The Fermi Paradox: Technological Timebombs

We often wonder where all the aliens are out in the galaxy, but could it be that the technologies needed to get to space and travel the stars lead to inevitable catastrophe?

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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: Technological Timebombs
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 355, August 11, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur

Editors:
David McFarlane
Jason Burbank

Cover Art:

Graphics:
LegionTech Studios

[asahearts]

7:15 "...better modeling of fallout and nuclear winter scenarios made it seem unlikely that even a full-scale nuclear exchange would permanently wreck the planet."

Finally, someone gets it. Most people I've spoken with about nuclear war have extremely outdated views on the effects of a nuclear war.

[shanerooney]

Honey Trap Tech:

There is a 1954 sci-fi story called "Beep" (by James Blish). It is about an instantaneous form of communication. Any distance, zero lag.

Before every message that gets send, there is an audible _beep_ (hence the story's name). If you analyse the beep you can decipher ever message that ever has, OR EVER WILL, get sent using this technology.

In the story, it is discussed that some of the messages that got sent are in code (to prevent interception by an enemy.) But also there's only a finite number of messages, suggesting the technology was stopped being used for some reason.

[stonedsnakestudios]

Mister Arthur, i can only feel respect for the way youre able to clearly and in lighthearted fashion explain these topics without losing depth.

When do they finally give you your medal and tv show? Love from the Netherlands♥️

[willransier]

Thank you for being... well you! I've been listening for a few years now and your my main source of useless information that I love to absorb. I have a few books that I have been working on and as much as I can find the information to breath life into them. Your content has been a great reference point when thinking about how certain technologies could work for my stories without using tropes like the speedforce for the flash to explain the why and how.

[PaulPaulPaulson]

Congratulations on 700k happy subscribers!

[KingKoopa]

Keep up the content, you're the man

[johnjonestheman]

Dr. Arthur! Glad to see you pop up in reddit, in a definitive and assertive and polite way... keep on truckin', good Doctor...

[DH-nqmu]

That intro was absolutely beautifully articulated. Wow.

[roadkillanonymous]

At around 2:50 - “…the silence we hear…is the silence of the grave.”

Dang it Isaac, goosebumps!

[charlesjmouse]

I like the idea that life is incredibly rare and maybe even unique to this planet - admittedly for no better reason than that is reassuring for us!
The alternate is what I like to call "The game of Jenga":
The 'higher' you build the more unstable your tower, inevitable collapse is built in. More, building higher requires you rob resources from your own foundations so promoting collapse. Worse, the further the 'fall' the greater the devastation and the fewer resources are left for rebuilding.

By it's very nature a stone age world is more robust and easier to rebuild than one based on medieval populations and technology. For our 'fragile heights' the slightest breath of wind will inevitably bring the whole thing down, likely killing everybody in the wreckage.
"When?" is the only question, not "If?"
Should anyone survive easier to gather resources required to begin rebuilding will be gone and so even in the unlikely event knowledge survives the means to rebuild will be absent.
At very best a world gets one shot at the stars and when it almost certainly fails the very most any survivors can hope for is to be trapped in a medieval existence bereft of the resources to rebuild.

PS
For anyone who reads this and thinks "No, no, you haven't considered <insert counter-argument here>" I bet I have, I've just not included it for the sake of brevity. Just think a little harder and I suspect you'll find <insert counter-argument here> is an illusion. Also the above is a tremendous simplification, again for the sake of some brevity.
I really don't want the above conclusions to be true and so have spent a long time in careful thought doing my level best to pick holes. The very best I can come up with is "hope". Hope to be wrong and use these unhappy thoughts to spur us all on to greater efforts rather than giving up, the latter will only bring us the inevitable that much sooner.

[intothevoid]

Ironically paranoia of technology and forcing a civilization to become “primitive” is in a way its own solution. And if it doesn’t go well, a doomsday situation in its own right

[hunam_]

The game Star Control 2 explores this in a scenario where Honey-trap technology was found in a derelict ship, and this colony of humans were hoping to create superfast propulsion and communication, and instead made contact with an alien in another dimension which promptly wiped them all out. So such honey trap technology doesn’t have to be explicitly hostile in order to destroy you, but you do have to know what it does so you’re not inadvertently creating a catastrophe. Isaac really presented this well.

[maltheopia]

The flip side of this is that a civilization that did manage to avoid the 'human' element of technological time bombs would be incredibly authoritarian by necessity. As in, 1984 doesn't have a sufficient level of oppression to prevent individuals killing themselves with technology.

However: a government that authoritarian would never allow interstellar colonization to happen in the first place. Maybe between close planets, but definitely not when it takes years to receive orders from your home system. They would never allow something like a Dyson Swarm to be built because it would be too difficult to keep all the platforms under government control. The government may even decide to automate everything and keep all but a handful of nobles (which will by necessity include every scientist and engineer) intentionally uneducated.

[JCdental]

I think the galactic civ bottle neck might be in metallurgy
You need to have a planet with metals, the metals must be accessible (in the upper crust) in quantities that make them a non luxury commodity so that people may experiment with them, there must be no better alternative(the biosphere might produce easier to use and more common ironwood type material)
Another thing- could all the Fermi paradox solutions be correct? At least one of the proposed solution applies to at least one civilization? They might even overlap e.g. they ruined the biosphere and haven't made a leap of logic that the other planets might be habitable,
they got a death hand tech and there is no access to space(opaque upper atmosphere),
never discover a key tech and kestlered themselves

[garyfreeman]

This episode provoked images of aliens, helicoptering their penises to indicate scepticism

[CrankCraven]

May I ask where you are from @isaac Arthur?
You have a unique accent, I can't figure it out, driving me nuts.
I listen to your content on car rides and to go to sleep, lol. Not saying you are boring! This kind of stuff just makes good background noise for sleep. I'll watch it 4 or 5 times to get it all

[acarrillo]

Thinking back to the Samsung Note 7 catastrophe, I think it is fair to deduce that people would notice if batteries started exploding more than they should.

[randar]

I think we need to get better in detecting. We just need more data to make a prediction right now we couldn't even detect an civilization at our level of technology if it was next to proxima centauri the closest star to us. We need stronger signals then even humanity can create to hope to detect something at this time.

[bakerpete]

Beauracratic over complexity is what will do a civilization in.

[Pheonix]

Makes me think of "The End of the Whole Mess" where the technology seems to have so much promise but has serious consequences.