[ExI] fermi paradox

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 12:18:05PM -0700, kevin at kevinfreels.com wrote:

>    "the universe does not appear to be engineered" - this is not a
>    statement of fact. It is opinion based on very little observation.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is so ridiculous to be best left standing as is.

>    "The universe is not engineered" would be a fact if you could prove
>    it, but you can't. Yes, I know we have tons and tons of images from

"Images", huh? Don't let a gang of astrophysicists and particle physicists
gang up on you in a dark alley. They both got so many nasty tricks you'd
never knew what hit you. 

>    telescopes. But in comparison to what is out there we know close to

What do you think is out there we haven't seen yet? Does it interact
with photons? Does it have mass? Is it observable, even in principle?
Does it largely consist of invisible, pink unicorns, and girls with cups?

>    nothing. We don't even know what's under our own ice caps or deep
>    within our own oceans. We have no clue about some of what has been

Precisely -- we know a lot more about what is out there than what
we've got a few 10 km below our feet -- though you would be surprised
what we do know about that.

>    churned back into the earth over the 4.5 billion years it's been

Um, atoms? Those things in the PSE?

>    here. We are just now starting to grasp some of our own history. We

A star is a much simpler object than a cell. So is history of stellar
objects.

>    don't even know for sure if Neanderthals bred with ancient H. sapiens.
>    Your "fact" is similar to stating that it is not raining in my country
>    because I see sunshine coming through the cracks in my blinds.

Your facts don't even exist. All you've uttered so far is mythical bullshit,
and opinions. You have to do much, much better than that.
 
>    As to the second fact, "could" does not equal "would". Otherwise it
>    would not require it's own word. "Would" is an assumption based on
>    what little we know of life on our own planet. Going back to the first

We're not talking about life on this planet. We're talking about
large-scale signatures of engineered objects, or, rather, remarkable
absence thereof. 

>    point, we know so little about our own solar system we can't even
>    safely say that ETs haven't been on our planet. It's entirely possible

Because you're being able to write this message and because there are
stars in the night sky we're in nobody's smart lightcone. Unlike Hollywood
or anime, aliens don't come in cute little starships out of nowhere,
and then leave. 

>    that we are the result of genetic mingling. We're so early in the
>    stages of our intelligence that we barely even know what to look for.

Do you think that thermodynamics is just window-dressing, or optional?
Or that you can arbitrarily relabel observables to fit your crazy-moon
theory, which is a rehash of tired old animism?

>    Heck, it was just in the last few decades that we even thought life
>    could survive around volcanic vents. Of course, we are out on the
>    fringes of the galaxy. Assuming that any other mind would think like
>    us - which is a stretch considering that most of us don't even think
>    alike - it may simply not be worth the energy to come way out here
>    where we are.

Life is about atoms and entropy gradients. There's plenty of atoms
and entropy gradients where you sit. Any inoculated petri dish will
grow radial colonies (temporal snapshots stacked on top of each
other are their light cones), which only stop when they run out of substrate.
You are substrate.  
 
>    To say the only choices are that we're first or that there is ALWAYS
>    an impenetratable wall is a large and unnecessary leap. I've seen

Absolutely not, anthropic effect doubly applies. You will always observe
yourself with the probability of unity, regardless how rare you are, and
you can't observe very well if you never happened, by virtue of my ancestors
eating the primeval muck that would have become your ancestors.

>    dozens of explanations from minds that have become so efficient that
>    they hardly use any energy and can survive off star light alone to

Even reversible logic is not completely reversible. It's also slow, 
and 10^23 beings would still need a great many photons, which need to
be reradiated in deep infrared.

Where are these photons? Where is the dark mass, at least?

>    post singularity beings who have slowed their clocks to 1 cycle every
>    million years to get a better view of the universe. But all that

If you slow your clock cycle too much to keep up with those joneses
who haven't, you're crunchy, and good with ketchup. In general, the
joneses are glowing-red hot, and are between one million to one
billion times faster than you.

>    speculation isn't necessary when the entire argument can be shut down
>    by a single possibility: Mind is uncommon.

That's something what we've been saying the whole time. Fermi's paradoxon isn't.
 
>    "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely,
>    mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down
>    the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." -

Man, what a lousy book. I never understood why so many consider it
scripture.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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