Fermi Paradox: Science or Politics?

Hastily written (I apologize)

A Right Angle episode on Nov 29, 2022 called “NASA Solves Fermi Paradox: No Alien Contact Yet Due to Climate Change, Nukes, Racism, Inequity” featured a PDF file posing as a scientific paper and was the focus of the Right Angle.

The article presents itself as a scientific paper but it is anything but. It is filled with logical fallacies and inconsistencies, internal-contradictions, unsupported assertions and invalid conclusion. In order to keep this rant as short as possible, I will only address some select examples from the paper.

Right off the bat, in the second paragraph of the Introduction the article reads, “…given a Universe stretching approximately 92 billion light years and existing for nearly 14 billion years, intelligent life can be both inevitable but still exceedingly rare.” This is a meaningless, unsupported assertion. The size and age of the universe is irrelevant to the inevitability or abundance of intelligent life in the universe without some testable theory from which the emergence of intelligence can be predicted. Otherwise, it is a meaningless phrase.

The paragraph continues with, “While such a notion may come as comfort to some as they (philosophically speaking) claim universal ownership, this scenario would also leave us profoundly isolated and stunted.” Again, this is an unsupported assertion. An opinion without any given basis. Such statements have no place in any scientific article.

The paragraph finally concludes with, “The great scientists, mathematicians and artists our civilization has produced achieved their historic feats through collaboration and competition. Extending this notion beyond our home world, how could humanity as a species ever truly realize our full potential if there are no other technological civilizations with whom to interact?” This argument is both self-contradicting and composed of circular logic. Self-contradicting because the argument begins with the premise that the great scientists, etc., were able to achieve their feats through collaboration and competition with each other. If we extend this notion beyond our home world, according to our first premise, humanity’s great scientists, etc, can still achieve their feats through collaboration and competition with each other. Therefore, the first premise contradicts the conclusion.

Meanwhile, the argument assumes that humanity requires another technological civilization in order to prove that humanity needs another technological civilization. It is circular reasoning.

A bit further along in the Introduction, regarding the Drake equation, the article asserts that, “…it is the life span of civilizations capable of interstellar communication, “L”, which is the most influential among its seven variables.” This assertion overlooks one obvious factor which is much more important than the life span of civilizations: whether extra-terrestrial life exists at all. That would be the biological factor, “B” because, without B, there are no other civilization, ever.

With the exception of “S”, the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, there is a great deal of uncertainty among all of the factors in the Drake equation. Fortunately, we have some theoretical and observational basis on which we can guess most of the values, albeit, with great uncertainty. However, we are unable to any guess at all for the biological factor because there is absolutely no self-consistent theory that can explain how life arises from non-life.

We may know a certain number of factors that life cannot exist without but, we haven’t a clue how life is actually able to form from non-living material. With no pathway to life, the biological factor is zero and it doesn’t matter what any of the other values are. Without a miracle, the Drake equation equals zero.

The fact that the authors chose “L” as the most important factor suggests that it was chosen only because it fits the narrative that the authors want to present.

Figure 1 also appears in the Introduction and it has a big problem. Six problems, actually. The figure shows six vertical bars which are supposed to represent civilization “filters” along a timeline. However, none of the filters are defined. Even the two filters that the article claims that we have passed through are unidentified. Although pretty, this lack of identification renders Figure 1 meaningless and has no place in a scientific paper.

Finally, we get to section 2.0 Rationale.

In the discussion about nuclear war, the article observes that democracies are hesitant to go to war with each other. However, the article misses a very important counter-point: that Communist and Socialist countries have great incentives to go to war.

The reason socialist societies must go to war is because socialism is not a self-sustaining economic system. It cannot create wealth out of thin air like a free-market society can. This means that, eventually all socialist societies come to a point where they need “other people’s stuff” and will go to war to get it. I think that the authors confused the word “democracy” with free-society in their assessment.

The article claims a “general acceptance of the basic contention that surface temperatures are rising and human activity is a significant driver has largely moved beyond doubt among national governments.” This is a logical fallacy called “Appeal to Authority”. What governments believe or what may or may not be of general acceptance does not make something true (or false).

In science, there is only one way to test a scientific theory and that is to measure some observable phenomena predicted by the theory. If the observations counter-dict the predictions, the theory is rejected.

In fact, “Science” proves, beyond a doubt, that human activity is NOT a significant driver of climate. This is because numerous observations are the opposite of the theory’s predictions.

It is also true that absolutely NONE of the general circulation models used to predict climate change have been validated. Therefore, the predictions from the models are pure fiction.

Meanwhile, the article make the claim that, “Given this plethora of models, logic strongly suggests the most reliable method for making analytically sound predictions for climate change is not in piecing together new models but rather determining where the most widely accepted established models converge – i.e., a preponderance of the evidence approach.”

However, since all of the predictions from the unvalidated models are fiction, the method that the article describes as “a preponderance of evidence approach” is actually a preponderance of fictional evidence approach. It is not science because the models are not real and it is irrelevant how much the models agree with each other.

The article also claims, “Poor distribution of resources and slow responses to inefficient regulations have led to profound shortcomings in the solutions to our recent pandemic, even as technological progress delivered vaccines in an extraordinarily compressed timeframe.” However, this assessment ignores the fact that the scientific process was rejected and replaced by a political process. Discussion and debate, which are essential to science, were punished. The well-known process of natural immunity was rejected and effective, proven treatments were outlawed. Meanwhile, “vaccines” which did not undergo ANY long term testing were proclaimed to be safe even though it was impossible to make that judgement without long-term testing.

The article appears to be an collection of facts and assertions specifically chosen to support a pre-determined conclusion while ignoring anything to the contrary. That is the very definition of pseudo-science. It seems to have been written by children who have very limited life experience. Right Angle asked, is this science or politics? Definitely not science.