An Answer to Fermi’s Paradox
Fermi’s paradox is the question about extraterrestrial life, where are they? Fermi noticed that if hospitable places for life as we know it are so numerous in the cosmos, and the evolution of life seems to lead inexorably to intelligence and civilization, it makes sense to wonder where are all the alien societies? Why haven’t we seen any evidence of them in our brief history of searching?
Looking at life from a Santiago perspective, from a systems view, gives us a possible answer. We can see that cognition involves transforming the whole body of an organism. We can also see that organisms, and living systems that they form including societies, are hungry for the knowledge that comes from these transformations.
When we have imagined alien civilizations, we have supposed that they would be eager to explore outward, into space, as we have been, in ships and vessels that provide a small ecosystem within the tolerances that their bodies could sustain. This vision depends on a civilization or organisms with fixed body plans, who do their exploration by moving themselves away from their home planet under the protection of some sort of technological shield.
This vision was based on our own experience. We are a civilization who has acquired the ability (barely) to leave our planet, but not yet acquired the ability to alter our body plans very much. We are only at the very beginning of the transformations that CRISPR will make possible. We still have failed to imagine very thoroughly what it would mean for us to change our bodies, and where this will lead us.
We already know that living systems are attractors, that they are hungry for at least two things, energy and order. At the center of attractors of all sorts, tornadoes, whirlpools, cyclones, these features are amplified. The Universe features many places where attraction has been amplified far beyond our abilities, even in our wildest imagination, to envision the consequences. But we can see these places; we know black holes exist. They show up in our measurements.
There may be very good reasons to suppose that the alien civilizations that have developed have passed quickly through the technological phase where they could leave their planets but not yet alter their bodies. For us, it has been less than 60 years between those two points, space travel to CRISPR. In the 4.5 billion year history of life on Earth, that is less than the blink of an eye.
The other thing we know from experience is that the exponential growth of knowledge driven by Moore’s Law transforms civilization at an increasing rate. This rapid growth has only really begun just now to be felt. If we take seriously the idea that we will be able to solve problems at a geometrically increasing rate, we must also take seriously the idea that our goals and the forms of our curiosity will be radically transformed by this process.
The idea of space exploration by a mature civilization rests also involves the serious inconvenience of the enormous distances between planets, worlds like our own. Every living system that we know of is a network, and networks thrive on connectivity. Spreading out, as scifi visions have conceived of alien civilizations doing, would necessarily slow down rather than speed up connectivity. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that the best way to explore will turn out to be bringing the faraway worlds closer to us?
We have already discovered that spacetime can be manipulated, but our ability to do so is only just beginning. Maybe the centers of black holes mark the places where alien civilizations have learned how to draw energy and matter to themselves, in order to expand their knowledge base. If the speed of light does turn out to be a fixed limit, as it seems to be, this would be a much more intelligent way to gain resources than spreading out ones civilization across light years. Perhaps the civilizations began in other places, but they all quickly realize that the center of a black hole is where all the action is, so they have migrated to them.
This author, as a part of our civilization, is already speculating about this, and I’m sure I’m not the first one to do so. So the possibility is clearly there.
The obvious objection to this idea is that living at the center of a black hole must involve radically unknowable change. To even conceive of what that would be like is beyond our wildest abilities. But if the exponential growth of knowledge is going to continue much longer, we will soon be at those astronomical heights of new forms and ways of being. Like in a black hole, there seems to be no escape from this process of change.
If you like this article, please rate it and share it, and read more about my work on www.talkingoctopus.com. I am also searchable as Canebrake Charlie on YouTube, where I post videos about living systems illustrating the ideas I propose in natural environments.
Copyright 2021 by Charles S. Munford
