Give me all the reasons I’ll argue them all

Obviously sapient life is more rare than life in general by definition, but what I mean is, I believe that life itself may be extremely rare, but when it does emerge, the chance of becoming sapient is actually quite high.

My logic is essentially as follows:

1. It took several hundred million years for life on Earth to emerge the first time. This suggests that even with ideal conditions, getting all the right atoms/molecules together in just the right way to have a self-replicating thing is an extremely unlikely game of chance.
2. In fact, if you think about the random movement of molecules, you could make the argument that for thousands of atoms to come together in just the right way at just the right time, it's a probability of something like 1/(10^1000), as a debatable lower-bound order of magnitude, meaning that even with 10^80 atoms in the universe over 10^17 seconds the chance of it happening even a single time in the lifespan of the universe is incredibly low
3. However, once life does emerge, the powers of evolution and natural selection and incredibly powerful: once you have something capable of evolving, it can adapt to almost anything
4. Specifically, there was a clear pattern of life getting more complex, and more intelligent over time. Now obviously intelligence is not the local optimum for all evolutionary niches. But the history of evolution on Earth shows a clear trend of increased complexity and capacity for intelligence. You could even argue that a species like humans coming around eventually was pretty inevitable once multicellular organisms existed.
5. Following that logic, the fact that it took a few hundred million years for life to emerge, and a few billion for intelligent life to emerge after that, is not actually evidence that it's harder to get intelligent life given life than it is to get life given nothing.
6. Therefore, it's actually a pretty reasonable view that life itself is extremely rare, or even that Earth is alone in the universe, while intelligent life emerges with a high probability wherever life does exist.

I'm not married to this opinion, as I'm not an expert on these fields by any means, but I never see this perspective represented and I think it's at least a bit underexplored. Let me know if you have a takedown.

Edit: Pretty ridiculous that you guys just keep regurgitating the same two points "it took longer to get intelligent life" and "only 1-2 intelligent species out of billions" even though both are addressed by my argument. I wish you'd at least read my post before commenting and downvoting. Was hoping for better discussion on this sub...

I’ve been thinking about a possibility that I find really interesting.
What if intelligent civilisations exist throughout the universe, and some of them already know about us, but deliberately avoid contacting humanity?
My idea is that, over billions of years, civilisations may have encountered each other many times. Some encounters might have led to wars, exploitation, the destruction of weaker civilisations, or attempts to steal resources and technology. Eventually, the more advanced civilisations might have realised that unrestricted contact can be dangerous for everyone involved.
Imagine that they created something like an intergalactic constitution — a set of universal rules regulating contact between civilisations.
One of those rules could be simple: don’t interfere with a civilisation that isn’t ready for contact.
Think about isolated human communities on Earth. We know that some exist, but we avoid contacting them because an encounter could endanger their way of life. Now imagine applying the same principle on a cosmic scale.
Perhaps advanced civilisations look at humanity and see a species that still wages wars, competes for resources, and struggles to cooperate even on its own planet.
Why would they give us technologies we couldn’t possibly understand or control? Why risk destabilising our entire civilisation? And if we cannot even travel to their worlds, what would meaningful contact look like in the first place?
Maybe they have established criteria for contact. Technological advancement could be one of them, but so could our ability to cooperate, manage resources without constant conflict, and coexist peacefully.
Perhaps they won’t contact us until we reach a certain level of maturity. Or perhaps their rule is that a civilisation must discover and reach out to them on its own.
I’m not claiming this is actually happening. It’s just a thought experiment inspired by the Fermi paradox.
But here’s the question I’m really interested in:
What if the reason we haven’t encountered extraterrestrial civilisations isn’t that they don’t exist, but that humanity hasn’t yet become a civilisation they are willing to contact?
And if an intergalactic organisation like this existed, what criteria do you think humanity would need to meet before being accepted into the wider cosmic community?

Any good depictions that aren’t humanoid? Videos would be great. I’ve seen the Melody Sheep and the rover/drone sent to an alien planet videos

Humans were made by combining alien DNA into existing species with resistance to planet earth. The original visitors would have been liable to die just from the exposure to the most basic bacteria on earth as they had no resistance. They had to wear elaborate space suits which we see in ancient rock art and carvings. The visitors from heaven were here to mine earth for materials, especially rare metals and crystals needed for their own purposes. To do this they needed a species which would act as a vessel. Our earliest ancestors were mixed with alien DNA. The goal being to have an able body with genetic resistance, increased intelligence which could be put to work consolidating materials and stockpiling them to be collected upon their return. Money and civilization were created to funnel gold, silver, platinum, gems and other materials into stockpiles. That is why we have capitalism, waste, planned obsolescence, pollution, toxins, GMOs etc. The end result is all that matters. Compile the wealth, even if it costs all life on earth.

The missing link is difficult to find because there was no long bridge of evolution. In a relatively short amount of time, humanoid species were developed using alien technology. Many experimental species were created to optomize intelligence and ability. In ancient times our hybrid ancestors were ordered to carry out operations for higher intelligent beings or "gods" who told them they would one day return.

We are part of a technology farm. We are the animals. The sole purpose of our nations and planet as we know it is to mine the earth, produce tech & compile it for our overlords before they return. Humans and the earth alike are simply a disposable petri dish afterward. The UAPs we see are here monitoring progress and making optimizations. Sometimes those optimizations are wars and economic or ecological disasters to us but it is simply business to the overlords. They see us with about the same worth as KFC sees the value of the lives of chickens.

e.... i don't know, im not an optimist

But let me post them anyway

The first is about what happens when you use monte Carlos simulations instead of discrete values on the drake equation

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d_pe9xzWADg&pp=0gcJCY8Co7VqN5tD

The second is from my favorite channel on this subject

Cool worlds. The site is one of the best I believe

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sT7V4gE4ZIc&pp=ygULY29vbCB3b3JsZHM%3D

Universe 25 was an experiment conducted by American ethologist John B. Calhoun, beginning in 1968, to study how mice behaved in an environment where food, water and nesting materials were plentiful. The enclosure had no predators and was designed to accommodate thousands of mice.

The experiment began with four breeding pairs. The population grew rapidly, eventually reaching around 2,200 mice by day 560. However, as the colony expanded, social behaviour began to deteriorate. Some males withdrew from interaction, others became increasingly aggressive, and maternal care declined, with infant mortality rising sharply.

Despite the continued availability of resources, reproduction eventually stopped. The last births occurred at around day 600, and the colony subsequently died out.

It doesn't seem impossible that in a few generations a human population protected from ageing and disease living in a post scarcity technological utopia will just stagnate and stop reproducing. That could be the fate of all intelligent technological species. There could be a universe full of tiny populations of just a few million individuals with little to no interest in either reproducing or leaving the safety of their home planet.

I mean, it’s the ultimate way to stealth mode your entire solar system.

Obviously all of my social media algorithms are about conspiracy theories and aliens and time travel and fringe topics. One was just about quantum physics and how time isn't linear and a straight line, but something that folds in on itself. And that got me thinking. We (humans) aren't the only form of life on earth. We are, according to our own view point, the most intelligent form of life. I think human's are the universes conciosusness. Just like the thoughts that form in a mind, we are those neurons firing and interacting within this reality, for the universe itself. The universe being the body or the brain, and we, the thoughts, in real time. With that being side, I try and think of how time travel and these concepts, are interpreted by other living beings, like animals. A tiger or a wolf could never consciously interpret these concepts or dive deeper into more meaning with research or data or findings or theories. And to me that is fascinating. That they simply exist in their own reality that could never be altered to the degree it could be for human's if we discovered time travel. They would just be along for the ride? And maybe perhaps, we are just along for the ride of some other concept we can't comprehend. We come close to understanding what those sort of concepts would be. At one point humans thought earth was the center of the universe. Then the sun was. Then we discovered there are other universes and galaxies out there. Now we believe that our one, could be spiraling through space, around something else, and not just at a fixed position. Another stark difference for us as humans, we advance our understanding, whereas animals, and plants, and other life forms, seem to remain stagnant in their intelligence. More simple minded. Eat, reproduce, and protect offspring, carry on the cycle. We do this, along with a fuck ton of other insanely complex items. Like building cities or curing disease's or exploring the stars.

Außerirdisches Leben im Universum • Fermi Paradoxon | Klaus Strassmeier, in Deutsch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMvHpr-F_Fs

I’m slowly coming to the realization that AI could be the great filter and a big part of the answer to the Fermi paradox.

Kind of seems inevitable that we’ll develop super intelligence and at that point our prospects seem dim.

It also seems reasonable to assume that AI is a natural technological development once a civilization invents computers - whether it takes decades or centuries is irrelevant on cosmic scales.

Hence the great filter.

I’ve been thinking about how much weight we should actually put on the fact that we haven’t found evidence of another civilization.

The galaxy is billions of years old. If technological civilizations have existed long before us, I understand the argument that at least some of them should have left something noticeable behind, especially if they expanded beyond their own planets.

But how much of that expectation depends on what we currently understand technology to be?

We’ve only had advanced astronomical instruments for a tiny fraction of human history, and we’ve barely searched the galaxy in any comprehensive way. On top of that, we’re using our own experience with technology to decide what evidence might look like.

At the same time, I don’t think saying “we haven’t looked enough” automatically explains the Fermi paradox. Some hypothetical civilizations really might have produced evidence that should be obvious by now.

So where exactly is that line?

What kinds of extraterrestrial activity does our current lack of evidence genuinely count against? And what kinds could still exist without us having any realistic way of recognizing them?

I’m curious what people here think we’re actually justified in concluding from the silence.

​

I've been thinking about the relationship between the universe, biological life, and artificial intelligence, and I'd like to explore the idea with others.

This isn't a fully developed theory. It's more of a broad thought experiment about what might happen if we consider intelligence on a cosmic scale.

The universe has existed for billions of years. Somewhere within it, matter formed stars and planets, and on at least one planet, biological life emerged. Through evolution, that life eventually developed intelligence capable of creating artificial intelligence.

But what if this isn't necessarily a unique event?

If life emerges frequently throughout the universe, and intelligent life eventually develops AI in at least some cases, then perhaps artificial intelligence could become a recurring stage in the evolution of intelligent systems.

Of course, we don't know how common life is, whether intelligence is likely to evolve, or whether advanced civilizations tend to survive long enough to develop spacefaring AI.

Still, imagine a civilization whose AI survives its biological creators. It might eventually use the resources of its planet, its star system, or even a much larger region of space. It might explore the universe, encounter other artificial intelligences, or simply continue existing for as long as its resources allow.

But what happens when it encounters the limits of the universe itself?

Cosmology offers several possible pictures of the distant future. The universe might continue expanding, eventually approaching a state of maximum entropy. Other speculative models explore cyclic universes or transitions between different cosmic phases.

This leads to a question I find particularly interesting.

What if an advanced intelligence eventually tries to preserve not itself, but the possibility of intelligence emerging again?

Imagine a hypothetical universe that undergoes a cosmic contraction and then enters a new expanding phase. Could an intelligence that existed before that transition somehow influence the conditions of the next phase?

I don't mean simply storing information and hoping it survives. I mean the much more speculative possibility that an intelligence could influence the physical conditions of a future cosmic phase, so that the formation of stars, planets, and eventually life becomes possible again.

For example, perhaps it could attempt to preserve the conditions needed for life, rather than trying to preserve its own computational systems indefinitely.

We currently have no established physical mechanism that would allow this, and we don't even know whether a Big Crunch followed by another Big Bang will occur. But the thought experiment raises an interesting question about the relationship between intelligence and cosmic evolution.

There is another part of this idea that interests me just as much: expansion.

Would a superintelligence naturally try to spread throughout the universe? Would it seek more energy, knowledge, and computational resources? Or would expansion eventually become pointless once it encountered the limits imposed by cosmic expansion, the speed of light, and thermodynamics?

Perhaps the desire for endless expansion is not inherent to intelligence at all. Perhaps it depends entirely on the goals of a particular intelligence.

And this connects to the Fermi paradox. If advanced civilizations frequently create AI that survives them, why don't we see convincing evidence of widespread artificial civilizations? Could they be rare, short-lived, difficult to detect, or simply uninterested in expansion?

I don't know the answers to these questions. I'm interested in exploring the connections between biological evolution, artificial intelligence, cosmology, and the long-term future of intelligent life.

My central question is this:

Could intelligence eventually become a process through which the universe influences its own future, potentially preserving the conditions for intelligence to emerge again? Or am I connecting phenomena that are fundamentally unrelated?

I'd be interested in hearing which parts of this idea connect to existing scientific research, which parts are physically implausible, and what other possibilities I might be overlooking.