[ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan
Subject: Re: [ExI] Silence in the sky-but why?

 

>.The most common line of thinking goes something like this:"You know, the
Universe is soooo big, even the Galaxy is sooo big, that there MUST be
intelligent life out there!".Well, as has been said here before, it's not
THAT big...Looks like it isn't!

 

We must recognize that as mind boggling as the thought may be, it is a
possible explanation for the silent sky: we really are the first ones here.
If true, this generates a line of thought even more astonishing.  If we are
the first tech enabled species in the galaxy, then this whole thing is ours,
all of it, but there is a catch.  We need to hurry.  Reasoning: we model
intelligence as an ever upward climb towards more and better, but it is not
necessarily so.  Humanity is accumulating knowledge at a high rate, but our
collective intelligence may or may not increase in the long run.  I can
easily imagine mechanisms which would cause average intelligence to
decrease.

We may be at, or nearing, or possibly even past, the peak average
intelligence of our species, depending on how it is measured, and that last
phrase is very important.  I know we have these IQ tests and performance is
going up.  But we may be fooling ourselves.

We tend to wait around for nano-santa to show up, but he may not.  Robust
nanotech might happen and not kill us, but it is speculative.  We have a
number of technologies we conceive, as a class could be called PS^2B^2, for
Pie in the Sky in the Sweet By and By.  But if we really ponder, we have a
technology I call P^2DN^2 for Potatoes on the Plate in the Dirty Now and
Now.   An example of the latter would be the primitive MBrain nodes I
sketched in a post a few days ago.

If we look carefully, we could conceive of an MBrain that could be
conceivably constructed using all technology that is either current or is on
the immediately foreseeable horizon, using technologies understood and
mastered already.  This is important in the possible outcome of a gradually
declining ability of humanity, which is one possible future (not the one I
consider most likely, but a possibility.)  We could conceive of an MBrain
which would start tugging the sun towards another star, which is a necessary
prerequisite to some earth-based life form colonizing the galaxy.

spike

 

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