[ExI] Fermi Paradox and Transcension

[Anders Sandberg]

On 05/09/2012 19:40, BillK wrote:
> 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.

It depends on their technology and society, I doubt there is any general 
statement that can be made. For Fermi question purposes it is enough to 
note that there could well be 1% remnants that could expand greatly - 
consider a near-singularity culture where people have nanoassemblers and 
libraries of blueprints. In order for this argument to work as a patch 
for the attractor argument you need to show that it is likely that *no* 
remnants ever can spread. And I am pretty confident that if you have 
copyable minds and a bit of nanotech you could definitely spam the universe.


> 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.

> It is not an 'attractor'. It is the inevitable path that intelligence 
> follows.

Yes, but he has not proven (or even made plausible) that STEM is such an 
inevitable point.

I think we can agree that there are likely some convergence points like 
mathematics and certain technologies. And I think it is plausible that 
any advanced civilisation will achieve and make use of STEM 
technologies. But even though STEM is super-useful, that doesn't mean 
one can then conclude that henceforth there will be no non-STEM 
activities. Yes, most rational goals can be achieved inside STEM 
clusters, but there are some goals that are either irrational or 
not-achievable in the cluster.

To work as an explanation it needs to be plausible that it is inevitable 
on a civilisation scale but also on the individual scale. It is the 
later that I find a very bold and unsupported claim. Why would *all* 
alien space-Amish want STEM? Why would *all* alien explorers decide it 
is better to live in black holes before launching exploration projects? 
Why would *all* alien artists decide that pretentious art projects that 
take eons to unfold are too much work?

Claiming STEM is super-useful is not enough. Arguing that clustered 
intelligences lack interest in outside things due to time lags  is not 
enough - that just shaves off the majority of minds. To work as a Fermi 
explanation you need something much stronger, really an argument to the 
effect that "Once technology X arrives - and *all* technological 
civilizations find it - it becomes practically impossible for *any* 
member of *any* kind of civilisation to make any observable activity".

That is a tall order.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University