[ExI] Alien Civilizations May Only Be Detectable For A Cosmic Blink Of An Eye

[Keith Henson]

eOn Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 2:05 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On 19/10/2025 23:43, BillK wrote:
>
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2025 at 20:18, Keith Henson via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Regardless, thinking about what we see gives us a strong hint of where
> humans are headed.  I expect we will eventually build data centers in
> space to accommodate trillions of uploaded humans.  I suspect they
> will be in the relatively cold "computational zone" where the lower
> temperature reduces errors.
>
> Keith
> _______________________________________________
>
> I also think this is a likely future but.......
> Unfortunately, it contradicts the idea of zipping around the galaxy,
> colonizing other worlds.

I don't think post-singularity humans will ever bother with colonizing
planets.  They might explore them, especially those with life, but
live there is not likely.

> Once uploaded minds are processing millions
> of times faster than humans, the universe becomes frozen by time
> dilation.

If you want to live in a communicating society, there is a strong
tradeoff between the size of the society and how fast you run.  Keith
Henson (April 12, 2012). "Transhumanism and the Human Expansion into
Space: a Conflict with Physics". h+ Media. Archived from the original
on November 30, 2012.  The thing at Tabby's Star is 1.5 light seconds
across, which indicates to me that if there are uploaded aliens, thyy
are running about our speed

If the other stars are the same bunch, they have spread out at around 1/3 of c.

> Travel in space takes a subjective eternity. Exploring
> millions of virtual worlds in computronium will be preferable.
> Advanced aliens will go quiet and stay local.
>
>
> I'm not so sure.
>
> Travelling physically will always take a subjective eternity, whether you're an upload or not.

You can slow down your clock to make a journey as short as you like
(subjectively).  The problem is falling out of sync with those who
stay behind.

> Unless you're not conscious. Travelling as information encoded onto some suitable photons will take no time at all, subjectively. Setting things up so that this is possible will take a few million years, as the hardware will need to be built, presumably by Von Neumann probes of some type, scattered throughout the galaxy and programmed to build the required receiving stations and processing substrates. Once that is done, people can zip around the galaxy at the speed of light. Providing they are willing to sacrifice a few thousand objective years while their peers back home are fitting billions of years of experience into the same time.
>
> (This could already be the case, for alien civilisations, and we'd be none the wiser. The galaxy would still look the same to us, for having a few million data centres scattered about. At least for a while. If they served as seeds for new local expansion, that could be a different matter, but if they stayed small, we would never notice them)
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if there are at least some brave and adventurous individuals willing to do this, but it would almost definitely cause huge rifts, mentally and technologically, between the stay-at-homes, who will have almost endless spans of time to develop, and the adventurers, who will be frozen at their previous level until they reach their destination. It would be a one-way trip, psychologically.
>
> If things like picotechnology are possible, maybe the originating civilisations would effectively disappear, becoming too small for any detection method. The whole universe could be soaked in advanced civilisations, and still look exactly the same.
>
> --
> Ben
>
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