[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 5:00 AM,  Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> On 05/09/2012 11:19, BillK wrote:
>> IEET have a long article suggesting that the future of all
>> civilisations is to 'transcend' and live inside black hole domains.
>
> While I hope this is possible and maybe true, I think there is a deep
> problem with the hypothesis: it assumes a very strong convergence to
> this lifestyle. It must be so good that no alien Amish or explorers get
> left behind to make the universe different. Can you imagine any cultural
> or technological innovation that would suck in 100% of humans?

Cell phones have come fairly close.  Even the Amish use them.  Can you
think of a culture that has rejected them?

"Clinic Seed" style uploading might do it as well.

> My and Stuart Armstrong's work on Dyson-powered intergalactic
> colonisation has convinced me that the Fermi question is between a
> million and a billion times tougher than commonly assumed: we need to
> consider aliens not just from our galaxy but from a sizeable fraction of
> all visible galaxies as potential past colonizers here. That means that
> any cultural convergence better be a million or a billion times stronger
> than the level we would think necessary in order to keep the Milky Way
> colonisation-free. I don't think we have any plausible mechanism for that.

Here is one.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/04/12/transhumanism-and-the-human-expansion-into-space-a-conflict-with-physics/

Hugo de Garis has the idea that unfriendly AI will be the end of us.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/08/21/the-singhilarity-institute-my-falling-out-with-the-transhumanists/

But AIs could travel to the stars with relative ease.  So that means
you need a reason for every single one of them to be stay-at-homes.

> The alternatives is of course that aliens are between a million or a
> billion times rarer than we would normally think, that the risk of
> existential risk is between a million or a billion times worse, that
> they are here but manages to maintain silence to a very high degree, or
> that the technology ceiling is much lower than we normally assume on
> this list.
>
> The silence in the sky is surprisingly talkative, but it is unclear what
> it is saying.

1  Something (like speed of light) keeps them all at home (or in a
dimension, black holes, cyberspace) where they are not apparent.

2  Something destroys the lot of them.  (Functionally same as the above.)

3  We are the first.  (Unlikely as this might be, someone has to be the first.)

Keith

> Anders Sandberg,