If there’s nothing particularly bizarre or inconsistent-seeming about a situation, then I don’t think we should call that situation a “paradox”. E.g., “How did human language evolve?” is an interesting scientific question, but I wouldn’t label it “the language paradox” just because there’s lots of uncertainty spread over many different hypotheses.
I think it’s fine to say that the “Fermi paradox,” in the sense SDO mean, is a less interesting question than “why is the Fermi observation true in our world?”. Maybe some other term should be reserved for the latter problem, like “Great Filter problem”, “Fermi’s question” or “Great Silence problem”. (“Great Filter problem” seems like maybe the best candidate, except it might be too linked to the subquestion of how much the Filter lies in our past vs. our future.)
I agree with that complaint about use-of-paradox, but AFAICT most things I’ve heard called paradoxes seemed more like “thing that someone was obviously confused by” rather than anything actually paradoxical. (To the point where I’m not even sure the word would get used if we restricted it’s usage thus)
Quine categorized paradoxes into veridical (apparently absurd, but actually true), falsidical (seemingly contradictory, because they actually do assume something false or use an invalid step somewhere), and antinomy (self-contradiction from true premises using only valid steps [arguably there are no such things]). I find these categories to be helpful for improving communication about such things.
If I have understood the arguments correctly, they are saying the Fermi Paradox is falsidical because the expectation of lots of ETIs was made using invalid steps.
I agree that the word “Paradox” was some sort of hype. But I don’t think anyone believed it. Nobody plugged their best guesses for all the factors in the Drake equation, got the result that there should be millions of advanced alien races in the galaxy, of which we see no sign, and then said “Oh my God! Science, math, and even logic itself are broken!” No. They instead all started putting forward their theories as to which factor was actually much smaller than their initial best guess.
If there’s nothing particularly bizarre or inconsistent-seeming about a situation, then I don’t think we should call that situation a “paradox”. E.g., “How did human language evolve?” is an interesting scientific question, but I wouldn’t label it “the language paradox” just because there’s lots of uncertainty spread over many different hypotheses.
I think it’s fine to say that the “Fermi paradox,” in the sense SDO mean, is a less interesting question than “why is the Fermi observation true in our world?”. Maybe some other term should be reserved for the latter problem, like “Great Filter problem”, “Fermi’s question” or “Great Silence problem”. (“Great Filter problem” seems like maybe the best candidate, except it might be too linked to the subquestion of how much the Filter lies in our past vs. our future.)
I agree with that complaint about use-of-paradox, but AFAICT most things I’ve heard called paradoxes seemed more like “thing that someone was obviously confused by” rather than anything actually paradoxical. (To the point where I’m not even sure the word would get used if we restricted it’s usage thus)
Quine categorized paradoxes into veridical (apparently absurd, but actually true), falsidical (seemingly contradictory, because they actually do assume something false or use an invalid step somewhere), and antinomy (self-contradiction from true premises using only valid steps [arguably there are no such things]). I find these categories to be helpful for improving communication about such things.
If I have understood the arguments correctly, they are saying the Fermi Paradox is falsidical because the expectation of lots of ETIs was made using invalid steps.
Does that scan?
I agree that the word “Paradox” was some sort of hype. But I don’t think anyone believed it. Nobody plugged their best guesses for all the factors in the Drake equation, got the result that there should be millions of advanced alien races in the galaxy, of which we see no sign, and then said “Oh my God! Science, math, and even logic itself are broken!” No. They instead all started putting forward their theories as to which factor was actually much smaller than their initial best guess.