[ExI] thought experiment and meaning of life

Anders Sandberg anders at aleph.se
Tue Jun 17 08:31:23 UTC 2014


William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> , 17/6/2014 2:22 AM:
A virus of entirely human origin has wiped the planet of all people.  Shortly after aliens visit (irony, eh?).  They study us and our buildings, literature - everything - over many years.
 
What will they say is the most important, the best thing we produced while we existed?  That is, they will attempt to attach a meaning to our collective lives.  Assume that they learn our languages, math, music, history, philosophy etc. and are somewhat like us.  
 
So, what would you say in answer to that question?   wfw
The "somewhat like us" part is key - sapient space corals might have meaning in their distributed fractal minds, but it will be hard to say how it meshes with our kind of meaning. 
But even looking at different *humans* it is clear that they would place meaning in very different things - just consider how present people might respond to the best things the Romans did: architecture, orgies, the poetry of Vergilius, Christianity or conquering Britain? While a Roman might point at some historical memorial about his gens while thinking the buildings we appreciate would need a new coat of colour, that the orgies were mis-remembered (no, a vomitorium is not what you think!), that the poetry just raises boring school memories, eastern cults are a dupondius a dozen, and who ever cared about those rainy outposts in the far north anyway?
OK, that said, I think the aliens would try to figure out *what this species would have wanted to be remembered for* (see it as the temporal golden rule: treat the past as you want the future to treat you). From their perspective they will note that while most civilizations profess veneration for big abstract achievements - their national epic, their theologies, their art and sciences - most humans who ever lived were not part of a big civilization but were hunter-gatherers. In such societies people typically care about being part of a family and remembered by their family in the future. Most afterlife mythologies care deeply about descendants continuing to venerate their ancestors. Even within civilizations the average person cares more for family than the big building that will outlast her. The final clincher is the recording on the Voyager probe (once they read about it they sent a FTL skiff to fetch it). The recording is all about "remember us!", very much the direct attempt of the species to make its own best epitaph. And it is on top of a singular technological achievement of the last civilization.
So the aliens will store the Voyager II probe and the recording.

(The space corals on the other hand decided a broken pencil tip, a parking ticket and Western Australia were the greatest achievements and promptly depart with them to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. But as we all know, they are rabid collectors.)
Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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