[ExI] Where are they? was Re: 2^57885161-1

[The Avantguardian]

>________________________________
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
>To: The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
>Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 5:43 AM
>Subject: Re: [ExI] Where are they? was Re: 2^57885161-1
>  
>On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 03:45:27AM -0800, The Avantguardian wrote:
>
>> Perhaps your new law of physics should be that "cultures of an intelligent species 
>
>Intelligent species are a subset of all expansive species.

True but non-intelligent post biota will likely be too busy eating one another to build Von Neumann probes.
 
>My aquarium is not a democracy.

Your aquarium also stands little chance of being detected by an ET civilization as well or colonizing the galaxy.
 
>>  
>> Ahh but in celebration of his birthday, I will invoke the Copernican principle and say that we are unlikely to be the first. 
>
>It's a statement we can feel good about, but unfortunately it's
>not supported by any data.
>
>> I would say that there is about a 2/3 prior chance that we are one standard 
>> deviation above or below the mean in age or advancement for civilizations. 
>
>Bzzt, no data.

Correct. That is why it is called a *prior*. When we get data, we get to update our priors and calculate posteriors.
 
>> Also keep in mind that only civilizations indigenous to any of the 14600 
>> stars within our radio light-cone have any chance of detecting us and vice versa. 
>
>If we don't collape there will be measurable stellar dimming
>in about a century scale, if not earlier.

So how many long-period eclipsing binaries out there aren't really binary stars at all but are instead works in progress?
 
>> The universe is vast and you have sampled only a small speck of it. 
>> It would be unwise to extrapolate that ridiculous sample to the universe at large.  
>
>Expansive life is impossible to miss across GLYr distances, unless
>observability is censored by relativistic expansion + anthropic principle.
>What we see is exactly what we can expect to see.

If a civilization turned the Andromeda galaxy to computronium 2 Myrs ago, we wouldn't notice for another 500 kyrs. So don't wait up.
 
Stuart LaForge
 
"Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." - William Shakespeare