What If Humanity Is Being Quarantined? The Zoo Hypothesis

Are we alone in the universe… or are we being intentionally isolated from it?

In this episode of Entropy Rising, we dive into one of the most unsettling solutions to the Fermi Paradox: the Zoo Hypothesis. The idea is simple but disturbing. Advanced alien civilizations may already know humanity exists and are deliberately avoiding contact.

But why?

We explore the different versions of the theory, from civilizations observing us like animals in a cosmic nature documentary to galactic “prime directives” that prevent interference with developing species. We also discuss whether humanity is actually too dangerous, too primitive, or simply not advanced enough yet to join a larger galactic community.

Along the way we tackle:
• The Fermi Paradox and why the universe seems silent
• Whether humanity is unusually violent or just average
• If advanced civilizations could realistically hide from us
• Why a galactic quarantine might exist
• The connection between the Zoo Hypothesis and simulation theory
• Whether curiosity alone would eventually break the quarantine
• The terrifying possibility that aliens may already be watching humanity

Could Earth be an uncontacted tribe on a galactic scale? Or are we simply early in the history of intelligent life?

Transcript

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it could just be that, you know, we're, like, part of their National Geographic channel. Just checking. They watch us, And they're like, "Ah,""Observe the, the horrific humans as they blow up each other." So, so beautiful, but so deadly. They… things like that where they, they don't wanna interfere. They just wanna let things play out as they will, Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, a podcast all about discussing the possible futures that could exist and maybe those that couldn't exist. We really are open to exploring everything. I'm your host, Jacob, and I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Lucas. Lucas, you know I'm gonna ask it. How are you doing today? I'm great, Jake. Thank you. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm glad we recorded. There was a bit of a drama getting set up today. two hours before we were ready to go I lost power. Yeah. Just out of the blue. I was like, "Oh. Okay, cool." I don't know, and then it was supposed to keep going on until about an hour ago. Luckily it came back pretty quick. Yeah, they got us. So it was like two hours. Uh, the Starbucks up the road had power, so I grabbed a coffee. Since my espresso machine wasn't working. But, exciting day, and I'm glad we're recording. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So today we are discussing, Or I should say we are continuing to discuss the Fermi paradox. Now, the Fermi paradox, of course, we've discussed multiple times in the show in the past, and I think, we're gonna discuss multiple times going into the future. some of the topics we've touched on with the Fermi paradox are great filters, which, which is one of our more recent episodes. We've also done the dark forest theory, which is one of our founding episodes for the podcast. And, undoubtedly we're gonna explore more in the future. Mm-hmm. So today we're gonna be specifically diving into the zoo hypothesis as a solution for the Fermi paradox. Yes. And the zoo hypothesis is really interesting because it ties in closely with a lot of other, solutions. But the reason why this one stands out is it's mainly because aliens already see us, are observing us, and for some reason they intentionally don't want us to see them. Yeah, I think it's interesting because the way I think of the Fermi paradox, which of course I think many of our viewers know, is basically the question of where are all the aliens? You know, we look at our, our universe and just even our galaxy, we have billions, hundreds of billions of stars. Uh, recent data shows, and by recent I mean data we've had in the past 20 years or so, that every single star has at least one planet. Most of them have more than that. And you've really gotta ask yourself, why don't we see life out there? It seems like just numerically, that statistically the odds are there should be life, and that's the whole idea behind the Fermi paradox. And like you said, The zoo hypothesis offers a solution on why we don't see aliens, but it posits or it proposes that aliens are out there, we just don't see them, and we'll explain why it says that later. But I think that's a distinct difference between some of the other theories we've talked about- Like the Great Filters Theory, which takes the view that we don't see aliens because they don't exist, which the Great Filters Theory proposes because there's a lot of these filters that knock out civilizations before they can get there. Mm-hmm. So I guess in my head, I kind of have two different Fermi paradox, like, categories of Fermi paradox solution I think about. Yeah. It's, you know, basically rare life or rare intelligence on one hand, or life is common, but we don't detect it, uh, for whatever reason on the other hand. Mm. No, I mean, and I feel like a lot of people, um, categorize it that way as, as well, because it's like, okay, so there either have been aliens or there, there should be aliens, but there's a reason why there isn't, or there just aren't aliens out there. Yeah. I th- I mean, it makes sense. At least that's the framework I've always built up, so I think it makes sense other people have as well. Now, the zoo hypothesis I'm actually particularly interested in. full disclosure, when I first really started diving into this kind of idea for the podcast and, and science and futurism and stuff, I, I never really gave the zoo hypothesis much credence. Uh, I didn't think it was very probable, and, uh, personally, I didn't think it was very interesting. But I noticed as I was posting on threads and talking about the Fermi paradox, it seems to be the one that just comes up over and over and over and over again. People seem to really like the zoo hypothesis. A lot of people seem to believe it is at least probable or somewhat possible. Uh, so I think it'll be an interesting one to dive into. And I do have to say, uh, over the past year, almost year and a half of doing this podcast and the research I've done, I've kind of changed my mind on it to at least I think it's more interesting than I used to. Yeah. I was kind of in the same boat as you, because it just seemed kind of, like, like crazy for us to just be in, like, this bubble curated by aliens. and I, I didn't really ever give it a fair shake either. But I did a lot of research on it the past couple weeks, and there's actually a lot of different subcategories that fall under the zoo hypothesis and, that makes it a little bit more approachable, I feel like. Yeah, I think that's a good thing that you pointed out because the zoo hypothesis really is kind of an umbrella term, which seems to be the trend with a lot of these topics we cover. You try to cover one topic, and you find out it's really one broad topic and a million… just keeps, like, uh, going into a fractal thing. just keeps splitting and splitting. But yeah, the zoo hypothesis is, is a fairly broad umbrella that covers any situation where aliens exist, aliens have the ability to reach out to us and contact us, but for whatever reason they choose not to. And it gets its name because it envisions us almost like the animals in a zoo exhibit. The aliens have put us in this artificial habitat or this habitat that's meant to mimic the natural reality of the universe where there is no intelligent life out there that we can see, and they cut off contact with us. And, you know, they're observing us, they're watching us like you'd watch animals in a zoo, but they're not interacting with us. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. you have to think of it as, you know, and it could be for any multitude of reasons, but you have to think of it as, like, we could be endangered in their eyes, or, uh, we could seem fragile to them, or we could just not be ready yet, and they've just encapsulated us that they don't wanna mess with the way that we naturally evolve, almost like a, a self-testing of our civilization to see if we could be worthy of being enlightened. Yeah, that's where we start talking about the other variants of the zoo hypothesis. It doesn't necessarily have to be we're animals in a zoo. It could be more like the prime directive from Star Trek, where, like you said, they're monitoring us, they're waiting for us to hit some crucial milestone, and then they're gonna expose themselves to us, so to speak, and say, "Hey, welcome to the galactic community." Um, it could be a little bit more nefarious than that. It could be the case that maybe we're a science experiment. I've seen some people propose that if you have a universe or a galaxy where intelligent life is everywhere, you can't even look at a star without finding a civilization, then it's not unreasonable to think that maybe, uh, some advanced alien species would wanna run a science experiment to see what it looks like when a, an upstart civilization grows up thinking they're alone in the universe, since that might not have happened for a very long time. So there's a lot of different reasons you could have this happen, and I think that changes a lot of the connotation behind is it a good thing, is it a bad thing, and, uh, how possible it is. Yeah, no, it definitely does. It definitely does. And, and that, that's just, like, a few of the reasons why it could happen. Which, speaking of that, there are some assumptions that we kind of have to make for this Fermi paradox solution to even really be possible. Mm-hmm. Uh, it goes without saying we're making the assumption that life in the universe is fairly common. order for the Zoo Hypothesis to exist, you need at least one other civilization to exist near us a-and be quarantining us from the universe. So that is an obvious assumption that this Fermi paradox solution really needs. Yes, and then of course, the other assumption is them, you know, having a reason to want to do that to begin with. Like, which is what spawns all of these whys. Yes. you know, and all these different threads of this hypothesis. And that's an interesting one'cause we can actually dive into and kind of think about why that would be. So that's kind of what a lot of the episode's gonna be centered around. Of course, another, uh, assumption that we're kind of making when we're talking about the Zoo Hypothesis is you effectively need, uh, cheap and readily accessible space travel. I don't think you necessarily have to have FTL travel for this hypothesis to work. You could definitely do it the slow boat way, staying under the speed, uh, of light. But I do think this hypothesis works better, and a lot of the times I see people talking about this hypothesis, they tend to assume you have like galactic civilizations, like Star Trek, Star Wars, So it,, A basic assumption is that space travel has to be, very easy to do or at least, uh, reasonable for species to achieve. Otherwise, the, the solution is we don't see them because they don't travel the universe, right? Yeah. Yeah, of course. But we, we can work under that assumption, that, that these are naturally, um, well space-faring civilizations, which is why they've gotten to the point of being able to even come and dictate us as a planet that should be quarantined or, you know, spectated or researched to begin with. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's kind of interesting maybe to speculate on why a species would choose to take this approach and quarantine us. Um, there's a lot of different reasons we can postulate on and think about, but I'm just curious what are some of your favorites and, you know, what do you think about it? probably my, my top favorite It would probably be that they're waiting to see our development, uh, move forward and see how we progress because right now humanity in itself is a very aggressive, uh, civilization. We, we, we tend to not work well with others, even amongst our own species. So, it might be better for, especially if this is an alien race that is integrated with other alien races, um, throughout the galaxy, they might be like,"Well, maybe we give them another 100,000 years. See if they, if they evolve a little bit better, learn to create a coalition that, envelops their entire planet and play nice, and then they can come." Or, um, and it kind of ties into another one that I kind of think could be possible, is that they already have showed us how to contact them and go out. We just need to reach a technological level that'll bring us to that point to where we can then see that, uh, invitation and then act on it. that's, uh, kind of

the theme of 2001: 9:51

A Space Odyssey, right? Yes. They, they leave a monolith on the moon that you're only gonna be able to discover once you hit a certain milestone. Exactly. Because they, they could be sensing that, uh, at that point technologically, all civilizations have already reached this level of, cohesion. Yeah, I can see that. So going to your first point of humans are particularly, uh, nasty and brutal, right? I, I think this is one I see mirrored a lot, and I see it mirrored a lot in terms of, , when I talk about Fermi paradox, especially on threads, it's almost inevitable I get a comment of,"Why would aliens wanna talk to us? We're a horrible species." someone I think summed it up so eloquently is, the solar system is the, is where you roll up your windows and lock your door before you pass through it. So I think a lot of people share your sentiment there that, humans are particularly brutal, and that might be something that they're waiting to see and screen out, and I've certainly seen it in a lot of science fiction. I actually recently just read a book by Denise Taylor, that covers first contact and effectively makes the same argument that we're a bit, I guess, hot-headed or a, a bit, um, not monstrous, I think, but, um, ruthless. I don't know. Mm-hmm. I don't know if I fully agree with that because it's just tough. I, I don't expect us to be a particularly aggressive or savage civilization in the grand scheme of things. If aliens do exist, which I think they do somewhere, but if, if they are common, I really do think we'd be a rather average example of that. I know people, especially right now with what's all going on in the world, feel like we're a particularly brutal and awful species, but we have done a lot of great things, and the fact that we've pulled together so much, we've built a civilization, we haven't bombed ourselves into oblivion with nuclear weapons are all good signs. And it's not unreasonable, and I know we've talked about this in the past, but it's not unreasonable to expect that other species are gonna have a very similar- past. And I do like a theory, of course, that maybe there is a, a milestone that they're waiting for us to pass, whether that's a technological milestone, like reaching a, a certain, uh, planet, maybe leaving our own solar system, or maybe a cultural milestone. Uh, perhaps it's the case that, uh, you aren't considered worthy to be contacted as a species until you, uh, manage to not nuke yourself. You know, it could be, self-annihilation is a, a great filter that a lot of civilizations hit, so maybe they do wait to see if we do that. So I think that does kind of lend credence to it. But my personal belief is I'm a little hesitant to say that we're, you know, particularly evil or nasty. It could go either way, but I feel like we'll probably be fairly average on the aggression scale. Yeah. No, I, I, I can definitely see, see that point of view. I just feel like people, think that way just because of the turmoil we've been in, in the last 100 or so years. Absolutely. Not even 100 years. I mean, really our whole existence. Yeah. But we have a lot of good parts, too, and our technology, does also move forward at staggering rates. right? It is interesting to think, of course, that if life is extremely common, maybe you can't turn over a rock on a planet without finding some new civilization, uh, and you do have these galactic empires, they might not be inclined to go to every single planet, contact them, and then bring them up the, uh, the technological evolutionary ladder. There just might be so many of them that they say, "Eh, we'll let you figure it out, and if you do something notable we'll contact you," the same way we don't go and drag every uncontacted tribe out into New York City, right? They might just keep our distance, let them do their thing, and monitor and, they think it's important, interact. I don't know. That is possible. Yeah. It is. It definitely is. another likely, uh, reason why would be, uh, a quarantine type of situation where either they fear, uh, a deadly disease could eradicate our people, or more likely, they fear intervention would cause us to destroy ourselves. and by that it's kind of like thinking like, uh, imagine they come down and they ask to speak to the one who speaks for us all I have no idea who that is, and I, I don't think that it would be a kind debate on who gets to talk to the powerful alien overlords. I think that, uh, it would cause quite a bit of disarray and wars and violence amongst our people. Yeah, not to mention what that would do for religion. I think that would probably cause a lot of, uh, turmoil in a lot of different ways, and definitely seen that echoed a lot in, um, science fiction and just, you know, I don't think you need someone else to point it out to you that that could cause some issues. I do have, though, an issue with that one. Okay. Which, uh, fundamentally to me is that unless they just stumbled across us very recently, then I feel like that whole argument for quarantining us is kind of a moot point because if they discovered us 10,000 years ago, they could have just slowly introduced themselves to us… as we evolved as a species, and we've always known they were there since we were effectively a civilization, especially if you did it when we're, we were so young and didn't have the ability to, really cause mass destruction, right? So I feel like if they wanted to talk to us, unless that's just an extremely small happenstance that they just stumbled across us recently, uh, they would have the ability to just kind of weave themselves into our, our history. And I know some people might think that that is what happened, but, despite what The History Channel may suggest on certain TV shows, uh, it does not appear that they did do that. No, no. Um, but you know, you never know. But that is my main argument for that one is like, sure, if they just popped out of the sky today and were like, "Hey, We're here," that could cause some issues, but they, they could've done that a long time ago, and we could have built our civilization knowing that they were there, which I guess kind of leads me into the other idea of why they might do it, which is what you suggested, quarantine. I think you were thinking of it in a, a biological sense maybe, but also a cultural sense. It's very possible that they just wanted to observe how humans behaved in our natural habitat, and maybe they wanted to see how we evolved without intervention, and so that directly in of itself could be a reason not to contact us. And, that one's, A little harder to argue against because you're at that point trying to guess the, the motives of the, the alien species. And, very almost impossible to do, I would say, so I can't really argue against that one. Yeah, no, I mean, you make a good point there. It, It, it could just be that, you know, we're, like, part of their National Geographic channel. Just checking. They watch us, And they're like, "Ah,""Observe the, the horrific humans as they blow up each other." So, so beautiful, but so deadly. They… things like that where they, they don't wanna interfere. They just wanna let things play out as they will, and then if we get to a point to where we can ascend technologically enough to be able to spot them or, or see them, then so be it. Yeah. Which I guess kind of brings me into the second part of this episode that I really wanted to talk about, which is the logistics of actually remaining, uh, hidden from us because that's what they would ultimately have to do. Mm-hmm. And especially people who've watched or listened to our podcast for a while now, I think I've made a… especially in a lot of our space warfare episodes or space, uh, spaceships episodes, I've made the argument that there is no stealth in space. And so that really does beg the question of, okay, if there's no ste-stealth in space, and if we expect that we can be able to detect things like Dyson spheres and Dyson swarms, then how is it that, a species could hide themselves from us? Yeah, it's a lot to think about, and there's a lot of factors that go into that. the, the first one that everybody jumps to is, oh, our technology's just lower than theirs, and they have some kind of cloaking, which, um, our technology's getting pretty insane. But, like, within the next couple of decades, we should be able to detect the smallest semblances of single-celled life across thousands of light-years, right? Like, like we're talking insane distances that they would have to be sheltering life from us, um, with some kind of unknown technology. And this isn't to say that that's not possible. No, no, no, it definitely is possible, but it's going to be getting harder and harder, and it's going to get to a point to where we may stumble across a way to detect them eventually. Maybe that's the threshold they're waiting for. When it becomes too much effort then, uh, then it's worth to stay hidden. It's like,"All right, fine, you caught us." It definitely could be. But another reason why I feel like that is so difficult to deal with because imagine just, just our society, right? Not only are they banking on their technology never failing, a, a message never being sent accidentally our way, a radio signal never being released a- accidentally through a crack, but they're also banking on if there is a problematic reason, like no, protest, no martyrs, no, extraterrestrial scientist really craving the ability to come down and see us, no, no curiosity at all in us, which doesn't stand to reason if they've come this far, then they're obviously a curious race. They've, they've expanded that far, and they, they have had no rogue agents at all to come and approach our planet and make themselves be known. Because even with the fear of death, and I, I, I believe it was Isaac Arthur talked about this in, in his video. It was like, For, for you to be the one to have written on your tombstone, "I enlightened an entire civilization," that's not too bad of a way to go. No, it's not, and it's, it's a great argument to be made for the, issues with quarantine because, yes, we can acknowledge that they have much more advanced technology than us, and you could, very easily dismiss it and say, "A species that's millions of years more advanced than us technologically could easily hide themselves from us." And I concede, yeah, they probably could, but the, the issues you're bringing up are also true. It's is that they also have to convince the rest of the galactic community, uh, not to reach out to us as well. And even if there's only one civilization, I mean, you could easily imagine a, a space empire that's expanding across our, our galaxy, and maybe they encounter Earth and they say, "Okay, well, we'll leave this solar system to the hairless monkeys, and, uh, we'll leave, and we're gonna quarantine them and all that." and there's no other outside influence from other space empires. Maybe we're core in the, in the center of their empire. But scientists and activists and, uh, there's all kinds of reasons that people may decide that they wanna go out and, and contact this uncontacted tribe. And, uh, this is where it gets really tricky with, uh, with, with our job and the podcast because you kind of are assigning human motives to non-human entities. But I don't know, it's all we really can do. And I, and you made the argument about curiosity, and that's completely fair, and I know Isaac made the same argument. Um, and that's a, that's an assumption I always make too. If you have science, it seems like a very reasonable expectation that you're a curious species. So to think that nobody in your entire civilization, mind you, your civilization might be trillions, quadrillions of people, it doesn't take a very large subset of population to be able to put together an expedition, uh, to come and visit the planet or at the bare minimum, shoot a, a radio signal our way, especially if they believe they could save the whole civilization, if they could give the, the solution to climate change or something like that. And it really is just hard to think that, you said, out of what could be trillions of people, that there wouldn't be ones that are so opinionated that they would, Compel themselves to do that. I feel like opinion isn't, isn't a human thing. It, I feel like that's something, And, and curiosity, I feel like those would span into a, civilization that was able to reach that, that scale of power. but may- maybe we're wrong, right? Like, like Jake said, we, we put this human assumption on things, but, it just makes sense for how life is right now. Yeah, and it's the best we can do knowing what we know about the universe and, uh, with the only example of intelligent life that we really have, which is ourselves. Um, and it, you know, for this hypothesis, for the solution for the Fermi paradox to be true, I mean, it's a, a reasonable expectation that the civilization is at least somewhat ethical to the point that they haven't annihilated us for whatever reason, right? Like they, they decided to preserve us. Now, even if we are entertainment to them, maybe they're, Watching this very video and laughing at the stupid monkeys who haven't figured out, uh, that it's all a TV screen and we're on The Truman Show. Either way, they, you know, they decided not to annihilate us. Um, so we'll take that for what it is. And even if they're studying us for science, I'm sure, uh, they have a reason for that, and, uh, hopefully they don't, uh, bleach the petri dish when they're done with their experiment. Uh, but it does seem like for whatever reason they're preserving us. And even if they are an all-encompassing empire, uh, they left us our, our solar system and our planet. So, uh, it's not unreasonable to think that there, there might be some people in that civilization who would wanna reach out and do more Yeah, absolutely. And that, that, that does, um, also bring up an- another big thought, because the, the zoo theory technically ties into another big, um, theory that, that people have, which is, this could be simulated and, like, like by a larger empire behind, like, a bunch of computers, and we could be living in a simulation. That way it could be untainted, um, but it would still be, like, a simulation for a reason, to observe us and see the way that we would interact or progress over a sample of time, um, for whatever reason they're trying to figure out. Maybe we're actually an evil space-faring empire, and our enemies are simulating our origins to figure out if they can find weaknesses. It could be. Anything. Anything, right? Yeah. L- literally anything. And it's so interesting because you are technically in a zoo, you're just in a zoo of ones and zeros. Yeah, I mean, that's, and that's a whole other theory, the simulation hypothesis that we'll have to make a dedicated episode for. But yeah, you are right, That's, that's a different type of zoo we could be in. It doesn't necessarily have to be a physical planet in a universe. And it's also worth pointing out that they could simulate our existence in other ways. Uh, we might not even be where we think we are. They could very easily just put a screen up over our whole planet, encompass our planet with a dome effectively just needs to be a thin foil of, a TV screen, uh, which sounds impossible, but when you're talking about the scale of civilization here, Dyson Swarms and interstellar travel, it's pretty small potatoes. And it's not hard to imagine a civilization that advanced could spoof any signal coming out. Maybe when we sent Voyager out, once it, uh, passed a certain threshold, they just wrapped it up and continued sending us fake signals to mimic it. That could explain why we keep getting signals from it even though we think it should've been obsolete a long time ago. Sure. They're just like,"Hey, watch this. Boop." Wonder what happened to Artemis. Right? Maybe all, maybe they were all brainwashed. I don't know. Yeah. I can't wait to see the conspiracy theories on this video. Yeah. Especially on YouTube. But it's, you know, it's something that these civilizations could do. but you know, it kind of does bring the question, I guess to me, that is kind of the core of the problem, which is we can imagine how they might do it, but sometimes it's hard to really imagine why they would do it. I mean, sure, you may have a, a civilization out there, but what do they gain by hiding themselves from us other than the example I gave before of- They are studying us and they need a, a pristine sample. So sure, I can see that motivation, but I really think that's where things start to fall down after that because, people take it from, like, the Prime Directive from Star Trek right? But personally, I love Star Trek. I think the Prime Directive's stupid, and I think it would be more beneficial for a species to see the universe as it is, to, to measure and see, like, oh, what are these? Oh, wow, there might be civilizations out there other than us, and grow up with that reality versus it being sprung on them all at once, at least in my opinion. as the one who would be getting the opportunity to observe the universe as it is, I agree with that. But, um, there could be a multitude of reasons. I mean, even here on Earth, we have things misdirected and hidden from us all the time, by higher powers. So it stands to reason that even higher powers would have their reasons for wanting to hide things. Or maybe that is just a human condition, and we think that that's how it'd be because again, we're putting human logic onto them. There was, there was one idea I had that could answer that question. Okay. Just one, and I think you could probably come up with multiple, Sometimes even if you're not explicitly told how something works, just knowing that it's possible can fundamentally leapfrog, uh, technological progress. So a great example, a thought experiment if you will, if you could go back in time, uh, you might not know the science of electricity or how any of it works, but if you tell somebody, " Hey, this is a technology that's future," you could send them down that avenue much earlier, and if they know it's possible, they might be-- that civilization might be much more relentless in studying it, uh, or just in general being pointed in that direction might speed up process. Like, if you know something's possible, you're much more likely to pursue it. And so perhaps that could also be a strategy there where if we looked up in the universe and we saw ships moving faster than light, or we saw a phenomena that would help validate one model of physics over another, that could potentially leapfrog us in physics much faster than they would otherwise want. Maybe that could be a thing where they're trying to protect us. Maybe The pathway we'd be led down could destroy us if we aren't ready for it. Or maybe they're hiding it because they don't want us to be a competitor to them, and they don't want us to have a leg up. Uh, so that's one idea I potentially had for it. I think that that's, a good thought. Trying to protect us for sure. You know, like we try to create faster than light engines, and ninety percent of the time it collapses the world into a black hole. something like that. So they're just waiting until we reach a mental capacity to where they can actually explain the physics of it to us and then, you know, reveal themselves. Hopefully it's that one and not that they're just, they don't want a competitor on the, the world stage, so to speak. Yes. Well, you know, if that's the case, thanks for letting us live this long. Yeah, Right. But, If it makes you feel any more comfort, if they don't want a competitor, why would they let us live at all? That kind of goes into the dark forest theory. Yeah. Yeah, It all circles back around into itself. Yeah, I think that's everything I have to say about you. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a fun one. I do think it's interesting. one, one last thing to add before we close out the show is that when we're talking about the Fermi paradox, I have some tests, and one of them is, is this universalizable? A great example of this is some people propose a solution to the Fermi paradox is maybe civilizations just don't expand into space. Maybe humans are unique in our expansionist drive. Mm-hmm. That's not universalizable because even if that's true for ninety-nine point nine nine percent of species, it only takes one to expand for us to observe them, see them. It doesn't work. The zoo hypothesis does fall into this category. It is universalizable because you only need one species to decide to quarantine us and do it effectively enough we can't test out, or that no one else can penetrate it to solve the solution. So it does fit into that category. Absolutely. So with that being said, that's everything I have on, on the zoo hypothesis. Yeah., I definitely think that we went over some really interesting topics about it and, uh, you know, helped me kind of embrace it a little bit more. Well, if you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on your podcast platform of choice or of course, YouTube. We are in video form on there as well. Feel free to check us out if you wanna see what we look like. And also join us next week where we are gonna be talking about the future of food, from food production, agriculture, growing it on a planet, growing it in space. It's gonna be an interesting episode, uh, for what sounds like on the surface a boring topic, but food really is the cornerstone of civilization, so I think it'll spawn some interesting chats, and I'm looking forward to recording it. Yeah, me too. I think it's gonna be awesome. Absolutely. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.