[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[BillK]

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> If there is something 99% of people select, then the important question is
> what the remaining 1% do. If one of their possible actions is to reproduce
> very fast or expand across the universe it doesn't matter that their
> offspring also tend to select the something in 99 cases out of 100.
>
> At present, if there existed something like that mankind would all end up
> using it since it is not possible to reproduce or flee fast enough. So if
> the super-attractor is very easy to do and happens before spaceflight, then
> it could explain the Fermi question. Except that we don't seem to have
> anything like it, cellphones nonwithstanding, and we could (if we were
> slightly more collectively rational) have spaceflight by now. The
> super-attractor could perhaps also work in a solar system wide civilization
> since interstellar travel is relatively tough, but now the attractor state
> needs to be far more strongly attractive than the mere planet-scale
> attractor since it is harder to reign in widely spread habitats. For
> interstellar civilisations the attractor must be able to happen locally
> regardless of communications limits, and must on average make a colony
> produce less than one offspring colonies.
>
> The higher the technological level required to trigger the attractor, the
> less plausible it looks that it could successfully attract *everybody* and
> not just the majority.
>
>

Two comments.
1) If only 1% of a nation opt out of migrating to the computronium
substrate, will they still have enough resources to do space travel?
As well as maintaining their 1% civilisation. The Amish just maintain
their way of life.

2) John Smart's thesis is that it is a mistake to look for a 'great
attractor'. Especially one that attracts all civs no matter what they
are descended from. He is looking for something that affects all civs
in the galaxy.

His suggestion is that as species develop they all converge on the
same outcome. Because that's the way the universe works.
Quote:
Species convergence in the sense of a non-identical, dynamic
progression towards universal milestones is of critical importance to
Smart’s next suggestion; rather than advanced civilisations seeding
the galaxy in a process of expansion, evolutionary development guides
intelligent life increasingly into inner space and what is referred to
as STEM, small scales of space, time, energy and matter that
eventually lead to black hole like domains.
-----------

It is not an 'attractor'. It is the inevitable path that intelligence
follows. The idea appeals to me.


BillK