Re: Fermi "Paradox"

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jul 22 2003 - 01:03:57 MDT

  • Next message: Brett Paatsch: "Re: Optimism [hall's merchants of immortality]"

    The problem lies in determining whether the die out account or the
    become invisible account is true.

    Historical evidence doesn't tell us much, since the rise and fall of
    civilisations on average has not had much effect on humanity as a whole.
    It is now when civilisations become global that the risks go up for
    permanent failures. But it is not enough to assume that the probability
    of civilisation crashing is high; it has to be so high that it results
    in *no* expanding starfarers. Given the awesome multiplicative power of
    even simple self-replication, once a civilisation can start sending out
    large numbers it is very hard to get rid of it. Probably the only way of
    saving the extinction account is to assume that there is a trap
    somewhere: a relatively easy experiment or technology that wipes out the
    experimenter civilisation and everything close to it. Could be stable
    strange matter (converts the planet and star to strange matter, which
    then blows up, producing a chain reaction in the vicinity - but we do
    not see much of that, do we?) or something causing gamma ray bursts.

    But the invisibility account doesn't tell us much, and seems to be
    rather untestable. Even if we have the idea that they could hide in dark
    matter or vacuum we cannot tell. As Mark pointed out, the best way might
    be to try to do something universe changing (a bit of >Hubris) and see
    if they interfere - which of course could be another version of the
    extinction account.

    "SELF REPLICATING PROBES?! NO YOU DON'T!"
    <zwoing>
    "OK, now we have uploaded you and your galaxy as a sim here in
    Plancktown. Please play nice, and don't bother us again."

    2 million years later:

    "(//((! Have you seen the new gamma ray burster in the Milky Way?"
    "Yes /||\, I have. I hope there were no intelligent life around there."
    "We will know when we send out or probes..."

    But in general I think we are lacking something in the philosophy of the
    Fermi paradox. We need to think better here.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 22 2003 - 01:08:09 MDT