[ExI] Fermi Paradox vs. Copernican Principle?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 1:28 AM Inigo Barrera <inigoku at yahoo.com> wrote:

*> What I'd contest is the seam between the two halves of your case. The
> physics half — starlight into empty space is free energy wasted,
> computation has a thermodynamic price — is solid.*
>

*Thank you.  *



> *> The value half, that any mind wants to maximize total computation,
> isn't physics. It's a utility function,*
>

*I agree.  *


> *> and I'd argue it's the one our particular selection history installed
> in us.*
>

*Yes but I go even further, it's not just our utility function, it is the
utility function of every form of life, even bacteria tends to move away
from noxious chemicals and move toward nutritious ones. If a life form
didn't care if it lived or died and didn't want to gain more control over
its environment then it would have no descendants because it would very
soon be outcompeted by life forms that DID care.*

*> Your answer is presumably that it only takes one lineage with that
> appetite, and expansionists inherit the light cone.*
>

*Yes, and once you have Drexler style Nanotechnology (which unlike faster
than light travel or perpetual motion machines requires only improved
engineering, not new science) then Von Neumann Probes are not only possible
they are dirt cheap and easy to make, so you only need one individual with
an "appetite" similar to mine and after just a few million years (a blink
of the eye cosmically speaking) there could be a Dyson sphere/swarm around
every star in the Milky Way. And a blind man in a fog bank could detect
that. But we see nothing like that in this galaxy or in any other. *



> * if the cost of erasing a bit scales with temperature (Landauer's
> principle), then burning stars now is the wasteful option;*
>

*Option? What is the "option", turning off all the stars in the Galaxy
right now? We don't see any evidence of that either. Thank goodness!!  No
matter how I look at it I can find absolutely no rationale for allowing the
energy from quadrillions of sons to radiate uselessly into infinite space
if you have the ability to intercept those photons first and make them
perform calculations, or to put it poetically, make them think. *


> *>the decision between expanding now and waiting hinges on a utility
> calculus, not on a thermodynamic compulsion.*
>

*And one element of that utility function must certainly be that a
calculation performed today is worth more than a calculation performed in
10^100 years because, like money, new knowledge earns interest, and because
even Mr. Jupiter Brain can't know for certain what things will be like in
the year 10^100, or even know if He will still be alive.*


> * > 'We're first' is the only answer on the table that makes us
> metaphysically special after five centuries of demotions,*
>

*We've been demoted along some dimensions but promoted among others. The
sun is about 330,000 times as massive as the Earth but the Earth is far
more complex than the sun, and thanks to us it is getting more complex
every day. And 98.5% of the angular momentum in the solar system comes from
the planets, not the sun.  And the Black Hole Ton 618 is 66 billion times
as massive as the sun, and yet it, like all Black Holes, can be exactly
described with just 3 numbers, one for its mass, spin, and electrical
charge. You need a hell of a lot more than 3 numbers to describe the Earth,
or even the sun.  *

*John K Clark*








> *I stopped believing in ET in the 1980s the first time I read Eric
> Drexler's book "Engines Of Creation", at about the same time I started
> hearing excuses that attempted to explain why we have never seen the
> slightest evidence of ET, and they were all very similar to the one you
> have presented. But I realize that you'd need a very profound chain of
> thought to explain why not a single alien in any alien civilization
> figured  it might NOT be a great idea to keep permitting low entropy
> photons from quadrillions of suns radiate uselessly into infinite space,
> and instead it might be a good idea to make them do some useful work first,
> for example by performing a calculation. But in the last 50 years none of
> the excuses for the Fermi Paradox  I have heard, other than the obvious
> one, have not been profound, they have been, I'm sorry but there's no other
> word for it, LAME.  *
>
> John K Clark    See what's on my list at  Extropolis
> <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>
>
> ka3
>
>
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