[ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2013 at 03:00:35PM -0700, Stephen Van Sickle wrote:

> 1.  We are not overrun by intelligences for the same reason we are not

Expansive live doesn't have to be intelligent. In fact, the first
wave arguably selects against intelligence.

> overrun by E. coli or kudzu:  predation.  In a universe red in tooth and
> claw, there is strong incentive to hide, and defectors from this principle
> are quickly eaten.

Ecosystem has a metabolism, and an observational footprint which
makes it detectable halfway across the visible universe. You can't hide it.
 
> 2.  There are more interesting places to go that are far easier to reach
> than it is to travel between the stars.  Alternate realities?  Parallel
> universes?  Basement universes?  This does not solve the defector problem,
> unless, as in #1, they are hiding as well.

Statistical argument kills this one.
 
> 3.  The time-like version of #2:  this is an uninteresting time.  Perhaps

I think the beginnings was boring, but nucleosynthesis and time
gives rise to more complexity. It seems the universe is winding
down (95% of stars to ever exist are already there), so the future
might be getting more boring again.

> the universe will, in the future, undergo a phase change that improves
> computation, or, once you've solved all of physics, you get bored and want

Darwinian systems never get bored.

> to see your predictions play out. Or the future sends a message, and you
> are impatient to get there.  So, civilizations are sleeping until a better
> time.  Still no solution to the defector question, unless sleeping is how
> you hide as well.
> 
> Likely, a combination of all three.  Reality is teaming with intelligence,
> all of which are either hungry predators or hiding from them.  Once an
> intelligence develops, it either quickly dies horribly, or soon figures
> things out and either escapes this universe to hide or, if a predator, to
> stalk and ambush the unsuspecting. Or, a new civilization sleeps until
> better times, deeply hidden, in, for example, a deep ocean.
> 
> I call this the Lovecraft Solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Not convinced.
 
> 
> > When being simulated or subject to alien police devices are the nice
> > options, then things are weird.
> 
> 
> And perhaps things are not just weird, but horrifically, mind bendingly
> weird.

What about plain good old boring? It definitely explains what we're seeing.