Ipse Dixit: The Klem Principle
The Fermi Paradox. The powers that be, mainly the editor-in-chief, feel that I need to discuss more science and technology topics. In my 50 years in the newspaper business, I’ve never discussed science or technology. Not once. I prefer to stick to the tried and true: bitching about local government, taxes, and my neighbor’s chihuahua. I hate that dog. Back to the Fermi Paradox.
In 1950, after discussing reports of flying saucers with other physicists, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi famously uttered, “But where is everyone?” The dumbed-down version of the Fermi Paradox, the version I can understand after reading about it for five minutes, is that with the potentially infinite number stars and possible habitable planets in the Universe, why haven’t we seen any evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations? The Universe is old enough for signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life to have spread throughout the cosmos many times over.
There are many theories explaining the missing evidence. One theory is that humans are a fluke. We’re an accident. Extraterrestrial life is so rare and improbable that we are alone in the universe.
Another idea proposes that intelligent species face inherent limits to their progress. Limitations like resource scarcity, natural disasters, and self-destruction prevent extraterrestrial civilizations from reaching Earth. Eventually, intelligent life taps out.
The last theory I’ll mention is the most amusing: Earth may be some kind of zoo. Without us knowing, extraterrestrials have designated Earth as a wildlife preserve, and they are protecting us without our knowledge. I can’t buy this theory because zookeepers shovel shit in every zoo I’ve ever visited. No one, extraterrestrial or otherwise, has ever shoveled my shit.
Despite the infinite number of theorized explanations, I believe any theory explaining the Fermi Paradox suffers from a fundamental flaw. The paradox assumes that human beings are capable of identifying intelligent life. What I call the Klem Principle explains and answers the Fermi Paradox. According to this principle, humans lack the ability to understand signs of intelligent life. This is a catch-22. Since humans cannot identify intelligent life, we will never answer the Fermi Paradox. We’re either alone, or the galaxies are teeming with intelligent life. According to the Klem Principle, we’ll never know.
You may be asking yourselves what this old codger is talking about. Humans can certainly identify intelligent life. If you thought that, you share the same flaw as the rest of us. Humans aren’t as intelligent as we believe. Consider the earthworm’s perspective as it spends its life burrowing through dirt. One day it’s dug out of the ground and stuck onto a fishhook. As a worm, it’s completely unaware of what is picking it up or that a fishhook is impaling it. All it knows is that it was thrown into water and eaten by a largemouth bass. But then again, it wouldn’t know that because it’s just an earthworm and it doesn’t know what a fish is.
Hold on, hold on, you may say. Humans are more intelligent than a worm. Maybe. Pick a different animal. Dolphins are admired for their intelligence. But would humans consider them to be intelligent life? Maybe, maybe not. Would we consider dolphins more intelligent than ourselves? Most people wouldn’t. But why not? Last time I checked, no dolphin ever wrote something as pointless as this. You may agree this column is pointless, but you’re the one who’s still reading it. Ultimately, people don’t know if dolphins are more intelligent to humans. We can make assumptions based on our definition of intelligence, but we don’t know for sure. This is the Klem Principle.