From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Feb 16 2003 - 10:27:19 MST
In the debate about the Fermi paradox Dennis May has
written (as supplied by Dan)
> > it's not that advanced ETIs would be afraid of humans
> > as they are now, but of giving themselves away to
> > other advanced ETIs that might see them as threats
> > or rivals, right?
>
> If you give yourself away to humans there is some
> chance you are giving yourself away to many other
> groups as well. An advanced group might be aware
> that humans are a single breakthrough away from
> regular space travel and WoMD which cannot be
> guarded against.
I consider all this quite silly. Civilizations that
reach approximately our level of achievement, which
takes merely a million years from the animal state,
quickly undergo some sort of singularity and expand
to encompass all solar systems in their galaxy. This
requires far less than one additional million years.
So all told, we are talking about it taking less than
two million years for an animal to conquer a galaxy.
These arguments are bolstered to a rather definitive
degree IMO in Frank Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality"
and Barrow and Tipler's "The Cosmic Anthropological
Principle". He points out that using "Von Neumann probes"
a civilization converts the remaining part of its galaxy
to its own tissue (my words) in a geological eye-blink.
The civilization, of course, continues to expand at the
speed of light, with at every moment the singularity at
the center retaining the most advanced state.
Talk about "advanced ETI's" somehow remaining aloof
from our planet is merely emotionally appealing SF.
"There aren't any"; that's the answer to the Fermi
question.
Lee Corbin
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