Originally Posted by uppkicker

Yeah, i pretty much agree with you mat, but i have to interject something in your ant hill analogy.

If ants could think barely enough to survive, which, they do then you are right, they would not "see" the road, but if they had the intelligence of say, a cow, they would see the road, though they might not be able to tell it apart from a "natural" structure. However i believe that humans are intelligent enough to see other living things and tell them apart from "natural" structures, i.e. we can tell a giant spaceship apart from a planet.

Of course you might say that "Aliens are too complex for us to understand" or "their structures does not reflect light, so we can't observe them". You might also say that they don't even use mere objects to explore the universe, but perhaps they use some other technology.

These are all valid points, as well as the ones you put forth mat, but i find it very unlikely that there exist such a race of "trancendental" beings. There may be, but i believe that we are all bound by the laws of physics along with chemistry (not alchemy).

My arguments only really holds any water when it comes to our "classical" view of aliens, i.e. as beings that use ships, drones, radio waves, or other easily detectable means of communication and spreading their civilazation.

You may say that i am overestimating human intelligence, but it is currently the highest intelligence we know of.

That being said, i certainly do believe that there is a vastly more advanced alien race somewhere, but i do not believe that there will ever be one so advanced to simply ignore us.

Let me present yet another analogy:

If, on earth, we only found other organisms several kilometers apart, we would most likely examine the majority, especially if they are separated from eachother. This i thing, better represents the universe, where life seems to be more scattered.

This really leaves us with one possibillity:

That this advanced race has noticed us, examined us without our knowledge, and determined that we are not worthy of contact with them. I find this to be unlikely, and infalsifiable, so i cannot refute it. This is the point which to me, is the strongest one for the fermi paradox.

I am sorry for being so scattered but let me once again speak a bit of your ant analogy:

You are correct in that us humans building the road would not care for the ants, but that is either because we don't know that the ants are there, because we don't see them, or because we know how ants act, and we know a lot about them.

The reason for why the earth is different than an ant hill is that we have developed independantly from other planets, we are unique. If course you can make the point that there are infinite planets out there, so some must be the same as earth, but these would be a stupendous distance apart.
Also, you may make the argument of panspermia, to which i say that it too, i find unlikely.

As for us "not being able to comprehend". How would the alien race know that? We know it about ants because we have seen them before, but as i put forth, it is highly unlikely that the aliens have found the same kind of race elsewhere in the universe.
You may say to this that they have found races of similar intelligence and tried to explain it to them, and it had failed, so they simply don't bother with us. If this is true then that must mean that it is too complex for us to understand, in which case i would call it "transcendental" to us.
Since we have a reasonably high level of intelligence, this "transcendental" "road" needs to be so incredibly complex that it borders on something supernatural.

Clarification:
I base our "high intelligence level" on the fact that we have learned to observe the universe, and that we "know that we know that we think", something other species appear to lack.

I don't think that an alien race so advanced as to qualify for the fermi paradox would be all that different from us actually, but you are correct about Carl Sagan's point, but i still believe that we could be able to pick up on certain signals from them.
Also, if they sent the signals directly to us, they wouldn't be ignoring us really, but i get what you are saying, you are saying that if we picked up on signals that they send to eachother, we could not understand them, to that, i really have no counter argument, since i cannot refute such an idea, since there is no proof for or against it.

To me, it is a very real possibillity that the fermi paradox is true, but i find it to be highly unlikely. Simply because we have not observed a single sign that such a civilazation exists, no signals (that we can understand), no material and no real abnormal behavior amongst the other planets and stars, i.e. no orbital fluctuation that cannot be explained, no abnormal light change in the stars.
That's why it's a paradox.. the Drake equation calculates that there must be some intelligent life in space, that's why Fermi observed that we have had no contact with alien life, thus, Fermi paradox.
The zoo hypothosis is also a valid theory, but it too is infalsifiable for now, that doesn't mean that it is wrong, but it just means that i cannot refute it. However, i wonder as our technology evolves, that we will one day meet with our zoo keepers.

To me, a race so advanced to qualify to the fermi paradox would either already have been noticed by us, not noticed us, or be so incredibly complex that it borders to a "god" race.