Why I believe in the zoo hypothesis

🙉🔒🏢

This is a continuation post on my Fermi paradox post!

Here is why I believe in the ‘Zoo hypothesis’ which states that:

technologically advanced alien civilisations are aware of Earth’s existence but intentionally avoid contact to allow humanity to evolve naturally.

Statistically, it seems basically impossible that life only exists on Earth. The ingredients for life are ubiquitous and organic molecules (like nucleotides) are commonly found on extraterrestrial samples (e.g. Mars, asteroids, etc).

With the recent discovery of a self-replicating sequence of 45 nucleotides, life itself seems likely to be relatively common amongst the universe.

Once life evolves, intelligence also seems like an inevitable evolution. Especially given the amount of time it took for humans to evolve compared to the cosmic timescale and the fact that intelligence has evolved separately at least 3 times on Earth alone in:

• Mammals: (e.g. dolphins, whales, humans etc)

• Cephalopods (mostly just octopi)

• Birds (e.g. Corvids (crows and ravens) and parrots)

Once intelligence evolves, it also doesn’t take much time to evolve technologically:

• Hunter-Gatherer to Farming (~200,000 years)

  • For most of human history, progress was stagnant as our survival depended entirely on foraging and being nomads.

• Farming to Industrial Age (~10,000 years)

  • Settling down allowed for population growth and specialised labor.

• Industrial to Atomic Age (~170 years)

• Atomic to Internet Age (~40 years)

• Internet to Artificial Intelligence (~30 years)

Each leap in technology and productivity is quicker than its predecessor.

Hence why I believe in the ‘zoo hypothesis’, there are advanced civilisations who intentionally avoid contacting us for any number of reasons. Humans have not yet sufficiently matured technologically, culturally or socially.

That’s about it for this one guys, hope you enjoyed! Lmk what you guys believe the explanation for the Fermi paradox is, check out my post on it for the common potential reasons!