[extropy-chat] damien's psi book

[Russell Wallace]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:43:29 -0800, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Even if we go with the notion that we exist in some
> sort of meta-sim, it still fails to explain the one
> observation that has puzzled me to no end: that the
> cosmos are not buzzing with signals.  How could that
> be?  Surely we are not the first tech-capable species
> to evolve.  Could we *really* be the very first ones
> to come along?  That notion is just too mind-boggling.
> So where are the others?

I've never understood why people are so unhappy with this idea; what's
to be unhappy about? It's not as if we have any practical need for the
existence of aliens.

However, one doesn't particularly need to assume their nonexistence
either; one can simply postulate that the speed of light is as
absolute a barrier as it appears to be. Then the nearest
extraterrestrial civilization could be a billion years older than we
are and be perfectly consistent with observation, provided they're at
least a billion light years away so signals or probes from them
haven't had time to reach us yet. Would you be happier with this
explanation?

- Russell