[ExI] Fermi's Paradoxical Politburo

[Dan]

On Thursday, March 14, 2013 2:29 PM  Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 March 2013 16:09, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Try this outlandish hypothesis on for size: intelligent civiizations stagnate
>> when technological advancement becomes illegal.
>
> This is a distinct possibility for our species, especially if its populations
> are not allowed to go on competing amongst them.

I hear it might be, though I think if you take the long view the species seems to have gone through several episodes of more or less self-imposed stagnation and bounced back. The end of the Bronze Age decline, e.g., appears to be one of the worst is the last four thousand years, yet humans didn't stay at a Bronze Age level of development. Even more organized, enforced periods of stagnation -- think of Ming Dynasty China or Shogunate Japan (in many respects) -- seem to not be permanent ends. My fear would be, though, that stagnation and decline will kill us (those of us living now) though maybe some descendants would spark the whole social, cultural, and techno progress off again, but centuries after we're dust.

> As to the paradox in general, I am inclined to adopt a variant of Wolfram's
> position, namely:
> - life or intelligence are nothing special, really, the second in particolar
> being largely pervasive and ubiquitous, and being nothing else but computation;
> - our view thereof remains however way too anthropomorphic, and given the
> spaceset of evolutionary and computational paths in comparison with the spaceset
> of systems in our event horizon, we are indeed unlikely to get in touch with
> something we would recognise as a "civilisation" anytime soon.

I opt more for the latter because unless there's a really, really low change of anything avoiding the filter, it would seem even one technological civilization would be noticed if it just went the "space opera" route of moving out into space. I hardly find it believeable, too, especially given the analogy with survivalists today -- if that isn't just a provincial human thing (and it doesn't seem to be as bacteria simply spread and don't all follow the same path -- save under lab conditions), some folkss would head off world before a Singularity and spread around -- maybe the space tech equivalent of the Amish. But look at the Amish! Are there more or less of them now than a hundred years ago?

Regards,

Dan
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