snarles comments on Catastrophe Engines: A possible resolution to the Fermi Paradox - Less Wrong
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Comments (22)
Seconded. So many layers of specificity, one of which is "exotic physics" ... I have a hard time seeing why it's worth entertaining this idea over any of the other unlikely but less specific theories one could devise.
It's not a contest. And although my explanation invokes unknown physics, it makes specific predictions which could potentially be validated or invalidated, and it has actionable consequences. Could you elaborate on what criteria make an idea "worth entertaining"?
But it is. There are only a limited number of ideas we can work on, so we'd better have some reason to think that this idea has more potential than any of the innumerable other ideas we could be working on instead.
You are right in general. However, it is also a mistake to limit your scope to too few of the most promising ideas. Suppose we put a number K on the number of different explanations we should consider for the Fermi paradox. What number K do you think would give the best tradeoff between thoroughness and time?