An unsettling solution to the Fermi Paradox? - The Transcension Hypothesis! Advanced civilizations or intelligence scale down towards the Plank scale as they advance or "inner space", rather than expand outwards into the universe. Could also be thought of as an anti-Kardashev civilization.

submitted by the-swerve-podcast from (youtu.be)

all 8 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]AirSeddit88 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Didn't Kurt Vonnegut write a science fiction story in which the Chinese had technologically outpaced the rest of the world and decided to miniaturize their entire population?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is just ridiculous mental masturbation, it wouldn't even fly as the plot of a sci-fi film. Honestly this kind of stuff is the problem with cosmology these days. It's amazing how the supposed smartest people in the world keep coming up with shit like this

[–]jagworms 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

This is a really complicated way of theorizing that "going small" would be more easy and possible to achieve than colonizing distant heavenly bodies.
It probably is, since colonizing heavenly bodies is impossible. Crossing the distance takes generations- you'd take off on a voyage, hoping your great-grandson would be competent enough to arrive at the destination and complete the mission, and that his great-grandson would be able to complete the return.
It's so stupid, but it thinks it's so smart.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Depends on how fast you go. At our current speeds we are talking about, 10 upon 10's of thousands of years to reach nearby stars. Human civilization hasn't even been around that long.

But if you can develop some kind of insane nearly limitless energy source. It's entirely within the realms of possibility to travel even to distant galaxies in a few decades due to how time dilation works.

The problems with all these kinds of science fiction ideas though is they skip the middle step of assuming that impossible technology that is key to the system working has already been figured out. When in reality the whole unlimited energy source is by far the most complicated and least likely element of these ideas.

Of course a lot of this assumes that we think our current knowledge of the universe is correct. Some as of yet unimagined discovery may happen and change the way we understand physics. Our current understanding is naturally incomplete and there's a few gaping black holes in it, pun intended.

[–]jagworms 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Fantasy.

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It makes perfect sense once you understand why relativity works. Naturally the first spec of space dust you hit has explosive consequences at relativistic speeds.

[–]jagworms 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's all pie in the sky based on technology that doesn't exist yet. The smallest problem would be fatal to the mission.

[–]shilldetector 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The simplest and hence most likely solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we don't see evidence of advanced civilizations out there because there either aren't any, or they are exceedingly rare. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Fermi even saw this as a paradox so much as proof that these civilizations were largely non existent in the vast majority of the Universe, and his statements on the matter were basically a response to people who felt differently.