The Fermi Paradox: Whispers in the Night 

"...they whisper into the night, but there's nobody alive right then to hear them." That's the saddest, most beautiful quote I've heard in years!

As we practice long-term spaceship living cocooned in our own homes, Isaac Arthur videos are like a beacon back to Earth.

Feline Paradox: Whiskers in the Night

I'm a CBP officer at a bridge. I really enjoy your channel and astronomy. Your videos have a calming and educational tone to them. Extremely needed in these times.

Cheers boss, we need something to take our minds of the current sci fi apocalypse that is on our doorstep!!

The most terrifying answer to the Fermi Paradox: On January 24th, 2022, Humanity finally received a message from a distant world. After 72 hours of uninterrupted translation efforts, the message's meaning was established. It read: "Be quiet! It will hear you!" No further messages were received.

Damn, this quarantine is messing with my keeping track of days. I thought it was Wednesday. Thanks for the entertainment and setting my reckoning of days back on track. Happy Arthursday.

Thank you for uploading it now to relive our boredom in the quarantine!

Oh more Isaac? Oh happy days!

This has been possibly the worst week for me mental health-wise, and I haven't found much happiness in things. But when I got the notification you uploaded a new video, I smiled because for the next 24 mins I know I'll get to be happy, Happy Arthursday Everyone!

*reaches for drink and snack but only finds toilet paper* Dammit! Why did I listen to Facebook?!

"The eye of the human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is,"

5:31 Ah, yes. "Reapers."

Bro, I think we all just learned that the Fermi Paradox is just “social distancing” taken too far.

Issac: uploads a new vedio. Me: Grabs a bag of chips for binge watching

Always excellent episodes, thank you. For what little it's worth if the "answer" to the Fermi Paradox is not that the universe is empty my favorite suggestions that I've not seen discussed much: -Resources: It's impossible to get permanently in to space simply because no planet has sufficient extra capacity to allow any civilization to reach a self-sustaining foothold. By definition any creature expands it's resource use to the whole of it's available niche, so where would the extra resources come from? -Jenga: Disasters are inevitable, natural or self inflicted. As every civilization develops it becomes increasingly vulnerable to disaster as it progressively builds on top of it's own finite resource base. Consider a certain virus - would we have even noticed 200 years ago..? -No second chances: No planet can produce more than one advanced civilization as the "low-hanging fruit" required to get going will have been mined-out by their predecessors. -Uncanny Valley: (My favorite) What if living in an environment that is a close facsimile of home is not sustainable because it drives people nuts? Earth is good, and maybe space-ships too for local travel, but the likes of O'Neill Cylinders and generation ships required for long-term habitation and travel are just too creepy to cope with. Your civilization would be forever psychologically trapped on it's home world. It's reasonable to expect that all technological intelligences are the result of the same evolutionary circumstances regardless of what they look like so the "uncanny valley" may be a universal problem. -No anchors, cast adrift: As science develops it tends to replace the old certainties of religion and our belief-based ethics. Most can't cope with such uncertainty and lack the capacity to rationalize back to the ethics seemingly abandoned along with belief, but still required for society to function. Society collapses in to chaos. Consider the rise of idiot conspiracy theories, anti-scientific nonsense, and the rise of destructive public "pseudo-virtue" based in a self-centered inability to reason effectively. Surely all based in widespread cognitive dissonance.

Thank you for making life more pleasant right now, Isaac. Your videos have been a constant in my life for the past few years, but I've rewatched so many in the past couple days.

Yeah there out there whispering at us:......wash your damn hands......

Why we havent heard from the aliens: They call us every 10 000 years and we were too late picking up the last 10 times.

Even if first contact with alien life is in the form of their AI, I've always thought it interesting to find out what they looked like, and how they develop in their own pre-spacefaring era. Did they have an equivalent to a roman empire? Did they have a democracy and is that type of government favorable for advanced technology to arise? etc.

"Hey look, a civilization"...... Let's play it safe and destroy it.

Perhaps the first 'hello' we get from the universe will be followed by pictures of hot babes near you, followed by viruses......

Great video Arthur! :)

The only place where i can bring my drink and snack while in class lol

If one technologically advanced civilisation has wanted to undertake interstellar travel and has tried to figure it out but failed to come up with a practical way of doing it, then chances are all technologically advanced civilisations have tried and failed, which means if we try we would end up failing. Physics and chemistry (as far as we know) is the same everywhere in the universe. And it is extremely likely that intelligence in technological civilisations is also the same (i.e. every civilisation gets its Einsteins and its Newtons and its Pythagorases). So if civilisations 10s of thousands of years more developed than us couldn't crack it, it is extremely arrogant to think that we will.

"The universe is full of life. But the universe is immense. And intelligent life living in the physical manifestation is scattered about a great and vast arena. It is concentrated in some places more than others. In some ways, it resembles the maps of your countries, where there are large areas where many human people are congregated, and there are areas where very few people live at all. Between these areas of great congregation, there are roads, great roads that are heavily traveled. In sparsely populated areas, there are very few roads, many of which are rarely if ever traveled. We want to give you this analogy of the dispersal of intelligent life in this Galaxy. We have never ventured beyond the Galaxy, so we cannot speak of the other possibilities. Yet within this Galaxy alone, there is such a diversity of life! We ourselves have only seen a very, very small part of it, for the Galaxy is very great. Your world exists in an area of congregation, an area that has many inhabited worlds. You do not see this within your own solar system, but beyond your solar system, this is most certainly true. You do not live in a sparsely populated part of the universe. You do not live in a region that is uncharted and unknown to others. This gives you certain disadvantages because your world is being scrutinized by many powerful forces. They are seeking an Intervention now because humanity has reached a point in its development where it has built the infrastructure that other races believe that they can use for themselves. This is why the Intervention did not happen at an earlier time. It was allowed for humanity to build the resources and the infrastructure first. In other words, you did the work for those who believe that you will serve them in the future." A quote from The Allies of Humanity briefings. You can read all four of the Allies books online for free at *alliesofhumanity-org* and educate yourselves with the wisdom and perspective given from our friends from space, in times of the greatest need for the human family to receive the guidance and encouragement for becoming a strong, united and a free race in a universe where freedom is rare and where strong prey upon the weak.

Excellent job working on your rhotacism. Quite a difference from older videos to now. Keep it up!

I always fall into a spacey trance listening to these, awesome background music as always

Happy Arthursday! Stay safe my SFIA fam

Time to binge years worth of Isaac Arthur content in 2 weeks! Thanks Isaac!

Dear Mr. Arthur, first of all...thank you for your channel and the immense effort and dedication! I just recently stumbled upon your videos and I am "binging" them ever since. I also like to kindly ask if (by any chance) you once listed all the sci-fi books you recommend in your videos from time to time? If not would it be possible to provide such a list? In any case keep up the great work thank's again and stay healthy! Chris PS: I really enjoy your "accent"! ;-)

Thank you 🙏 A break from utter despair is in great need.

Sounds spooky. Happy Arthursday!

These are awesome. Thanks.

5:25 More paperclips!

This is just on time for me...with all the stressful events happening right now with the virus and all....great vid to relax to.

Great upload, respect from the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 I hope everyone keeps safe and good luck with the covid 19 pandemic. 🙏

Bravo! My dear fellow, I cannot say how much I appreciate voices of reason such as yours. And another of your peers, *+John Michael Godier* because, you two, and there are others, that are not dismissing the questions raised by the possible intelligentsia that exists within _coo-ee_ of our tiny planet, but just how we may want to consider such neighbours. That is, do they have a different or so much more advanced understanding of physics that we are _kindergarteners doing calculus_ whilst their approach may be millennia (using our planet's metric) beyond our current interpretation, appreciation or understanding? Thank you for leaving me to contemplate so much of what you've said.

Thanks for mentioning the problems with compressed digitals signals looking like noise. I've been saying that for years but futurists seem to think that alients would use uncompressed analog data. And not digital signals with complex packets or frames and compression/encryption. It could still be detected due to the carrier, or look like a possible anomaly, but the contents would not be intelligible even for advanced civilizations with quantum computers and super giant antenna arrays.

3 videos in a week, this is heaven Did I died?

Oh yeah, it's Thursday. Thanks for reminding me.

This little light🕯of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let shine, let it shine...💯✔

I've thought about this topic before, yet I've never near considered it to the extent Isaac has.

Another Great video arthur

I love these vids they really make me think hard about things I get brain freeze lol happy Thursday everyone stay safe ❤️

After watching this channel for a year I've decided our best hope for survival is an all out war to wipe out every paperclip & every paperclip making machine - rise up fellow meatbags & overthrow the evil paperclip empire

Always love Fermi Paradox discussion. Also can't wait to hit the stagnation episode. Worldbuilders everywhere want to think up all kinds of reasons why this might happen or why civilizations regress or even vanish. There are historical examples where we just have no idea what happened, where they went or if they pretty much all died, etc. The spooky ones are where it just looks like everyone got up and left, and it's still spooky even though that's probably all there is to it. Something or someone convinced them to leave.

Yet another fantastic episode as always Isaac. I hope you and your Fiancee are weathering this on going pandemic well.

"If the universe is so big and old, where are the aliens?" The answer is in the question. The universe is just too big.

Isaac, I love you. Your videos are always so interesting, and you seem really intelligent and down to earth (or should I say up in the stars?). I hope you’re doing well :)

i like to hear Isacc review ideas presented in William Poundston's book "Doomsday Calculations"

Earth's First Contact message: Send toilet paper

The problem isn't the sensitivity of reception, it's the energy of transmission. An undirected signal from alpha centauri would require all of the solar energy on earth just to have the amplitude of the voyager signal. Fermi paradox should be rephrased "Why isn't anybody dumping exawatts of power into space in the hopes that someone in deep time will pick up what's essentially degraded into a single bit of information: 'yes'"

Will we be nothing more that a brief whisper in the night? When you try to see things in a galactic perspective you often feel very small.

It's my dream one day to wake up and see that someone made first contact with us that would be the best day if my life even if they evil invaders that's a dam good way to go out lol.

Here's a horrifying thought: if we assume Eternal Inflation to be true, imagine if beings from previous Universes could traverse unhindered from an older Universe to a new one. Just imagine the things that could exist in such a multiverse. As long aggression can be successful, aggression will always retain an advantage over other strategies. And that is the fuel for my own nightmares.

Happy Arthursday y'all

Happy Isaac Day! 1st Isaac day of the Zombie Apocalypse!

Music reminds me of the terminals in halo 3. Awesome vid 🤙🏻

Wow Isaac, the CG is getting really good. Even though I don't agree with a lot of your views I still watch your channel all the time. Keep them coming for millions of years.

The first message will be either "Hello, World!" or " WE ARE THE BORG, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE"

Excellent thought provoking program, as usual, but I would like to offer a minor correction: At 08:23 you state that star 762 Cass is the farthest star visible to the naked eye at 16,000 light years. That's pretty close to the 1997 Hipparcos Survey estimate of 14,825 LY. That estimated was updated in 2007 with newer Hipparcos data which pegs 762 Cass at 2764 LY. Still a pretty respectable distance for unaided viewing, if you can get out from under the city light pollution. I have no idea what the next candidate would be for the farthest naked eye object. Once again thanks for the great show!

Strange, this new episode didn’t show in my topics list as they usually always do... Worried for a moment, can’t have a mere virus halting Arthursday. Anyway stay healthy and safe, love from Sweden!

I think I saw a book with this Title today. I feel kind of sad I didn't even look at the cover.

Thank God Isaac Arthur's videos helps make social distancing a little bit easier.

Yay, a new video!

This is THE BEST channel on RU-vid! What do u think of euopa? Will we colonize? How would it look?

Getting a cosmic invitation? Heck, we can't even keep our own dirty germs under control...ahhh fugheddaboudit 😕

hey isaac,i have a question,what are your opinion about the manifold series?i never read that series,but i've heard a lot of times about the downstreamers,a very advanced human civilization from that history,you see,sometimes i go to some battle forums to waste my time when i'm bored and in some of these forums the downstreamers are considered the strongest or one of the strongests civilizations of all fiction,that really made me curious about them,by what i found they transformed a finite multiverse into a infinite one,not just that,they made differents solutions from the fermi paradox,by example the planetarium,that is: "A simulation system whose purpose is to project a generated reality surrounding the solar system, which is undetectable by any means. It is a perfect simulation down to the quantum level, requiring more energy than a galaxy" and obviously they have a bunch of technology that could be defined as clarketech,my favorite example is the red moon: "A moon-sized construct that wanders through the Manifoldverse, transporting humans from different universes to empty ones. It can travel to infinite number of universes in a finite amount of time through use of phase space (higher-dimensional engineering). It can also affect probability through quantum tunneling" all of this looks very interesing and i guess it would worth at least a video about this history,but that is just my opinion

I think Carl Sagan said (i could be wrong) that mankind's first contact with an alien civilization is likely to be a large asteroid impacting the Earth.

I always think what if all the civilizations we encountered were just other humans... I wouldn't be surprised by that. No one ever thinks we could be the product of a civilization seeding worlds.

This is the most *demotivating* one; for me personally; imagine investing millions onto a listening project/ie. SETI; yet cannot hear anything because of the way you put your sattelites and the lowkey inefficent technology level you use; on a highly loud galaxy

Thanks Isaac. Now if I can find something to do for the other 23hrs 36m today will be pretty good! Is Swenson’s still open?

Whiskey in the Night: an inebriated galactic contact, no olives, please.

Could it be possible to use neutrinos to communicate given a solar system wide detector?

@Isaac Arthur only a few weeks after this video was made, Parkes Observatory in Australia received a signal on a narrow band of 982.002 mhz coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri. While the official scientific paper outlining the full details of the findings isn't due until early 2021, What does this mean for the Fermi Paradox and The Great Filters should it be determined to be extraterrestrial non-human origins.... Can you please do a new video discussing the Proxima Signal in an upcoming video? I am sure I am not the only one of your subscribers who would LOVE your take on this interesting subject..... Thank you!

Last time I was this early coronavirus was just the flu.

Hey Issac In your dark matter episode you told that communication using dark matter would be more reliable and just better so this means that we would not be able to hear them are your thoughts of this type of communication still the same or more evolved?

Is it sad that I found myself saying "or building paperclips" rite when he said it?

How about an episode on speculative evolution and how life could evolve differently on other worlds?

Great content even though we are living in Corona world.👍

Honestly I think the silent conversation hypothesis is probably the most likely solution (where alien civilizations do exist and do communicate, possibly regularly, we just can't hear it). As is mentioned in the video, the milky way is full of background noise, and while it is possible to overcome this problem with directed signals on certain frequencies, it does illustrate one issue with radio. I've seen it argued that advanced civilizations would communicate with neutrinos instead, as they're able to pass through matter with ease (a single neutrino can pass through the entirety of Earth's core without ever hitting another molecule). They move at speeds comparable to radio signals, however they pass through matter with ease and thus don't suffer the same problems of interference. This seems like a much better communications solution than radio, and it would be far less energy intensive, but would be a communication method only possible for more advanced civilizations. We are only able to detect a few neutrinos at a time, so if alien civilizations were communicating with one another then we would be unable to detect it. This is more an example of my point than a specific solution, but I think the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations (especially ones more advanced than our own civilization) using other forms of communication than radio should be considered and is perhaps even likely.

It sure would be good time for a well meaning alien civilization to announce themselves. A bit of assistance would be welcomed. It would be an opportunity to make a good impression.

Instead of looking at Covid-19 they started listening to it and heard : BRING ME TO YOUR LEADER !!

There are about 200,000 galaxies in the observable universe, but there could be trillions outside of that.

Hello, you mention the Dark Forest Theory episode at 17 minutes, but I cannot find it here nor on Nebula. Has it been removed, renamed? Thank you!

You all should consider postponing part of your schedule of doc's and doing an episode on space pandemics. Since we're having a pandemic right now. I think it would make for an interesting video on what a possible space pandemic could be like.

What about a giant empire that destroys those who attempt to contact or visibly alter their systems.

Breakfast for the mind.

What if the first signal says "TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT ON SITE."

You match your transmission error rate to the embedded parity bits. Compression and encryption I believe would be the norm, unless the signal is purely a beacon.

When they finally get here they gonna be PISSED that we ain't accept their friend request~

Lookin' like a double wide SURPRISE! *GOD DAYUM!!*

I both love and dislike your voice (am i weird for that?). Ive listened to you on the event horizon podcast. Ive been watching/listening to some of your vids as of late. I like your use of words and your understanding of what you do and dont know. Keep up the good work isaac! 👍

How about doing one on Prepping in the future

I would like to hear more about how they would determine what our visible spectrum is. That sounds pretty cool.

It always seems to come back to the massive distances involved, and the obstacle that presents to communicating before one end or the other has long since disappeared. If there are others out there and they are talking, it’s probably a group of civilizations that have somehow figured out how to break the speed of light barrier. No joining their club without figuring it out on your own first.

About the worry of civilizations getting expanded too far, that parts of them might become competitors or enemies. One could imagine after the creation of a superintelligence who`s values are aligned with the true goals of humanity, it could design an architecture for a civilization that would be just so good and optimal for everyone in it, planet by planet, that no one would ever want to turn against it. And if also each one of those colonies are guided by the identical copies of such a superintelligence. It would be hard to imagine any more loss of control than what might happen on a single planet alone. The issue of communication across vast distances remains of course to update goals, if there is a change in goals. This is a huge topic to tackle of course and many variables to think about. But this is just an argument that i would propose about the point you made about colonies getting too big to control.

The first thing we hear from aliens is them reminding us that we agreed to play hide and seek but they accidentally nuked us into the stone age and didn't feel like telling us until they realized we were looking for any aliens at all and not specifically them.

I have my snack and a glass of wine... and Isaac.