The Fermi Paradox - Why we haven't been contacted by aliens

[Dave Lane]

Originally Posted by keg in kc

What if they aren't from another star system? What if, say, Earth itself has a history of which we're not aware? What if humanity itself has a history to which we're not aware? What if civilization exists on a recurring cycle, like in Azimov and Silverberg's Nightfall, rising and falling repeatedly over the millennia? What if past human civilizations reached pinnacles even higher than our own, even spread to a degree throughout the solar system, only to destroy itself much like we've seemed intent upon doing for the last century? What if some small remnant has survived over thousands or tens of thousands of years, perhaps continued to advance? Or what if something related to it has survived, something technological or bio-engineered, not human?

There are infinite other alternatives to what something like Roswell could be. It doesn't have to be dumb aliens. Or aliens at all. Yet maybe it could be that, too. Who's to say in a hundred years or a thousand we won't come up with a way to traverse what we see as impossible distances. Or maybe whatever happened there or in other parts of the world where people have reported strange things are part of the closed environmental system here on Earth, events centered around global mechanics we either aren't aware of or don't yet understand. Maybe it really is too far to travel.

That's what makes this a true mystery, not knowing. And the important thing is being open minded or imaginative enough to even ask the question in the first place, the question of what any of the hundreds of inexplicable events in the last century may have been. Maybe we'll never find any answers. And hell, it's easier to just point and laugh, and not even try.

Then everything is a mystery. How do you know you really exist? How do you know this isn't the matrix. It's a mystery. No one knows. How do you know I'm not the frog prince of Kolab connecting to the WWW on a really big antenna.

You know how we know? Because there is 0 evidence to support either possibility. Doesn't mean a negative can be proven but your civilization repeating concept would have left clues somewhere in the evolutionary / fossil record. There is none. So the default position must be until there is some evidence to support said idea it's just that. Some semi-literate person spitballing an idea.