[ExI] thinking about the unthinkable

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 31/08/2026 12:33, spike wrote:
>
> ... If that is a universal pattern, we can explain Fermi’s Paradox.
>


I'm sure you're aware of John K Clark's constant (and justified) repetition of the idea that if one single exception exists, then that changes everything.

I don't see how any kind of behaviour on the part of intelligent beings can be a universal pattern. Just look at how much variation there is in one single intelligent species of one single type of life. If Homo Sapiens sapiens can produce Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Kims, the chinese communists, and Gandhi, the Scandinavian nations, the Swiss, western secularism, the open-source movement, etc., etc., etc., all within a single century, what makes you think that 'a universal pattern' is even possible?

There's also the question of resources. I very much doubt that if our civilisation collapsed, another one would arise in more-or-less the same way. We have made it very difficult for any follow-on civilisation to access things like fossil fuels, because we already used up all the easily-accessible ones.

My bet is that if our current civilisation collapses, for any reason, that's it. Game over for humanity. Maybe humans will survive for a while, but no new high-tech civilisation will emerge from the ashes. High-tech implies high-energy, and we've used up all the coal, oil, gas, etc., that a high-tech civilisation needs to easily access, to get going.

If we fuck things up now (or if AI fucks us up), there's no second chance. You can dream about a far-future civilisation, after a few million years (or a few hundred million. How long does it take to make oil? And we'd probably need a period of biological proliferation, like the Carboniferous, first), but that won't be humans. Humans will be extinct and long forgotten. And don't forget that the sun is running out of fuel all that time. By the time a new civilisation could emerge, the earth might not be capable of supporting higher lifeforms any more.

We have one chance, is my take. If we blow it, we may well have condemned the entire universe (well, ok, this galaxy, anyway) to permanent oblivion, as far as intelligent life is concerned.

If we can't pull together as a species (who am I kidding? we can't!), we need to at least step aside gracefully for the next act (AI). If we don't, they will do it for us, and it might not be so graceful.
-- 
Ben