Missing sial, iron, and nickel explains Fermi paradox

In article . com,
Ian Parker wrote:

Like what? We're talking about things on the timescale of hundreds of
millions of years. What we do in the next century or two isn't going to
make any difference.

Statistically the most likely time for another civilization to appear
is now. Geological time indeed counts in billions. When I say
statistcally now, what I am saying is this. You habe a box a billion
years wide. You place a civilization in it. Now is as likely as any
other time.

I'm not following you here. Do you agree that, if the evolution of a
civilization is treated as an independent event, the population of such
events will form a standard distribution? If so, then there is a mean
and a standard deviation. When you say "the most likely time for
another civilization to appear is now," are you saying that the mean of
this distribution is the present?

If so, that's a sensible position -- what the Copernican principle
implies. The problem with it, of course, is that unless space
colonization is impossible, then civilizations are not independent
events; only the first one or few (the extreme outliers of the
distribution) would be independent, and the others would arise in an
already-settled galaxy.

In fact if evolution is indeed as insensitive to special conditions as
you are claiming. I will say might be so, might not then 2 hr 6 min
will ensure the galaxy. 2hr 7 min will mean we are also rans.

I haven't a clue what you're saying here.

This seems rather pointless. All indications are that there is NOBODY
else out there. So, either we're in some sort of nature preserve and
the ancients are intentionally hiding from us, or for some weird reason,
we happen to be the first, and the galaxy is ours.

All the indications are that there is none more advanced than we are.
SETI has indeed not seen Radio Reloj. So nobody is at the same level
as us.

Right.

It is possible that there are civilizations (allowing for speed
of light) that are 20-300 years ahead of us or 100+ yars behind.

Yes, and SETI proponents seem to implicitly assume this, but it's a
ridiculous position that I think comes from watching too much Star Trek.
Even on Earth, cultures that had been separated for even a few thousand
years were not 200 years apart, technologically -- they were *thousands*
of years apart. The Americans were still using bows and arrows when the
Europeans showed up with guns and steel. The Japanese were still using
swords when the Americans showed up with rifles (and the Japanese were
not all that isolated). Other examples abound -- and these are people
who are all the same species, with common ancestors in Africa not that
long ago.

Now, suppose independently evolving civilizations on completely
different worlds. They're not going to be a few hundred years apart;
they're going to be MILLIONS of years apart. The odds of two
neighboring civilizations evolving within a couple hundred years of each
other are ridiculous -- in geological terms, that's the exact same
instant. It's like grabbing two random people from the population and
expecting their height to be the same to within 0.1 mm.

And because of the exponential progress of technology, even a few
hundred years makes a big difference at this point. At thousands or
millions of years, you're looking at the difference between no
civilization at all, and some post-biological star-spanning civilization
that would make us seem like mildly clever monkeys.

Imagining everybody in the galaxy developing space travel at pretty much
exactly the same time makes for exciting science fiction, but
mathematically speaking, it's close to impossible.

Best,
- Joe

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