I'm not sure referencing cosmic inflation is good evidence that FTL travel is possible. Under that theory the rapid (FTL) expansion of the universe happened prior to the fundamental forces separating. Even if the theory is right, we don't live in those conditions any longer.

As for why any intelligent species would want interstellar travel prior to using all the resources up in their solar system. It seems a basic assumption would be if they are interested in continuing their survival, eventually they'll have to be in another solar system. Sure, the death of stars is a long process, we have probably another billion years or so before ours grows hot enough to cause major problems. But it will happen.

The Fermi paradox is an interesting idea. And I believe if ever humans get fast and easy interstellar travel, we will expand as far and wide in the galaxy as is possible. And in less than tens of millions of years, we will effectively be "all over the galaxy." But other beings might not be as curious, or as willing to continually increase their population. It is simply unknowable currently.

But you are putting humans in 1 pot when that is not how the world works. In reality corporations in major economic and highly advanced nations would create completely sustainable systems as soon as the price for resources exceeds that of 100% recycling, which would give these corporations massive advantages on the global market. Corporations will push to make recycling mandatory even in countries where the government has been braindead or run by idiots once that happens.... This is one of the very few things where the free market will indeed benefit us. In essence, the coming oil scarcity (which is imo the only important upcoming shortage) will cause massive disruptions yes. But some nations will prevail. China, Germany, Japan (most likely).... basically all the nations that have enough economy power and sustainable energy sources to weather all the effects and disasters...

But to your numbers ,p
1)
Actually it is unproven that any developed life would go through radio wave based communications. We are just assuming it because we haven't met any other life. Do you see bacteria building radar dishes? Yet clearly they communicate on a basic level. Not every species has to have our biological inadequacies when it comes to communication methods.

A good example is sea borne life, or any other life that has evolutionary traits different from ours making long range communication a biological given trait, not something they need technology to do.

2)
At least as far as we know.. yeah As you say, it was dumb luck we as inadequate as we are came to be the dominant species with the furthest technological development so far. But it does not mean every other species would develop identically. I think Inter-Stellar travel would be an absurd waste of resources until all available colonization targets are full or exploited. A species could theoretically spend 5000 years perfecting terraforming every planet and moon in it's solar system and build a dyson sphere before it would ever properly explore deep space exploration. And at that point, I think it's more likely they would have jump gates of some description, meaning they would travel on fixed paths and only explore "locally"

3)
The expansion right after the "big bang" was FTL. The universe is proof FTL is possible. Whether it can be used to travel to specific locations.. well who knows. But it can't be impossible. But yes, it would not involve a thruster and a straight line to the target. But who is to say that's all there is in our universe.

I think it'd be more likely a REALLY advanced species would build world ships and not travel willy-nilly through space.

And that's even assuming they build ships, as opposed to BEING the ships. Or growing them.

My point being, the Fermi Paradox is too close-minded. There is no proof species would develop even REMOTELY like we do on planets with different conditions. So any assumption based on OUR development is flawed.




But to come to a conclusion. I think oil depletion and climate change are chances for humanity to push forward. Many nations will fall, and billions will die. But technology will make some nations become strong enough to survive and prosper. But that's my technocrat mindset speaking. I could be wrong But hey, It won't bother me. I barely make it to the oil depletion the way I live.. and I don't mind. I had a blast so far, and a 50m higher sea levels wouldn't even bother me. I live 130m above sea level (and away from any river) ;p

@ Eraser
I agree that resource depletion and global warming may not completely eradicate humans. But the disruptions they cause WILL cause a collapse of modern society and a new, non technological dark age. And having used up all the easy to gather resources such as fossil fuels, easy to mine metals, etc. recovering from that will be almost impossible. Unless we use the remaining resources to create a completely sustainable society, there will be shortages and eventual collapse. Given what I've observed of humans so far, that seems extremely unlikely.

Ask yourself, would you fly towards naked monkeys who barely can get to space if you had the technology to fly here?

I think we would. There's a difference between sending a probe and going yourself, the latter being preferable. Humans travel to Antarctica to study bacteria, and to the bottom of the ocean to study the worms and life around thermal vents, I imagine any sufficiently advanced curious alien life would prefer to come themselves. The complexity of humans would be a huge draw, as I think many planets develop life, but very few develop intelligent, technologically advanced life. I do agree that any species advanced enough to travel the stars would also have some version of the prime directive in place to avoid disrupting them.

As for going ourselves, we wouldn't need to evolve into a new species either. Artificial gravity is a pretty easy problem to solve. It's the FTL part that's challenging.

I agree that von Neumann probes are an outdated idea, remote observation is a much better and cheaper way to assess systems. However, I don't think the Fermi Paradox is outdated:

1. Any developing civilization will go through it's radio wave phase, and that should be detectable. However, that's probably a pretty short window of a few 100 years before some new technology takes its place. Easy to miss if we weren't listening at the right time. You could go millions of years without hearing a signal. Also, it would be easily detectable by nearby stars, but once it gets out a bit, the signal would be so weak as to be nearly imperceptible.

2. Life may be plentiful, but intelligent, civilized life that advances to the point of building interstellar travel is probably very, very rare. It took life on earth a couple of billion years to get to this point, and it wasn't a forgone conclusion.

3. There may be no way to travel FTL. In such a case, it would be very difficult for any civilization to travel here. The width of our own galaxy is 100,000 light years. The time it would take to travel to other stars at sublight speeds is decades. You need huge self-sustaining ships for that, and the closest stars would take years to reach, further stars decades or millenia.

Both of these things won't destroy humans, if anything both of these will mean we push towards space exploration, terraforming and cybernetic augmentations even faster.

Maybe if think about a different way you may have a point. Namely if you'd argue that an cybernetic augmented human , (basically the only human life that could survive in 0g indefinitely) is a different species. So the more logical argument would be that no planet born species can achieve interstellar travel and colonization without giving up what it means to be said species. Simply because living on a planet makes it impossible to live in space. But living in space is required for a society to develop beyond the first development level, namely you need a large amount of beings living in space to build and maintain the truly awesome shit we could build. Like space elevators or a dyson sphere which would instantly solve the overpopulation and energy problem for the entire race (be it human or augmented human).

The more realistic answer is that a race sufficiently developed will have very little reason to fly about in space to meet races that are not on the same development level. Ask yourself, would you fly towards naked monkeys who barely can get to space if you had the technology to fly here? Why would you? What would this get you, apart from possible conflict?

A developed race would maybe have far-out stealth drones monitoring us but they would never fly here in person to do a Independence Day style invasion.

Or basically, the Fermi Paradox is speculative nonsense based on outdated thought models of the 1950ies. No sane species would even BUILD von Neumon Probes. Heck, we have enough sci-fi to make us vary of even developing real AGI's .. you think a race with FTL travel would build self replicating AGI drones? WHY?

(my 2cent) ;p

This comment was edited on Jun 12, 2013, 09:20.

NegaDeath wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 19:38:

Creston wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 17:56:
ALIENWARE DEVELOPS MOST POWERFUL GAMING LAPTOPS IN THE MULTIVERSE
Stephen Hawking Likes this.

Creston

Our Stephen Hawking or the cyborg goatee'd version from the evil alternate dimension in the multiverse?

Man I hope there is a Cyborg Hawking somewhere. Can you imagine how much more he'd be able to do if he had a functioning body?

Creston wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 17:56:
ALIENWARE DEVELOPS MOST POWERFUL GAMING LAPTOPS IN THE MULTIVERSE
Stephen Hawking Likes this.

Creston

Our Stephen Hawking or the cyborg goatee'd version from the evil alternate dimension in the multiverse?

PHJF wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 09:03:

Unveils the Most Powerful Gaming Laptops in the Universe

Why stop there?

ALIENWARE DEVELOPS MOST POWERFUL GAMING LAPTOPS IN THE MULTIVERSE

Stephen Hawking Likes this.

Creston

KS wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 11:43:
I'm guessing Businesswire exists to allow businesses to self-publish advertising as if it were a news release. For a fee.

Businesswire has been like that for 5-6 years. Then again so has /.

KS wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 11:47:

So Alienware is coming down on the side of Earth's the only one w.r.t. the Fermi Paradox? Which is odd given their moniker.

Heh.

I think that the answer is obvious to the Fermi Paradox: Any intelligent species capable of developing interstellar travel destroys itself before developing said travel. Humans are on track to do that currently via the combination of resource depletion and global warming. We retain too much of our fight or flight instincts in order to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve it.

The Klorbnax on Gnosrt 12 in Galaxy 7214 will be disappointed to hear their sentient portable biocomputers have been outspecced by Alienware.

PHJF wrote on Jun 11, 2013, 09:03:

Unveils the Most Powerful Gaming Laptops in the Universe

Why stop there?

ALIENWARE DEVELOPS MOST POWERFUL GAMING LAPTOPS IN THE MULTIVERSE

So Alienware is coming down on the side of Earth's the only one w.r.t. the Fremi Paradox? Which is odd given their moniker.

I'm guessing Businesswire exists to allow businesses to self-publish advertising as if it were a news release. For a fee.

Unveils the Most Powerful Gaming Laptops in the Universe

Why stop there?

ALIENWARE DEVELOPS MOST POWERFUL GAMING LAPTOPS IN THE MULTIVERSE