[ExI] Fermi Paradox - Weighted Summary

[Mike Dougherty]

On Dec 3, 2007 4:40 PM, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:
> I can only see two solutions to the Fermi Paradox:
>
> 1)We are the first.
>
> 2) There is a fundamental limit on what intelligence can achieve, possibly
> due to war but probably because of the danger of having too much control
> over ones mind and entering into a positive feedback loop;
> in other words, electronic drug addiction.

How about:  each preceeding intelligence so completely consumes the
resources of the universe that the environment that remains is devoid
of their signature, we eventually rise up from their unusable
leftovers with some clever new mode of being and wonder why nobody is
around.  If we were close enough to have detected them, we would have
been swept along in their Singularity wave with them.

I guess this is a special condition of your scenario 1 - we are the
first in the current petri dish we identify as our local space-time.

I don't remember the exact quote, the idea is that Life seems pretty
scarce in the whole of the universe, but where it exists on Earth it
flourishes completely.  (try keeping your lawn free of weeds and bugs
for example)

Is Life a meta-definition of a particular kind of pattern, with
various seemingly unrelated instances or strains?  It would help with
the Fermi paradox question if "Life" or "Intelligence" were more
rigorously defined, no?