Dissolving the Fermi Paradox · HackerPapers discussions

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 06:25:33 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by floxy

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:20:25 GMT

or not: "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox": https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by DennisP

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 21:07:37 GMT

One approach is to give each variable a probability distribution. The greater our uncertainty about possible values, the wider the bell curve. Drexler and colleagues did that, and found "a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable." https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 20:42:04 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by n4r9

Thu, 01 May 2025 11:15:55 GMT

One problem with the Fermi paradox is that the Drake equation simply multiplies expected values together without regard to the underlying distributions. You can think about it this way: what if the actual mechanisms of the evolution of life result in there being a very high probability of 1 or 2 space-faring civilisations evolving, and a tiny probability of trillions of space-faring civilisations? The expected value coming out of the Drake equation would be large but useless. A few years ago some researchers at the Future of Humanity institute explored what happens if you take distributions…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by baq

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:53:20 GMT

we're probably alone, though: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by OisinMoran

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:55:40 GMT

This is neat! If you enjoy the write up, you might be interested in the paper “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox” which goes even more on-depth into actually multiplying the probability density functions instead of the common point estimates. It has the somewhat surprising result that we may just be alone. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by DennisP

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 23:23:32 GMT

Actually the Drake equation may not say that: > When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilizations, and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities....When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85%…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by DennisP

Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:21:25 GMT

In this case the Copernican principle is at odds with the anthropic principle. If there were only one place in the universe with intelligent life, then necessarily that's where we would be. GP may be thinking of this paper, which uses a reasonable probability distribution for each parameter in the Drake equation, and finds a decent chance that there is no other technological civilization in the observable universe: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by kelseyfrog

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:52:46 GMT

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404 and discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17560462

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by floxy

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:44:17 GMT

"Dissolving the Fermi Paradox" https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by EvgeniyZh

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 17:53:04 GMT

My answer is that the values we multiply are too uncertain to give meaningful prediction [1] [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 12:09:25 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by blfr

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 20:52:55 GMT

This question has been (very unsatisfyingly) answered, or at least resolved: > When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe, and thus that there should be little surprise when we fail to detect any signs of it. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 SSC has an article on the paper as well https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/03/ssc-journal-club-disso...

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by GeorgeTirebiter

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 21:09:43 GMT

What about the scenario that Humans are the First ? Once-in-a-galaxy rare (more like once in a visible universe rare; see: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf ) The more I understand how we got life from chemicals (it truly is nothing short of miraculous, even if you like I do not believe in supernatural beginnings), the more I come away with how unlikely it is that we are here. But, here we are! And, so, WE get to populate the galaxy and maybe other galaxies with our Humanity. Lucky us. There are plenty of other scenarios (they are hiding; they are waiting until we develop Warp Drive…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by theptip

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 21:12:13 GMT

Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems to get the Fermi Paradox backwards. It explains why we haven't been visited by aliens (the light-cone of our radio transmissions is small and therefore aliens outside of it couldn't send probes to us), but the key observation of the Fermi Paradox is in the other direction; why can't _we_ see _other_ civilizations, in all of the billions of years of history in our light-cone? If extra-terrestrial civilizations exist, we expect to be able to see some trace of them with our telescopes. Particularly at Kardashev type II and above (star-scale…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by theptip

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:11:28 GMT

> If life on Earth had to achieve n “hard steps” to reach humanity’s level, then the chance of this event rose as time to the n-th power. Sounds like a somewhat simplistic model? Compare with this recent paper that actually analyzes the individual genetic evolution steps required: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 Also it turns out that the Drake Equation itself is bogus because it simply multiplies together probabilities without considering error bars on each point estimate; if you use Monte Carlo across the uncertainty ranges of your variables, the paradox dissolves.

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:32:50 GMT

What fermi paradox? https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by floxy

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:53:41 GMT

"Dissolving the Fermi Paradox": https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 >The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations. We show that this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters. We examine these parameters, incorporating models…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by jordo

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 05:17:01 GMT

We flipped a coin, and it ended up being heads (just us), meh... Nothing more to it: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf I believe the TLDR of that is, if you monte carlo the drake equation, and account for the uncertainty of the error margins, you don't really end up with much of a paradox.

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by rainworld

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 12:27:21 GMT

An example of that: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by taejo

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 17:05:45 GMT

I guess this is the paper you're talking about: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by Symmetry

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 15:20:52 GMT

One paper on the Fermi Paradox I want to plug is this one by Sandberg, Drexler, and Ord. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 Most people when doing the Fermi estimate for the number of civilizations in the Galaxy use numbers that tend to result in a lot of them. But different people use very different numbers in different steps. If you look at the ranges of values that different people assign to the different terms then suddenly it doesn't seem very unlikely that intelligent civilizations could be rare.

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by nimithryn

Wed, 26 May 2021 18:42:23 GMT

Under some models, there’s a non-negligible chance that humans are atypical. See this paper by Sanders, Drexler, and Ord, for instance. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Wed, 19 May 2021 07:47:31 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

50 points; 71 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Tue, 18 May 2021 20:46:02 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox[0] is a great and easy to read paper to disabuse anyone of the idea of multiplying point estimates when you could convolve probability distributions instead. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by TTPrograms

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 17:13:47 GMT

The Fermi Paradox is not real if you consider the massive uncertainty we have on the parameters of the Drake equation: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by Pazzaz

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 21:00:09 GMT

An interesting paper that I don't see brought up often enough is "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox" by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord[0]. They show that it isn't a surprise that we are alone in the universe if we consider the uncertainty inherent to parameters of the Drake equation. Their analysis estimate that there is (at least) a 39% chance that we are alone in the observable universe. [0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by bobsmooth

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 05:19:52 GMT

It really hasn't. [1] [1]https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by yboris

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 16:42:30 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler, Toby Ord > "This result dissolves the Fermi paradox, and in doing so removes any need to invoke speculative mechanisms by which civilizations would inevitably fail to have observable effects upon the universe" https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by shiftingleft

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 14:18:06 GMT

The Fermi Paradox has essentially been resolved: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 This explanation is much more plausible than a Great Filter. Here's a great comment summarizing the argument very intuitively: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562439 I also found this one very helpful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564379

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by disconcision

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 02:50:31 GMT

i hear this argument constantly, but i've never been able to understand it. you say the universe is big and has existed for a long time, but compared to what? if i say the universe is small and new, how would you counter that? i don't mean to come across as aggressive, but if there's any arrogance on this issue, i'd suspect it lies in thinking we have enough information to come to any meaningful position on the issue. the most convincing meta-analysis i've seen, which considers the probability distributions implied by the error bars in our current best estimates of the relevant parameters…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by hindsightbias

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 17:26:08 GMT

When realistic distributions of uncertainty are applied to the Drake Equation, the paradox dissolves: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 09:23:16 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 09:12:21 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

3 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 20:06:47 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by yyyk

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 03:07:20 GMT

Because there are a lot of other things necessary for life. Usually we get the 'planet X may be suitable for life' PR news item first, and later in the scientific press we find out quietly 'planet X is awash in deadly gamma radiation, and the tectonics are such that there's a richter scale 13 quake every week'. It turns out that when taking into account all known factors, us being alone is a nontrivial possibility: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 02:43:43 GMT

https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by cb321

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 20:37:24 GMT

I agree with much else said here about the failure -> crank -> taboo problem, but it bears noting that the Fermi paradox is not really a paradox. There is this https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 . The 2 minute layman's version is that multiplying several to many very uncertain numbers "drives your error bars to the fringes". So, there is not some credible, high probability estimate that we are not (EDIT: locally) alone. Without that estimate there is no paradox.

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 16:21:02 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

1 point; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by jtolds

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 16:18:36 GMT

The Great Filter isn't a thing! There is no Fermi paradox! The Drake equation is malformed; multiplying expected values is a bad way to combine probability distributions. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 14:05:54 GMT

Only providing averages is crazy given the huge variance of the underlying factors. https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by IngoBlechschmid

Wed, 27 May 2020 15:59:24 GMT

Apparently there is also a easy solution to the Fermi paradox by taking the uncertainty in the Drake parameters into account: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 "We examine these parameters, incorporating models of chemical and genetic transitions on paths to the origin of life, and show that extant scientific knowledge corresponds to uncertainties that span multiple orders of magnitude. This makes a stark difference. When the model is recast to represent realistic distributions of uncertainty, we find a substantial {\em ex ante} probability of there being no other intelligent life in our…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by pmohun

Sun, 17 May 2020 19:02:04 GMT

You may have seen this resolution to the Fermi Paradox, but if not I thought I'd post it: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 "The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be teeming with intelligent life is linked to models like the Drake equation, which suggest that even if the probability of intelligent life developing at a given site is small, the sheer multitude of possible sites should nonetheless…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by hindsightbias

Mon, 04 May 2020 01:48:06 GMT

“When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable.” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf Done and done.

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:27:04 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (2018)

3 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — HN submission

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:58:15 GMT

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox

1 point; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by Tuna-Fish

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 06:51:07 GMT

And the year before that gave us Dissolving the Fermi paradox[1], which conclusively shows that the drake equation is not worth the napkin it's written on. tl;dr: It is possible for both of the following statements to be true at the same time: (1) The Drake equation gives a true estimate for the mean amount of extant civilizations in the galaxy, and that estimate is relatively large. (As in, much greater than one.) (2) The probability of sentient life existing outside our solar system is infinitesimally small. The reason for this is that the Drake equation gives a mean over all possible…

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 23:26:14 GMT

We don't know. The confidence intervals on individual probability distributions are already wide and long-tailed but convolving them only makes the problem worse. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf

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Dissolving the Fermi Paradox — mentioned by the8472

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 17:39:33 GMT

Some additional examples of people fixing instances of this problem Dissolving the fermi paradox[0], convolves distributions instead of multiplying point estimates of life/no life. How to NOT measure latency, looks at CDFs instead of slow/fast thresholds. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.02404.pdf [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ8ydIuPFeU

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