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One of the possible answers to the Fermi Paradox is simply we're the first.
And it's the most likely solution. The universe has been hostile to life until very recently (on a cosmological scale). We know we're rather early in the goldilocks zone of universal habitability.
I just find it odd when some people argue "humans aren't special enough to be that lucky. We're too stupid to achieve more". It's odd because calling humans stupid is actually arguing that humans are exceptional. Meanwhile you don't have to be exceptional to be lucky.
And if you're wondering, it's Lex Friedman that argues this. And no, I don't listen to him anymore. I stopped once over 50% of the people he interviewed were just AI and crypto shills
We could be the great scourge of this part of the universe. Expanding recklessly through galaxies in the local group, leaving only the dead husks of stars that have been stripped of all usable energy. The exponential nature of scientific discovery means that not only do we have a head start, our head start compounds as time progresses. We become a horrific but very efficient war machine for the sole purpose of controlling and exploiting all available forms of energy for profit. We seem like we're on that path.
/c/humansarespaceorcs
To be fair its likely to be the most probable answer.
Whilst intelligent life is probably quite common at specific points in time, it isnt common at the same time, and if it is the distances involved are so vast it means we will never know they exist.
The best we can hope for in all likelihood is that we stumble on the ruins of some other species that died out millions of years ago.
Or we stumble on a bunch of blue monkeys who are as intelligent as dogs, but in 50 million years they will be the ones finding the ruins of our civilisation.
The flip side of this is that black hole entropy farming could keep simulated human consciousness alive for billions of years orbiting just outside the event horizon as we transition into the early stages of heat death, meaning that if this is possible, the statistically overwhelming portion of all human consciousness will exist in this state, making it a near statistic certainty that is what you are currently experiencing.
Not if they have the misfortune to be found by us they wont.
That's not an answer, because if life is common, then the chance of us being the first is minuscule.
Lets say that life can only form around main sequence G type stars (ie, like our sun). There is no reason to believe this is true, but lets say it is for this example. The universe is 14 billion years old, and the sun is 4.5 billion years old. Lets round it to 4 billion years old when life first formed.
Now, the earliest G type stars formed approximately 1 billion years after the universe formed. Lets say that life can only develop when those stars were at least 4 billion years old. That puts the earliest possible scenario where life formed at 5 billion years after the universe formed, and that was 9 billion years ago. Low balling it, there are approximately 7 billion g type main sequence stars current in our galaxy.
All together, that means the chance of us simply being the first is very low, and if we are the first, then life isn't common, and if life isn't common, the underlying reason for that is the answer to the fermi paradox.