There is a mathematical meaning to this principle. An extraordinary claim is not one that is merely surprising; it is one that is assigned a very low prior probability. The argument is statistical: if a claim is highly improbable, then the evidence required to overcome that improbability must be correspondingly strong. Within its proper domain, this makes perfect sense. But what are the odds of a visitation? And more importantly—how would we know?
Fermi’s paradox arises precisely because, given the age of the universe, there should exist civilizations vastly older than ours—perhaps by hundreds of millions or even billions of years. Such civilizations would have had more than enough time to spread throughout the galaxy without ever exceeding the speed of light. Galactic colonization does not require exotic propulsion; it only requires time. This is why Fermi asked, “Where is everyone?” His point was that, under reasonable assumptions, extraterrestrial presence should be expected. If that is true, then why would a claimed sighting be considered an extraordinary claim?
Now consider superluminal travel. While we currently lack a practical mechanism for exceeding the speed of light, General Relativity does not strictly forbid all forms of effective faster‑than‑light motion. And it remains possible that some future physics—unknown to us but not to a civilization millions of years ahead—could make such travel feasible. But here is the crucial point: either faster‑than‑light travel is physically possible, or it is not. This is not a probabilistic question. It is binary. We may guess that it is unlikely based on our current understanding, but that is not a statistical inference. There is no meaningful “10% chance” or “0.1% chance” that superluminal travel is possible. The truth value exists independently of our knowledge.
If the speed of light is an absolute limit, then the probability of interstellar visitation may indeed be 0%. But if it is not an absolute limit—if some advanced civilization, or perhaps many thousands, have discovered a viable method—then visitation may be not merely possible but common. We might live adjacent to an interstellar thoroughfare, with travelers passing by routinely and occasional visitations being entirely expected.
Thus, the probability of visitation spans the full range from 0% to nearly 100%. Without knowing the underlying physical truth, we cannot meaningfully assign a prior probability. And if we cannot assign a prior, we cannot declare the claim “extraordinary” in the statistical sense. The event might be vanishingly unlikely—or it might be the most natural thing in the world. We simply lack the information needed to classify it.
by Observer_042
6 Comments
Consider that human beings are pretty much blind do 99.9% of the electromagnetic spectrum. What makes you think that a species so blind to reality could come up with a valid system for what is beyond their perception?
Oh wait! equal paragraph length, near equal paragraph number of characters, double-dashes. Makes sense now.
Let me tag a physicist in this post. Hold on
Good point, and I agree. The existence, and even the visitation, of alien life should not be considered extraordinary.
Even if it were, “perceived” extraordinary claims should not require extraordinary evidence. They should require the same rigor as any other claim. Increasing the burden of proof for claims perceived as extraordinary contributes to a scientific resonance chamber where only already-accepted theories are considered. This generates stagnation and closed-mindedness that is, sadly, very pervasive in most scientific areas.
Many people devote their lives to a specific line of thought and end up being the ones vetoing new developments in the field. Sometimes, even unconsciously, they have a very high resistance to even opening a discussion on ideas that go against their life’s work.
Beyond this, we have the, IMHO constructed, environment where alien/UAP/UFO discussion is automatically relegated to the ridiculous and the fringe. This is done with such intensity that, for decades, many serious researchers didn’t want to even consider studying this phenomenon, fearing their careers might be negatively affected.
This is a video of Carl sagan explaining what it might look like if a 3 dimensional creature abducted a 2D flatlander.
https://youtu.be/UnURElCzGc0
I think Sagan understood that something was happening. His problem was with the idea that extraterrestrial spacemen were visiting from other stars, and that’s reasonable, even to this day there’s still no scientific evidence to support jumping to that conclusion. We don’t see them going to or coming from another planet, they are often reported to seemingly blink or fade in or out of our reality.
I understand your point, but the main problem with travelling for years on end is the lifespan of the species. If it is short like ours, then you will have to use generation ships. The problems with that, as pointed out many times before, are complicated and i honestly don’t know all of them however I will try my best to summarise 2 of them.
First is homesickness. The children would eventually want to see their original planet in person. Hell, depending on the amount of time required to travel to the destination they might be on the ship their entire lives, never seeing a single world’s surface.
Second is potential mutinies. I don’t know much about this specific point, but I will try to explain. Since the people want to see home, after years of being in space with no sun, sky, or moon, they might try to overthrow whoever (or whatever if it’s AI controlled) controls the ship. They might try to take it back to Earth or whatever their home is called.
Again, I am not particularly educated in this subject, but that is what I can understand and are my reasons for not believing in aliens coming to earth (although I do believe in intelligence beyond Earth).
Obviously, the first point is negated if the species has a long lifespan. But I do think the second problem would still be important to manage. Hell, it was important to do that with stokers on steamships during hot days, and those lasted days or weeks. Maybe months if the steamship was one of the first.
Also be honest with me. Was that written by AI? That fits extremely well with how LLMs like ChatGPT type.
OP, I’d rather read *your* thoughts, not your thoughts through the filter of AI.