[ExI] Virtual Reality is where the aliens are

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 4:24 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> It could be something simple, such as advanced societies consistently fail
> to make the transition to renewable energy, so they all end up fighting
> over
> dwindling concentrated energy sources.  Or the really smart minority
> persistently get out-bred, so the population's collective intelligence and
> drive gradually dissipates like a mist in the cloudless spring dawn.


### Nah, this won't happen to us :)

Moderately dangerous stochastically destructive processes cannot be an
explanation for a consistent lack of expansion shells. There are many
quadrillions of potentially life-bearing planets in our past light-cone, so
whatever prevented every single one of them from bearing fruit was not just
random chance, it's a law of nature. Worries about renewable energy and
dysgenia are those vague fears implanted in us by the chattering classes,
not real dangers based on physical science... but can you point to a
cut-and-dry engineering reason for consistent civilizational failure? It
must be something that leaves no escape route at all, no chance of success.
I do not know about any physical danger that even remotely approaches the
level of intractable enmity to life that is needed to explain the Fermi
paradox.

This, perhaps paradoxically, leads me to optimism or at least being at
ease. If known dangers do not explain the Fermi paradox, then the Fermi
paradox does not make known dangers more dangerous. The answer to it is
either (A) we are the first and probably will grow up to flourish or (B)
whatever does us in is completely unknown to us and will kill us very soon
without any hope of dealing with it, or (C) we are so pathetically wrong
about everything we can't even start asking the right questions. Since A
leads to optimism and you can't do anything about B or C anyway, the proper
attitude is don't worry, be happy - and, or course, help build that first
starship whenever you can spare some time or dime.

Rafał
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