right?

So to me, Fermi’s paradox remains unanswered: why can’t we find them?

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