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Fermi paradox

The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi blurted out, "But where is everybody?" (although the exact quote is uncertain).

There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox, such as suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare, that the lifetime of such civilizations is short, or that they exist but (for various reasons) humans see no evidence.

Chain of reasoning
The following are some of the facts and hypotheses that together serve to highlight the apparent contradiction:

 * There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun.
 * With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets in a circumstellar habitable zone.
 * Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the Sun. If Earth-like planets are typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.
 * Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step humans are investigating now.
 * Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.
 * Since many of the Sun-like stars are billions of years older than the Sun, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, or at least their probes.
 * However, there is no convincing evidence that this has happened.

History
Fermi was not the first to ask the question. An earlier implicit mention was by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in an unpublished manuscript from 1933. He noted "people deny the presence of intelligent beings on the planets of the universe" because "(i) if such beings exist they would have visited Earth, and (ii) if such civilizations existed then they would have given us some sign of their existence." This was not a paradox for others, who took this to imply the absence of extraterrestrial life. But it was one for him, since he believed in extraterrestrial life and the possibility of space travel. Therefore, he proposed what is now known as the zoo hypothesis and speculated that mankind is not yet ready for higher beings to contact us. In turn, Tsiolkovsky himself was not the first to discover the paradox, as shown by his reference to other people's reasons for not accepting the premise that extraterrestrial civilizations exist.

In 1975, Michael H. Hart published a detailed examination of the paradox, one of the first to do so. He argued that if intelligent extraterrestrials exist, and are capable of space travel, then the galaxy could have been colonized in a time much less than that of the age of the Earth. However, there is no observable evidence they have been here, which Hart called "Fact A".

Other names closely related to Fermi's question ("Where are they?") include the Great Silence,  and silentium universi (Latin for "silence of the universe"), though these only refer to one portion of the Fermi paradox, that humans see no evidence of other civilizations.

Original conversations
In the summer of 1950 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Enrico Fermi and co-workers Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York had one or several lunchtime conversations. In one, Fermi suddenly blurted out, "Where is everybody?" (Teller's letter), or "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?" (York's letter), or "But where is everybody?" (Konopinski's letter). Teller wrote, "The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that, in spite of Fermi's question coming out of the blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life."

In 1984 York wrote that Fermi "followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over." Teller remembers that not much came of this conversation "except perhaps a statement that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic center."

Fermi died of cancer in 1954. However, in letters to the three surviving men decades later in 1984, Dr. Eric Jones of Los Alamos was able to partially put the original conversation back together. He informed each of the men that he wished to include a reasonably accurate version or composite in the written proceedings he was putting together for a previously held conference entitled "Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience". Jones first sent a letter to Edward Teller which included a secondhand account from Hans Mark. Teller responded, and then Jones sent Teller's letter to Herbert York. York responded, and finally, Jones sent both Teller's and York's letters to Emil Konopinski who also responded. Furthermore, Konopinski was able to later identify a cartoon which Jones found as the one involved in the conversation and thereby help to settle the time period as being the summer of 1950.

Basis

The Fermi paradox is a conflict between the argument that scale and probability seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe, and the total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than on Earth.

The first aspect of the Fermi paradox is a function of the scale or the large numbers involved: there are an estimated 200–400 billion stars in the Milky Way (2–4 × 1011) and 70 sextillion (7×1022) in the observable universe. Even if intelligent life occurs on only a minuscule percentage of planets around these stars, there might still be a great number of extant civilizations, and if the percentage were high enough it would produce a significant number of extant civilizations in the Milky Way. This assumes the mediocrity principle, by which Earth is a typical planet.

The second aspect of the Fermi paradox is the argument of probability: given intelligent life's ability to overcome scarcity, and its tendency to colonize new habitats, it seems possible that at least some civilizations would be technologically advanced, seek out new resources in space, and colonize their star system and, subsequently, surrounding star systems. Since there is no significant evidence on Earth, or elsewhere in the known universe, of other intelligent life after 13.8 billion years of the universe's history, there is a conflict requiring a resolution. Some examples of possible resolutions are that intelligent life is rarer than is thought, that assumptions about the general development or behavior of intelligent species are flawed, or, more radically, that current scientific understanding of the nature of the universe itself is quite incomplete.

The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts found on Earth, or in the Solar System?". If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy. This is relatively brief on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the Sun, and since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale exploration of the galaxy could be possible by probes. These might leave detectable artifacts in the Solar System, such as old probes or evidence of mining activity, but none of these have been observed.

The second form of the question is "Why are there no signs of intelligence elsewhere in the universe?". This version does not assume interstellar travel, but includes other galaxies as well. For distant galaxies, travel times may well explain the lack of alien visits to Earth, but a sufficiently advanced civilization could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe. Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of human observation. It is unknown whether the paradox is stronger for the Milky Way galaxy or for the universe as a whole.

Drake equation
The theories and principles in the Drake equation are closely related to the Fermi paradox. The equation was formulated by Frank Drake in 1961 in an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved in the existence of alien life. The equation is presented as follows:

 * $$N = R_* \cdot f_\mathrm{p} \cdot n_\mathrm{e} \cdot f_\mathrm{l} \cdot f_\mathrm{i} \cdot f_\mathrm{c} \cdot L$$

Where $$N$$ is the number of technologically advanced civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy, and $$N$$ is asserted to be the product of
 * $$R_*$$, the rate of formation of stars in the galaxy;
 * $$f_p$$, the fraction of those stars with planetary systems;
 * $$n_e$$, the number of planets, per solar system, with an environment suitable for organic life;
 * $$f_l$$, the fraction of those suitable planets whereon organic life appears;
 * $$f_i$$, the fraction of life-bearing planets whereon intelligent life appears;
 * $$f_c$$, the fraction of civilizations that reach the technological level whereby detectable signals may be dispatched; and
 * $$L$$, the length of time that those civilizations dispatch their signals.

The fundamental problem is that the last four terms ($$f_l$$, $$f_i$$, $$f_c$$, and $$L$$) are entirely unknown, rendering statistical estimates impossible.

The Drake equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists, with wildly differing results. The first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which had 10 attendees including Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, speculated that the number of civilizations was roughly between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Conversely, Frank Tipler and John D. Barrow used pessimistic numbers and speculated that the average number of civilizations in a galaxy is much less than one. Almost all arguments involving the Drake equation suffer from the overconfidence effect, a common error of probabilistic reasoning about low-probability events, by guessing specific numbers for likelihoods of events whose mechanism is not yet understood, such as the likelihood of abiogenesis on an Earth-like planet, with current likelihood estimates varying over many hundreds of orders of magnitude. An analysis that takes into account some of the uncertainty associated with this lack of understanding has been carried out by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord, and suggests "a substantial ex ante probability of there being no other intelligent life in our observable universe".

Great Filter
The Great Filter, a concept introduced by Robin Hanson in 1996, represents whatever natural phenomena that would make it unlikely for life to evolve from inanimate matter to an advanced civilization. The most commonly agreed-upon low probability event is abiogenesis: a gradual process of increasing complexity of the first self-replicating molecules by a randomly occurring chemical process. Other proposed great filters are the emergence of eukaryotic cells or of meiosis or some of the steps involved in the evolution of a brain capable of complex logical deductions.

Astrobiologists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and William Bains, reviewing the history of life on Earth, including convergent evolution, concluded that transitions such as oxygenic photosynthesis, the eukaryotic cell, multicellularity, and tool-using intelligence are likely to occur on any Earth-like planet given enough time. They argue that the Great Filter may be abiogenesis, the rise of technological human-level intelligence, or an inability to settle other worlds because of self-destruction or a lack of resources.

Grabby Aliens
In 2021, the concepts of quiet, loud, and grabby aliens were introduced by Hanson et al. The possible "loud" aliens expand rapidly in a highly detectable way throughout the universe and endure, while "quiet" aliens are hard or impossible to detect and eventually disappear. "Grabby" aliens prevent the emergence of other civilizations in their sphere of influence. The authors argue that if loud civilizations are rare, as they appear to be, then quiet civilizations are also rare. The paper suggests that humanity's current stage of technological development is relatively early in the potential timeline of intelligent life in the universe, as loud aliens would otherwise be observable by astronomers.

Earlier in 2013, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong examined the potential for intelligent life to spread intergalactically throughout the universe and the implications for the Fermi Paradox. Their study suggests that with sufficient energy, intelligent civilizations could potentially colonize the entire Milky Way galaxy within a few million years, and spread to nearby galaxies in a timespan that is cosmologically brief. They conclude that intergalactic colonization appears possible with the resources of a single solar system and that intergalactic colonization is of comparable difficulty to interstellar colonization, and therefore the Fermi paradox is much sharper than commonly thought.

Empirical evidence
There are two parts of the Fermi paradox that rely on empirical evidence—that there are many potentially habitable planets, and that humans see no evidence of life. The first point, that many suitable planets exist, was an assumption in Fermi's time but is now supported by the discovery that exoplanets are common. Current models predict billions of habitable worlds in the Milky Way.

The second part of the paradox, that humans see no evidence of extraterrestrial life, is also an active field of scientific research. This includes both efforts to find any indication of life, and efforts specifically directed to finding intelligent life. These searches have been made since 1960, and several are ongoing.

Although astronomers do not usually search for extraterrestrials, they have observed phenomena that they could not immediately explain without positing an intelligent civilization as the source. For example, pulsars, when first discovered in 1967, were called little green men (LGM) because of the precise repetition of their pulses. In all cases, explanations with no need for intelligent life have been found for such observations, but the possibility of discovery remains. Proposed examples include asteroid mining that would change the appearance of debris disks around stars, or spectral lines from nuclear waste disposal in stars.

Explanations based on technosignatures, such as radio communications, have been presented.

Electromagnetic emissions
Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be a natural advance for technological species, theoretically creating effects that might be detected over interstellar distances. The careful searching for non-natural radio emissions from space may lead to the detection of alien civilizations. Sensitive alien observers of the Solar System, for example, would note unusually intense radio waves for a G2 star due to Earth's television and telecommunication broadcasts. In the absence of an apparent natural cause, alien observers might infer the existence of a terrestrial civilization. Such signals could be either "accidental" by-products of a civilization, or deliberate attempts to communicate, such as the Arecibo message. It is unclear whether "leakage", as opposed to a deliberate beacon, could be detected by an extraterrestrial civilization. The most sensitive radio telescopes on Earth,, would not be able to detect non-directional radio signals (such as broadband) even at a fraction of a light-year away, but other civilizations could hypothetically have much better equipment.

A number of astronomers and observatories have attempted and are attempting to detect such evidence, mostly through SETI organizations such as the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen. Several decades of SETI analysis have not revealed any unusually bright or meaningfully repetitive radio emissions.

Direct planetary observation
Exoplanet detection and classification is a very active sub-discipline in astronomy; the first candidate terrestrial planet discovered within a star's habitable zone was found in 2007. New refinements in exoplanet detection methods, and use of existing methods from space (such as the Kepler and TESS missions) are starting to detect and characterize Earth-size planets, to determine whether they are within the habitable zones of their stars. Such observational refinements may allow for a better estimation of how common these potentially habitable worlds are.

Conjectures about interstellar probes
The Hart-Tipler conjecture is a form of contraposition which states that because no interstellar probes have been detected, there likely is no other intelligent life in the universe, as such life should be expected to eventually create and launch such probes. Self-replicating probes could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as a million years. If even a single civilization in the Milky Way attempted this, such probes could spread throughout the entire galaxy. Another speculation for contact with an alien probe—one that would be trying to find human beings—is an alien Bracewell probe. Such a hypothetical device would be an autonomous space probe whose purpose is to seek out and communicate with alien civilizations (as opposed to von Neumann probes, which are usually described as purely exploratory). These were proposed as an alternative to carrying a slow speed-of-light dialogue between vastly distant neighbors. Rather than contending with the long delays a radio dialogue would suffer, a probe housing an artificial intelligence would seek out an alien civilization to carry on a close-range communication with the discovered civilization. The findings of such a probe would still have to be transmitted to the home civilization at light speed, but an information-gathering dialogue could be conducted in real time.

Direct exploration of the Solar System has yielded no evidence indicating a visit by aliens or their probes. Detailed exploration of areas of the Solar System where resources would be plentiful may yet produce evidence of alien exploration, though the entirety of the Solar System is vast and difficult to investigate. Attempts to signal, attract, or activate hypothetical Bracewell probes in Earth's vicinity have not succeeded.

Searches for stellar-scale artifacts
In 1959, Freeman Dyson observed that every developing human civilization constantly increases its energy consumption, and he conjectured that a civilization might try to harness a large part of the energy produced by a star. He proposed a hypothetical "Dyson sphere" as a possible means: a shell or cloud of objects enclosing a star to absorb and utilize as much radiant energy as possible. Such a feat of astroengineering would drastically alter the observed spectrum of the star involved, changing it at least partly from the normal emission lines of a natural stellar atmosphere to those of black-body radiation, probably with a peak in the infrared. Dyson speculated that advanced alien civilizations might be detected by examining the spectra of stars and searching for such an altered spectrum.

There have been some attempts to find evidence of the existence of Dyson spheres that would alter the spectra of their core stars. Direct observation of thousands of galaxies has shown no explicit evidence of artificial construction or modifications. In October 2015, there was some speculation that a dimming of light from star KIC 8462852, observed by the Kepler space telescope, could have been a result of Dyson sphere construction. However, in 2018, observations determined that the amount of dimming varied by the frequency of the light, pointing to dust, rather than an opaque object such as a Dyson sphere, as the culprit for causing the dimming.

Extraterrestrial life is rare or non-existent
Those who think that intelligent extraterrestrial life is (nearly) impossible argue that the conditions needed for the evolution of life—or at least the evolution of biological complexity—are rare or even unique to Earth. Under this assumption, called the rare Earth hypothesis, a rejection of the mediocrity principle, complex multicellular life is regarded as exceedingly unusual.

The rare Earth hypothesis argues that the evolution of biological complexity requires a host of fortuitous circumstances, such as a galactic habitable zone, a star and planet(s) having the requisite conditions, such as enough of a continuous habitable zone, the advantage of a giant guardian like Jupiter and a large moon, conditions needed to ensure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts. Perhaps most importantly, advanced life needs whatever it was that led to the transition of (some) prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells, sexual reproduction and the Cambrian explosion.

In his book Wonderful Life (1989), Stephen Jay Gould suggested that if the "tape of life" were rewound to the time of the Cambrian explosion, and one or two tweaks made, human beings most probably never would have evolved. Other thinkers such as Fontana, Buss, and Kauffman have written about the self-organizing properties of life.

Extraterrestrial intelligence is rare or non-existent
It is possible that even if complex life is common, intelligence (and consequently civilizations) is not. While there are remote sensing techniques that could perhaps detect life-bearing planets without relying on the signs of technology, none of them have any ability to tell if any detected life is intelligent. This is sometimes referred to as the "algae vs. alumnae" problem.

Charles Lineweaver states that when considering any extreme trait in an animal, intermediate stages do not necessarily produce "inevitable" outcomes. For example, large brains are no more "inevitable", or convergent, than are the long noses of animals such as aardvarks and elephants. As he points out, "dolphins have had ~20million years to build a radio telescope and have not done so". In addition, Rebecca Boyle points out that of all the species that have ever evolved in the history of life on the planet Earth, only one—human beings and only in the beginning stages—has ever become space-faring.

Periodic extinction by natural events
New life might commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets. On Earth, there have been numerous major extinction events that destroyed the majority of complex species alive at the time; the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs is the best known example. These are thought to have been caused by events such as impact from a large meteorite, massive volcanic eruptions, or astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts. It may be the case that such extinction events are common throughout the universe and periodically destroy intelligent life, or at least its civilizations, before the species is able to develop the technology to communicate with other intelligent species.

However, the chances of extinction by natural events may be very low on the scale of a civilization's lifetime. Based on an analysis of impact craters on Earth and the Moon, the average interval between impacts large enough to cause global consequences (like the Chicxulub impact) is estimated to be around 100 million years.

Intelligent alien species have not developed advanced technologies
It may be that while alien species with intelligence exist, they are primitive or have not reached the level of technological advancement necessary to communicate. Along with non-intelligent life, such civilizations would also be very difficult to detect. A trip using conventional rockets would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the nearest stars.

To skeptics, the fact that in the history of life on the Earth, only one species has developed a civilization to the point of being capable of spaceflight and radio technology, lends more credence to the idea that technologically advanced civilizations are rare in the universe.

Amedeo Balbi and Adam Frank propose the concept of an "oxygen bottleneck" for the emergence of technospheres. The "oxygen bottleneck" refers to the critical level of atmospheric oxygen necessary for fire and combustion. Earth's current atmospheric oxygen concentration is about 21%, but has been much lower in the past and may also be on many exoplanets. The authors argue that while the threshold of oxygen required for the existence of complex life and ecosystems is much lower, technological advancement, particularly that reliant on combustion, such as metal smelting and energy production, requires higher oxygen concentrations of around 18% or more. Thus, the presence of high levels of oxygen in a planet's atmosphere is not only a potential biosignature but also a critical factor in the emergence of detectable technological civilizations.

Another hypothesis in this category is the "Water World hypothesis". According to author and scientist David Brin: "it turns out that our Earth skates the very inner edge of our sun's continuously habitable—or 'Goldilocks'—zone. And Earth may be anomalous. It may be that because we are so close to our sun, we have an anomalously oxygen-rich atmosphere, and we have anomalously little ocean for a water world. In other words, 32 percent continental mass may be high among water worlds..." Brin continues, "In which case, the evolution of creatures like us, with hands and fire and all that sort of thing, may be rare in the galaxy. In which case, when we do build starships and head out there, perhaps we'll find lots and lots of life worlds, but they're all like Polynesia. We'll find lots and lots of intelligent lifeforms out there, but they're all dolphins, whales, squids, who could never build their own starships. What a perfect universe for us to be in, because nobody would be able to boss us around, and we'd get to be the voyagers, the Star Trek people, the starship builders, the policemen, and so on."

It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself
This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or spaceflight technology. The astrophysicist Sebastian von Hoerner stated that the progress of science and technology on Earth was driven by two factors—the struggle for domination and the desire for an easy life. The former potentially leads to complete destruction, while the latter may lead to biological or mental degeneration. Possible means of annihilation via major global issues, where global interconnectedness actually makes humanity more vulnerable than resilient, are many, including war, accidental environmental contamination or damage, the development of biotechnology, synthetic life like mirror life, resource depletion, climate change, or poorly-designed artificial intelligence. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in scientific hypothesizing.

In 1966, Sagan and Shklovskii speculated that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales. Self-annihilation may also be viewed in terms of thermodynamics: insofar as life is an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, Stephen Hawking's "external transmission" or interstellar communicative phase, where knowledge production and knowledge management is more important than transmission of information via evolution, may be the point at which the system becomes unstable and self-destructs. Here, Hawking emphasizes self-design of the human genome (transhumanism) or enhancement via machines (e.g., brain–computer interface) to enhance human intelligence and reduce aggression, without which he implies human civilization may be too stupid collectively to survive an increasingly unstable system. For instance, the development of technologies during the "external transmission" phase, such as weaponization of artificial general intelligence or antimatter, may not be met by concomitant increases in human ability to manage its own inventions. Consequently, disorder increases in the system: global governance may become increasingly destabilized, worsening humanity's ability to manage the possible means of annihilation listed above, resulting in global societal collapse.

A less theoretical example might be the resource-depletion issue on Polynesian islands, of which Easter Island is only the best known. David Brin points out that during the expansion phase from 1500 BC to 800 AD there were cycles of overpopulation followed by what might be called periodic cullings of adult males through war or ritual. He writes, "There are many stories of islands whose men were almost wiped out—sometimes by internal strife, and sometimes by invading males from other islands."

Using extinct civilizations such as Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as models, a study conducted in 2018 by Adam Frank et al. posited that climate change induced by "energy intensive" civilizations may prevent sustainability within such civilizations, thus explaining the paradoxical lack of evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Based on dynamical systems theory, the study examined how technological civilizations (exo-civilizations) consume resources and the feedback effects this consumption has on their planets and it's carrying capacity. According to Adam Frank "[t]he point is to recognize that driving climate change may be something generic. The laws of physics demand that any young population, building an energy-intensive civilization like ours, is going to have feedback on its planet. Seeing climate change in this cosmic context may give us better insight into what’s happening to us now and how to deal with it." Generalizing the Anthropocene, their model produces four different outcomes:

 * Die-off: A scenario where the population grows quickly, surpassing the planet’s carrying capacity, which leads to a peak followed by a rapid decline. The population eventually stabilizes at a much lower equilibrium level, allowing the planet to partially recover.
 * Sustainability: A scenario where civilizations successfully transition from high-impact resources (like fossil fuels) to sustainable ones (like solar energy) before significant environmental degradation occurs. This allows the civilization and planet to reach a stable equilibrium, avoiding catastrophic effects.
 * Collapse Without Resource Change: In this trajectory, the population and environmental degradation increase rapidly. The civilization does not switch to sustainable resources in time, leading to a total collapse where a tipping point is crossed and the population drops.
 * Collapse With Resource Change: Similar to the previous scenario, but in this case, the civilization attempts to transition to sustainable resources. However, the change comes too late, and the environmental damage is irreversible, still leading to the civilization’s collapse.

It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others
Another hypothesis is that an intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligent species as they appear, perhaps by using self-replicating probes. Science fiction writer Fred Saberhagen has explored this idea in his Berserker series, as has physicist Gregory Benford and, as well, science fiction writer Greg Bear in his The Forge of God novel, and later Liu Cixin in his The Three-Body Problem series.

A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives, greed, paranoia, or aggression. In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a threat. It has also been suggested that a successful alien species would be a superpredator, as are humans. Another possibility invokes the "tragedy of the commons" and the anthropic principle: the first lifeform to achieve interstellar travel will necessarily (even if unintentionally) prevent competitors from arising, and humans simply happen to be first.

Civilizations only broadcast detectable signals for a brief period of time
It may be that alien civilizations are detectable through their radio emissions for only a short time, reducing the likelihood of spotting them. The usual assumption is that civilizations outgrow radio through technological advancement. However, there could be other leakage such as that from microwaves used to transmit power from solar satellites to ground receivers. Regarding the first point, in a 2006 Sky & Telescope article, Seth Shostak wrote, "Moreover, radio leakage from a planet is only likely to get weaker as a civilization advances and its communications technology gets better. Earth itself is increasingly switching from broadcasts to leakage-free cables and fiber optics, and from primitive but obvious carrier-wave broadcasts to subtler, hard-to-recognize spread-spectrum transmissions."

More hypothetically, advanced alien civilizations may evolve beyond broadcasting at all in the electromagnetic spectrum and communicate by technologies not developed or used by mankind. Some scientists have hypothesized that advanced civilizations may send neutrino signals. If such signals exist, they could be detectable by neutrino detectors that are now under construction for other goals.

Alien life may be too incomprehensible

Another possibility is that human theoreticians have underestimated how much alien life might differ from that on Earth. Aliens may be psychologically unwilling to attempt to communicate with human beings. Perhaps human mathematics is parochial to Earth and not shared by other life, though others argue this can only apply to abstract math since the math associated with physics must be similar (in results, if not in methods).

In his 2009 book, SETI scientist Seth Shostak wrote, "Our experiments [such as plans to use drilling rigs on Mars] are still looking for the type of extraterrestrial that would have appealed to Percival Lowell [astronomer who believed he had observed canals on Mars]."

Physiology might also cause a communication barrier. Carl Sagan speculated that an alien species might have a thought process orders of magnitude slower (or faster) than that of humans. A message broadcast by that species might well seem like random background noise to humans, and therefore go undetected.

Paul Davies states that 500 years ago the very idea of a computer doing work merely by manipulating internal data may not have been viewed as a technology at all. He writes, "Might there be a still level[...] If so, this 'third level' would never be manifest through observations made at the informational level, still less the matter level. There is no vocabulary to describe the third level, but that doesn't mean it is non-existent, and we need to be open to the possibility that alien technology may operate at the third level, or maybe the fourth, fifth[...] levels."

Arthur C. Clarke hypothesized that "our technology must still be laughably primitive; we may well be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms, while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime". Another thought is that technological civilizations invariably experience a technological singularity and attain a post-biological character.

Colonization is not the cosmic norm
In response to Tipler's idea of self-replicating probes, Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "I must confess that I simply don't know how to react to such arguments. I have enough trouble predicting the plans and reactions of the people closest to me. I am usually baffled by the thoughts and accomplishments of humans in different cultures. I'll be damned if I can state with certainty what some extraterrestrial source of intelligence might do."

Alien species may have only settled part of the galaxy
According to a study by Frank et al., advanced civilizations may not colonize everything in the galaxy due to their potential adoption of steady states of expansion. This hypothesis suggests that civilizations might reach a stable pattern of expansion where they neither collapse nor aggressively spread throughout the galaxy. A February 2019 article in Popular Science states, "Sweeping across the Milky Way and establishing a unified galactic empire might be inevitable for a monolithic super-civilization, but most cultures are neither monolithic nor super—at least if our experience is any guide." Astrophysicist Adam Frank, along with co-authors such as astronomer Jason Wright, ran a variety of simulations in which they varied such factors as settlement lifespans, fractions of suitable planets, and recharge times between launches. They found many of their simulations seemingly resulted in a "third category" in which the Milky Way remains partially settled indefinitely. The abstract to their 2019 paper states, "These results break the link between Hart's famous 'Fact A' (no interstellar visitors on Earth now) and the conclusion that humans must, therefore, be the only technological civilization in the galaxy. Explicitly, our solutions admit situations where our current circumstances are consistent with an otherwise settled, steady-state galaxy."

An alternative scenario is that long-lived civilizations may only choose to colonize stars during closest approach. As low mass K- and M-type dwarfs are by far the most common types of main sequence stars in the Milky Way, they are more likely to pass close to existing civilizations. These stars have longer life spans, which may be preferred by such a civilization. Interstellar travel capability of 0.3 light years is theoretically sufficient to colonize all M-dwarfs in the galaxy within 2 billion years. If the travel capability is increased to 2 light years, then all K-dwarfs can be colonized in the same time frame.

Alien species may isolate themselves in virtual worlds
Avi Loeb suggests that one possible explanation for the Fermi paradox is virtual reality technology. Individuals of extraterrestrial civilizations may prefer to spend time in virtual worlds or metaverses that have different physical law constraints as opposed to focusing on colonizing planets. Nick Bostrom suggests that some advanced beings may divest themselves entirely of physical form, create massive artificial virtual environments, transfer themselves into these environments through mind uploading, and exist totally within virtual worlds, ignoring the external physical universe.

It may be that intelligent alien life develops an "increasing disinterest" in their outside world. Possibly any sufficiently advanced society will develop highly engaging media and entertainment well before the capacity for advanced space travel, with the rate of appeal of these social contrivances being destined, because of their inherent reduced complexity, to overtake any desire for complex, expensive endeavors such as space exploration and communication. Once any sufficiently advanced civilization becomes able to master its environment, and most of its physical needs are met through technology, various "social and entertainment technologies", including virtual reality, are postulated to become the primary drivers and motivations of that civilization.

Artificial intelligence may not expand
While artificial intelligence supplanting its creators could only deepen the Fermi paradox, such as through enabling the colonizing of the galaxy through self-replicating probes, it is also possible that after replacing its creators, artificial intelligence either doesn't expand or endure for a variety of reasons. Michael A. Garrett has suggested that biological civilizations may universally underestimate the speed that AI systems progress, and not react to it in time, thus making it a possible great filter. He also argues that this could make the longevity of advanced technological civilizations less than 200 years, thus explaining the great silence observed by SETI.

Lack of resources needed to physically spread throughout the galaxy
The ability of an alien culture to colonize other star systems is based on the idea that interstellar travel is technologically feasible. While the current understanding of physics rules out the possibility of faster-than-light travel, it appears that there are no major theoretical barriers to the construction of "slow" interstellar ships, even though the engineering required is considerably beyond present human capabilities. This idea underlies the concept of the Von Neumann probe and the Bracewell probe as a potential evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

It is possible, however, that present scientific knowledge cannot properly gauge the feasibility and costs of such interstellar colonization. Theoretical barriers may not yet be understood, and the resources needed may be so great as to make it unlikely that any civilization could afford to attempt it. Even if interstellar travel and colonization are possible, they may be difficult, leading to a colonization model based on percolation theory.

Colonization efforts may not occur as an unstoppable rush, but rather as an uneven tendency to "percolate" outwards, within an eventual slowing and termination of the effort given the enormous costs involved and the expectation that colonies will inevitably develop a culture and civilization of their own. Colonization may thus occur in "clusters", with large areas remaining uncolonized at any one time.

Information is cheaper to transmit than matter is to transfer
Video conferencing, such as Zoom, can result in dramatic decreases in costs compared to physical face-to-face meetings. This increased efficiency is partially due to reduced travel expenses, including airfare, accommodation, and meals. This increased efficiency translates into reduced environmental impact as well. A 2021 study found that replacing in-person business meetings with video conferencing can emit 66 times less greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent in-person gathering. This reduction is primarily attributed to decreased air travel and associated energy use.

If a human-capability machine intelligence is possible, and if it is possible to transfer such constructs over vast distances and rebuild them on a remote machine, then it might not make strong economic sense to travel the galaxy by spaceflight. Louis K. Scheffer calculates the cost of radio transmission of information across space to be cheaper than spaceflight by a factor of 108–1017. For a machine civilization, the costs of interstellar travel are therefore enormous compared to the more efficient option of sending computational signals across space to already established sites. After the first civilization has physically explored or colonized the galaxy, as well as sent such machines for easy exploration, then any subsequent civilizations, after having contacted the first, may find it cheaper, faster, and easier to explore the galaxy through intelligent mind transfers to the machines built by the first civilization. However, since a star system needs only one such remote machine, and the communication is most likely highly directed, transmitted at high-frequencies, and at a minimal power to be economical, such signals would be hard to detect from Earth.

By contrast, in economics the counter-intuitive Jevons paradox implies that higher productivity results in higher demand. In other words, increased economic efficiency results in increased economic growth. For example, increased renewable energy has the risk of not directly resulting in declining fossil fuel use, but rather additional economic growth as fossil fuels instead are directed to alternative uses. Thus, technological innovation makes human civilization more capable of higher levels of consumption, as opposed to its existing consumption being achieved more efficiently at a stable level.

Humans have not listened properly
There are some assumptions that underlie the SETI programs that may cause searchers to miss signals that are present. Extraterrestrials might, for example, transmit signals that have a very high or low data rate, or employ unconventional (in human terms) frequencies, which would make them hard to distinguish from background noise. Signals might be sent from non-main sequence star systems that humans search with lower priority; current programs assume that most alien life will be orbiting Sun-like stars.

The greatest challenge is the sheer size of the radio search needed to look for signals (effectively spanning the entire observable universe), the limited amount of resources committed to SETI, and the sensitivity of modern instruments. SETI estimates, for instance, that with a radio telescope as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory, Earth's television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable at distances up to 0.3 light-years, less than 1/10 the distance to the nearest star. A signal is much easier to detect if it consists of a deliberate, powerful transmission directed at Earth. Such signals could be detected at ranges of hundreds to tens of thousands of light-years distance. However, this means that detectors must be listening to an appropriate range of frequencies, and be in that region of space to which the beam is being sent. Many SETI searches assume that extraterrestrial civilizations will be broadcasting a deliberate signal, like the Arecibo message, in order to be found.

Thus, to detect alien civilizations through their radio emissions, Earth observers either need more sensitive instruments or must hope for fortunate circumstances: that the broadband radio emissions of alien radio technology are much stronger than humanity's own; that one of SETI's programs is listening to the correct frequencies from the right regions of space; or that aliens are deliberately sending focused transmissions in Earth's general direction.

Humans have not listened for long enough
Humanity's ability to detect intelligent extraterrestrial life has existed for only a very brief period—from 1937 onwards, if the invention of the radio telescope is taken as the dividing line—and Homo sapiens is a geologically recent species. The whole period of modern human existence to date is a very brief period on a cosmological scale, and radio transmissions have only been propagated since 1895. Thus, it remains possible that human beings have neither existed long enough nor made themselves sufficiently detectable to be found by extraterrestrial intelligence.

Intelligent life may be too far away
It may be that non-colonizing technologically capable alien civilizations exist, but that they are simply too far apart for meaningful two-way communication. Sebastian von Hoerner estimated the average duration of civilization at 6,500 years and the average distance between civilizations in the Milky Way at 1,000 light years. If two civilizations are separated by several thousand light-years, it is possible that one or both cultures may become extinct before meaningful dialogue can be established. Human searches may be able to detect their existence, but communication will remain impossible because of distance. It has been suggested that this problem might be ameliorated somewhat if contact and communication is made through a Bracewell probe. In this case at least one partner in the exchange may obtain meaningful information. Alternatively, a civilization may simply broadcast its knowledge, and leave it to the receiver to make what they may of it. This is similar to the transmission of information from ancient civilizations to the present, and humanity has undertaken similar activities like the Arecibo message, which could transfer information about Earth's intelligent species, even if it never yields a response or does not yield a response in time for humanity to receive it. It is possible that observational signatures of self-destroyed civilizations could be detected, depending on the destruction scenario and the timing of human observation relative to it.

A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet. However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that humanity is in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox.

Some SETI skeptics may also believe that humanity is at a very special point of time—specifically, a transitional period from no space-faring societies to one space-faring society, namely that of human beings.

Intelligent life may exist hidden from view
Planetary scientist Alan Stern put forward the idea that there could be a number of worlds with subsurface oceans (such as Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Enceladus). The surface would provide a large degree of protection from such things as cometary impacts and nearby supernovae, as well as creating a situation in which a much broader range of orbits are acceptable. Life, and potentially intelligence and civilization, could evolve. Stern states, "If they have technology, and let's say they're broadcasting, or they have city lights or whatever—we can't see it in any part of the spectrum, except maybe very-low-frequency [radio]."

Advanced civilizations may limit their search for life to technological signatures
If life is abundant in the universe but the cost of space travel is high, an advanced civilization may choose to focus its search not on signs of life in general, but on those of other advanced civilizations, and specifically on radio signals. Since humanity has only recently began to use radio communication, its signals may have yet to arrive to other inhabited planets, and if they have, probes from those planets may have yet to arrive on Earth.

Everyone is listening but no one is transmitting
Alien civilizations might be technically capable of contacting Earth, but could be only listening instead of transmitting. If all or most civilizations act in the same way, the galaxy could be full of civilizations eager for contact, but everyone is listening and no one is transmitting. This is the so-called SETI Paradox.

The only civilization known, humanity, does not explicitly transmit, except for a few small efforts. Even these efforts, and certainly any attempt to expand them, are controversial. It is not even clear humanity would respond to a detected signal—the official policy within the SETI community is that "[no] response to a signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place". However, given the possible impact of any reply, it may be very difficult to obtain any consensus on who would speak and what they would say.

Communication is dangerous
An alien civilization might feel it is too dangerous to communicate, either for humanity or for them. It is argued that when very different civilizations have met on Earth, the results have often been disastrous for one side or the other, and the same may well apply to interstellar contact. Even contact at a safe distance could lead to infection by computer code or even ideas themselves. Perhaps prudent civilizations actively hide not only from Earth but from everyone, out of fear of other civilizations.

Perhaps the Fermi paradox itself—or the alien equivalent of it—is the reason for any civilization to avoid contact with other civilizations, even if no other obstacles existed. From any one civilization's point of view, it would be unlikely for them to be the first ones to make first contact. Therefore, according to this reasoning, it is likely that previous civilizations faced fatal problems with first contact and doing so should be avoided. So perhaps every civilization keeps quiet because of the possibility that there is a real reason for others to do so.

In 1987, science fiction author Greg Bear explored this concept in his novel The Forge of God. In The Forge of God, humanity is likened to a baby crying in a hostile forest: "There once was an infant lost in the woods, crying its heart out, wondering why no one answered, drawing down the wolves." One of the characters explains, "We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten."

In Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest, the author proposes a literary explanation for the Fermi paradox in which many multiple alien civilizations exist, but are both silent and paranoid, destroying any nascent lifeforms loud enough to make themselves known. This is because any other intelligent life may represent a future threat. As a result, Liu's fictional universe contains a plethora of quiet civilizations which do not reveal themselves, as in a "dark forest"...filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost". This idea has come to be known as the dark forest hypothesis.

Earth is deliberately being avoided
The zoo hypothesis states that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists and does not contact life on Earth to allow for its natural evolution and development. A variation on the zoo hypothesis is the laboratory hypothesis, where humanity has been or is being subject to experiments, with Earth or the Solar System effectively serving as a laboratory. The zoo hypothesis may break down under the uniformity of motive flaw: all it takes is a single culture or civilization to decide to act contrary to the imperative within humanity's range of detection for it to be abrogated, and the probability of such a violation of hegemony increases with the number of civilizations, tending not towards a "Galactic Club" with a unified foreign policy with regard to life on Earth but multiple "Galactic Cliques". However, if artificial superintelligences dominate galactic life, and if it is true that such intelligences tend towards merged hegemonic behavior, then this would address the uniformity of motive flaw by dissuading rogue behavior.

Analysis of the inter-arrival times between civilizations in the galaxy based on common astrobiological assumptions suggests that the initial civilization would have a commanding lead over the later arrivals. As such, it may have established what has been termed the zoo hypothesis through force or as a galactic or universal norm and the resultant "paradox" by a cultural founder effect with or without the continued activity of the founder. Some colonization scenarios predict spherical expansion across star systems, with continued expansion coming from the systems just previously settled. It has been suggested that this would cause a strong selection process among the colonization front favoring cultural or biological adaptations to living in starships or space habitats. As a result, they may forgo living on planets. This may result in the destruction of terrestrial planets in these systems for use as building materials, thus preventing the development of life on those worlds. Or, they may have an ethic of protection for "nursery worlds", and protect them.

It is possible that a civilization advanced enough to travel between solar systems could be actively visiting or observing Earth while remaining undetected or unrecognized. Following this logic, and building on arguments that other proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox may be implausible, Ian Crawford and Dirk Schulze-Makuch have argued that technological civilisations are either very rare in the Galaxy or are deliberately hiding from us.

Earth is deliberately being isolated
A related idea to the zoo hypothesis is that, beyond a certain distance, the perceived universe is a simulated reality. The planetarium hypothesis speculates that beings may have created this simulation so that the universe appears to be empty of other life.

Alien life is already here, unacknowledged
A significant fraction of the population believes that at least some UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are spacecraft piloted by aliens. While most of these are unrecognized or mistaken interpretations of mundane phenomena, some occurrences remain puzzling even after investigation. The consensus scientific view is that although they may be unexplained, they do not rise to the level of convincing evidence.

Similarly, it is theoretically possible that SETI groups are not reporting positive detections, or governments have been blocking signals or suppressing publication. This response might be attributed to security or economic interests from the potential use of advanced extraterrestrial technology. It has been suggested that the detection of an extraterrestrial radio signal or technology could well be the most highly secret information that exists. Claims that this has already happened are common in the popular press, but the scientists involved report the opposite experience—the press becomes informed and interested in a potential detection even before a signal can be confirmed.

Regarding the idea that aliens are in secret contact with governments, David Brin writes, "Aversion to an idea, simply because of its long association with crackpots, gives crackpots altogether too much influence."

title: Fermi paradox


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Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is a tendency among certain groups and individuals that is characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, along with a strong belief in the importance of distinguishing one's ingroup and outgroup, which leads to an emphasis on some conception of "purity", and a desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. The term is usually used in the context of religion to indicate an unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs (the "fundamentals").

The term "fundamentalism" is generally regarded by scholars of religion as referring to a largely modern religious phenomenon which, while itself a reinterpretation of religion as defined by the parameters of modernism, reifies religion in reaction against modernist, secularist, liberal and ecumenical tendencies developing in religion and society in general that it perceives to be foreign to a particular religious tradition. Depending upon the context, the label "fundamentalism" can be a pejorative rather than a neutral characterization, similar to the ways that calling political perspectives "right-wing" or "left-wing" can have negative connotations.

Buddhism
Buddhist fundamentalism has targeted other religious and ethnic groups, as in Myanmar. A Buddhist-dominated country, Myanmar has seen tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2013 Burma anti-Muslim riots (possibly instigated by hardline groups such as the 969 Movement). as well as during actions which are associated with the Rohingya genocide (2016 onwards).

Buddhist fundamentalism also features in Sri Lanka. Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka has seen recent tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka and in the course of the 2018 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka, allegedly instigated by hardline groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena.

Historic and contemporary examples of Buddhist fundamentalism occur in each of the three main branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. In addition to the above examples of fundamentalism in Theravada-dominated societies, the reification of a protector deity, Dorje Shugden, by 19th-century Tibetan lama Pabongkhapa could be seen as an example of fundamentalism in the Vajrayana tradition. Dorje Shugden was a key tool in Pabongkhapa's persecution of the flourishing Rimé movement, an ecumenical movement which fused the teachings of the Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma, in response to the dominance of the Gelug school. While Pabongkhapa had an initially inclusive view early in his life, he received a number of signs that he had displeased Dorje Shugden by receiving teachings from non-Gelug schools, and thus initiated a revival movement that opposed the mixing of non-Gelug practices by Gelug practitioners. The main function of the deity was presented as "the protection of the Ge-luk tradition through violent means, even including the killing of its enemies." Crucially, however, these "‘enemies’ of the Gelug refers less to the members of rival schools than to members of the Gelug tradition ‘who mix Dzong-ka-ba’s tradition with elements coming from other traditions, particularly the Nying-ma Dzok-chen’."

In Japan, a prominent example has been the practice among some members of the Mahayana Nichiren sect of shakubuku – a method of proselytizing which involves the strident condemnation of other sects as deficient or evil.

Christianity
George Marsden has defined Christian fundamentalism as the demand for strict adherence to certain theological doctrines, in opposition to Modernist theology. Its supporters originally coined the term in order to describe what they claimed were five specific classic theological beliefs of Christianity, and the coinage of the term led to the development of a Christian fundamentalist movement within the Protestant community of the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement's purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of liberal theology and higher criticism.

The concept of "fundamentalism" has roots in the Niagara Bible Conferences which were held annually between 1878 and 1897. During those conferences, the tenets widely considered to be fundamental Christian belief were identified.

"Fundamentalism" was prefigured by The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a collection of twelve pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915 by brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart. It is widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism.

In 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church identified what became known as the five fundamentals:
 * Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this
 * Virgin birth of Jesus
 * Belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin
 * Bodily resurrection of Jesus
 * Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

In 1920, the word "fundamentalist" was first used in print by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of The Watchman Examiner, a Baptist newspaper. Laws proposed that those Christians who were fighting for the fundamentals of the faith should be called "fundamentalists".

Theological conservatives who rallied around the five fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists". They rejected the existence of commonalities with theologically related religious traditions, such as the grouping of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into one Abrahamic family of religions. By contrast, while Evangelical groups (such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) typically agree with the "fundamentals" as they are expressed in The Fundamentals, they are often willing to participate in events with religious groups that do not hold to the "essential" doctrines.

Hinduism
The existence of fundamentalism in Hinduism is a complex and contradictory phenomenon. While some would argue that certain aspects of Gaudiya Vaishnavism manifest fundamentalist tendencies, these tendencies are more clearly displayed in Hindutva, the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India today, and an increasingly powerful and influential voice within the religion. Hinduism includes a diversity of ideas on spirituality and traditions, but has no ecclesiastical order, no unquestionable religious authorities, no governing body, no prophet(s) nor any binding holy book; Hindus can choose to be polytheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, pandeistic, henotheistic, monotheistic, monistic, agnostic, atheistic or humanist. According to Doniger, "ideas about all the major issues of faith and lifestyle – vegetarianism, nonviolence, belief in rebirth, even caste – are subjects of debate, not dogma."

Some would argue that, because of the wide range of traditions and ideas covered by the term Hinduism, a lack of theological 'fundamentals' means that a dogmatic 'religious fundamentalism' per se is hard to find. Others point to the recent rise of Hindu nationalism in India as evidence to the contrary. The religion "defies our desire to define and categorize it." In India, the term “dharma” is preferred, which is broader than the Western term “religion.”

Hence, certain scholars argue that Hinduism lacks dogma and thus a specific notion of "fundamentalism," while other scholars identify several politically active Hindu movements as part of a "Hindu fundamentalist family."

Islam
Fundamentalism within Islam goes back to the early history of Islam in the 7th century, to the time of the Kharijites. From their essentially political position, they developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Shia and Sunni Muslims. The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to takfir, whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death.

The Shia and Sunni religious conflicts since the 7th century created an opening for radical ideologues, such as Ali Shariati (1933–77), to merge social revolution with Islamic fundamentalism, as exemplified by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Islamic fundamentalism has appeared in many countries; the Salafi-Wahhabi version is promoted worldwide and financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan.

The Iran hostage crisis of 1979–80 marked a major turning point in the use of the term "fundamentalism". The media, in an attempt to explain the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution to a Western audience described it as a "fundamentalist version of Islam" by way of analogy to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the U.S. Thus was born the term Islamic fundamentalist, which became a common use of the term in following years.

Judaism
Jewish fundamentalism has been used to characterize militant religious Zionism, and both Ashkenazi and Sephardic versions of Haredi Judaism. Ian S. Lustik has characterized "Jewish fundamentalism" as "an ultranationalist, eschatologically based, irredentist ideology".

New Atheism
The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Critics have described New Atheism as "secular fundamentalism".

Politics
In modern politics, fundamentalism has been associated with right-wing conservative ideology, especially social conservatism. Social conservatives often support policies in line with religious fundamentalism, such as support for school prayer and opposition to LGBT rights and abortion. Conversely, secularism has been associated with left-wing or liberal ideology, as it takes the opposite stance to said policies.

Political usage of the term "fundamentalism" has been criticized. It has been used by political groups to berate opponents, using the term flexibly depending on their political interests. According to Judith Nagata, a professor of Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore, "The Afghan mujahiddin, locked in combat with the Soviet enemy in the 1980s, could be praised as 'freedom fighters' by their American backers at the time, while the present Taliban, viewed, among other things, as protectors of American enemy Osama bin Laden, are unequivocally 'fundamentalist'."

"Fundamentalist" has been used pejoratively to refer to philosophies perceived as literal-minded or carrying a pretense of being the sole source of objective truth, regardless of whether it is usually called a religion. For instance, the Archbishop of Wales has criticized "atheistic fundamentalism" broadly  and said "Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous". He also said, "the new fundamentalism of our age ... leads to the language of expulsion and exclusivity, of extremism and polarisation, and the claim that, because God is on our side, he is not on yours." He claimed it led to situations such as councils calling Christmas "Winterval", schools refusing to put on nativity plays and crosses being removed from chapels. Others have countered that some of these attacks on Christmas are urban legends, not all schools do nativity plays because they choose to perform other traditional plays like A Christmas Carol or "The Snow Queen" and, because of rising tensions between various religions, opening up public spaces to alternate displays rather than the Nativity scene is an attempt to keep government religion-neutral.

In The New Inquisition, Robert Anton Wilson lampoons the members of skeptical organizations such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal as fundamentalist materialists, alleging that they dogmatically dismiss any evidence that conflicts with materialism as hallucination or fraud.

In France, during a protestation march against the imposition of restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in state-run schools, a banner labeled the ban as "secular fundamentalism". In the United States, private or cultural intolerance of women wearing the hijab (Islamic headcovering) and political activism by Muslims also has been labeled "secular fundamentalism".

The term "fundamentalism" is sometimes applied to signify a counter-cultural fidelity to a principle or set of principles, as in the pejorative term "market fundamentalism", used to imply exaggerated religious-like faith in the ability of unfettered laissez-faire or free-market capitalist economic views or policies to solve economic and social problems. According to economist John Quiggin, the standard features of "economic fundamentalist rhetoric" are "dogmatic" assertions and the claim that anyone who holds contrary views is not a real economist. Retired professor in religious studies Roderick Hindery lists positive qualities attributed to political, economic, or other forms of cultural fundamentalism, including "vitality, enthusiasm, willingness to back up words with actions, and the avoidance of facile compromise" as well as negative aspects such as psychological attitudes, occasionally elitist and pessimistic perspectives, and in some cases literalism.

Criticism
A criticism by Elliot N. Dorff: "In order to carry out the fundamentalist program in practice, one would need a perfect understanding of the ancient language of the original text, if indeed the true text can be discerned from among variants. Furthermore, human beings are the ones who transmit this understanding between generations. Even if one wanted to follow the literal word of God, the need for people first to understand that word necessitates human interpretation. Through that process human fallibility is inextricably mixed into the very meaning of the divine word. As a result, it is impossible to follow the indisputable word of God; one can only achieve a human understanding of God's will."

Howard Thurman was interviewed in the late 1970s for a BBC feature on religion. He told the interviewer: "I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. Meanwhile, religious experience goes on experiencing, so that by the time I get my dogma stated so that I can think about it, the religious experience becomes an object of thought."

Influential criticisms of fundamentalism include James Barr's books on Christian fundamentalism and Bassam Tibi's analysis of Islamic fundamentalism.

A study at the University of Edinburgh found that of its six measured dimensions of religiosity, "lower intelligence is most associated with higher levels of fundamentalism."

Use as a label
The Associated Press' AP Stylebook recommends that the term fundamentalist not be used for any group that does not apply the term to itself. Many scholars have adopted a similar position. Other scholars, however, use the term in the broader descriptive sense to refer to various groups in various religious traditions including those groups that would object to being classified as fundamentalists, such as in the Fundamentalism Project.

Tex Sample asserts that it is a mistake to refer to a Muslim, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalist. Rather, a fundamentalist's fundamentalism is their primary concern, over and above other denominational or faith considerations.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fundamentalism


text:
Talk:Fruitarianism

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 February 2019 and 3 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lostxxjustina.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

dietary veganism
I see the dietary veganism link links directly to veganism & I wonder about this being placed right at the top. Before I even start looking for references, it is my opinion that fruitarianism has entirely separate roots from veganism, & is devoid of any animal rights/welfare element and that, historically, it was entirely a health thing perhaps with Biblical roots (e.g. the whole back to eden or fake Essene thing) or at least spiritual roots, e.g. the idea of prana.

Was there once a dietary vegan page? --Danny Mamby (talk) 08:43, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Veganism started as a diet, it only later became a philosophy. It's now defined by many modern activists as strictly a philosophy but this is irrelevant to this article. The veganism article states it is both a diet and a philosophy. So there is no problem in linking to dietary veganism which redirects there. Psychologist Guy (talk) 11:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

 * Do you have a reference and date for that? --Danny Mamby (talk) 12:45, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Removal of fad diet
Danny Mamby can you explain why you are removing the "fad diet" wording and category? This is obviously a POV because we have many reliable sources describing fruitarianism as a fad diet. Psychologist Guy (talk) 11:57, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Firstly, the reference does not say it is a fad diet (see update according to what it does say). Secondly, "fad" is not a scientific or academic valid term. It is obviously just a culturally bound NPOV slur in itself.

However, the reference given defines fad as “a scheme of eating that enjoys temporary and sometimes enthusiastic popularity. Usually created by one person or the product of a religious movement, these diets are meant to improve the practitioners’ health, vitality, and appearance" which raises two further problems with it. How long is a "temporary and sometimes enthusiastic popularity"?

Please allow me to state that I do not follow a fruitarian diet, so I am going to rebuff any accusation that I am being "POV", I just believe in a fair & objective representation which ramming "fad" at the top of an article does not allow.

The given source does not have a chapter on fruitarians, and so I suspect you are engaging in some original research or synthesis here (it does have a section on rawfoodism, but that is a difference topic). It does however mention it is practise is over 100 years ago and, indeed, we know from other sources that it goes way back in antiquity 1,000s of years, arguably until it was one of hominids' primary or seasonal diets. So how long does it take until something is not a fad?

Then, if you do a search on what it refers to as "fads" (that were once fads but became part of the mainstream), you'd have to be tagging half the food articles on the Wikipedia; Irish coffee, chipped beef, chaffing dish, terrapins, juice bars, chop sued, wine coolers, peanut butter etc.

Lastly, it's little more than just a cultural prejudice on two levels. Racial, e.g. eating sausages and bacon for breakfast might be "normal" where you live but to an Indian they would be a fad, and professional, e.g. on behalf of orthodox western medicine or nutrition, therefore we need to weigh up the various references and navigate a neutral path between them. --Danny Mamby (talk) 12:24, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

 * You are wrong, firstly fad diet is just the name for a pseudoscientific diet, i.e. a diet which promotes unreasonable or pseudoscientific health claims. Others terms for fad diets include food cultism or nutritional quackery. Mainstream nutritional sources and food encyclopedias list fruitarianism as a fad diet. See for example, Ashraf, Hea-Ran L. Diets, Fad. In Andrew F. Smith. (2013). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Volume 1. which has a paragraph on fruitarianism and is the very first source on the article. The whole idea of fruitarianism is eccentric, strange and quackery it is not a "normal" eating habit and yes some religious cults have adopted fruitarianism. People have died on the fruitarian diet including kids, it is bizarre that you want to characterise this as a normal regular diet and requesting for fad diet to be removed. Any qualified dietitian would tell you fruitarianism is straight up quackery. Psychologist Guy (talk) 18:59, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

 * While I noted fruitarianism wasn't specifically called a fad in the reference, you didn't respond to my question about all the other foods and diets that are specifically called a fad in it.

 * It can't be "pseudoscientific" because it doesn't make any scientific claims. It also doesn't fit in with "fads" simply because it has lasted too long. It dates back 1,000s of years. It's a sort of fast or, as the references states, aceticism. When did I ever represent it as "a normal regular diet" whatever that might be (& to whom)?

 * Millions die through eating a Western pattern diet, does that make it a fad or quackery?

 * Look, it's really quite simple. For the most part, terms like "fad", "quackery" or "pseudoscience" are just a sort of priggish reactionaryism not just the unorthodox, but to anything outside of a narrow, Western cultural norm. As at term, it lacks an accurate meaning and is unnecessarily prejudicial. What undercuts the credibility of the source, and establishes its prejudicial nature, is where the authors refer to veganism as "an ascetic form of vegetarianism".

 * The reference given only defines a fad diet as “a scheme of eating that enjoys temporary sometimes enthusiastic popularity”, dating faddism to the 1830s and William Sylvester Graham.

 * What I've done is reflect what the reference actually says & which is also far more helpful and accurate. --Danny Mamby (talk) 19:04, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * - your discussion above and your edit warring in the article are reflections of your opinion which is not supported by WP:SCIRS sources or by other editors here. The talk page is for building consensus on a disputed fact or definition, WP:CON. Rather than edit warring, wait for the input and discussion by others. Zefr (talk) 19:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

 * Your intervention would have a lot more credibility if it was not accompanied by complete reversion of obviously beneficial contributions with such an insulting summary. By all means, respond to what I have pointed out about what the actually reference gives says. To be quite frank, I don't believe anyone else has actually read it in its entirety. So perhaps you are the one who should stop edit warring and add something of benefit to the topic instead.
 * As far as I can see, you have added nothing of any benefit whatsoever. Thank you. --Danny Mamby (talk) 19:49, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Psychologist Guy has presented a credible case and sources. You are defending a weak opinion with equally weak sources or blogs. The article before your edits was adequate to define this narrow fad diet. Zefr (talk) 19:58, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That is an absolutely dishonest statement. I have not included one blog source whatsoever. I am referring to and using precisely the same reference that Psychologist Guy is. Have you actually read it? I think not because if you had, you'd recognize the quote I am using from it.--Danny Mamby (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * , A gentle reminder not to use phrasing such as "poor writing" in edit summaries that could be construed as rude or uncivil. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. If you look closely at their reversions, you'll also see it is Zefr who is restoring incredibly poor quality blog references but yet accusing me for doing so in their summaries, when I actually removed them. I hope that is enough for others to see what is going on here. --Danny Mamby (talk) 20:43, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The page was locked for no reason and now I cannot get on to edit it, please unlock. Mamby Danny (talk) 16:59, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The page is protected because you are block-evading. Please consider working on one of the many other articles or topics on Wikipedia in need of help from editors. This particular dispute has settled with consensus. Pyrrho the Skeptic (talk) 17:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Missing content drying and minimal cooking
I've tried to clean up some of the content, and I think there are far more important improvements to be making than arguing over a single NPOV word. One element that I have seen and is missing is the adoption of drying, freeze drying, or sun cooking by some fruitarians. I don't know if it is the same as with raw fooders who permit cooking up to a specific temperature.

Does anyone care to find any references to it. --Danny Mamby (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

 * I doubt there are any reliable references that mention this. But you are correct because in the primary literature I have seen fruitarians mention sun cooking. For example Arnold Ehret, Otto Abramowski and many fruitarians in the past practiced it as have some modern fruitarians like Douglas Graham but no reliable scholarly secondary sources have picked up on this so it is unlikely this sort of information will end up on the article. Psychologist Guy (talk) 19:27, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Leafy greens and vegetables missing
A fruitarain diet consists primarily of fruits, but leafy greens such as lettuce and celery are quite important in the diet for minerals, proteins and certain vitamins. Aviyaht (talk) 13:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Zhanna Samsonova
Zhanna Samsonova may have died because of her fruitarian diet. The official cause of death is not yet public, but I'll leave this as a note so someone can check back later. CarlFromVienna (talk) 05:49, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Fruitarianism


text:
Show Me Love (film)

Show Me Love (Fucking Åmål) is a 1998 Swedish romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Lukas Moodysson in his feature-length directorial debut. It stars Rebecka Liljeberg and Alexandra Dahlström as two seemingly disparate teenage girls who begin a tentative romantic relationship. The film was released theatrically in Sweden on 23 October 1998, and premiered internationally at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

It received an overwhelmingly positive reception and won four Guldbagge Awards (Sweden's official film awards) at the 1999 ceremony. Its international awards include the Teddy Award at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival, and the Special Jury Prize at the 34th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 71st Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.

The Swedish title refers to the small town of Åmål in Västra Götaland County, western Sweden. However, only a few scenes were filmed in Åmål, and they were not included in the final product. Primary filming took place in the nearby town of Trollhättan, the location of producing company Film i Väst's studios.

Plot
Two girls, Agnes and Elin, attend school in the small town of Åmål, Sweden. Elin is outgoing and popular but finds her life unsatisfying and dull. Agnes, by contrast, has no real friends and is constantly depressed. Agnes is in love with Elin but cannot find any way to express it.

Agnes's parents worry about their daughter's reclusive life and try to be reassuring. Her mother decides, against Agnes's will, to throw a 16th birthday party for her. Agnes is afraid no one will come. Viktoria, a girl in a wheelchair, shows up and Agnes shouts at her in front of her parents, telling her they are friends only because no one else will talk to them. Agnes, overcome with anger and depression, goes to her room and cries into her pillow shouting that she wishes she were dead, while her father tries to soothe her. Viktoria leaves and Agnes's family eats the food made for the party.

Elin arrives at Agnes's house, mainly as an excuse to avoid going to another party, where there will be a boy (Johan, played by Mathias Rust) she wants to avoid. Elin's older sister, Jessica, who comes with her, dares her to kiss Agnes, who is rumoured to be a lesbian. Elin fulfills the dare and then runs out with Jessica, only to soon feel guilty for having humiliated Agnes.

After becoming drunk at the other party, Elin gets sick and throws up. Johan tries to help her and ends up professing his love to her. Elin leaves Johan and the party, only to return to Agnes's house to apologize for how she acted earlier. In doing so, Elin stops Agnes from cutting herself. She even manages to persuade Agnes to return with her to the other party. On the way, Elin shares her real feelings about being trapped in Åmål. She asks Agnes about being a lesbian and believes that their problems could be solved by leaving Åmål and going to Stockholm. On impulse, Elin persuades Agnes to hitchhike to Stockholm, which is a five-hour journey by car. They find a driver who agrees to take them, believing them to be sisters who are visiting their grandmother. While sitting in the back seat, they have their first real kiss. The driver sees them and, shocked at the behaviour of the two 'sisters', orders them to leave the car.

Elin discovers that she is attracted to Agnes but is afraid to admit it. She proceeds to ignore Agnes and refuses to talk to her. Elin's sister Jessica sees that she is in love and pushes her to figure out who it is. To cover the fact that she is in love with Agnes, Elin lies, pretending to be in love with Johan, and loses her virginity during a short-lived relationship with him. Elin eventually admits her feelings, when, after a climactic scene in a school bathroom, they are forced to 'out' their relationship to the school.

The film ends with Elin and Agnes sitting in Elin's bedroom drinking chocolate milk. Elin explains that she often adds too much chocolate until her milk is nearly black. She must fill another glass with milk and mix it and that her sister Jessica often gets mad that she finishes the chocolate. Elin has the last word saying "It makes a lot of chocolate milk. But that doesn't matter".

Cast

 * Alexandra Dahlström as Elin Olsson
 * Rebecka Liljeberg as Agnes Ahlberg
 * Erica Carlson as Jessica Olsson
 * Mathias Rust as Johan Hulth
 * Stefan Hörberg as Markus
 * Josefine Nyberg as Viktoria
 * Ralph Carlsson as Agnes's father, Olof
 * Maria Hedborg as Agnes's mother, Karin
 * Axel Widegren as Agnes's little brother, Oskar
 * Jill Ung as Elin's and Jessica's mother, Birgitta

Title
The original title of the film, Fucking Åmål, refers to the girls' feelings about their small town: In a key scene, Elin shouts in desperation "varför måste vi bo i fucking jävla kuk-Åmål?" (which roughly translates to "why do we have to live in fucking bloody cock-Åmål?").

According to Moodysson, the problem with the original title started when the film was Sweden's candidate for the Academy Awards, though eventually it was not chosen as a nominee. The Hollywood industry magazine Variety refused to run an advertisement for Fucking Åmål. Thus, American distributor Strand Releasing asked for a new title. Moodysson took the new title from the song at the end of the film, by Robyn. Distributors in other native English-speaking countries then followed suit.
 * Descubriendo el Amor ("Discovering Love")
 * Amigas de Colégio ("School Friends")
 * Láska je láska ("Love is Love") The Czech title is based on a Lucie Bílá song of the same name, which references homosexuality.
 * Покажи мне любовь (, "Show Me Love")
 * Hebrew: F- Åmål
 * English: Show Me Love
 * French (Canada): Qui Aimes-Tu? ("Who do you love/like?")
 * French (Canada): Qui Aimes-Tu? ("Who do you love/like?")

Political controversy
Even before the film was completed, it created controversy in the town of Åmål. Local politicians campaigned to get the title changed because they argued that it would show the town in an unfair way and even undermine it as an economic centre. Further pressure was brought on the makers of the film, the Film i Väst studio, who are partly financed by Swedish local authorities, including Åmål.

However, the local complaints had no effect on the content or release of the film. Since the release, the town of Åmål has tried to embrace the publicity generated, despite the fact that the town's name is missing from the English title. In the early 2000s the town founded the pop music "Fucking Åmål Festival."

Critical and commercial response
Fucking Åmål received the highest audience figures for a Swedish film in 1998–9, with a total audience of 867,576 and a total audience for the whole of Europe of 2.1 million. It grossed $6.5 million in Sweden and $3 million in Norway. Some international reports stated that the film had outgrossed the Hollywood film Titanic in Sweden. In fact, Titanic had over twice as many viewers as Show Me Love in Sweden in 1998.

Show Me Love has an approval rating of 91% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 44 reviews, and an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus states: "A naturalistic depiction of teenage life, Show Me Love has a charming, authentic feel". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generaly favorable reviews". It is among the top ten of the British Film Institute list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

The film received consistently good reviews, including the realism and credibility of its portrayal of what it is like to be a teenager in a small town in the 1990s. In addition, the efforts of the young actors were praised. Jan-Olov Andersson at Aftonbladet felt that Dahlström's and Liljeberg's imaginative appearance and interaction was "sensationally credible", and Bo Ludvigsson at Svenska Dagbladet wrote that it was "a warm, strong and confident film about the courage to be human". Ludvigsson also believed that Fucking Åmål, with its storytelling drive, leave and authenticity, was well above most of the Swedish films of recent years. Anders Hansson at Göteborgs-Posten thought that director Moodysson with fairly ordinary elements created "a film with unusual rise".

Autostraddle placed it at number one on its "Top 10 Best Lesbian Movies" list.

Cultural impact
According to Russian singer Lena Katina, producer Ivan Shapovalov was inspired to create the pop duo t.A.T.u. after the release of this film. The track "Show Me Love" is featured in their album 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane.

The creators of the 2018 Netflix series Everything Sucks! called the film the "biggest influence" on that show's creation.

Awards and nominations
! rowspan="24" | 1999 ! rowspan="3" | 2000
 * rowspan="2" | Amanda Award
 * Best Foreign Feature Film
 * Fucking Åmål, director Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Best Nordic Feature Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * Atlantic Film Festival
 * Best International Feature
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * rowspan="2" | Berlin International Film Festival
 * C.I.C.A.E. Award - Recommendation (Panorama)
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Teddy Award - Best Feature Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * British Film Institute Awards
 * Sutherland Trophy - Special Mention
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Manaki Brothers Film Festival
 * Special Jury Award
 * Ulf Brantås
 * Won
 * Cinema Jove - Valencia International Film Festival
 * Golden Moon of Valencia
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * European Film Awards
 * Best Film
 * Lars Jönsson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="2" | Flanders International Film Festival Ghent
 * Student Jury Award
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Grand Prix
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="5" | Guldbagge Awards
 * Best Film
 * Lars Jönsson
 * Won
 * Best Director
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Best Screenplay
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Best Actress in a Leading Role
 * Alexandra Dahlström Rebecka Liljeberg
 * Won
 * Best Actor in a Supporting Role
 * Ralph Carlsson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="4" | Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
 * Audience Award
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * FICC - The Don Quixote Prize
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Special Jury Prize
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Crystal Globe
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="3" | Kyiv International Film Festival "Molodist"
 * Best Full-Length Fiction Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * FIPRESCI
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Youth Jury Award - Full-Length Feature Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
 * Rosebud - Best Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * Best Actor in a Supporting Role
 * Ralph Carlsson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="4" | Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
 * Audience Award
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * FICC - The Don Quixote Prize
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Special Jury Prize
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Crystal Globe
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * rowspan="3" | Kyiv International Film Festival "Molodist"
 * Best Full-Length Fiction Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * FIPRESCI
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Youth Jury Award - Full-Length Feature Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
 * Rosebud - Best Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * FIPRESCI
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Youth Jury Award - Full-Length Feature Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
 * Rosebud - Best Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * Verzaubert International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
 * Rosebud - Best Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * Bodil Awards
 * Best Non-American Film
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * GLAAD Media Award
 * Outstanding Film – Limited Release
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Nominated
 * International Film Festival Rotterdam
 * MovieZone Young Jury Award
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won
 * International Film Festival Rotterdam
 * MovieZone Young Jury Award
 * Lukas Moodysson
 * Won

Soundtrack
The film's soundtrack was released through Metronome Records and consists of songs in English and Swedish language. Swedish band Broder Daniel, who contributed three English language songs to Fucking Åmål, saw a spike in popularity after the film's release. The band also released an EP titled Fucking Åmål.

 * Fucking Åmål/Musiken Från Filmen
 * Label: Metronome Records
 * Format: CD, compilation
 * Country: Sweden
 * Released: 1998

title: Show Me Love (film)