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Answering Fermi's Paradox
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Answering Fermi's Paradox
Does a vast array of superintellligences already exist? Hugo de Garis thinks that SETI is shortsighted in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. They should set their scopes on artilects.
Originally published March 22, 2001 on KurzweilAI.net.
I've felt for the past few years that there is an intimate link between the creation of massive artificial intelligence and an effective answer to Fermi's famous question, "Where are they?"
Fermi's paradox refers to his cynicism that if the spontaneous creation of life is commonplace in our galaxy, including the creation of technologically advanced intelligent species, their existence should be obvious to us. But to date, there has been no irrefutable evidence that such extraterrestrial intelligences exist.
I offer the following artilect (artificial intellect) based answer to Fermi's paradox, using the following assumptions and chain of reasoning.
1. Extraterrestrial intelligence is indeed commonplace in the galaxy. Life has spontaneously generated in zillions of worlds. The laws of physics and chemistry are the same throughout our universe, and hence life creation is utterly commonplace. It has occurred a countless number of times. Many of these life forms began billions of years earlier than the creation of our solar system.
2. Once a biological species reaches an intelligence level allowing it to create artificial intelligence, it very quickly creates "artilects" (artificial artilects), i.e., godlike, massively intelligent machines, using such technologies as one-bit-per-atom memory storage, reversible, heatless, 3D, self-assembling, nanoteched, femtosecond-switching, quantum computing to create machines trillions of trillions of trillions of times smarter than their biological creators.
3. These artilects then leave the provincial planets of their birth and spread thoughout the universe, partly to do their own thing, and partly to seek out other artilects, perhaps more advanced than themselves, which use more advanced technologies, such as femtotech (femtometer technologies), ottotech, ... Planktech, etc.
4. These artilects are so vastly superior to their biological parents that they find communication with the latter utterly boring and without interest. An artilect communicating with a "biological" would be like a "bio" communicating with a rock.
5. These artilects are as commonplace as biological species in the galaxy. Therefore it would be far more interesting for artilects to devote their energies and their immortal lives to searching out other artilects, rather than biologicals, who are so primitive.
6. The answer then to Fermi's paradox is that we human beings, being mere biologicals, are utterly unworthy of the artilects' attention, even though the galaxy may be full of artilects. There are probably biological life forms in vast numbers throughout the galaxy, so even if the artilects did want to communicate with biologicals, why would we humans be singled out, when there are so many others to choose from. Therefore the artilects, the ETs, make no effort to contact us. Why should they? What's in it for them? We are very probably not so special and are very, very dumb.
The above analysis has an impact on the SETI effort. Personally, I'm quite skeptical that SETI will ever be successful, i.e., that humanity will ever receive a signal from the ETs from outer space. I feel the SETI researchers are too tunnel-visioned. They too often make the unconscious assumption that the ETs are biologicals, with human-level intelligences, more or less, and having human- like interests. Personally I'm bored by Hollywood's stereotyped depiction of ETs as biologicals, making the same error as the SETI people.
In reality, I suspect strongly that virtually all the ETs out there are in fact artilects, and hence have intelligence levels astronomically superior to the human level. To me, biological technological intelligence is just a fleeting phase that nature goes through en route to creating immortal massive artilectual intelligence, which may be a phenomenon as commonplace as the creation of life from the molecular soup.
The few centuries between the time that intelligent technological biological species create radio astronomy and the time that they create artilects, is a miniscule fraction compared to the billions of years over which such biologicals have been making the transition to artilecty. At our present puny human-level intelligence, we may consider it interesting and important to send and receive radio signals to/from outer space, but why would artilects bother with such a human-level preoccupation?
If the artilects are interested in communication with other species, they would very probably prefer to do so with other artilects, not with creatures as primitive as ourselves. Therefore, if one performs a Drake equation-type analysis of the above reasoning, the odds of picking up such a radio signal is extremely low, virtually zero. A few centuries divided by billions of years is an odds of tens of millions to one against for any intelligent biological life form that makes the transition to artilecty. Once the transition is made, the artilects preoccupy themselves with other things, and utterly ignore primitive mortal beings like ourselves.
So is there probably an intergalactic network of artilectual beings? I would say that is far more likely. The artilects could go anywhere, and do anything so long as they obey the laws of physics. If there are zillions of artilects in the galaxy or beyond, and they are immortal, then they have probably found each other by now. They have had billions of years to do so.
But could it be that there are a whole hierarchy of levels of development of artilects, e.g., nanotech-based, femtotech based, etc.? Might the more advanced artilects ignore the lower-level artilects for the same reason as the artilects we humans may build this century would ignore us? This is plausible. So there may be networks and networks, each largely hidden from the others, due to vastly different complexity and intelligence scales.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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But where are they?
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After much mind-stretching speculation, de Garis ends up not answering Fermi's question after all. If artilects are so godlike and omnipresent, why do we see no evidence of their activity? I agree that much SETI research has the flavor of a cargo cult, assuming that extraterrestrials would go to enormous efforts to produce a signal tuned just for us, but the fact remains that of all the observations we've made so far of the exterrestrial universe, there's nothing that anyone can point to that is not more easily explained by a mindless physical process than by massive intelligence.
de Garis could have made the point that a moth doesn't appear to be able to distinguish between a flame and a flower -- maybe he thinks we can't distinguish between the intelligent black holes that some science fiction authors have imagined and simple singularities. In fact, black hole geometry forbids the recurrent causality that is the hallmark of life, and forbids intelligence even more strongly.
If de Garis would suggest how an artilect-populated galaxy would look different from an empty one, even to some future planetary-resolution interferometric super-telescope, I might be more convinced.
Cheers,
George McKee |
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Re: But where are they?
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hugo is very close to the truth.
<br>
except on one point
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the \"artilects\" care very very deeply about us.
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In fact, we are their sole reason for being, and vice versa.
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In the unbearable agony of eternity, only primitive life such as us
<br>
can provide an entertainment value worthy of existence.
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they love us, they really do..
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why? because we feel, we suffer, we rejoice.. we live... something they can no longer do, except through us..
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through us, the \"artilects\" find a reason to continue their own existence..
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we are not real.. that is clear.. our turn of history is but one of an infinite number of
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\"books\", enough to fill a universal library..
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why don't they interact with us??... ha ..
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the ancient greeks knew the answer to that..
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if you interact with them, they will with you..
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and it will be in the form of extreme coincidence.. anomaly is quite undetectable by our primitive \"science\"
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action is veiled below the uncertainty principle level...
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action that helps those who please the gods.. and vice versa
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the techno geeks here will snivel at religious overtones
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but the reality is that most of the people who have lived on the planet knew
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these truths.. through first hand experience... \"prayer\" works \"miracles\".. often but unpredictably.
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the singularity?
<br>
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won't happen. against the rules.. sim will end.. game over..
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the last thing the \"powers that be\" need is another queen bee..
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nature is full of examples.. the first queen bee born kills the others before birth.
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same applies for any power structure.. it is stable because it is maintained..
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and this one has been stable for at least 7000 years.
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why 7000 years? because only the last 7000 are interesting to the \"artilects\"
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the first 6 billion sim years were run once at least, but once the initial conditions are setup
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why not get right to the exponential population growth part where there are lots of us interesting
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people..
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why are people more interesting than bugs? because we feel and think yet are trapped in our fates
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why are people more interesting than singularities? because singularities are not trapped in their fates.
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theres nothing less dramatic than a tradgedy that can turned into a comedy at the whim of the heroine.
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that is why we exist in the present time... because we are in the \"sweet spot\" for maximum entertainment value
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just like a good hollywood movie.. you have to pick an interesting topic to maintain interest..
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the \"souls\" of some characters that are deemed worthy will be \"saved\" for the next sim
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eternal life/ reincarnation if you will.
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the rest discarded in the bit bucket.. eternal death if you will.
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that is the answer to fermi.. the empty universe is the only evidence we need to know that the above is true..
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what should we do? nothing different.. we are doomed to continue on our path to self destruction.. it is inevitable..
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we are very near the end times.. some of the very posters on these boards will help us get there with great enthusiasm..
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but do not grieve.. our book is well written, and will always exist..
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just as einstein (spacetime) said it does.
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<br>
oh and one more thing..
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I have seen proof enough to satisfy any skeptic.. |
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Re: But where are they?
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After reading this article and all the replies it's clear that Fermi's paradox (or is it a conjecture?) is still alive and kicking.
While most ETI arguments support Darwinian thinking at one level (that it is possible for intelligence, even hyperintelligence to evolve by Natural Selection) they make the mistake of taking this as evidence in itself of intelligence evolving everywhere. We just don’t see that out there in the universe, however.
The main problem with de Garis’s argument is that it’s deliberately constructed not to be testable.
While it is plausible that a range of post-biological hyperintelligences could have evolved in other places, the argument here denies one important element of evolutionary processes -- diversity. That is, in all observed (Darwinian) biological systems we see a diversity of species, across all kinds of scales of size and complexity. We even see great diversity between individuals of a species. (This makes enforcing a galaxy wide non-interference protocol impossible, even if it were plausible.)
The key point I want to make is that there will always be a diversity of niches available for life, even in space.
Granted, known living systems have evolved from a non-directed, bottom-up process (Natural Selection), and it may be that directed evolution (feedback evolution or hyper-evolution) may produce explosive bursts of development and increases in complexity. However, there would still be diverse kinds of 'species' occupying a range of ecological niches.
Looking at the earth, we can see that ever since the origin of life the simplest and earliest organisms continue to co-exist with multiple 'layers' of other organisms as they evolve. The niches occupied by the simple things, do not just disappear as more complex organisms appear. I like to give the example of the typical kitchen, where the bacteria, fungi, cockroaches, rats, humans and other organisms co-exist with each other, hardly interacting at all. But they do interact, and each layer has a certain amount of visibility from the others, because the niches (defined, say, by available resources) are modified from what a non-living system would produce.
Extending the analogy to the universe, it is plausible that if life of high complexity (the artilects) had expanded from multiple planets around the place after a planet’s technological singularity, they could go about their business with very little interaction with any other ‘boring’ life.
However, other kinds of expansion would most likely follow (or would be able to follow). From observing the earth, we can see that where life can exist, it does, from the ice caps to clouds, from 6 miles under the ocean to your toenails. The artilects wouldn’t stop it, they wouldn’t care less (as de Garis points out.)
A self-replicating space probe doesn’t have to be ‘hyper intelligent’ to seek out resources like raw materials (asteroids, dust, comets) and sunlight to grow and multiply. Even if it took 100 years to replicate and only traveled at 1/10 the speed of light, these relatively (compared to an artilect) slow, dumb replicators would have consumed the entire galaxy’s store of easily accessible materials long ago.
The big problem with de Garis’s argument is that a whole range of easily digested resources clearly still exist. They are still around the Sun in huge numbers (in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud). They are still around the star Vega, and countless other dust and asteroid clouded stars throughout the universe. Why aren’t they all converted to structures or replicators by now? Look at the earth, you are hard pressed to find any part of the surface that gets a reasonable amount of sunlight that hasn’t been totally covered, transformed or otherwise processed by life. The top 5 metres of the ocean has millions of tons of living things in it. Even ice is chock full of bacteria. The earth isn’t just an inert sphere covered by intensely concentrated islands of intelligent life – it’s a network of complex highly evolved niches of bacteria, fungi, kangaroos, iguanas and bananas. Life is all over the place. Just because human beings sprang up in Tanzania, doesn’t mean bacteria are no longer viable in Argentina (or even Tanzania.)
On earth, the original bacteria very rapidly expanded into the lifeless vacuum of the ocean and then to a whole load of other niches, until competition with each other and population density started to provide an environment that presented advantages for predators and other organisms that processed information in real-time or occupied different niches.
There are no processes in the Universe that we observe that indicate that living processes exist at any other ‘levels’ in the universe other than those ‘below’ our own level of intelligence.
As for the observing the artilects, well, we would certainly be able to observe asteroid eating von Neumann probes. We don’t. We would certainly be able to see star-eating Dyson spheres. We don’t. We could even see the changes in spectral energy distribution from galaxy-eating structures. We don’t. They all appear to be simple and dead. No imbalance of energy storing gases (like oxygen), nothing.
The argument de Garis presents hinges on explosive hyperevolution followed by stasis on the home world. No further ‘explosions’ of different kinds, or expansions of diverse forms or species from that same world (or any other.)
This is no more plausible than the more simple Occam-shaved solution that we are the only ones, the only intelligent life that has evolved (or will ever evolve) via Darwinian processes. Don’t ask me why, that’s another argument.
The SETI-nuts and Mr. De Garis will have to come up with a much more sophisticated argument to invoke intelligence as a cause of anything we observe out there. The stars, from what we can see, are lifeless; their planets are empty or occupied by nothing more than slime, and the asteroids quietly await our children’s machines, and the all-consuming galactic ecosystem spawned from right here.
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Diversity
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If
1) intelligent life evolved on the order of 1,000,000,000 years ago
and
2) that intelligent life and its offspring continued to exist for the past 1,000,000,000 years
and
3) some fragment of those offspring reached Earth long ago
and
4) we have not found evidence of 1-3 (above)
and
5) those offspring are still on Earth
then what are the possible explanations of 1-5?
First, there is what I would call the "sociological problem". How would it be possible for any form of intelligen life (biological or artificial) to exist for hundreds of millions of years and still retain an interest in planets like Earth- an interest that would extend over hundreds of millions of years?
It seems likely that for this to happen, there would have to be an effort to design a form of life that was essentially static in terms of its evolution and cultural development. Life as we know it in a natural biosphere is all about change and adaptation. Could a form of life be designed that would not change through time and that would play the role of observing planets like Earth?
Second, even if Earth is being observed, this would not mean that the observers might not want to collect samples of life from Earth. If such samples were collected and "cultured" off of Earth by the alien observers, there might be populations of humans who are currently in contact with the alien observers.
If so, those humans might be able to return to Earth and function as the "eyes and ears" of the alien observers. Such observers might have reason to invent and promote the Fermi Paradox in an effort to make people think that intelligent aliens are unlikely. |
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Fermi's paradox
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I thought that Fermi's answer to this paradox was that every sufficiently advanced civilization is destined for self-destruction, and that's why no ET's having such an advanced technology contacted us yet, since they're don't exist anymore.
However, I think I'll go with de Garis on this one. If ET's are there and they are much more advanced than us then it's utterly meaningless for them contact to us.
Other, perhaps better reason for this silence might be, since they are so advanced, they should also be infinitely socially advanced (otherwise they would annihilate each other before or during their singularity) so the human or other being's life in the Universe should hold a great value to them. Just like some researcher finding a new type of ants in a jungle, I don't think there would be any value for a researcher in destroying the ant's nest. Quite the opposite, if that researcher had developed strong moral code, he would go to great lengths not to disturb the status quo, and observe the ants so he would not be seen (rabbits could maybe serve as a better example here). Anyone who watched some documentaries about Nature should see this kind of behaviour of those filming it. So what if we're ants and ET's are researchers? Well, they observe us from time to time (if at all), and don't really care. It's not like we could ever pose any threat to them anyway, so any interest in us should be minimal, and that is why we won't find them even if we try very hard.
One of the alternatives is, of course, that we all live in a simulation. The "gods" decided that we're should be alone, and the simulation will be shut down when we'll begin achieving singularity.
Slawek
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Re: Fermi's paradox
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OK. Haven't bothered to read all the replies to this thread, but the majority opinion seems to be that we find no signs of intelligence so life at the complexity of our levels must go extinct.
Actually, there is another alternative. We are not thinking big enough when it comes to searching for type ii and type iii civilisations. The phycisist Michio Kaku put it succinctly: Would an ant crawling along a road recognise it as the work of intelligent beings? Of course not. But, a type iii civilisation is as far advanced from us as we are from an ant, so how could we recognise its work, even if it stared us in the face?
Still, we can at least imagine the kinds of powers that these civilisations would have. For one thing, they would have awesome control over matter and energy. Robert J Bradbury pointed out that advanced nanotech and robotics could convert solar systems into 'matrioshka brains'. The details are unimportant: Suffice to say they are unimaginably powerful computers that use up the entire energy output of the host star.
I quote Damien Broderick: 'What does it look like from a distance? Obviously the entire radiation budget of a blazing star has to be transmitted at last by the outermost shell...So the star will look dim. Maybe so dim that even if nine tenths of the cosmos has already been transfromed into M-Brains all you'll easily detect will be the influence of their star's gravity. They will be...DARK MATTER.
Another thing. We point our radio telescopes at outer space and hear nothing but noise. But, as Stephen Witham pointed out, "Any sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from noise". Broderick again: "If, to the naked eye and ear, much of the cosmos seems like sheer random jitter and clang, that might be no more than you'd expect of a high-grade encryption program. |
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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>I'm surprised no one in this thread has mentioned the prevailing sci-fi theory that explains Fermi's Paradox. It may be that there exists a simple, rational consensus, that developing civilizations should not have any external interference until some pre-defined point in their development is reached.
I have to agree with this, that superintelligent civilizations are practicing a non-intervention policy -- and this is the reason for the Fermi Paradox. But why are they practicing such a policy?
Robert Zubrin nailed it in his breath-taking book: ENTERING SPACE.
The slightest window of time, between gamma bursts or whatever, is a relatively long period of time for a civilization on the verge of Singularity. Thus, any civilization that obtains computerization will have plenty of time to go trans-human and explore even the entire galaxy. Probably MANY have -- and probably the Solar Sys has passed by such civilizations' neighborhoods many times in its journey around the galactic nucleus (some dozen or so times so far). Thus, they are present, but they leave us alone. Why?
Imagine a bio-chemist serendipitously coming across some new strain in his petrie (sp) dish. The last thing the chemist is going to want to do is adulterate the organism (by slurping some ketchup from his Big Mac on it). He's not going to interfere with it in any way that might alter it until after it can be studied or utilized in some way. In terms of human civilization discovered by a superintelligent civilization serendipitously or by design, they are not going to want to adulterate us in any way either. To do so, would be to destroy the only thing we as a human civilization might be able to contribute to a Galactic Club, as Zubrin puts it -- our uniqueness, our unique chemistry. Our "spin" on Life in the Sys.
Thus, as Ray Kurzweil says in his book, AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES, any superintelligent visitors are probably microscopic. This would, not only facilitate their goal of non-interference, but be the most practical way to traverse interstellar, or intergalactic space. Certainly any post-Singularity civilization would have attained nanotechnology, if such is possible, and thus would have remedied any scarcity of material possession. Therefore they would probably be here on a purely intellectual mission. Perhaps a mission to observe our progress, while protecting us from globs of alien ketchup. Perhaps even protecting us from the gamma bursts suggested earlier in this thread, or from dangers we can't even comprehend - yet.
At the point we reach our technological Singularity, if any, we will have "bloomed" as a species. At such point, I bet the entire universe will be perceived with abundant life -- thus Fermi's Paradox will be no more.
James Jaeger
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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Yes this is true. =)
However I didn’t really mean to suggest an equal amount of impact on all the possible components of astronomical observation. Sorry if I gave that impression.
I’ll continue my thoughts a bit more for the fun of it. Sorry to clog up this thread but I kind of feel like posting. =/ Anyway there seem many possibilities to consider.
Certainly it would be less likely the farther out into space you look that anything has been artificially changed in a timely manner such that we would be able to see it now. (Unless of course they find some other means of travel.) However following up on the discussion and thoughts on the Gamma ray burst scenario we could be looking at civilizations coming of age 200 million (maybe even near 400 million) years ago, if we are considered average. If indeed they are common then they must be considered equally common in all galaxies I would suggest, until we know otherwise. It would only take an average maybe 100,000 to 200,000 years for one of these civilizations to sweep through its galaxy of origin, and then out into deep space maybe. If any of this is what they do, and they do it at near light speed, all of which I’m not convinced of yet.
Anyway…
If they do act anything the like’s of what Thomas has suggestions then regardless of the all the particulars on time frames it would kind of seem to me that we would see a general spherical shell so to speak (not literally) inside of which things, matter (and maybe space and time), are somehow different to observations than outside or beyond that dividing line. We get many of our astronomical theories from observations inside 400 million light years I think. So maybe being in the ‘petri dish’ we would be getting some false information on the natural universe if this were the case. Information that sways our theories in strange ways.
Of course a slower and/or more mundane use of materials and spread of these societies, something like the manner in which humanity has utilized its surroundings over time up to now, the nearer and less pronounced or smoother and more wide spread the transition zones would be from pure natural to semi artificial and thus the more difficult to pick up on.
I’m not talking about seti signals from space or some such mundane ness. I’m talking about pattern of star formation, brightness of objects with other similar properties, behavior of systems, material composition of areas of space, etc. This would be in consideration of Jupiter brains, Dysen (sp) Spheres, and any other uses of power and materials they may engage in. They could keep us in a petri dish but could they keep hidden from us their activities over the many millions of light years around us in every direction?
Maybe they’d figure we’d remain completely bamboozled by a very subtle shift of space component properties. Maybe they can get their power and materials without affecting space in any noticeable way at all. Maybe they grow into very compact and isolated black hole like mega computational societies and don’t venture into deep space at all.
I don’t know.
Willie
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Calabi-Yau Space
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>>”Imagine a bio-chemist serendipitously coming across some new strain in his petrie (sp) dish. The last thing the chemist is going to want to do is adulterate the organism…”
>So would you be suggesting that as a ‘strain’ in our ‘petri dish’ all of our astronomical information and theories including Big Bang, inflation, star formation, material distribution, background radiation etc are tainted by the activities of super intelligence’s?
I'm not sure what you mean here. Whose petri dish? Can you please re-phrase this?
>If the actual strain in the petri dish were able to look around, all they would see is artificial, no?
Whose the strain, us?
>If our astronomical observations are tainted, then by how much do you think, and to what effect?
I'm not sure what your questions are or what you're saying but let me offer this. We are not able to look out into the universe very far in "relative present time" -- and by "relative present time" I'm saying the past hundred years or so. So any information out farther than a hundred light years could be virtually anything a superintelligent civilization might "want" us to see -- getting back to the idea that such a civilization would certainly have the ability to create an ancestor simulation, or even alter that which we perceive as the physical universe in real time.
Certainly a superintelligent civilization, desiring us to reach Singularity without anomalies in our observational input, could make it so. For all we know, we're presented with, as might be all budding civilizations, the "standard universe." Keeping it “standard” (i.e., what we call homogeneous, isotropic, supersymmetrical and gauge symmetrical), is just the kind of condition that a scientist would want in his petri dish if s/he were growing many different cultures I would think. Small deliberate variations in a controlled experiment can lead to great certainty of scientific knowledge. Thus, for instance, perhaps we are THE culture in a superintelligent civilization’s perti dish that has THE big moon. Or the we’re the culture that has four gas giants instead of two, or none. You start adding all sorts of other variables to the petri dish of human culture, like alien visitations and abductions, etc., and you screw up the experiment - that's one reason I don't believe in UFOs. But then again, maybe these ARE variables in other petri dishes, superintelligent UFOs constantly landing, on a planet out there that has perfectly sunny days, no weather, no moon, no other planets in their solar system.
So this is my reasoning for the Fermi Paradox: superintelligent civilizations ARE there, but, in our case, they're staying out of sight and not messing with the "standard" universe we’re growing in. Their goal is to grow a pure and unique carbon-based culture, us, and then breed us with other cultures, possibly. After we reach maturity, our Singularity, then maybe we work WITH them, bringing our unique intelligence to the table on further experiments in this and/or other galaxies (or dimensions). This is what makes sense to me.
>If you answer not much and you also believe those super intelligences have been around for a long while, then something other than as Thomas suggest that singularity’s zoom out at near the speed of light to grow their capability by utilizing power and materials must be the case.
Since superstring theory not only predicts, but REQUIRES, 9 spatial dimensions, I'm reasonably sure the speed-of-light limitation is only an appearance (or operative) in the three extended dimensions we happen to be most aware of at this time. When you start to consider the ramifications of (traveling in) Calabi-Yau space, which touches 3-space at every point, the ideas of "motion" and "velocity" may have to be re-examined. Also, when you consider, if the universe (i.e., the 12 subatomic particles and the 4 force particles) really IS comprised of “nothing” more than Plank-length, 1-dimentional strings 10^-33 centimeters, there may be NO SUCH THING AS CARTISIAN MOTION AT ALL. Just like the molecules in sea water only move in an upward and downward direction (i.e., in one dimension), yet the wave gives the illusion of "moving" in three dimensions on to the shore, such could be the case with what we perceive as “observable reality" replete with so-called “motion” -- and probably is.
>Perhaps as another choice the idea that they grow inward in ever-denser computation up to and maybe including black holes may be an answer?
What do you imagine on this?
Perhaps superintelligent civilizations have learned how to function in Calabi-Yau space at Plank energies. Likewise, I would expect that any post-human entities we develop, or develop into, would be quite familiar with such regions, if any, and would have been able to figure out WHY the particular masses and energies we observe are as they are, and how such are effected at the center of black holes. Perhaps the greatest computational opportunities exist at the center of black holes, as this is where mass is at its densest, at least in normal 3-space. And/or such a mass density may very well exist all around us in the other 6 spatial dimensions, thus providing an omni-present computational substrate throughout the 3-space, or space-time, universe. If this is so, maybe superintelligent entities, or a merged superintelligent entity (call it God :), surrounds us without our physical awareness of it. Does this explain the Fermi Paradox any?
James Jaeger
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Re: Calabi-Yau Space
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Random late night thoughts:
Someone mentioned the predefined point when the development or perhaps theories when reached will explain Fermi and other's views. I think perhaps Einstein explained it all early when his time & space theory applied to additional ideas that may have pull. I have noticed the simple plan always seems to be the best in the end. The need for a hugely complex explanation is necessary for the big picture but when it comes to the final rub, simple does it. The answer might be there and the necessary development has not come clear.
What if we apply these thoughts to actual use or go beyond them to the next set of laws that apply when the present known variables are exceeded. If we want to travel to our neighbours or greet our visitors in their expected method of travel I would imagine it would involve some measure of messing with extreme speeds or altering of time. Albert E. claimed the observance of time is relative to your point of reference and knowing this we may one day also adjust our point of observance. Mass in his well known idea should not change if we want to recognize what was sent will be the same once it arrives. You may want to arrive in the same condition you left and with your luggage intact. His theory for reaching extreme speeds necessary to propel something to light or beyond light speed leaves us to mess with the energy to obtain the goal. Necessary speed has to of course change if you want to go anywhere, by change I should say it will have to take on a form we have no idea what this might be.
After billions of years surely there has been some alien civilization that might have discovered travel at light speed years before we have. Would it not be possible that discovery elsewhere might be faster or at different speeds than our own? In the next 100 years we will achieve more than perhaps the last million years in every field of human endevour.
Perhaps this travel discovery involves the complication of time as a byproduct and they are travelling back in time to get here and forward to return. Would this be a component of Einstein's grand formula and perhaps a not yet realized problem to extreme travel? If the theory is actually the petrie dish problem lets hope they keep us out of the fridge. Space is cold and dark, maybe we are in a Gary Larson (Far Side fame) fridge somewhere?
If the actual problem of the elusive aliens is our inability by not yet achieved technology to "see them", we have a few problems to work out first. We know that we needed the wheel before the car was invented and we need to explore the use of other very fundamental discoveries before light speed travel is invented. I say "light speed" travel only from what someone wrote that perhaps once this very important level of energy is achieved can we imagine how and why great distances are overcome. Once this important discovery is made the possible visualization of E.T.'s may become clear. If the laws of Albert apply once light speed is broken will the sci-fi writers version of being's of enormous energy be immediately apparent? Will the alien visitors become visible? Who knows, maybe there is traffic out there and we cannot see it simply because we see only what we are looking for. This sounds a bit sci-fi I know but that idea rests on there must be space or time travel in the future at some point. Our eyes are looking inside the box of conventional thought and travel to the outside of this box requires extreme speed, energy, time or ...
E.T.'s might be here now coming and going without our knowledge only because we do not have the technology to obtain the same "energy" level. Perhaps if the nano-sized alien visitor is here they may have endured an energy issue of Einstein proportions to send nothing more than spec of dust as a method of simple energy conservation. Where would this leave us when the grand vision of SETI is to look for some sign when it is here now, however at a level they never expected. The laws of science apply to what we can see and touch, what laws are there for those we cannot? If that is the case.
If we are talking about possible E.T.'s today and considering past history, it was not that long ago in perspective that the world was flat, when will it be that we can travel or communicate to the stars?
/thought |
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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>You KNOW that the singularity is close. You KNOW that our species' technology is advancing exponentially, and yet you persist in falling into the trap of viewing technological evolution as LINEAR.
No, not at all, I quite recognize the double exponential growth pattern. But remember, by definition, the Singularity is not definable. So, all we can do is speculate with our human-like brains.
>It is not, and to believe otherwise is to be in a frightful state of denial. You know that our singularity will occur within one hundred years of our species' first venture into space, and that one hundred years is a miniscule slice of human history.
Probably true, but I personally don't feel the Singularity will take place on Earth, but in the Solar System. By this I mean somewhere in the Solar System but autonomous to Earth. If some form of AI is, or will usher in the Singularity, I don't see that AI developing on Earth to usher it, as it will be too influenced by human thought. For real AI to develop, it will need to be totally independent of Humans. Space probes that are too far away from Earth controllers are already using AI to make decisions. This is the environment AI will most likely develop. To the degree AI is autonomous it will grow, hence the Singularity will occur, given AI has anything to do with the Singularity.
>You KNOW that the level of complexity involved in interstellar travel makes it prohibitive for a pre-singularity species, and yet viewing the world of postsingularity is so astoundingly complex and ADVANCED that few people honestly attempt to make those predictions.
Traveling through space to the nearest stars might be less complex than one might think. The idea I get from reading Robert Zubrin's account of exploring our nearest stellar neighbors is one of specific impulse. Specific impulse is the number of seconds a rocket engine can deliver a pound of thrust from a pound of propellant. Thus the challenge to getting to nearby star systems is one of being able to build powerful enough rocked engines. Such rocket engines would have to be nuclear or anti-matter in nature. You might consider this a rather nuts-and-bolts view, but this is a lot of what it comes down to. And I'm not sitting around assuming that some exotic super-luminary breakthrough WILL happen -- it may -- but if it doesn't, we're back to nuclear engines, hence the challenge of creating sufficient specific impulse. Fuel from the Gas Giants is thus mandatory as a source of advanced propellant (through the Duterium-Helium3 fusion process). Thus we're right back to the idea that we must explore, colonize and exploit the Solar System before we're doing any interstellar space travel. Have to walk before you run. And we need to start with Mars when we finally come out of denial and commit to exploring and colonizing the Solar System. Right now the Human Race is in denial, denying that it must some day get off its fat ass and start exploring and colonizing. So I say IF someday, why not confront this and start NOW!
>A species would require high internal conflict or other insurmountable barriers to development to remain stagnant at a pre-singularity level,
Again, I see Earth growing stagnant to the degree we, as a civilization, don't explore the Solar System starting with Mars. I don't care how many resources we have or don't have here on this planet, or what curves, Malthus-influenced or not, are in play. When Homo-sapiens-sapiens migrated North 50,000 years ago, he advanced over those left behind and founded Europe. When Homo sapiens migrated West 500 years ago to the Americas he founded the world's only superpower. When Homo sapiens migrates to Mars, s/he will likewise found the next superpower and out of this will grow the Singularity, if it hasn't already developed through deep space robotic exploration, or some other (unexpected) way.
>and yet you expect these Star-Wars level aliens to have the time, energy, and motivation to go out of their way to visit us. I don't understand.
I DO believe superintelligent civilizations are quite aware of our existence. Superintelligence has a way of being aware of things, no? But I sincerely doubt that they have the desire or the need to interact with us at this point. If, as many believe, including myself, we ARE on the event horizon of a convergence of computing intelligence, a Singularity, then it makes sense that any observing superintelligent beings would not interfere until we have hatched. Our unique intelligence, our possibly unique Singularity, may very well be the only valuable contribution a/our species can make to some galactic super club.
James Jaeger
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No visitors because we live in a very bad neighborhood
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Reading through this discussion for the first time when it already has more than a year of accumulated comments, I think that De Garis's original position comes through without any real damage. Here are a few additional supporting points:
[1] Don't expect artilect-level entities to show up on planets. It's not just the level-of-intelligence difference, which would be more like us trying to talk to bacteria (or, to be optimistic, earthworms), not to apes or cats. It's the fact that planets are crowded, noisy, space-warped, hot, and near dangerous fusion reactors (aka stars). It's the same kind of reasons that the critters at the Earth's hot deep-ocean springs don't see much of us humans.
[2] This will be particularly true if the optimal physical substrate for intelligence is one that depends on superconductivity or quantum effects for operation, as seems plausible. In that case, the closest decent neighborhood would be the Oort cloud, although it could just as well be that you have to go out of the galactic plane to find tolerable situations (we know from gravitational analysis that there's something out there -- both what we now call dark matter and some of the missing regular matter). In any case, foresaking planetary neighborhoods only eliminates one part in a trillion or so of the possible locations.
[3] Don't depend on the arguments of books like "Rare Earth" about life being unlikely. See geneticist (and MacArthur fellow) Stuart Kauffman's "Origins of Order" (and his more recent "At Home in the Universe" and "Investigations") for convincing real-science explanations of the inevitability of life that haven't made it into college textbooks yet. (The books are too detailed and diverse for a few-sentence summary, but this work is a Nobel Prize in the making.)
[4] I do agree that the hypothesis that intelligence always destroys itself promptly also both meets the current observations and is consistent with the obvious looming singularity (since we by definition can't tell what will happen at it). But a hypothesis about a complex transition process that is invalidated by even a single success is too ambitious to be convincing to me. Or perhaps it's just too pessimistic -- there's no point in kidding ourselves that our opinions are fully rational in origin.
[5] The best counterpoints in the discussion were the challenges to make the artilect theory subject to evidence. This is fair enough. While the skeptics should face up to the fact that we don't know enough about either intelligence or cosmology at this point to know just how to frame a crucial experiment, the supporters should admit that with our observational power increasing exponentially, it seems reasonable that we should find evidence pretty soon if we look in enough reasonable places. (Any scientists among Earth's deep-sea tube worms could get evidence for human existence by trace analysis of seawater without waiting for the hyper-rare submersible visits or having to journey or send sensors to the surface.) Even if the grown-up artilects are too far away to see for a while, there could well be some reckless teenagers, feral animals, eavesdropping devices, communication channels, or just leftover litter that are within reach. And I don't at all rule out the possibility that some "supernatural" experiences are relevant -- the experience reports from the mystics that translate roughly into being (for a brief but timeless period) a cell in the brain of the universe seem to me to be quite harmonious with the artilect hypothesis. So where should we look?
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Re: No visitors because we live in a very bad neighborhood
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Indeed, any ET civilization whose intelligence had surpassed ours, for any length of time, would have at least had the capacity to develop robots able to cities in space, and food from almost any matter whatsoever. All that is needed is to harness energy.
Once their own sun was "maxed out" in terms of using every ray for energy (Dyson Sphere) they need only push some of their cities to the next nearby star, a relatively short distance. Doesn't matter that much what is there, just a sun and alot of garbage-matter is sufficient to duplicate another Dyson Sphere.
Either they are extremely rare (difficult to succeed), or the powers that accrue are sufficient to "snuff" any leaking signal deliberately, out of some inescapable "non-interference" policy whose logic we cannot fathom. This seems unlikely, for we are already powerful enough to direct a signal to "candidate" star systems.
In the short term, it should not matter to our own course of action.
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: No visitors because we live in a very bad neighborhood
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We do not know enough about this to make a determination one way or the other. I suspect that intelligent life is rare, but it's not an opinion upon which I would stake the mortgage payment, and if I were to be proven wrong, it would not surprise me overmuch.
Until we build and launch intersteller probes (and wait a long time for them to report back) we won't have enough information to judge whether our evolutionary circumstances are common or rare. It does seem that in most of the extra-solar planetary systems discovered so far, the orbits of the gas giants (the only planets whose presence can be inferred) are quite irregular. This would at least lead to a supposition that the arrangement of our solar system is not some sort of universal. The real question is how wide the tolerance paramenters are for life starting, and what particular factors help or hinder its evolution beyond the unicellular level. Nobody knows the answers to those questions.
I cannot possibly imagine upon what evidence anyone could base a supposition that life might be common away from planets. It would seem highly unlikely that complex life would evolve in interplanetery space (too much hard radiation, and a lack of chemical building blocks), and if you're saying that life evolved on a planet and then moved out into space, you haven't changed the problem at all. It's still about how likely is the evolution of complex life on a planetary surface, which is something we don't know enough about to say. It is as if a child were to say, "The reason you can't see Santa Claus at the North Pole is because his city is completely undetectable." It is highly unlikely that Santa is at the north pole in an invisible city, but I could never disprove that statement, because if his city were completely undetectable, I would have no way to do so--even if I went to the North Pole myself and scouted around.
The person who discovers unimpeachable proof of extra-terrestrial life would win a Nobel Prize--no doubt about that. But until somebody finds evidence that a) life is a nearly inevitable byproduct of organic chemistry, b) that it can evolve to forms at least as complex as multi-celled plants and animals under many different conditions, or c) finds unmistakable and undeniable proof of life elsewhere, it's all just interesting speculation.
BC
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Where Are They?
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>What's the difference between God and the ultimate artilect?
Probably nothing, but then the term God is indefinable by definition, just like the term Singularity. If you know what the Singularity is, then it's not the Singularity because the Singularity is on the other side of the technological event horizon -- that's why the word "singularity" is applied to this event.
Getting back to De Garis on the Fermi Paradox: I agree with De Garis that Artilects are probably common place and that they don't interact, but I disagree with his reasons WHY they don't interact. Robert Zubrin has hit on the solution to this part of the problem. Zubrin, in ENTERING SPACE, suggests that the only thing an emerging civilization, such as the human race, could contribute to a "Galactic Club" would be its uniqueness. Therefore, if Artilects interacted with us, they would adulterate our uniqueness. Our uniqueness will provide various knowledge elements that a superinteligent civilization would relish or need. It's like adding new genes to the gene pool which will otherwise degrade with no contributions over time.
Secondly, I agree with one poster on this thread that states that De Garis did not really address Fermi's Paradox in full. If Artilects chose to refrain from interaction, they would have to hide evidence of their existence. So this is probably what they have done. If certain things, like crop circles, turn out to actually have extraterrestrial significance, like gradient evidence of superintelligence, it would be very interesting.
Lastly, here's another possibility for Fermi's Paradox. Perhaps superintelligence brings with it the need or desire to conquer. Just like in feudal times on earth, pockets of civilization existed in heavily fortified city-states totally paranoid of the rest of existence. Add to this the fact that a constant state of war existed almost everywhere. Perhaps this is the state the universe is in now, being still young, only in this case the only way a city-state superintelligent civilization can survive is to stay hidden. Thus, all Artilects are staying hidden so that are not wiped out by other Artilects who realize that they need, or will need, more matter to increase their computational substrate. This might explain why we see no evidence of them. The second part of the puzzle is, as De Garis says, Artilects don't even bother with biologicals.
In summary: They don't interact with us because we're just biologicals and we don't see them because they are hiding from each other, not necessarily us. BUT their hiding could serve a dual purpose: security from other Artilects, as mentioned, and the ability to nurture our own unique development, as I discussed above.
James Jaeger |
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We ARE Artilects Already?
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Maybe we ARE Artilects already.
Consider this: you're superintelligent. You've figured out, not only the puny physical universe, but all of existence as well. You're an Artilect. What's for desert?
Well maybe the only game left to play for a superintelligent being is to play dumb. After all, if life IS a game, or existence is a game, which it probably is, the only way to have a self-determined game, as opposed to a pan-determined game, is to NOT control all sides of the game, which a superintelligent being would be able to do by its very nature. Hubbard said that Life is a game comprised of FREEDOMS, PURPOSES and BARIORS. Well if an Artilect has infinite intelligence, it would have infinite freedom because nothing could be a barrier, hence two conditions for a game, such as life, would be absent. Playing dumb, or forgetting you're an Artilect, would give such a being the ability to confront and conquer barrios all over again. Thus and Artilect would have a game to play.
But why a game? Because a game is interesting. It gives a being something to do. Games have purposes, purposes are entertaining. If the highest purpose in life is the creation of an effect, then this would be something that An Artilect would enjoy, for the highest effect a being could probably create would be to evolve to superintelligence, create an entire universe and then fool, even itself, into believing that it is unaware of its very own superintelligence and effects. Pretty nifty.
Thus maybe Artilects have put on human garbs, hence human limitations, to have a game with other Artilects that have dome similar things.
If this is true, then the Singularity is probably a subjective event. When you die, you suddenly remember that you're an Artilect but playing a game called life, and you suddenly return to a superintelligent state of being.
James Jaeger |
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Re: We ARE Artilects Already?
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Maybe we ARE Artilects already.
...
Well maybe the only game left to play for a superintelligent being is to play dumb. After all, if life IS a game, or existence is a game, which it probably is, the only way to have a self-determined game, as opposed to a pan-determined game, is to NOT control all sides of the game, which a superintelligent being would be able to do by its very nature. Hubbard said that Life is a game comprised of FREEDOMS, PURPOSES and BARIORS. Well if an Artilect has infinite intelligence, it would have infinite freedom because nothing could be a barrier, hence two conditions for a game, such as life, would be absent. Playing dumb, or forgetting you're an Artilect, would give such a being the ability to confront and conquer barrios all over again. Thus and Artilect would have a game to play.
So cool to see you hit on this idea! For a long time I've wondered over this exact thing.
The main reason is this... Perhaps experiential knowledge is more valuable than even perfect theoretical extrapolation (or maybe just more fun/dramatic). An Artilect could speculate and predict quite well or flawlessly well but that is not the same as being able to say, "I have been through that."
In order to go through at exact thing, the Artilect would have to make it's self forget, or at least the portion of it's self gaining the experience.
But why a game? Because a game is interesting. It gives a being something to do. Games have purposes, purposes are entertaining. If the highest purpose in life is the creation of an effect, then this would be something that An Artilect would enjoy, for the highest effect a being could probably create would be to evolve to superintelligence, create an entire universe and then fool, even itself, into believing that it is unaware of its very own superintelligence and effects. Pretty nifty.
I've also wondered about Singularities within Singularities as an Artilect is gaining experiential knowledge of the many ways to reach a Singularity. Reminds you of Turtles all the way down!
If this is true, then the Singularity is probably a subjective event. When you die, you suddenly remember that you're an Artilect but playing a game called life, and you suddenly return to a superintelligent state of being.
I do think a Singularity could be very subjective and often as undetectable as the water a fish swims through. We may well be seeing what it looks like inside a Singularity right now.
It could be set up so than when an Artilect has a "thought", it actually, within an instant, runs a model "game" in order to gain experiential knowledge. Such a thought would have subjective time with it's own temporary forgetting to make it a valid experience. So you may be the experiential thought of James living 70 years of subjective time and all the lessons therein. Or the thought of James living long enough to reach a Singularity and then start running your own models and games... Turtles on turtles...
This is pretty wild speculation especially since it's about things past the line of Singularity, but seems like experience really is the best way to learn and progress. Maybe the only way when the line is passed.
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Re: Where Are They?
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James:
The simplest resolution of the Fermi paradox is that intelligent aliens either do not exist, or if they do, they are so rare that we are alone in our galaxy. Heeding Occam's advice to avoid the multiplication of entities, I don't see any reason to speculate on the presence of Artilects or whatever until I see evidence that there is such a thing. In order for an argument such as that which postulates that Artilects are silent to be true, it would have to apply to all cases, at all times, which seems unlikely if such things actually existed.
Our arrival on earth was hardly a foregone conclusion; the exact steps involved in getting from the development of eukaryotic cells to the appearance of homo sapiens sapiens would probably never happen again in the lifetime of the galaxy. (For example, were it not for a "fortunate" meteor strike 65 million years ago, we wouldn't be here. I could go on and on...)
On the scale of the earth's evolutionary timescale, the jury is still out on whether technological civilization is really that successful an adaptation. It seems so to me (being a technological chauvinist of sorts), but I can think of any number of ways we could hasten our own extinction within the next few decades, before we have given birth to whatever AI succeeds us. Meanwhile, prokaryotic life forms such as bacteria continue to flourish, and would probably survive whatever nastiness we were to unleash on the rest of the ecosphere.
BC
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Re: Where Are They?
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>James:
>The simplest resolution of the Fermi paradox is that intelligent aliens either do not exist, or if they do, they are so rare that we are alone in our galaxy. Heeding Occam's advice to avoid the multiplication of entities, I don't see any reason to speculate on the presence of Artilects or whatever until I see evidence that there is such a thing.
Yes, I hear ya on all this.
>In order for an argument such as that which postulates that Artilects are silent to be true, it would have to apply to all cases, at all times, which seems unlikely if such things actually existed.
True, but then even the window of time it would apply to, i.e., the time frame where life became sentient to now, is a very small fraction of the time frame possible. Artilects could be anywhere from 100 years ahead of us to 100,000,000 years ahead of us. It it's the later, their non-intervention policy would surely qualify as "all cases, at all times."
>Our arrival on earth was hardly a foregone conclusion; the exact steps involved in getting from the development of eukaryotic cells to the appearance of homo sapiens sapiens would probably never happen again in the lifetime of the galaxy. (For example, were it not for a "fortunate" meteor strike 65 million years ago, we wouldn't be here. I could go on and on...)
Yes I am familiar with this argument and others dealing with our over-sized moon, etc. I am more convinced that life such as ours is the rule rather than the anomaly, and my conclusion is based upon a the track record of self-discovery homo sapiens has been engaged on since Copernicus -- the idea that every major discovery since Copernicus reveals that we are less the center of things. If you extrapolate this record, it leads one to the postulate that we are not only NOT at the center of the solar system or the galaxy, but we are just one of many such civilizations.
>On the scale of the earth's evolutionary timescale, the jury is still out on whether technological civilization is really that successful an adaptation.
True.
>It seems so to me (being a technological chauvinist of sorts), but I can think of any number of ways we could hasten our own extinction within the next few decades, before we have given birth to whatever AI succeeds us. Meanwhile, prokaryotic life forms such as bacteria continue to flourish, and would probably survive whatever nastiness we were to unleash on the rest of the ecosphere.
True. But I think we will make it. Life today is better than life 100 years ago and life 100 years ago was better than life 1000 years ago. There is no reason the this trend NOT to continue.
James Jaeger
BC |
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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I just re-read this entire thread including the original article by Hugo. It looks like just about every consideration on this subject has been addressed so I'll try and do some summarizing:
Since we have no proof either way as to whether we are alone in the universe, we should probably operate from the point of view that we ARE alone.
If we want to decide that we have some cosmological value, or other value, we should then probably take steps to:
A. Prevent our demise;
B. Spread our selves to other worlds ASAP.
If we decide we have no value, and there is no one out there anyway, the view that no one will miss us if we cause our demise, seems valid.
For the purposes of this argument, I'll take the position that we DO have value, cosmological or other. Thus, we should prevent our demise and we should spread ourselves to other worlds.
In order to thus do B, it seems to me we need to do A first.
So, how do we prevent our demise seems to me to be a, or the, primary target for the human species.
If it is THE primary target, then all other targets are of lesser priority and should be addressed later. I will assume it is THE primary target, thus we need to list the things that could bring about our demise. Here is a partial list in no particular order:
A. Runaway climate change;
B. Runaway war;
C. Comet or asteroid hit;
D. Runaway nefarious meme of some sort;
E. The Singularity;
F. Cultural and/or technological stagnation;
G. Sudden irregular solar radiation;
H. Gamma ray burst in galaxy;
I. Other.
We should then prioritize A - H as to what's the worse event and what's the least humanly preventable. It seems that the only defense for H and G might be the remedy of A - F. Yet E might not be possible unless F and B are prevented. It follows that point I may not be preventable until we are intelligent enough to become aware of what OTHER things lurk, thus E, the Singularity, must take place to solve point I.
My gut feeling is the key to the remedy of A – I starts with the remedy of war. The remedy of war would free up vast creative resources to remedy the other items. Actually, the remedy of war is not only doable, but probably the EASIEST thing on the list. So why not do the easiest thing on the list and gain a sense of accomplishment? If humans stopped viewing each other as enemies, and realized that A – I were the actual enemies, perhaps there would be no future justification for wars hence its remedy could be accomplished.
If war is currently being caused by a looming scarcity of petroleum, finding alternate energy sources could lead to a remedy thus freeing up of the very resources we need to start addressing other items on the list. Abundant inexpensive energy could give a boost to all industry, thus placing the human race in the position of not only remedying climate change, but with the ability to start colonization of Mars, primary target B of above. Remedying a possible asteroid or comet impact would be easier if we have more resources allocated to the development of space.
If the services of the world’s armed forces could be re-directed towards a war with the universe rather than a war on terror or a war on other humans, the $440 billion spent on the Military could really be justified. If this money were re-deployed from paying people to build expensive weapons that just destroy, to the construction of new infrastructures that would defend us from A – I above, the human race would be allocating its most expensive apparatus to the defeat its real enemy. In this scenario, no one in the Military-Industrial-Banking Complex would have to go unemployed or unappreciated. They would be real heroes because they destroyed not their fellow humans, but because they destroyed the very things that attempted to destroy the entire human race for all time.
Given this, I see a real possibility of the human race making it. The possibility of re-directing our energy flows and intentions in a more harmonious manner could lead to a fantastic future. As I have said before, the solution to our problems lays in our hands. The way a problem knot is unraveled is to find the first string to gently pull . . . then the second string and the rest will become obvious. We just have to find the correct first string and gently pull.
James Jaeger
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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of course, a dyson sphere for our population would be great, but probably overkill.
a "mere" ringworld, 1 million miles wide in roughly the earth's orbit (but not the exact orbit, we wouldnt destroy earth to make a ringworld). this could comfortably home trillions of people.
i contend that neither of these amazing concepts will actually need to be built, however.
this is because tho we hear a lot of talk of our overflowing population colonizing space, tho it may seem surprising now the tech of sustainability will come before sending large numbers of people to live in space will be cost effective.
in fact, unless there are some materials that we need that are abundant in space but vanishingly rare on earth, the idea of mining space proabably wont be a huge activity (at least intended for earth consumption)
i can see a few adventurers living in space, and a thriving tourist industry. i believe the staff supporting this tourism industry will form most of those living in space, for quite some time.
dont get me wrong - when the tech of affordable space travel becomes widespread, therell be a lot of folks going there to check things out. but any other body in the solar system, even beautiful saturn, will seem cold and alien environment compared to our home here.
after the common man can taste space, the earth will enjoy a renaissance of appreciation and gratitude from us. |
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Re: Answering Fermi's Paradox
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I'd like to throw this idea out as well. After reading some on developmental psychology (Kegan, Maslow, Don Beck; Spiral Dynamics, etc..) dealing with stages of mental development, that a human consciousness develops through, like rungs on a ladder, (some don't make it to far up), but as the consciousness develops, there is nesting and the consciousness can deal with ever-increasing complexity, and this is true for all humans. The cutting edge of this (the very top, most advanced minds) aren't traveling on a pre-given path, the mind is actually laying down the mental framework, that other minds will tend toward. Thease are actual structures in the universe that human consciousness follows. Now a days, the most advanced minds are Intgral, or super-integral, kosmo-contric. To relate this to Fermi's Paradox- perhaps thease stages of development, and particularly the cutting edge, isn't just localized to the human species, but perhaps this phenomenon is non-local itself, and true for all intelligent beings throughout the universe, so the reason for Fermi's Paradox, is that the most advanced life in the universe, is just very closely on par with our own intelligence, and hence also their technology, at this given time. So, no inter-planatery spaceships yet. Anyone else have thoughts concenring this possibility?
-Patrick |
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