New Answer To The Fermi Paradox? Cognitive Horizon Hypothesis May Explain Why Aliens Haven't Contacted Us

Where are all the aliens? For decades, armchair philosophers and the greatest minds in science have pondered the Fermi paradox, but perhaps they’ve been attacking the question from the wrong angle. Maybe the aliens are already “here,” just not in the form of little green men in flying saucers. What if extraterrestrial life exists as interdimensional, nonphysical entities, like forms of consciousness or energy so intensely different from ours that we cannot fathom them?

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The Fermi paradox goes like this: given the immense scale of the universe – trillions of galaxies, each with millions upon millions of stars – the chances of there being life beyond Earth are sky high. Surely, at least one planet could harbor intelligent life and reach out to contact us. 

Why, then, have we not found conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations? As physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked, “Where is everyone?”

Since Fermi first proposed this conundrum in the 1950s, there have been a variety of suggested answers. One idea is that intelligent life is extremely rare in the universe and Earth is a freak anomaly, while another argues that life is probably out there, but civilizations tend to self-destruct or burn out before they develop space travel. It could be argued that we've only been properly looking to the skies with advanced equipment for a few decades, which simply isn't long enough in the grand scale of the universe. 

Alternatively, intelligent extraterrestrial life may simply be too far away for us to detect. Maybe Earth is being deliberately avoided, like an intergalactic outcast banished from the popular corner of space. 

Or perhaps we’re barking up the wrong cosmic tree altogether. In a 2024 paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Serbian philosopher Vojin Rakić proposed that our attempts to explain the Fermi paradox have been far too human-centric. 

We often assume that alien intelligence would resemble human intelligence. If they're smart enough, we naively believe, these aliens would inevitably build an advanced civilization that would mirror ours, including great structures, modes of transport, and communication networks. 

Instead, Rakić proposes that alien life might be so radically different from anything we know that we would fail to recognize – or even perceive – it at all. 

After all, intelligence on Earth doesn’t always look like what we expect. An octopus could be dismissed as a spineless, slippery sack of organs, but we know they are immensely clever animals, even without a nervous system resembling our own.

Intricate networks of fungi, when examined closely, reveal a remarkable complexity that is easy to miss if you're not nerdishly aware. And few could have predicted that a box of silicon chips could one day give rise to something as sophisticated as artificial intelligence.

Rakić goes down the rabbit hole with the idea, arguing that some forms of alien existence might even go beyond human perception, existing in dimensions, forms, or timelines that our undetectable to our senses, our scientific equipment, and our wildest dreams. 

"The entities that have never been perceived by humans because of lasting human epistemological limitations may exist in dimensions humans are incapable of accessing. A significant number of humans believe that they are the most intelligent beings that have been encountered until now (i.e. encountered by humans). That is a highly biased anthropocentric assumption," Rakić writes.

He concludes by suggesting that we will only solve the Fermi paradox if we radically rethink our approach. We should stop, he argues, searching for flashing cities on distant exoplanets or faint signals from a distant galaxy and start appreciating the profound inadequacy of the human mind to fully grasp all the possibilities of the universe.

"The formulation of the Fermi paradox is actually too narrow. The paradox is indeed why humans have not perceived extraterrestrial life in a universe that is enormous, but the question is much broader: what may exist around humans that humans cannot perceive (‘around’ meaning both terrestrial, extraterrestrial in our universe, as well as extraterrestrial in other universes)? That is the key question," Rakić concludes.

"The Fermi paradox should not be solved in a manner resembling previous attempts at solving the paradox, but it should be addressed in line with what has been termed in this paper as the lasting human epistemological limitations solution. In fact, the paradox should be reformulated," he added. 

What do you think? Does Rakić’s argument add a fresh perspective, or does it feel a bit wishy-washy, leaving more questions than answers?