The Fermi Paradox: There are trillions of stars and many of them should by random chance have Earth-like planets, so life should be abundant. So why haven’t any alien species been here? I would like to offer a new answer to this paradox.

There is such a thing as metamaterial cloaking, which are human-made materials not found in nature that are invisible to certain wavelengths of light. If it is one day possible to make metamaterials that are invisible to all the wavelengths of light that stars give out, then we could only spot a civilization with this invisi-paint by the gravitational effect that their civilization has on nearby stars. So it is in that case possible for any civilization out there to hide from detection very well.

But why would the cloaked civilizations not contact other civilizations? Why hide? The answer is that they do not want to risk contact. Why would contacting other civilizations be a risk to a space-faring civilization?

Lets go into the Kardashev Scale. Where I had to add a type 4 and 5.

Type 1 civilizations can use the energy amount roughly equal to that which their planet gets from their star.

Type 2 civilizations can use the energy amount roughly equal to that which their star gives out in total.

Type 3 civilizations can use the energy amount roughly equal to the output of all the stars in a galaxy.

Type 4 civilizations can gather resources from all the local galaxies in range, and send it back to one spot ( 1 ).

). Type 5 civilizations have survived the end of the universe at least once (either by making a new universe, traveling to a new universe, living long enough for a new universe to happen by the mechanism that makes universes, or some other way).

(1) The area you can gather resources from is finite if you want to send resources you gather to one time and place so that your civilization can use those resources to survive the end of the universe. The reason this area is finite, is because of the speed of light (which I assume can’t be exceeded), and the expansion of the universe (so you have a limited time to gather resources before galaxies begin flying apart so fast you can no longer travel between them).

Now lets go back to the question; Why would any of these civilizations want to hide from any other civilization? Because all these civilizations are capable of metamaterial cloaking, so the true size of any civilization you find is unknown. It could be a type 1 posing as a type 3, or a type 3 posing as a type 1. But why would such behavior be prevalent? Because all but the type 5 civilizations need more resources to survive the end of the universe. And even the type 5 may need more resources, to survive yet another universe. So if you are a type 4 and meet another type 4, ideally you could cooperate and double your resources (assuming you inhabit the same space and gather resources not far from each other). Increasing the chances of becoming a type 5 civilization. But if you are a type 1 and manage to hitch your trailer to a type 4 civilization you get enormously higher chances of becoming type 5, whereas the type 4 civilization gets nearly zero increased chances of becoming type 5. A type 2 has huge incentive to become allied with a type 3, a type 3 has huge incentive to become allied with a type 4, but a type 4 has nearly zero incentive to become allied to a type 3, and a type 3 has nearly zero incentive to become allied to a type 2.

But if you are of such a mind that you think cooperation would still be best, first lets imagine what the differences in decision-making will be between different civilizations:

A type 1 will make decisions pretty much like we do today. Spur of the moment sort of stuff. Easily affected by cognitive biases and they easily argue with fallacious arguments. Their behavior is the type of behavior that leads to war, murder, short-term decisions, drug-abuse, little scientific interest. The economy of such a civilization is mostly based on an evolutionary need to compete for survival and procreation. People buy fancy cars, not sound long-term investments like asteroid-deflection programs and cutting-edge cancer research. Even though a type 1 may have an energy consumption equal to that which their planet receives from their star, most of it wasted on efforts not related to surviving for a century let alone the end of the universe. Its even possible they have not yet bothered to cure aging. Average age is about a hundred years, so the average level of expertise is limited by that in every field of science and philosophy and politics etc. While it is recognized that they need ten thousand hours or more to get good at making chess decisions, they will readily form amateur opinions about complex topics because they read an article in The Times about it. A type 1 civilization will mostly get its nutrients from engineered algae that can grow in extremely salty, cold, warm, high pressure, low pressure, water, even with little water. As long as they have solar panels to power the lightbulbs in the vats of algae, they can use this algae to break down human waste into plant-nutrients, which the algae itself uses to make new nutrients for humans. Replacing millions of fungi and bacteria on Earth, spread across thousands of square kilometers of farmland, with a single-step process where no water evaporates (most of the water you apply to a field evaporates), where no fertilizer is lost (much of our phosphorous comes from mining, and it eventually ends up in the oceans where it can never be retrieved, so we are running out of phosphorous), where no energy is lost (most of the energy from the sun is wasted because plants don’t soak it all up, much of it is wasted evaporating water and being reflected (plants would be black if they absorbed all the sunlight)). This allows the type 1 civilization to exceed 100 billion individuals easily, comfortably.

A type 2 will scan their own brain when making decisions. Then they will scrutinize every molecular interaction that took place in their brain at the time of the decision to make a decision about whether or not to stick with that decision. Then they will make a new decision, this is a spectre level 1 decision. And then they scan that decision as well, and make a spectre level 2 decision, and so on and so forth. This trick allows them to steer away from cognitive biases, evolved behavior and basically anything they know to be irrational when giving it thought (they will for instance be able to quit smoking). They can not yet engineer their own brains to not have these evolved behaviors but they can with a lot of effort steer away from them. And they are helped by technological additions to their brains which make certain tasks easier (better memory, better at mathematics, faster input of complex boring texts and data). They have cured aging so the average person has several centuries under his/her belt, centuries of learning, discussion, experiences, thinking.

A type 3 civilization’s population will have the internal ability, through genetic and technological engineering of their brain capacity, to go up the spectre levels automatically. They will have added internal scanning machines that sense every action in the brain and automatically controls for cognitive biases and other unwanted behavior (like laziness or scientific disinterest). They have both biological and technological improvements to their brains and bodies. Memory capacity billions of times better than a type 1 civilization, and processing power thousands of times greater than a type 1 civilization, in every single person’s brain. Because of this they consume a lot more energy (calories), but that is just fine because of nutrient-replication (engineered algae). They now lack the capacity to think in as stupid terms as a type 1 or 2 civilization, they will look back at faint memories of when they bought an expensive car that they traded in for another expensive car five years later, as you look back at mistakes you did while drunk. A type 3 civilization has thought about things and discussed things millions of hours and every person have lived tens of thousands of years. People have written books it would take thousands of years to read, to understand a single point about the dangers of contacting other species. And other books equally long on the possible benefits of contacting other species. When a type 3 civilization does something, it has been discussed, weighed and deliberated for thousands of years and they are in no hurry, so they might as well discuss it another million years if there is no time-constraint. If they find a civilization they will go to spectre level one trillion and if that decision is to contact that civilization, someone else may say “lets just go one more level why don’t we?”, and then they respond “Ok!”.

A type 4 is a type 3 on steroids, crack, caffeine, speed, nitroglycerin and antimatter. A portion of their population has chosen to change their physical body and brain to unrecognizable extents. A single individual may consume the same amount of energy on conscious thought as an entire type 1 civilization, in order to solve very complex physics problems about how to become type 5. A type 4 civilization spend the majority of their resources gathering more resources, and developing new and higher energy physics experiments in order to learn what they need about the universe to become type 5. Sure, there will exist some portion of the population in all types that don’t join the effort into becoming a type 5 civilization, but at this point the average age is into the hundreds of billions of years. So the population mainly diverge into two groups; The group that kills itself eventually for not finding existence rewarding enough in itself, and the second group which wants to become type 5. The effects of a hundred billion years of engineered changes in their brain and body also has an effect which means they will innately focus on more long term planning ( 2 ) because that is the opposite of the behavior they started out with ( 3 ).

) because that is the opposite of the behavior they started out with ( ). A type 5 is basically a civilization of demi-Gods. They are quite confident that they can become a type 5 again after either making a new universe or surviving until a new universe happens where the old universe was. Both scenarios would give them plenty of time to make the initial hard push towards becoming a very early type 4 that can stomp out every possible type zero that arises in their space (before space travel is possible on a planet’s type zero civilization the type 4 just bombards the planet with rocks). But in the case where the type 5 civilization transported themselves to another universe, there could be other type 5s there, in which case they will be very xenophobic (as if they haven’t been to this point). And there’s a final quirk, if the universe repeats itself instead of another universe exploding into existence where the old was, then a type 5 would have to not interfere with its own civilization’s development or else they risk messing up the timeline which made them a type 5 last time. A type 5 is certain that becoming a type 5 is possible, they did it at least once, so for all practical purposes their entire income in resources and energy is spent to repeat that success. Meaningless amounts are spent on entertainment by comparison, whereas a type 1 is almost the exact opposite in resource allocation (How much of your paycheck went to curing cancer with the WILT approach, compared to what you spent on stuff meant to convince potential mates that you are wealthy?).

(2) Meaning you behave with stronger and stronger motivation to survive the end of the universe as you modify yourself away from the behavior you evolved to have.

(3) Evolution favors rather short-term behavior, that’s why you buy the best car you can afford right as you become middle-aged, which in other words is right when you are about to become infertile. You are maximizing your odds of having children while you still can. With no regard to your financial status after you become infertile or your future hundred billion years as a debt slave.

A type 1 will think “I will take a loan now, and pay it back over ten years of hard work, so that I can have a new car now, until I grow bored and want a new car”. A type 4 or 5 will think “I will save up for ten years, then make an automated mining robot which makes back 1% of its cost every year, then in 110 years I begin getting a profit margin, and when I have gotten a trillion percent return on investment and know I have the accumulated resources to become a type 5 individual, THEN I can make myself a fancy car that I can enjoy until it is time to leave this universe. Because what if I was one car worth of resources short of becoming type 5? What if I lacked a can of petrol worth of energy to open the portal to another universe after I wasted ten years worth of petrol as a type 1?”.

The final point is that even if the risk involved in contacting another civilization is low, however low you want to optimistically think it is for sake of argument, then the argument is still there in the back of your mind that “but I have only one life, if there is an infinitesimal chance of dying as a result of contacting another civilization, that is perhaps a pointless risk”.

That is the general gist of my answer to the Fermi Paradox. Though you would benefit from learning more about how exactly I think that we will defeat aging, since these points are dependent on that being possible or else the whole risk idea is less of a problem. Because if you live forever in the true sense of the word, a tiny risk of death per year eventually adds up to certain death. And contacting another civilization holds risk. Either they are lower type than your own civilization, in which case they are stupider than you and thus more likely to do something that may end your life (accidentally or not). Or they are higher type than your own civilization, in which case they may just take your measly resources because of their fear of your stupidity which may cause them death accidental or otherwise. If the lifespans are not infinite, the risk/reward ratio falls more in favor of contacting other civilizations.

I shall include a description of the seven human aging processes and the treatments to them, so that you can form a picture of whether or not you want to read up on it:

Loss of cells without replacement. This is the cause of Parkinson’s Disease, treatment is cell-replacement with stem-cell treatment. Senescent cells that don’t work properly are sometimes not lost by apoptosis (programmed cell death). Treatment is forced apoptosis and in some circumstances surgery to remove the senescent cells. Example of where we might remove senescent cells, are immune-cells that are specialized. The immune-cell count is limited so the more specialized cells you accumulate throughout your life to fight encountered threats, the fewer remaining non-specialized cells you have to produce specialized cells against new threats. This is what is known as age-related weakening of the immune system. Intracellular aggregates (stuff inside cells that can’t be digested), and extracellular aggregates. Example is that cholesterol, a vital molecule produced in our liver when we don’t ingest it, is sometimes oxidized into 7-ketocholesterol, and we lack the gene to produce the enzyme needed to break that down. So 7-ketocholesterol accumulates over time inside and outside cells, along with other such aggregates, and we get massive blobs of gunk that causes heaps of problems to cell function, as well as blood-clots and hardening of vital organs (particularly our liver). Treatment is to add the genes that produce the enzymes needed to break these things down. There are some specifics which separates intracellular and extracellular aggregate treatments, so its defined as two aging processes. The mitochondrial genes (13 in all) in each cell, vital to ATP production, mutates into non-functioning versions. The 13 mitochondrial genes are housed in several copies of cellular balloons separate to the nuclear DNA, because the energy involved in ATP production inside these balloons is often enough to rupture the cell wall around the mitochondria. The lysosome then consumes the ruptured mitochondrial balloons and eventually only mutated non-functioning mitochondria remain. This causes the cell to pump harmful substances out of the cell to maintain ATP production, causing a host of problems around the cell (probably adding to extracellular aggregate production). The treatment is to copy the mitochondrial genes to the nuclear DNA with a few things besides, so that new copies that function properly can be produced at regular intervals. The extracellular matrix consists of many fibers, certain substances attach to these fibers and these substances again attach to each other. This makes the average count of connections in any volume of protein fibers increase, making the protein matrix less flexible and more fragile over time. The treatment is to produce drugs that attaches to these connections and separates them, regaining flexibility in for example arteries, so that previously unproblematic blobs of aggregates don’t cause blood-clots because the arteries are too stiff. The hTERT gene and ALT mechanism for telomere-lengthening is the reason why cancer can divide forever. Unlike normal cells which eventually can’t divide anymore. Telomeres are the end caps on our chromosomes, which get shorter with each cell-division, and once they are a certain length the cell can’t divide. Not “won’t”, but can’t. This is why we have the hTERT gene and ALT mechanism, so that 1 sperm and egg can combine and divide enough times to form an adult being with 37 200 billion cells. These mechanisms remain in all our cells, but inactive in all but those required to divide a lot (skin, stomach lining, etc). Cancer is simply when a cell by chemical chance starts to signal for itself or others to divide without the body needing them to do so. These causes benign tumors which can’t divide too much and spread forever around the body. But some of these benign cells also get a genetic or epigenetic mutation that signals the cell to activate either method for telomere-lengthening. This is a huge problem, because with benign cancer cells we simply give them any chemotherapy and then we cull the numbers down below the detectable amount (about 1 billion cells) and then they stop dividing and are harmless. The dangerous cancer cells then compose the 1 billion or so most resistant to the chemotherapy you gave, and they keep dividing. Only a matter of time before they return, only this time you need an entirely new poison which works in a different enough way so that it works. Because the remaining cells are almost entirely resistant to the poison you used last time. Now this works fine most times, even works fine most times for a third time. But when you get cancer for a fourth time, the odds are very long indeed. And cancer drug companies are focused on making new poisons for the fourth and fifth and sixth etc generation cancer cells. They entirely ignore the possibility of removing the hTERT gene and ALT mechanism, as described in this 7 page paper: http://www.sens.org/files/pdf/WILT-FBS.pdf

PS: It should be noted that we would need to remove senescent cells that lack telomere-length because of our cancer treatment, as well as adding stem-cells to replace them once we force apoptosis, but that is what we have to do anyway to treat other diseases so the cancer researchers get that for free. It should also be noted that stem-cells are no longer made from fertilized human eggs, but normal cells reprogrammed.

You should look into strategies for engineered negligible senescence. The treatments described are known as the SENS strategy for treating age-related disease. And the result, if done in all seven aging processes, would be that you would literally become young again. And remain a young adult for as long as you are willing to keep taking the rejuvenation treatments periodically. So there is theoretically zero limit to human lifespan. Assuming of course you manage to stay safe from accidents and murder. And even then there’s huge possibilities in surviving a previously fatal event, Anna Bågenholm survived a total of 40 minutes in ice cold water, with an additional 40 minutes being without CPR and with zero breathing and heart rate, before being brought onto a rescue helicopter where CPR began, and flown back to a hospital, where she was revived with no permanent brain damage. Her core body temperature was lowered so much during the first 40 minutes in the ice cold water that all the biological systems in her were prevented from decaying when her heart stopped and oxygen-supply stopped.

One final note. The only way to detect a cloaked civilization, would be gravity. One very interesting piece of data is that when observing galaxies spinning, they spin too fast. Judging by the amount of visible matter, they should fly apart because of their fast spin. And its not like they haven’t accounted for possible hard-to-see matter. Even adding all the hard-to-see matter, the visible matter still only accounts for about one sixth the gravity that hold galaxies together. They estimate that there has to be about five times more invisible mass than visible mass, to account for the gravity observed from the speed at which galaxies spin. That is what we call Dark Matter, gravity without visible matter. If I was a type 5 entering a new universe, I would group all my spaceships and planet-size space stations in such a way that galaxies form, and such that galaxies spin tighter (which means faster) together than they otherwise would. Because then I can more easily gather resources from each galaxy to one central location in each galaxy that sends it off to the pre-determined location where my civilization will gather the resources for the next jump into another universe. And I would have that central location in each galaxy near the center so that all the galaxy can be harvested as easily, and it would be near a black hole or other heavy object, because then I can use gravity slingshot maneuvers to get extra bang for my buck when accelerating the resources towards the destination somewhere in the galaxy cluster.

If you want more, for example how we will solve our type zero problems (transportation, education, healthcare, unemployment, welfare costs, standard of living, interstellar travel, etc). Then buy my book.