[extropy-chat] When did intelligence first emerge in theuniverse?

[Robert Bradbury]

On 6/23/06, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> There is zero evidence that these planets orbiting other suns are anything
> more than just planets.


I didn't say that there was.  I was merely suggesting that there are other
possibilities that are consistent with known laws of physics (e.g. Jupiter
brains or neutronium brains) that would provide reasonable explanations for
the current observations that are receiving zero press time.  This becomes
more annoying when one starts to have to do a lot of hand waving to explain
*why* at least some of the "Earth's" that are likely to be older than ours
would not have evolved *long* past our current state of development.

One of the triumphs of the Big Bang theory is that it explains how the
> lighter elements were made during the first few seconds of the big bang.
> The
> calculated abundance of these elements and their observed abundance are in
> excellent agreement (especially regarding deuterium) . However if Dark
> Matter were normal matter and there were 10 time more of it around than we
> thought the abundance of light elements observed and their calculated
> value
> would not be even close.


Cough... And precisely *where* is the data coming from that is providing
those element abundances?  If MBrains or NBrains can disassemble planets and
stars do you not think they could preassemble the solar system to look a
particular way?  Do you feel they could put a few hundred million satellites
in orbit around the outer solar system to make the elements in the Universe
appear to have the "mix" we observe?   "Gee look Joe, if I take this light
and properly time the variation in power inputs the it will look exactly
like a gravitational microlens to the observers watching from Earth.  Oh
yes, and don't forget that they are expecting to get that faint radio signal
from that Voyager satellite we have sitting over in the corner next week."

Has any scientist seriously studied what set of astronomical observations we
currently have could *not* be produced by an ATC relatively cheaply -- given
the matter, energy and engineering capabilities we can anticipate they would
have?  (Assuming they are not skewing the input data to give us the
impression we are living in what is indeed a faux universe.)

The scenario here isn't that we are in a simulation but that we are in one
of the many faux "universes" that are setup to be relatively close resemble
the "real" universe to test developmental variation involving the discovery
of things which do not fit the "standard" pictures.  E.g. When does a
civilization come up with the Fermi Paradox and how do they handle it?  What
about Dark Matter?  What about Dark Energy?  What about "strange"
supernovas?  Etc.  If we tweek what they are observing just this way, how
does it alter their development?

You can flip the question around and ask what fraction of the believed
"local" reality could be manipulated?  There are many scientific experiments
where attempts are not made to replicate them more than a few times (look
for example at the cold fusion debate...).  The nanorobots could move in and
put the "fix" on the results and it would be very hard for us to detect
this.  It isn't as if the scientists have the labs in clean room conditions
under lock and key 24/7 equiped with heat and motion sensors that might
detect nanorobots sneaking in or out.

I see no reason why Jupiter brains can't be made of normal matter so I see
> no reason to think Dark Matter is made up of Jupiter Brains. I don't even
> want to talk about Dark Energy, although even more common than Dark Matter
> we know even less about it.


My point would be that Jupter Brains and Matrioshka Brains and Neutronium
Brains are *all* made out of "normal" matter operating under our hopefully
accurate perceptions of physical laws.  Unless they are actively radiating
copious amounts of energy they *are* going to be undetectable (i.e. *DARK*)
except by using gravitational microlensing or occultation astronomy.
Getting either of these methods to provide good data involves making some
reasonable assumptions about the nature of, distance to and size of the
background and foreground objects.  Astrophysicists do not generally engage
in speculations about the universe being populated by roving populations of
the 3 Brain types  -- presumably because they would like to retain their
jobs and maybe someday get tenure.

Robert
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