RE: Aliens, Space Travel and Ultratechnology (part 1)

Billy Brown (ewbrownv@mindspring.com)
Tue, 27 Jul 1999 23:48:28 -0500

Doug Bailey wrote:
> Four possibile explanations for the Fermi Paradox:
> (1) The Greener Pastures Exodus:

A somewhat plausible scenario. There is one additional assumption here that you didn't note: no one has ever cared enough about us poor gaussians to bother doing anything about us. It would be trivial for an SI to ensure that no future sentient race ever has to suffer from mortality, either by sterilizing the universe or by setting up an autonomous system to uplift new races once they cross the threshold into sentinece. (Hmm - maybe we don't qualify yet?)

> (2) The Redundant Universe:

This only works if you eliminate all personal variations as well (otherwise you will always have some fraction of the population that decides to explore the universe anyway, for non-economic reasons).

> (3) The Singleton:

Another somewhat plausible scenario. There isn't any particular reason to think it will happen (so far intelligence has led to more personal diversity, not less), but we can't rule it out.

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
ewbrownv@mindspring.com