The Subanthropic Principle

Well, one of the foundations of modern UFOlogy is the Fermi Paradox.
What it basically says is that if the number of predicted alien civilizations is near correct, and if alien life is as common to our galaxy as assumed, then it makes no sense that someone has not made contact, either by probe or in person..

They haven’t? Are we sure?
Spanish physicist Beatriz Gato-Rivera published a paper in 2003 called Brane Worlds, the Subanthropic Principle and the Undetectability Conjecture. (PDF link on the right column). Here’s a tasty bit:

Do mountain gorillas know that their “civilization” is embedded in a larger civilization corresponding to a much more evolved and intelligent species than themselves? Do they know that they are a protected species inhabiting a natural reserve in a country inside the African continent of planet Earth? The answer to these questions is certainly no, they do not know anything about our social structure, our countries, borders, religions, politics, ..... nor even about our villages and cities, except perhaps for those individuals living in a zoo, or adopted as pets.
In the same way, the human civilization of planet Earth could be immersed in a much larger civilization unknowingly, corresponding to much more evolved and intelligent species than ourselves.
...
In this situation, the answer to the usual remark “if there are advanced extraterrestrials around, why they do not contact us openly and officialy and teach us their science and technology?” seems obvious. Would any country in this planet send an official delegation to the mountain gorilla territory to introduce themselves “openly and officially” to the gorilla authorities? Would they shake hands, make agreements and exchange signatures with the dominant males? About teaching us their science and technology, who would volunteer to teach physics, mathematics and engineering to a bunch of gorillas? In addition one has to take into account the limits of the brain capabilities, independently of the culture or education.

…

The Subanthropic Principle: We are not typical among the intelligent observers from the Universe. Typical civilizations of typical galaxies would be hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years more evolved than ours and, consequently, typical intelligent observers would be orders of magnitude more intelligent than us.

More intelligent, or, if I may add, radically different, although I am not sure those two are conflicting. Do we study “inferior” beings? Yes. Do we try to “help” them by changing their lives and introducing them to ours? No. Not by lack of will. It simply cannot be done.

Would we know if we where being watched? DO WE KNOW? Officially not. Some people know. And it’s not easy. Watched by whom? Watched to what purpose? Now that’s a brain twister. Trying to imagine the purpose of virtually invisible beings riding virtually invisible and all-powerful crafts (albeit rather prone to malfunction) who are rumored to perform strange and meaningless experiments on people widely regarded as crazy…

I suddenly got a little depressed writing this. No chance of finding out even a little slice of truth? I hope not. I will not. Concede, that is..

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